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.

Spring Breakers, Stoker, and Pig Destroyer

I find myself in a position of writeness.

The only thing I've seen before of Harmony Korine's is this, so my knowledge of his style is limited; however it seems to be pretty consistent with Spring Breakers, a somewhat surreal film that at first glance appears to be something akin to those Girls Gone Wild clips everyone has seen somewhere or another, but is instead a strange, dark story of two humans and a bunch of very troubled people. Yes, there is a lot of skin here, but it's a lot more than that. I've heard comparisons to Natural Born Killers, and those are not unwarranted, although the pace is quite different. It's funny, disgusting, and engrossingly erotic, at times concurrently. James Franco shines brightly as Alien, the stereotypical white-man-who-thinks-he's-black, and the four leading ladies take strangely subdued roles while maintaining nearly constant screen presence. Even more oddly the ones who stay the longest are the least developed. It's a weird movie.

I've tried watching the Revenge trilogy aside from Oldboy without much success. It probably deserves another go. Same with that one vampire movie that I was so excited about and never got around to seeing. Park Chan Wook definitely proved himself with Oldboy, and Stoker is no slouch either. Like his previous masterpiece, this one is intensely creepy, and probably very offensive to a lot of people who will never see it. It's impressive that the Korean director's first English-language/acted film is as good as it is, although a lot of the dialogue is really quite awkward; this may be intentional but I tend to think it could be a by-product of the language barrier. It sure doesn't hurt the atmosphere. Mia Wasikowska plays a beguilingly strange young woman with some sort of psychosis that gives her heightened senses and a bloodlust suppressed by her father. Her estranged uncle comes into the picture with the intention of showing her her true self. Madness and a possibly unnecessary shower scene ensues. I enjoyed it all.

Pig Destroyer has been one of my top favorite bands for several years now, ever since I clicked with either Phantom Limb or Terrifyer; I can't remember which. Their most recent album, Book Burner, takes a more traditional grind-core route than their last few but still rips tremendously, and has a few of my favorite tracks of their discography (notably The Bug.) The band doesn't tour much (they have jobs), which made it even more unlikely for me to ever have a chance to see them, until I moved down to the DC area, which just happens to be where they are based. Still it took over three years before I got to experience this megalith of grind in person. It was worth the wait. A good portion of their set at Black Cat was from their latest, but there was definitely a generous sampling of their past catalog as well. I couldn't really sing along of course due to having no idea what the words are for the vast majority of their songs, but when I could I felt like their biggest fan, up there in the middle of the second row fighting to stay upright against the pummeling mass of moshers. Kat Katz came on for a couple songs which was fantastic; it's entirely awesome that such a slight, beautiful woman can belt out that kind of vitriol so violently and maintain her elegance. I hope to see these guys (and gal, perhaps) destroy the stage again, hopefully soon.

Good night.

Mama

From the first time I saw a trailer for this movie, I was pretty intrigued, even before I saw Guillermo Del Toro attached as executive producer. I think that, in addition to the inclusion of Jessica Chastain, is really what clinched it for me, but it really looked quite good for what it is, which is not a whole lot more than your average horror movie. Or is it?

It's obvious that's all the audience was expecting. There was always a mounting level of excited whimpering followed by a huge wave of shrieking for every jump scare, even when the scare was just somebody breaking a chair. If it's not obvious, this was the first time I can remember going to see a legitimate horror movie in a theater on opening weekend. I'm not used to this much "interaction." It didn't help that a bunch of the jump scares were almost immediately followed by some subdued dialogue that I couldn't hear due to all of the screaming and laughing.

All that said, I think the audience kind of figured out what was actually going on near the end, once the nature of the big-bad was given more attention. Mama is not the mindless, ruthless killer of most slashers; she's called Mama for a reason. The movie definitely has a theme of motherhood. Jessica's character goes from someone entirely opposed to having a child at all to being a badass, protective mother figure to two girls with which she has no blood relation, and it's a believable journey. Speaking of Chastain, holy hell, casting one of the most talented actresses in film today in a role seemingly tailored to my desires is a great way to get me into the theater. Excellent job. The kids are pretty great too. Lots of effective, beautiful shots of huge, dark eyes.

