All right, everyone's on about the new superhero movie Iron Man and I actually did go to see it opening weekend (rare for me, but it was the only thing playing at the time I could get away).
First things first: Take the f#$*(@ing bluetooth earpiece out of your (*#$*@ ear, jerkwad. That piercing blue LED makes watching the movie near you like watching it on an airport runway. OK?
OK, then.
Iron Man is apparently some sort of comic book hero--a guy in a waldo, by classic sci-fi terms. Because it's the first movie (and, oh, yes, there will be more), we get an origin story: Arms dealer and man-about-town Tony Stark is captured on a middle east tour and held captive by terrorists who want him to build them one of these super-duper missiles he's building for the US.
Instead, in comic book logic, he builds a super-suit and kicks their ass. Oh, and in the course of his kidnapping, he gets shot up and his co-prisoner saves his life by installing some sort of electromagnet that keeps the shrapnel out of his heart.
This is probably the most inspired comic book logic since Doc Ock preceded his work on a fusion reaction by building four artificially intelligent cyber-limbs (Spiderman 2).
Which is to say it's delightfully insane.
Anyway, he frees himself with the help of his suit, and then gets rescued from the deserts of Terroristan. And then things sorta get murky.
In the first part of the movie, Stark is an unrepentant patriot--you ain't seen patriotism like this since Starship Troopers, and in this movie, they aren't kidding!--convinced he's doing the right thing. After being kidnapped, and learning that the bad guys have his weapons, he sort of has an epiphany, and decides to stop making weapons. He devotes his time to his iron-man suit and the remarkable (also very comic-book) arc-generator that powers it.
Now, logically, Stark would be concerned with how the bad guys got his weapons and, to its credit, the movie does touch on this. But given the pro-military attitude, the idea that he would stop making weapons--jeopardizing his friends in the armed forces--seemed a little inconsistent. Some have interpreted the pause as tempoarary, until he found out who was supplying them.
But as I said, murky.
By the way, if you know anything about comic book logic, it's apparent from the get-go who the bad guy is.
So, what's the verdict?
Well, basically, it's good. Robert Downey Jr. was an excellent choice, and director Jon Favreau is to be commended for this and his overall handling of the subject matter. As with Elf, he plays the story out sincerely, avoiding camp, cynical intellectualism, and any sort of "I'm too good for this" vibe.
The pacing is good, and although the action payoffs aren't very big, they're big enough, as the rest of the script is populated by interesting characters, funny situations and the usual stuff that makes movies fun to watch. The music is adequate, if not memorable.
The supporting cast includes Gwyneth Paltrow (looking like Kirsten Dunst and sounding like Lisa Kudrow), Terence Howard as an Air Force buddy, Leslie Bibb as an intermittently antagonistic reporter, Shaun Toub (of Kite Runner) as the cave-imprisoned heart surgeon, and--as an extra added bonus for any movie--Jeff Bridges as corporate chief of Stark Enterprises. (I didn't actually recognize him--bald and gray-bearded--until he spoke, and kept hoping he'd say "Careful, man, there's a beverage here!")
Overall, it's fun, but not quite great. To compare it further with Spiderman 2, which I think is in some ways the epitome of the comic book film, in that movie, everyone's motivations were clear, even when distorted for comic book reasons. In this movie Tony Stark stops making weapons but becomes a weapon himself, giving us the message that, what, you can only count on or trust yourself?
Still, I suppose we can't get the Salkinds/Donner vision of Superman, with Truth, Justice and the American Way presented without further comment (and even back then, there was a lot of camp in those phrases and actions). Shame, though, as it really suited this movie while it lasted.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query comic book logic. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query comic book logic. Sort by date Show all posts
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Monday, August 6, 2012
The Dark Knight Rises
It was a fair bet that the last movie in Chris Nolan's Batman trilogy was not going to live up to the ridiculous hype of the second movie. But I think it's fair to say that, while we don't have a trilogy that measures up to only great trilogy in cinema history (Toy Story) we have a very solid finish to a very watchable trilogy.
Personally, this was probably my favorite of the three. If Nolan has a weakness—at least as far as I'm concerned—it's that his movie can be clever intellectually while not really engaging the emotion. In some ways, Insomnia is one of my favorite films of his because you really get a sense of Pacino's deterioration as the film goes on. (Plus I can relate to not having slept for long periods.)
But this was engaging on a lot of levels. There was tremendous layering and depth by a really top-notch crew of actors. The story begins several years after the last one ended with Batman having vanished, the scapegoat of the bad events of the previous film. Life is great now, with crime down and criminals being put away right-and-left thanks to the Dent act.
Gary Oldman does a fantastic job as Police Chief Gordon, who struggles every day with the lie he created for the greater good. New to this film is Nolan regular Joseph Gordon-Levitt, as the beat cop who believes in the Batman and knows what is afoot. Michael Caine's Alfred has the depth of a adoptive father, worried for the safety of his ward, far from the comic relief his character is typically associated with.
It's fair to say that, if these aren't the definitive interpretations of these characters, they are interpretations which future reboots will be measured against.
Anne Hathaway's Catwoman is particularly worthy of mention. In keeping with Nolan's hyper-realistic approach, she never really suits up and dons the mantle of "Catwoman". She's just a jewel thief. She only wears a mask at a costume party. They do this very clever trick of giving her special glasses that, when she flips up, look like ears.
She looks amazing in the jump suit—kinda have to get that out of the way up front. But she's shockingly convincing as a badass, delivering the occasional high kick and judo throw without ever getting camp.
She talks like an OWSer. I don't think Nolan was trying to make any specific political points: He's less about the OWS and more about the French Revolution, which is sort of what unfolds in Gotham during the course of the story. You can make your own parallels and draw your own conclusions; there's no reason for him to do so.
At the same time, if she's an OWSer, she's an early one, one who is horrified by the eventual climax and denouement of the revolution, like many of the people who got behind OWS at first only to later be appalled by the most noxious elements. Again, it's not necessarily an OWS commentary at all; these things happen all the time, and the OWS is just the most obvious recent similar example.
But travelling through the rubble of a once beautiful apartment, she picks up a photo and says "This was someone's home once." To which her female companion (Catwoman is totally bi, yo) replies "Now it's everyone's home." Catwoman's struggle is personal and profound, capturing the character's struggle between her sense of justice and the nagging remains of her morality.
There's an amazing sense of teamwork here, too. From Morgan Freeman's Lucius Fox and Marion Cotillard's Miranda down to Gordon and Blake (Levitt's character), I haven't mentioned the Batman his own self yet because he's just one character in this ensemble. Well, he's two: Batman and Bruce Wayne, and he's the hub around which the action takes place, though this isn't reflected all that much in screen time. (He's absent in the beginning of the film and also at the start of the third act.)
What's clear is that, unlike (especially) Burton, Nolan understands heroism. His Catwoman isn't a victim (whatever she's suffered), and each character gets a chance to be a hero, even the establishment-political-type-cop played by Matthew Modine.
Anyway, I should say Bale is beyond merely good as The Dark Knight. He seems comfortable—comfortable with the discomfort, you could say. He has less screen time in this than earlier films but he fills it well. I guess in part this is because in the earlier films, he was trading more on the past mythology of the Batman, whereas here we're looking at what he's done in the previous films, and the effect it's had both on the city and his own personal state.
Actor-wise, there are some nice touches in the form of the reappearance of Liam Neeson (as Ra's al Ghul) and Cillian Murphy (the Scarecrow). Heath Ledger's Joker is missed, but the movie is pretty well crammed—close to three hours in length, so his absence is more of a nostalgic ache than a conspicuous plot hole.
This is just the acting and characterization, and there are many other excellent points this movie: Like, getting away a little bit from the stark realistic feel of the last movie, this one really captures the imagery of the best comic book art. The initial battle between Bane and Batman is tremendous, a thrilling and horrifying spectacle with one shot directly lifted from the comic book cover. There's an excellent twist which would also be tipped if you knew your Batman—I only realized it after it happened.
Then there's music, set design—the sound mix was a little off in places, I thought, and I wasn't sure if it was deliberate, like, "It doesn't matter what they're saying."
But the biggest flaws were in this struggle that Nolan has between the comic book and the reality. I had this problem in spades with the last flick: The Batman's "no kill" code starts to look stupid in the face of the Joker's wanton destruction. There was a little less of that in this one but there were many other similar problems.
Bruce Wayne has some serious health problems, but they don't seem to stick. Like, he's been limping for years, but when he gets back into the suit he's fine. Now, they explain that with a little bit of mechanical assistance but it really just goes away, Bruce Wayne or Batman. And that's just the most obvious instance of a physical malady seeming nigh unconquerable only to vanish later on.
Then there's a little bit of comic-book-logic, which regular readers know that I love, but which is bizarrely out of place in Nolan's Gotham. The central plot device hinges on Wayne having put half his fortune into this unlimited energy source which he then abandons upon completion because it can be used as a weapon. Upon seeing it, Cotillard's Miranda exhales breathily, "Free energy for the entire city." And Wayne responds "but it can be turned into a bomb".
This is really beneath the Nolans (brother Jonathan co-wrote with Chris). First of all, we've already established it cost at least half the Wayne fortune variously figured at between $6 and $11 billion. And it completely renders the Wayne Corporation unprofitable. And Wayne's not the only shareholder.
So... free energy?
And the weapon it can be turned into? Well, a 4 megaton bomb. So...yeah, what's the point? It serves a certain dramatic purpose, to have the mistrustful Wayne turn over the keys to the bomb/fusion reactor to Miranda, but the setup struck me as kinda dopey. (Current nuclear plants are actually pretty safe from precisely this sort of thing.)
There's a prison in a remote region of—I think it's Tibet, recalling the first movie—but people seem to be able to get there and back pretty easily. Also, to be able to get a satellite cable hookup with big screen TV. Heh. How about that service call?
The Boy was particularly bothered by the street fight where everyone seems to forget they have guns. It's a thing with him.
I'm scratching the surface here. Point is, in some ways, it's not tight.
On the other hand, I could see going to see it again. There's a lot there. The drama is above par. The broad strokes are so right I can overlook the little stuff. A lot of satisfying wrapping up here, too. It's a good way to go out.
Anyway, nicely done, Nolans.
Personally, this was probably my favorite of the three. If Nolan has a weakness—at least as far as I'm concerned—it's that his movie can be clever intellectually while not really engaging the emotion. In some ways, Insomnia is one of my favorite films of his because you really get a sense of Pacino's deterioration as the film goes on. (Plus I can relate to not having slept for long periods.)
But this was engaging on a lot of levels. There was tremendous layering and depth by a really top-notch crew of actors. The story begins several years after the last one ended with Batman having vanished, the scapegoat of the bad events of the previous film. Life is great now, with crime down and criminals being put away right-and-left thanks to the Dent act.
Gary Oldman does a fantastic job as Police Chief Gordon, who struggles every day with the lie he created for the greater good. New to this film is Nolan regular Joseph Gordon-Levitt, as the beat cop who believes in the Batman and knows what is afoot. Michael Caine's Alfred has the depth of a adoptive father, worried for the safety of his ward, far from the comic relief his character is typically associated with.
It's fair to say that, if these aren't the definitive interpretations of these characters, they are interpretations which future reboots will be measured against.
