Four Movies I Saw

 I can't figure out a clever title combination. You're the Next World's Elysium Station? Nah.

 

Fruitvale Station

So this one is a bit hard to write about. It's based on a true story and contains actual, infamous footage from this story (briefly), and it's the kind of story that justly infuriates. This guy played by that actor from The Wire is a good dude who is trying to get away from his less-than-legal past. He's having some success but it's a hard road. His past unfortunately leads him to a run-in with some very aggravated police officers, and through a lot of misunderstanding and probable incompetence, he ends up dead. Sad stuff. It's well filmed and honest.

 

Elysium 

Remember when I posted about Only God Forgives? We have a similar situation here. District 9 was Neil Blomkamp's breakout film, and it's great. I love watching it. It has a wonderful old-future thing going, the improvisation makes it super-believable, and even if it does kind of devolve a bit toward the end, the action is fun. Drive was arguably Nicholas Winding Refn's breakout success, and his next was another collaboration with the same people, but it sucked. Blomkamp did the same thing, sort of, in that he made another sci-fi movie in a similar style with at least one actor carryover in Sharlto Copley. Now, Sharlto isn't the problem here. The problem is primarily Blomkamp's dialogue, which is just laughably bad. Sure, the visual quality is still there, the action is mostly fun, but really, this is mostly just the third act of District 9 without all of the preceding excellence. Even Matt Damon's decent performance isn't enough to make it enjoyable aside from a few scenes. Takeaway: Robots are dicks, and followups to great movies aren't sure things.

 

The World's End

Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost have been building their loose "Cornetto/Blood and Ice Cream" trilogy since 2004's Shaun of the Dead. Each film has both blood and ice cream in it. Each film is also hilarious and extremely well-made. Each one employs a different facet of genre filmmaking to give a backdrop to some excellent examinations of friendship, society, and loyalty. This one really hits all three. Much like the first two films, it starts out giving little hint as to what's really going to go down, but is still a very entertaining comedy about old, rather estranged friends gathering around the asshole-leader in order to revisit the time in his life where he last felt happy, drinking their asses off on the Golden Mile. Then shit goes nuts. I won't say anything about it just in case you haven't seen any trailers, but brace yourself for some major fun. It's just great. I'm still wrestling with the ranking, but right now I'm putting it at the top of the trilogy.

 

You're Next

I don't think I wrote about it, but I watched The Strangers a while back. It's a very good home-invasion horror/thriller movie about a beautiful couple who are attacked in their home for no apparent reason. It's well made, suspenseful, and entertaining, and the simplicity of its execution makes it quite enjoyable without feeling campy. When I saw the trailer for You're Next, I initially blew it off as a Strangers rip-off. It turns out the similarities are only superficial. There's really quite a bit more going on in this one, but I really can't go into all of the differences. The quality of the acting is a bit lower (Liv Tyler's not in it), but everything else about it is quite good. There's a lot of blood but the gore is tolerable. The characters are interesting. It's funny sometimes. I like to think of it as kind of like a combination of Alien and Aliens in a country home. If you like horror, you should go see it probably.

Conjuring the Wolverine

The Wolverine

Y'all remember X-Men Origins: Wolverine? I do a little. Mostly how much it resembled the innards of my kitchen garbage pail after a few months of neglect, and how Deadpool got painfully violated (and not in a funny way like it might happen in the comics). It seemed that we might get something to help us forget about it when the sequel was announced with Darren Aranofsky attached, but that was dashed when he left after Japan got all scary (what with the radiation and all). Then James Mangold came along, which didn't help my thinking on it much, but eventually word started getting out that this just might not suck! And guess what, it doesn't! Mostly!

