Ender's Game

It's hard to talk about Ender's Game because I honestly don't know where to start.

I wrote a little about it on my librarian blog (you can read it here if you like), mostly addressing how I felt about Orson Scott Card, the book, and going to see the movie. I always intended to see the film, no matter how I felt about OSC; when I bought my ticket, I donated to the Human Rights Campaign as well. But I've been excited about this movie since the first trailer was released; it was a really well done trailer, managing to touch on the treatment of the kids in battle school, the characterization of Ender, and the mystery of Mazer Rackham without actually saying much of anything. It looked good. The casting was good. I had no reason to be anything other than optimistic.

To say the movie didn't deliver is an understatement.

Ender commands a really cool looking, but ultimately superficial, space battle

You can't be a book lover and a movie lover without running into the adaptation problem from time to time - books get adapted into movies all the time, and for the most part I enjoy them as a different mode of telling the same story. I try not to get hung up on small inaccuracies or changes made, because things inevitably have to change when moving from one medium to another. This was not the problem with Ender's Game. The problem with Ender's Game is that every change made, every omission, every alteration, fundamentally changed the tone and meaning of the story, so that by the time it's all wrapping up, you're left with a completely different message than the book offers.

From the very first scenes, which whip past you so fast it's almost impossible to digest them, I knew we were in trouble - all the key scenes were there, but presented in a manner that felt like the writers said "Okay, these moments are important, we have to include them," but without any understanding of why they were important. As a result, emotionally weighty moments from the book fall flat or feel goofy, because there's no context or buildup or anything to give them their importance. The scenes are presented almost in a vacuum, because the director has never taken the time to show you why they matter.

The "showing versus telling" is a problem here. Gavin Hood, the director, has pretty much decided that information has to be spoon-fed to the audience via voice-over or info dump by Ford, even when the telling contradicts what little he takes the time to show us. Every important development in Battle School is compressed into two battles, in ways that mean the audience has to be told why they are important - exposition which doesn't make the visual make sense, by the way. Like other big visuals (which do look stunning, I have to say), Battle School loses a lot of coherency for the sake of making a big special effects splash. You get the feeling that some things were changed simply for the sake of including those special effects.

I will say I enjoyed the acting, for the most part - Harrison Ford was perfect at getting Graff's gruffness, but also showing the real affection he develops for Ender. Ben Kingsley is great at Mazer Rackham, although his accent coasted just this side of incomprehensible. The place where the acting breaks down is with the kids, but I'm not quite willing to place all the blame on them - I've seen and loved Hailee Steinfield, Abigail Breslin and Asa Butterfield in other films. They are weak in Ender because the writing and the direction are weak, because the emotions and tone are wrong. Ford and Kingsley are great actors with years of experience under their belts, and actors of that caliber can elevate weak material (which they are absolutely doing here). Steinfeld and Butterfield simply don't have the experience; they needed more help from the script and the director, which they clearly weren't getting.

I can't really tell you how much I wanted to like this movie. I absolutely do not think the story is unfilmable - but you have to start with filmmakers that understand the material they're working with. There was a message in Hood's film, but it wasn't the message of the Ender's Game novel...and his Ender is not the Ender I grew up with.

Pacific Rim

I have half-finished reviews for Now You See Me and Man of Steel sitting in my drafts, and I couldn't tell you why I'm not all that compelled to finish them - I think part of it is that I was disappointed with NYSM and I don't feel like I have much to add to the Man of Steel discussion, which was VERY good but everyone else has pretty much captured why.

I am compelled - strongly, in fact - to tell you to go see Pacific Rim.

Charlie Hunnam and RInko Kikuchi as Raleigh Becket and Mako Mori

Pacific Rim is polarizing, and I think I've finally pinned down why: a lot of the buzz leading up to it had to do with the fact that, in a time in film history when most of the films being made are sequels, prequels, adaptations and franchise pieces, Pacific Rim was a "wholly original" piece.  Guillermo del Toro had lovingly hand-crafted the perfect genre film, and people (at least the people writing about film and media) were amped about it - a summer blockbuster with shades of Godzilla and Transformers, created from an Oscar nominated director.