Anne Hathaway's Catwoman is particularly worthy of mention. In keeping with Nolan's hyper-realistic approach, she never really suits up and dons the mantle of "Catwoman". She's just a jewel thief. She only wears a mask at a costume party. They do this very clever trick of giving her special glasses that, when she flips up, look like ears.
She looks amazing in the jump suit—kinda have to get that out of the way up front. But she's shockingly convincing as a badass, delivering the occasional high kick and judo throw without ever getting camp.
She talks like an OWSer. I don't think Nolan was trying to make any specific political points: He's less about the OWS and more about the French Revolution, which is sort of what unfolds in Gotham during the course of the story. You can make your own parallels and draw your own conclusions; there's no reason for him to do so.
At the same time, if she's an OWSer, she's an early one, one who is horrified by the eventual climax and denouement of the revolution, like many of the people who got behind OWS at first only to later be appalled by the most noxious elements. Again, it's not necessarily an OWS commentary at all; these things happen all the time, and the OWS is just the most obvious recent similar example.
But travelling through the rubble of a once beautiful apartment, she picks up a photo and says "This was someone's home once." To which her female companion (Catwoman is totally bi, yo) replies "Now it's everyone's home." Catwoman's struggle is personal and profound, capturing the character's struggle between her sense of justice and the nagging remains of her morality.
There's an amazing sense of teamwork here, too. From Morgan Freeman's Lucius Fox and Marion Cotillard's Miranda down to Gordon and Blake (Levitt's character), I haven't mentioned the Batman his own self yet because he's just one character in this ensemble. Well, he's two: Batman and Bruce Wayne, and he's the hub around which the action takes place, though this isn't reflected all that much in screen time. (He's absent in the beginning of the film and also at the start of the third act.)
What's clear is that, unlike (especially) Burton, Nolan understands heroism. His Catwoman isn't a victim (whatever she's suffered), and each character gets a chance to be a hero, even the establishment-political-type-cop played by Matthew Modine.
Anyway, I should say Bale is beyond merely good as The Dark Knight. He seems comfortable—comfortable with the discomfort, you could say. He has less screen time in this than earlier films but he fills it well. I guess in part this is because in the earlier films, he was trading more on the past mythology of the Batman, whereas here we're looking at what he's done in the previous films, and the effect it's had both on the city and his own personal state.
Actor-wise, there are some nice touches in the form of the reappearance of Liam Neeson (as Ra's al Ghul) and Cillian Murphy (the Scarecrow). Heath Ledger's Joker is missed, but the movie is pretty well crammed—close to three hours in length, so his absence is more of a nostalgic ache than a conspicuous plot hole.
This is just the acting and characterization, and there are many other excellent points this movie: Like, getting away a little bit from the stark realistic feel of the last movie, this one really captures the imagery of the best comic book art. The initial battle between Bane and Batman is tremendous, a thrilling and horrifying spectacle with one shot directly lifted from the comic book cover. There's an excellent twist which would also be tipped if you knew your Batman—I only realized it after it happened.
Then there's music, set design—the sound mix was a little off in places, I thought, and I wasn't sure if it was deliberate, like, "It doesn't matter what they're saying."
But the biggest flaws were in this struggle that Nolan has between the comic book and the reality. I had this problem in spades with the last flick: The Batman's "no kill" code starts to look stupid in the face of the Joker's wanton destruction. There was a little less of that in this one but there were many other similar problems.
Bruce Wayne has some serious health problems, but they don't seem to stick. Like, he's been limping for years, but when he gets back into the suit he's fine. Now, they explain that with a little bit of mechanical assistance but it really just goes away, Bruce Wayne or Batman. And that's just the most obvious instance of a physical malady seeming nigh unconquerable only to vanish later on.
Then there's a little bit of comic-book-logic, which regular readers know that I love, but which is bizarrely out of place in Nolan's Gotham. The central plot device hinges on Wayne having put half his fortune into this unlimited energy source which he then abandons upon completion because it can be used as a weapon. Upon seeing it, Cotillard's Miranda exhales breathily, "Free energy for the entire city." And Wayne responds "but it can be turned into a bomb".
This is really beneath the Nolans (brother Jonathan co-wrote with Chris). First of all, we've already established it cost at least half the Wayne fortune variously figured at between $6 and $11 billion. And it completely renders the Wayne Corporation unprofitable. And Wayne's not the only shareholder.
So... free energy?
And the weapon it can be turned into? Well, a 4 megaton bomb. So...yeah, what's the point? It serves a certain dramatic purpose, to have the mistrustful Wayne turn over the keys to the bomb/fusion reactor to Miranda, but the setup struck me as kinda dopey. (Current nuclear plants are actually pretty safe from precisely this sort of thing.)
There's a prison in a remote region of—I think it's Tibet, recalling the first movie—but people seem to be able to get there and back pretty easily. Also, to be able to get a satellite cable hookup with big screen TV. Heh. How about that service call?
The Boy was particularly bothered by the street fight where everyone seems to forget they have guns. It's a thing with him.
I'm scratching the surface here. Point is, in some ways, it's not tight.
On the other hand, I could see going to see it again. There's a lot there. The drama is above par. The broad strokes are so right I can overlook the little stuff. A lot of satisfying wrapping up here, too. It's a good way to go out.
Anyway, nicely done, Nolans.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
The Avengers
I am actually getting pretty tired of all these superhero movies. Most of 'em are Marvel, for one thing, which was never my thing. Since the lead time is so long on these suckers and one bad apple can kill a franchise, nearly every damn one of 'em has an "origin story". They tend to rely on dodgy and homogenizing special effects. Also, the tropes of the genre have infected most other genres, turning up where you wouldn't expect, like in Dark Shadows.
Et cetera.
But they're also often the best movies made in the year, however, so there ya are. Or rather, there I am, with The Flower and The Boy watching the latest smash 'em up directed by no less a figure than Joss Whedon ("Buffy The Vampire Slayer", "Firefly").
Well, it's good.
Very good.
I'd say that The Dark Knight Rises has got its work cut out for it to be the comic book movie of the year, but I'm not sure Dark Knight is even really a superhero movie. (Batman's not a superhero, and Nolan seems increasingly determined to avoid most of the tropes of the superhero genre, in something akin to irony.)
This really is.
The story doesn't really matter. The world is imperiled and earth's mightiest heroes must come together to save it. Well, the mightiest heroes in the Marvel universe that aren't already licensed out to other studios. Which is why the whole thing is kind of odd, from a marketing perspective: Iron Man, Captain America, The Hulk and Thor aren't the A-List. Black Widow and Hawkeye aren't even on the B-List!
But Whedon does an excellent job delineating the characters. Granted, these guys are drawn in broad strokes and have long histories, but there's a scene where the slutty chick from "How I Met Your Mother" says something to Captain America about Thor being a god, and Captain America says, "There's only one God, ma'am, and he doesn't look like that."
Nice.
Because, you know, that's what Captain America, frozen in time in WWII, would say. There's a somewhat meta-reference to the fish-out-of-water thing as Captain America and Thor seem to be competing vis a vis who's more out of the cultural loop.
And the movie is filled with nice touches like that, that aren't really touches but maintaining continuity of character, in a knowing but respectful way that makes the movie lively, upbeat entertainment.
There's no doubt that he's behind the strength of the two human heroes, Hawkeye and Black Widow. They would've been disposable in just about any other writer/director's hands, but their relationship is central and Black Widow in particular has a number of pivotal roles and surprising turns.
Whedon also fully embraces the insanity of comic book logic, much in the way Sam Raimi did with his Spider-Man movies (particularly the second one).
The Boy, who isn't inclined toward these things, said he didn't think it could've been any better, and not in a backhanded way. The Flower loved it. You can't really ask much more of an action movie than that it makes you care enough about the characters to make the action interesting, and this mostly does.
With eight big characters (the six heroes, Nick Fury and Loki), you're going to be pressed for time. All the actors from the previous movies are back, with the exception of The Hulk being played not by Edward Norton but by Mark Ruffalo, who is possibly the only better guy for the role of the wan Bruce Banner. The new character, Hawkeye, is played ably by Jeremy Renner (of The Hurt Locker and The Town).
It's said that this movie started as an in-joke as the stinger for Iron Man, but on the strengths of the movies about the other three heroes became a reality and it's something of a minor miracle that it paid off at all, to say nothing of this well.
So, tired as I am, I'd go see Avengers 2, if Whedon directs.
Et cetera.
But they're also often the best movies made in the year, however, so there ya are. Or rather, there I am, with The Flower and The Boy watching the latest smash 'em up directed by no less a figure than Joss Whedon ("Buffy The Vampire Slayer", "Firefly").
Well, it's good.
Very good.
I'd say that The Dark Knight Rises has got its work cut out for it to be the comic book movie of the year, but I'm not sure Dark Knight is even really a superhero movie. (Batman's not a superhero, and Nolan seems increasingly determined to avoid most of the tropes of the superhero genre, in something akin to irony.)
This really is.
The story doesn't really matter. The world is imperiled and earth's mightiest heroes must come together to save it. Well, the mightiest heroes in the Marvel universe that aren't already licensed out to other studios. Which is why the whole thing is kind of odd, from a marketing perspective: Iron Man, Captain America, The Hulk and Thor aren't the A-List. Black Widow and Hawkeye aren't even on the B-List!
But Whedon does an excellent job delineating the characters. Granted, these guys are drawn in broad strokes and have long histories, but there's a scene where the slutty chick from "How I Met Your Mother" says something to Captain America about Thor being a god, and Captain America says, "There's only one God, ma'am, and he doesn't look like that."
Nice.
Because, you know, that's what Captain America, frozen in time in WWII, would say. There's a somewhat meta-reference to the fish-out-of-water thing as Captain America and Thor seem to be competing vis a vis who's more out of the cultural loop.
And the movie is filled with nice touches like that, that aren't really touches but maintaining continuity of character, in a knowing but respectful way that makes the movie lively, upbeat entertainment.
There's no doubt that he's behind the strength of the two human heroes, Hawkeye and Black Widow. They would've been disposable in just about any other writer/director's hands, but their relationship is central and Black Widow in particular has a number of pivotal roles and surprising turns.
Whedon also fully embraces the insanity of comic book logic, much in the way Sam Raimi did with his Spider-Man movies (particularly the second one).
The Boy, who isn't inclined toward these things, said he didn't think it could've been any better, and not in a backhanded way. The Flower loved it. You can't really ask much more of an action movie than that it makes you care enough about the characters to make the action interesting, and this mostly does.
With eight big characters (the six heroes, Nick Fury and Loki), you're going to be pressed for time. All the actors from the previous movies are back, with the exception of The Hulk being played not by Edward Norton but by Mark Ruffalo, who is possibly the only better guy for the role of the wan Bruce Banner. The new character, Hawkeye, is played ably by Jeremy Renner (of The Hurt Locker and The Town).
It's said that this movie started as an in-joke as the stinger for Iron Man, but on the strengths of the movies about the other three heroes became a reality and it's something of a minor miracle that it paid off at all, to say nothing of this well.
So, tired as I am, I'd go see Avengers 2, if Whedon directs.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Captain America: Winter Soldier
As I've mentioned, patience for the superhero movie is wearing thin at Casa'strom, so much so, I think I pushed this out of my mind almost immediately after seeing it.
