thisglimpse-1
Lifetime Total
10+
Lifetime Plot
1+
Lifetime Image
1+
IMDb Member
16 years
Reviews
Within Our Gates (1920)
The Last Third is the best third
I was pretty lost amongst all the jealous sisters and jilted lovers and plot of intrigue and deceit... until the last third - the flashback, which was a much simpler, more tragic story.
The ending was awful - "he stopped trying to rape her when he discovered she was his daughter" but I wonder if the filmmaker wasn't stretching to make a point that the benevolent white people and the violent white people are the same people.
The ending was awful - "he stopped trying to rape her when he discovered she was his daughter" but I wonder if the filmmaker wasn't stretching to make a point that the benevolent white people and the violent white people are the same people.
American Hustle (2013)
From the Feet Up
"American Hustle" begins with one of the best opening scenes in recent memory. Before we see anything else, we see Christian Bale -- the guy who played millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne not that long ago -- meticulously arranging, pasting, and spraying into place a terribly elaborate and truly hideous comb over. It's funny, and it tells us volumes about this character. He's a con man, a master at the art of deception, and a very careful one. Every detail has to be exactly right, "from the feet up" -- all the way up to the fake hair.
But he's gotten himself into a situation where nothing's right, everything is slapdash, and he's out of control. It's only a matter of time before he ends up in prison, or worse. That's all thanks to Bradley Cooper, an FBI agent who caught on to one of his small time schemes, and is using it as leverage against him and his partner, Amy Adams into larger and ever more dangerous schemes, until they're looking at taking down powerful politicians, and ending up on the wrong side of the mob. Bale isn't happy about any of this; he's a small fish happy in his big pond; he'd rather be scamming gambling addicts than having a sitdown with Robert De Niro.
Some of this actually happened. The film is based on the "Abscam" scandal from the late '70s, loosely. The historical situation is pretty crazy in and of itself, and indicative of the dysfunction in American government and culture in the '70s. ("Argo" this ain't.) In a nutshell, the FBI grew tired of being reprimanded by Congress, so the feds launched an operation against Congress itself. It involved a fake "Arab" seeking to invest millions into New Jersey's slumping economy, and willing to grease whatever palms necessary to get the casino licenses, citizenship and anything else needed to get the job done. Abscam brought down several Representatives and one Senator on bribery charges, but it also resulted in something called the "Civiletti Undercover Guidelines," which basically was the Attorney General telling the FBI to never do anything like it ever again.
It's a situation a little too messy for a straightforward film adaptation, but David O. Russell likes to make messy movies. Russell's signature talent is his ability to both create and control chaos on screen. He loves to set crazy characters on colliding paths, and knows there are infinite ways to play crazy. It's hard to imagine any other director managing the scenes Russell manages, scenes in which three or four or five crazy people bounce off of each other at odd angles in fantastically entertaining ways. He's also skilled at swinging from zany to serious (and back) at the drop of a hat. It's kind of like watching Real Housewives: these people are nuts, but we care about them anyway. Actually, it's infinitely more entertaining than Real Housewives.
Russell has developed a consistent stable of actors he likes to work with -- or who like to work with him. Rumor has it he's an extremely demanding director, known for feeding improvised lines to actors from alongside the camera during shooting. Also, there's a video on YouTube of him ranting and raving at Lily Tomlin during the shooting of "I Heart Huckabees," though Tomlin afterward said that everything was fine between them and she'd be happy to work with him again. Some can't take the heat, and some thrive in it.
Amy Adams is better in Russell's movies than in anything else she's done, and so is Bradley Cooper. Cooper has earned Oscar nominations for his two performances in Russell's films, despite playing basically the same character in both of them (manic and naive, goal-driven, desperate, prone to violent outbursts but somehow forgivable and even innocent.) I'm not convinced yet that Cooper is a great actor--I'd like to see more range in his performances -- but he has without a doubt created a very watchable character performance that can span multiple films. In that way he's kind of like Al Pacino or Woody Allen.
Christian Bale, on the other hand, is a man of a thousand faces (and mannerisms, accents, etc.) If the Oscar always goes to the actor who uglies up best, Christian Bale got robbed. He gained 50 lbs and looks terrible. I guess that's not as impressive at Matthew McConaughey losing 50 lbs., but McConaughey is still rodeo-sexy through most of Dallas Buyers Club. Bale just looks bad here, and that's good. It's amazing to me that the same guy can play Batman, Patrick Bateman and a crackhead boxing has- been who once knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard (or maybe he just tripped.)