But the fact is that it's a.) not completely original (like I said, shades of Godzilla and Transformers...and Evangelion, and Half-Life, and Cloverfield, and kung-fu movies, and much of JJ Abrams' body of work, and a whole host of other things); b.) it wasn't the magnum opus that people expected and thought they deserved.  The dialogue is weak, the story (while TOTALLY AWESOME) is a little goofy, there's unnecessary exposition which could have been dedicated to more character development, the big endgame is a little rushed.

I'm here to state, plainly and emphatically and on the record: WHO GIVES A SHIT.

No, seriously.  I'm not going to pull out the "It's a giant shiny action movie, who needs plot?" line, because I don't need to.  What Pacific Rim lacks in writing strength it more than makes up for in three main things:

1. World Building
Do you remember when James Cameron made Avatar, and everyone was going apeshit over the world he'd constructed?  The world building of Pacific Rim spits on that.  From the individuality of the kaiju and the jaegers, most of which we only see for a few minutes but manage to have distinct personalities, to the trickle-down effect that the monsters have on the black market (Ron Perlman plays a wonderfully shady black market trader in kaiju bits), Pacific Rim is dense with background detail that colors the story without overwhelming it.  I read a review that complained about all the jargon used in the film (I believe it was referred to as "geek speak"), which I noticed but didn't have a problem with, because its couched so firmly in context that I, at least, never had trouble understanding it.  I'll be buying the making of book, Pacific Rim: Man, Machines, and Monsters as soon as possible, because you KNOW that del Toro has pages and pages and pages of information that we never get to see - but the movie aches with it.  This is why, even when you can feel the homages that del Toro is drawing on, ultimately the movie itself feels pretty fresh.

2. Cinematography
Simply put, this is one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen.  Every battle sequence is impeccably shot with clarity, even when the battles take place at night.  A scene in downtown Hong Kong is lit with neon signs and helicopter beams, the drift visualizations are ethereal and striking, and as I said above, the kaiju and jaegers drip distinct personality in their visual designs and the way that they move.  The way they move is important, too - no matter how flimsy some of the science is (and I don't really care, honestly) the monsters and the jaegers move realistically.  There's weight to them, things don't always happen quickly, and it feels real to the physics of things twice the size of the Statue of Liberty.  This goes hand-in-hand with the world building, and each detail of this world is precise and visually clear.  If Pacific Rim doesn't win all the technical and effects Oscars, frankly, they're doing it wrong.

3. The Actors
Remember when I said the writing was weak?  Here's where I tell you why it doesn't matter.  Idris Elba, Charlie Hunnam and Rinko Kikuchi form the emotional center of this movie, and they are all so compelling that I forgive them for any cliched dialogue they had to utter.  Elba in particular commands with the force of personality I've come to expect from him - he's an actor that elevates the material he's given, so even when I was wishing there was more to his Cancelling the Apocalypse speech, I was shaken in my seat by the lines he delivered.  Hunnam's Raleigh Becket is down-trodden, damaged, and immensely capable, and you can feel the way he waffles between hopelessness about the situation and stoic determination.  The idea behind Kikuchi's Mako Mori is occasionally stronger than the execution; it feels like the writers don't always quite know what to do with her, which is a shame because I loved her - she shows serious mettle, rising to an impossible demand and doing the best she has with less than desirable circumstances.  I deeply appreciated the lack of romance between Mori and Becket; their strong camaraderie feels more real to the characters and the actors.

So I urge you to see Pacific Rim.  Don't see it because it's the last hope for original movies - it's not.  Don't see it because it's the last hope for genre movies - it isn't.  See it because it's awesome.  See it because it's the most fun I've had at the movies in a really, really long time.  See it because it deserves a big screen.

And hold on to your hat when you do.

Oblivion

I'm still feeling pretty whiny about Star Trek, so I'm going to chat for a bit about a movie I DID like, even though I saw it a few weeks ago (on my birthday, actually!).

I had moderate expectations for Oblivion - I think Tom Cruise is a talented and capable actor, even if he is pretty crazypants in real life, and generally I enjoy movies he's in (Minority Report is one of my favorites, in fact).  And the general attitude about Oblivion seemed to be "That was better than I expected!", so it seemed like a safe bet.