Which isn't fair, because it's really quite good, and it avoids a lot of the worst aspects of the superhero movie.
But if we can take anything from Captain America: Winter Soldier, it's that life isn't fair.
Actually, I don't think that's really the message of any of it, but what the heck.
The story follows Captain America, after he wakes up in the future—er, present—and fights whatever it was "The Avengers" were fighting (do I remember? No, I do not) and now wanders around DC in a sort of emotional isolation.
One thing this movie does very well is bring the feels, but without bogging things down. It's a nice touch that Steve Rogers is emblematic of war veterans who have trouble adjusting to civilian life, for example.
Hayley Atwell is back as Peggy Carter, though she's—well, I guess she'd be 100 now—so the movie uses that to get some emotional grounding.
Scarlett Johansson reprises her role as Black Widow, and brings some real depth to her character, who's mostly been filler to this point. (Though her big sacrifice doesn't seem to amount to much.) As Cap's platonic pal, with issues of her own, she contributes a lot to his development as well.
The story is that Cap is working for SHIELD and Nick Fury (Samuel Jackson, of course) though there's a tension between them since there are things that Fury wants done that Cap wouldn't do. Black Widow does the dirty work, but Cap isn't crazy about being used in that fashion.
The big back story involves Fury's Big Plan to launch a fleet of those awesome flying aircraft carriers that showed up in the Avengers film, and the trouble he's getting from world bureaucrats. Well, he and his pal Pierce, who represents...I'm not sure, exactly. Civilian command? Intelligence officer? I don't recall him being given any title or organization designation. He's just Fury's ally in handling paperwork and politics or something.
He's also played by Robert Redford, who's the best villain since Jodie Foster in Elysium (and you should read this to get exactly how cutting a critique this is). The fact that he's a villain is a spoiler, by the way. Sorry. I mean, "Sorry, if you didn't see that coming the instant Redford agreed to play the role of a government intelligence agent building a super-secret army."
I've already said it's time to pull the plug on Redford, and this role—well, apparently he's been bitching about not having the chance to play villains previously, which strikes me as an odd statement for a guy who built a film empire—this role is just not flattering for him. Much like Foster in Elysium, there's no understanding, no depth, just a sad caricature of what he thinks a bad guy might be like. (Just a regular, laid back dude, apparently.)
Weakest part of an otherwise strong film.
All that aside, the action is above par for a superhero film, not going gaga with the CGI, and relying on a lot of standard fighting action where possible. I thought it also hit the sweet spot of "comic book logic" with a few silly surprises that work 'cause, you know, it's a comic book. (See, I'm not going to spoil those because those are actual surprises, unlike the what-the-heck-is-he-except-third-act-turncoat-bait Redford role.)
The final set piece is huge, and The Boy didn't care for it, but it worked for me, mostly. It didn't make a lick of sense, of course, and some of the fighting seemed kind of silly, but overall it was appropriate.
I mean, if you like superhero movies, there's no reason to not like this. But, as I said, they're wearing out their welcome here.
Which isn't fair, because it's really quite good, and it avoids a lot of the worst aspects of the superhero movie.
But if we can take anything from Captain America: Winter Soldier, it's that life isn't fair.
Actually, I don't think that's really the message of any of it, but what the heck.
The story follows Captain America, after he wakes up in the future—er, present—and fights whatever it was "The Avengers" were fighting (do I remember? No, I do not) and now wanders around DC in a sort of emotional isolation.
One thing this movie does very well is bring the feels, but without bogging things down. It's a nice touch that Steve Rogers is emblematic of war veterans who have trouble adjusting to civilian life, for example.
Hayley Atwell is back as Peggy Carter, though she's—well, I guess she'd be 100 now—so the movie uses that to get some emotional grounding.
Scarlett Johansson reprises her role as Black Widow, and brings some real depth to her character, who's mostly been filler to this point. (Though her big sacrifice doesn't seem to amount to much.) As Cap's platonic pal, with issues of her own, she contributes a lot to his development as well.
The story is that Cap is working for SHIELD and Nick Fury (Samuel Jackson, of course) though there's a tension between them since there are things that Fury wants done that Cap wouldn't do. Black Widow does the dirty work, but Cap isn't crazy about being used in that fashion.
The big back story involves Fury's Big Plan to launch a fleet of those awesome flying aircraft carriers that showed up in the Avengers film, and the trouble he's getting from world bureaucrats. Well, he and his pal Pierce, who represents...I'm not sure, exactly. Civilian command? Intelligence officer? I don't recall him being given any title or organization designation. He's just Fury's ally in handling paperwork and politics or something.
He's also played by Robert Redford, who's the best villain since Jodie Foster in Elysium (and you should read this to get exactly how cutting a critique this is). The fact that he's a villain is a spoiler, by the way. Sorry. I mean, "Sorry, if you didn't see that coming the instant Redford agreed to play the role of a government intelligence agent building a super-secret army."
I've already said it's time to pull the plug on Redford, and this role—well, apparently he's been bitching about not having the chance to play villains previously, which strikes me as an odd statement for a guy who built a film empire—this role is just not flattering for him. Much like Foster in Elysium, there's no understanding, no depth, just a sad caricature of what he thinks a bad guy might be like. (Just a regular, laid back dude, apparently.)
Weakest part of an otherwise strong film.
All that aside, the action is above par for a superhero film, not going gaga with the CGI, and relying on a lot of standard fighting action where possible. I thought it also hit the sweet spot of "comic book logic" with a few silly surprises that work 'cause, you know, it's a comic book. (See, I'm not going to spoil those because those are actual surprises, unlike the what-the-heck-is-he-except-third-act-turncoat-bait Redford role.)
The final set piece is huge, and The Boy didn't care for it, but it worked for me, mostly. It didn't make a lick of sense, of course, and some of the fighting seemed kind of silly, but overall it was appropriate.
I mean, if you like superhero movies, there's no reason to not like this. But, as I said, they're wearing out their welcome here.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Thor? Why, I'm Furiouth!
OK, now that I've seen the movie, my kids can breathe a sigh of relief because I'll stop doing that dumb joke. (Probably.)
Thor is the latest in the Marvel-Takes-Over-The-Movies rampage that started in earnest with Sam Raimi's Spider-Man and has led down such inglorious blind alleys as Daredevil and Hellcow. (OK, they haven't done Hellcow...yet.)
I was always a DC guy, I think I've mentioned, and Thor was one of the reasons why. As a big fan of Greek and Norse mythology, the idea of a Thor superhero struck me as stupid. Whereas, I dunno, Metamorpho seemed perfectly non-stupid? (I find the whole Marvel/DC dichotomy interesting, because obviously both companies made good and bad comic books, and certainly I didn't have any peer pressure, yet I never liked Spider-Man, The Hulk, The Fantastic Four, etc.)
Anyway, here we have the tale of the Norse god as a sort of sci-fi/superhero mash-up. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) lives in Asgard with his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins), mother Frigga (Renee Russo) and his possibly evil brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) where they hold off the definitely evil Frost Giants with their United Colors of Benneton Super Best Friends.
Through a variety of wacky adventures (or an evil plot, mayhap?) Thor ends up powerless, hammerless and banished to earth, where he falls into the lap of plucky cosmologist Jane (Natalie Portman). Thor's got to get back to Asgard to save everybody from all the badness. But of course, there's some ass that needs kickin' down on earth, too.
Kenneth Branagh directs and does a fine job with some occasionally thin material. It's done in sincerity and without the wink-and-a-nod of a critic's darling but also without taking itself too seriously. (My favorite Branagh-directed movie would be another one of his less artsy films, the thriller Dead Again.)
The movie takes place at both ends in the Flash Gordon-esque world of Asgard, and in the middle on Earth in New Mexico. The Asgard stuff is—well, I liked it? But it's not exactly Lord of the Rings. And while I'm not a fan of the trilogy, it looked epic, whereas Asgard sometimes came off as cheesy.
The movie really picks up when it comes to earth. Chris Hemsworth does an oustanding job, even though it may seem like not a difficult task. You know, "Stand there. Look gorgeous. Take off your shirt. Smile." But I think we've all seen it done badly, and there is some subtlety here.
We have to like him, for example. But we also have to see that he's a bit too cocksure—arrogant, even. Too self-involved and not overly concerned about what happens to others. Imperious. And he has to do all that without us disliking him and while being a complete White Knight, a la Superman.
It doesn't hurt that he looks the part. Am I right, ladies? He towers over Portman, and most of the cast, which reminds me a little of my experience at The Graves premiere. That is, he looks huge, but he's also about the same height as The Boy, who is only slightly taller than I. Heh.
Point is, he looks and acts the part. Reminded me (favorably) of the young Chris Reeves.
Tim Hiddleston is the other really strong part of this. Ace of Spades has a mega-review up here where he talks about many of the same things I do, only in much greater detail. (He praises it, only faulting it for not trying to be a great movie.) Ace doesn't seem to be impressed by the comparisons of Loki to Shakespeare's finest villain, Iago, but I have to admit, it occurred to me, too.
There's a lot of complexity and subtlety in that character, and Hiddleston did a fine job with it.
I'm not (ever) as impressed with Portman as everyone else seems to be. She's fine here. Her whole job is to fall pretty much instantly in love with Thor, and she does a serviceable job. Her role is—I'm not sure, exactly whether she's a cosmologist or an astrophysicist, but she provides the bridge between the science-fiction and fantasy elements of the story in some of the finest comic book logic since Doc Ock started his fusion experiment by making autonomously intelligent tentacles for his back in Spiderman 2.
I love that sort of thing.
But Portman comes off fine, though Kat Dennings (40 Year Old Virgin) steals scenes from under her and comes off sexier—and I'm not really a fan of Dennings looks, either. OK, if you twist my arm, I'd have to say Jaimie Alexander as Sif comes off the hottest. Ass-kicking Viking women! And 5'9" she can tower over the tiny Portman and Dennings, so it looks a little more plausible than it—well, then it normally does when actresses go around kicking ass in action films.
What else? Music: Good. Setting? Nice: New Mexico makes a nice change from the big city shenanigans. It felt more intimate. Climactic Plot Point: I liked it, but a lot of people have said there wasn't enough on the line. I felt it fit in perfectly with a white knight story. Tie-ins with other Marvel Properties? Meh. I have a bad feeling about all that.
Overall, I'd recommend it if you can hang with the comic book thang. The Boy and The Flower both liked strongly, but were not terribly enthused. No requests for "Thor" underwear have been made, e.g.
Thor is the latest in the Marvel-Takes-Over-The-Movies rampage that started in earnest with Sam Raimi's Spider-Man and has led down such inglorious blind alleys as Daredevil and Hellcow. (OK, they haven't done Hellcow...yet.)
I was always a DC guy, I think I've mentioned, and Thor was one of the reasons why. As a big fan of Greek and Norse mythology, the idea of a Thor superhero struck me as stupid. Whereas, I dunno, Metamorpho seemed perfectly non-stupid? (I find the whole Marvel/DC dichotomy interesting, because obviously both companies made good and bad comic books, and certainly I didn't have any peer pressure, yet I never liked Spider-Man, The Hulk, The Fantastic Four, etc.)
