The Same Olde

Haywire

2012-01-23T20:43:00.001-05:00

I think I saw the trailer for this in theaters twice, and both times my reaction was “Hm. Maybe.” It had the trappings of yet-another-action-movie but felt a little bit different; it seemed to have some of the personality of The Bourne Identity, which is something I value very highly. It turns out it’s directed by Steven Soderbergh, who most recently put out Contagion, which I didn’t like that much, but he’s also made a whole bunch of very good movies. You’ve probably seen a bunch of them. I think this is his first pure action movie, and he made a great choice for the star; former mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano.

It’s a very simple story. Mallory Kane (Gina) is a contract badass, and through an unfortunate turn of events she gets betrayed and marked for death. Her story is told partially by her to a random guy from a diner while driving his car in order to not die. That’s about it, and that’s cool. Simple stories can be great as long as they’re well executed and the rest of the film is made with attention to quality, and I think that’s been done here.

Gina is not an accomplished actress, but Soderbergh did a great job of making her look like one as well as he could. She doesn’t have a lot of lines. Her acting is largely physical, much like Ryan Gosling’s performance in Drive, except there isn’t much in the way of subtlety here. She just kicks ass all over the place. The ass-kicking is often filmed in ways your don’t often see in action films these days; wide, steady shots, few quick cuts, and lots of pretty complex fight choreography. Even the gun battles are given an almost panoramic feel. It’s just nice.

The score I’ve been told sounds a lot like Ocean’s Eleven, but of course I don’t remember that at all. I probably liked it though, because I liked it here. It’s very jazzy, at times sounding like something from a James Bond movie. I don’t remember anything particularly orchestral anywhere. Really cool atmosphere.

It certainly doesn’t hurt to have such an awesome cast too, with the meteoric Michael Fassbender, the recently-redeemed (in my eyes) Antonio Banderas, Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglass, and even Channing Tatum in his first good role ever. Everyone performs admirably, and much less annoyingly than in Contagion.

Really the only bad thing I can say about this movie is that Gina’s not that great at delivering her lines convincingly 100% of the time. She’s just not really an experienced actress. Damn fun to watch though.

Concert Review: Ghost at The Rock N’ Roll Hotel, 2012-01-19

2012-01-20T17:38:00.001-05:00

Ancient Wisdom hails from Austin, Texas, and in keeping with the rest of the night, play a pretty hard-to-pin-down sort of sludge/rock/doom. They were definitely interesting to watch as the frontman is also the drummer, but doesn’t sit on a throne; rather, he hits the bass drum with his left hand and the rest of the stuff with his right, producing a pretty slow, tribal sort of beat. As is the case with most drummer-singers his vocal stylings are a bit rough, especially since he’s opted out of the growls. They rock pretty hard though.

Blood Ceremony was a real treat. They’re not the first female-fronted metal band I’ve seen live but definitely the prettiest one. Also the most interesting due to the flute. Put that thing through a PA and it pierces your very brain in twain. They play traditional doom, very Black Sabbath influenced from what I could tell. All four of the charismatic Canadians seem to be very capable on their instruments and laid down a ton of gripping riffage. I’ll be checking them out further.

Ghost of course was the reason I bought the ticket. They were the breakout act of the year in 2011, brought to most people’s attention by the main dude behind Darkthrone. I hear them described as Mercyful Fate-like all the time but I consider their Opus Eponymous to be miles better than anything I’ve heard from them; King Diamond’s voice is something I just can’t get into. Also their songs are just devilishly catchy. Their stage presence is incredibly entertaining what with all their silly costumes and antics, and “Papa” really has a handle on interacting with the audience while maintaining the character. It’s really like watching a play with face-melting sounds coming out of it than attending a metal concert. One of the highlights of their set was their cover of Here Comes the Sun, which I expected might be an encore but ended up somewhere in the middle; the actual encore was strangely omitted.

It was a fantastic night. The venue was nice enough, a bit smaller than Black Cat or Sonar, but the stage was pretty well elevated and the sound was good for the first two bands; Ghost’s mix sounded pretty muddy for a lot of their set unfortunately.

The Artist

2012-01-17T20:24:00.001-05:00

As I tend to start pretty much everything I write with some mention that I haven’t seen much of something similar to the thing I’m writing about, I have to say that I haven’t seen much in the way of silent films. Probably nothing full-length at all really. I should get on that probably. Due to this omission I’m probably not quite the intended audience for this movie, but in the end it didn’t really matter that much.

So this guy’s a really big silent movie star. Then sound starts happening and he unintentionally creates the embodiment of this new, hateful (to him), technology in the love interest lady with the fake beauty mark. Most of the movie after that point is a telling of his decline from grace and whatnot, with a pretty great little metaphorical dream sequence in the middle.

It’s a bit similar to what I can remember from Singing in the Rain, except without all the songs and talking and whatnot. Almost every possible measure is taken to make it look like a genuine silent movie; it’s black and white, the (limited) dialogue is pretty much exclusively shown on text frames, and the film is shown entirely in a 4x3 aspect ratio. The only thing that’s missing really is the horrible film-grain and defects. Again, I haven’t seen enough of the real McCoy to say that’s really a prevalent thing, though; it’s just the mental picture I have of it.

Of course an important thing in a movie like this is the score, and I’m pretty sure I enjoyed it. Can’t really remember anything as usual. I’ve seen a couple headlines here and there about borrowing from Vertigo or something, but I’ve not seen many Hitchcock films either so I can’t vouch for that. Whatever.

The acting is good, and hammy enough to evoke what it’s going for. John Goodman is great even when you can’t hear his mouth-noises, and the leads pretty much nail it. The dog is the best though. Best Supporting Actor right there.

I really enjoyed it. I wouldn’t give it Best Picture or anything but that’s probably what’s going to happen. Nostalgia and all that shite.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Fincher)

2012-01-08T20:57:00.001-05:00

WHERE’D YOUR EYEBROWS GO ROONEY?

I really love the Swedish adaptation of the novel. The Lisbeth character is magnetically dark while maintaining a real humanity, and while the story may admittedly not be the most original or innovative thing ever, her plights and interactions make for some very engrossing viewing. I don’t think it was at all necessary to make an English-language version of it, as the first one was a perfectly well-made film, but if David Fincher wants to do it then sure, whatever man.

Much like for Let Me In, Matt Reeves’ re-adaptation of Let the Right One In, I’m not going to re-summarize the story; it’s the same. There is very little in the way of divergence. I haven’t read the book though (as usual), but I don’t plan on it. I’ve heard from a bunch of people that it’s boring. I think I’ve got the gist anyway. The only difference that really registered with me was how Lisbeth and Mikael’s relationship develops and ends up; although I did feel a bit cheated at the end of the Swedish one, I think I preferred it to how it happens here. This conclusion does seem a bit less like a cliffhanger though; maybe they were covering their asses in case the response fails to merit sequels. Maybe I’m making stuff up.

Aside from that, all the differences are in the filmmaking. It’s a Fincher movie, so it’s really tight. I can’t say I’m familiar enough with his stuff to pick out any signature elements or anything though. I’ll have to re-watch it, but I think the Swedish version was filmed pretty much just as competently as this one. Trent Reznor’s back again after winning an Oscar for The Social Network, and while the score isn’t that noticeable most the time, once in a while it sticks out in a subdued sort of way (except for Immigrant Song, which knocks my pants off). I thought the dude with the NIN shirt was pretty funny. Another awesome thing for me music-wise was the Ulver tune in the background of the tattoo-parlor scene. No one else in the theater noticed though, I’m fairly certain.

Rooney Mara’s performance is of course the clincher here. It’s obvious she put a lot into the role. She was one of the very few actors who actually tried to use a convincing Swedish accent, and she’s barely recognizable from her appearance in The Social Network. Still, I think it might have been a bit less of a problem for her than for Noomi Rapace in the nude scenes, as her body is considerably more smokin’. In the end though I prefer Noomi’s take on the character. It might just be because I’ve seen the movie so many times, but she just came off as perfect.

Daniel Craig is fine. It’s a pretty bland role. That dude from AMC’s The Killing book-ends the movie pretty great with his one line and worried looks. They should’ve gotten Milton from Office Space to play Lisbeth’s guardian instead of that Jack Black-lookin’ guy.

I liked the first one better. Still very good though.

War Horse

2011-12-30T15:57:00.001-05:00

If you read my last post, you’ll note that Tintin gave me hope for Spielberg’s continuing career. I included the note that it may have been because of the inclusion of a large number of awesome people. After seeing this movie, I think that was probably the case.

War Horse is based on a children’s book that was later adapted to a stage play, neither of which I’ve read or seen. It covers several moments/periods of time with several characters during World War I, centered around a horse with magical powers. It’s meticulously engineered to pull on your heart-strings and inspire you and all that bunk.

The problem here is that I’m a cynical person who doesn’t love horses. If I were the opposite of that, I’d be all over this thing. There are too many moments of the “Spielberg Face” without really justifying it in my eyes, and it’s all just so damn wholesome. Not a drop of blood is shed, even when a large number of people are gunned down, a horse gets run over by a tank, and our hero the horse runs through several fences of barbed-wire. Except for that last bit pretty much everything that could be at all off-putting happens off-screen. Yeah yeah, it’s a family movie, whatever.

As I said too, the horse is magical. It seems to understand human language without much difficulty, has an incredible grasp of empathic situations, and keeps doing things that everyone insists are impossible for him to do. This would be a bit more affecting if there were a reason for it, like he was born with the soul of a dragon or something. Also I think it would have been cool if the movie was actually all filmed from the horse’s perspective and we didn’t get all this extra stuff with the humans and whatnot.

It’s a pretty movie for sure. It is an odd look though; many scenes kind of gave me the impression of a green screen even though it probably wasn’t used, I guess it was just the lighting. Just kinda weird.

So. Bottom line, bad movie for cynics. Probably good for wide-eyed horse-loving children.

Buncha Movies

2011-12-28T19:27:00.001-05:00

I’ve been busy, yo.

Young Adult

I liked Juno. Haters be damned. Up in the Air was good. This movie is better than those movies. Charlize Theron plays an evil woman who used to be the most popular, prettiest girl in high-school, and now she keeps living in a fantasy world of entitlement and superiority while the rest of the world has moved on to boring but healthy reality. She decides to rekindle a flame with her “soul-mate” who happens to be happily married (although she doesn’t think that’s really possible, since they’re soul mates). Patton Oswalt’s broken but awesome character tries repeatedly to tell her she’s an idiot without much luck. It’s a pretty tragic movie, and the it’s neat that Charlize isn’t really an antihero here, just a messed up human. Oswalt is really what made the movie great though.

Mission: Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol

Needs more colons. I remember watching the first one twice in a row, way back sometime around THE YEAR 2000 in my youth pastor’s trailer-home with the rest of the youth group, trying to figure out what the hell was going on in it. I think I watched it later on and didn’t have that much trouble, but it definitely left an impression of being an enjoyable mind-game sort of action movie. I’m pretty sure I saw the second one but I must have blocked it out mostly. Maybe I didn’t. I haven’t seen the third though, so a bunch of the stuff that happened in this one didn’t really make a whole lot of sense, although I think they did a good job of recapping the important bits without sounding too expository. The story here is that a bomb exploded in Russia and now Tom Cruise and co. are no longer employed by the US government but have to stop the bad guys or else everyone will die and they’ll be labeled terrorists. Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, and Paula Patton do very actiony things while being funny a lot, and Michael Nyqvist plays a boring, detached villain without really doing a bad job of it. Cruise proves he can still actionate with the best of them in several very impressive scenes. It’s a really preposterous, enjoyable movie. Go Brad Bird.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

The last one was okay. Wasn’t a huge fan but whatever. This one gets more into the story that most people know (I’m not claiming to be knowledgeable on this stuff though), what with Moriarty playing a major role, represented by that British dude from Mad Men. However, it’s still a ridiculous action movie rather than the cerebral venture I think the subject matter is more suited to. Of course it’s been done a hundred times but this is still just unnecessary, especially with so much going on all the time it’s hard to even grasp what’s happening. There were at least three scenes I thought were the climax. It’s nice to see Noomi Rapace in something, and I’m definitely looking forward to Prometheus, but she didn’t really help the movie much. Guy Ritchie has made some good stuff; his visual style is very evident here, and it’s often nice to look at. I think it was fun enough altogether, there was just too damn much of it.

The Adventures of Tintin

I had a Tintin book a long time ago. I don’t remember a whole lot about it other than it was quite captivating, and that one dude was drunk a lot. With that as my basis, I can say that this film realized my idea of it quite excellently. It also showed that Spielberg can still bring it, although that might be largely influenced by the inclusion of so many awesome people in the making of this wonderfully warm and exciting adventure. We’ve got Andy Serkis, Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Steven Moffat, Peter Jackson, and probably a bunch more I forgot about to make sure it doesn’t suck. Thankfully George Lucas is not on the list. It’s just a thrill to watch these lovable characters and colorful villains battle it out happily over such gorgeous CG sets whilst spouting humor left and right. Tintin himself brings to mind so many characters from books I read as a child, all those boy-genius detectives like the Hardy Boys or Encyclopedia Brown, always coming to the right conclusion on minimal evidence without making it seem implausible. I think the greatest triumph here though is the use of 3D; as it isn’t live action it’s not that much of a feat, but there are several instances where it’s used to show depth so much more than just popping things out of the screen, and it looks utterly fantastic. The visual style aside from that is just very pleasing to the eye anyway so it’s win-win. Great movie.

Hugo and The Descendants

2011-12-11T16:56:00.001-05:00

I haven’t seen that many Scorcese films. I know that he’s very highly respected though, and the movies I’ve seen of his make a good case for that respect. This movie is a new breed for pretty much everyone though, being that it’s Martin’s first “family” film and also made in the dreaded 3D. It was made at the behest of his daughter, who really liked the book that I haven’t read. None of that stuff matters though, because it’s Scorcese.

It’s about a kid who’s parents are dead, like Batman, but instead of kicking bad dudes’ asses all the time he gets all mopey, is forced into clock maintenance, and tries to fix a robot in order to find an expected final message from his dead dad. This indirectly leads to him meeting Sir Ben Kingsley and Chloe Moretz and having an adventure of educational heights.

The trailers gave me the impression that this might be sort of a fantastical movie, like The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus or Pan’s Labyrinth in some respects, but it’s really not. A little suspension of disbelief is required for some bits but for the most part this is just a vehicle for the praise of film and its earliest champions, specifically Georges Melies, who made that moon-face-bullet thing. There’s a section somewhere near the middle in which the scary gambler from Boardwalk Empire narrates a beautifully architected lesson on the guy’s history, in which we learn that he made a ton of movies and then lost them all and got really sad. The objective then becomes to make him happy again.

It’s definitely a good movie. I wasn’t too crazy about Asa Butterfield or even Chloe Moretz’ performances the whole time, but they had their moments. Sacha Baron Cohen was pretty entertaining, and Ben Kingsley is just a great actor whichever film he’s doing. The 3D nonsense worked quite well from time to time, but whenever there were quick cuts or fast movements I just couldn’t deal with it. I think the latter issue would be much less of one if it were filmed at a higher framerate, like The Hobbit is going to be. Still, Scorcese’s great at making stuff look good and he used the technology pretty much as well as anyone could.

The last Clooney movie I saw was The American, and it was awesome. I just recently saw Sideways for the first time, and that was pretty cool too. Good signs. Figured I’d give it a shot, and since Young Adult wasn’t showing at the theater I was going for, this was the next in the stack. Too bad I can’t really stand Hawaiian music.

George Clooney is the trustee of a bunch of land on a Hawaiian island and his wife’s in a coma. He doesn’t know his kids well and they know more about his wife than he does. He finds some crap out about her that makes him angry, and he has a hard time concentration on the fact that he has to decide what to do with this land he’s got before his cousins go all apeshit on him. I guess that’s the gist.

It’s a tad boring, but not bad. There are some funny/awesome bits, mostly involving something of a side-character named Sid, and Clooney’s older daughter is quite attractive. The buzz this one’s getting is all for Clooney’s performance though, which is good, but I don’t think it really stands out that much, and he will most likely not get an award for it unless there’s some political thing going on that I don’t know about. Not as good as Sideways or The American.

Melancholia

2011-11-23T16:57:00.001-05:00

I liked Lars Von Trier’s last movie, Antichrist. I didn’t love it. It was certainly a distinct film, and quite an experience to watch, but I’m not the biggest fan of watching people disfigure themselves painfully (well, I loved 127 Hours, but that’s just different somehow). I haven’t seen any other LVT movies though and he’s got a history of getting a ton of nominations and awards for making great movies, so Melancholia was definitely somewhere near the top of the list of movies I wanted to see this year.

Here we have Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg playing unlikely sisters. Kirsten’s character, Justine, is clinically depressed. The first half of the film is a documentation of her efforts to defeat this depression and have a wonderful wedding. The second half concentrates on her sister Claire, who in the preceding act was trying to support Justine, but now faces a different sort of doom that Von Trier is basically using as an analogy for depression.

That might seem a bit boring. Sometimes it is. However, that analogy for depression is a god-damn planet on a collision course with Earth. Wrap that around your head. Von Trier’s excellent knack for visuals makes this conceit beautifully intense, never mind the gorgeous slo-mo prologue. The atmosphere leading up to the finale is very palpable. I’m not sure how I felt about Kiefer Sutherland’s role as Claire’s husband; his actions seemed a bit odd but did add to the sense of desperation.

I’ve been depressed in the past, but I’m fairly certain it was never this bad. I’m thankful that Von Trier was able to make this film to educate people about this illness while wrapping it all in such a beautiful package.

Some Movies

2011-11-06T22:37:00.001-05:00

I’ve decided to forego watching The Walking Dead live tonight live because I figure I’d never sit down to write this stuff otherwise. It’s not that great of a show anyway.

In Time

It’s been over a week since I saw this. It’s not that it’s nothing to write about, I just haven’t found the time really. It isn’t a great movie or anything though. It could have been I guess; the conceit was appealing to me at least, no aging past 25 and a count-down until you drop dead, and the director is the guy who made Gattaca, so it’s got some pedigree. Apparently he’s made at least one semi-stinker since then though. Some of his visual style came through in the sets, and it’s got a similar sort of sci-fi societal examination going on. Unfortunately the script is a bit ridiculous. I don’t think I’ve ever heard so many puns involving the word “time.” It almost gets comedic. The action is alright, the actors do their jobs, and it’s a very timely (oh crap there I go too) movie what with all this Occupy stuff going on. A decent thing. I’d put it on level with The Adjustment Bureau quality wise, although I think I enjoyed that more.

La Piel que Habito (The Skin I Live In)

A plastic surgeon whose wife was badly burned and later died decides to create a new skin that can resist fire. That’s about as much as I knew about this movie. I’ve not seen any Almadóvar films before this, and nothing I’ve seen with Antonio Banderas has really given me the impression that he’s a serious actor, but apparently the two have a history. I’m glad I didn’t know much about it; there are a lot of red herrings offered for about the first half of the film, and then the twist happens and everything becomes so much more interesting. It’s a very sexy, strange and creepy thing. If you can handle subtitles and like stuff that pushes the boundaries a bit, I highly suggest checking this out. Just don’t read too much about it.

Martha Marcy May Marlene

This was one of the big winners at Sundance this year. It bears a few similarities to Take Shelter in that it deals a bit with mental breakdown and family, and it’s also quite slow; it is however much more grounded in reality. The oncoming storm is replaced by the evil in people, and Michael Shannon is played by Elizabeth Olsen, who is apparently one of those Olsens. You could never tell from this performance. Martha (or Marcy May (or Marlene)) is a sort of a lost girl who thinks she’s found a home in a sort of commune centered around a man named Patrick. As with most communes that make their way to the fictional screen, it’s not really the innocent, idyllic lifestyle she pictured. Her life immediately after her two-year immersion in crazy-land is told in parallel, trying to find a semblance of her previous life with her sister and brother-in-law at their summer home, causing lots of stress and hard decisions. It’s a good, emotional and engrossing film as most psychological things are, but I had a bit of a hard time figuring how she stayed with the crazies that long.

I also watched Splice again today, and it surprised me how many elements it shares with The Skin I Live In. It’s not as good though.

Take Shelter

2011-10-25T20:51:00.001-04:00

Hey look, it’s another one of those movies no one has ever heard of!

However, you may have heard of the now not-so-new HBO series Boardwalk Empire, and if you’ve seen it then you know Michael Shannon, and you also know that Michael Shannon is a g’damn monolith of an actor. That should be enough to make you want to see this movie. Add in a bit of psychological and familial turmoil, a dash of the supernatural, and you’ve got a guaranteed box-office failure of an Oscar film. Of course it’s not really showing on a huge number of screens so it was never going to make much money anyway.

Michael Shannon is a good, loving father to a cute little deaf girl, and a good, loving husband to that beautiful woman from The Tree of Life. He’s got a solid job and good friends (one of which happens to be another guy from Boardwalk Empire). Life is good. Then the movie starts. He’s plagued by intensely real dreams of a dreadful storm that changes people and destroys everything he knows; the dreams begin to affect his waking life, and he starts taking drastic measures not very unlike those in a certain story-arc from Six Feet Under. The film follows him as he grapples with the very high possibility that he’s becoming schizophrenic and the irresistible urge to prepare for destruction, all while trying to preserve and protect his all-important family.

While it is a very slow movie, there are several moments of great intensity that mirror (to a less violent extent) the explosive scenes in Drive. Lots of great, languid shots of storm clouds and swarming bird flocks help to convey the doom descending on Shannon’s mind. A very large component of the film is the family aspect though; this guy really wants to be a good parent and hates what his mind is doing to his ability to do it.

Of course, we never really know if he’s really going crazy or if he’s a prophet. The final scene leaves it open for interpretation, much like Inception. I’m not sure what I think. I tend to like more superhuman/natural stuff so I guess I lean toward the latter, but it really could go either way.

I wasn’t quite as impressed with Shannon’s performance as I have been with his work in Boardwalk Empire. He’s much more human here. Still, it’s being lauded as one of the greatest of the year, and I can’t really argue with that given what I’ve seen. It’s a very good movie, just a bit slow.

50/50

2011-10-17T21:28:00.001-04:00

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a pretty rad dude. He and James Franco are two of the best young-ish male actors around right now, methinks. Seth Rogen can be cool sometimes too I guess, and this movie really uses him correctly. I suppose it helps that he’s really playing himself in more ways than one, as he basically lived his own part in real life as a friend of the writer, Will Reiser, who wrote the screenplay based on his own experience with cancer. I haven’t seen that many movies about this sort of thing, but I can’t imagine the majority of them are this enjoyable.

JGL is a young dude with plenty of life to live, when suddenly an aching back leads to the discovery of tumor with a highly poly-syllabic name. He then goes through all the normal things a cancer patient goes through, calmly then a bit less calmly, dealing with the support of his neglected and overly-caring mother, his seemingly self-focused best friend, and a girlfriend whose earnestness may be masking her other emotions. It may sound like a dire tale, and it is; cancer is no joke and this movie makes no joke of it. It does, however, serve up plenty of humor along the way. As I said before the film makes great use of Seth Rogen’s talents, but more importantly keeps his annoying laughter to a minimum. Both he and JGL are extremely likable dudes, Anna Kendrick is beautifully awkward and everyone else just fills their roles really well.

It’s an emotional journey without relying too heavily on drama, which is great. I think too often this subject is made unapproachable in its doominess. This is more of a story about a guy who happens to be dying and his realization that people actually love him a lot more than he thought they did.

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil

2011-10-11T22:33:00.001-04:00

Another VOD viewing because good movies don’t get wide enough releases to be convenient. Blah. Not that big of a deal though, it was just seven bucks and HD, so it was a pretty fine viewing experience anyway. Certainly worth the money.

I have to admit the biggest attraction for me to this movie was Alan Tudyk in a lead role. He just doesn’t get enough of those. I’ve also seen the other guy, Tyler Labine, as something of a charming idiot/asshole character named Sock on the deceased show Reaper, which I enjoyed mostly. Up until now I thought the girl was Amber Heard but apparently she’s Katrina Bowden. They look much alike in their blondness.

The actors are far from the only things going for this though. At first glance the film appears to be your average slasher flick with a couple of Deliverance-style hillbillies hacking up a bunch stupid college kids. While the kids are indeed stupid for the most part, it turns out they’re the ones who are inadvertently causing all of the mayhem. Most of them mean well, they’re just incredibly bad at staying alive. Tucker and Dale, a misunderstood pair of kind-hearted West-Virginians who just want to go fishing and learn how to talk to ladies, hopelessly watch as the carnage piles up around them while trying to enjoy their new vacation home in the woods.

It doesn’t work quite as well as I’d hoped; the ways in which some of the kids die just seems a bit far-fetched, and every mishap requires so many things to happen just so in order to actually happen. Sure, they’re all quite funny, but the level of stupid required in these situations is just a bit staggering.

The characters are good though, and Tyler Labine actually comes out at the top (he’s pretty much the main character I guess, so that makes sense.) The gore isn’t too horrible to watch and Katrina Bowden is incredibly gorgeous, so it’s a very entertaining viewing, and I recommend it.