Yes, it's definitely a horror movie. Mama herself may not be all that believable, but she has her moments for sure. I actually felt a little bit of tension in my chest during a couple of the scares, but really I found the most effective bits to be in the suspenseful moments, of which there are a lot. There are also some pretty great shots of the kids doing really strange things, closely followed by the realization that Mama is in the room off screen, which is always fun.

Altogether it's really quite a beautiful thing. It's no Pan's Labyrinth, but there aren't many of those.

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.

The Dark Knight Rises

Welp, if I’m going to write about something it might as well be Batman, right?

This little film is the capstone of Chris Nolan’s trilogy on the Goddamn Batman, in which Batman is rarely the centerpiece. He mostly was in Batman Begins, because that was an origin story. He definitely wasn’t in The Dark Knight because Heath Ledger. Here, there doesn’t seem to be a centerpiece per say; it’s a huge, sprawling epic of characters and characters that could have better served as extras, all vying for their piece of the picture while only a few really make the grade. The Goddamn Batman strangely has more of an arc this time but still manages to be not-in-the-movie for most of the six-hour runtime. And yet, we still get WHERE IS IT WHERE IS IT.

That’s all okay though, I guess. It all looks good usually, and it’s certainly not ever boring. There are lots of emotional heights and neat action scenes, the occasionally memorable lines, and Anne Hathaway in a cat suit while actually doing a great job on the character. I really really appreciate Nolan’s use of IMAX cameras, even though I don’t think it’s quite as effective as the smaller number of scenes filmed with them in The Dark Knight (that intro, mannnnn). I also really like the Scarecrow/Crane’s very limited appearance, and his delivery of probably the best line in the movie.

The real problems though come about because there’s just so much stuff. Bane never has the chance to become much more than an occasionally physical menace, and his voice is just comical. His army of villains requires an army of good-guys, and as such there are lots of scenes with a ton of extras, which just didn’t work very well for me, especially where the involvement of so many people seemed to degrade the performances of the main characters. There are a lot of “main” characters too, requiring a lot of separate scenes, breaking the flow all over the place, and adding to the considerable length of the film. I’m glad I drank a lot of Dr. Pepper before the 10:30 showing.

I’m not getting into plot-holes because I’m honestly not good at spotting them. I’m sure there are tons though. It just felt like it.

As I mentioned though I’ve got to point out Anne Hathaway’s performance as a standout; it’s a bit like Heath Ledger’s situation, as he was initially a weird casting, but then owned the role. She might not have done it to the same degree, but her scenes are consistently enjoyable and believable. Also that ass.

So it’s okay. I just like complaining I guess. You should go see Moonrise Kingdom.

Things

So hey, how’s it been? It’s nice outside.

Since last I wrote, I’ve seen The Avengers twice, Sound of My Voice, a few concerts, and probably some other stuff I can’t remember. I’ve spent a lot of time outside and have had no impulse to write about anything, but it’s all just piling up and I still have a vague sense of responsibility for some reason. Now since I’m taking the day off to recover from Meshuggah last night I’ve got some time to kill. Here we go.

The Avengers is super great as expected. It seems anything Joss Whedon controls is destined for wonderfulness, and now that he’s a got a familiar property to play with he’s finally getting the recognition he deserves, breaking pretty much every box-office record there is like Chris Nolan and James Cameron before him. It’s certainly not a perfect movie, but as far as super-hero stuff goes it’s what it needs to be, and Whedon’s penchant for witty dialogue and excellent handling of large principal casts makes it crazy entertaining.

Sound of My Voice is basically garbage. Don’t bother unless you like being bored and only enjoyed Lost before they started answering questions, except that’s not really even a valid comparison because Lost is good.

As I mentioned, I saw Meshuggah last night along with Decapitated and Baroness. Decapitated were pretty boring, probably because I don’t really know their songs at all, but they struck me as border-line deathcore of a sort I don’t really dig. Baroness kicked all sorts of ass and included a few songs from their yet-to-be-released Yellow and Green album, which seemed okay for the most part. Meshuggah owned the stage of course. I had to push my way out of the crowd though because the middle of a Meshuggah audience is no place for a short, bespectacled music lover.

The night before that I got to see Reggie Watts with some friends. I’m only passingly familiar with him so I probably didn’t enjoy the show as much as I might have, especially since as soon as any sort of music starts playing the speech-center of my brain shuts down completely and words lose all meaning to me. His standup was pretty good though. Very nerdy.

