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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

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

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

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

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

Not a great movie. A very good one though.

Cowboys and Aliens

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

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

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

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

Another Earth

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

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

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

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

Super 8

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

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

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

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

X-Men: First Class

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

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

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

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

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

Some TV Stuff

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

The Event

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

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

Castle

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

Chuck

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

House MD

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

The Office

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

Fringe

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

The Chicago Code

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

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

Community

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

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

DONE.

Source Code

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

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

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

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

Sucker Punch

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

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

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

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

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

Paul

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

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

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

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

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

The Adjustment Bureau

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

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

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

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

Tron: Legacy

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

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

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

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