It's a very solid, character driven story set in Japan that just happens to star an immortal-type dude with retractable, metal-covered claws. Sure there's action and junk, but it's really quite grounded for the most part, the dialogue is good, and it looks awful nice. The action is great too, which has become more of an unexpected delight in comic book movies. All this can be said about everything through the first part of the second act. After that it gets a bit hairy. The comic-book tropes of a big-bad and boring villains come into play and it just doesn't work. I'm reminded quite strongly of the Iron Man finales, particularly 1 and 2. An ending this bombastic just isn't needed for the kind of movie Mangold was seemingly trying to make, and it suffers for it. Still, as a whole it's a very solid, enjoyable thing, and almost succeeds in wiping away its predecessor's filth.

The Conjuring

I might have talked about my relationship with horror back in my Mama review; in short, I'm not a fan of the dumb stuff that relies on gore and jump-scares to do its job. That's just boring. It would seem I'd be a fan of older, classic horror, because both this and Mama have been described as being old-school in their style. Mama did have a lot of jumps but this really doesn't have many at all, and the gore is basically non-existent. I'm not enthralled by the whole exorcism thing but if it's based on true events as it claims, I'm okay with it.

I can't say I liked it as much as I did Mama. Still, it's nicely made, the cast is great, and it never gets completely ridiculous. In fact it's almost a believable story, which is really what might make it scary for some people. Pretty good.

Only God Forgives Much Ado About the Pacific Rim

Much Ado About Nothing

Joss Whedon makes good stuff. He even makes good stuff right in the middle of making other good stuff when he really has no business doing so, as is the case with this movie, which was filmed at his (really nice) house while he took short breaks during the production of The Avengers. The cast is almost entirely composed of faces familiar to Whedon fans, from shows like Buffy, Angel, Dollhouse, and Firefly. It's got a lot of spirit, humor, and heart, and not all of that is just because it's a time-tested work of Shakespeare. The language is of course a bit difficult to handle for someone not entirely used to it (e.g. myself), but I got the gist of it. It's a really fun film. Just a bunch of great actors having fun together.

 

Pacific Rim

Perhaps a little spottier than Whedon's, Guillermo del Toro's filmography is still a solid list of wonderfully enjoyable, often darkly-tinged fare. He's a big ol' fanboy, and makes what he loves. In this case he loves giant robots and alien monsters, and a healthy dose of Star Wars references. Fine by me. I've been excited for Pacific Rim since the first info started being dispersed. It was a little disheartening to hear that it wasn't doing all too well once it was released, but that didn't decrease my expectations much; Guillermo doesn't make bad movies, and this is definitely a good one. Not great, but definitely good. The thing that people keep concentrating on is the scale of it. It is indeed huge, and the battle scenes are awesome, mostly keeping the action in a wide-ish frame unlike most modern action movies. The widespread complaint of characterization-lameness is also valid though. They aren't bad, just not particularly interesting. I did like the R2-D2 and C-3PO analogue scientists though. Altogether a very enjoyable thing.

 

Only God Forgives

Unfortunately I can't say the same for Nicholas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling's followup to the excellent Drive. My anticipation for this was as strong or stronger than it was for Pacific Rim, but this one failed me. It's a grueling exercise in style and brutality, which might sound good in some ways, but ends up being just a chore to watch. It's a combination of the very limited dialogue, almost universally hateful characters, unnecessarily excessive violence and gore, and complete lack of a satisfying ending. Sure, Drive didn't really have a Disney ending either, but it was interesting and emotional at least. It's definitely well-filmed, and the music is great, but it's hard to ignore how un-enjoyable it is. Even Valhalla Rising is less confounding. I recommend skipping it.

This is the End of The Man of Upstream Steel

Upstream Color

Primer is the definition of a head-trip. It's nearly impossible to follow. Shane Carruth successfully made a film that only makes sense if you analyze to a ridiculous degree, but still manages to be intriguingly entertaining without going to such lengths. Now with Upstream Color, he's taken a bit of a different route; instead of rooting the story in scientifically plausible concepts, he's almost tripped into the fantastical with psychotropic worms and telempathic (yeah not a word, deal with it) pigs. In the end it's not nearly as hard to follow. There's still a lot of non-linear scenes going on, and a lot of the time it's not certain what's real and what isn't (a-la Trance), but the fogginess of it all only serves to make a relatively simple storyline seem complex. All that said, it's a gorgeously shot and emotionally compelling film.