But Jennifer Lawrence, who can seemingly do anything, might be the best part of the movie. She plays Bale's wife, whom he can't seem to get away from (he calls her "the Picasso of passive-aggressive karate.") She routinely steals scenes by playing absolutely, but uniquely and distinctly, batshit crazy. She's the opposite of her nail finish--she's mostly rotten and a little bit sweet, and you can't get enough of her. You just keep coming back.
"American Hustle" is a zany, screwball ride, but it's also a movie about survival and reinvention. It's about people who are conning themselves, who are desperate to get out of their situations and maybe their skins. Ironically, the only characters who have a firm grasp on their real identities are the cons . In the world these characters live in, ambition is the greatest sin -- ambition and lying to your friends.
But he's gotten himself into a situation where nothing's right, everything is slapdash, and he's out of control. It's only a matter of time before he ends up in prison, or worse. That's all thanks to Bradley Cooper, an FBI agent who caught on to one of his small time schemes, and is using it as leverage against him and his partner, Amy Adams into larger and ever more dangerous schemes, until they're looking at taking down powerful politicians, and ending up on the wrong side of the mob. Bale isn't happy about any of this; he's a small fish happy in his big pond; he'd rather be scamming gambling addicts than having a sitdown with Robert De Niro.
Some of this actually happened. The film is based on the "Abscam" scandal from the late '70s, loosely. The historical situation is pretty crazy in and of itself, and indicative of the dysfunction in American government and culture in the '70s. ("Argo" this ain't.) In a nutshell, the FBI grew tired of being reprimanded by Congress, so the feds launched an operation against Congress itself. It involved a fake "Arab" seeking to invest millions into New Jersey's slumping economy, and willing to grease whatever palms necessary to get the casino licenses, citizenship and anything else needed to get the job done. Abscam brought down several Representatives and one Senator on bribery charges, but it also resulted in something called the "Civiletti Undercover Guidelines," which basically was the Attorney General telling the FBI to never do anything like it ever again.
It's a situation a little too messy for a straightforward film adaptation, but David O. Russell likes to make messy movies. Russell's signature talent is his ability to both create and control chaos on screen. He loves to set crazy characters on colliding paths, and knows there are infinite ways to play crazy. It's hard to imagine any other director managing the scenes Russell manages, scenes in which three or four or five crazy people bounce off of each other at odd angles in fantastically entertaining ways. He's also skilled at swinging from zany to serious (and back) at the drop of a hat. It's kind of like watching Real Housewives: these people are nuts, but we care about them anyway. Actually, it's infinitely more entertaining than Real Housewives.
Russell has developed a consistent stable of actors he likes to work with -- or who like to work with him. Rumor has it he's an extremely demanding director, known for feeding improvised lines to actors from alongside the camera during shooting. Also, there's a video on YouTube of him ranting and raving at Lily Tomlin during the shooting of "I Heart Huckabees," though Tomlin afterward said that everything was fine between them and she'd be happy to work with him again. Some can't take the heat, and some thrive in it.
Amy Adams is better in Russell's movies than in anything else she's done, and so is Bradley Cooper. Cooper has earned Oscar nominations for his two performances in Russell's films, despite playing basically the same character in both of them (manic and naive, goal-driven, desperate, prone to violent outbursts but somehow forgivable and even innocent.) I'm not convinced yet that Cooper is a great actor--I'd like to see more range in his performances -- but he has without a doubt created a very watchable character performance that can span multiple films. In that way he's kind of like Al Pacino or Woody Allen.
Christian Bale, on the other hand, is a man of a thousand faces (and mannerisms, accents, etc.) If the Oscar always goes to the actor who uglies up best, Christian Bale got robbed. He gained 50 lbs and looks terrible. I guess that's not as impressive at Matthew McConaughey losing 50 lbs., but McConaughey is still rodeo-sexy through most of Dallas Buyers Club. Bale just looks bad here, and that's good. It's amazing to me that the same guy can play Batman, Patrick Bateman and a crackhead boxing has- been who once knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard (or maybe he just tripped.)
But Jennifer Lawrence, who can seemingly do anything, might be the best part of the movie. She plays Bale's wife, whom he can't seem to get away from (he calls her "the Picasso of passive-aggressive karate.") She routinely steals scenes by playing absolutely, but uniquely and distinctly, batshit crazy. She's the opposite of her nail finish--she's mostly rotten and a little bit sweet, and you can't get enough of her. You just keep coming back.
"American Hustle" is a zany, screwball ride, but it's also a movie about survival and reinvention. It's about people who are conning themselves, who are desperate to get out of their situations and maybe their skins. Ironically, the only characters who have a firm grasp on their real identities are the cons . In the world these characters live in, ambition is the greatest sin -- ambition and lying to your friends.