Drive

2011-09-20T18:30:00.001-04:00

Looking back at the past year of movies, there have been a lot where I wouldn’t have minded at all if the film was cut short at about 60 minutes or so. Some I just wanted to end. Yes, a few kept me interested, but I think this is the first one that had me wishing for an extension; and yet, it ended where it should have, and was better for it.

I haven’t seen the Pusher trilogy, but I have seen Bronson, and that was enough to raise my interest in this Nicolas Winding Refn (such a sweet name) movie, never mind all of the praise it’s been getting, including Best Director at Cannes. I just checked and I have not in fact seen any Ryan Gosling movies, which explains why I didn’t really get all the hype on that end. His performance here hasn’t really made me a huge fan but I’d be okay with trying out some more.

So the movie is about this guy who drives cars. He’s a stunt driver, a mechanic, and a getaway driver for criminals. He does all this without saying much, and almost always remains entirely calm. A little bit of romantic involvement with Carey Mulligan brings him into a dangerous situation, and we begin to find out that his past might not be all roses, surprise surprise.

The cool thing with that bit about the past is that we’re not given any actual information about it. All we learn is that this guy is capable of some pretty intense actions (he’s also very good at staring contests and not saying anything when asked questions). We never even learn his name, he’s just the Driver. Pretty awesome. We’re also treated to a ton of breathing space between the action sequences. The contrast this brings to said scenes is just fantastic, although even without the space they’d still be shocking. All of this is done with beautiful shots and an occasional backdrop of 80s-ish nostalgic synth music (strangely not cringe-inducing in this context).

The film also features some great Ron Perlman and Bryan Cranston performances. It’s nice to see Cranston as someone other than Walter White. Perlman of course elevates everything he touches, and he does a fine job as usual. I said before that Gosling’s part wasn’t that impressive, but it’s definitely very good considering how few lines he actually has. Most of the performance is body language.

So it’s a super great movie. Go check it out.

Red State

2011-09-08T21:40:00.001-04:00

I’ve been listening to Kevin Smith’s myriad podcasts for a few months now, so I’ve been keep quite current on this movie and all of its strange distribution, but I didn’t manage to catch it during his premiere tour. So now that it’s on On-Demand I figured I’d check it out. I’ve heard lots of good things and a few not-so-good things. One thing that always comes up though is that this movie is a reinvention for Smith, a complete departure from everything he’s done before. I’ve gotten a little tired of his style so this concept is anything but a deterrent.

The film is inspired by the Westboro Baptist Church and their ridiculous, hateful antics. It’s not about them, although it does mention them, but only in comparison to the antagonists who are much much worse. The initial protagonists are the most similar to Smith’s usual characters, a bunch of horny teenage boys who just want to have some fun like normal people; the Five-Point Church has something of a vendetta against this normal fun.

I don’t think I’ll go into any more detail about the story than that. It’s a pretty good one, but it’s not really what makes the movie good; it’s mostly the performances. Red State has some very good actors, including John Goodman, that guy with the stapler from Office Space (Stephen Root), two actors who star in Breaking Bad (Matt Jones and Anna Gunn), Melissa Leo (who recently got an Oscar) and a bunch of other great people I recognized. I don’t remember seeing Michael Parks in anything before, but he probably had the most impressive scenes of anyone else in the movie. Downright scary dude.

As for Smith’s reinvention, I’d say it’s definitely true. There were very few moments past the first 15 minutes that felt like anything I’ve seen of his before, except maybe near the end where the flow of conversation broke down a little bit. I’ll put that down on editing though. The guy threw this together very rapidly, mostly while very high. That said, it’s a beautifully shot movie and I enjoyed every minute of it. It’s very serious, troubling and thrilling. Much like Dogma it might not be the best theological treatise but it’s a good horror flick with a little more applicability to our current reality than something like Paranormal Activity.

Now that I’ve finally seen this, I’m a bit more interested in Smith’s supposedly final upcoming movie Hit Somebody. I think it might be great.

The Devil’s Double

2011-09-06T21:45:00.001-04:00

So Fright Night and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark sadly turned out to be busts. I was hoping the latter’s association with the awesome Guillermo del Toro would make it something more than its other pedigrees, but apparently that wasn’t really the case. I’m not that big into horror most of the time anyway. I’ll probably check out the original Fright Night at some point though; it seems it’s pretty well liked. Anyway, with those two down the drain, my prospects for movies these last couple weeks have been slim. This one here was basically a lark. I’d heard some mildly good things but it took a friend’s uncharacteristic invitation to go see a random movie to get me to try it.

It’s about a guy who ends up being a double (against his will of course) for one of Saddam Hussein’s sons, Uday, during George Bush senior’s administration. It follows that Uday is “The Devil” in this case. The film definitely drives this home. He’s a pervert in many many ways, a drunk, a cocaine addict, a murderer and a sadist, never mind being a touch insane and very narcissistic. Our hero Latif is decidedly none of these things and loathes his boss immensely, while Uday keeps saying he loves him like a brother in between bouts of violent punishment whenever Latif tries his patience. Eventually Latif gets sick enough of it all to take more definitive action.

It’s pretty obvious that both Latif and Uday are played by the same actor, but he does a fine job of portraying two different characters. There weren’t many moments when I couldn’t tell which character was which, except maybe for a couple where Latif was imitating Uday’s antics. Mostly an impressive performance overall. The rest of the cast is good too, and it all looks quite nice. The story is engaging, the stakes are high, the use of real-life war footage is good, and while I think it might have been a bit more convincing film if it had been subtitled, the dialogue was snappy.

I don’t know a whole lot about the real story, but I suspect this is mostly on-point, at least for the major events. Apparently Latif is still out and about somewhere, living a life untethered to a madman.

Attack the Block

2011-08-23T22:33:00.001-04:00

I must be a hipster or something, because this seems to be pretty underground. There were only seven other people at the theater. Granted, it was a Monday, but still; this movie needs to be seen. I guess it doesn’t help that it’s only in like 10 theaters in the country and isn’t being advertised as far as I can tell, but whatever.

It’s produced by Edgar Wright, features Nick Frost, has aliens, and contains tons of British inner-city slang that can be found in things like Misfits, one of my favorite shows. It’s pretty much the best thing ever. Much like Super 8, it stars a youthful cast of exciting characters and features fantastic visuals. Unlike most US summer blockbusters though the visuals do not take the forefront. They’re certainly well done, and almost entirely with practical effects, but the greatest things are the characters and the dialogue. Almost every sentence ends with “innit,” which is a strange perversion of “isn’t it” but doesn’t mean that anymore. People say things like “believe, bruv,” and “allow it” to mean things that we would say completely differently.

There’s tons of movement. Very little sitting around. It’s all entertaining, gripping, funny, touching, intense. Some of the characters’ decisions don’t make too much sense, but that’s okay. They’re just super cool people, unlike those (as I’m led to believe) in movies like Skyline or Battle LA. Certainly cooler than in Cowboys and Aliens.

Most of the reviews or mentions of this movie I’ve read or heard have been painstaking in leaving out as many details as possible, and I’ve tried to do that here. Just know that it’s a pretty fantastic movie and you should definitely see it if you get the chance.

30 Minutes or Less

2011-08-15T22:29:00.001-04:00

Alright, time to crap out a review before bed.

I like Jesse Eisenberg, and Aziz Ansari is pretty cool too. I haven’t seen much with Danny McBride but I know he’s funny. I don’t really know anything about the rest of the actors in this movie, but the trailer looked funny and I was hearing some good things here and there, why the hell not. Monday night theater run it is.

The gist of the story is that Jesse is an asshole pizza delivery guy, and some other assholes strap a bomb-vest on him in order to force him to rob a bank so they can set up a tanning salon slash bordello. As you can imagine things don’t really go quite right, although it seems to be working out well for the bombers for longer than I expected it would.

Anyway this is a comedy, so there’s lots of funny. It tends to be pretty raunchy comedy given that it’s an R, which also allows for a respectable amount of boobs, but it doesn’t rely entirely on that freedom and has some genuinely funny stuff in it dealing with friendship and whatnot. I think Danny McBride is the funniest of the bunch here, with Aziz in a close second. Jesse isn’t really a funny guy, just super intense. He works well enough. I’m not sure whether I liked or disliked Danny’s penchant for wearing heavy metal shirts; I liked seeing them in a movie but I don’t really like seeing them associated with being a psychopath. The media does that enough.

There are some really good jokes and a pretty awesome chase scene, and it’s definitely entertaining all the way through; I don’t think I laughed as much as I did for Horrible Bosses (which I forgot to write about, it was pretty darn good). It was solid though. I think I should probably watch Point Break sometime so I can get some more of the jokes.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2011-08-14T20:44:00.001-04:00

The trailer for this movie made me laugh. It looked kind of terrible. The CG apes were completely unbelievable, Franco’s delivery of the “Cure” line was awful, and Charleston Heston was nowhere to be seen, removing all credibility. I had mostly written it off even though it prompted me to finally watch the original film to see what the big deal was. Turns out that it was an excellent movie, sadly followed by quite a number of sub-par sequels, and a reboot by Tim Burton that sucked; I vaguely remember watching it but I can’t bring up any details. So anyway, the critics started lauding this one and I was mildly surprised. I’m still a week behind on movies though, so I didn’t see it until today.

As you probably all know, this is a prequel to the original movie that tries to explain how the apes replaced man as the dominant species. The original didn’t really go into depth about that at all; it just presented the situation as it would be and allowed the viewer to draw their own conclusions. Supposedly the same task was handled in one of the old sequels, but I don’t care to find out how similarly. In this one, James Franco is a scientist trying to find a cure for Alzheimer’s Disease, seemingly prompted by his own father’s (John Lithgow’s) illness. This leads to testing on apes and eventually to the miracle of Caesar the intelligent chimp, who through a series of events becomes a leader of the new primate race and begins something of a rebellion against humanity.

It’s very much an action film, I’d say quite a bit moreso than the original movie, which dealt mostly with theology versus science and stuff like that, with only a few chase scenes among the dialogue. There’s plenty of good dialogue here too but the advances in special effects allow for a much more visually immersive experience. Andy Serkis’ mo-cap performance is pretty great as usual, and although at the start the CG apes look a bit wonky, I mostly got used to it by the end. The relationship between Franco and Caesar is handled pretty well. I almost teared up in a couple spots.

It’s very obvious that this is only the beginning of the story, and it’s been confirmed that it’s planned to be a trilogy. It should be interesting how it plays out, and how much is done to make it line up with the ideals of the first movie. I’d like to see a bit more of that philosophical stuff rather than ape-war.

Not a great movie. A very good one though.

Cowboys and Aliens

2011-08-07T20:42:00.001-04:00

As I said last week, I had been pretty excited for this movie until the reviews started coming in, and felt a bit betrayed. As such I didn’t go to see it. I wasn’t sure if I’d see it in the theater at all, especially what with the Revenge of the Rise of the Fallen Planet of the Apes movie getting all that praise and whatnot. Then the new Half in the Bag review came out last night, and I felt compelled to see the film before I watched the review. So I did.

This movie is about James Bond and Indiana Jones killing some frog men and learning about tolerance while the hot chick form House does weird stuff with fire, Wild Bill Hickok gets yanked into a spaceship, and one of those pesky moon clone-workers tries to shoot a gun. All in all, it’s pretty cool.

But seriously folks, it ain’t half bad. There’s at least an honest attempt at characterization for the main characters and even some of the less prominent ones, the visuals are awesome, and you get to see Olivia Wilde’s back. I wish this were an R. Some of the story elements aren’t really explained very much or seem a bit too convenient, but overall it works well enough as a Western will. I have to say I’ve been pretty spoiled by Deadwood as far as Westerns go, so this didn’t wow me as much as it could have. I’m not entirely sure what I was looking for in it that wasn’t there; I think I just assumed the combination of the two genres would be awesome no matter what.

It’s good acting all around, and the setting was very nice. Not the best movie ever or anything, but it couldn’t hurt to go check it out.

Another Earth

2011-08-01T17:53:00.001-04:00

I meant to see Cowboys and Aliens this weekend, but the middling reviews it’s getting and the abundance of other real-life fun-things I had the opportunity to do pushed it out of frame. I would have also liked to see Attack the Block, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be showing anywhere near me. Thankfully though the trusty old Landmark E Street cinema was showing another film I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about.

From the title and the promotional photos, most people (including me) would mark this as a sci-fi film in which another planet shows up in the sky, leading to a lot of space travel and physical effects of such close proximity, boring stuff like that. One would also expect that much of the film would take place on this other earth; however, that is not the case at all.

This is a movie about a girl who makes a horrible mistake and spends the majority of the movie trying to fix it. The whole planet thing is related but not the focus. There’s a ton of emotion, heartbreak and awkward love interspersed with a little thought on the implications of alternate timelines and duplicate people, and some brief but beautiful meanderings on the allure of space. It’s a very good story and acted extremely well, except for one moment that just didn’t seem to happen in a way that made much sense.

The camera work is a bit shaky at times but it’s nothing like the Blair Witches and their ilk. The quality of the picture varies with the mood to great effect; sometimes it looks like a home movie and others like a big-budget sci-fi film. The visuals aren’t what make this movie though. It’s definitely the story.

Captain America

2011-07-27T21:31:00.001-04:00

The lazy bug’s gone and bit me again. I saw this on Saturday, started a post a few days ago, and gave up because I didn’t feel like writing anything. Here ‘goes again. I don’t think I’ll try to stick with any sort of structure because I don’t give a damn.

It’s a good movie. I liked it. Very much like watching an old comic book. There’s a good amount of camp, lots of altruism and concentrated evil, and explosions. It’s not going to win any awards for story or anything but the characters are very likable and well presented. The setting is great, and the whole bit with Rodgers being the front-man for war bonds was classic.

I don’t really know much about Captain America; most of what I know of the early classic superheroes was gleaned from old collections in my local library as a kid, which I read on the bench but never checked out. I think I assumed my mom wouldn’t let me. Thusly I’m not very attached to the character, but watching this movie made me a fan. He’s made extremely relatable in his cg-stiched-face phase as a short weakling who can’t make it with the ladies, and then when given the power to make himself a badass, he does as he was advised and doesn’t abuse it. He’s just an all-around great guy.

Hugo Weaving and Tommy Lee Jones make for a terrific supporting cast since they’re just that awesome. Hayley Atwell is classically hot. Chris Evans did a fine job. As a whole, I think I’d put this movie above X-Men: First Class, just below Iron Man, maybe tied with Iron Man 2. It’s a promising advertisement for next year’s Joss Whedon blockbuster.

The forced culturally-diverse team of badasses was a bit stupid though.

The Troll Hunter

2011-07-10T10:24:00.001-04:00

Norway’s pretty cool. It’s the home of black metal, Kvelertak, and a bunch of fjords, and it’s got probably the best average quality of life on the planet. Oddly their movies don’t seem to pop up on the global radar much though; this is the first I’ve heard of one. I’ll certainly be on the lookout now.

This is a kind of muckumentary/shakycam thing, a bit more like Cloverfield than anything else. It’s supposedly a bunch of footage that was discovered in some way that’s explained in the opening text, and it’s all just been put together into a movie. Originally it was supposed to be a documentary about bear poaching, made by a group of college kids, but it turned out the poacher wasn’t hunting bears. Trolls are real and they’ve been wandering outside their territories, and somebody’s trying to cover it up with fake bear attacks. One man is given the task of keeping the monsters in check, and the intrepid group of college kids are eventually allowed to tag along and document the atrocities.

The biology and diversity of the trolls is taken from legend and folklore. Not everything made the cut; the more fanciful bits like speaking human language and playing games of wit were thrown out in favor of making the trolls into massive, dumb predators who eat rocks or whatever else they can find. The film has pretty blatant environmentalist undertones. The destruction of the trolls is an affront to nature and the preservation of Norwegian history, all that sort of thing. And yet, the film maintains a not-quite-that-serious vibe, bringing on laughs once in a while and not really prompting that much reverence for the creatures; that’s directed more on the beautiful landscapes.

The trolls themselves are of course computer-generated, and they look great. The animation isn’t perfect all the time, but it didn’t matter that much considering the strangeness of the several different kinds of trolls. The most grating aspect of the film was the shakycam. I remember there being a lot of fuss over people getting sick at Cloverfield screenings; those people should avoid this one at all costs. It gets pretty brutal with the shaking. Also, since it’s supposed to just be raw footage spliced together instead of a professionally edited movie, the cuts are frequent and often jarring. The sound was probably the best part though. It made the scale of the creatures much more believable.

To top off the goodness, the closing credits were accompanied by a track off of Kvelertak’s self-titled release from last year, which is an incredibly fantastic album and extremely appropriate for this movie.

A bit about the theater. We went to the E Street Cinema in Washington DC. This is the first time I’ve been there and it certainly won’t be the last. They show lots of great limited-release films, and had posters for a whole bunch of movies I hadn’t even heard of. Once we got into our theater, which was very small but still had semi-stadium seating, we were treated to a live, albeit somewhat nervous introduction by one of the staff who seemed genuinely happy to see so many people in attendance for this movie in particular. The crowd was cool, the sound was great, and the screen was just fine. It was just an all-around great time.

Didn’t think I’d write this much.

Game of Thrones – Season 1

2011-06-21T22:28:00.001-04:00

Winter is coming yo.

So this is show is awesome. HBO is good at making stuff. Of course it doesn’t hurt that it’s based on one of the most highly praised fantasy book series ever, and the writer George R. R. Martin is a producer and wrote one of the episodes. It also has a fantastic cast, and a pretty decent budget.

It’s a story of family ties, honor, idiocy, betrayal, scheming, war, and a little magic. The several houses of Westeros vie for the throne for different reasons while a gathering darkness threatens everyone’s existence in the cold North. A host of interesting characters, including the inimitable Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister and Sean Bean as Eddard Stark, have long conversations about their idea of how the world works and make lots of mistakes; unlike in a lot of other shows, these mistakes come with definite prices. Much like in The Walking Dead (the comic, not really the show), no one is safe. It lends a sense of danger unlike I think I’ve seen in television before aside from shows like The Wire or Breaking Bad.

While it is a sort of high fantasy, there is very little in the way magic, and I’ve seen no elves or dwarves anywhere. There’s a lot of dragon talk but you’ll have to watch the show to find out how that works out. There is some sorcery, but it happens behind closed doors and is regarded by pretty much everyone as something that should be avoided at all costs. It’s kind of refreshing to see something this realistic in this setting.

These past ten episodes have ranked up near the top for me, and I can’t wait for more. I’ll probably break down and read the books before the next batch comes around.

The Tree of Life

2011-06-20T22:13:00.001-04:00

I haven’t seen any Terrence Malick films before this, but I probably will do so in the future. It’s pretty obvious this guy really cares about what ends up on the big screen, and puts everything he has into it. Although I can’t say I enjoyed watching this as much as something like Super 8, I can definitely respect the film; it’s a beautiful, heady trip of a thing.

There’s a bit more of a story than I was led to believe in other reviews, but it’s definitely presented differently than in most films, and not very linear. The main character, played by Sean Penn in adulthood and Hunter McCracken as the child, doesn’t really lead that much of a special or interesting life; it’s just a life. He has problems much like most kids, and his parents have problems like most parents, they just happen to be very strong characters. His mother is the embodiment of grace, and his father a man who tries his hardest to be the best father he can be, which is much different than society’s current idea of the fatherly blueprint.

The story is told with gorgeous shots, limited dialogue, and barely any exposition. Surrounding the main plotlines are a few extended segments portraying the creation and destruction of everything. These segments are incredibly beautiful and I wouldn’t at all mind seeing them in IMAX. The thing is, I’m not entirely sure what Malick is getting at with them; they must relate somehow to the story of the boy, but in keeping with the lack of exposition, this is never really laid out. There are a fair number of whispered voiceovers, but they’re mostly cryptic. I’d probably need to watch again and listen more closely to glean the meaning. Right now it’s just left me a bit mystified.

It’s a monster of a movie, and Malick is planning/working on making a six-hour version too. I’m not sure I’d be able to watch that, at least not all at once.

Super 8

2011-06-13T20:23:00.001-04:00

Put ET and Cloverfield in a blender, and you’ll get Super 8. I’m pretty sure that’s what JJ Abrams was going for from the start, as evidenced by getting Spielberg to produce it, and making the primary cast mostly kids; I’d say the formula worked pretty damn well.

A small group of kids with various kinds of family problems are trying to make a zombie movie on their Super 8 camera when a train crashes in frame and leads to a bunch of weird, scary stuff that the kids end up understanding better than most of the adults. It’s a definite formula, but done right it really resonates with the nostalgia centers of our brains, especially when the kids doing the acting know what they’re doing, which certainly seems to be the case here. The small group of distinct, likeable characters creates an atmosphere of caring and curiosity unlike anything I’ve seen in quite a while; I should probably watch The Goonies at some point.

The monster part was very well done too. I really liked Cloverfield, and figured from the start that this movie would have some similarities given JJ Abrams’ involvement. I wasn’t disappointed. It’s presented in much the same way, just a little bit at a time until the end, where we still don’t get long looks but enough to get a general idea. I thought the CGI was good too.

It might not be the most plausible of stories, and there are definitely a bunch of moments requiring a healthy dose of disbelief-suspension, but it’s just such a likeable movie that going on about its faults is a pointless venture. You want to see this movie.

X-Men: First Class

2011-06-05T18:36:00.001-04:00

Kick-Ass was a pretty great-ish movie, so it was pretty cool that Matthew Vaughn got to do an X-Men movie too. For some reason though I never had very high hopes for this, probably because of the last two X-Men movies, III and Wolverine: Origins, neither of which could be called good. Hearing that the production was being very rushed didn’t help either, and although January Jones is positively smokin’, her acting career outside of Mad Men (and sometimes in it) hasn’t been stellar. Aside from Kevin Bacon the cast is mostly unknowns or just relatively new actors, whereas the first trilogy had the powerhouses Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan. None of this could really ruin the movie but I still had my suspicions that it might not be the greatest thing ever.

It’s set in the 60s, so that’s pretty cool. We get to see more Nazis and Commies and clips of JFK, but sadly I didn’t really feel like what I was watching happened 50 years ago; probably just because there wasn’t really any apparent effort made to make it look like a movie from the 60s, more like somebody with a modern camera went back and made some shots. Imagine what a Tarantino X-Men movie would look like. Now that would be something.

Naturally since it is the 60s, and it’s called First Class, the story involves Professor X and Magneto getting together and starting the X-Men. Everybody’s young, hip, and aside from the leads, pretty bland. Kevin Bacon kind of makes up for the large cast of lamers by being himself, probably ending up as the best character next to Michael Fassbender as Magneto. I know I’ve seen that guy in stuff but even when I look it up I can’t remember his characters. I just now read that Mystique was played by Jennifer Lawrence; I knew I recognized her but her appearance and character here were so extremely removed from her role in Winter’s Bone that I just couldn’t make the connection. Sadly she’s far above the material she was given; Mystique worked much better as the silent morphing-supermodel.

I know I’ve been mostly negative so far, but it’s not a bad movie, just a pretty good one with a bunch of problems. People who are lauding it as the best of the series though are probably forgetting the first two. There were some darn cool scenes and some fun dialogue from time to time, and a pretty hilarious cameo of sorts half-way through. I just think the sadly necessary inclusion of so many characters hurt the film, probably because there was so little time to really develop them. Those who were given the most attention were good enough. The story wasn’t anything to go crazy over, as it seems to be with most prequels.

I’d say it’s about what I expected. I just wish it had been given a bit more time to stew.

Concert Review: Man Man at Black Cat, 2011-06-03

2011-06-04T10:03:00.001-04:00

The Show is the Rainbow

Although not the worst opener I’ve ever been subjected to, the one-man rap-artist The Show is the Rainbow has the honor of the being the most retarded. The music wasn’t too bad, but being prerecorded I didn’t have much respect for him; in my limited research of the lineup before the show I saw hints that he had a band at one time, but they split. It doesn’t take much to imagine why. This guy is a wacko, pathetic pot-head. Most of the stuff he said between songs was about how great pot is and that he has no fans. Thankfully he was only “on stage” for about half an hour.

Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers

To me, this band was an experience similar to Secrets of the Moon; a band I’d never heard of that tore up the stage without the benefit of rabid fans, and had me transfixed. They’re definitely not the same sort of music of course, there was no metal to be had this night; still, the intensity and power that Shilpa threw into that microphone was pretty staggering for such a small person. They do a sort of jazzy punk-rock with a lot of soul and plenty of punch. All of the players were great. The guitarist’s sound was wonderfully distorted and colorful, the bass was clear and punchy, the drummer was the most animated person on stage all night, and Shilpa’s dynamic voice owned me. Possibly even more interesting was the strange instrument she was playing which is apparently a harmonium. They got a CD purchase out of me.

Man Man

This band could be one of my favorite bands one day. As it stands though I haven’t heard enough of their music enough times for it to click with me. They have a lot of the elements I enjoy, including frequent time-changes, quirky vocals, some pretty heavy bits, and just general strangeness, but for some reason up to this point they haven’t grabbed me. I heard a bit more Tom Waits influence on their recorded stuff than I did in the live setting, which was a bit disappointing.