Anyway, here we have the tale of the Norse god as a sort of sci-fi/superhero mash-up. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) lives in Asgard with his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins), mother Frigga (Renee Russo) and his possibly evil brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) where they hold off the definitely evil Frost Giants with their United Colors of Benneton Super Best Friends.
Through a variety of wacky adventures (or an evil plot, mayhap?) Thor ends up powerless, hammerless and banished to earth, where he falls into the lap of plucky cosmologist Jane (Natalie Portman). Thor's got to get back to Asgard to save everybody from all the badness. But of course, there's some ass that needs kickin' down on earth, too.
Kenneth Branagh directs and does a fine job with some occasionally thin material. It's done in sincerity and without the wink-and-a-nod of a critic's darling but also without taking itself too seriously. (My favorite Branagh-directed movie would be another one of his less artsy films, the thriller Dead Again.)
The movie takes place at both ends in the Flash Gordon-esque world of Asgard, and in the middle on Earth in New Mexico. The Asgard stuff is—well, I liked it? But it's not exactly Lord of the Rings. And while I'm not a fan of the trilogy, it looked epic, whereas Asgard sometimes came off as cheesy.
The movie really picks up when it comes to earth. Chris Hemsworth does an oustanding job, even though it may seem like not a difficult task. You know, "Stand there. Look gorgeous. Take off your shirt. Smile." But I think we've all seen it done badly, and there is some subtlety here.
We have to like him, for example. But we also have to see that he's a bit too cocksure—arrogant, even. Too self-involved and not overly concerned about what happens to others. Imperious. And he has to do all that without us disliking him and while being a complete White Knight, a la Superman.
It doesn't hurt that he looks the part. Am I right, ladies? He towers over Portman, and most of the cast, which reminds me a little of my experience at The Graves premiere. That is, he looks huge, but he's also about the same height as The Boy, who is only slightly taller than I. Heh.
Point is, he looks and acts the part. Reminded me (favorably) of the young Chris Reeves.
Tim Hiddleston is the other really strong part of this. Ace of Spades has a mega-review up here where he talks about many of the same things I do, only in much greater detail. (He praises it, only faulting it for not trying to be a great movie.) Ace doesn't seem to be impressed by the comparisons of Loki to Shakespeare's finest villain, Iago, but I have to admit, it occurred to me, too.
There's a lot of complexity and subtlety in that character, and Hiddleston did a fine job with it.
I'm not (ever) as impressed with Portman as everyone else seems to be. She's fine here. Her whole job is to fall pretty much instantly in love with Thor, and she does a serviceable job. Her role is—I'm not sure, exactly whether she's a cosmologist or an astrophysicist, but she provides the bridge between the science-fiction and fantasy elements of the story in some of the finest comic book logic since Doc Ock started his fusion experiment by making autonomously intelligent tentacles for his back in Spiderman 2.
I love that sort of thing.
But Portman comes off fine, though Kat Dennings (40 Year Old Virgin) steals scenes from under her and comes off sexier—and I'm not really a fan of Dennings looks, either. OK, if you twist my arm, I'd have to say Jaimie Alexander as Sif comes off the hottest. Ass-kicking Viking women! And 5'9" she can tower over the tiny Portman and Dennings, so it looks a little more plausible than it—well, then it normally does when actresses go around kicking ass in action films.
What else? Music: Good. Setting? Nice: New Mexico makes a nice change from the big city shenanigans. It felt more intimate. Climactic Plot Point: I liked it, but a lot of people have said there wasn't enough on the line. I felt it fit in perfectly with a white knight story. Tie-ins with other Marvel Properties? Meh. I have a bad feeling about all that.
Overall, I'd recommend it if you can hang with the comic book thang. The Boy and The Flower both liked strongly, but were not terribly enthused. No requests for "Thor" underwear have been made, e.g.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Spider-man again? Amazing!
When your eleven-year-old responds to a reboot with "Already?!" then that may be a sign that said reboot is a bit premature.
Frankly, I didn't think it was such a big deal. When they reboot Batman three years from now, I'll be thinking that's more than enough, probably, but it's not like we're steeped in Spider-Man stories.
To clarify, I didn't think that going in. Actually watching the movie, however, my opinion shifted a little. This movie was in such a panic to jam everything about Spider-man into the movie, it comes off a little jarring and silly at times.
Overall, it's an okay flick. Uneven. I did find myself constantly comparing it to Raimi's version. The CGI in this is light years better. I mean, it's really good, and I was greatly concerned about it. There are a few fakey moments but to a degree it's good enough that the problem comes down to the source material: i.e., some things portrayed in comic books are going to look goofy when you try to translate them to real life.
The costume is great, though utterly unexplainable both in terms of how our hero acquires it and how it seems to have no seams for the hood, yet the hood pulls off easily. Heh.
Andrew Garfield doesn't look anything like Peter Parker, but the near 30-year-old can play a nerdy teen convincingly—entirely differently from Tobey Maguire—and is occasionally much better as the hero.
Sally Fields is pretty awful as Aunt May, but Martin Sheen is even worse as Uncle Ben. Where Rosemary Harris and Cliff Robertson owned those roles, Sheen (who was so good recently in The Way) seems like a naggy killjoy. Actually, the whole Uncle Ben story arc, which starts out promising, just goes horribly awry.
I mean, he dies because, I guess, he must, but not much comes of it. I mean, there's no funeral. There's no mourning. Life goes on its chirpy way until a few scenes later, when Fields allows how she's a little put out by the whole husband-getting-killed thing.
I'm willing to blame the Uncle Ben thing on the director, but Sally Fields still has the same hair color she had 40 years ago. It's weirdly distracting. You're playing an old lady, Sally, embrace it or just don't take the part. I dunno. It didn't work for me at all.
It threw me off that Dennis Leary was in this movie, because he looks and sounds quite a bit like Willem Dafoe, who played The Green Goblin in the original. But he was pretty good as chief of police and Gwen Stacey's father. Though his story arc is also a little weird.
Emma Stone, once again playing the parts no one will hire Lindsay Lohan for any more, is typically excellent as Gwen Stacey.
The sound mix is occasionally awful and the music sometimes made me go "Huh?" but the real problems with this film have to do with its inability to find its tone.
For example, Raimi's Spider-man was a cheerful, fun action flick with the requisite amounts of melodrama and a tight lid on the camp. Nolan's Batman is dark and heavily realistic.
Marc Webb's (500 Days Of Summer) Spider-man can't seem to make up its mind. There's death and destruction everywhere that's somewhat reminiscent of Nolan's Dark Knight, but Spider-man's always been kind of a smartass, so he'll drop a snarky comment—and it jangles like car keys in the back of a piano. Or something.
It's not just verbal either. The movie commendably embraces comic book logic at some points while at others just drops all logic and then swivels back to a kind of gritty realism. The movie tries to create emotional impacts but then rushes past them in a hurry to jam as much of the myth into the allotted 2.5 hours as it possibly can.
The movie's villain is both menacing and sorta goofy looking, and at times evil-seeming while at others mostly just muddled.
Oh, here's a good example: Peter Parker realizes that he needs to wear the costume to protect his loved ones, but then he leaves a camera with his name and address on it in a conspicuous location. And the movie throws a bunch of crap out that doesn't resolve so, you know, sequel(s).
We enjoyed it, to varying degrees. The Boy spotted the tonal problems and The Flower just wasn't bowled over but it's not a bad popcorn movie. It's just an inauspicious start for a series that wants to fill the shoes of the previous (however flawed) trilogy.
Frankly, I didn't think it was such a big deal. When they reboot Batman three years from now, I'll be thinking that's more than enough, probably, but it's not like we're steeped in Spider-Man stories.
To clarify, I didn't think that going in. Actually watching the movie, however, my opinion shifted a little. This movie was in such a panic to jam everything about Spider-man into the movie, it comes off a little jarring and silly at times.
Overall, it's an okay flick. Uneven. I did find myself constantly comparing it to Raimi's version. The CGI in this is light years better. I mean, it's really good, and I was greatly concerned about it. There are a few fakey moments but to a degree it's good enough that the problem comes down to the source material: i.e., some things portrayed in comic books are going to look goofy when you try to translate them to real life.
The costume is great, though utterly unexplainable both in terms of how our hero acquires it and how it seems to have no seams for the hood, yet the hood pulls off easily. Heh.
Andrew Garfield doesn't look anything like Peter Parker, but the near 30-year-old can play a nerdy teen convincingly—entirely differently from Tobey Maguire—and is occasionally much better as the hero.
Sally Fields is pretty awful as Aunt May, but Martin Sheen is even worse as Uncle Ben. Where Rosemary Harris and Cliff Robertson owned those roles, Sheen (who was so good recently in The Way) seems like a naggy killjoy. Actually, the whole Uncle Ben story arc, which starts out promising, just goes horribly awry.
I mean, he dies because, I guess, he must, but not much comes of it. I mean, there's no funeral. There's no mourning. Life goes on its chirpy way until a few scenes later, when Fields allows how she's a little put out by the whole husband-getting-killed thing.
I'm willing to blame the Uncle Ben thing on the director, but Sally Fields still has the same hair color she had 40 years ago. It's weirdly distracting. You're playing an old lady, Sally, embrace it or just don't take the part. I dunno. It didn't work for me at all.
It threw me off that Dennis Leary was in this movie, because he looks and sounds quite a bit like Willem Dafoe, who played The Green Goblin in the original. But he was pretty good as chief of police and Gwen Stacey's father. Though his story arc is also a little weird.
Emma Stone, once again playing the parts no one will hire Lindsay Lohan for any more, is typically excellent as Gwen Stacey.
The sound mix is occasionally awful and the music sometimes made me go "Huh?" but the real problems with this film have to do with its inability to find its tone.
For example, Raimi's Spider-man was a cheerful, fun action flick with the requisite amounts of melodrama and a tight lid on the camp. Nolan's Batman is dark and heavily realistic.
Marc Webb's (500 Days Of Summer) Spider-man can't seem to make up its mind. There's death and destruction everywhere that's somewhat reminiscent of Nolan's Dark Knight, but Spider-man's always been kind of a smartass, so he'll drop a snarky comment—and it jangles like car keys in the back of a piano. Or something.
It's not just verbal either. The movie commendably embraces comic book logic at some points while at others just drops all logic and then swivels back to a kind of gritty realism. The movie tries to create emotional impacts but then rushes past them in a hurry to jam as much of the myth into the allotted 2.5 hours as it possibly can.
The movie's villain is both menacing and sorta goofy looking, and at times evil-seeming while at others mostly just muddled.
Oh, here's a good example: Peter Parker realizes that he needs to wear the costume to protect his loved ones, but then he leaves a camera with his name and address on it in a conspicuous location. And the movie throws a bunch of crap out that doesn't resolve so, you know, sequel(s).
We enjoyed it, to varying degrees. The Boy spotted the tonal problems and The Flower just wasn't bowled over but it's not a bad popcorn movie. It's just an inauspicious start for a series that wants to fill the shoes of the previous (however flawed) trilogy.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Dress For Success
The Flower wants a lab coat and glasses to wear while she's doing her math and science work. (There's comic book logic and six-year-old girl logic, and there's no point in arguing with either of them.)Yeah, I stole the picture here from iStockphoto--I guesss that's what the watermark says. It was the best picture I could find.