Guys, this movie is great.  The story is solid (it's an adaptation of a graphic novel written by Joseph Kosinski, who also directed Tron: Legacy. ~The more you know~) and had a few twists I wasn't expecting, and the filmmakers do some really interesting and risky things that COULD have tanked it - but they didn't.

The biggest risk it takes, in my opinion, is in pacing - Oblivion is never in a hurry to impress you.  It has a lot of the window dressing of a big summer blockbuster, but the first hour or so is pretty much Tom Cruise wandering around a vacant Planet Earth reminiscing about a life he's never lived (pre-alien war, we're told.  Cruise and his partner Vicka, played by Andrea Riseborough, fix the drones that take care of giant water processing machines.  They have just two weeks left before they get to abandon ship and join what's left of humanity on colony Titan).  It moves incredibly leisurely, treading just this side away from boring.  It's captivating, though, because Cruise and the writers hit on just the right combination of nostalgia and weirdness to keep it interesting.

Ultimately, that pace is used to establish the world the movie is in, right before the rug gets yanked out from under you.  When the story starts shifting gears, though, the first chunk makes more sense.  Plot twists get dropped like breadcrumbs, the action spirals up slowly, and when the big reveals start happening it's almost breathtaking the way the filmmakers have played you.

Nothing comes out of nowhere - that whole opening sequence is seeded with clues that don't become clues until you know what the context is.  Going in, I thought I had a pretty good grasp on what the twist would be and what Morgan Freeman's role in all of this was; turns out what I thought I knew was correct, but only partially, and not in the way that really matters.

Oblivion also has an emotional resonance that surprised me, because I'm not used to genre or summer films being this willing to sacrifice explosions for the sake of emotional connection.  For all its scale (and there's a lot of scale - sweeping, barren landscapes, shiny futuristic planes and living platforms, lots of white and metals and a pretty cool suspension pool), the story feels small and intimate - it's the story of Morgan Freeman and his rebels, or course, but it's really the story of Cruise's Jack.  The big reveal and climax at the end feel earned, because you've spent so much perceived time with Jack, which means that Oblivion retains the emotional core that so much genre film misses (I was reminded of Avatar, actually, in that both are big, shiny science fiction tales, but Oblivion is actually resonant and, you know, good.)

Oblivion looks very much like a giant sci-fi summer blockbuster - with Cruise in the main actor seat and big, impressive visuals, superficially the film looks much bigger than what it ends up being: one man's struggle with identity and purpose.  

Star Trek Into Darkness, this time with SPOILERS

Let's get into it.

I will admit that I have never seen Wrath of Khan.  I've never been a Star Trek fan, so I never bothered, and thus may be missing something in Abrams' remake.  However, one of the things I loved so much about his first reboot was that it was so accessible - you didn't have to be a Trek fan to know what was going on, and you didn't have to be familiar with the characters to fall in love with them.  So I'm not willing to cut Abrams any slack on this front.

That said, here are my specific complaints about Star Trek: Into Darkness.

- As I said in my first review, I thought Abrams was telling us with his first Trek that he was off the leash, not to be constrained by the previously established Trek canon (however you may feel about that decision).  But what do we get as a follow up? A film that tries to shoe horn as much reference and remake that it possibly can into a story that would have been better served without it.  John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) was more interesting before the "reveal" that we're actually just doing Khan again.  The story of Kirk's disgrace with the Academy, and him getting called to task for his shitty captaining by his mentor Admiral Pike, was way more fascinating than the revenge drama we got.  All of this was washed away in the first twenty minutes of the movie.

- Let's talk about those first twenty minutes.  I was SO excited to see Pike's dressing down of Kirk, because it's a big character moment for him - yes, he's been insanely lucky so far, but the way he runs his ship and his attitude are dangerous and will probably kill someone someday.  To have another character, one that Kirk respects so much, actually call him out for that could have been a great story to follow - except that we forget about that the instant Pike dies.  The Federation takes the Enterprise away from Kirk...and then gives it back to him almost instantly.  His abilities as a captain are never in question for the rest of the film.  Even his bad decisions are mostly the product of him taking pretty solid advice from his crew.  It doesn't end up meaning anything.