Man of Steel

I think I've only seen three of the previous Superman movies, and I'm not particularly well-read on him as far as the comics go. I did watch Smallville through something like the seventh season until I realized it was crap though. With all that as a baseline, I can confidently say this is the best Superman screen-property that's been made so far, and definitely Zack Snyder's best film. Although Michael Shannon didn't transcend anything he's done before, his character was well-written and a believable villain, even moreso than his predecessor in Superman 2. I'm a bit sick of Russel Crow. This Henry Cavill guy's got a future with this character though. He lacks the playfulness of Christover Reeve, but his physical and emotional presence is perfect for this god character. The element of god-hood isn't really discussed to quite the degree I would have liked, but Snyder already tackled that in Watchmen, so I guess he didn't feel it necessary to go overboard with it and just stick with the acceptance of an invincible, altruistic being from another planet; not to say that it was ignored completely. Anyway, the action's fantastic, the dildo-space-pods are hilarious, and KNEEL BEFORE SHANNON.

This is the End

Definitely an interesting movie just because all of the actors play themselves. There's a lot more to it than that though, and it's funny-as-hell to boot. There's nothing funnier than a bunch of screaming dudes kicking a bloody, disembodied head around the floor (except maybe for Michael Cera as an insufferable asshole). The whole religious thing is great, and the special effects are possibly the best I've ever seen in a comedy. Between this and 50/50 I think Seth Rogen has established himself as a quality dude. I just really wish Franco had reprised his role from Spring Breakers and started yelling "LOOK AT MY SHIT" for five minutes again.

The Iceman

I've sung Michael Shannon's praises a few times before here, notably in Take Shelter and Boardwalk Empire. I might not have noticed this movie if not for his name; sure it's a pretty neat story, but it hasn't been advertised very well at all as far as I'm aware, which is a shame. Shannon's performance here is just as monolithic (to reuse the term) as in Boardwalk. The characters aren't the same, but there are enough similarities in their temperaments to make him perfect for the role.

The Iceman is based on the true story of Richard Kuklinski, a man who killed somewhere around 100 people from the 1950s to the 80s. He started out killing for the fun of it and later joined the mafia as a hit-man. The latter period is the focus of this film. Kuklinski had a wife and children who never knew he was a killer until his arrest in 1986. The film paints his family life in a way that makes you almost empathize with him; he seems kind, and expresses the fact that they are all he cares about several times. Outside of the home though, killing is like breathing to him. He's not a moralistic killer aside from his "no women, no children" rule. He kills who he's told to kill, who he needs to kill to protect himself, and those who just annoy him or happen to be in the wrong place.

So, he's a pretty terrible person. The film and Michael Shannon's excellent performance take this dark spot of humanity and turn him into something less than a monster, which is probably bad in the grand scheme of things, but even an anti-hero has to be a little relatable in order for a story to work.

Aside from Shannon, we get some great stuff from the frequently more elusive Winona Ryder, gangster stand-by Ray Liotta, and a completely unrecognizable Chris Evans as the scummy ice-cream truck murderer Mr. Freezy (apparently called Mr. Softee in real life). James Franco also makes a short but very effective appearance as one of Kuklinski's more unfortunate victims.

It's a darn good movie. It's a pleasure to watch Shannon's appearance change through the decades, while maintaining his stone-cold posture and hints of inner turmoil. I hope he's used right in The Man of Steel.