And yet.
It looks like she's about to give the cable repairman a "biology lesson". If you know what I mean, and I think you do.
Sheesh.
You think that's bad? The Flower also wants a French maid outfit for when she cleans.
There are no pictures of French maid outfits on the entire internet suitable for a post about my daughter.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Kick-Ass
It's hard to believe that prior to Bryan Singer's X-Men (2000) and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man(2002) superhero movies (as such) were rather rare. Superheroes were kiddie stuff throughout the '40s and '50s, and the campy "Batman" TV series would have seemed to be the gravestone on any non-goofy interpretation of superheroes—which may have been the reason that the Salkinds struggled so mightly with Richard Donner over the classic '70s Superman movies, with Donner wanting to play it straight and the Salkinds going for slapstick.
But the Salkind's Superman movies didn't translate into a lot of other superhero movies any more than Tim Burton's Batman did. Burton's aesthetic translated marvelously to Gotham City and rescued an otherwise shoddy interpretation. (Burton doesn't get comic books at all, as was disastrously apparent in his sequel.)
But with CGI, and the fortuitous application of some of our greatest younger directors, like Singer and Raimi, the box office bonanzas of the early part of the millennium have meant superhero movies galore.
Not only do we get a bushel of 'em every year, we also get parodies, deconstructions, and movies that pretend not to be superhero movies, but really are.
Which brings us to this year's Kick-Ass. In this movie, a nerdy, bullied high-school kid decides to get himself a ski suit, some clobberin' sticks, and fight crime.
Now, you never know which route a story like this is going to go. Does he succeed, empowered by his...uh...ski suit? Er, training. Yeah, like Batman? Or, does he end up getting super-powers through some unforeseen random chance? Or does he just plain get the crap kicked out of him?
I don't want to spoil anything; in one of the nicer surprises I've seen in movies lately, the answer to the above is more complex than I've laid it out. Now, if you actually know anything about fighting and/or the human body, you realize that it's kind of stupid, too, but a little suspension of disbelief goes a long way.
In his adventures, our hero, who clumsily dubs himself "Kick-Ass", meets the equally clunky-named "Hit-Girl", an eleven-year-old girl who has been trained from a baby to be a killing machine. Her father, who goes by the moniker "Big Daddy", and dresses just like the campy Batman of the '60s, has raised her up to help him take revenge on the drug lord who ruined his career, and on whom he blames the death of his wife and her mother.
So, in other words, we have a full-on genuine comic book storyline and characters in the middle of our parody. Filmmakers do this from time-to-time, with a sort of ironic detachment (I'm better than this, so it's cool when I do it), and it can be disastrous.
It's not here, at least I didn't think so, until the climactic scene, when it's very clear we've completely embraced the comic-heroic logic and dispensed with the parody. The end is actually a bit campy, unfortunately.
Entertaining film. IMDB currently has it as #150 on their all-time greatest, right next to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Bourne Ultimatum. I can't imagine it being in the same class as the former but I suppose it's up there with the latter.
As I said, entertaining, but also rather uneven as a consequence of trying to straddle two different sorts of realities.
Some people (notably Ebert) had a problem with the language that came out of young Chloe Moretz's mouth, to say nothing of the violence she was subjected to and visited upon others. I tend to think that's taking it too seriously, as the whole thing was patently absurd.
What else is notable about this film?
Let's see: Nic Cage, as Big Daddy, does a dead-on Adam West impersonation, which is fun, but really makes it impossible for anyone familiar with the old "Batman" series to take seriously. The movie is trying to go for gritty realism and shock value with that stuff; it just seemed cheesy to me. (You don't get any "realism" points in my book for adding violence or death or downbeat endings.)
The music is awful. It's largely pop-songs and musical strains you've heard in other movies, but better in those other movies. Like Joan Jett's Bad Reputation which was used rather more effectively in the original Shrek (when he beats up all the knights).
The one that drove me nuts was the use of In The House, In A Heartbeat, from the Danny Boyle Zombie flick 28 Days Later. (You can hear it on YouTube; about a minute in is the four note pattern that Kick-Ass uses.)
And none of the music rises (or lowers) to the level of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", as used in the blue penis movie.
So it's got that going for it. Which is nice.
Anyway, The Boy said "It didn't piss me off." Which is high praise, because he thought it would. He rather liked it, though not so wildly as to put it at #150 of all-time movies.
It didn't piss me off either.
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Pacific Rim
What's this Pacific Rim movie about? I think it's best summed up by this poster the North Hollywood Laemmle had up:
Actually, the only way Pacific Rim could've been better is if it had featured Gigantor beating up Godzilla.
After Man of Steel, I was basically never wanting to see another big-budget CGI summer blockbuster ever again, but I love me some Guillermo del Toro and, despite bad box office, the buzz on the movie was very solid indeed.
Verdict? Well, it's a movie about giant robots fighting giant monsters. And it's about as good as a movie about giant robots fighting giant monster can be. Which ain't great—but also ain't bad!
The premise is unapologetically Japanese Video Game-y, with the earth under assault by Kaiju, monsters who emerge from the ocean (via a gate to another dimension) to terrorize shore cities. In order to combat the Kaiju, earth's governments band together to create Jaegers, giant robots which must be controlled by two psychically linked pilots.
The frequency, power and quantity of kaiju incursions is on a rapid increase, so level up Kaiju pilots!
Here's what works in Pacific Rim:
Think about that for a second: A movie about giant robots and monsters fighting—a movie that would not exist without CGI—actually shows tremendous restraint, and avoids the 20-minute-combat set pieces found in, say, Man of Steel.
Also kind of astounding, in a movie that sets up the "save the world" plot from scene 1 is actually focused primarily on the (melo)drama of the lead characters. The psychic link is a convenient shortcut for the sort of bonding you get in more realistic combat movies. This makes it more engaging than either Man of Steel and (most of) World War Z.
Nothing super-shocking, but not a straight shot from first punch to final boom.
You don't usually get any kind of surprise in a blockbuster as to who is going to live or die. But this was almost horror-movie-esque. (More on this in a moment.)
More on this, after we cover the bad, too.
Here's the bad:
OK, this bugs me, though obviously, in a movie about giant monsters fighting giant robots, engineering isn't a big deal. And there's a typical (enjoyable) comic book logic that leads one to the path that says "Yes, giant robots are, of course, the way you'd fight giant monsters, because you couldn't possibly deliver the same or far worse damaging payloads from long ranges with missile and plane attacks."
That aside, the actual combat is about at the level of Toho's Godzilla movies and, truth-be-told, most action movies these days: We have a fight until the plot necessitates some resolution, and the damage done is exactly what is called for at any moment.
I'm not complaining, in the sense that of course that's the way it would play out. Why spend a few thousand dollars of your $200M budget to try to make sense? Whatever you came up with to tie things together with some semblance of coherence would get taken about in one of the draft processes any way.
But it does distance me. It's not even that I object to being awkwardly manipulated, it's that this stuff is so clumsy as to be completely ineffective manipulation.
Probably the worst thing is that this movie about giant monsters fighting giant robots isn't even the worst offender of this variety.
Now, the neutral:
This aspect of the film was interesting. Ron Perlman was the only actor I could name in this film, and he's typically B-movie fodder, though he played Hellboy, the beast in the '80s "Beauty and the Beast" TV series, and a caveman in Quest for Fire.
He's usually in makeup, in other words.
But this allowed them to make the results of the movie somewhat less predictable. It made the horror movie-esque aspect possible, or at least more likely. And it doubtless knocked $30-40M off the budget.
It may be why there was no really compelling charisma there. The Japanese girl, Rinko Kikuchi (who was in one of my favorite films a few years back, The Brothers Bloom) is a good mixture of vulnerability and moxie, and Charlie Hunnam (Children of Men) strikes the right notes as the humbled hero. Even Idris Elba (Prometheus, the black Norse God in Thor), whose role is the most egregiously clichéd, pulls it off.
I don't know if it's the acting per se, really. But there's a lot more genuine chemistry in del Toro's Hellboy movies. This may be one place where the scale actually did hurt: There's too much space for the camaraderie to fill. Also, the characters end up dying at an alarming rate, long before you can care much for them.
Weirdly, this might need a four hour director's cut.
Anyway, The Boy, who hates this kind of stuff really and truly enjoyed it. I mean, he saw the original Transformers movie when he was about 10, and hates it to this day, and leans against the big, dumb action flicks that are aimed primarily at his demographic. But this won him over, I think due to a general lack of pretentiousness, and a degree of respect for the audience.
It's bombed here in the U.S., looking like it might just barely clear $100M, but it's earned twice that overseas, such that we might actually get a sequel.
So, I guess the recommendation is: If you can like a movie about giant monsters and robots fighting, this is probably a movie you can like.
After Man of Steel, I was basically never wanting to see another big-budget CGI summer blockbuster ever again, but I love me some Guillermo del Toro and, despite bad box office, the buzz on the movie was very solid indeed.
Verdict? Well, it's a movie about giant robots fighting giant monsters. And it's about as good as a movie about giant robots fighting giant monster can be. Which ain't great—but also ain't bad!
The premise is unapologetically Japanese Video Game-y, with the earth under assault by Kaiju, monsters who emerge from the ocean (via a gate to another dimension) to terrorize shore cities. In order to combat the Kaiju, earth's governments band together to create Jaegers, giant robots which must be controlled by two psychically linked pilots.
The frequency, power and quantity of kaiju incursions is on a rapid increase, so level up Kaiju pilots!
Here's what works in Pacific Rim:
- The CGI is excellent, but it doesn't seem to exist for its own sake.
Think about that for a second: A movie about giant robots and monsters fighting—a movie that would not exist without CGI—actually shows tremendous restraint, and avoids the 20-minute-combat set pieces found in, say, Man of Steel.
- The scope is global, but the drama is primarily personal.
Also kind of astounding, in a movie that sets up the "save the world" plot from scene 1 is actually focused primarily on the (melo)drama of the lead characters. The psychic link is a convenient shortcut for the sort of bonding you get in more realistic combat movies. This makes it more engaging than either Man of Steel and (most of) World War Z.
- The plot has a few mild twists.
Nothing super-shocking, but not a straight shot from first punch to final boom.
- It has a real "anyone can die at any moment" feel.
You don't usually get any kind of surprise in a blockbuster as to who is going to live or die. But this was almost horror-movie-esque. (More on this in a moment.)
- Ron Perlman!
More on this, after we cover the bad, too.
Here's the bad:
- The acting isn't very compelling
Maybe it's not the acting, exactly, but there's not a lot of charisma on screen here. A movie like this needs a William Shatner or a Nic Cage even selling it. 'cause, you know: silly. Suspension of disbelief hard-strained.
- It's magicky.
OK, this bugs me, though obviously, in a movie about giant monsters fighting giant robots, engineering isn't a big deal. And there's a typical (enjoyable) comic book logic that leads one to the path that says "Yes, giant robots are, of course, the way you'd fight giant monsters, because you couldn't possibly deliver the same or far worse damaging payloads from long ranges with missile and plane attacks."