The Bling Ring (2013)
All Surfaces - On Purpose
"The Bling Ring" is an odd, funny, somewhat artsy film from Sofia Coppolla based on a fascinating Vanity Fair article by Nancy Jo Sales titled "The Suspects Wore Louboutins." I'll sum it up for you: a group of L.A. teenagers burgled the houses of various celebrities over the course of several months. Based on information gleaned from celebrity gossip rags (and blogs) as well as Google Maps, they visited the million dollar homes of Lindsey Lohan, Paris Hilton and others while they were at parties or away on film shoots, found the security surprisingly lax (Hilton had a spare key under the welcome mat) and stole their clothes, money, and underwear, which they would then wear to parties and nightclubs.
It's a fascinating story, not least because it tempts us to make sweeping generalizations about "kids these days." And generally, when a story like this gets picked up by a film company, the movie that results is a sort of true crime confessional. It dives deep into the characters and their motivations, because, we the people want to understand how and why people could do things like this. It's the "Bonnie and Clyde" sub-genre, and it's a pretty reliable film formula.
But Sofia Coppola seems aggressively determined to fly in the face of that formula. Almost the entire film is shot from midrange, with very few closeups. Confessional moments aren't, really - they're played for laughs (though I was surprised to find that some of the funniest, most outrageous moments come verbatim from the Vanity Fair article the movie was based on. Real people said things like "I want to run a huge charity organization. I want to lead a country, for all I know." You can't write this stuff.) But I think Coppola is keeping her distance on purpose. This is a movie about surfaces, appearances, and it would be a bit odd to dig beneath the surface of our characters. Contrary to expectations, "The Bling Ring" isn't going to explain to us what makes these people tick. They are opaque; that's the point. Us cornfed flyover Americans don't understand them. We can throw easy explanations at them, say things about absent parents and celebrity obsession and substance abuse, but at the end of the day, what we have are a generation (or a culture) of surface-obsessed young people, and it's really anyone's guess what -- if anything -- lies beneath that surface.
But once Coppola's intentions are clear, it's worth asking whether they're actually good intentions, aesthetically. There's definitely a certain logic in a surface-obsessed director like Coppola making a film about surface-obsessed criminals, and I can respect the idea that you can't actually get to know real people by watching a fictional film about them. But all this really amounts to is seeing "The Bling Ring" as a negation; it's a protest against true crime confessionals, in the form of a movie that's supposed to function as a piece of entertainment. But without something positive to replace what it's clearing out of the way, "The Bling Ring" feels kind of empty, and even (inadvertently) invites us to fill in its absence with our own conjecture. I'm confident that Coppola is not trying to say anything at all about "kids these days," and yet, when the credits roll, it's tempting to say something along those lines anyway. And so, in that way, "The Bling Ring" itself is like its protagonists (if you can call them that) : it's all surface, inscrutable, mysterious, and ultimately unsatisfying.
Other random thoughts:
--There's a great sequence of a robbery filmed from several hundred yards away - we watch everything through the giant glass windows that substitute for walls in this reality TV star's house.
--I don't like the "Unsolved Mysteries" structure, and I wish movies would abandon it -- or find a way to make it fresh. I don't need dramatic scenes intercut with interviews of the characters, explaining what they are thinking or doing. It feels cheap and lazy, almost as lazy as voice-over, the characters straight out telling us things the director couldn't figure out how to show us in the scene. It just makes it worse when the things they're telling us aren't that important, or are things we could have figured out from the dramatic scenes.
--Israel Broussard is an odd casting choice for our main character. I would expect someone more classically good-looking, or at least someone better groomed. With his shaggy mop of hair and ever-present hoodies, he looks more like the outcast, creative and sensitive center of movies like "The Way, Way Back" or "Bandslam" than a fashion-obsessed club hopper. I have a hard time believing that girls like these - pretty, popular, rich girls - would give him the time of day. Ever.
--There are a lot of things I found hard to believe in "The Bling Ring," and it turns out most of them are actually straight from the true story. As far as I can tell - and I've scoured Google looking for an explanation - a number of celebrities do not have home alarm systems -- or maybe they don't set them when they leave their million dollar houses chock full of designer clothes and top of the line everything. Paris Hilton really did leave a key under the mat. The Bling Ring was eventually caught thanks in part to security camera footage, but apparently nobody's checking the cameras very often, because they robbed several of these places six or seven times.
It's a fascinating story, not least because it tempts us to make sweeping generalizations about "kids these days." And generally, when a story like this gets picked up by a film company, the movie that results is a sort of true crime confessional. It dives deep into the characters and their motivations, because, we the people want to understand how and why people could do things like this. It's the "Bonnie and Clyde" sub-genre, and it's a pretty reliable film formula.