The Great Trek into Kvelertak

Star Trek Into Darkness

The first one was a lot of fun, and so is this one. The main problem with the 2009 film was the rather unimpressive antagonist; this time around, they got Benedict Expletive Cumberbatch to work his baritone magic, and even with the almost incoherently silly and convenient script, he managed to play a wonderfully menacing and yet almost empathic bad guy and made the film at least twice as enjoyable as it could have been without him. The rest of the cast did their jobs well enough. There's enough action to fill all of the old Star Trek movies put together, and a different kind of humor that often falls into the referential category. It's this referential thing that's getting a lot of people (mostly die-hard Trek fans) really upset. As this is a "reboot" of sorts, there are going to be many parallels, and that is taken to a bit of an extreme here. It's done a little bit sloppily but I got a ton of enjoyment out of it. Good stuff. Robocop.

The Great Gatsby

 I'd been hearing bad things about this from the first time I heard about it. There have been at least four other Gatsby film adaptations in the past, and I don't think any of them have garnered much acclaim; it's just too much of a masterwork (or so I'm told) to really be "filmable," as people tend to say about things they like a lot. Obviously I haven't read the book so that defensive attachment wasn't an issue for me going into the theater, and I think it helped my experience a lot. It's a beautifully visual film with some pretty great acting, a lot of gorgeous women, and of course the story itself is quite interesting even if it is a bit of a "chick-flick" sort of thing. I'm not a huge fan of voice-over but it worked well enough. Perhaps it has failed though in that I don't really feel like I have to go read the book. Different strokes, Old Sport.

Kvelertak

Check another one off the list of must-see-live bands. I bought this ticket months ago, as soon as the tour was announced. They have come to the U.S. before, but never so close to me, so there was really no choice this time. Their self-titled album from a few years ago topped my list without much even competition (aside from Shining and Ghost). Meir hasn't had nearly the same effect but it's still an excellently feel-good metal album and didn't lessen my love for the band. I spent the majority of their set in the first and second rows, and suffered the requisite beatings from the mosh pit behind me; it was worth it. The frontman went crowd-surfing several times, and at one point one of them starting hanging from the rafters above the crowd. At the end the first few rows were all invited up onto the stage join in with the band in their revelrous finale. Kick-ass.

The openers were pretty good too. The first band, Black Clouds, was an instrumental three-piece playing rather djenty metal similar to TesseracT but with an extremely distorted bass, and a seizure inducing light show. It was fine but I get bored rather quickly without vocals. Next up, Black Tusk performed as the only opener I'd actually heard before, but were unfortunately fairly boring as well. I'm not sure really what made them boring for me. They're really quite similar in sound to the rest of the bill, but there's just something missing. I think the next band, Cancer Bats, managed to find that element that really gets my interest. Could be the rocking guitar riffs or the vocalist's energetic performance (plus pizza shirt), but whatever it was got me to buy their album Dead Set on Living. It's pretty great; a disc full of rip-roaring bluesy metal followed by another disc of Black Sabbath covers, almost exclusively pulled from their first few albums. They've got a new fan for sure.

Iron Mud Trance

Trance 

Danny Boyle makes good movies. Sometimes he makes great ones. This one isn't great, but it's certainly a ride. I went into it with some idea of what to expect from Filmspotting reviews and such; I think I was bracing for something like Inception. It's not really that, but there are some similarities; it can be a little difficult to tell what's really happening and what isn't, and there's quite a bit of jumping around, but the narration helps to keep it mostly straight. It's visually interesting and exciting, but the characters make some strange turns, and it all just falls together a bit ridiculously by the end. I'm just gonna end this one with this: Rosario Dawson knows what you want.

Mud

Mud's great. It definitely rides on the quality of its actors. It's probably the best I've seen from Matt McConaughey, Michael Shannon's in it, other dudes from Boardwalk Empire and Deadwood both make appearances, one of the main characters is a kid from The Tree of Life, and Reese Witherspoon's okay I guess. With that lineup as the base, Jeff Nichols crafts an endearing, emotional film only tangentially similar to Beasts of the Southern Wild (which I liked a bit less than this in retrospect). It's got friendship building, violence, action, budding and broken romance, and a lot of water with snakes in it. I'd say that's a winning formula. Definitely catch this one.