That aside, the actual combat is about at the level of Toho's Godzilla movies and, truth-be-told, most action movies these days: We have a fight until the plot necessitates some resolution, and the damage done is exactly what is called for at any moment.
I'm not complaining, in the sense that of course that's the way it would play out. Why spend a few thousand dollars of your $200M budget to try to make sense? Whatever you came up with to tie things together with some semblance of coherence would get taken about in one of the draft processes any way.
But it does distance me. It's not even that I object to being awkwardly manipulated, it's that this stuff is so clumsy as to be completely ineffective manipulation.
Probably the worst thing is that this movie about giant monsters fighting giant robots isn't even the worst offender of this variety.
Now, the neutral:
- No all-star cast.
This aspect of the film was interesting. Ron Perlman was the only actor I could name in this film, and he's typically B-movie fodder, though he played Hellboy, the beast in the '80s "Beauty and the Beast" TV series, and a caveman in Quest for Fire.
He's usually in makeup, in other words.
But this allowed them to make the results of the movie somewhat less predictable. It made the horror movie-esque aspect possible, or at least more likely. And it doubtless knocked $30-40M off the budget.
It may be why there was no really compelling charisma there. The Japanese girl, Rinko Kikuchi (who was in one of my favorite films a few years back, The Brothers Bloom) is a good mixture of vulnerability and moxie, and Charlie Hunnam (Children of Men) strikes the right notes as the humbled hero. Even Idris Elba (Prometheus, the black Norse God in Thor), whose role is the most egregiously clichéd, pulls it off.
I don't know if it's the acting per se, really. But there's a lot more genuine chemistry in del Toro's Hellboy movies. This may be one place where the scale actually did hurt: There's too much space for the camaraderie to fill. Also, the characters end up dying at an alarming rate, long before you can care much for them.
Weirdly, this might need a four hour director's cut.
Anyway, The Boy, who hates this kind of stuff really and truly enjoyed it. I mean, he saw the original Transformers movie when he was about 10, and hates it to this day, and leans against the big, dumb action flicks that are aimed primarily at his demographic. But this won him over, I think due to a general lack of pretentiousness, and a degree of respect for the audience.
It's bombed here in the U.S., looking like it might just barely clear $100M, but it's earned twice that overseas, such that we might actually get a sequel.
So, I guess the recommendation is: If you can like a movie about giant monsters and robots fighting, this is probably a movie you can like.
Monday, June 30, 2014
X-Men: Days of Future Past
It's almost like they're daring us not to go see these movies. First, we got another superhero movie. Next, we got a reboot/crossover where the prequel (X-Men: First Class) encounters the future version of itself. And just to rub it all in, it's a freaking time-travel story.
Goddamn if it doesn't work, though, with the competent (alleged pederast) Bryan Singer back at the X-Men helm.
The story starts in a bleak future where the mutants have been all but wiped out by these adaptive robots (called Sentinels) that figure out their mutations, adapt to them and then figure out how to counter them. The only way the survivors have managed to last is through mutant Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), who can send someone's consciousness a few days back in the past—long enough to pre-empt the adaptive robots' victories.
I'm not sure how robots can adapt to something they never encounter (since it never happens, what with the time travel and all) but adapt they do, with only a few surviving mutants facing ultimate extinction: Storm, Wolverine, Dr. X and Magneto, as well as a few others who haven't yet starred in their own movies.
Dr. X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen, still alive! and actually looking pretty good) have reconciled at this late date, with Magneto realizing the error of his ways, since it was his conversion of Mystique in X-Men: First Class that lead her down the dark path which ultimately leads to the creation of the Sentinels.
The evil genius Trask, played by the always wonderful Peter Dinklage, is the creator of the Sentinels—and, actually, if this movie has a serious narrative flaw, it's that it's hard to see that he doesn't have a damn good point about the Mutant Menace.
Anyway, the plot is that they have to send someone back in time to prevent the events that result in their ultimate doom, and since the time travel process is so traumatic (when you're going THAT far back), they have to send someone who can regenerate really fast. That'd be Wolverine, if you're not up on your mutants. And because regenerating your body is just like regenerating your mind, I guess.
The continuity within the movie works okay, given the issues that arise with time travel, but I kept feeling like there was a serious loss of inter-movie continuity. Like, I think the same event that results in the creation of the Sentinels results in Mystique's death, but she was in the original three X-Men movies.
Also, Wolverine doesn't have his adamantine skeletal structure yet, though the only consequence of that is that his claws aren't very useful. Somehow, though, I thought the implication of previous movies was that he had gotten them well before the '70s (when this movie largely takes place).
It doesn't particularly matter much in Singer's hands: There's good suspense, action, comic book logic, fine acting across the board, and so on. The ending didn't annoy me too much, though it had the character of a "It was all just a dream" ending, pertaining to the previous five films.
I gotta wonder where they're going to go next or if they're just going to reboot or what. Or maybe give the whole franchise a rest for a while. I kid! If you had a money printing machine, you'd run it day and night, too. In fact, the next movie should be out in two years, and it's going to be called Apocalypse.)
There's also an annoying bit early on where they enlist a super-speed mutant named QuickSilver to help them free Magneto, and it quickly becomes apparent that, if they keep him along, they can pretty much do whatever needs to be done without any further fuss, so naturally they leave him behind for no good reason other than his powers are too powerful for the plot to sustain.
Goddamn if it doesn't work, though, with the competent (alleged pederast) Bryan Singer back at the X-Men helm.
The story starts in a bleak future where the mutants have been all but wiped out by these adaptive robots (called Sentinels) that figure out their mutations, adapt to them and then figure out how to counter them. The only way the survivors have managed to last is through mutant Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), who can send someone's consciousness a few days back in the past—long enough to pre-empt the adaptive robots' victories.
I'm not sure how robots can adapt to something they never encounter (since it never happens, what with the time travel and all) but adapt they do, with only a few surviving mutants facing ultimate extinction: Storm, Wolverine, Dr. X and Magneto, as well as a few others who haven't yet starred in their own movies.
Dr. X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen, still alive! and actually looking pretty good) have reconciled at this late date, with Magneto realizing the error of his ways, since it was his conversion of Mystique in X-Men: First Class that lead her down the dark path which ultimately leads to the creation of the Sentinels.
The evil genius Trask, played by the always wonderful Peter Dinklage, is the creator of the Sentinels—and, actually, if this movie has a serious narrative flaw, it's that it's hard to see that he doesn't have a damn good point about the Mutant Menace.
Anyway, the plot is that they have to send someone back in time to prevent the events that result in their ultimate doom, and since the time travel process is so traumatic (when you're going THAT far back), they have to send someone who can regenerate really fast. That'd be Wolverine, if you're not up on your mutants. And because regenerating your body is just like regenerating your mind, I guess.
The continuity within the movie works okay, given the issues that arise with time travel, but I kept feeling like there was a serious loss of inter-movie continuity. Like, I think the same event that results in the creation of the Sentinels results in Mystique's death, but she was in the original three X-Men movies.
Also, Wolverine doesn't have his adamantine skeletal structure yet, though the only consequence of that is that his claws aren't very useful. Somehow, though, I thought the implication of previous movies was that he had gotten them well before the '70s (when this movie largely takes place).
It doesn't particularly matter much in Singer's hands: There's good suspense, action, comic book logic, fine acting across the board, and so on. The ending didn't annoy me too much, though it had the character of a "It was all just a dream" ending, pertaining to the previous five films.
I gotta wonder where they're going to go next or if they're just going to reboot or what. Or maybe give the whole franchise a rest for a while. I kid! If you had a money printing machine, you'd run it day and night, too. In fact, the next movie should be out in two years, and it's going to be called Apocalypse.)
There's also an annoying bit early on where they enlist a super-speed mutant named QuickSilver to help them free Magneto, and it quickly becomes apparent that, if they keep him along, they can pretty much do whatever needs to be done without any further fuss, so naturally they leave him behind for no good reason other than his powers are too powerful for the plot to sustain.
The '70s stuff is actually not too awful, I'm guessing due to Singer. There's enough to signal the '70s without getting too campy. There was a fleet of Citroëns, like in the last one, which made me miss The Old Man more than usual.
It's solid. Can't really complain. It's just...you know...summer superhero movie.
It's solid. Can't really complain. It's just...you know...summer superhero movie.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Manic Monday Apocalypso: The Fate Worse Than Death
Another "serious" MMA, no fun movie or comic book or game to talk about. This topic comes courtesy of Darcysport, with whom I had a heated exchange about the fate of GM. She, as a Michigan resident who knows lots of good people who will personally suffer from GM's failure, wants it to succeed.
I, an asshole, want it to fail. (My words, not hers. We were civil. Mostly.)
My logic is simple, ruthless and uncompromising: The actions involved in the "saving" of GM were illegal, unConstituional, and represent a serious step on the road to fascism. I'm not saying we're fascists now, or Obama is a fascist; I'm saying that (yet another) barrier to fascism has been removed.
Therefore, whatever ill happens to GM workers pales in comparison to the ills that will follow any "success" GM has. (Any real success is unlikely. A redefinition of the word "success" is most likely.) This was my feeling about the initial, massive financial system bailout--a feeling I think has been vindicated (in a very short time) by the subsequent actions and failures.
But it's easy to say this about people you don't know. "Let them suffer, so that the Republic may live." It's all so abstract. (Principles are like that.)
But I've said it before: It is better that my children die than the government should get more involved in health care. The government is involved, and is largely responsible for the mess they're now proposing to save us from. ("Savings" is another word commonly redefined in this discussion.) The solution never, ever involves more freedom.
There's a concrete angle to this: My employers sent out a missive encouraging us all to vote for the massive tax propositions on the latest ballot. But I still voted against it, even though it might cost me my job. (Or I would've voted against it had I bothered to vote this time; my perfect voting record is somewhat sullied, I'm afraid.)
And this is where we get to the whole apocalypse tie-in: Though it's more fun to pretend the world ends with a bang, it of course ends with a whimper. In practical terms, the whimper is the slow enslavement of a once free population. With each step, we're supposed to quietly accede, precisely because good people will be hurt, our families will suffer and the good times we have enjoyed will come to an end. Or, maybe only the sorta-okay times will get less okay. (You can see that prominently in communist countries: Life sucks, but it sucks a little less for a few, and they'll do any horrible thing imaginable to hold on to that slightly less sucky existence.)
There is a fate worse than death, and that's slavery. We were founded (somewhat ironically) by men who refused to be slaves. Death was preferable to them. And yet we are nowhere near as free as they were under Britain's rule. Maybe that's why it always sort of feels like the End is Nigh.
And rather intriguingly, every post-apocalyptic scenario I can think of pits a few freedom-loving rebels against a dysfunctional society.
The left has come at us anew with Orwellian tactics of redefining words like "taxes" as "revenue" and "big, ugly programs that benefit only entrenched political power" as "investment". What I suggest now is for freedom-loving folk to call political programs what they are: An attack on freedom.
If being against nationalized health care means you want people to die, it's fair--and more accurate--to say that being for it means you're against freedom. Financial bailouts? Anti-freedom. Auto bailouts? Anti-freedom.
Freedom by definition includes the freedom to fail. Just as freedom of speech includes the freedom to say stupid and offensive things, freedom of action includes the freedom to do stupid and offensive things.