But Sofia Coppola seems aggressively determined to fly in the face of that formula. Almost the entire film is shot from midrange, with very few closeups. Confessional moments aren't, really - they're played for laughs (though I was surprised to find that some of the funniest, most outrageous moments come verbatim from the Vanity Fair article the movie was based on. Real people said things like "I want to run a huge charity organization. I want to lead a country, for all I know." You can't write this stuff.) But I think Coppola is keeping her distance on purpose. This is a movie about surfaces, appearances, and it would be a bit odd to dig beneath the surface of our characters. Contrary to expectations, "The Bling Ring" isn't going to explain to us what makes these people tick. They are opaque; that's the point. Us cornfed flyover Americans don't understand them. We can throw easy explanations at them, say things about absent parents and celebrity obsession and substance abuse, but at the end of the day, what we have are a generation (or a culture) of surface-obsessed young people, and it's really anyone's guess what -- if anything -- lies beneath that surface.
But once Coppola's intentions are clear, it's worth asking whether they're actually good intentions, aesthetically. There's definitely a certain logic in a surface-obsessed director like Coppola making a film about surface-obsessed criminals, and I can respect the idea that you can't actually get to know real people by watching a fictional film about them. But all this really amounts to is seeing "The Bling Ring" as a negation; it's a protest against true crime confessionals, in the form of a movie that's supposed to function as a piece of entertainment. But without something positive to replace what it's clearing out of the way, "The Bling Ring" feels kind of empty, and even (inadvertently) invites us to fill in its absence with our own conjecture. I'm confident that Coppola is not trying to say anything at all about "kids these days," and yet, when the credits roll, it's tempting to say something along those lines anyway. And so, in that way, "The Bling Ring" itself is like its protagonists (if you can call them that) : it's all surface, inscrutable, mysterious, and ultimately unsatisfying.
Other random thoughts:
--There's a great sequence of a robbery filmed from several hundred yards away - we watch everything through the giant glass windows that substitute for walls in this reality TV star's house.
--I don't like the "Unsolved Mysteries" structure, and I wish movies would abandon it -- or find a way to make it fresh. I don't need dramatic scenes intercut with interviews of the characters, explaining what they are thinking or doing. It feels cheap and lazy, almost as lazy as voice-over, the characters straight out telling us things the director couldn't figure out how to show us in the scene. It just makes it worse when the things they're telling us aren't that important, or are things we could have figured out from the dramatic scenes.
--Israel Broussard is an odd casting choice for our main character. I would expect someone more classically good-looking, or at least someone better groomed. With his shaggy mop of hair and ever-present hoodies, he looks more like the outcast, creative and sensitive center of movies like "The Way, Way Back" or "Bandslam" than a fashion-obsessed club hopper. I have a hard time believing that girls like these - pretty, popular, rich girls - would give him the time of day. Ever.
--There are a lot of things I found hard to believe in "The Bling Ring," and it turns out most of them are actually straight from the true story. As far as I can tell - and I've scoured Google looking for an explanation - a number of celebrities do not have home alarm systems -- or maybe they don't set them when they leave their million dollar houses chock full of designer clothes and top of the line everything. Paris Hilton really did leave a key under the mat. The Bling Ring was eventually caught thanks in part to security camera footage, but apparently nobody's checking the cameras very often, because they robbed several of these places six or seven times.
The Lone Ranger (2013)
A Tale of the Deluded and Delirious
It seems like all Native America wanted to talk about this summer was "The Lone Ranger" and whether it honored or offended Native Americans. I've read articles from Native people on both sides, so I'll let my words be few on this topic. Frankly, I expected it to be worse. It makes some honest, if clumsy and possibly misguided, attempts to honor Native peoples. Its greatest sin is that it relegates Native Americans to the past. Tonto appears to be the last living Indian, and he's hardly more than a peanut-guzzling wax figure in a Wild West museum. The filmmakers might be surprised to find that there are vital and growing Native communities in the 21st century.
"The Lone Ranger" opens in a Wild West museum, where an extremely old Tonto is part of the display. This ancient Indian narrates the entire story to a young boy wearing a toy six-shooter and cowboy hat. About halfway through the film, we learn that Tonto (Johnny Depp), because of childhood trauma, has suffered a break with reality and is completely nuts. When you put these two scenes together - when you recognize that the whole movie is a story told by a man who has completely lost touch with reality - things start to make a little more sense.
This is a schizophrenic film. The experience of watching it is similar to what I imagine a visit to a mental hospital would be like. It veers from ridiculous to campy, from fast-paced and breathless to terribly serious to suddenly, perhaps unintentionally, funny again. It's hard to keep up. It might be pointless to try. Like an amusement park ride, the way it moves, jerks, veers and swoops will either make you light-headed and woozy, or it will make you puke.