Iron Man 3

Shane Black made Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. It's not only an awesome movie, it also features Iron Man himself (RDJ). Makes sense to have him pick up the pieces left by Jon Favreau (who appears in this movie as comic relief). I liked the second film well enough but only saw it once. No desire to see it again. This one here has shades of that one, but it does it all a lot better, with a much more interesting villainous angle and a much more human Tony Stark. Still, it's a little hard to believe Tony's emotional plight with his constant, rapid-fire verbal deflections; but it wouldn't be an Iron Man film without that. The little tie-ins to the rest of the Marvel movie-verse (mainly Avengers) are fun and serve the plot well enough. Ben Kingsley's Mandarin works better than I thought it would, but perhaps not for the reason you might think going into it. I liked it but I wouldn't put it over the first film. The initial ending credit sequence though, is fantastic. Nice post-credits tag too.

Skyfall, Wreck-It-Ralph, Masquerade

Here I sit. Time to write.

Masquerade struck me as very similar in concept to The Devil’s Double, which is another foreign film I knew next to nothing about before I saw it. This one’s a lot less soul-destroying, and more heartwarming than its predecessor. I guess the writer also worked on Oldboy, so it’s got some pedigree, and while it doesn’t rise nearly to the heights of that masterpiece, it’s a wonderfully rousing tale of good-hearted commonfolk versus ancient Chinese politics. The main character is very likeable and the humor element makes it very watchable. Going in I expected it to be a lot more stuffy. Good stuff, if you can stand subtitles.

I’d heard Wreck-It-Ralph was on-par with Brave, which made me a little less excited about it. Brave was pretty darn mediocre, especially for PIXAR. This, while certainly not another Toy Story, was better than mediocre. The use of familiar video game properties was as brilliant as I’m sure it was costly, and every character was incredibly loveable. The amazing Alan Tudyk as Ed Wynn as the King of Sugar Rush was a real treat, and I always love Sarah Silverman. John C. Reilly did a great job as well with Ralph. The only problem with the film I had is similar in a way to how I felt about How to Train Your Dragon; the moral of the story is off. In the aforementioned film, the takeaway was “Your parents are wrong and probably idiots. Do something dangerous and it’ll work out fine.” I’m not entirely cool with that. Here, the message is going in the opposite direction but still not particularly great: “This is your job. You have to do it. If you do anything else everything will suck.” Communism anybody? Still a very enjoyable movie.

Skyfall is good. I don’t think I liked it as much as I was supposed to. Casino Royale hit me hard, Quantum of Solace fell flat, and this one just kind of breezed by. It did a good job with legacy fanservice, and the action was pretty good. I’m a big fan of Javier Bardem. His role in this reminded me a bit of Heath Ledger’s Joker here and there. The finale was the best part, keeping the scale of the action down and simple. Jolly good show, old bean. Props to Tank Dong for having the best name in the acting business.

Movie Catchup

I’ve seen a bunch of movies since Batman. These might be all of them. They might not. I can’t remember. Boredom breeds needless words.

Argo

I think it’s safe to call this Ben Affleck’s best work so far, although I might have enjoyed Gone Baby Gone a bit more. I really liked the 80s aesthetics in both the costuming and production aspects, probably done better than even Let the Right One In did. The best part of the movie was during the credits where all of the rescuees’ passport photos were shown in comparison to their perfectly cast actors, and then Tony Mendez shows up. Derpfleck.

Frankenweenie

Tim Burton’s return to form as an expansion on his first(?) short-film is a heart-wrenching, delightful homage to classic horror and Tim Burton movies. It was a great decision to do it in black and white; I don’t think it would have had nearly the same impact in color.

3, 2, 1… Frankie Go Boom

Perlman as a transgender ex-con computer hacker. That’s all you need. Oh alright, Lizzy Caplan in a candy bra. Got it? Good. VOD that sucka.