The main problem for me though was situational; the fans were here to party, and party they did. I was pretty near the stage and a mosh-pit broke out almost as soon as the band started playing after their somewhat ridiculous and prolonged abandonment of the stage after setting up their instruments, presumably to get into their uniforms and face-paint. I’m not a fan of moshing. Since I’m a short guy, moving away from the stage obscured the band from my view, so I just went to the back of the club to sit down. After that the music was okay but a bit muffled.

I think the main reason people claim the band is better live is their theatrics. There was much standing on top of things and being strange, and the instruments themselves were all decked out with plastic fingers and bicycle pieces; pretty neat to see but it didn’t add much for me. It was nice to see Shilpa help out with the vocals a couple times.

This was the second time I’ve been to Black Cat, and it’s a pretty nice venue. It’s quite cave-like, a lot like Sonar but a bit more friendly seeming. The area in the back is quite nice thankfully, a raised platform with chairs, tables, and even a couple couches. The sound’s pretty good and the alcohol is apparently pretty cheap for the area. I expect to be going back there a bunch in the future.

Bridesmaids

2011-05-31T21:04:00.001-04:00

I’ve never really liked Kristen Wiig’s characters on SNL, but that might just be because it’s SNL. In the context of a film she has a lot more time to get things right, and she’s not inhibited by the one-note characters written for her. I’m not saying she’s a completely different person on the big screen but she’s a lot less annoying when she doesn’t have to be. At least she’s a good writer.

Bridesmaids is a movie that definitely looks like a “chick-flick,” but isn’t. It has many of the same basic building blocks; a bunch of female characters with relationship problems, a love interest, and OMG A WEDDING OMG. However, unlike the films advertised in the previews before this movie, it’s something that anyone with a good sense of humor and a strong enough stomach can enjoy. Being an Apatow-produced movie it’s not much of a surprise that there’s going to be some pretty raunchy comedy.

It’s the story of a largely unsuccessful woman with a newly engaged friend, and her seemingly endless self-destructive behavior and pity-parties. In her quest to compete for her best-friend’s attention, she manages to give the wedding-ladies food poisoning, get thrown off a plane, destroy a bridal shower, lose her job, and almost destroy a promising relationship with the Irish guy from The IT Crowd, jeopardizing the very friendship she was fighting for in the process. It’s a bit painful to watch at times, but being a comedy there’s plenty to keep it from being entirely depressing.

And what a comedy it is. This movie made me laugh more than any new funny-film has in the last few years. It’s gross, it’s irreverent, a bit shocking, awkward, and just a bit genius. The scene I’ll probably remember the longest didn’t even have any dialogue; Kristen makes a pretty neat cupcake and takes a bite, and then the camera just stays on her while she chews just a bit longer than would be expected as she makes unflattering faces. That sort of understated humor isn’t repeated a whole lot but the intelligence of it is prevalent.

The rest of the cast does a great job. There are a lot of great actors, some of which I recognized, including the awesome Jon Hamm as a fantastically awful person, Tim Heidecker of Tim and Eric Awesome Show fame as the silent fiancé, and the adorable Ellie Kemper from The Office as an innocent newlywed.

Once in a while the movie does kind of relax into the framework of a chick-flick, but never for long, and not in a way that made me want to stop watching it. It’s really funny.

Some TV Stuff

2011-05-24T19:23:00.001-04:00

Well, I haven’t seen any new movies in a bit, and I’ve been kind of neglecting TV on here for a while. Not many of the shows I’ve been watching have really inspired me enough to write a full post. I could probably do it for a couple of them, but I think it’s easier just to do a little for each one here and be done with it.

The Event

Since I just finished watching last night’s finale, I figured I’d start with this, possibly the most interesting failure of the last batch of Lost clones. I initially had no interest in it based mostly on the name, which reminded me of The Happening. Not a good selling point. Anyway, there were a few semi-positive previews on some blogs I read so I figured I’d give it a chance. It focuses on a few characters in government and a cool, extremely earnest hacker/genius/hero type dude who are faced with alien invasion not too dissimilar from that of V, except here the aliens don’t actually look like lizards, they don’t have a spaceship, and they don’t want to eat us. Instead they just want to move in, which might require a substantial trimming of our population. Also they’ve been here for 60 years already and can make shiny portal things.

It’s not really a bad show. It’s miles better than FlashForward and V, and at times it’s almost gripping. The problem is that the characters don’t have much dimension, and are never given the opportunity to adjust to new circumstances, as whenever some seemingly game-changing thing happens, the resolution always involves replacement of characters and basically just going back to normal. I realize this is a common trait of network TV shows, but if you’re going to replace Lost you’d better try a bit harder. The Event will not be returning this fall, and I’m okay with that, especially after the perfectly ludicrous closing of the finale.

Castle

I’ve been keeping up with this show for one reason: Nathan Fillion. He’s a funny, charismatic dude, and he does have some input in the show, but it seems great actors need good writing and direction too. If only Joss Whedon could take it over. Nathan’s role as a successful mystery writer helping out a homicide policewoman is sometimes fun to watch, and occasionally the other characters make it bearable as well, but Castle is probably the most formulaic show I’ve ever seen, putting even House’s cookie-cutter plots to shame. It really becomes a chore to sit through the same beats over and over without any real progress in the overall story arc. There have been a couple interesting episodes but I can’t really remember them. I probably even missed a few because I couldn’t bring myself to give it my full attention every week. I’ll probably watch next season’s premiere to see how the cliffhanger turns out, but if it resolves as I expect it to then I don’t think I’m going to stick with it.

Chuck

Chuck is a stupid show. Almost every decision the lead characters make is idiotic, they never learn anything, and the insistence on involving unbelievable relationships in every episode’s plot is just tiresome. Still, it’s a show that panders to my nerdery, the characters usually have a kind of likeability, Yvonne Strahavski is incredibly gorgeous, and Jayne Cobb is in it. When I first tried the show while the first season was still airing I dismissed it after a few episodes. I later came back to it and fell in love; now that I’ve been watching it as it airs since somewhere in the second season, the appeal has died a bit, but not enough to make me abandon it for the final season coming up. I hope the writers can come up with an actual conclusion now that they don’t have to keep stretching things out in hope of renewal.

House MD

Sevens seasons is a lot. Any show with this longevity should expect to be losing its edge, and I think that was very evident in last night’s finale. Every season-closer I can remember before this one was something of an event, almost a triumph of drama and character development; this time it was more like any other episode, with a half-hearted attempt at shock value. It was laughable. There was far too much reliance on House’s relationship with Cuddy this season. It worked sometimes but it was mostly just retreading the same issues that we’ve seen before dealing with House’s inability to do his job when he’s happy. Olivia Wilde’s absence from the cast for most of the season definitely hurt the show in my eyes, but I’m quite happy that she’ll be in a number of the movies I’m looking forward to because of it. There were a few episodes that broke from the usual formula, and I wish they’d do it more often, but the addictive quality that used to be there seems to be gone.

The Office

Now we start getting closer to something that might be considered quality. The Office has been around almost as long as House, but it’s managed to do that without relying on formula quite as heavily, to its benefit. The characters are still great, the comedy has lost most of its edge but remains charming, and the rather major upheaval in the loss of Steve Carell was handled pretty well, although the real fallout is yet to be seen. There were some very funny episodes amid the usual kinda-funny stuff up until the last few which were mostly very fun to watch. I really enjoyed Ellen and Gabe’s breakup and the ensuing feud between Gabe and Andy, which brought about some of the best line deliveries of the season. Will Farrell's brief stint as manager wasn’t the greatest but worked well enough. It’s still a good show after all these years, but I wouldn’t be surprised if next season is its last.

Fringe

Much like Chuck, Fringe is a show that I initially dismissed after watching some of it, but came to love later. In my last post on the show I wrote about how I happened to drop in on an episode that basically blew my mind, pulling two universes on top of each other with fascinating results. The third season continued the storyline in an admirable fashion, with the two realities taking turns episode by episode with the alternate versions of the characters we’ve come to love. Sometimes it got a bit silly, what with the soul-magnets and whatnot, but for the most part Fringe remains a solid sci-fi-ish show with likeable characters and interesting plotlines. The monster-a-week formula has been mostly discarded in favor of a larger story, and it’s been working pretty well. I’m definitely looking forward to the season that we all expected not to happen.

The Chicago Code

I haven’t seen any other Shawn Ryan shows like The Shield or Terriers, but from what I understand they’re all similar in a few ways; the characters are complex people with the desire to do good while not really doing it all in a way that’s generally accepted as good, and the shows themselves are incredibly solid. Both hold true for The Chicago Code. It’s the story of a new lady police superintendant, Teresa Colvin, who has a strong desire to clean up the Chicago government, which is traditionally plagued with corruption. She puts together a small taskforce of cops she trusts, including our hero Jarek Wysocki, to find the dirt she needs to put away the evil one politician at a time. The trio of Teresa, Jarek and the despicable Alderman Gibbons are very well drawn, and all three of them fit the bill of good intentions versus questionable methods, to varying degrees of violence. Gibbons in particular is an interesting case, as he’s definitely an evil man, but he does seem to have the betterment of Chicago as his main goal, or at least that’s what he thinks; it may be he’s just serving himself. Jarek is fantastically played by Jason Clarke as a good police through and through while wrestling with his demons. Teresa, played by Jennifer Beals, initially seemed a bit unbelievable to me but eventually became more of a human character with an uncompromising method.

Aside from the cast, the show is just gorgeously filmed; it’s probably the best HD programming I’ve seen on network TV, with constantly crisp and vibrant colors in every shot. The use of voiceovers might be overdone sometimes but here it’s used well, especially in the first episode, which involved the moment that really hooked me into the show. It’s an extreme shame that it’s been canceled, but the finale really worked as a series closer.

Community

This show is made for people like me. So many episodes are dedicated to parodying over-used tropes or honoring great films, and doing it hilariously with a great cast of loveable, unique characters. Oddly some of the faults I burned Chuck with count as merits for Community; no one ever really learns anything. They remain the same people after every episode. It works here for some reason. Anyway, the film-culture jokes are great, Abed continues to crack meta in the best moments possible, and the paintball episodes kick ass. By far the best comedy currently on TV, at least that I’ve seen. Can’t wait for more.

Now that these seasons have ended, I can now get back to some Netflixing when I’m not watching excellent shows like The Killing and Game of Thrones, and maybe write a bit more than I have been. I watch too much TV. Now let’s count all the grammatical errors I made, because I suck a proofreading!

DONE.

Thor

2011-05-09T23:09:00.001-04:00

“I’m Thor.” “You’re Thor?” “Well it hurtth.” (not taken from this film)

I don’t know much at all about the comic-book version of Thor. My knowledge of Viking lore is mostly gleaned from Neil Gaiman books. Still, this movie seemed like it could be fun, and the reviews are pretty good. Having both Kat Dennings and Natalie Portman in the cast certainly can’t hurt.

Thor is the son of Odin the Allfather, king of Asgard, which is seemingly a planet or something instead of a spiritual realm as in the mythological version. The inhabitants of Asgard are a techno-magically advanced, powerful race of superhumans/aliens who’ve been trolling Earth for the past few millennia, posing as gods. Odin and his brother Loki are vying for their aging father’s throne, and Thor’s brash ways bring him to restart an age-old war with the Frost Giants, another alien race on another planet. This affront to peace makes Odin very angry; he summarily grounds Thor until he learns his lesson.

This brings us to Earth, where Thor the disenfranchised meets the lovely scientists Natalie and Kat stormchasing with their old-man co-worker. For a while Thor oddly thinks that he’s still the big man, but eventually figures out that he’s been a bad boy. This realization marks an almost immediate change in his attitude, and after a selfless act he’s given back the hammer and goes back up the rainbow bridge to kick some brotherly ass.

It’s not what I’d call a really good movie, and while others are calling it the best comic-book movie since The Dark Knight, I’m not sure I agree. I think I enjoyed Iron Man 2 a bit more. It is indeed an entertaining film, mostly due to its self-awareness; the movie knows it’s a bit ridiculous, and piles on the funny. If not for that it would just be stupid. The only performance that I really thought was truly good from an acting standpoint was Loki’s, played by Tom Hiddleston. The rest were just silly. Likeable, but silly. The visuals were pretty nice but too plastic for my liking, and the action kind of fell into the same trap as Sucker Punch by having little or no consequence.

Still, the funny saves it. Thor’s time on Earth being a jack-ass is fun to watch, and whole rainbow-bridge thing just cracks me up a bit. It’s a fun movie, and you could do worse than going to see it in theaters; just skip the 3D if you can.

Deadwood

2011-05-07T12:10:00.003-04:00

This show is awesome. Can’t really boil it down any further. It’s up there in the skies with The Wire and Breaking Bad, and all those other shows that I haven’t seen yet. The reason it’s so awesome is its extreme focus on characters and squeezing tons of incredible performances out of its actors. The dialogue is some of the most difficult to understand yet wonderful prose I’ve heard in a televised program, and the episode/season structure is extremely satisfying without relying on contrived cliffhangers for almost the entire three-season run. The great shame though is that it had to end prematurely with a rather large thread left untied, and it seems that it will forever remain so.

Now that I’ve started with something that would better fit in the conclusion I guess I’ll write a bit about the plot. The show is loosely placed on a real place called Deadwood, in which the majority of the characters are based on real people who really were in Deadwood in the late 1800s. However, a lot of dramatic liberties were taken to better serve the story. Anyway, this guy Al Swearengen is the owner of a saloon, and basically controls the camp that will later become a town. He’s a very smart, foul-mouthed man with good intentions but an uncompromising method. He has many, very loyal friends who help him to control and protect the camp. Not among them, at least at the start, is Seth Bullock, a moralistic man with little control over his fiery emotions who uses his position as a sheriff to give himself some outlet for his hatred of evil men. These two men are at odds for the majority of the show’s run, making for some terrific battles of character. Eventually though, greater dangers than the clash of their own egos arrive, and compromises must be made for the preservation of their livelihoods.

I can see now that if I start listing the characters further, this will never end, so you’ll have to take my word that they’re all fantastic. So there’s lots of stuff dealing with conflicting moralities, racism, honor, dishonor, loss, love, and death, as you’d expect in a western. It’s so much more than just a western though; it’s more like an epic Shakespearean play with F-words every two seconds. One theme that I noticed cropping up a lot was the characters’ need for control; several would constantly lash out at their underlings whenever they felt a lack of control or that they were being belittled by others, making them seem both petty and human. There’s just so much emotion in this show it’s ridiculous.

As expected I can’t really do Deadwood justice. To do that I’d have to write a few essays, and I really don’t want to do that. I’m done with highschool, thanks. I’m just going to have to leave this at it is and fume in my chair cursing HBO for cutting this wonderful thing short before it was meant to end.

Win Win

2011-05-01T21:01:00.001-04:00

I’m a pretty big Paul Giamatti fan. Before I knew who he was it was still a treat whenever I recognized him in movies. Now I kind of seek out his stuff, and so far this has been the one that took the longest to see after I heard about it, because it’s such a small movie. What’s really cool about it is that it’s written and directed by Tom McCarthy, the guy who did The Station Agent and some of the new Game of Thrones series on HBO, which are both fantastic. He even had some involvement in the writing for Up, which is a fine movie too. To top it all off it has Jeffrey Tambor from Arrested Development and Amy Ryan from The Office. Good people in this thing.

Mike Flaherty is a rather down-on-his-luck family-man lawyer who is also a wrestling coach at the local high school. His luck starts changing when he finds out one of his elderly clients has a lot of money and needs a legal guardian to take care of him as he slips into dementia, which leads to Mike doing some shady things to get the money without doing too much actual work. Then his client’s estranged grandson comes into the picture and happens to be a great wrestler, unlike everyone on Mike’s team. Win win! Everything goes great for a while, but of course Mike’s misdeeds eventually come back to wreck his day.

It’s dramedy of sorts; very funny and also emotionally involving. Most of the characters are broken in some way, much like those in McCarthy’s other works. I really like movies like this where the characters are human and unsure of what they’re supposed to be doing. Kyle, the wrestler, is possibly the most human of all the characters because he’s not actually an actor; while his lines aren’t delivered with any sense of professionalism, it’s believable for his character and really works quite well. Mike’s slightly-better-off friend, played by Bobby Cannavale, plays a financially successful but familial failure of a man who just can’t seem to do anything without it seeming like sexual innuendo, and brings in most of the laughs while still being just about as broken as Mike. Amy Ryan, playing Mike’s wife, seems to have it a bit more together but is definitely ruled by her emotions.

One thing that was a bit weird but also kind of expected was the proliferation of product-placement. My friend and I counted at least five or six instances of it, sometimes more obvious than others; it was kind of funny how Wii Golf was shown a few times very quickly and mentioned in the dialog, with the delivery of the lines seeming to be almost begrudging of its inclusion, at least to my ears. I can understand why there was so much; it costs a lot to make a movie, even one as simple as this, and it still has a very independent feel.

It’s a very good movie. I’m not big on sports, but kind of like Crazy Heart’s use of country music, the wrestling in this film was easy to enjoy as it really had a lot to do with the story. Everything else was just really enjoyable because of the great character writing. You should go watch it if you get the chance.

Hanna

2011-04-11T19:33:00.001-04:00

There’s been a respectable number of young-lady-centric movies recently, some of them good (True Grit) and some of them pretty awful (Sucker Punch). Hanna definitely falls in the former category.

The story is a little vague, but not too hard to follow. Hanna is the daughter of a rogue CIA-or-something agent who has grown up separated from civilization in a snowy forest-land, learning how to be the perfect soldier and not a whole lot else. She does manage to retain some wonder though, which makes her an interesting character. Once she is set free from her prison as a rite of passage deal, we’re witness to both her efficiency as a warrior and her quizzical, awkward side as she deals with attackers and newfound friends on a mission to avenge her murdered mother who she never knew. On the way, she discovers things about herself and her father that change her world forever.

Possibly the coolest thing about this movie is the soundtrack and how the rest of the film is entwined with it. Near the beginning of the movie Hanna asks her father what music is, and is given a dry, colorless definition that really has no bearing on what she really wants to know; when she first discovers music in an ugly Moroccan hotel, she’s enthralled. There are several scenes where the characters are doing rhythmic things that sync up with the music to great effect. The music itself is great. It’s the first Chemical Brothers music I’ve heard, and I think I’ll probably be investigating them further.

The second greatest thing I thought was the dialogue. Hanna herself speaks very strangely, mostly in a sort of rapid-fire fashion, especially when reciting her carefully memorized cover story to people who don’t really care. At other times she just says things that any normal person wouldn’t say, to the confusion of her audience. Another character, a young European girl who quickly befriends Hanna, says possibly even weirder things in her matter-of-fact voice that I found pretty hilarious. The adult cast’s dialogue is also quirky but not to the same extent.

The camera work is awesome, the characters are colorful and interesting, the dialogue is a joy, and it’s all just so darn fun. It does help that many comparisons could be drawn to The Bourne Identity without danger of being another Unknown. As far as female empowerment goes, I think this movie succeeds quite well. It’s not exactly what I expected, but it certainly wasn’t a disappointment at all.

Source Code

2011-04-06T18:54:00.001-04:00

Duncan Jones last/first movie was called Moon, and it was a pretty fantastic, simple sort of homage to Space Odyssey: 2001. It was a small movie so it didn’t get all that recognition or anything but it was very well made on a small budget. Now, Jones has been given the money to make something a bit more financially viable, and he’s made another kind-of-homage, this time to Groundhog Day and maybe a bit of 12 Monkeys. While it is a bigger movie and thus loses a bit of the personal nature of Moon, it retains most of the spirit and quality of its predecessor while hitting all the points necessary to please the big crowds.

Captain Colter Stevens wakes up to a strange, unfamiliar scene in a train, with a woman he’s never met, who acts like they’re good friends. This is very confusing to him. After a few minutes of questions and running around a bit, the train blows up and he dies, only to wake up again in a small dark room strapped to a chair, with a strange woman giving him orders he doesn’t understand over a monitor. He’s told that he’s been assigned to a recon mission of sorts, reliving a dead man’s final eight minutes in order to find the bomber. After a few repeats of the scenario he eventually gives into his task while getting to know the specters of the passengers a little better, and growing increasingly attached to the beautiful woman in the opposite seat.

The sci-fi elements of the story are a bit far-flung, but they strangely appealed to me. Coupled with a pretty emotional performance from Jake Gyllenhaal and the themes of death and newfound attraction, the movie had a pretty profound emotional affect on me and may have warped my analytical eye a little; however, I really think it’s a well made movie and deserves the attention it’s getting. The cinematography is wonderful for one. The opening credit sequence of helicopter shots was absolutely beautiful, and all of the other scenes had a warm, colorful quality to them that endeared it to me all the more. Even with the colorful nature it still managed to bring in hints of Terry Gilliam in the “pod” scenes, appropriate considering the elements borrowed from 12 Monkeys. Again, the most obvious film comparison would be Groundhog Day, another one of my favorite movies; the biggest difference here is that the reason for the conceit is plainly laid out, whereas in Groundhog Day is was left to speculation, to the film’s benefit. In this instance though I think it’s handled well enough for at least sci-fi lovers to accept.

It’s a pretty great movie I think. The acting is very good, the story is full of heart and excitement, and if you can accept the minor flaws that other people are finding in it, then I think you’ll enjoy it just as much as I did.

Sucker Punch

2011-03-27T19:17:00.001-04:00

Do you like music videos? Do you like two-hour music videos? Then Sucker Punch is the movie for you!

The initial hype for this thing wasn’t very misleading, really. It had tons of awesome things presented rather spastically in a short trailer with little in the way of plot or character hints. It didn’t include much dialogue though, which helped to make it seem better than it actually is. The bits that it did include were a bit iffy, I thought. Maybe a little too straight-forward, what with the list of items and all that. It was very easy to look past that though and concentrate on the fact that it would be a movie about a bunch of pretty ladies fighting robots and orcs with machine guns and katanas.

That’s pretty much what we got, except the actiony bits are surrounded with some sort of dreamish story about some sad girls stuck in either an asylum for insane babes or a whorehouse, depending on which way you look at it. It’s also very restrained in order to fit the PG-13 bill, which I think is what kept it from reaching that lofty, masturbatory height that the trailers advertised. I thought I would be able to enjoy the actiony bits more than I ended up liking them; I suppose it might have been due to my relatively short sleep last night but I almost nodded off a couple times while robots were exploding. The music was pretty cool though, especially the inclusion and rather prominent featuring of “Army of Me” by the wonderfully strange Björk Guðmundsdóttir, which almost had me invested in the scene. There were some other neat songs as well, almost all used during the action scenes, which all felt very much like music videos.

Outside of those parts the movie is pretty bad. The acting is almost universally terrible, even by the rather accomplished character actor Scott Glenn, whose Yoda-like character’s catch phrases failed in their supposedly endearing aim and just ended up being annoying; Jon Hamm’s abbreviated role could have been better if his most interesting scene hadn’t been cut due to the MPAA’s lameness, and the principal cast can’t make the dialogue interesting. There were just so many long, static scenes of boring exposition that could have been replaced with more visually entertaining pieces while allowing the viewer to figure things out on his or her own. The list of MacGuffins just seemed stupid to me.

As usual, Zack Snyder made a movie that only he could make. It’s very recognizably his style; washed out colors, lots of slo-mo, and subject matter yanked from old Heavy Metal issues. I liked 300 when I first saw it, and I respect his version of Watchmen in most respects. This though, his first venture into “original” territory, seems lacking. It’s like he tried to pack every awesome thing he could think of into a two hour, PG-13 movie. Not gonna happen bro.

Paul

2011-03-21T19:56:00.001-04:00

I want to like Seth Rogen, I really do. I can honestly say I liked his performance in Observe and Report, and he did a Kevin Smith movie which was pretty cool, but aside from those I don’t really get him. I really don’t think his voice was right for the titular alien from this movie, although most people seem to disagree with me. I guess it doesn’t matter that much.

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost on the other hands, I deeply love. I'm a big fan of British sensibilities in comedy and these guys have been consistently great in whatever they do together. I suppose a good part of their greatness can be attributed to working with Edgar Wright, but they did well enough with this one that my faith hasn’t waivered much.

The story is about two British nerds visiting the United States to attend Comic-Con and take a road trip to historic locations related to extra-terrestrial contact, because they’re nerds. I’ve done neither of these things so I guess I haven’t quite made it to their level yet. On their way to one of said locations, they happen to meet an alien who’s been cooped up in Area 51 for sixty years and wants to leave, so they decide to help him out after they come to grips with the totally awesome reality they’re now facing. The alien, Paul, turns out to be a lot like them, and also a lot like Seth Rogen. He’s basically a nerd stoner who happens to also have a huge gray head and the ability to make himself invisible to heal things empathically. After meeting a few more colorful characters and having some discussions on bromance, the new friends manage to rendezvous with Paul’s rescue party and send him home.

It’s a sacrilegious road-comedy with sci-fi. Pretty great combination if you ask me. It’s also jam-packed with nerdy in-jokes and film references, probably quite of few of which I missed; but those that I got had me slapping my knees in the prideful thought that I too am a nerd, and have seen things that other people have seen. Pegg and Frost are great as usual, and I think Rogen’s character improved a little as the movie went on. I can’t say the bromance bit was very affecting for me, but it was at least made more believable after seeing very similar characters in Spaced.