Armie Hammer stars as a self-righteous lawyer who seems to believe that he can singlehandedly bring Justice and Order to the wild, wild West. This is the good guy, and also the film's first big problem: he's completely unlikable. From the beginning of the film to the end, he's stiff, and arrogant, and self-righteous. Even Tonto doesn't like him, but we'll get to that.
Hammer quickly gets deputized and rides out into the desert, where the bad guy, who literally eats the heart of his enemy, slaughters everyone around him. Yep, this is a kid's movie. Depp shows up to bury the dead bodies, but discovers that this one's only mostly dead. Mostly dead means slightly alive, so he nurses the stranger with the big white hat back to health, convinced by a bird (or a hallucination of a bird, I'm not sure) that this man can't be killed.
Depp and Hammer ride after the bad guys, only to discover that the good guys are actually the bad guys, and the original bad guys don't matter that much, and before long, the Army's involved, and we're all thoroughly confused as far as who's on which side and why.
Actually, I'd like to pause and talk about the Army, because it might be the one place where "The Lone Ranger" actually has something interesting to say. Barry Pepper plays the Army commander, who is sent in by the government to fight the Comanches, who attacking and killing innocent folks along the frontier. Pepper is presented by the film as a good man sent to do a job, and only concerned with doing it well and completely. It's only after he and his army have slaughtered an entire Comanche war party that he discovers that it wasn't the Comanches killing the ranchers after all, but railroad workers dressed up as Comanches because the evil railroad baron (Tom Wilkinson) wants the Comanches out of the way. Fuller has been tricked and manipulated.
Then, so quickly that you might miss it, Pepper comes to a watershed moment in his life -- will he admit that he has unwittingly done a terrible thing, slaughtering innocent people, then repent and try to make amends? Or will he continue down the road he's found himself on, buying the lie he's been told, a lie that justifies his own actions? In this all-too-brief moment, I think the makers of "The Lone Ranger" have hit upon the situation of most white Americans, and the tough choice in front of them -- to ignore/justify the past, or to go about the hard, soul-searching work of repentance and reconciliation, and seek a better future. Sadly, I'm afraid most people choose the same path Pepper chose.
"The Lone Ranger" was a big box office disappointment for Disney, and I can't say that you'll miss much if you decide to skip it when it comes out on DVD soon. I didn't find it as terribly offensive as some people did, but frankly, it just wasn't a very good movie. There are certainly better things you could do with your time.
"The Lone Ranger" opens in a Wild West museum, where an extremely old Tonto is part of the display. This ancient Indian narrates the entire story to a young boy wearing a toy six-shooter and cowboy hat. About halfway through the film, we learn that Tonto (Johnny Depp), because of childhood trauma, has suffered a break with reality and is completely nuts. When you put these two scenes together - when you recognize that the whole movie is a story told by a man who has completely lost touch with reality - things start to make a little more sense.
This is a schizophrenic film. The experience of watching it is similar to what I imagine a visit to a mental hospital would be like. It veers from ridiculous to campy, from fast-paced and breathless to terribly serious to suddenly, perhaps unintentionally, funny again. It's hard to keep up. It might be pointless to try. Like an amusement park ride, the way it moves, jerks, veers and swoops will either make you light-headed and woozy, or it will make you puke.
Armie Hammer stars as a self-righteous lawyer who seems to believe that he can singlehandedly bring Justice and Order to the wild, wild West. This is the good guy, and also the film's first big problem: he's completely unlikable. From the beginning of the film to the end, he's stiff, and arrogant, and self-righteous. Even Tonto doesn't like him, but we'll get to that.
Hammer quickly gets deputized and rides out into the desert, where the bad guy, who literally eats the heart of his enemy, slaughters everyone around him. Yep, this is a kid's movie. Depp shows up to bury the dead bodies, but discovers that this one's only mostly dead. Mostly dead means slightly alive, so he nurses the stranger with the big white hat back to health, convinced by a bird (or a hallucination of a bird, I'm not sure) that this man can't be killed.
Depp and Hammer ride after the bad guys, only to discover that the good guys are actually the bad guys, and the original bad guys don't matter that much, and before long, the Army's involved, and we're all thoroughly confused as far as who's on which side and why.
Actually, I'd like to pause and talk about the Army, because it might be the one place where "The Lone Ranger" actually has something interesting to say. Barry Pepper plays the Army commander, who is sent in by the government to fight the Comanches, who attacking and killing innocent folks along the frontier. Pepper is presented by the film as a good man sent to do a job, and only concerned with doing it well and completely. It's only after he and his army have slaughtered an entire Comanche war party that he discovers that it wasn't the Comanches killing the ranchers after all, but railroad workers dressed up as Comanches because the evil railroad baron (Tom Wilkinson) wants the Comanches out of the way. Fuller has been tricked and manipulated.