- Which brings me to character motive, or lack thereof. As a Federation terrorist, Harrison was on the way to having some kind of motive - perhaps he was wronged by the Federation.  It doesn't matter, it didn't have to be complicated.  But by turning around and making him Khan, he has a tenuous motive for revenge against one specific member of the Federation (Admiral Marcus, who, um, what?  How can I give a shit about a conflict with someone I've never met before, and who's characterization wasn't explored enough to matter) and NOTHING to justify that last scene where he crashed the ship into San Francisco. Khan is only ever angry at one person: Marcus, Kirk, Spock.  But somehow, we're supposed to buy that he's this huge danger to the universe?

I feel like this is where it would have been helpful to have seen Wrath of Khan, because the scene with Old Spock gives some intimations of how dangerous Khan is - but the point is, we never see that in this version. He's some kind of superhuman, and I totally get why he hates Marcus, but the explosive destruction aimed at the Federation is never earned.

- Seriously, the Klingons were in the movie for two minutes and were more interesting than everything else.  Can the next movie be about them?

- The dialogue was brutal. Seriously, I love Karl Urban, he's a great actor, and we've seen that he's great at being Bones - so why why WHY would you reduce him to a series of stereotypical metaphors and one-liners?  All of the characters were distilled down to their TOS stereotypes (except, interestingly, Spock, who continually talks about being unable to feel and then being REALLY BAD at not feeling).

Speaking of, can we talk about how unfair Uhura's part in this whole thing was?  I alluded to it in my other review, but seriously: she's supposed to be capable and professional.  I do not believe at all that she would choose to fight about her relationship with Spock on the shuttle on the way to an extremely dangerous mission.  It was poorly placed, distracting, and damaging to all characters involved.

- For all that the stakes keep being raised, and the probability of death looms ever closer, I never felt like there was any tension.  With the sole exception of Khan and Kirk's flight through space (which would have been even more effective if it had been edited a little tighter), I never once was afraid for these characters.  Hell, Kirk died and I didn't take it seriously, because I knew what story we were in (which is another reason the Khan bait-and-switch doesn't work - yes, it's Spock that dies in the original, but that doesn't stick, either).  There is a way to create tension when your audience knows the ending of the story, this movie just never knows how.

- And at the end...nothing is different.  Khan is back in a cryo tube (which, how? How do you fight an super being back into a freezing tube?) Kirk has the Enterprise back. All the relationships are where they were in the beginning, because nothing was ever a serious threat to them.  The whole film felt like a wasted opportunity.

I'll probably go see more Trek films, if Abrams keeps making them.  But I won't feel the same kind of unreserved excitement I had before STID.  Which makes me really, really sad.

Star Trek: My first summer disappointment

I'm coming out of hibernation because I saw the new Star Trek film last night, and I have a lot of feelings about it. Specifically, I have a lot of BAD feelings about it, which have left me disappointed to the point of anger - which, on the one hand, is kind of ridiculous, because at the end of the day, movies aren't worth getting mad about...but on the other hand, I was SO EXCITED about this one. JJ Abrams' first Star Trek is one of my favorite m movies. I had it on my top ten list for 2009. I thought it was Best Picture material.

Into Darkness is...not. It manages to feel both bloated and hollow, drilling the same parallels into you over and over again with all the subtlety of an anvil, taking what were some of the best things about the 2009 film and tossing them merrily out the airlock.

I'm going to do this review in two parts, a spoiler free one and one where I can more fully enumerate the crimes of Star Trek: Into Darkness, the better to fully explain how I came to leave the theater feeling like I saw a different movie than everyone else I know (believe me, I wish I'd seen the one everyone is raving about. That sounded like a GOOD movie.).

To start, it's too long by about a half hour. The first twenty minutes are great - they move along, reveal some interesting conflicts, and get the action started...which then almost immediately tapers off into endless, pointless fight sequences and way, WAY too many shots of various crew members running down the white hallways of the Enterprise (which, by the way, has anyone ever bothered to map out the ship? Because I had no idea where we were supposed to be in the ship most of the time).