It’s a really funny movie. I’m not sure it would have the same effect for those that haven’t seen many sci-fi movies, but it has enough low-brow humor to maybe make it a hit with the Apatow-crowd. Good stuff.

Limitless

2011-03-20T20:52:00.001-04:00

I’m a sucker for superhuman stuff. The more believable it is the better, in most cases. There’s no super-strength or x-ray vision here, just brain stuff, so it’s probably one of the most plausible films of this variety that I’ve seen. However, the basis of the conceit (we can only access 20% of our brains) is kind of BS, so that along with a bunch of other stuff breaks it a bit. Still, it was well done enough for me to enjoy most of it.

The story is that Brad Cooper is a mooching writer who doesn’t write and then starts taking drugs to get smart. Then of course the drugs start taking their toll as they do, driving him a bit mad and making his new life as a Wall Street man a bit difficult. It’s a semi-good picture of the effects of addiction for what it is. This drug in particular starts making your lose time, and then once withdrawal hits you get sick and probably die. The need to feed his addiction leads Brad to do things that nearly get him killed anyway several times, but the pros of the drug somehow outweigh the cons, allowing him to stay one step ahead of the baddies.

There are some pretty cool visual tricks, like the infinite-hallway thing and color-pallet changes according the mental state of the characters, the acting is in general pretty cool, and again I like superhuman stuff. However, this movie has problems. The very extensive use of voiceovers is one. While it’s probably necessary to convey what’s going on in Brad’s heightened mind, I think we could have done without that much explanation. The bit that bugged me the most though was the end, in that the message we get from this story is that drugs can be good and improve your life if you can handle them right. Going into it I thought the whole “you’re probably going to die” thing would be more predictive of the conclusion, but I guess we just had to have a happy ending.

Not a bad movie but I wouldn’t say you need to see it really.

Rango

2011-03-08T21:29:00.001-05:00

This is one of the strangest “kids’” movies I’ve seen in a long time. For one, it isn’t made by Pixar yet does not suck, and for another it’s rated PG and includes smoking, children pointing guns at themselves, intoxicating beverages, death, and references to films that no PG-aged child has any business seeing in my idea of a PG-oriented home. All of these things and more add up to a damn good animated film that’s pretty much a lock for Best Animated Feature in the third month of the year.

Gore Verbinski and ILM have teamed up to create a spaghetti-western homage unlike anything before it, for the simple fact that it’s CG. To add to that, it’s got probably the best character designs I’ve seen in any CG film so far, and although it’s in the guise of a children’s film, the dialogue pulls very few punches in its fast-paced and sometimes college-level vocabulary. It’s a simple story of course, but the humor on the byways is just awesome.

To get back to the character designs; everyone in this movie is ugly. Straight up. And it’s fantastic. Shrek was supposed to be ugly, but he’s really not. Rango is an asymmetrical, bumbling, bug-eyed mess, and it benefits the character in spades. The variety of the appearance in the other characters is staggering, aside from maybe the love-interest, whose look doesn’t differ that much from Rango’s aside from an attempt to make her look at least slightly attractive, which I think ended up being a detriment. This sort of ugliness is similar to the look that directors like Terry Gilliam bring out in their work, and I’m a big fan of it.

As far as film references go I’m afraid I probably missed the majority, but those I caught had me stamping my feet with happiness. The best I thought was the chase scene depicted in the picture above, in which our heroes are pursued on a wagon through a canyon by moles with guns on bats. For some odd reason the bats tended to start spinning out of control and exploding on the canyon walls when shot. I was also informed of a scene I didn’t catch near the beginning, in which the two main characters from Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas make an actual split-second cameo. I’ll be paying more attention next time.

Johnny Depp’s performance was pretty good. I think he fit the bill quite well, and you could really see his performance in the animation, which was created in a rather neat way; Depp’s motions were filmed for each scene, but instead of motion capture, the animators simply used the footage as reference, inserting their own skills into the sequences to keep it artistically valid and therefore much more entertaining. I hope this becomes a precedent.

To top it all off, it’s not 3D! Awesome! Screw George Lucas!

The Adjustment Bureau

2011-03-06T16:33:00.001-05:00

The trailers for this one started showing up at about the same time as Unknown’s. Both intrigued me, but The Adjustment Bureau seemed a quite a bit more promising; instead of just the possibility of something sci-fi, it was much more obviously intentional. I only recently found out it’s based on a story by Philip K. Dick, author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which became Blade Runner, so it’s got some credentials too. Of course I haven’t read any Dick books so I can’t speak for the faithfulness of the adaptation (as usual). However, I can say that I enjoyed this about as much as I thought I would.

The story follows Matt Damon’s character, a young politician aspiring for a Senate seat, whose typical semi-frat-boy past is catching up with him and making his life difficult. A seemingly chance meeting with a pretty girl (Emily Blunt) inspires him to give a speech that brings him back into the political picture. Up until this point, everything is going just as intended. Then chance intervenes and the two meet again. This is not supposed to happen. The Adjustment Bureau, a sort of supernatural agency for the correction of free will, doesn’t have this event in its plan.

It’s at this point that I started getting worried that the movie would fall into the trap of insta-relationships that I touched on in my post about Unknown. Thankfully though we’re given a nice explanation as to why the two bond so quickly that fits into the conceit, and makes the story more interesting. It seems the plan hasn’t always been the same; it has been adjusted itself in the past. Their relationship had been predetermined before, and some guidance given to their lives before had leaked into the new plan. I’m cool with that.

With that out of the way, the movie becomes a sort of chase film a-la Dark City with teleporting doorways and telekinesis, surrounding a charming romance with a little bit of comedy. It’s the kind of movie I’d take a girl to see if I knew any. The sci-fi might be a bit flimsy but I think it works well enough. It was nice seeing John Slattery from Mad Men, and Damon was just as good as usual. Emily Blunt did a great job and her dancing scenes were actually enjoyable, perhaps more so for me than most of the stuff in Black Swan. I liked it.

Drive Angry 3D

2011-02-28T19:59:00.001-05:00

Okay, I’ve got 15 minutes until Chuck starts. Let’s see if I can pinch this out in time to watch more dumb.

Nicholas Cage is a desperate, erratic man. He’s made a ton of movies, some of which are good, and lots are really bad. I haven’t actually seen many of the latter category, fortunately. Unfortunately, however, although this film appeared to be one of those movies that would transcend badness into insanity and therefore some kind of quality, it was largely Nic’s restrained performance that kept the movie from becoming actually entertaining.

It’s not all bad; Amber Heard is really hot, and William Fichtner once again proves that character actors are totally badass, completely upstaging Cage in pretty much every scene they shared. I’m not a very big car nut but I guess the whole classic muscle-car thing was pretty cool. There was a small bit where satanic cultists were put in their pathetic place which I enjoyed, and the action tended to be okay.

All that aside, it was a dumb movie that appeared to know it in most of the scenes, but unlike Piranha 3D, made several futile efforts to be serious. This was most evident in Cage’s performance. His lines were delivered in his most boring voice, often quite badly. Not once did the fantastically insane Cage of Bad Lieutenant ever surface; it was always a sad sort of “I’m totally more badass than everybody here” kind of demeanor, which is just lame. I don’t give a crap that he escaped hell to avenge his brutally murdered daughter’s death, he’s goddamned Nic Cage. To make matters worse, the 3D in the title means that everything looked like crap, because live-action 3D almost never works, and the CGI bits didn’t mesh well at all.

It’s a bad movie. William Fichtner was really the only quality in the whole thing, but he wasn’t enough. It’s just bad.

Let the Right One In

2011-02-21T12:45:00.001-05:00

So this will be my third post on this story. I’ve been doing very little reading for the last several years, but I loved the movies that were made from this work so much that I felt it necessary to find out if they really stacked up to the source. It turns out that both movies were pretty faithful, the first more than the second, but both left out quite a bit of story, most likely because a film that did everything in the book would probably be shunned by most civilized audiences.

The most glaring omission from both movies is the truth of the relationship between Eli and Håkan, who is often referred to as her “father” by people who can’t see the subtext. When I saw the first film I assumed he was a long-time protector/familiar of sorts with a romantic connection to Eli. Let Me In sort of confirmed this assumption, but made it seem a bit more innocent somehow. It turns out that Håkan is a straight-up pedophile and was only recruited by Eli a short time ago, after he had been outed as the pervert he was. There are many portions of the book written from his perspective; he sees Eli as some sort of god/goddess, but also as a sex object that remains slightly out of reach, much like the young boys who hold his fancy. His violent ventures are efforts to endear himself to her and gain sexual favors. Some of his mental narration is pretty disgusting really. Also, the movies both remove his character entirely after his “death,” whereas in the book he continues to have a part, although not in the same way; again, pretty gruesome.

The second biggest difference was handled much better in the original film, but still not as explicitly as in the source. Eli is not a girl. She says this in both films as I recall, but it’s easy to assume she just means that she’s a vampire; there are a couple of frames in the first movie that expand on the line, but it’s easy to miss and also ignore. In the book, Oskar eventually starts referring to Eli as “he,” but I think I remember he doesn’t always stick to that pronoun, as it’s hard to make the distinction when faced with his/her outward appearance. The theme of homosexuality is much more pronounced, but it never becomes the major theme; that remains friendship.

There are a few other characters who are given more of a focus, like Oskar’s friend Tommy who was dropped entirely for the theatrical versions as I recall; it was a bit hard for me to care about him given this fact, but his storyline definitely got more interesting near the end. Lacke and Virginia, the star-crossed lovers from the bar, are both given larger roles, but following the same general story arc from the first movie. The policeman Staffan seems to be who the cop from the second is based on, although there isn’t really a whole lot of correlation between the two. Oskar’s bullies are humanized a bit more.

Eli his/herself seems much more like an adult than portrayed in the movies, although he/she claims that she still feels like a twelve-year old even though she’s over 200. It may be a fault of the translation from Swedish, which was evident in the American movie, but the dialogue between children never really felt quite natural; it might be intentional I suppose. This is not a natural relationship.

As expected, it’s a really good book. I think I may have enjoyed watching the first movie more than reading this, but I can only attribute that to the love the filmmakers had for it.

Unknown

2011-02-20T19:29:00.001-05:00

Back in 2008, a movie starring Liam Neeson called Taken was released, and everybody kept comparing it to The Bourne Identity. It did follow some of the formula, the whole moving around foreign countries and lots of hand-to-hand combat with the occasional car-chase scene. It was a pretty good movie though, and really the same comparisons could be made to a lot of other action movies. It seems somebody got the wrong idea out of Taken’s success though, and figured they’d milk the Bourne formula with Neeson for all it’s worth.

At first glance, and for about the first half of the movie, Unknown seems more like an episode of The Twilight Zone. Instead of having amnesia, Liam appears to have been completely replaced by another man, taking his wife, his job, and even his scheduled speech at a bio-technology summit. He of course has no ID to confirm he is who he says he is, as it was conveniently lost. He almost gives in to the thought that he might be insane, but his memories are so vivid that he just can’t accept it. His suspicions are confirmed after a shady guy starts tailing and trying to kill him. After a bunch of chases, death and almost-romance, we finally get to the reveal. I am going to spoil this so if you’re actually planning on going to see the movie you should skip the next paragraph.

Turns out he’s an assassin. This is revealed to him with almost the exact same dialogue as in Bourne Identity. The guy who’s taken his life was his backup, and his wife is actually his partner in the whole plot, so she’s in on it. He soon starts remembering who he actually is, but seemingly doesn’t become the same man again, instead deciding to take down the very mission he had been heading up until his accident. There isn’t really much reason given for this turn of conscience, whereas in Bourne it was rather plainly and emotionally explained. It just made me angry really.

Aside from all the second-rate mimicry, it’s just not that great of a movie. January Jones is of course gorgeous, but her acting here is pretty robotic, not giving me much hope for X-Men: First Class. Neeson himself is just himself, his deep and manly voice just not conveying the emotion I would be expecting in his situation. Diane Kruger is okay as a facsimile of Franka Potente’s character from Bourne Identity, but much like Mila Kunis in The Book of Eli, she latches onto Liam’s character rather quickly and strongly without any really convincing reason. There were lots of Hollywood-style car explosions that wouldn’t actually happen, a little bit of shoddy CGI, and lots of those up-close shaky-cam fight scenes that have been plaguing action movies for a number of years now.

Most of the reviews I’ve read for this so far have been more forgiving than I am. Even as I was walking from the theater discussing it with my friend, I said it was “an okay movie.” As I’m writing this though I can’t help but think of it as a failure.

Winter’s Bone

2011-02-13T21:35:00.001-05:00

I’m not sure this one ever really got a wide release, and I didn’t know about it when it was making the rounds anyway, so I just now managed to get it through Netflix. Aside from The Kids are Alright it’s the only Academy Award for Best Picture nominee I hadn’t yet seen for last year. I’ve managed to learn very little about the movie itself, and went into it with only a vague notion of the plot; a female protagonist with a mission related to either vengeance or finding her father, something like that. In that sense it seemed a lot like the premise of True Grit, but after watching Winter’s Bone I don’t think I can really make any comparisons between the two.

This movie is depressing. It’s set in some sort of redneck community composed of loosely blood-related, broken people amidst a cloud of drug manufacturing and murder. Our hero Ree, played by Jennifer Lawrence, is informed that her father really needs to show up in court for his trial relating to his chosen profession of crank-cooking, or else their house and land will be taken away for his bond. Ree takes it upon herself to find her estranged father, along with her duties of caring for her young brother and sister and their despondent mother. It seems wherever she turns someone is telling her to leave well-enough alone; apparently her dad got in a bit over his head. Still, she presses on.

Almost all of the characters in this movie are ragged, despairing people in a world of fear. Counter to the modern world of equality, in this corner of the country women are inferior and must do what they are told by men. There are several instances where Ree is not permitted to even speak to the men she seeks to question, instead speaking through their wives as proxies. Her repeated attempts to get information from them often results in getting smacked or worse. She never lets this defeat her though; she’s the strong female lead. Even when facing the patriarchal redneck king-pin she doesn’t waver, and eventually she reaches some sort of success in her mission.

There’s a pretty big theme of family ties, as would be expected in this sort of setting, but it’s not a happy sort of theme at all. I certainly wouldn’t want to be related to these people. Still, it’s not quite as bad as what I saw in Deliverance, and some of the characters redeem themselves a bit later in the film. Like I said though, it’s depressing. There’s definitely not enough of an uplifting conclusion to get an Oscar. It’s well-filmed and well-acted, even on the part of the kids, and it seems more like a real story than the two biopics in the running. Can’t say I enjoyed it very much though.

The Mechanic

2011-01-31T22:06:00.001-05:00

Okay, let’s look at the new movie lineup this week. First we’ve got Anthony Hopkins in the three-hundredth movie about Catholic exorcism, in which not very much happens that wasn’t done way better in The Exorcist itself. Then there’s a Jason Statham movie in which lots of shit gets blown up. Not exactly the strongest pickings ever. Oh well. So I went with the Statham one. The previews didn’t look that bad really, and Jason has made a couple good movies here and there. It certainly couldn’t be as bad as The Expendables. Also I’ve seen Ben Foster in a few things and he’s been pretty cool.

A “mechanic” in this movie is an assassin, because they fix things. Jason plays Arthur Bishop, an accomplished mechanic whose mentor becomes his target, as required by his direct employer. Being a professional he obliges, but not without remorse. As a sort of penance he takes his mentor’s trouble-maker son, Steve (Foster), as his charge and begins training him in with ways of The Force. Steve isn’t the best student ever but eventually becomes a competent killer and starts helping out on assignments. Then the unthinkable plot twist of Steve discovering who killed his father happens, and he tries to take out Arthur. The results are predictable but not badly played out.

It’s a simple story without very much to exposit, so most of the time is spent gearing up to the next batch of violence, and then killing stuff. Still, there’s enough characterization to make it more than pure pulp. Statham is likable and Foster is believable in his kind of empty sadness for his father’s death. The action is quite good, with at least one fight sequence that reminded me a lot of The Bourne Identity, which I’ve probably mentioned is my favorite action flick. All in all it’s not really anything special, but it was a pretty good watch.

American Graffiti

2011-01-26T21:58:00.001-05:00

George Lucas used to be a good filmmaker. He was at his best when he had little money and lots of help. This, his second film after THX 1138, was definitely made in those conditions. His script was rewritten several times by other people, he consulted with people like Francis Ford Coppola, and was given a ridiculously small budget and timeframe. Perhaps he was the soul of the movie; many of the characters’ stories were based on his own life, and he pushed very hard for the title and the sub-A-list cast. Still, according to the making-of feature, his directing style was very minimal. He basically just let the characters do whatever they wanted to do, and kept filming them until he saw something he liked. As such, his limited input helped to make the movie what it is.

The movie is comprised of several interweaving stories of young men and women in the early 1960s, driving around in fancy cars and listening to rock n’ roll in what Lucas called their “mating ritual.” At first I found it hard to like this theme because it’s something so completely foreign to me that I can’t really relate, but eventually I warmed to the characters as it became clear that they could be real people with real flaws. It reminded me a bit of The Breakfast Club like that. Perhaps the most important part of the movie is the music; popular songs from the period are used more like an ambient score than pretty much any film before it, and the traditional score is completely absent. Lyrical themes play into the scenes themselves while the sound is adjusted to fit the environment and the mood. It really works well.

I didn’t know much about the movie coming into it, so I was pleasantly surprised to see Richard Dreyfuss in what could be considered to be the lead role, Ron Howard in another, and even Harrison Ford with a smaller but important part, all of them much younger than I’d ever seen them before. This was really their break-out movie, and they all put out some great performances.

I kind of wish Star Wars hadn’t been as successful as it was so Lucas could have continued being a poor but good filmmaker. Maybe then the prequels wouldn’t have happened.

The Way Back

2011-01-23T21:39:00.001-05:00

I don’t remember hearing about this before I saw the trailer at a theater, I think attached to Black Swan or something, which is strange considering both Colin Farrell and Ed Harris have major roles. Maybe I just passed it over. Anyway, it’s about a group of men who escaped from a Siberian forced-labor camp during Stalin’s control of the Soviet empire. In the second scene of the film, a guard tells the prisoners that it is not the guns or walls that keeps them prisoners, but Siberia itself; it’s not exactly a forgiving landscape. It’s always cold, usually snowing, there’s not much in the way of civilization, and the people who do manage to stay alive would probably report any escapees anyway. Still, our wrongly-accused protagonist thinks it can be done and gathers a small group to brave the wastelands in search of freedom.

From then on it’s a story of survival and camaraderie in pretty much every sort of environment there is; frigid tundra, snowy peaks, wetlands, deserts, more peaks, and mosquito-infested byways, all presented quite attractively, except for the part where it’s often killing the characters. They’re a pretty neat group of people; an American, some Polish, Russian, and others. A Russian girl claiming to be Polish in order to endear herself joins the group partway through, bringing more of a family vibe to the team. They mostly speak English but it’s not like it’s just an alternative to subtitles; more like it’s a universal tongue, although I kind of doubt that it was the primary language in the real-life situation on which the story is based.

The journey starts in Siberia and ends in India, crossing all of the mentioned environments in Russia, Mongolia, China, and the Himalayas. It’s all on foot. Not everyone survives, unsurprisingly. It doesn’t quite hit the moral outrage-button as much as Schindler’s List or anything but it’s still a very respectful and pretty chilling look at the effects of Communism; of course that’s not at all the main focus. It’s a story about some people who want very much to live. I think it’s quite effective.

I think I’ve seen enough based-on-fact movies for the time being now. Bring on the fiction.

The King’s Speech / The Fighter

2011-01-12T18:55:00.001-05:00

My desire to write about stuff seems to be ebbing. Even when I see awesome stuff like True Grit or whatever, and have to enumerate its virtues to everyone I meet, the task of sitting down and typing just doesn’t appeal to me. As such, both of these movies have been sitting in my head for a week or two now and I don’t think I can say that much about either of them, so they’re gonna be all friendly-like and sit together in the same post.

The King’s Speech is a British biopic of sorts, chronicling King George V’s heir non-apparent’s difficulties with any sort of public and some private speaking. He’s initially a total loss whenever he’s required to make a speech for anything. After a bunch of failed attempts to find a good speech therapist, his wife finally finds a guy whose only credentials are his experiences in the field, but he happens to be a really friendly guy and just the sort of person good ol’ Berty needs. We’re then treated to a story with some similarities to My Fair Lady except the Lady is a dude, and it’s more of a bromance than a romance. There’s lots of uplifting themery and heaviness brought on by the World-War II period, and the main characters’ likability is undeniable. Not exactly a breakthrough in cinema or anything but it’s definitely well-made and enjoyable enough.

The Fighter is a movie with Mark Wahlberg in it. At least, that’s what it might have been. Sure, he’s the main dude supposedly, but thankfully he’s not that bad (most likely due to good direction) and the rest of the cast blows him so much out of the water that you kind of forget he’s there. It’s another biopic, this time with a smaller scope time-wise, and a completely different setting. Mark plays a boxer whose career is overshadowed by his older crack-head brother’s brief time in the ring in which he allegedly took down Sugar Ray Leonard at some time. The crack-head is played incredibly by Christian Bale in another completely on-point role, with physical conditioning similar to his transformation in The Machinist. Amy Adams is Mark’s gorgeous potty-mouthed girlfriend, and even Conan O’Brien’s sister has a nifty supporting part. All of the acting is brilliant (except for Wahlberg’s which is okay enough), and the story is really good. It’s probably a good depiction of what crack can do to a person.

Both films end happily. I preferred The Fighter because it had a bunch of moments where the characters did things that I could barely think of rational people doing, and that sort of thing (in moderation) keeps my interest more than the more low-key sort of movie that The King’s Speech is. Also Christian Bale’s performance is just outstanding. I’d recommend seeing both though.

True Grit

2011-01-03T21:03:00.001-05:00

So it’s been over a week since I saw it. Just didn’t ever feel like writing. Now I’ve got a few hours free, and I’ve managed to avoid starting up Minecraft. Let’s do this.

It’s the second film adaptation of the book that I haven’t read. Haven’t seen the first one either, but I’ve seen enough John Wayne movies to get the idea, so my excitement for this wasn’t due to its predecessors, rather everything else about it. It’s directed by the Coen brothers, who have made some of the best movies of recent years. It’s starring Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon, two of my favorite actors. It’s a western. This Hailee Steinfeld looked to be pretty dang good.

So the story is pretty simple. This girl Mattie Ross’s dad was murdered by a good for nothin’ outlaw (Josh Brolin), and she’s hiring a man with “true grit” to bring him to justice. She finds Rooster Cogburn (Bridges) in pretty short order, and manages to get him to help her out after proving that she herself is not without gumption. Damon tags along as Texas Ranger La Boeuf, and the character drama begins.

It’s definitely a western. It has all the feel of those old movies that I remember so fondly, except with that Coen strangeness in the situations and dialogue making it even more entertaining. It’s really much more funny that I had expected, with few scenes that didn’t merit a laugh; and yet, it doesn’t feel like a comedy. It’s a drama. Stanfield does an amazing job as the lead even overlooking that it’s her first theatrical movie, delivering her confidently fast-paced lines very convincingly, a bit like Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network. She has an aura of urgency that contributes to the dramatic edge while keeping it from being dry. Jeff Bridges is as great as ever, completely immersing himself in the character rather than just disinterestedly mumbling like in Tron: Legacy. Matt Damon also becomes a new man, much like in The Informant though maybe not quite as drastically. Josh Brolin, another Coen alumnus, makes up for Jonah Hex in his rather small but important role. The characters are what makes this movie, and that’s really what makes me love it.

It’s a very good looking movie too. Not many scenes really stand out in this regard, except for perhaps the cabin shoot-out and the arrival of the road-doctor, but it all fits together very well in its familiar settings and makes for an enjoyable view. At this point I can’t really remember much about the sound unfortunately. Maybe it wasn’t that great. Anyway, it’s a really good, simple but enthralling genre piece which I’d put in the top three Coen movies next to The Big Lebowski and No Country for Old Men.

Tron: Legacy

2010-12-19T18:13:00.001-05:00

I went into this expecting to be disappointed. Almost every review I’ve read has been pretty disheartening, pointing derisively at the lifeless dialogue, soulless performances, and lack of a good conclusion. Still, also in almost every review there was praise for the visuals and sound. That’s all that was really being hyped to begin with so there wasn’t much surprise there. It was enough to get me into the theater. I think lowering my expectations was the best thing I could have done.

Tron: Legacy, once horribly titled TR2N, is a sequel to a movie that came out almost thirty years ago, which was a box office failure in its time. It’s become a cult-classic since, mostly among computer nerds such as myself, although I didn’t see it until six years ago and didn’t think very much of it then. The technology was revolutionary for its time but not mine. Now, for some reason Disney thought it would be a good/profitable idea to bring it back to life with state-of-the-art 3D CGI. The nerds rallied to the call. Of course they weren’t really Disney’s target audience anymore, so it couldn’t really be all that we wanted it to be. Still, getting Jeff Bridges to reprise his role was definitely a good move, and grabbing Olivia Wilde, one of the hottest hotties around, didn’t hurt at all.