I saw Converge a while back too, which was just extremely excellent. It’s the second time I’ve seen them but this time I was much closer to the stage, which is really the only way to experience their ridiculous intensity. Jacob Bannon is a monster of a performer. They played a number of new songs, which didn’t really sound like anything as revolutionary (for them) as Dark Horse did before Axe to Fall was released, but they were definitely solid and I look forward to them. I only caught one of the opening acts, Loma Prieta, which sounded nothing like music at all and made me wish I’d remembered to bring my earplugs.

I watched some shows too. Some friends got me into Adventure Time, which is a great cartoon made for pretty much everybody, drawing from stuff like Dungeons and Dragons and Candyland, with both childish and adult sensibilities throughout. It’s a joy to watch. I also caught up with Justified, which seems to almost be a spiritual successor to Deadwood, starring the same Timothy Olyphant and guest-spotting a bunch of other alumni. It’s fantastically written and almost every episode is a gripping reprieve from some other less-awesome shows I’m still holding on to.

Community is not one of those less-awesome shows. It’s probably the most awesome. Shame that it probably won’t be next season though. We’ll miss you Dan.

I think that’s everything.

Cabin in the Woods

“Husband-bulge.”

Why are you not at the theater right now.

The Hunger Games

It’s nice to see something good come out of the Twilight poop-cloud. I’m assuming that’s largely why this movie was made anyway; the money-people saw a billion little girls swarming over a female-centric young-adult property and said “NEED MORE.” Very thankfully, this one happens to be based on an apparently quality series of novels that can be compared rather easily to a Japanese film called Battle Royale, which would never be released in theaters in the US. There are no sparkly vampires here.

It’s a weird dystopian future where a bunch of districts in some country are totally ruled by the Capitol, and must give up a young boy and girl each year to fight in a tribute deathmatch. They’re also really hungry, ergo the title, although that part wasn’t given too much explicit attention in the film. This girl Katniss, played by Jennifer Lawrence of Winter’s Bone and X-Men: First Class, offers herself up to save her younger sister. This is a big deal because no one has ever volunteered from her district before, although it’s not at all unheard of in others. Thusly she becomes something of an unwilling star in the game of killing her peers.

Given the concept you might think this could get pretty violent and be not all appropriate for the intended audience of pre-tween girls and boys, but they’ve managed to keep it pretty clean for the most part, and garnered a PG-13 rating so they could get all the moneys. It still works alright, and if you really want to see teenagers dismember each other bloodily then check out the aforementioned Battle Royale, coincidentally just released on BD and DVD in the US! There are a number of pretty emotional scenes, but even there it doesn’t get that heavy. I think the super-fast characterization and attachment required to really pull the heart-strings was done much better in The Grey.

The dystopia bit is really quite well done, with endlessly weird costumes and frightening TV show hosts, hearkening back to stuff like Running Man. It’s long but kept me entertained for the full running-time. Jennifer Lawrence is great. Explosions. Woody Harrelson. BIG BUCKS.

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.

John Carter (of Mars)

As usual, I haven’t read the book. Or books. I suppose it’s kind of shameful given that Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series is basically the reference for all sci-fi/fantasy that came after it, and I consider myself such a fan of the stuff. I do really like Frank Frazetta’s illustrations of it but that’s not really good enough. I know so very little about the real deal; but that could be for the best, as it made the movie that much newer to me even though everything in it has been tread so repeatedly in other stories.

It’s simple enough I guess. This guy John is a badass, gets accidentally transported to Mars, meets some aliens and an attractive lady, jumps really high and beats the bad guys. As usual the jumping really high part was what appealed to me the most. I didn’t care that much about all the backstory stuff, which includes a shadowy society of immortals who think they control the universe and all that. They were a little interesting but their admitted indifference kind of made them less menacing.

The best aspect of the movie is the visuals. It’s just really well put together. The alien race, the Tharks, while sometimes looking a bit cartoony are really quite believable; perhaps a bit moreso that the blue cat people from Avatar. Some of John’s jumping action is a bit wobbly but it’s still plenty fun to watch. I saw it in 3D, and it wasn’t bad, but I think sitting near the side of the theater degraded it a bit. I was seeing double sometimes.