In addition to feeling padded out with unnecessary running, poorly edited action sequences, and revisiting the same plot points over and over, Into Darkness seems to take pleasure in wasting some of its best resources. Karl Urban as Bones is reduced to stupid metaphors and bitter one liners (to the point where another character actually says to him, "Enough with the metaphors!"). Uhura manages to somehow be both more and less interesting, getting to accompany Kirk on a mission but choosing the worst possible moment to bitch about her relationship problems. In fact, most of the crew, such strong presences in the first film, are basically reprising that here - hardly anyone gets anything new to do, or even say.

There's some good stuff here, not enough to assuage my feelings about it as a whole, but just enough to be frustrated by the film. The first two scenes are excellent, as Kirk' s methods and attitudes are called into question by the one person who's opinion he might actually care about. There's enough of the Klingons seen that I wish they'd been the villains of the film. And Benedict Cumberbatch, our actual villain, delivers monologues both traffic and sinister in a way that might have given me chills...If the material he'd been given had had more punch. But it's all so bogged down in senseless, motive-less buckshot that I had trouble keeping the good stuff in mind.

The conflict introduced in the opening sequence is pretty instantly brushed aside for something much less interesting, so that Abrams can pull what I'm sure he thought was an epic level bait and switch...but which ends up pretty much guaranteeing that the rest of the movie has no tension, because you now know exactly how it will end. This might be my biggest criticism and biggest disappointment: I thought that, with his first Trek, Abrams was making a grand statement that we were now playing by his rules. The old timeline was scrapped, he could send the Enterprise and her crew wherever he wished, and it would all be new, and fresh, and exciting. Into Darkness is none of those things. It is a group of people patting themselves on the back for being clever and good looking, while offering nothing in the way of new experience. I know you can do better, Mr. Abrams. I sincerely hope your next effort is more with my time.

Oscar Predictions!

I feel like I have a pretty good handle on the Oscars this year.  We'll see how I do tomorrow!

Best Picture: Lincoln
Ebert is convinced that Argo is taking it home, and after all the reactionary press Ben Affleck has gotten after his snub, he might be right - but tomorrow I think we're looking at a return to traditional Oscar values, and Lincoln simply has more weight on its side.  I think that the combined powers of Spielberg, Daniel Day-Lewis, the historical biopic subject and the epic scope are going to be too much for the Academy to resist.

Best Director: Steven Spielberg
I really don't see any other contenders in this category (not that the other directors don't deserve to be nominated!).  IF Affleck had been nominated, these two categories might be harder to predict - as it is, I think we're looking at a Lincoln-takes-all kind of evening.

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
It's the performance of his lifetime.  It's the performance of several lifetimes.  He can't lose.

Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
Her real competition is Jessica Chastain, but I think Zero Dark Thirty is suffering a little on the awards circuit because of how similar it is to The Hurt Locker.  Lawrence has been getting more and better press than Chastain, plus her performance was unforgettable.  Granted, I haven't seen ZD30, and both women are turning into the kind of actresses that change the landscape of film, but I think the scales are tipped just slightly in Lawrence's favor.

Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained
If Lincoln is losing anywhere, it's here - and that's because Django isn't winning any other category (in my opinion).  Tarantino is pushing too hard for the Academy to take him seriously, when his material doesn't stand up to that assertion.  Waltz, however, is becoming a virtuoso that plays in Tarantino's key - if anyone can snag an award for Django, it's him.

Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables
For serious, they should just play the clip of Hathaway singing "I Dreamed A Dream" and let it speak for itself.

Animated Film: Wreck-It Ralph
For the first time in a while I don't think Pixar has a lock on this category.  I waffled hard on this one, because of how much I want ParaNorman to win - unfortunately, too often the Academy plays it conservative with the animated feature, and I think this year Disney's name is going to be too much to resist.  HOWEVER, Wreck-It Ralph was still an excellent movie, and will deserve the award.

Other Awards!