I don’t remember much about the first movie aside from Flynn (Bridges) getting transported into the digital world and battling it out a little. There was a bit of a refresher in this one, but I think most of the events described occurred in the intervening years. We learn that he’s been trapped in The Grid and his digital doppelgänger has become Hitler. His son Sam, having not known of his father’s plight for so many years, has assumed that he was abandoned, but doesn’t really show the usual symptoms of that kind of complex, instead roguishly following in his father’s footsteps to make software free for everyone. Well, not really footsteps, more like badass motorcycle tracks and semi-parkour moves. Gotta keep the action going! So he gets beamed into the Grid, meets the evil Flynn (Clu), his dad, and Olivia (Qorra). He then figures he can save the day and goes at it. There are lots of awesome disc-battles and light-cycle chases, even a flight combat scene reminiscent of the “Don’t get cocky” scene from Star Wars. There’s also some dialogue I guess. Stuff happens. Big finish. Strangely illogical conclusion. It’s over.

As expected, it really was just an effects fest basically. It’s a very stylized movie, and with updated technology it’s just simply gorgeous (almost as much as Olivia). The Daft Punk score is extremely enjoyable, and their cameo is kinda cool too. There were a few nerdy bits here and there, like using actual UNIX commands in an old terminal (although it shouldn’t have been a touch-screen). Jeff Bridges got to be The Dude every once in a while which always got a laugh out of me. The guy in the lead was alright I guess. Olivia didn’t have much of a role aside from being incredibly beautiful, and I’m perfectly happy with that. The biggest problem was probably the digital Bridges when depicting Flynn; I can handle him as Clu, because Clu is a program, but the valley was very uncanny otherwise. All in all though it wasn’t as bad as the critics are making it out to be, and the pros outweighed the cons, I think. Good show.

Black Swan

2010-12-14T20:37:00.001-05:00

Darren Aranofsky makes weird movies. Not always the same kind of weird, but always something abnormal. Black Swan is like The Fly crossed with American Psycho and Gia. Yeah, I said Gia. That aspect of the film was one of the big pulls for me honestly.

So it’s about Natalie Portman, the virginal, naive ballet dancer who wants really bad to dance the main part in Swan Lake, and ends up getting the part. The problem is that it’s really two parts, the White Swan and the Black Swan. She’s perfect for the white one, an outwardly spotless picture of technical beauty. The Black Swan is supposed to be more relaxed and sexualized, and she seems to have no concept of this. Her director pushes her beyond her limits, and her mother keeps holding her back in her child-world; this breeds a rather violent conflict in her mind, which is given a physical target in Mila Kunis’ character, Lilly. Lilly seems to be the embodiment of the Black Swan. Nina (Portman) processes this as any psychotically determined person would, and then crazy crap starts happening.

Actually, it starts even before Lilly shows up. Nina has a scratching problem. She has weird rashes on her shoulders and her fingernails often bleed from over-zealous clipping. There are some pretty emotionally intense scenes involving said clipping that were actually harder for me to watch than that scene in 127 Hours. It seems a lot of the affects of her self-abuse are in her head, although we the viewers never really know the true extent of it. There are times when it’s obvious that her transformations are mental, and those are some of the most beautifully disturbing scenes in the movie. My mention of The Fly shouldn’t be taken completely at face value; it never gets that brutal, and it’s anything but sci-fi.

I might throw in an Inception comparison, but I think American Psycho is still more apt. It’s just not ever entirely certain whether what you’re seeing is actually happening or not. I had actually been hoping for more of a sci-fi twist, but it works well enough. I would also probably have enjoyed it more if I cared about ballet at all, but I really don’t; I suppose I have a bit more appreciation for the work the dancers have to go through to do what they do, but stage performance arts just go right past me. Natalie’s performance could be the best I’ve seen from her though. I wouldn’t be surprised if she nabs Best Actress.

So yeah, Aranofsky’s next move is called Wolverine. I have a feeling it’s going to turn the comic-book movie scene upside-down.

Boardwalk Empire – Season 1

2010-12-12T21:21:00.001-05:00

Steve Buscemi. Omar. Ladies. Guns. Gangs. 20s. Boardwalk Empire.

I don’t really need to write anymore, but I guess I will. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but I normally have a strange problem with gang fiction. I’m still not entirely sure why. Classics like The Godfather and Goodfellas largely bored me. The first season of The Sopranos seemed like a chore. Reservoir Dogs I’ve grown to like, but the first time I don’t think I’d yet acclimated to that level of gore. Now, Boardwalk Empire comes along with all its insane pedigree, the above mentioned people/things and Martin Scorsese, it had better well knock my socks off. Oh look, there they are lying on the floor.

This may be because the gang aspect is a bit different from those other stories; Steve Buscemi plays a so-called elected official, Treasurer Enoch “Nucky” Thompson. He’s not the head of the family, he’s just the guy that runs everything. Not everyone respects him. They only really respect what they might be able to get out of him in exchange for money, so-called allegiance, or political favors. Again, I don’t really know why, but it seems I like this sort of character more than Marlon Brando’s. It may be because he’s less of an asshole than Tony Soprano. Anyway, Steve Buscemi is always great as a character actor, and here he plays the lead equally well.

Nucky is the Treasurer of Atlantic City, New Jersey. AC runs on alcohol and gambling, and now with Prohibition in effect, even more money is to be made. People will spend more on stuff if it’s illegal. As such, he who controls the liquor controls the city, and Nucky Thompson is that man, though he doesn’t appear that way to his adoring public; he gives seemingly heartfelt speeches to the temperance groups supporting Prohibition, and courts a women who admires him for his moral standing. This woman, Margaret Schroeder played by Kelly Macdonald, starts off as the faultless housewife and slowly becomes that which she hates while realizing her admiration for Nucky was ill-founded. Most of the other characters are in on it from the start, like Jimmy Darmody, the son of the previous show-runner who’s been out to war and has returned with spiritual scars. Nucky is like a father to him, but that doesn’t keep the old man from using him as a gun.

Jimmy starts out partnering with a young Al Capone. Al proves to be an unreliable jokester, which eventually drives the two apart, and Jimmy finds a new partner in Richard Harrow (Jack Huston), the chilling phantom-masked war veteran who shares a sort of brotherhood with Jimmy’s battlescars, although his are both unseen and dramatically visible. He’s probably the most interesting character on the show. Shame he didn’t have a bigger role. Another actor who should have had more screen time is Michael Kenneth Williams as Chalky White, who only gets a couple chances to show his acting prowess; but when he does, you know Omar’s still dangerous.

Not everyone is Nucky’s friend of course. He has plenty enemies, both in the dark underground and the pious government. The most intriguing one of these, for me at least, was Federal Agent Nelson Van Alden, played by Michael Shannon. Here’s a man who takes his trade all too seriously while most of his compatriots are more likely to side with the man with the booze. The bulk of his devotion to duty is part of his almost psychotic religious intensity. He imagines himself the poster-child for Christianity while I doubt many churches would want him representing them. The guy’s got a bit of a righteous anger problem, and it’s relentlessly entertaining. His attempts to nab Nucky in the act lead to some of the most gripping scenes in the show.

There are a few more notable characters and lots of plot, but this post is getting too long and I don’t think I can make it entertaining. It’s a good show. The first episode, directed by Scorsese, was a bit hard to follow but it set the bar for quality quite high. After that every episode was a bit slower but just as gripping, and almost always featured some sort of violence or skin (Paz de la Huerta has an aversion to clothes). It never got boring. It really was like watching a twelve-hour movie. I’m a very character-oriented kinda guy, and every character on the screen was made either likable or despicable to a level not too far from The Wire. I’m definitely looking forward to season 2.

The Walking Dead – Season 1

2010-12-06T20:06:00.001-05:00

This show was by far my most anticipated show this year. Pretty much every star aligned to make this the best thing I could imagine. Frank Darabont, director of The mother-flippin’ Shawshank Redemption, took my beloved Robert Kirkman graphic novel and decided to make it into a TV show. All of the publicity that came out before the premiere had me giddy; all of the actors were basically ripped straight from the black and white pages, one or a few of the episodes were to be directed by someone who had a hand in Breaking Bad, and Robert Kirkman was writing a script for an episode as well. It seemed that this would be a realization of something I had previously thought impossible.

The great thing about The Walking Dead is that although it is a zombie story, it also isn’t. It’s primarily about a group of people and how their lives and minds are effected in a world where everything is dead and hope is so very rarely seen. Each character becomes a different person, some more than others; the trauma of a post-apocalypse is wonderfully examined in a supposedly endless story of survival, breakdown and perseverance of the human spirit. Frank Darabont understands this very well. That doesn’t mean the zombie element is left by the wayside, far from it; their gruesome faces are seen in every episode, and AMC doesn’t seem to shy away from dismemberment at all.

The plan is to use the comic as a sort of basic outline for the series instead of a rote history. There’s plenty room for expansion of the cast and storylines, and no doubt things will be omitted as well. I’m fine with this as long as it fits, and they keep the more pivotal moments intact. So far they’ve done a pretty good job doing just that, except maybe for the addition of a location and character that just didn’t work out very well for the last episode. There were some other characters added to get right into some more varied social issues right off the bat instead of waiting until later, as there was of course no guarantee that the show would continue after the first six episodes. These new guys did seem a bit too stereotypical for Kirkman’s style, but I don’t think it was a particularly bad move to include them.

The bits that didn’t change are perfect. Every member of the core cast from the comic is dead-on, both visually and characteristically. Glenn (the asian guy) is particularly amazing in this aspect. Rick Grimes, played by Andrew Lincoln, is perhaps a little too melodramatic at times but pulls off the character very well. He’s of course the most important element, as he goes through the most visible changes, both physically and mentally. I have confidence that he’ll keep the quality high.

This first season did a fantastic job of introducing the story to the small screen. The ratings were near the highest of any cable drama ever. This is probably due to the fantastic marketing it got. AMC is awesome. It was not without issues, some more glaring than others, but overall it was just a joy to see the pages brought to life so well. There were a few knots left untied which are pretty easy to figure out if you’ve read the comic. Not sure how I feel about those. Perhaps Darabont will surprise us. The writing staff is going to change a little for the next season, so anything could happen really. I just wish we could get the season 2 premier before next October.

The Warrior’s Way

2010-12-05T19:29:00.001-05:00

I haven’t seen a whole lot of kung-fu/ninja movies, nor is my knowledge of westerns very extensive. As far as I know though this is the first movie to combine the two genres (correct me if I’m wrong). The last American-made ninja movie I saw was Ninja Assassin, so I had no reason to expect this to be any good, especially from the previews. The one thing that caught my attention was the genius line, “Ninjas. Damn.” which unfortunately was omitted from the theatrical release. Strangely though, this movie was almost entirely different from what I expected; it wasn’t a mindless action fest, but instead a stylistic, charming action-comedy.

The story focuses mainly on that ninja guy in the picture. He’s got the pretty generic ninja backstory, dedicating his life to become the very best ninja in the world, ever. This is rather hilariously pointed out with a dumb-looking text overlay near the end of the beautiful intro scene. That and the cowboy-narration pretty much set the tone for the rest of the movie. So anyway, this guy decides not to kill the baby princess, daughter of his enemy, after slaughtering their entire clan as a test of his awesomeness. This won’t sit at all well with his own clan so he flees to the American West to meet an old friend and go into hiding. Here he meets a ragtag bunch of down-on-their-luck westerners, many of which are circus performers. This adds to the weirdness ever more. He soon befriends a spunky redhead girl and teaches her the art of swordplay so she can have revenge on the evil bad-guy who murdered her family. Eventually he and his gang show up, and so does our hero’s past. An epic battle of old-timey machine guns, katanas, dynamite, and devilish clowns ensues, afterwards proceeding to an ending not so happy ever after.

As usual the previews make it out to be nonstop action. Surprisingly though the action makes up maybe 10% of the movie. The rest is nicely paced romantic comedy with the occasional midget humor. I can’t say the acting is that great, and almost every scene is obviously green-screened, but the characters are likable and it’s not pretentious in any sense of the word. The action itself is very entertaining, and sometimes gorgeous. The main antagonist is wonderfully slimy and easy to hate. As far as the whole genre-mashing goes, I think it was done well enough, but it could definitely be improved. I’m expecting next summer’s Cowboys and Aliens to put this movie to shame ten times over. Still, I enjoyed The Warrior’s Way much more than I thought I would, and I hope it doesn’t do too poorly at the box office.

Dogma

2010-12-04T15:57:00.001-05:00

This is one of those movies that I’ve seen playing on TV at various places, but never sat down to watch the whole thing. I think there are still a bunch of those. I finally got around to Dogma though, mostly because of the new Jay and Silent Bob Get Old podcast, which has been pretty hilarious and sometimes moving so far. It’s renewed my interest in Kevin Smith stuff anyway, so I figured I’d hit this one up before Chasing Amy and his other less-lauded works. Probably never going to watch Cop Out though.

The film starts with a disclaimer about its sacrilegious content, which has done nothing to keep it from being derided by critics of the more religious sort. It’s not really surprising, as it really shows how little Smith respects Catholicism specifically. He doesn’t go around calling all Christians idiots or anything, but he does use very satirical and often blatantly juvenile humor to point out some of the more easily mocked aspects of human-forged religious tradition. The key point in all of his arguments is the most inflammatory; in argument between two Earth-shackled angels (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck), one of them reminds the other of a rule I don’t think I’ve ever heard: “If the church says it's so, God must adhere.“ There was a more official sounding line saying basically the same thing but I can’t find it. I’m pretty sure it’s just something Kevin made up, but it definitely seems to justify the whole Papal system.

So the problem brought about by said rule is that the two angels have figured out a way to re-enter Heaven due to George Carlin the priest reinstating indulgences, which means that anyone who enters his church would become absolved of all sins. This would contradict God’s decision to throw them out of the Holies. Such a contradiction cannot exist because God is infallible, so if they were to succeed in their venture, then the universe would cease to be. In order to prevent this God sets up an interception with the last Scion (Linda Fiorentino), which means she’s the last living relative of Jesus Christ. She is of course reluctant, and becomes even more so after finding she has to be accompanied by our old friends Jay and Bob. Also joining the group are Rufus the 13th Apostle played by Chris Rock, and Salma Hayek as the Muse of Serendipity. Alan Rickman stops in once in a while as Metatron, the voice of God (God’s actual voice makes your head explode).

It’s definitely a Kevin Smith movie. Most of the jokes are about how angels don’t have penises or how Jesus was actually black, and I’m pretty sure there’s at least one Star Wars reference. There’s even a poop demon. It was funny. The inclusion of Jay and Bob seemed unnecessary but it wasn’t bad; it’s always fun to hear Jason Mewes spouting off about his genitals and drugs. I have to say I enjoyed Salma Hayek’s introduction scene.

As an anti-religious satire, it doesn’t hold a whole lot of water. As a comedy, I think it’s something that mostly just Kevin Smith fans will really enjoy, but it’s got capable dialogue and enough shock moments to keep the average viewer happy. Not my favorite of his by a long shot though.

Kvelertak

2010-11-30T19:15:00.004-05:00

Back in January, a band called Shining released an album that had me hooked from the first note. I thought it couldn’t be topped. Amazingly though, it seems 2010 had even more to offer. I first heard of Kvelertak on MetalSucks, a rather fantastic music blog which has been a great resource for me lately. The first thing to catch my interest was not the review itself, but the awesome John Dyer-Baizley artwork. I’ve been a fan of his since Baroness’ Red Album (Baizley is a member of the band); his visual touch has since been a near-perfect indicator of quality behind the cover. Sure enough, this new Norwegian band has created a monolith of feel-good genre-fusion extremely worthy of the lustrous illustration John so graciously/profitably contributed.

The band’s debut opus is an immensely cohesive mixture of punk, hard rock, rock ‘n’ roll, and Norway’s specialty, black metal. I’m actually quite surprised how well it works. I guess it might not be quite as infectious if the black metal part was more prominent; for the most part it’s relegated to the vocal section, while popping up once in a while amongst the riffing. I do suspect however that the screechy voice is what will hold this back from becoming a truly prominent album. There are tons of people who simply can’t stand that sort of thing, and I pity them for it. As far as these go, they’re not the best extreme-metal vocals ever, but hardly weak by any stretch. Combined with a few folk-metal tinged choruses and gang-vocals, the screeches fall into place better than any punk-rocker’s marble-mouth I’ve ever heard. Even though the lyrics are all in Norse, it’s easy to envision the folkloric fantasies and bar-stool anthems held within them.

Every track is a blood-pumping thrill-ride. I can’t count the number of times I’ve listened through this in my car; it’s just so perfect for keeping up-beat during such a frequently boring commute. Perhaps it’s because I haven’t really heard enough of the more traditional genres it’s drawing from, but this just seems so new to me. I feel like everyone should like this. Unfortunately there doesn’t yet seem to be any official US distribution, it’s $25 to import on Amazon, and it’s not on US iTunes (yet another reason for me to hate it). I think the majority of Kvelertak’s fans probably haven’t spent a dime on their listening pleasure. However, the band itself is pretty cool with that from what I’ve heard. They’re just jazzed that people dig it, which makes me like them even more.

Feast your eyes and ears on MJØD (which I think means beer, lemme check… close. Mead.) A little warning though, it might be not be quite safe for work or whatever.

It’s all like that. I hope you can agree that this is completely awesome.

Tangled

2010-11-29T12:34:00.001-05:00

So I probably wasn’t going to ever see this movie, but it looked like it might not suck, and my attempts at spontaneity kind of made it the only option when we got to the theater on Saturday night. The selling points for me were Disney’s attempt to bring back their old character style in the new medium of CGI, and the casting of Zachary Levi (Chuck) as the voice of the male protagonist.

The story of course is that of Rapunzel and her ridiculously long hair. As I recall though the hair wasn’t really magical in the original story. Here it’s given the power of glowiness and healing/rejuvenation, which is what makes the old hag keep her locked up. I can’t remember what her reason was before. Anyhow, Prince Charming isn’t a prince, instead a bit more of an antihero with a heart of gold and all that, pulling out the parkour and the fake skate-boarding at every turn. We also have an intensely annoying sentient horse playing an antagonist-turned-good-guy, and some evil twins. We follow goldie-locks and Sean White through an adventure filled with emotional turmoil, misunderstood ruffians, natural disasters and familial stress, always accompanied by generic Disney musical numbers, the majority of which made me want to leave the theater.

That’s the problem I have with these things now; Pixar has spoiled me with great movies devoid of cheesy and unnecessary musical bits, and usually good characters and story. In this film, Disney seems to be clinging to the crappier bits of their legacy and not really forging any new ground. I suppose it might be entertaining for its target demographic, but I’m decidedly not a part of that anymore.

That said, the 3D aspect was pretty well done, and I did like the majority of the characters’ visual design. So that’s what I can say about it; It’s pretty, but mostly lame.

127 Hours

2010-11-21T13:33:00.001-05:00

In 2003, some dude named Aaron Ralston made some stupid decisions. He felt invincible in his youth, physical capability, and knowledge of the terrain he was visiting, and felt no need to tell anyone that he was setting off alone into a rocky wilderness. This film is about how stupid he was. However, it’s not just about that; it’s also about emotional reflection and the human desire to survive.

James Franco plays Aaron the thrill-seeker, dashing head-long into peril without much caution at all. He first meets up with a couple babes who’ve lost their way and has a joyous time with them for a while in a subterranean pond, then sets off to “Blue John” to do something I guess, it’s never really clarified. It doesn’t matter anyway since he never gets there. While navigating a narrow passage he dislodges a rather large rock which pins his arm to the side of the passage. He then goes through several stages of disbelief, situational analysis, despair, excitement, alternating manic/soulful reflection, and dire decision making while slowly losing precious water, but never his will to live.

I think it’s pretty common knowledge what happens next, so I’m just going to go ahead and say it. Dude cuts his arm off. With a pretty dull, cheap multipurpose tool, because he forgot to bring his Swiss Army knife. First he has to break his two arm-bones though, which is almost harder to watch than the cutting part; the sound wasn’t quite as sickening as I thought it might be, but it was very loud, giving a good idea of the pain he must have experienced. Even better though I thought was the sound made whenever he touched a nerve; I think it was something like a screeching electric guitar. Very evocative of sharp, searing pain. I’ve heard that the whole scene has made people faint; I didn’t have a problem with it but my viewing buddy said he had to cover his eyes for some bits.

The rest of the movie was pretty awesome too. There were quite a few funny bits, like when he starts going a little nuts and does a mock talk-show with his portable camera, interviewing himself and pointing out what idiotic choices he had made to bring him to his situation. There was a frequent use of three-way split-screen to show all of the thoughts going through his mind, which worked quite well, and the music was pretty damn amazing. Aside from the technicality aspect though, the greatest part for me was the joy of finally extricating himself from the rock; for some reason I feel like I can relate to that sort of situation of being stuck and finally breaking free, but I don’t know why. It was just invigorating to see that small prison finally snap.

I haven’t read Aaron’s book, but I probably will at some point. It just seems like it would be thrilling. This movie certainly was. Hats off to Danny Boyle.

The Room

2010-11-15T18:42:00.001-05:00

Tommy Wiseau is an idiot. He got all of his writing and directorial ideas from softcore pornography, and though it was a good idea to make a movie about this one time his girlfriend ditched him. At least that’s what I got out of this horrendous piece of unintentionally hilarious pig vomit.

I’m not alone in my opinion; along with Troll 2 and a few others, this is held pretty much universally as one of the worst movies ever made. I had to watch it though because it’s also hailed as being funny in its ineptitude, especially in the performance of the mastermind Tommy Wiseau himself. Tommy wrote, directed, and produced the feature, and I think he would have been fine with playing every part but had to settle with the protagonist because he doesn’t have boobs.

So the story, as far as I could tell, is about Jonny (Tommy), the perfect man. Jonny has no faults aside from being overly trusting and a little too philanthropic. No way is he a total douche. His girlfriend is a two-faced witch who lovingly fondles him in the two-hundred twenty-seven awkward sex scenes while repeatedly claiming to be bored and out of love with him in conversations with pretty much everyone else, such as her bitchy mother and Jonny’s best friend Mark, who she manages to seduce somehow. There’s also the very weird man-child Denny who is apparently a drug user and is in love with Jonny’s girl, Jonny himself, and some other girl who we never see. Anyway it can all be reduced to this: nobody appreciates Jonny and he kills himself because they all betray him.

If you’re not cracking up already I’ll explain why this is funny. Tommy Wiseau is a terrible actor with an accent that would put the Governator to shame. He forces his awkwardly constructed dialogue on his terrible cast in what I think is an attempt to make his own acting look better, but it fails. Tommy thinks the only way to introduce a character into a scene is by greeting them with a “Oh hi [name]!,” no matter what the situation. His emotional breakdowns consist of languidly pulling drawers out of dressers and haphazardly knocking pictures off of shelves. His best insult is badly imitating a chicken, and everyone else seems to think this is genius. His classic line “You are tearing me apart Lisa!” pretty much makes the movie.

I had some friends come over last night while I was watching it, and one of them kept referring to it as a “show,” because it really looks like a bad soap opera instead of a professionally filmed feature. Everything is bad; the sets, the cinematography, the editing, the acting, the dialogue, the music, and even the length of 100 minutes is too much. It’s kind of amazing that Tommy needed four million dollars to make this thing.

I need to watch a good movie now.

Due Date

2010-11-07T18:08:00.001-05:00

Here’s another one of those comedies where most of the jokes are in the trailer. Not all of them though thankfully, and the ones that they left for the show are usually a bit more shocking than one might expect. I’m cool with that. I’m a big fan of both Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis (a name I simply can’t remember how to spell), so them in a road-movie comedy seemed like a good bet anyway.

I’ve heard a lot of people compare this to Planes Trains and Automobiles, a Steve Martin movie of which I think I’ve only seen a few minutes. If I recall correctly I tried watching it at one point and I just couldn’t handle the disaster-comedy vibe it had so I gave up on it very quickly. I’ve learned to deal with those a bit better now so it wasn’t a big deal. However, I can’t make any comparisons because I don’t know how it goes. Maybe I’ll check it out later.

Anyhows, it’s the story of a pretty up-tight dude who needs to get back to his wife in time for his first child to be born, and the intervention of Zach’s bumblingly needy character into his life, disrupting RDJ’s efforts in pretty much every way possible. It turns into a sort of high-damage slapstick with a lot of awkwardness mixed into the dialogue. The road-movie part of it was enjoyable but maybe not as much as I’d hoped, and it wasn’t really that easy to accept RDJ’s eventual (though somewhat begrudging) acceptance of Zach’s friendship after everything that he was subjected to. Still, it was a pretty fun ride with a few hilarious moments here and there. Not bad.

The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

2010-10-31T16:49:00.001-04:00

I’m a huge fan of the first movie in this trilogy, which sets up Noomi Rapace’s powerful character so wonderfully. The second movie helped to solidify her independent badassery while making sure to show that she’s not infallible and really needs other people to help her out even though she refuses assistance at almost every turn. In this final installment, most of the work is done by her friends, but she still comes out looking the strongest.