I also took it up with Amba over healthcare: Yes, We The People have the freedom to die because we've made poor choices. We The People also have the freedom to set up charities to help people who've made bad choices (or who were just unlucky).
If the car companies have to fail, so be it: Clear the barriers to making new car companies, or maybe companies dedicated to a brand new paradigm of travel.
Freedom, in the form of liberalism, grew Western Civilization. Ossification, in the form of "liberalism", will cause it to crumble.
I, an asshole, want it to fail. (My words, not hers. We were civil. Mostly.)
My logic is simple, ruthless and uncompromising: The actions involved in the "saving" of GM were illegal, unConstituional, and represent a serious step on the road to fascism. I'm not saying we're fascists now, or Obama is a fascist; I'm saying that (yet another) barrier to fascism has been removed.
Therefore, whatever ill happens to GM workers pales in comparison to the ills that will follow any "success" GM has. (Any real success is unlikely. A redefinition of the word "success" is most likely.) This was my feeling about the initial, massive financial system bailout--a feeling I think has been vindicated (in a very short time) by the subsequent actions and failures.
But it's easy to say this about people you don't know. "Let them suffer, so that the Republic may live." It's all so abstract. (Principles are like that.)
But I've said it before: It is better that my children die than the government should get more involved in health care. The government is involved, and is largely responsible for the mess they're now proposing to save us from. ("Savings" is another word commonly redefined in this discussion.) The solution never, ever involves more freedom.
There's a concrete angle to this: My employers sent out a missive encouraging us all to vote for the massive tax propositions on the latest ballot. But I still voted against it, even though it might cost me my job. (Or I would've voted against it had I bothered to vote this time; my perfect voting record is somewhat sullied, I'm afraid.)
And this is where we get to the whole apocalypse tie-in: Though it's more fun to pretend the world ends with a bang, it of course ends with a whimper. In practical terms, the whimper is the slow enslavement of a once free population. With each step, we're supposed to quietly accede, precisely because good people will be hurt, our families will suffer and the good times we have enjoyed will come to an end. Or, maybe only the sorta-okay times will get less okay. (You can see that prominently in communist countries: Life sucks, but it sucks a little less for a few, and they'll do any horrible thing imaginable to hold on to that slightly less sucky existence.)
There is a fate worse than death, and that's slavery. We were founded (somewhat ironically) by men who refused to be slaves. Death was preferable to them. And yet we are nowhere near as free as they were under Britain's rule. Maybe that's why it always sort of feels like the End is Nigh.
And rather intriguingly, every post-apocalyptic scenario I can think of pits a few freedom-loving rebels against a dysfunctional society.
The left has come at us anew with Orwellian tactics of redefining words like "taxes" as "revenue" and "big, ugly programs that benefit only entrenched political power" as "investment". What I suggest now is for freedom-loving folk to call political programs what they are: An attack on freedom.
If being against nationalized health care means you want people to die, it's fair--and more accurate--to say that being for it means you're against freedom. Financial bailouts? Anti-freedom. Auto bailouts? Anti-freedom.
Freedom by definition includes the freedom to fail. Just as freedom of speech includes the freedom to say stupid and offensive things, freedom of action includes the freedom to do stupid and offensive things.
I also took it up with Amba over healthcare: Yes, We The People have the freedom to die because we've made poor choices. We The People also have the freedom to set up charities to help people who've made bad choices (or who were just unlucky).
If the car companies have to fail, so be it: Clear the barriers to making new car companies, or maybe companies dedicated to a brand new paradigm of travel.
Freedom, in the form of liberalism, grew Western Civilization. Ossification, in the form of "liberalism", will cause it to crumble.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Sweet Coraline
One important rule of making it in Hollywood is to always be working on your next picture by the time your last one opens, and to have the one after that all nailed down. That way, if the one at the box office flops, you have two more chances before your career is finished.
This is probably impossible if you're doing stop-motion animation. And so it came to pass that the director of Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach went eight years between movie releases: the disastrous Monkeybone and the reasonably successful Coraline.
I had held off going to see this movie, as it The Boy wasn't really in the target audience--too old--and neither was The Flower--if not too young, exactly, then not particularly inclined to the creepy. But it has hung on and made an unexpected appearance at our local art house this week, when all the Oscar dross finally got pushed out. (Yay!)
The Flower seemed pretty confident that, as this was a fairy tale (my description), that they would all live happily ever after, and therefore it would be okay for her to see. But why o why, she lamented, didn't they just tell you the ending beforehand? Then you'd know if you wanted to go see it!
This led to a less surreal discussion than the one I posted here (which occurred after the movie) between her and the boy about whether the ending was more important than how you get there.
So, about the movie: This is, indeed, a fairy tale about a young girl who moves from the big city into a sub-divided house out in the boondocks with her preoccupied parents. In the house, she discovers a tiny door with only a brick wall behind it. But if her parents aren't around (asleep, away), the wall becomes a passage. And on the other side of the passage is a mirror image of her world, only this world fulfills her dreams of the perfect life.
Her other parents are doting and entertaining, her neighbors aren't crazy old coots but magically talented, the garden is a living world of lights, and even her room is fantastically enchanted.
The only apparent thing that's "off" is that all the people in this mirror world have buttons for eyes. (This, of course, is just a warning sign of how off the whole thing is.)
Creepy, eh? Now, fairy tales are creepy and horrific, in general. This isn't much different, thematically, than Hansel and Gretel and the gingerbread house, or Celtic stories of "little people", who were always doing horrible things. But if you're going to take a kid to see this, make sure they're not freaked out by eye stuff. (The other really disturbing part of the movie, that of the fat old women running around in skimpy clothing, was in the "well, there's something you don't see every day" category. The Flower recognized the reference to Boticelli immediately.)
The Flower is primarily disturbed by unhappy endings, so no issue with the eyes for her, though when the illusion of the other world started to come apart, my arm was grabbed and stayed grabbed for quite some time.
And come apart it does as the mystery of the "other mother" unfolds.
Wonderful voice work by Teri Hatcher (who shall forever be Lois Lane to me) and Keith David (as a savvy cat nemesis to the "other mother"), as well as Dakota Fanning as Coraline, John Hodgman as Father, and the comedy team of French and Saunders as the crazy old ladies next door. Ian McShane, late of Kung Fu Panda, plays an old Russian guy training mice in his apartment.
Ultimately, this is a satisfying movie, with solid Fairy Tale logic. Everything hangs together. I would swear I've read the tale before in another form; certainly the concept of a fairy world where illusions make very mundane or even nasty things seem marvelous is not new. But I can't remember any particular fairy tale that goes that way. (Fritz Leiber wrote a Fafhrd/Grey Mouser story called Bazaar of the Bizarre in that vein, and the theme of great-illusion-masking-horrible-truth was used in the 2000 version of Bedazzled.)
And Selick's work is good here. He demonstrates (again) that much of the visual artistry of Nightmare Before Christmas was his, if you didn't pick that up from James and the Giant Peach and Monkeybone. (His pallette is less ruthlessly grey/white/red than Burton's.) Since it was meant to exploit 3D--my brain doesn't do 3D so we saw it regular-flat-style--it has more than a few moments that are conspiculously sticky-out-of-the-screen-y, but it's not horrible in that regard.
And the stop-motion is very fine, indeed. It's even more impressive to think that, in this day-and-age when computers can simulate this style of animation (or even more, that computers fulfill the needs stop-motion animation was originally meant to address), that there are teams of people out there moving little dolls around a millimeter at a time. And you get to marvel at the broken mirrors, the running water, and all the other little things that seem impossible with just stop-motion. (There are some parts that were surely computer animated, but not that many!)
The only caveat I have is that the movie is probably over-rated. It's very good, but not a mind-blowing revelation. I think a lot of the hype comes from the fact that Neil Gaiman--a comic book luminary along the lines of Alan Moore or Frank Miller--wrote the story on which this was based.
It's a fine story. And a fine movie. Part of the reason for both, though, is that it doesn't have grand pretensions. It's a nice, moral fairy tale. Enjoy it for being that.
This is probably impossible if you're doing stop-motion animation. And so it came to pass that the director of Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach went eight years between movie releases: the disastrous Monkeybone and the reasonably successful Coraline.
I had held off going to see this movie, as it The Boy wasn't really in the target audience--too old--and neither was The Flower--if not too young, exactly, then not particularly inclined to the creepy. But it has hung on and made an unexpected appearance at our local art house this week, when all the Oscar dross finally got pushed out. (Yay!)
The Flower seemed pretty confident that, as this was a fairy tale (my description), that they would all live happily ever after, and therefore it would be okay for her to see. But why o why, she lamented, didn't they just tell you the ending beforehand? Then you'd know if you wanted to go see it!
This led to a less surreal discussion than the one I posted here (which occurred after the movie) between her and the boy about whether the ending was more important than how you get there.
So, about the movie: This is, indeed, a fairy tale about a young girl who moves from the big city into a sub-divided house out in the boondocks with her preoccupied parents. In the house, she discovers a tiny door with only a brick wall behind it. But if her parents aren't around (asleep, away), the wall becomes a passage. And on the other side of the passage is a mirror image of her world, only this world fulfills her dreams of the perfect life.
Her other parents are doting and entertaining, her neighbors aren't crazy old coots but magically talented, the garden is a living world of lights, and even her room is fantastically enchanted.
The only apparent thing that's "off" is that all the people in this mirror world have buttons for eyes. (This, of course, is just a warning sign of how off the whole thing is.)
Creepy, eh? Now, fairy tales are creepy and horrific, in general. This isn't much different, thematically, than Hansel and Gretel and the gingerbread house, or Celtic stories of "little people", who were always doing horrible things. But if you're going to take a kid to see this, make sure they're not freaked out by eye stuff. (The other really disturbing part of the movie, that of the fat old women running around in skimpy clothing, was in the "well, there's something you don't see every day" category. The Flower recognized the reference to Boticelli immediately.)
The Flower is primarily disturbed by unhappy endings, so no issue with the eyes for her, though when the illusion of the other world started to come apart, my arm was grabbed and stayed grabbed for quite some time.
And come apart it does as the mystery of the "other mother" unfolds.
Wonderful voice work by Teri Hatcher (who shall forever be Lois Lane to me) and Keith David (as a savvy cat nemesis to the "other mother"), as well as Dakota Fanning as Coraline, John Hodgman as Father, and the comedy team of French and Saunders as the crazy old ladies next door. Ian McShane, late of Kung Fu Panda, plays an old Russian guy training mice in his apartment.
Ultimately, this is a satisfying movie, with solid Fairy Tale logic. Everything hangs together. I would swear I've read the tale before in another form; certainly the concept of a fairy world where illusions make very mundane or even nasty things seem marvelous is not new. But I can't remember any particular fairy tale that goes that way. (Fritz Leiber wrote a Fafhrd/Grey Mouser story called Bazaar of the Bizarre in that vein, and the theme of great-illusion-masking-horrible-truth was used in the 2000 version of Bedazzled.)
And Selick's work is good here. He demonstrates (again) that much of the visual artistry of Nightmare Before Christmas was his, if you didn't pick that up from James and the Giant Peach and Monkeybone. (His pallette is less ruthlessly grey/white/red than Burton's.) Since it was meant to exploit 3D--my brain doesn't do 3D so we saw it regular-flat-style--it has more than a few moments that are conspiculously sticky-out-of-the-screen-y, but it's not horrible in that regard.