Cinematography: Life of Pi
Costume Design: Mirror Mirror
Film Editing: Argo
Makeup: The Hobbit
Music: Life of Pi
Music/Original Song: Adele, Skyfall
Production Design: Lincoln
Sound Editing: Argo
Sound Mixing: Les Miserables
Visual Effects: Life of Pi
Writing/Adapted Screenplay: Lincoln
Writing/Original Screenplay: Django Unchained

Chuggin' Along

So!  I have been dangerously delinquent on updating this blog.  I don't know if it was resolution fatigue or what, so I'm going to make a couple of preemptive statements regarding the future of this blog:

- Setting myself deadlines, it turns out, makes me not want to update.  SO.  Updates will go back to a "Whenever I feel like I have something to say" schedule.  Hopefully this will lead to an increase of words.

- Going forward, I am still going to try to keep to the "post reviews within 48 hours of seeing a movie" clause, because the fresher a movie is in my brain the better I can tell you all about it.

I'm playing with the idea of combining this blog and my book blog (Alternative Read) into one giant media entity, because then I can also flail all over about the tv shows I'm watching (spoiler alert: I get a lot of feelings about tv) and everything can be in one happy location.  I'm still trying to figure out what platform would best serve that purpose, so I'll keep you updated and, in the meantime, try to keep these things updated, as well.

ENOUGH ABOUT THAT, LET'S TALK ABOUT MOVIES.

Since last I spoke here, I've seen:

Mama.  I know, I KNOW.  Apparently I can't claim that I don't do horror movies anymore, because not only did I pay to see this in a theater, but I didn't actually have any nightmares after!  (I do have to make a studious effort to get it out of my brains if I think of it pre-bedtime, though.)  It was good!  Surprising no one, because Guillermo del Toro, duh.  Jessica Chastain and the little girls are fabulous - the girls especially do a great job of being creepy and endearing and feral and a whole bunch of other stuff.  The ending veers into melodrama territory, and is maybe a touch too overblown and tragic, but it's satisfying and ultimately makes sense.  I do confess to keeping my eyes glued on my knees during many of the scenes where you actually see the ghost, but: baby steps.

Fat Kid Rules The World, which: AWESOME.  This was one of the best YA books I read for my YA literature class in library school, and I was really excited when I found out that it got made into a movie and then successfully Kickstarted a distribution.  I got to see it when I went out to the American Library Association midwinter conference in Seattle, because someone from YALSA (the young adult division of ALA) e-mailed the director and said she wanted to screen it - he sent her a complementary copy and some awesome bumper stickers (proclaiming DON'T F*CK WITH THE FAT KID).  The movie, while obviously a slimmed down version of the story, captures the important stuff - and I felt like the people who made it really got the book.  It's about self confidence, self acceptance, punk rock, dealing with family issues, high school bullshit...all that teenage angst wrapped up in Troy, the titular fat kid, as he navigates what starts off as a pretty shitty life - but improves significantly when he gets involved with a drug addict/punk guitarist, Marcus.

Silver Linings Playbook, which was fabulous - the story itself has the skeleton of a typical rom-com, but the cleverness and sensitivity of the writing as well as the stellar performances elevated the whole thing.  Jennifer Lawrence, who I seriously want to be when I grow up (except that she's YOUNGER than me, which doesn't give me self esteem issues at all, thank you very much), is seriously charming - she's all broken edges and enviable hair and sharply witty remarks.  I like Bradley Cooper more and more, because I think he's very willing to step outside of his comfort zone and push his characters to the max; he does a whole host of things here that I haven't seen from him before, and it makes Pat's manic-depressive fluctuations believable, scary, and ultimately sympathetic.  Robert De Niro and Jackie Weaver as Pat's long suffering parents are also pitch perfect, especially Weaver, who plays Pat's mother with a quiet tolerance that speaks volumes even when she doesn't.

Warm Bodies: I don't actually have a whole lot to say about this one, which speaks plenty in and of itself, I think.  It was...ok.  A serviceable zombie movie with an interesting perspective.  I didn't like how many things happened because Reasons (like the big plot hook, shown in the trailer - zombies are coming back to life because of...love?  OK, sure.), and the pacing felt off to me.  The acting is charming, but all in all I could have waited for the DVD release.

My Oscar Predictions go up on Friday.  Are YOU watching?