As in the second movie there is very little contact between the two protagonists, Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. Lisbeth spends about half of the film in a hospital due to the events from Played with Fire, and Mikael spends all of that time gathering evidence to combat her aggressors in court. The majority of the movie is just that; evidence gathering and attempts to sabotage it, and then a pretty exciting trial bit. I’ve never been a big fan of court-tv dramas but when I really care about the characters, the setting can be gripping. The first movie alone made me love them so I actually enjoyed the proceedings.

Aside from that thread, there is also the loose end from the finale of the second film, the blond giant whose solution to every problem, big or small, is to bash someone’s head in. He happens to have a problem with Lisbeth being alive so throughout most of the movie we see short scenes of him monitoring her and waiting for the moment to strike, leading up to the action-heavy finale (similar to both previous movies in that respect) that acts as a great payoff for the large lack of violence in the preceding 120 minutes.

This one also sees the return of Lisbeth’s hacker friend Plague, a stereotypically fat but very likable guy who knows how to use a computer, and ends up pretty much saving the day. This kind of nerdery is just another aspect of these films that makes me love them even more; I recently read an article explaining how all of the hacking is completely possible, but of course not quite as simply as it’s made to be here. I’m fine with that of course. It would probably make a pretty boring movie to do it accurately.

Noomi’s performance is excellent as usual, and that’s really what I care about personally. I’m a huge fan of her goth image, which is her projection of the independence and power that she possesses; not only does it portray that well it also just looks damn cool. After she gets out of the hospital she really goes all out in that regard, adding the mohawk and big flashy neck spikes. This full regalia is what she wears to court, as if to say that she has no reason to hide herself from the jury’s scrutiny; the accusations of insanity are so groundless that even her outlandish display is not enough to discredit her.

As a movie in itself, it’s well made and entertaining, but only if you’ve seen the first two of course. The first can stand alone but these last two really require that you see them all in sequence. I suppose that’s obvious though. This one serves as a perfectly capable ending to the series, although I wish there had been a bit more payoff regarding Lisbeth and Mikael’s relationship. I suppose it would have been contrary to the theme of independence though, and probably would have cheapened it. Oh well. Still a satisfying conclusion to the saga of the Men who Hate Women.

Scott Walker – Scott 4

2010-10-28T20:11:00.002-04:00

I’m going to review The Drift at some point. For now though, I’m starting to buy his older albums and feel the need to write about them, since they’re really just as worthy although so completely different from his later works. This one is considered to be his masterpiece of the early years by lots of people, and it really is pretty amazing.

It starts out with a track called The Seventh Seal, and it just so happens to be a poetic summary of the film by the same name, which I just recently wrote about here. To be honest I didn’t realize this until I looked at the lyrics, as I’m really bad at listening to the words of songs. Must be why I enjoy death metal so much. Anyway it’s a great track. Scott’s vocals are in top form and there’s some nice acoustic guitar work to go along with the cellos and whatnot. The next track is what appears to be a breakup song, a short down-tempo ballad that sounds nice but doesn’t have a lot to say. Still, he manages to squeeze in a line about dead dudes in subways. The World’s Strongest Man is in the same vein but a little more upbeat.

A little later, one of the standout tracks shows up. The surging violins, uplifting vocal lines, and reverb-heavy classical guitar picking help to make it a memorable song, and lines like “Extensions through dimensions, leave you feeling cold and lame, Boy Child mustn’t tremble, ‘cause he came without a name” both mystify me and please my nerdiness. It might be because this one was featured on the documentary “30 Century Man,” an excellent documentary on Scott’s history, which has contributed to its memorability for me, but I still just love listening to it.

I don’t think I’ll be going into any sort of depth on the rest of the tracks. There’s one about a crippled war hero, a song supposedly “Dedicated To The Neo-Stalinist Regime,” and a few other ones. All of them are pleasant listens without a hint of the jarring strangeness from Tilt and The Drift, but almost every song has a line or two that just doesn’t seem to fall in line with the carefree attitude of most pop songs. It’s the first of his solo albums not to contain any Jacques Brel covers though, so by comparison it’s the happiest of the bunch; strange that this one was the flop. It was such a sales failure in fact that it was deleted from the publisher’s catalogue almost immediately after its release. Scott’s audience at the time was mostly lonely housewives rather than musical aficionados like today, and the previous album’s predominantly 3/4 time signature made it difficult for them to dance to it, and so they gave up on him; at least that’s what Scott figures.

As a whole it’s a very well produced and poetic orchestral pop album. I don’t think it’s quite the level of genius that most other fans seem to make it out to be, but it’s still an easy listen and anything but shallow. Good stuff.

Concert Review: Devin Townsend Project at JAXX 2010-10-26

2010-10-27T18:45:00.001-04:00

It was a hot, sweaty night of nerdery at Jaxx Nightclub yesterday. The line of the black-shirted went all the way to the gas station on the other end of the parking lot; I was surrounded by people who were talking about things I actually new things about, like Gene Hoglan’s middle name and the release date of Strapping Young Lad’s first album. It was a pretty glorious thing. Eventually I got inside and decided to once again try out the main floor instead of heading to the elevated rear, which might have been a mistake, again. I managed about 3rd or 4th row from the front, and had an intermittent view of the stage. Not too bad but not great.

Tetryl

So the first local band hit the stage pretty quickly, pounding out some kickin’ death metal with touches of Lykathea Aflame. It really was a very solid performance for such a young band, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The vocalist had both the look and the attitude down pretty well, and his vocal style reminded me a bit more of a grindcore mentality. All the musicians performed great and it was probably the heaviest showing of the night. I wouldn’t mind seeing these guys again.

Exist

As soon as the drummer and the bassist started setting up their stuff I could tell what their deal was. The drummer had a Cynic t-shirt and the bass was something like an 8-string fretless. This could only mean one thing: jazz metal. Jazz metal is something very few bands have been able to pin down right, and it’s still not something that can really be enjoyed. One of the more important points of metal is to be focused in its brutality and not to meander too much, which jazz is wont to do. These guys did bring on the heavy for some bits, but they only managed to play two songs because of the ridiculously long noodling-sessions in which the lead guitarist tried desperately to be Allan Holdsworth, and pretty much failed. I suppose it might have been more fun if I’d been high. They did play well I guess, aside from that. You can download their debut EP for free at http://www.existband.com.

TesseracT

I’ve been aware of TesseracT for I think about four years. I was first introduced to them in a forum thread about the possibility of the existence of something as awesome as Meshuggah’s “I” EP, which is pretty much impossible to top. However, there were some good recommendations, the best of which was TesseracT’s song Concealing Fate (Part 1), which at the time was just a few demos. Their demo sampler was listened to many times on my walks to and from class back at school. Theirs is a style similar to Meshuggah’s in the use of low-range palm-muted “chuggas", known nowadays by metal nerds as “djent.” They distinguish themselves from their Swedish masters by using more melodic non-growled vocals for the majority of their lyrics, and lots of chimey ambient guitars to give the music a more dynamic feel. They aren’t a unique band now, but they might have been back then if it weren’t for Textures. Still they’re distinct enough to be recognizable, and very enjoyable.

As for their performance, it was outstanding. They’ve gone through a number of vocalists, and I think they found a keeper in their current guy, who was an entertaining frontman and sang quite well considering the range of sounds he has to make. He does sound a little bit too much like the guy from Coheed and Cambria but it’s not so bad that it makes me sick. The instrumentalists of course were all spot-on; they’ve been playing the same small set of songs for about half a decade, it would be kind of amazing if they screwed up at all. A weird thing that happened during their set was a large dude in front of me passing out. The singer had to find a dry spot in the song and notify security, after which the limp body was swiftly carried away. He came back for Devin’s set though so I guess it all worked out.

I bought their Concealing Fate EP for $10, and there will probably be a review forthcoming.

Periphery

Periphery is another djent band who has gone through a ton of vocalists. Their current screamer joined the band only just recently, just in time to record vocals for their debut eponymous album. The widespread reaction to the CD was one of admiration for the music, but disgust for the vocals, an opinion I share. He’s supposedly improved his style recently (after releasing the album of course, good move there), going so far as to post a re-recorded version of one of the album tracks on his myspace page. I don’t really see it as much of an improvement. I was all psyched to see if he could do better in a live setting, but first his mic didn’t work for the first song and then it turned out he was sick and couldn’t handle the stress on his throat, so he left the stage half-way though the set. What little I did manage to hear of his voice sounded okay, but even after he got the working mic it wasn’t really mixed high enough for me to make any judgment. Compared to TesseracT they played a lot more intensely; the music was very dense and complicated. It was so loud though it kind of sounded like mush. After their travesty of an album I wasn’t expecting much, even after respecting their founder Misha Mansoor for quite a while.

Devin Townsend Project

Devin Townsend has been near to or at the top of my list of favorite musicians for a number of years now, and the only reason I bought a ticket, although noticing that TesseracT and Periphery were on the bill was a great surprise. I managed to catch him during the Between the Buried and Me tour earlier this year in Baltimore, but a 30 minute set is simply not enough Hevy Devy. His new positive outlook is a refreshing thing in metal, although I sure wouldn’t mind a few Strapping Young Lad songs. His set consisted largely of songs from Ziltoid, Addicted, and Infinity, with a couple from Ocean Machine and Terria. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t single Ki track, which was disappointing, and Earth Day was omitted as well. Sad. Still, Bad Devil was featured, which is pretty awesome because it was probably the first track that actually got me interested in his solo material.

As usual Devin was an extremely charismatic frontman, starting out with a joke about the amount of ball-sweat in the room and a rapid-fire story about taking a shit in the CVS across the street. His array of funny faces made him a joy to watch, and at one point he actually came out into the crowd and played a section of a song while all the sweaty nerds patted his shiny bald head. It was obvious that he was well-loved by everyone there. His vocal performance was pretty incredible, much better than most footage I’ve seen on youtube and all that. He seems to be really enjoying these tours, contrary to the time when he swore off ever touring again and promised to become a hermit in the Canadian mountains. I’m very glad he’s found his new life in music and hope he’ll continue to be his prolific self for many years to come.

The Social Network

2010-10-24T11:44:00.001-04:00

The first time I saw the trailer for this movie I was impressed with the design and thought it looked pretty interesting. The next 25 times I saw it in front of every other movie ever, I started getting pretty annoyed with it and thought I might not be able to stand sitting through a feature length film including the scenes from the trailer. Still David Fincher is not one to be overlooked, and the movie started getting fantastic reviews from pretty much everybody except Armond White, which means it must be really good.

Jesse Eisenberg, who I know best from Zombieland, plays Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. Yes it’s a fictionalized version of Mark but as I understand it it’s not completely falsified. At its core this movie is about a computer nerd who wants to do something big, and thinks he knows something about social interaction while he really doesn’t. I have to say I kind of identified with him a little, although I have neither of those two qualities aside from being a nerd with few social skills. The trailer makes him out to be a lot more of an ass than the movie as a whole does. Still, it’s largely a negative look at Mark’s life, which makes sense since it’s based on a book which was written with Eduardo Saverin as the main consultant. Eduardo, played by the up-and-coming Andrew Garfield, is put in a much more “faultless victim” light. If you go into the movie expecting an objective documentation of history, then you’re going to be disappointed in that regard. It’s some dude complaining about another dude. Past that, it’s a very good movie.

The worst parts of the trailer for me were the out-of-context bits of Jesse’s performance. I just don’t think they work nearly as well standalone like that. In context, his rapidfire self-centered babbling is almost always entertaining, if maybe a little hard to follow at times. Garfield does a solid job in his role, and Justin Timberlake proves once again that he’s a good actor; still not enough for me to even think about trying out his music though. Rooney Mara’s somewhat minor performance is good, but not quite extensive enough for me to make any judgment as to how she might do in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. That dude playing the twins did a good job too I guess.

Anyway, it’s a very well directed movie, and the fast-cut editing really worked. The cinematography was pretty great as well, especially the tilt-shifted rowing race. Always love that stuff. Trent Reznor’s contribution to the soundtrack is a good one too, not always particularly recognizable but not hard to believe that he was involved. Ending with a Beatles song is always a nice touch.

So, David Fincher’s gone and done it again. Here’s to hoping he continues his history of excellence (minus Benjamin Button) with Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig in the American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Looking forward to it.

Scott Walker - Tilt

2010-10-23T11:37:00.001-04:00

Quite a while ago I wrote about The Drift in a very abbreviated post. That was back when I was even worse at music reviews so I couldn’t think of anything to say. Also, since that was my first exposure to Scott Walker, I didn’t know very much about his musical career or anything, and now I do, so I have a bit more to write about. Huzzah. I might give The Drift an expanded shot later, but more likely I’ll just end up talking about it here. We’ll see.

Noel Scott Engel started his career as an American teen/child idol on some TV show in the late 1950s. He also sang a bit at that point I think. After that, he joined a band called The Walker Brothers as their bass player and became Scott Walker. They played your basic pop songs, and became quite popular on the British charts, especially with their ballad The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore, sung by Scott. He wasn’t the lead vocalist for most of his time in the band, but his deep baritone voice suited their sound well and he became a more prominent member in their later time together.

Eventually the band broke up and Scott started putting out solo albums in a style somewhat similar to his Walker Brothers material, but usually much darker in lyrical content and including more orchestral elements. His albums did quite well until his fourth venture, which failed to chart; he attributes this to his extensive use of 3/4 time on the previous album, Scott 3; I guess it’s harder to dance to waltzes. So anyway this failure kind of crushed him and he lost his spark for a while, putting out a string of uninspired junk for a few decades. Then in the 80s The Walker Brothers got back together and put out a few albums, the last of which started out with four Scott songs displaying a much different, darker, weird avant-garde sound that would signal the start of his descent into the realm of nightmare music.

The first of these was Climate of Hunter in 1984. It was the most similar to those four Walker Brothers tracks, not all that daring but still quite strange. It would then take another 11 years for him to put out another one, and finally we get to the real subject of this review. Tilt is an exceedingly dark kind of industrial dreamscape full of morbid tales sung in a sad crooning voice. The opening track, Farmer In The City, is based on a poem by Pier Paolo Pasolini about an Italian draftee and deserter; its emotionally drenched refrain of "Do I hear 21, 21, 21...? I'll give you 21, 21, 21..." always gives me chills although I’m not entirely sure what it means. It’s on the second track that the industrial part really steps in with a sound like a sledgehammer on an anvil and a herd of rattlesnakes about to strike. Also featured are long distorted saxophone notes and disturbing ambience which make The Cockfighter probably the most rattling song on the album.

The rest of the songs are bit more reserved but still very strange. The title track includes awesome wavering pitch-shifted guitars in the background of an almost upbeat bassline and drum track, giving it an ominous sound a bit similar to the opening track on Scott 3 from 26 years before. The album closes with Rosary, a quiet but emotionally saturated track set apart by Walker’s “ooh-ah-oooh ah-ooh-ah-ooh,” which sounds a lot more impressive than it looks written here. There used to be a live recording of him performing the track live on youtube, but I’ve been unable to find it again unfortunately. It was quite powerful.

Although not nearly as creepy as his 2006 followup The Drift, Tilt is a formidable release and should not be taken lightly. If you’re not really into the whole darkness thing then I suggest starting out with Scott 3 or 4 in order to get some appreciation for his talent, and eventually you might be able to stomach what he considers to be what he wanted to make all along, the aural depiction of his constant nightmares.

Here’s “Farmer in the City”

Die Antwoord - $O$

2010-10-21T18:45:00.001-04:00

These South African weirdos came into focus early this year when Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing posted their videos for Zef Side [Beat Boy] and Enter the Ninja. Before that, they had been through a number of groups, none of which garnered any sort of international recognition. Die Antwoord itself had been around for a year or two before February. The name means “The Answer” in Afrikaans, a language pretty specific to South Africa that has its roots in colonial Dutch and a smattering of native languages. The group uses this and several other languages in their lyrics, which I view as a benefit to their package.

$O$ was first streaming free on their website, but then after the BoingBoing push they soon got a record deal with Interscope and replaced the songs on their website with instrumental versions. The CD came out a few weeks ago with a different tracklist and new cover art, seen above. It’s really quite fantastic how quickly they became a hit and kept the momentum going with great music videos and tours.

The main performer of the group, who goes by Ninja, has created a great character to help sell the music; that coupled with his pretty considerable rap skills make the music quite enjoyable. Yolandi Vi$$er performs backup vocals and some leads as well. She’s one of the stranger elements of the group’s image, putting forth a very sexualized persona while wearing an odd hairstyle that makes a lot of people very confused. DJ Hi-Tek isn’t really seen much, but he provides the “next-level sounds” on his “PC computer” to great effect.

The music itself is very sharp hip-hop with lyrics about genitalia, social classes, haters, ninjas, annoying girlfriends, transsexuals, and a lot of other stuff that I don’t understand because it’s not in English. There’s lots of bass and techno-influenced beats which makes it very fun to play in my car. There are quite a bunch of references to pop-culture and possibly less popular culture as well, such as South Park, District 9 and Zelda; the chorus of Enter the Ninja is apparently ripped from some trance song that I’ve never heard. Almost every song is humorous, which makes the self-promotion stuff bearable to me. Most other hip-hop that I’ve heard using that element has just annoyed me. Be warned though, the parental advisory on the cover is not to be ignored. If you don’t want to hear F-bombs then you probably won’t be able to listen to a single track, and if you can understand Afrikaans then you’ll probably be even more aghast.

It’s a ton of fun. There are plans to release at least four more albums, which makes me very happy. This CD is only $10 on Amazon, so if it sounds appealing then go for it.

Portal - Swarth

2010-10-20T18:21:00.001-04:00

I think it was a few years ago I was browsing the Meshuggah forums, and happened upon a thread about this band. It seemed everybody there couldn’t get enough of their sound. The most touted album at the time was Outre’, so I checked that out. I was underwhelmed. The production seemed lousy and it all just sounded like a big muddy mess; not what I was looking for at the time. So that album just hung around in my library for a while, mostly ignored. Then a few months ago, I heard about a new album from the band called Swarth; I got ahold of it and this time it clicked. Loudly and sharply.

Portal’s sound can be pretty accurately described as a whirlwind of angry bees being pummeled by an avalanche of rhinoceroses, with an occasional high-tension wire snapping through the maelstrom. If that doesn’t sound appealing to you then I wouldn’t be surprised. This sound is pretty consistent through their catalog so far, but Swarth somehow separates itself from the rest with a slightly snappier production and I think a bit more energy. It’s best listened to at very high volume and low light. Their lyrics are supposedly inspired by Lovecraft and other such things, but of course only the most careful of listeners will be able to make anything out. Reading the CD’s insert, all I gathered was that they like to use big words and Latin phrases that probably don’t really mean anything when put together. I’m fine with that.

Aside from the sound, Portal is known for their very strange stage presence. Everyone aside from the vocalist wears executioner’s masks and dingy business suits, while his outfit changes for each album release (so far). First he wore a large wizard’s hat that fell over his face, then a pope’s hat in conjunction with the robes and a black cloth, and now it’s a weird clock/radio-thing. I really want to see these guys live sometime.

Check out “Glumurphonel” if you wish.

Rubicon Season 1

2010-10-19T18:57:00.001-04:00

AMC’s been doing some wonderful things for TV lately. Breaking Bad and Mad Men have both been incredibly great dramas, and The Walking Dead promises to be everything a lover of the comic could hope for; it seems the channel known for its taste in movies knows a thing about shows as well. When I first heard news of Rubicon, the early synopsis didn’t wow me very much, but I knew that it had to be quality stuff to be broadcast alongside Draper and Co’s flagship.

Rubicon is a conspiracy show. That’s why I didn’t initially think much of it; I hold almost no interest in conspiracies, and have little respect for theorists thereof. The fact that this story is about an actual conspiracy doesn’t really assuage my disdain for it, as it only bolsters the mindset. Still, it’s a good drama aside from that and there are some likable characters in it. Will Travers, played by some guy I’ve seen in other things that I can’t place, is a supposed genius intelligence analyst who discovers a conspiracy involving his place of employment and some large corporations. He gets help with his theorizing from several people who are probably a lot smarter than him (smart enough to protect themselves), including an older guy named Kale who seems pretty cool. Will’s small team of analysts has some kind of entertaining sub-plots, and were occasionally fun to watch and maybe care about. His secretary’s hot but pretty one-dimensional. The baddies are made to be a little less ominous than they could have been while being kept on the outskirts of the drama.

The main nit-picks I have with it mostly involve Will’s behavior in the context of him supposedly being really smart. This may be my own fault, as I often think of myself as intelligent and thus compare Will’s actions to what I would do in his situation. Every time he needlessly confronts someone who’s following him or messes with a bug in his room I yell at the TV “DON’T DO THAT! You’re just calling attention to yourself!” I have to remind myself that I really don’t know anything about espionage and would probably screw up a lot more than he does.

It’s a “cerebral” show. That means stuff doesn’t happen very much, but it’s supposed to make you think. Therefore, the majority of it is pretty boring for someone who doesn’t care about what the characters seem so worried about all the time. It picks up a bit near the end though. I can’t complain about the quality of the acting or the cinematography; it’s all skillfully done. I guess it’s just not the kind of show I like. Bring on the zombies.

Catfish

2010-10-18T18:46:00.001-04:00

Remember when you first got on the internet, and you got warned about those hot girls/guys in chat rooms who are actually fat old dudes? Turns out that actually happens, and the circumstances can be stranger than you might think.

Catfish is what appears to be a completely true, non-acted documentary about a photographer who gets involved in a virtual relationship with a family of seemingly wonderful, talented people, and slowly starts uncovering the truth behind the facade. It’s pretty odd that they just happened to be filming this stuff while it wasn’t yet apparent what was going on, but not so odd that it’s entirely unbelievable. As the deception unfolds it seems to become more and more sinister; the editing often gives it a thriller-like feeling, especially in dark driving scenes.

It’s a bit hard to really give a good synopsis of this movie because of what it is. I’ve probably already written too much. If you don’t intend to ever see it then you can probably find a more thorough summary lying around somewhere. I think what the filmmakers ended up creating is a kind of essay on the strangeness of human desire for a life other than that which he or she has been given, and the sadness of broken hopes. It’s not really a depressing movie but it certainly isn’t a feel-good story.

All in all it’s a film quite different from anything I’ve seen before, and I recommend it.

Never Let Me Go

2010-10-10T14:25:00.001-04:00

Ever seen The Island? Remember how much it sucked? Well, it wasn’t because of the concept that it was a failure, it was the director’s fault. Good ol’ Michael Bay. Anyway, this movie is basically The Island taken out of its obviously sci-fi genre and inserted into an alternate timeline in Europe where human cloning has been legalized and exploited in a similar, but much more horrifying fashion. It’s not at all what it looks like on the surface.

Instead of the luscious Scarlett Johansson we get treated to Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan, who are both much better actresses than Scarlett, and not at all hard to look at. Ewan McGregor is replaced by Andrew Garfield, the soon-to-be Spider-Man. He does a pretty fantastic job too. The story is that somewhere in the 1950s, we figured out how to clone humans and use them as organ banks, in a way defeating a host of deadly diseases by creating a much more efficient donor program. This is of course kind of horrible, especially since it seems that the clones are quite human and capable of living normal lives; however, the donor program keeps them separated from normal society and indoctrinates them with the belief that their fatal destiny is their only option and the right thing to do. It’s obvious though that this conditioning starts to wear off as they get older, although they also seem resigned to it.

The story focuses on two girls and a boy in a strange love triangle; in and of itself it would just make a tolerable romantic drama, but in the context of this tragic doom-fest it’s heart-wrenching. The ethical question of whether clones have souls becomes a stupid one as the story progresses; these are obviously full-fledged humans, they’re just a little weird because the other humans have forced them to be so. They just choose to disregard it so they can keep living. It’s a very sad story.

As a movie itself it’s very well done. There’s some touching cinematography, a poignant score, and excellent acting throughout. It is a little odd how it’s so explicitly divided into the traditional three acts, but I don’t think it’s a detriment.

I don’t think I could see something like this really happening. That might just be because it hasn’t yet, but I suppose things like slavery and whatnot make pretty close precedents.

Lost Highway

2010-10-09T22:16:00.001-04:00

I saw two movies today. One was good and one was terrible. I’m going to write about the latter first because it’s more fun.

I’ve seen a number of films by David Lynch, as well as the TV show Twin Peaks. Everything except the pile of excrement known as Dune was either tolerable or enjoyable, and always disturbing; It has been a while since the last time I watched one though, so I decided to give one of the few remaining on my list a go. I didn’t really know anything about it, and I think I know why now. Nobody wants to watch this movie.

It seems to be about some jazz musician guy with wife-problems that don’t make any sense. He starts getting video tapes in his mail containing evidence of some weirdo spying on him, and then he apparently meets the guy who seems to have the power of multi-presence and white face-makeup. Then he somehow gets framed for killing his wife, goes to jail, has his face melted, and turns into some biker kid who ends up having sex with a mob-girl who looks a lot like the first guy’s wife. She of course is using him for something that’s never really explained, and then weird shit happens and the first guy’s back and his wife was actually a pornographic actress and he kills the mob boss. Creepy guy comes back and says weird things too, and the jazz musician drives off while trailed by cop cars and melts his face again.