Next up is the acting; I can’t really find fault with the majority of the cast. There are some damn fine actors in there, including McNulty from The Wire, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony from Rome, and Willem Dafoe as one of the Tharks’ voices. They all do a great job with the dialogue they’re given. Taylor Kitsch is… not great. They could have done better. Lynn Collins as the Martian princess is a much more enjoyable casting.

The dialogue often seems a bit tired, which is to be expected given that the source material has been used so thoroughly already, but I think if the writers had taken it in a different, more pulpy direction it could have been better. I really loved the funny bits, and wish there were more of them.

Reading reviews beforehand may have colored my opinion a bit, but I think the majority is right. It’s a very fun, well-made, but hollow movie.

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 Muppets / Chronicle

Thanks to my parents I grew up watching stuff like The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper, so while I didn’t actually see much of the Muppet Show, I still have a pretty good nostalgia level for these characters. However, after seeing some of the later films like Muppets in Space or whatever, I think some of that wore off, and kind of preempted any interest I would have had in this one. So I didn’t see it until last night, because doing stuff with friends is fun. I got to see it at the Arlington Draft House n’ Cinema which was pretty neat. Ate some chicken.

I’ll cut to the quick. It’s a good, entertaining movie that relies very heavily on nostalgia and cameos. The whole concept of the thing is of course getting the gang back together and all that, which is fine, but it’s missing something that the first films had. There’s also the new muppet character who is having an identity crisis in tandem with his somehow human brother played by Jason Segal, but even though it starts the real main storyline it eventually seems to become unimportant.

It was definitely fun to see all the cool people in it though, and as I said, it’s entertaining. Lots of funny bits. I like Amy Adams. Chicken tastes good.

I only started hearing about Chronicle a month or so ago, I think. Kept myself from watching and trailers. Similarly to my experience with The Skin I Live In, I went into it knowing very little; all I knew was it features some kids/teens who somehow gained some sort of telekinetic powers. I’m totally down with that. I’ll try not to go too far in depth on this.

It is in fact about three high-school seniors who find something weird in a cave and then gain the power to move things with their minds, among other things. The rest of the film is an examination of how having this power affects their lives and friendships without getting into any real sort of superhero nonsense. It’s all very believable and emotionally effective. There were some bits (thankfully not too many) that resonated pretty hard with me. Some of that watery stuff came out of my eye-holes near the end.

If you liked Heroes before it sucked, enjoy Misfits, or saw something to like in Kick-Ass or Super, then you should definitely see this movie. If you’ve ever dreamed of flying, you should see this movie. If you are a human, you should probably go see it. What I’m saying here is that it’s really good.

The Grey

Here’s yet another movie that was advertised in such a way as to cheapen the content and make it more appealing to the broader audience of people who just want to see Liam Neeson punch some wolves. That said, I don’t know if it would be doing as well as it is if they’d gone the more honest route. It’s been getting great reviews from pretty much everybody though so that’s a good pull if the general public actually pays attention to that.

Even though the trailer is a lie, The Grey does employ some common horror/action movie cliches, such as plane crashes and a bunch of people getting picked off one by one; but that’s just superficial to the real soul of the film. It’s about this guy played by Liam Neeson who’s pretty much ready to give up on everything, but in the face of a force outside of his control, his human survival instinct kicks in and makes him a leader. The rest of the cast is far from the incidental cannon fodder of elimination-style horror movies too; they all seem like real people rather than one-note stereotypes, and even the ones with the most limited screen time leave a lasting impression.

Lately I’ve grown to love action movies with a lot of breathing room, e.g. Drive, and this is definitely one of those. It’s hard to run in the snow and the wolves don’t even show up that much anyway. Much of the movie is just discussion of how doomed these people are, and it’s great. The action scenes are quite good too.

It’s a very human movie. Humanistic I’d say. There’s a somewhat pronounced element of religious questioning and relying on oneself instead of a distant god, and it really works quite well without going too far for semi-religious people to accept, I think. Neeson’s descriptions of his idea of what happens when you die seem starkly poetic.

It’s definitely not a perfect movie though. The whole thing with the wolves couldn’t really be done right without real wolves, and the animatronic/cg solution they came up with is just kind of embarrassing in parts. That said, the whole thing with people getting upset about the portrayal of the wolves as unstoppable death machines is pretty darn wrong. Neeson’s character explains several times that they are basically in the animal’s den and are therefore seen as much more of a threat than normal.

It’s good. You might not want to see it right now if you’ve got a flight coming up though.