Then, so quickly that you might miss it, Pepper comes to a watershed moment in his life -- will he admit that he has unwittingly done a terrible thing, slaughtering innocent people, then repent and try to make amends? Or will he continue down the road he's found himself on, buying the lie he's been told, a lie that justifies his own actions? In this all-too-brief moment, I think the makers of "The Lone Ranger" have hit upon the situation of most white Americans, and the tough choice in front of them -- to ignore/justify the past, or to go about the hard, soul-searching work of repentance and reconciliation, and seek a better future. Sadly, I'm afraid most people choose the same path Pepper chose.
"The Lone Ranger" was a big box office disappointment for Disney, and I can't say that you'll miss much if you decide to skip it when it comes out on DVD soon. I didn't find it as terribly offensive as some people did, but frankly, it just wasn't a very good movie. There are certainly better things you could do with your time.
The Wolverine (2013)
He's Back Again
We like Wolverine. Apparently we really like him; "The Wolverine" is the sixth movie in which Hugh Jackman's played the character, which was created in 1974 by Len Wein and John Romita, Sr. (He was originally an enemy of the Hulk.) To understand why we like him so much, I think it's helpful to think back to 1974. America had just lost the war in Vietnam, thanks to the politicians despite winning all the battles (whether or not this is factually true, it was the general zeitgeist of the time.) We'd just found out our President was a crook, and forced him to resign. A lot of Americans had a lot of rage, a problem with authority, a hard time trusting anybody, but also a deep thirst for justice and revenge. We'd stopped believing the system was ever going to deliver it for us, and were ready to get it any way possible. We felt powerful, cheated, and somebody needed to pay. As Wolverine's popularity skyrocketed in the comic books, Clint Eastwood became one of the most popular stars in Hollywood playing a brooding cop with a big gun who always got the bad guy but had a hard time playing by the rules. There's a lot of Dirty Harry in Jackman's portrayal of Wolverine, and I'm still waiting for the movie that introduces Eastwood as Logan's long-lost father.
"The Wolverine" picks up where "X-Men: The Last Stand" left off, which is a bit of a stumble, because that movie was made 7 years ago and there have been two X-Men films since then. It took me a while to recapture the storyline: Logan killed Jean Grey, the woman he loved, because her alternate personality the Phoenix, was taking over and destroying everyone and everything around her.
Wolverine has fled to somewhere very wooded and become Grizzly Adams. He is haunted by dreams of Jean Grey, and promises never to hurt anyone again ever, a promise he keeps for about five minutes, until someone hurts one of his ursine friends. While he is beating up rednecks, a pink-haired Japanese ninja girl (Rila Fukushima) finds him and begs him to come to Tokyo, where a man he once saved is dying, and wants to say goodbye.
Logan agrees, and somehow never suspects that the man he is going to see-- billionaire tech giant Yashida, played by Haruhiko Yamanouchi -- might have an ulterior motive for bringing him across the ocean. Logan gets embroiled in a complicated, nearly incoherent family controversy, wherein the Yakuza are trying to assassinate the old man's granddaughter, except maybe they're hired by the pretty girl's father, who's mad that he's not mentioned in the old man's will, except maybe not, because there's also a playboy fiancée with political ambitions and a jilted boyfriend with lots of ninja friends, and maybe the old man's not as dead as he appears.
I don't know if it all makes sense. I don't feel like wasting the brainpower it would take to untangle it all and see if it makes sense. What it all boils down to is that Logan is going to protect the pretty granddaughter (Tao Okamota) because she's pretty and vulnerable and likes to kiss him. And a lot of people want to kill her, some with guns and some with swords and some with poison-tipped arrows, and it's not all that important who sent them, or why.
"The Wolverine's" convoluted plot, as well as an airless, joyless third act where everything is explained but nothing makes sense, are the film's weaknesses. But it has plenty of strengths. The film is strong on atmosphere and aesthetics, and director James Mangold knows how to make the most of his Japanese settings. It's packed to the brim with exciting action sequences, including one aboard a bullet train sequence bears more than a passing resemblance to the space suit action sequence in "Star Trek: Into Darkness." I don't say that to disrespect it; these two are probably the best two action sequences in movies this summer.
This is as much a samurai film as a superhero film, and that's pretty cool. Svetlana Khodchenkova has a lot of fun playing sexy villainess Viper, who likes to wear green, scaly tight-fitting things and kills people by kissing them with her acidic, forked tongue. She's not really given enough to do and her death is anticlimactic, but the Russian actress makes the most of what the script and the screen time give her.