What the hell Lynch? Was this supposed to make any sense at all? And seriously man, was the Marilyn Manson cameo necessary? Why the hell was Rammstein included in the soundtrack? I DON’T UNDERSTAND. To top off all this tomfoolery, it’s also one the most boring movies I’ve ever seen. Every scene is slow and often seemingly pointless. The only thing that kept me from turning it off was the helpful presence of a couple of friends who joined me in mocking it throughout the two-hour fifteen-minute run.

I remember Mulholland Drive being weird and confusing too, but I also remember liking it. I wonder if I watched it again whether I would think the same of it. I think I’m better off not finding out.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia seasons 3-5

2010-10-03T16:24:00.001-04:00

Season 3 was really good, much like Season 2. It pretty much took the second season and just kept going, except it was funnier somehow. I can’t remember much specifically though. Season 4 was good, but it felt more like a chore to me; I think the problem was the Gang’s shenanigans got just a little too brutal, as pictured in above in the episode “The Gang Gets Extreme: Home Makeover Edition,” in which they kidnap a hispanic family and destroy their home while somehow thinking this is a good thing. Sure they’re stupid, but it’s just a little bit too unbelievable to stay funny and just becomes horrific.

Season 5 was better than 4, but I don’t think it quite recovered enough to make me love it again. There were some great moments and some not so great ones. It was still a bit of a chore to get through it. I can’t really think of anything interesting to write about it.

Then there was the Christmas special, which was amazing. It was good to finally hear them let out a few F-bombs and push the disgust-boundary without resorting to torture. It was also nice to learn a bit more about Charlie and Mac’s childhoods; the extras on the DVD contained a few short scenes of kid actors depicting stuff they had talked about before, and they were pretty hilarious/touching. I wish the whole show was this good.

Now I’m hearing rumblings that the new season airing now kind of sucks so far. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

Let Me In

2010-10-02T10:17:00.003-04:00

You might have heard about Let the Right One In a year or two ago when every movie critic ever was putting it on their Top 10 lists. Or maybe here. I’s a fantastic movie, but it’s Swedish, so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t in any major US theaters, and therefore most people around these parts didn’t go see it, which is a huge shame. Thankfully though some cool people saw it and decided that more people should at least see some version of the story, so they made Let Me In. The title is supposedly a better translation of the book’s title but I don’t know Swedish so I can’t be sure. (update: the phrase "Let the right one in" is apparently from a Morrissey song. I need to check that guy's stuff out sometime. I guess they just changed the title to make it more appealing.)

I already wrote briefly about the story in my review of the original, so I’m going straight to the part that everyone who has seen that one wants to hear: how it stacks up. As the concept of the movie being remade was introduced, it was often said that it’s not really a remake but a re-adaptation of the book; as I haven’t read it I can’t be sure, but there are differences which make me think that might be accurate. The tone is slightly different but it definitely seems like Matt Reeves was trying to capture the essence of the original film.

The biggest difference is the addition of a detective in the place of a bumbling local whose motive of revenge leads him to investigate the strange situation. Aside from the motive itself though the only real difference is that one of the detective’s scenes is basically repeated as a flashback in the beginning of the film; his role as a character is very limited, which is as it should be. I don’t think I like it any more or less than the other version.

The most obvious changes behind the detective are the two scenes where Abby/Eli’s protector/familiar goes out to do his thing. This time they are much more action-heavy, and both involve cars instead of walking in the snow or school gymns. They’re done very well and Richard Jenkins does a fantastic job as usual. The action element is really stepped up in every scene requiring it, but not in a bad way at all. The previews make it seem like the movie has become some sort of B-grade action-horror movie but that’s just to get people to watch it. I personally think that was a bad move.

Aside from that, it’s a very similar movie with very similar dialogue and message. Some of the iconic scenes are extended a little bit and don’t suffer for it. Some scenes are slightly less-good and others are done better, as they are more suited to a higher-budget movie. Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee both put on stunning performances. There were of course a number of moments where their delivery of the lines made me cringe a little, but I don’t think I would have if I had seen this movie first. Perhaps they could have made the translation a little less literal, I don’t know. I had a few small gripes with Chloe’s physical performance but not enough to overshadow the rest of it; she did a really good job, cementing her as my favorite child actor right now. I mean, this is Hit-Girl and Eli? That’s a freakin’ resume right there. Kodi was in The Road too which makes me like him straight off the bat, and his role here doesn’t hurt at all.

The only real problem I had with it was the CGI. There was some in the Swedish version, and I don’t think it was that great there either, but for this one they basically took the original as a guide and magnified its faults. Abby’s transformation to vampire-mode is slightly more drastic and therefore less believable. Thankfully though it doesn’t happen any more often and can be overlooked pretty easily.

As a final judgment I have to say that it doesn’t quite match the Swedish movie’s greatness, but it’s still a very good movie and very much worth seeing. If you haven’t seen the first one, I highly recommend checking this one out while it’s still in theaters; I don’t think it will last very long since it was advertised so poorly. Even if you have seen Let the Right One In it’s a worthy watch.

Hellboy Vol. 6 – Strange Places

2010-09-30T19:18:00.001-04:00

I’ve decided I’m going to write about each Hellboy trade paperback that I buy after I read it from now on, because they’re great. To summarize what’s come before this one, Hellboy is a demon who came through a portal opened by Nazis and now he’s trying to be a good guy, but his apocalyptic destiny keeps on creeping up on him and getting him very annoyed. He’s fought a lot of mythical creatures and spirits and always had a witty tagline.

Each volume usually has two or more stories of varying length. This one has two, the second of which includes an epilogue and sketches from a couple of aborted attempts. They’re both excellent, and I think I may have enjoyed this volume more than most of the others for its simplicity and foreboding.

The first story, The Third Wish, begins with a trip to Africa and the introduction of a possibly ancient witch doctor who pushes Hellboy into an undersea adventure inspired by the same story on which Disney’s The Little Mermaid is based, only way darker and shorter. He’s dragged into a cave by Ursula’s counterpart, the Bog Roosh, who is basically a giant fish/eel with boobs. Actually it was a trio of mermaids of some relation to her that brought Hellboy to the cave, and in seeking reward they pretty much all manage to get murdered through Roosh’s manipulation of their wishful intentions like some sort of evil djini. Hellboy’s not a fan of that so he brings out his right-hook and does a little damage. The doomish part is brought into the picture through Roosh’s claim that she needs to destroy Hellboy to prevent the apocalypse, which just makes him madder because although he doesn’t want to accept his destiny, it’s beginning to wear him down.

The second half is more explicitly about the great evil that he is meant to bring to world. The Island is a desolate ship graveyard full of strange castles and skeletons, one of which was once a prophet of the Ogdru Jahad (the giant slug-bug monsters in space), and it just so happens he’s waiting for some blood to spill on the ground and wake him up, and Hellboy unfortunately obliges. There’s then a pretty lengthy discussion on the origin of Earth and the Ogdru Jahad and Hellboy’s supposed failure to embrace his future. Of course he ends up kicking ass and goes home but it seems like he doesn’t have a whole lot of hope left. The epilogue is a discussion amongst several observing spirits/ghouls about the doom that continues to approach to to Hellboy’s refusual to die, and then we’re treated to some awesome sketches and stuff.

Mike Mignola’s writing is consistently engrossing. The voice of Hellboy is always a great contrast to the stuffy olde-english way in which almost all of the other characters speak, although their language always makes for delicious prose, like “Little fish, little fish. Pretty as you are… oh but I will make of you such a horror.” Love this stuff.

The Town

2010-09-22T18:34:00.001-04:00

I’ve never been to Boston. I don’t know anybody who grew up there. I don’t really know much about the place, or have any desire to go there. I think maybe after seeing this movie I have even less interest in visiting the city by the bay.

This is the second film Ben Affleck has directed, the first being Gone Baby Gone, which I haven’t seen yet. Supposedly it’s much more of a laid-back indie film than this, which is meant to be a sort of thriller-blockbuster. It’s also based on a book which I haven’t read. The only reasons I had any interest in seeing it were that Jon Hamm (the fantastic lead-asshole of Mad Men) has a pretty prominent role, and it’s been getting pretty good reviews. The previews with the weird masks were pretty cool too I guess. So after a few aborted attempts over the last few days I finally got to the theater last night and sat down in front of the big screen for a couple hours.

The story focuses on Affleck’s character, who is portrayed as the “good guy” whose life of crime has been forced on him by a sort of bank-robber caste-system. He is of course in possession of a heart of gold and wishes to “leave this whole (censored) town in my reah view,” an idea of which his other caste-members aren’t too fond, especially Jeremy Renner (the wild-card with too many bullets to keep in his clip). So leading up to his exodus, he has to do a few more jobs, and his gold-laden heart leads him to befriend and be-love one of his bank-manager victims because she’s hot. This is a bad idea generally. The rest of the movie is the continued efforts of Affleck to end his robbing career and leave with the hot chick, involving a few more robberies, a couple shoot outs, and one or two chase scenes. Then it ends rather stupidly and I walk out of the theater a little disappointed.

It’s not that bad really, I just couldn’t connect with the characters. This is a problem I seem to have once in a while with crime-related drama; I can’t make myself love people who make stupid life choices and disrupt the machine of everyone else’s lives, unless the performance is something outstanding like Heath Ledger’s in The Dark Knight or something. At least I think that’s how it is. Sad to say that the acting in this movie just isn’t that spectacular. Not even Jon Hamm did that good of a job, though I think that’s a fault of the script. The action scenes were pretty cool but since I didn’t care whether the characters lived or died they weren’t as gripping as they could have been.

I’m still going to watch Gone Baby Gone at some point, but I can’t say this movie has made me love Ben Affleck the Director.

Crazy Heart

2010-09-16T21:51:00.001-04:00

The Big Lebowski is one of my very favorite movies. If it wasn’t for that I very likely would’ve had no interest in seeing this one, which of course stars The Dude (Jeff Bridges) as “Bad” Blake. It did win Best Original Song and Best Actor Oscars last year, which I suppose might’ve gotten it on my radar, but I’m not the biggest fan of country music; I don’t mind a bit southern twang but country itself is just one of those things that I wasn’t indoctrinated to love. Still, this movie might have just endeared the style to me a bit more.

It’s the story of an old musician whose career has passed the downturn and is currently wallowing in booze. This is a pretty common tale, I’m led to believe, but it’s still a good enough base to make a semi-tragic romance out of if you’ve got good actors and all that stuff, which this movie does. You’ve got the aforementioned Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Colin Farrell and a bunch of other great character actors all giving outstanding performances. Gyllenhaal plays the love interest as a hopeful reporter who interviews Bad Blake; Blake has very little interest in the interview though, and it seems she doesn’t care all that much either because the romance bit starts off almost too easy. It all goes past the one-night stand routine and then the alcohol starts screwing everything up. Eventually it becomes a story of attempted redemption and acceptance. It’s not a feelgood movie really, but it’s not a total tragedy either, which makes it more than okay in my book.

It’s a pretty beautiful movie both visually and sonically. There’s a fair amount of driving in Texas / New Mexico landscapes, and nicely atmospheric musical sections featuring well-written country songs performed by talented musicians. Frequent song breaks don’t always work for me, as was recently evident in the HBO show Treme; I got bored with most of that pretty quickly. Here though they’re a bit more abbreviated and at least to me they seem more necessary. They play a major part in the story of Blake’s decline to patheticness. My one complaint is that the music sections are always about twice as loud as the rest of the movie; I ended up just keeping the volume down and turning on the subtitles.

Possibly the best part of the movie for me though was the first scene with dialogue; it’s in a bowling alley. Those who’ve seen the film I mentioned in the first paragraph will know of the significance. This time The Dude is wearing the cowboy hat though, and he’s definitely not abiding.

THE AMAZING SCREW-ON HEAD™ and Other Curious Objects

2010-09-14T18:09:00.001-04:00

I’ve been collecting Mike Mignola stuff for a somewhat respectable while now, and yet I haven’t written a thing about it. That’s kind of indefensible because Mignola is the metaphorical knees of the bee. This is particularly evident in the collection of shorter, but very entertaining/beautiful stories. I picked up the hardcover at a local comic shop because I couldn’t not buy it once I saw it.

The main story is of course THE AMAZING SCREW-ON HEAD, which was the basis for a TV pilot episode that never aired but was totally awesome (Netflix that sucka). Only this one story was written and Mignola says in the story notes that nothing more will be, as he doesn’t have anything else. That’s a real shame. It focuses on the title character who is essentially the head of a robot who can screw himself into a bunch of robot bodies for various tasks, and takes orders from Abraham Lincoln. He’s pretty much a secret-agent dude in the same sort of way that Hellboy is aside from not really having a dark origin. He goes around fixing supernatural problems. In the story, his target is Emperor Zombie, who was a master of ancient languages. This matters because of reasons you should find out by reading/watching the issue/episode. It’s much more of a comedy-based venture than Hellboy and most of Mignola’s other works, although it has about the same level of fantastically doomy stuff that makes it so damn interesting. Very fun but sadly brief read.

The collection includes five other very short stories, one of which isn’t really even a story, but they’re all great. The Magician and The Snake is particularly interesting because the writing credit is given to Mignola’s seven-year-old daughter. Those who read Axe-Cop know this can mean very awesome things. It’s a pretty sad story; melancholy coupled with the non-sequitur consciousness of a child is a great combination. It got the Eisner award for Best Short Story in 2003.

The rest of the book is filled out with stand-alone drawings and sketches related to the stories. Mignola’s art is a very different sort of thing, lots of black and seemingly simple shapes used in concert to create all kinds of atmosphere. I can’t saw I always like it, but there are so many frames that just pop so sharply that it makes me feel like no other style would work for his stories.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Seasons 1 & 2

2010-09-09T17:32:00.001-04:00

I don’t often write about individual season for TV shows, but recently it’s gotten a bit easier to make myself write about things, so why the hell not? I’ve been meaning to start watching this for a while now and thankfully a friend had all the DVDs available for lending, so I didn’t have to pollute my Netflix queue. Now that I’ve gotten through the first two seasons, I have thoughts; not many mind you, but more than usual.

The first season is only seven 22-minute episodes, and I got through them very quickly, but this is because I was watching them with my friends while playing board games, so my attention wasn’t that dedicated to it. Still, I could tell it was very funny and got the gist of the plots. It centers around three guys and a girl who own a bar somehow. All four of them seem to be self-serving morons of some degree. I don’t always like asshole characters, but they’re done right here, and I’ve fallen in love with all of them. Each episode is pretty much self-contained and involves some idiotic caper that starts perhaps somewhat innocently and gets blown completely out of proportion by “The Gang’s” propensity to do everything completely wrong in order to gain something from it. I’m pretty sure they never really learn anything from their mishaps.

The second season is basically the same, except it’s ten episodes and Danny DeVito’s in them. According one of the extras on the third DVD, DeVito was only available for 20 days of filming, so all his parts were done first; this meant that all 10 episodes had to be written before principal photography. Considering the actors are the writers, this is a huge deal. I have massive respect for these guys, especially in light of the genius that is Season 2. I enjoyed it quite a bit more than the first. DeVito’s ridiculousness fits in perfectly with the rest of the cast’s antics. Every episode seems to get consistently funnier.

One of the coolest things is that the show looks like it’s almost entirely adlibbed, but it’s not. Sure there’s a fair amount of improv but for the most part everybody follows the script while making it all feel perfectly natural, which makes it even easier to laugh at these people who are pretending to be idiots. Good show. Not sure I’ll be able to catch up with it before the Season 6 premiere next week, but it’s good enough to maybe get me there in time.

Insomnia

2010-09-07T17:25:00.002-04:00

It occurred to me recently that I’d seen all but one of Chris Nolan’s full-length movies. Thusly I put this movie in my Netflix queue and waited breathlessly, which led to asphyxiation and subsequent death. I got better though.

While suffocating, I read up a bit on the movie that I would watch after my resurrection. It’s actually one of those gol dang remakes, this time from Norway. I know nothing about the original other than that. This new one from 2002 stars Al Pacino and Robin Williams, so it can’t be that pointless. It starts out much like Twin Peaks in that a girl has been found dead in a small town, and some outside investigators come to figure out whodunnit. Then some guy gets shot in an inopportune fashion and Al Pacino can’t sleep. By the way, it’s set in Alaska during the 24 hours of light thing, which exacerbates his problem. Robin Williams comes in later and becomes a sort of rationalization for past events, both Pacino’s friend/advisor and adversary. It’s a bit of a weird relationship, and it kind of fits with the atmosphere of uncertainty brought on by sleep deprivation. Meanwhile, Horseface McGee (Hilary Swank) (actually she’s not that bad looking) is looking into said unfortunate death from the beginning, and becomes a half threat/half distressed damsel in the process. Then people shoot each other and it’s over.

I have to say this is the least entertaining Nolan movie. Both Pacino and Williams put forth solid performances, but the insomnia element just doesn’t grab me as much as the memory loss from Memento or the (spoiler removed) conceit from The Prestige. The murder-mystery part is not made mysterious at all. Honestly I just don’t have a lot of empathy for Pacino’s plight either. I’ve seen a lot of complaints that Nolan’s style is too clinical and emotionless, and I think it’s the most evident in this movie; Pacino is the only one with emotion, but it doesn’t really show that much. It’s not a bad movie, it’s just kinda boring.

Machete

2010-09-05T11:30:00.001-04:00

Probably my first “Mexploitation” movie. I don’t think a whole lot of those exist.

It’s based on a fake trailer that was attached to the Grindhouse movies, starring the omnipresent character actor Danny Trejo. The trailer made it look like a straight-up exercise in badassery with little in the way of plot or story, just explosions, babes, and killing. The response to the trailer itself was quite warm, so Robert Rodriguez decided to make a movie out of it. I guess he figured it would be too hard to keep it at the insanity level of the trailer for 105 minutes so he dug up a plot and started piecing it together.

It ended up as something of a commentary on illegal immigration and the current stupidity surrounding it. I’m not sure if this made it stronger or weaker, as I haven’t really been at all emotionally involved in that mess, and I still don’t really care much after seeing this movie. It gave Machete a reason to go around wreaking havoc I guess so it works well enough.

The action varies in quality. There are some pretty wacky scenarios, including a weed-whacker and improvised swinglines, that helped to keep it from getting too brutal to handle for some, but again I’m not sure if they added or detracted from the feel I was looking for; they certainly made it less than what the trailer seemed to be portraying. They actually built the film around recycled scenes from the trailer, which I guess makes sense since trailers are pieces of movies; they just did it backwards. The thing is this loses some of the fluidity because they couldn’t quite match the intensity of the smaller-scale trailer with the budget they had.

Still, Danny Trejo is awesome, and the Jessica Alba / Michelle Rodriguez duo was pretty smokin’. Steven Segal I could have done without. Jeff Fahey, now pretty well-known after his stint with Lost, played a pretty despicable character very well, and Robert De Niro succeeded in personifying the stereotypical conservative republican politician. Even Lindsay Lohan had an okay role although her acting talents weren’t the highlight.

Altogether it was a fun romp in a somewhat flawed film; you might dismiss the flaws as being intentional for the kind of movie it is, but I’m not sure I can.

The American

2010-09-02T22:35:00.001-04:00

Not sure why I thought this would be an action movie. I guess I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to the trailer, even though I thought it made the film look pretty good. Turns out there’s very little action, but that is not in the slightest a bad thing.

This is a a slow paced romantic tragedy in the trappings of a thriller. George Clooney plays a somber secret-agent-like fellow, although he doesn’t really seem to be your traditional James Bond type at all, aside from his tendency to attract beautiful women at every turn. This turns out to be his problem. He can’t stop it with the ladies, and they keep cramping his style. The focus on his tortured romantic side makes me think this movie was made largely for women, but then there are many man-pleasing moments too so mostly it was probably just made to be a good movie.

There are some actiony-bits here and there, and they’re done very well. I want to compare it to The Bourne Identity, but I think that’s just because I love it so much; it’s not really that similar. This is a slow, beautiful film with lots of heartache, mistrust, self-doubt, regret, and an ending befitting everything previous. I think I can say this is the best Clooney movie I’ve seen.

Bronson

2010-09-01T21:14:00.001-04:00

I knew pretty much nothing about this movie until today. I had seen the very odd-looking poster, and just recently learned that the Scott Walker song The Electrician was used in the film, and that got me interested enough to check it out. I had figured it was another boxing movie like Cinderella Man or something. The Netflix description got me a bit more interested, saying it was a non-fictional story of a notorious prisoner with a deranged persona. Crazy people always make for entertaining movies.

Charles Bronson, born Michael Peterson in 1952, was (is) a sane man. However, he was still nutty. He felt that he should be important, and his method of getting there was physicality. He didn’t feel that he needed to do this in the traditional means; he should rocket to the top. The quickest way to do this would be to bash in every skull in sight, seemingly. Obviously this got him locked up in short order, but he didn’t have much of a problem with that. Prison was his playground, his gymnasium. He’s so far ended up spending 34 years in the clink, 30 of them in solitary confinement.

Anyway, the movie paints him as a fascinatingly resilient character. He narrates the movie in a sort of comedy show dream-sequence interludes between major events in his imprisoned and briefly free-roaming life, putting on a riveting performance of sudden mood changes and sarcastic storytelling. In the reenactment bits he’s often stoic when not pummeling people, with occasional outbursts; at other times he’s a perfectly likable guy who just isn’t very good at carrying conversations. A number of probably gay dudes give him advice or try to help him along the way (it’s a bit odd how they’re all like that). Eventually he starts drawing pictures as an outlet of sorts, which leads to a very strange artsy hostage situation near the end of the film. Then it ends.

Of course the story goes on for Bronson the man, who is still serving a life sentence and keeps stirring up trouble from time to time, while managing to release several books, convert to Islam, renounce Islam, have his art shown in a gallery, and continue to be pretty happy about everything. It’s a weird story but the movie makes it a very entertaining one.

FLCL

2010-08-31T17:56:00.001-04:00

It’s been a while since I last watched any anime. I hit a couple stinkers and lost interest I guess. So it took a friendly gathering to get me to try it back on again. Half of us in the group had seen this before, and it seems that they had all liked it a lot, but couldn’t really describe it. After watching it with them I think I’m in pretty much the same boat. Still, I’m going to write what little I can about it.

I don’t think the title is really an acronym, it’s just an approximation of “Furi-kuri,” which is said a number of times in the series but never really defined. It has something to do with the powers of an alien-girl which turn your body into a sort of inter-spatial hub for transportation of magical bass-guitars and giant robots, or perhaps it’s just puberty. Puberty does seem to be one of the major themes in a very off-kilter/metaphorical sort of way. The main character has two love interests but isn’t at the point where he really knows what love is, and in generic anime fashion he can’t handle their advances, although it’s forgivable since he’s only twelve years old. Aside from these two points, there doesn’t seem to be much at all holding this show together.

It’s probably the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen, up there with Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo and Paprika. I was told there’s a lot of symbolism but all I really saw was a bunch of crazy crap. There’s a factory in the shape of a giant clothes-iron, the aforementioned forehead-spewed robots, astral pirate gods, loads of panty-shots, hectic manga interludes, water-based reanimation, pyromaniacs, spontaneous disappearances, and much, much more. It makes no sense at all until maybe half-way through the three hour run, and even then it’s pretty much indecipherable.

Still, it’s entertaining. I assume a few metric tons of hallucinogens went into its production costs.

Piranha 3D

2010-08-30T20:47:00.001-04:00

I don’t normally watch movies like this. Especially not in theaters. The closest I’ve seen is Jaws, which is one of the reasons I decided to see this one, since it pays homage to Jaws quite a bit. The opening scene features Richard Dreyfuss as Matt Hooper from said film, and then basically takes the opening scene from Jaws and multiplies it by a thousand.

While it takes nearly all of its cues from schlockfests of yesteryear, I don’t consider it schlock. It’s really a quality collection of homage and pulp in an exciting package. The nearly endless supply of womanly bits doesn’t hurt in the least, of course, especially in THE 3RD DIMENSION. There’s a couple other great cameos too, like Christopher Lloyd as the crazed marine biologist, and Eli Roth as a somewhat nameless but hilariously disposed red-shirt. The acting from the main cast isn’t really anything special but they kept me entertained.

The story really doesn’t merit any sort of mention, and that’s okay! It’s not the kind of movie you watch for intellectual stimulation. Most of the plot points rely on human stupidity that is so rampant in movies like this. Otherwise it’s just a visual feast of usually tolerable gore amidst a sea of swaying mammaries. Fun!

I have to say though, this is the first 3D movie I’ve seen that was post-converted, and I was disgusted by that aspect most of the time. The CGI bits were just fine, but there were just so many moments in the live-action parts that just made my head spin or looked downright awful. There’s a scene with a depth-of-field-blurred chain-link fence that’s just horrendous. This crap needs to stop.

You, the Living

2010-08-26T20:21:00.002-04:00

Hey, hey, remember that one time that I said Swedes are good at making movies? I’m probably still right. Apparently though I don’t really like all good movies.

This ponderous collection of useless mini-stories about useless people has gotten some pretty darn good reviews from pretty important people. Ebert gave it four stars and called it Perfect. Even Armond White likes this stuff for some reason. Ideally, I should like it too, based on the concept alone; it’s supposedly a black comedy with absurdist bits shot in an unconventional manner (paraphrased from Wikipedia). This sounds a lot like Brazil or something, which I do enjoy from time to time. However, so much of this movie is just drawn out nothing that I got bored with it almost as soon as it started. There are several musical segments, which I think are done wrong; movies like Scott Pilgrim and That Thing You Do have the right idea in this arena, here they’re just bland monotonous dirges. Several of the conversations are just people talking into phones.