And the stop-motion is very fine, indeed. It's even more impressive to think that, in this day-and-age when computers can simulate this style of animation (or even more, that computers fulfill the needs stop-motion animation was originally meant to address), that there are teams of people out there moving little dolls around a millimeter at a time. And you get to marvel at the broken mirrors, the running water, and all the other little things that seem impossible with just stop-motion. (There are some parts that were surely computer animated, but not that many!)
The only caveat I have is that the movie is probably over-rated. It's very good, but not a mind-blowing revelation. I think a lot of the hype comes from the fact that Neil Gaiman--a comic book luminary along the lines of Alan Moore or Frank Miller--wrote the story on which this was based.
It's a fine story. And a fine movie. Part of the reason for both, though, is that it doesn't have grand pretensions. It's a nice, moral fairy tale. Enjoy it for being that.
Monday, July 1, 2013
Man Of Steel
The human being cannot resist giving himself an edge. This leads to what I like to call "institutionalized unethicalness". For example, although there are alternate explanations as for why, I can't help but believe that the reason a 2x4 isn't 2x4, is because somebody started skimming off the edges, and soon everyone did, and finally a standard was created to stop the shenanigans.
And if it's not true for 2x4s it's most certainly true for hard disk sizes. One kilobyte is 1024 bytes. A megabyte should be 1024x1024, but various hard-drive manufacturers used 1000x1024, since it made the drives look more capacious in advertising. And so, today, if you by a terabyte drive you end up with more like 900 gigabytes (because OSes report the actual size).
It's not just true for trades and crafts, though. It's also true for art. In music, the standard A-over-middle-C pitch is 440 cycles, which was a standard adopted in the 20th century. In the 19th century, it was closer to 420 cycles. Why? Because being a little bit sharp allows you stand out from everyone else.
The ultimate classic interpretation of this is Nigel Tuffnel's amplifier that goes to eleven. (One louder than ten!)
I provide this historical diversion because Zach Snyder/Chris Nolan's Man of Steel goes to eleven, and this seems to be what most people take from it, like or not.
If it's not global, it's cosmic in importance. It's not enough to punch a guy through a building, you gotta punch him through twelve buildings and the streets and, you know, through a tanker of gas or something.
The Boy did not care for it. He didn't hate it, exactly. It was not In Time, but he made the observation (rephrased slightly here to eliminate cuss words) that they just fought and fought and fought and no one actually got hurt. These are literally pointless battle scenes.
And they do go on. (And on. And on.) Like most modern superhero movies, the battle scenes seem to go on with no grounding or point, just the billionaire's equivalent of playing with dolls.
I also did not hate it, and I'm sort of inured to the length, pointless battle scenes, especially if the rest of the movie is good (I also watch porn for the plot!) but I did have some serious issues with their artistic choices, a good many of which can probably be laid at producer Nolan's feet.
First, Batman is not Superman. Actually, even before that, we should note that Batman isn't even Batman, as he's been portrayed popularly in recent years. Batman has a dark side. He isn't completely dark all the time, at least not traditionally. There's an element of hope in Batman, as there must be in all heroes.
But Superman? He's invulnerable, omnipotent and possibly immortal. He's the ultimate power fantasy, and the ultimate hopeful retort to the notion that "power corrupts" that every young boy believes in. ("If I were all-powerful, I'd use that power to fight bad guys!")
I am the first to admit, this makes traditional dramatic structure challenging. But there are plenty of good movies that don't have character arcs. (Sorry, Syd Fields.) And, look, you took this job, so give us Superman, already, and not Batman-in-blue.
There were some very good choices made: Having Lois Lane (Amy Adams, looking lovely even when filmed in washed-out-make-me-look-tired-lighting) be in on the whole Clark Kent/Superman thing from the ground floor was good.
Having Clark's powers grow over time, due to atmospheric differences, and making the development of his powers sort of autism-like was kind of interesting, and provided a good story hook later on.
Some of the choices were neutral: There is no kryptonite in this movie. "Kryptonian atmosphere" serves the exact same purpose, though. There's a mess of back story on Krypton which goes on way too long but has a purpose, at least.
The real problem (for me) was that the bad choices were catastrophically bad. I mentioned earlier that Superman is dramatically problematic because he's basically perfect. So the usual gambit for creating a story with him is to rob him of his powers in some fashion. (Sam Raimi used this gag twice or maybe three times, come to think of it, in the Spider-Man movies.)
Typically this is done with kryptonite. This movie does it, at first, by saying Supes' powers are acquired, possibly slowly. Then, that he doesn't know their limits, he has to be instructed. All good, so far.
But the real limit on his powers? Pa Kent. Pa says "Hey, don't use those or people will find out you're an alien. And, doesn't matter if people are gonna die, maybe don't save them."
SPOILER
This is lame. The movie keeps Supes hobbled by saying "Hey, maybe you can't trust humans."
This is kind of a pet peeve of mine. The net effect of people being made aware of alien life would be about zero. In reality, 80% of the population still wouldn't believe, and the 20% who did believe it already believed in aliens.
Early on, too, Superman abuses his power by destroying a working man's truck. Very un-Superman. Even if the guy deserved a little payback.
The movie's climax is the least Superman thing of all.
SPOILER
This was probably done for shock value, except that people really can't be shocked without first being immersed in the pro-America, good-guy power fantasy to begin with.
Of course, it's competently directed by Snyder, and the cast includes Larry Fishburne as Perry White, Kevin Costener as Pa Kent and Russell Crow as Jor El. Diane Lane stands out as Ma Kent, as does Chris Meloni, who plays a military guy. Michael Shannon was an interesting choice to play General Zod but I liked him.
Superman is played by Henry Cavill, who was in the lamentably forgettable (forgettably lamentable?) Immortals and he does a good job, even in the few moments where he is actually Superman and not a Kryptonian Batman. (One thing Chris Reeve nailed in the '70s movies was the Superman persona, which was probably only allowed for potential camp value.)
The Flower thought it was okay, though she expressed the (correct) belief that if she knew anything at all about Superman, it would've pissed her off. (My kids are not comic book geeks.)
Even so, I can't really recommend it, unless you're a fan of the whole "going to eleven" thing.
And if it's not true for 2x4s it's most certainly true for hard disk sizes. One kilobyte is 1024 bytes. A megabyte should be 1024x1024, but various hard-drive manufacturers used 1000x1024, since it made the drives look more capacious in advertising. And so, today, if you by a terabyte drive you end up with more like 900 gigabytes (because OSes report the actual size).
It's not just true for trades and crafts, though. It's also true for art. In music, the standard A-over-middle-C pitch is 440 cycles, which was a standard adopted in the 20th century. In the 19th century, it was closer to 420 cycles. Why? Because being a little bit sharp allows you stand out from everyone else.
The ultimate classic interpretation of this is Nigel Tuffnel's amplifier that goes to eleven. (One louder than ten!)
I provide this historical diversion because Zach Snyder/Chris Nolan's Man of Steel goes to eleven, and this seems to be what most people take from it, like or not.
If it's not global, it's cosmic in importance. It's not enough to punch a guy through a building, you gotta punch him through twelve buildings and the streets and, you know, through a tanker of gas or something.
The Boy did not care for it. He didn't hate it, exactly. It was not In Time, but he made the observation (rephrased slightly here to eliminate cuss words) that they just fought and fought and fought and no one actually got hurt. These are literally pointless battle scenes.
And they do go on. (And on. And on.) Like most modern superhero movies, the battle scenes seem to go on with no grounding or point, just the billionaire's equivalent of playing with dolls.
I also did not hate it, and I'm sort of inured to the length, pointless battle scenes, especially if the rest of the movie is good (I also watch porn for the plot!) but I did have some serious issues with their artistic choices, a good many of which can probably be laid at producer Nolan's feet.
First, Batman is not Superman. Actually, even before that, we should note that Batman isn't even Batman, as he's been portrayed popularly in recent years. Batman has a dark side. He isn't completely dark all the time, at least not traditionally. There's an element of hope in Batman, as there must be in all heroes.
But Superman? He's invulnerable, omnipotent and possibly immortal. He's the ultimate power fantasy, and the ultimate hopeful retort to the notion that "power corrupts" that every young boy believes in. ("If I were all-powerful, I'd use that power to fight bad guys!")
I am the first to admit, this makes traditional dramatic structure challenging. But there are plenty of good movies that don't have character arcs. (Sorry, Syd Fields.) And, look, you took this job, so give us Superman, already, and not Batman-in-blue.
There were some very good choices made: Having Lois Lane (Amy Adams, looking lovely even when filmed in washed-out-make-me-look-tired-lighting) be in on the whole Clark Kent/Superman thing from the ground floor was good.
Having Clark's powers grow over time, due to atmospheric differences, and making the development of his powers sort of autism-like was kind of interesting, and provided a good story hook later on.
Some of the choices were neutral: There is no kryptonite in this movie. "Kryptonian atmosphere" serves the exact same purpose, though. There's a mess of back story on Krypton which goes on way too long but has a purpose, at least.
The real problem (for me) was that the bad choices were catastrophically bad. I mentioned earlier that Superman is dramatically problematic because he's basically perfect. So the usual gambit for creating a story with him is to rob him of his powers in some fashion. (Sam Raimi used this gag twice or maybe three times, come to think of it, in the Spider-Man movies.)
Typically this is done with kryptonite. This movie does it, at first, by saying Supes' powers are acquired, possibly slowly. Then, that he doesn't know their limits, he has to be instructed. All good, so far.
But the real limit on his powers? Pa Kent. Pa says "Hey, don't use those or people will find out you're an alien. And, doesn't matter if people are gonna die, maybe don't save them."
SPOILER
This is lame. The movie keeps Supes hobbled by saying "Hey, maybe you can't trust humans."
This is kind of a pet peeve of mine. The net effect of people being made aware of alien life would be about zero. In reality, 80% of the population still wouldn't believe, and the 20% who did believe it already believed in aliens.
Early on, too, Superman abuses his power by destroying a working man's truck. Very un-Superman. Even if the guy deserved a little payback.
The movie's climax is the least Superman thing of all.
SPOILER
This was probably done for shock value, except that people really can't be shocked without first being immersed in the pro-America, good-guy power fantasy to begin with.
Of course, it's competently directed by Snyder, and the cast includes Larry Fishburne as Perry White, Kevin Costener as Pa Kent and Russell Crow as Jor El. Diane Lane stands out as Ma Kent, as does Chris Meloni, who plays a military guy. Michael Shannon was an interesting choice to play General Zod but I liked him.
Superman is played by Henry Cavill, who was in the lamentably forgettable (forgettably lamentable?) Immortals and he does a good job, even in the few moments where he is actually Superman and not a Kryptonian Batman. (One thing Chris Reeve nailed in the '70s movies was the Superman persona, which was probably only allowed for potential camp value.)
The Flower thought it was okay, though she expressed the (correct) belief that if she knew anything at all about Superman, it would've pissed her off. (My kids are not comic book geeks.)
Even so, I can't really recommend it, unless you're a fan of the whole "going to eleven" thing.
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