Seven Psychopaths

In Bruges passed me by in theaters, but once I heard it was actually good, I checked it out and was blown away by Colin Farrell and Peter Dinklage’s performances in a clever, gripping, funny and heartfelt movie that had appeared to be some sort of midget exploitation film from the trailers. Hearing that Martin McDonogh had another movie coming out was enough for me to get excited but then attaching Sam Rockwell, Colin Farrel again, Woody Harrelson, Tom Friggin’ Waits, and Goddamn Christopher Walken, holy balls was I into that. And it delivered bygummit. Picture Adaptation with a better cast and more excitement.

Looper

Brick’s really good. I have yet to see Brothers Bloom, which I unfortunately keep confusing with The Brothers Grimm. Anyway, Rian Johnson is crazy talented, so it’s fantastic that he finally got his due with this hit. He gets Bruce Willis to prove that he can still kill an action movie, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt didn’t really have anything to prove but he did it anyway with his awesomely in-depth transformation into mini-Willis. A much better job than that tyke Disney’s The Kid. I loved how the aspect of telekinesis was only hinted on in the trailer but became one of the main components of the plot as the story progressed. Pretty darn.

Dredd 3D

Yes, I did see it in 3D. I would have been fine without it, but it’s not a post-conversion so I’m cool with it. Coupled with the frequently and cleverly used slo-mo it actually worked pretty well. It’s a great, violent romp in a nicely contained setting, and the complete absence of a world-ending baddy made it much fresher as a comic-book movie than it could have been. I liked seeing Wood Harris from The Wire again, as I don’t think I’ve seen him in anything else since. Major props to Karl Urban for not taking off the helmet.

Slither

So it’s not new or anything, but I hadn’t seen it before and it was directed by James Gunn and has Nathan Fillion in it. And that racist hillbilly guy from Walking Dead. Loads of disgusting fun for a small portion of the family. I definitely recommend checking it out if you like that sort of stuff. It’s on Netflix Instant last I checked.

Casa de mi Padre

Will Ferrel hasn’t really been hitting them out of the park lately. I haven’t seen everything of course but those that I have weren’t anywhere near the genius of Anchorman or… it appears that’s the only really good movie of his I’ve seen. Oh well. Anyway, Casa de mi Padre isn’t going to dig him out of the hole he may or may not be in, but it’s definitely a serviceable exercise in oddity.

It’s a Spanish-language movie mocking cheap telenovelas. That’s pretty much it, except there’s a bit more absurdism and borderline surrealism than I think might show up in such things. Laughs go on far too long, characters are often replaced mid-scene with mannequins, ridiculously fake-looking animal puppets give spiritual pep-talks, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much smoking in a movie. In between these moments of hilarity is mostly straight if low-quality drama, almost exclusively in Spanish with the exception of a few lines from the good Nick Offerman of Parks and Rec fame. I kind of enjoyed being able to pick out some dialogue that wasn’t fully translated in the subtitles, although as far as I could tell it was never done for any sort of comedy.

It’s really a lot of fun to watch. I’m not sure what all the middling/low critical praise it’s getting is all about. I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets some kind of cult status eventually.

Rampart

Not a whole lot to say about this one. I saw it because Woody Harrelson rocks and Ebert said it was good. Sadly I was somewhat disappointed given the premise of a “bad” cop dishing out his own justice, hearkening to Bad Lieutenant (remake), which I enjoyed quite a bit. This is a bit more realistic, sad, and just a bit difficult to watch. The camera work can be pretty annoying with all the hand-cam stuff and unconventional movements/angles. Woody’s performance is on point, and he does muster up a bunch of pity for his plight, but it’s also quite apparent that what he’s doing is largely wrong, which given the seriousness of the thing didn’t make the experience all that enjoyable for me.

It’s definitely an interesting film with lots of good acting. It felt longer than it was though which is a bad sign.

The Artist

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.

War Horse

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.

Hugo and The Descendants

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

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

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

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.

Drive

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.

The Devil’s Double

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

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.