The absurdist parts were pretty much the only bits I enjoyed; a couple times a character would describe a dream they had, and then it would be played out as they dictated. They were still slow but at least some weird stuff happened. The other unusual thing was the common thread among the characters in that they all seemed to think very little of themselves, and would often let other people know this at length. It got pretty annoying really.

I think I can see how somebody might enjoy this, but really it’s just way too boring and disjointed to keep my interest. Most other movies with multiple storylines have a much better defined intersection. This is pretty much just a gallery of misery.

The Seventh Seal

2010-08-25T17:50:00.001-04:00

Chances are you’ve seen this iconic image before. It’s also quite likely that you’ve never seen the movie. I finally watched it last night because it showed up in my Netflix suggestions for some reason, and I had recollections of hearing that it was really good or something, and had an interesting discussion about the existence of God. Didn’t really know much else about it, and figured it was a short film composed of a single game of chess in the setting seen in the aforementioned image. It’s not really, and it’s not in English either, which I didn’t expect; strangely enough, it’s a Swedish film, which further supports my suspicion that Swedes are generally really good at making movies.

It is in fact about a knight who just got back from the Crusades and ends up playing chess with the personification of Death. There’s a bunch more to it though, including an entertaining cast of characters and a lots of stuff about the Bubonic Plague, witch burnings, hatred of women, and of course the question of God’s existence. Our friend the knight is very disillusioned following the ill-advised crusades. He’s reached the point in his religious life where he’s doubting that God really hears his prayers, and is searching for a way to really find him and question him. It just so happens that his time on the earth is up, and Death is here to take his soul; the knight takes this opportunity to challenge Death to a game of chess which he of course cannot refuse, in hopes of gleaning theistic knowledge. This game takes place in short segments throughout the movie.

Aside from the knight, there’s a band of musicians/actors, one of whom sees visions of religious figures. There’s also the knight’s squire, who sings rather depressing songs and dishes out a lot of cynical rhetoric primarily about the fickle tendencies of women, and a rather dumb blacksmith who ends up following the group and failing to learn anything. The witch-burning bit surrounds a youthful women who has been accused of communing with the devil and bringing the Plague; the knight seems very intent on getting some information from her about the deity she’s supposed to have known, in order to find God, but she isn’t very helpful. Even so, he tries to help her a little, but it still doesn’t end well, just gut-wrenching emotionally.

The Plague of course is discussed quite a bit, mostly in conjunction with the Church’s reaction, some of which is self-flagellation and doomsaying. The movie does not paint the Church in any sort of positive light. I think I can see where Monty Python got a lot of their inspiration for The Quest for the Holy Grail.

It’s a very dark, cynical movie, with few light-hearted moments. The knight is a very cool character to watch, and his squire something of a badass from time to time. The movie has been praised as a cinematographic masterpiece, which I suppose it is for its time. Not every scene was shot that great, but the first chess segment is of course wonderful though short. Definitely a quality movie. I don’t think I have the chops to give the actual theological meat of it a good analysis, so I’m just going to stop here.

Grindhouse: Death Proof

2010-08-24T17:18:00.001-04:00

"Dude cut himself falling out of his time machine"

That line is pretty descriptive of this movie itself. It’s an exercise in a few specific styles of movie-making, as Quentin Tarantino loves to do. It’s not really a period movie; it’s in a modern setting but it’s made to look like it isn’t with scratchy post-processing, a black-and-white segment, and intentionally crappy transitions, coupled with a number of vintage cars. It’s almost divided into the classic three acts by the visual styles. It kind of made me nostalgic without really having seen any of the movies it’s referencing.

It does actually reference movies explicitly too, most notable Vanishing Point, which I know nothing about. It’s pretty easy to figure out that it’s a car movie though, which I guess is a little meta. That and the characters looking at the camera every once in a while. As far as plot classification goes it’s half exploitation and half female empowerment. First it’s all about pretty girls doing pretty girl things within Tarantino’s world of long conversations about sex and other sundry things, then almost the whole cast changes and it’s chicks being pretty and kicking ass. The second half is very much a car movie while the first is much more personal, which is a little ironic considering what happens at the midpoint.

The car bit gets really exciting but a little confounding; there’s a rather lengthy dangerous situation that could have been cut short pretty easily at several points, but just keeps going to maintain the action/suspense. I guess it makes sense in the context of Grindhouse. Anyway the action is pretty great and makes up for the betrayal of the first half. Kurt Russel puts out probably the best performance I’ve seen of his, although I haven’t seen much. The female cast also does a great job even with Tarantino’s incredibly long takes. Enjoyable movie.

Also, butts.

Pushing Daisies

2010-08-23T21:13:00.003-04:00

Here’s another one of those shows that just couldn’t keep me hooked, and took me a rather long time to finish, joining the ranks with Angel and The Sopranos (of which I’ve only seen the first season). Neither of those were bad shows really, and it’s the same with this one. Angel picked up later on and I can’t really come up with a good reason why I didn’t enjoy The Sopranos. Pushing Daisies, however, is a bit easier to analyze in this regard. It’s just too damn sweet.

I don’t mean sweet like “Hey that’s a sweet car bro,” I mean saccharine. Pretty much every character’s main features are cuteness and lovability. The relationships are filled with a devotion that borders and often crosses the creepy line, and every “cute” trait that an actor possesses is accentuated in every way possible. Every color is vibrant. The main location in the show is a pie-only restaurant. It’s just a little bit ridiculous.

There is a reason for this though. The show is about death, straight up. Other shows such as Six Feet Under have tackled this in different ways, but Bryan Fuller decided to take the extreme polarity route to make it seem less morbid. Every episode deals with a murder of some wacky sort, and the main cast does there thing to solve it. This thing is the main conceit; Ned, the main character, can bring people back from the dead by touching them. Of course there’s a catch: if he leaves them alive for more than a minute, some other thing of roughly the same size and in the same area must die. He can touch the newly revived again to set them back in their graves before that minute runs out in order to avoid such an occurrence, but there have been a few notable instances where he held back, namely his dog Digby and his girlfriend Chuck. You have to remember that he can never touch them lest they fall from their coil of mortality, which becomes pretty much the main plot thread throughout the two seasons.

Aside from Ned and Chuck we have a few other pretty cool characters. Emerson Cod is a private investigator who uses Ned’s gift to get more money (but he’s pretty nice about it). He’s probably the biggest source of laughs with at least one dismissive one-liner per show, such as “Where'd I put that rat's ass I could give?” Also there’s Olive, who embodies the show’s sweet/cute gimmick to a fault. She’s got a sickeningly high voice to match her diminutive stature and elfin features, coupled with a tendency to show a lot of cleavage whenever she’s in front of the camera. She’s got a thing for Ned which makes for an entertaining but somewhat dreary love triangle. Then there’s Chuck’s two aunts who don’t know she’s alive. One’s a hardass and the other could be Olive’s mother if she were a blonde. Keeping them in the dark becomes another main plot thread, although it’s a bit odd that they dismiss the possibility of letting them in on the secret so finally, stating that the shock would kill them (I think they’d be alright).

So anyway it seems the rest of the world, or at least those with ratings boxes, had the same reaction to the show as I did. It had a truncated first season due to the Writer’s Guild strike of ‘07, and the second season floundered. The final episode’s shooting had wrapped before they knew it was cancelled, but enough people loved the show that they were able to pull together enough money to piece together a sort of resolution montage that really was quite touching. I can’t say I would have been all that excited about a third season, but it was often entertaining in its extremely quirky little way, and television is a bit sadder without it.

The Bad Lieutenant – Port of Call: New Orleans

2010-08-18T21:17:00.001-04:00

This is one of those movies that you don’t expect to be good because it stars Nic Cage, and then you find out Werner Herzog directed it.

Actually I don’t really have a lot against Cage; I haven’t seen all of his movies, but from what I can tell, his performance relies a lot on the quality of the direction. The biggest turd that I have seen was Ghost Rider, ‘nuff said. Herzog is anything but a bad director, and it shows in this film.

I guess it’s a remake of the 1992 movie Bad Lieutenant, but I haven’t seen it. From what I just read about it there are a few differences in the plot but it’s generally the same theme. Said theme is one of a quest for redemption amid spiraling failures. Cage’s character is a police detective who has a lot of destructively bad habits, some brought on by a near debilitating back injury. In this aspect he’s very similar to Gregory House from House MD, although he’s actually quite a bit more of an asshole; he does things that hurt himself and others almost flippantly. For a reason that’s never explained he has a ridiculously gorgeous escort girlfriend played by Eva Mendes. She, among other things, becomes an object of his redemption.

The main plotline begins with a multiple homicide. Some vestige of goodness leads Cage to adopt the case very seriously, although his attentions will not be fully focused on it due to his many problems. Oddly though his very horrible decisions eventually lead to many favorable outcomes, while it seems that every time he tries to do something positive it smacks him in the face. In the end he seems very confused but a little happier perhaps.

What makes this a great movie in my eyes is a combination of weirdly wonderful cinematography and sudden bursts of insanity. There are several moments where the camera obliquely focuses on lizards, specifically alligators and iguanas; it’s probably some sort of symbolism but I don’t really know, I just like how strange it is. Then Cage, usually while under the influence of powerful narcotics, says darkly hilarious things in his trademark wobbly voice to chilling effect. You may have seen the “His soul is still dancing!” scene in the previews. Herzog describes the film as a sort of a dark comedy that doesn’t seem like one, but it might make you laugh in a way that you don’t really understand. Definitely in my case.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

2010-08-16T20:32:00.001-04:00

The only other Nickelodeon show I think I’ve seen is Invader Zim. Now that I’m not 8 years old anymore, I generally don’t tune into that channel. However, I am a nerd, and according the the current nerd consensus, I am required to watch this show that aired a few years ago. I remember seeing ads in stores and whatnot for it and being generally dismissive of them. Apparently I shouldn’t have done that. It took a crappy movie to bring the discussion of this show’s merits up enough to get me interested.

So the show is about this kid Aang who is the reincarnation of a line of powerful “benders,” or people with the ability to manipulate the traditional elements with martial arts. He’s been frozen in a giant ball of ice for a hundred years while the world is ravaged a by a war that began in his absence, perpetrated by the obviously evil Fire Nation. He’s discovered by a brother and sister from a Water tribe and thus begins their three-season adventure and quest to end the war.

Since Aang is a kid, he hasn’t had time to master the four elements; he was born an Airbender and he’s pretty good at that, which is a good thing because all the other Airbenders are dead at this point, presumably from a sort of Herodic holocaust meant to get rid of him, which he missed by running away and getting himself frozen. He still has to learn the other three though and in a specific order for a reason that isn’t really explained beyond a traditional association with the four seasons. This leads to a lot of traveling and meeting esoteric characters of varying interest in locales firmly compartmented into the four elemental categories. The core cast grows a bit, including the antagonists who are really quite well developed, although those who are given special attention of course eventually join the main group to be good guys.

Each season ends with an epic battle of sorts, in line with the Tolkein method of fantasy, which is a pretty solid method to follow. These battles lead up to the finale where Aang has to face the Fire Lord, and make the decision whether to kill him or let him live, since this is a kid’s show the outcome is pretty easy to predict for the most part. I think it ended well enough though.

It isn’t all business, far from it. Especially in the first season it’s a very goofy show, pretty much what you’d expect for an American kids’ comedy, but usually not embarrassingly so; it borrows a ton from Japanese animation in both drawing style and cultural themes, but leaves out most of the crap. Its been said that a lot of it is very similar to Studio Ghibli’s stuff which is anything but a criticism. As the show progresses it gets less and less goofy and more ominous, while keeping the light-hearted fun from being totally stifled with somewhat filler-y bits. The action scenes are always a treat, and some of the romance is almost entertaining but usually just pretty awkward.

There are a bunch of references to other shows, not all animated, like the creepy violin crescendo from Lost after Aang realizes he’s on a weird island, and one episode is filled with anime references in a string of dream sequences. Incidentally both of these episodes were in the third season which I thought was by far the strongest.

It’s a pretty fun show all told, although I don’t think it really hit me as hard as most people I’ve heard talk about it. Certainly not as much as it affected M. Knight Shamalamadingdong. I don’t plan on ever watching his interpretation; this show should not be brought to the big screen, it’s just too much of a comedic/action epic to treated properly without making it stupid, as proven. So if you’ve written the show off based on that monstrosity, please reconsider and check this out for some good clean fun. It’s on Netflix instant watch, so there’s not a whole lot stopping you.

The Expendables

2010-08-15T16:55:00.006-04:00

Somebody already wrote a plot summary.

But seriously folks, if you want to see a bunch of old guys (and Jason Statham) reliving their glory years in the most unoriginal, tired action movie trope fest this year, then The Expendables is the movie for you. You also get treated to a hollow and small performance by the beautiful Charisma Carpenter, and if you’re a Dexter fan then you’ll recognize David Zayas who also doesn’t get to really shine.

I guess some people enjoyed it though. Every time somebody’s torso got torn in half there was a row of guys in front of me who would all yell out a synchronized “OOOOHHHHHHHHH!!!," and sometimes they would jump out of their seats. Fun enough I guess.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (film)

2010-08-15T11:38:00.005-04:00

The first thing you should read in this post is the tag list at the bottom, because I normally just use them for categorization of the primary medium used in the thing I’m writing about, but for this movie, I felt it an injustice not to include the other tags; without those media this film would be a much lesser thing.

I first heard of Scott Pilgrim shortly after I finally read Watchmen and was looking around for more awesome comics to read. I put it in my mental list and tried other stuff for a while. Then a friend nagged me into reading it a couple or so years ago. It didn’t really impress me that much, mostly because of the absence of color for the majority of the run, and the very stylized manga-ish look of the characters. It also bored me a bit for some reason, can’t remember why. Maybe it was because I was actually one of the few kids of my generation denied video games until I could pay for them myself. Still, it had a lot of cool elements, like the slightly comedic “stats” boxes that would show up next to characters from time to time, and the surreal nature of their lives in this multimedia universe.

I can’t remember when I heard about a movie being made; it might have been after I finished the second-to-last volume, maybe in the middle somewhere. Anyway, I immediately realized that this was a completely awesome idea. It could work so much better as a movie with crazy CG special affects and whatnot; also the fact that Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) was directing was a huge plus. One of the biggest reasons though is the prevalence of music alongside the video game aspects of the comic; there are several moments where music is shown as being extremely powerful and impactful, and the only way that can be done in comics is with imagery, which is normally not how the power of music is realized. Bryan Lee O’Malley did a good job with it, but still I really wanted to hear what these characters were so awed by.

So now we get the movie itself. From the very first minute to the last, my head was stretched wide with grins. Everything that had been missing in the comic was present in the movie, along with every great aspect that showed up on those black and white pages. It’s an amalgam of all the media that have been molding my generation for the last 20-30 years in a very pleasantly surreal romantic action-comedy. Pretty much every character on the screen is exactly how I imagined them while reading the book, even the one-dimensional Evil Exes. The jokes are 5 times funnier, the onomatopoeia 3 times more effective even when entirely unnecessary in the presence of sound, and the chicks are way hotter with normal sized eyes. Michael Cera’s role is being lauded as a perfect representation, and while I don’t 100% agree with that, I think he did an excellent job that transcends his previous work.

As mentioned, the music is a very important part of the story, and pretty much every moment involving music is pure magic. Artists like Broken Social Scene, The Black Keys and Beck were brought on board to make the sounds described visually in the comic into a reality. While music is always subjective, I think with the combination of the visuals it could not have been done much better.

This is the kind of comic-book adaptation that I’m hoping The Walking Dead turns out to be. An improvement rather than an attempt at an homage.

Death at a Funeral (2007)

2010-08-12T19:53:00.003-04:00

Hey look, it’s another one of those disaster comedies that I so dislike that I keep watching more of them.

This is of course not the American version with Chris Rock and Tracy Morgan, but strangely enough it is the one with Peter Dinklage, because he’s in both of them playing the same character (with a different name). I haven’t seen the new version and I probably never will, since it’s the same exact movie without the British edge to the humor, which makes it an entirely pointless remake. Also, thanks to that movie you probably know the whole plot already just from the previews. I guess that saves me from writing about it.

It’s really funny though even after the American previews spoiled the majority of the jokes. Just about every character is a total dick in some way or another, and those that aren’t keep getting shoved around like they’re worthless, or in Alan Tudyk’s case they get pumped full of hallucinogens. Alan’s performance was of course my favorite, although it was pretty weird hearing him speak with a faux-British accent. As mentioned up at the top there, everything is always going wrong until the end. There were some moments that just made me cringe and laugh at the same time; I kept having to remind myself that this is a movie, not my life. Nothing to worry about. Just laugh. So I did.

As I’m really not very good at writing reviews of movies themselves, I think I’ll end that right here. Instead I’m going to talk about remakes for a bit. This one had no reason to be remade in the English language whatsoever. I hate Hollywood a bit more for that. However, there has been the recent trend in remaking awesome Swedish films based on their source material, like Let the Right One In (to be Let Me In), and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The former seems to be actually turning out very well, and I’m looking forward to its release. There hasn’t been much development on the latter yet, although interestingly there was rumor a while back that Yo-Landi Vi$$er of the somewhat-underground Die Antwoord was offered the role of Lisbeth. Unfortunately it was later confirmed along with the news that she had declined it. I think she would have been great; she’s got that weird look and intensity that Noomi Rapace put on the screen so well. I guess she didn’t think she could do it justice. Daniel Craig is confirmed as Mikael Blomkvist though, which seems alright to me.

Anyway, there have been some really good remakes in the past, and there will probably be more. It would be nice though if people would start coming up with their own ideas for movies.

The Other Guys

2010-08-08T17:46:00.001-04:00

I don’t think I’ve seen that many buddy-cop movies. The most similar thing to this movie that I can think of is Rush Hour. The Other Guys has less action and gets a bit more ridiculous in its humor, and is altogether less memorable. However, it was a fun ride and probably Ferrell’s best work in a number of years.

The plot isn’t worth writing about really; where it shines is the dialogue. Sam L Jackson and The Rock start it off with some absolutely over-the-top action and Sam’s trademark foul-mouthing, and then Ferrell and Wahlberg take over for the rest of the movie. Ferrell of course the main source of laughs, playing a an overtly bland cop to foil Wahlberg, who basically plays himself. It’s kind of similar to Dinner for Schmucks really, in that Ferrell is kind of playing a happy idiot, but there’s more to him than that; he has a dark past that he’s trying to bury with his ever-so-normal life, which isn’t really normal. I particularly enjoyed the the way every hot girl he comes in contact with becomes instantly infatuated with him, much to Wahlberg’s confusion.

It’s a fun enough movie and it really doesn’t try to stick to any sort of reality, which is cool. I think making it a cop movie helped to reign it in a little which may have helped keeping it from getting too ridiculous to stay funny, but I miss Anchorman.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo who Played with Fire

2010-08-01T17:18:00.002-04:00

It’s actually two movies, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl who Played with Fire, and there’s another one coming out later called The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest. I just thought since these words will be about both movies I should get them both in the title.

I watched the first movie shortly after Roger Ebert started going nuts over it on the twitters. The main reason I think was because of the girl, one Lisbeth Salander (played by Noomi Rapace) whose gothic portrayal interested me a lot. You don’t see a lot of movies like this with protagonists like that. Anyway, the trilogy of Swedish movies is based on a book trilogy which I haven’t read, collectively called the Millennium Trilogy. The title of the book the first film is based on literally translates to “Men Who Hate Women,” which is the main theme of the story. There’s lots of rape, murder, and various other brutality, and some excellent retaliation in the form of Lisbeth’s vengeful personality.

The first movie is a cold-case murder mystery amid a wonderful character study. The other protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist, is an investigative reporter who runs foul of some powerful people and gets set up for some jail time. He gets six months before he has to go though, and some rich old guy contacts him about investigating the disappearance of his adopted daughter forty years ago. Turns out she was his babysitter a little while before that so he has some personal stake in it and accepts. Meanwhile, Lisbeth has an interest in this guy’s life because she was hired to investigate him, and ends up helping him with the case. She’s just gone through some rather nasty stuff with some dastardly men (which she handled in a completely badass way), and over time begins to see Mikael as a light of hope in a world that seems set on hurting her, while clinging to her mantra of solitude. This leads to some great relationship stuff and an awesome conclusion to the mystery.

Aside from the story, the film is great because it’s quite a slow film, taking its time to show beautiful and horrific scenes, build characters, and make the audience invest themselves in the investigation through wonderfully engaging riddle-solving. There isn’t a terrific amount of action in this one, but there are moments that are very gripping. It’s very easy to get emotionally involved in it.

The second film was directed by a different guy, so it’s a bit different. There’s a lot more action and a fair bit more skin. Still, it continues the story pretty brilliantly and the two main characters continue to be played to perfection. A little disappointingly though, Lisbeth and Mikael don’t actually meet up until the end of the film. They have tenuous contact here and there but mostly it’s two separate but interacting storylines. I suppose it’s necessitated by Lisbeth’s continued claim to loner-hood, but I would have enjoyed some more interaction between the main characters.

I can’t really go into the story much because the plot relies on the story from the first film, and thus discussing it would require explaining the stuff I left out in my first summary. It mostly focuses on a bunch of people in governmental/police positions taking advantage of women who no one cares about, which is of course the theme of these stories. There’s a bunch more murder and stuff and our heroes get embroiled in it by association. Instead of Mikael getting set up this time it’s Lisbeth, and Mikael sets out to clear her name. Lisbeth of course would rather take it into her own hands despite the heightened danger posed by some rather imposing fellows. Still, she hands out a few cans of whoop-ass, and with the help of Mikael and his team, brings a little justice to the world.

A very good movie, but not as good as the first. I’m hoping the third can live up to it.

This is the first time I’ve seen an indie/foreign film in a theater. Living in the DC area has its perks, I guess. Parking was ridiculous though. Also the subtitles weren’t integrated at all well; they were always completely white with no outline, so you couldn’t really read them at all during light-colored scenes. Guess I’ll have to wait until the Blu-Ray comes out to really know what’s going on.

Dinner for Schmucks

2010-07-31T16:27:00.003-04:00

This is what you might call a disaster-comedy film; not in the sense that it’s a disastrous failure (it isn’t), but that everything consistently goes wrong. In the past I’ve never really enjoyed movies of this sort. As a pessimist I get upset when stuff happens as I expect it to. However, there’s a lot to like about this movie, so it kind of makes it okay.

Steve Carell stars as a pretty charming middle-aged guy who has a hobby in mouse-taxidermy, making pretty awesome dioramas mostly depicting events from his sad life. Still, he’s a very happy guy pretty much all the time, seemingly ignorant of the destruction he’s causing (though always apologetic afterwards). His intervention in the life of Paul Rudd’s character takes every wrong turn possible but of course ends happily.

The main event of course is the titular dinner, in which a bunch of business executives bring “extraordinary people” to laugh at so they feel less like the nincompoops that they are. Tim (Rudd) brings Barry (Carell) to the dinner so he can secure his place in a new office and get a bigger paycheck. The lead-up to the dinner establishes that Tim isn’t doing this out of spite for Barry, and that he’s really just a good guy who’s trying to impress a girl by being successful, so you’re not supposed to hate him. Anyway the dinner is a lot of fun, bringing in Zach Gaifianakis, Chris O’Dowd from The IT Crowd, and a bunch of other funny people to show off their inane talents. Before and after the main even we are also blessed with the presence of Jemaine Clement in a role very unlike his character in Flight of the Conchords.

The movie is a remake of a French film which I know almost nothing about, but I assume it’s probably better. The ridiculousness of a lot of the situations is just a bit too much. Still, it was pretty funny, and Steve Carell is always fun to watch. Also the Fool on the Hill intro was pretty great.

Despicable Me

2010-07-25T14:55:00.001-04:00

This is one of those movies that looked like it might be really cool when information started getting out about it. The shadow-profile of the protagonist, Gru, looked really stylish and not very funny. Then the minions became the main focus, and they were all funny and stuff. Still cool. Then the kid plotline reared its ugly head and all hope was lost. Still, it turned out to not be a complete bust.

The story is that this Russian-esque, Steve Carell-voiced, so-called villain is trying to be more of a real villain and thusly decides to steal the moon. Turns out visiting the moon has been a life-long dream of his, so it’s kind of a big deal for him. He has to deal with a new-comer villain to reach that goal, and in a rather stupid twist of events, it seems the only way to do this is to adopt three horribly cute girls who have a talent for selling cookies. The movie then becomes less about Gru’s faulty masterminding than it is about melting his cold heart and realizing that he likes taking care of cute things. You can guess how it ends.

It’s still quite a funny movie though. There are a bunch of pretty great one-liners and lots of explosive slapstick comedy. The minions (little yellow dudes) are of course a large source of laughs, with their unintelligible jabbering and even more slapstick humor. Even the kids are funny from time to time, although usually they just ended up annoying me. I think it would have been a much more enjoyable thing if they’d found some other way to make it an acceptable kids’ movie. Heck, they could have just made it a short.