Also, she has the unexplained ability to take away Wolverine's healing factor, rendering him killable. The script makes the most of this, and Jackman's meets them halfway; the result is a protagonist who isn't invulnerable (like Superman and Thor,) but seems genuinely surprised by how much being hurt, well, hurts. Logan briefly contemplates letting himself be killed, so that he can join Jean Grey (and the countless other people he's watched die over his 200-year lifespan) in the afterlife. But there's the ingénue to save from the bad guys. Sigh... seems like there's always an ingénue to save from the bad guys. Superheroes never get a chance to spend quality time with their loved ones, dead or alive. It's a tough life.
I wonder if, as an audience, we'll ever grow tired of Wolverine. 1974 was a long time ago, and it's been a while since we nearly impeached a president or lost a war. I suppose there's always plenty to be angry about, but successful, entertaining and even humorous movies featuring more brightly colored, optimistic superheroes - guys like Iron Man, Thor and Captain America - make me think the age of the dark, angsty protagonist may finally be coming to an end. There's another X-Men movie in the works (make sure to stick through the credits to see the teaser for "Days of Future Past") but maybe after that, Jackman can hang up the claws once and for all.
"The Wolverine" picks up where "X-Men: The Last Stand" left off, which is a bit of a stumble, because that movie was made 7 years ago and there have been two X-Men films since then. It took me a while to recapture the storyline: Logan killed Jean Grey, the woman he loved, because her alternate personality the Phoenix, was taking over and destroying everyone and everything around her.
Wolverine has fled to somewhere very wooded and become Grizzly Adams. He is haunted by dreams of Jean Grey, and promises never to hurt anyone again ever, a promise he keeps for about five minutes, until someone hurts one of his ursine friends. While he is beating up rednecks, a pink-haired Japanese ninja girl (Rila Fukushima) finds him and begs him to come to Tokyo, where a man he once saved is dying, and wants to say goodbye.
Logan agrees, and somehow never suspects that the man he is going to see-- billionaire tech giant Yashida, played by Haruhiko Yamanouchi -- might have an ulterior motive for bringing him across the ocean. Logan gets embroiled in a complicated, nearly incoherent family controversy, wherein the Yakuza are trying to assassinate the old man's granddaughter, except maybe they're hired by the pretty girl's father, who's mad that he's not mentioned in the old man's will, except maybe not, because there's also a playboy fiancée with political ambitions and a jilted boyfriend with lots of ninja friends, and maybe the old man's not as dead as he appears.
I don't know if it all makes sense. I don't feel like wasting the brainpower it would take to untangle it all and see if it makes sense. What it all boils down to is that Logan is going to protect the pretty granddaughter (Tao Okamota) because she's pretty and vulnerable and likes to kiss him. And a lot of people want to kill her, some with guns and some with swords and some with poison-tipped arrows, and it's not all that important who sent them, or why.
"The Wolverine's" convoluted plot, as well as an airless, joyless third act where everything is explained but nothing makes sense, are the film's weaknesses. But it has plenty of strengths. The film is strong on atmosphere and aesthetics, and director James Mangold knows how to make the most of his Japanese settings. It's packed to the brim with exciting action sequences, including one aboard a bullet train sequence bears more than a passing resemblance to the space suit action sequence in "Star Trek: Into Darkness." I don't say that to disrespect it; these two are probably the best two action sequences in movies this summer.
This is as much a samurai film as a superhero film, and that's pretty cool. Svetlana Khodchenkova has a lot of fun playing sexy villainess Viper, who likes to wear green, scaly tight-fitting things and kills people by kissing them with her acidic, forked tongue. She's not really given enough to do and her death is anticlimactic, but the Russian actress makes the most of what the script and the screen time give her.
Also, she has the unexplained ability to take away Wolverine's healing factor, rendering him killable. The script makes the most of this, and Jackman's meets them halfway; the result is a protagonist who isn't invulnerable (like Superman and Thor,) but seems genuinely surprised by how much being hurt, well, hurts. Logan briefly contemplates letting himself be killed, so that he can join Jean Grey (and the countless other people he's watched die over his 200-year lifespan) in the afterlife. But there's the ingénue to save from the bad guys. Sigh... seems like there's always an ingénue to save from the bad guys. Superheroes never get a chance to spend quality time with their loved ones, dead or alive. It's a tough life.
I wonder if, as an audience, we'll ever grow tired of Wolverine. 1974 was a long time ago, and it's been a while since we nearly impeached a president or lost a war. I suppose there's always plenty to be angry about, but successful, entertaining and even humorous movies featuring more brightly colored, optimistic superheroes - guys like Iron Man, Thor and Captain America - make me think the age of the dark, angsty protagonist may finally be coming to an end. There's another X-Men movie in the works (make sure to stick through the credits to see the teaser for "Days of Future Past") but maybe after that, Jackman can hang up the claws once and for all.
Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
Turning romcom conventions on their heads
David O. Russell is making a name for himself by taking terribly conventional scripts/plots and turning out remarkably original movies full of life and energy. He did it first with "Three Kings," but then again, and with more accolades with "The Fighter," which on paper was just another movie about an underdog boxer, but on screen was fascinating, funny, and one of the best sports films to come along in years. And now he's back with "Silver Linings Playbook," and he's doing the same thing for the romantic-comedy-amongst-kooks genre.
Bradley Cooper plays a guy fresh out of a mental hospital after nearly beating his wife's lover to death. He's trying hard to be better, and even harder to convince everyone else that he's better. His friends hook him up with Jennifer Lawrence, who, since her cop husband died in a freak accident, has slept with nearly everyone in town. The motives of his friends are questionable. Are they trying to get him laid so that he'll forget about his ex-wife? That's super sketchy, since Lawrence is clearly dealing with her own craziness and needs people around her who will protect her, not enable her.
But then it becomes clear that just about everyone in "Silver Linings Playbook" is some kind of crazy. It's sort of the mirror image of "Arrested Development." In that show, Jason Bateman thinks he's the only sane one surrounded by a bunch of lunatics, but really, he's just as nuts as everyone else. Here, Bradley Cooper thinks he's the one with mental issues surrounded by normal people, but everyone else is just as insane as he is.
Take, for instance, his father, played by Robert De Niro. He's a bookie and a passionate, superstitious Eagles fan. He honestly seems to think that the way he holds a certain handkerchief has an effect on the outcome of the game. De Niro believes that Cooper watching the game with him makes a difference. That's insane. Betting on it is even more insane. That's a weird pressure to put on somebody - I'm betting heavy because I believe you're good luck and the Eagles are going to win because you're at the game. Not playing IN the game, AT the game. You can't do anything REAL to help the team win the game, you can't take the field and catch a touchdown pass, so if they lose and you were there being good luck, what then? You didn't do enough? Didn't do what enough? If my dad bet all he had on a football game because he believed that my good luck presence was going to determine the game - me one out of 50,000 fans attending, 150,000 watching -- I would have a nervous breakdown right then and there.
Lawrence is the hero of the film because instead of resisting everyone's craziness, she just meets them in it. In the best sequence of the movies (and one of the best sequences in movies, period,) instead of telling De Niro that he's insane to think that his son's relationship with her is detrimental to the Eagles, she just goes with it. And she's done her research. I love the way this whole sequence is filmed, directed and acted. There are so many characters involved, really involved in this scene; there's so much energy to it. The plot mechanics are pretty straight forward; you need to film a confrontation scene that ends with this crazy bet upon which the rest of the film will be predicated. But the way it's handled is so loose -- and frenetic -- that it really feels like a situation that just evolves into what it becomes. Nothing feels forced. And so a really implausible plot point -- the calling card of nearly all romantic comedies -- feels honestly believable.
All of "Silver Linings Playbo0k" feels messy, loose and thrown together. At first glance, you'd think the director is hardly in control of what's going on here. But on closer look, it becomes clear that this madness is by design. For instance. Russell uses the editing, and the score, to create a sense of things happening too fast, which I think is supposed to be how Cooper feels about the world - there are just too many things happening, too fast, both inside and outside of his head, for him to deal with them all. If everything would just slow down a little, he might be all right. But everything escalates. On top of that, Russell gets great, fully invested performances from everyone involved. That's no easy task, and I wonder what his secret is. Some of these actors, I've never seen them working this hard. Others, De Niro in particular, look like he just woke up from a long nap of acting in silly and stupid movies. I've stopped watching movies just because Robert De Niro is in them, but I'll hazard a guess - he hasn't been this invested since he directed himself in "The Good Shepherd."
This is a heck of a movie, and David O. Russell is a heck of a director, someone I'll definitely be watching in years to come. His movies are alive in a way a lot of movies aren't, and they're really fun and intriguing to watch.
Bradley Cooper plays a guy fresh out of a mental hospital after nearly beating his wife's lover to death. He's trying hard to be better, and even harder to convince everyone else that he's better. His friends hook him up with Jennifer Lawrence, who, since her cop husband died in a freak accident, has slept with nearly everyone in town. The motives of his friends are questionable. Are they trying to get him laid so that he'll forget about his ex-wife? That's super sketchy, since Lawrence is clearly dealing with her own craziness and needs people around her who will protect her, not enable her.
But then it becomes clear that just about everyone in "Silver Linings Playbook" is some kind of crazy. It's sort of the mirror image of "Arrested Development." In that show, Jason Bateman thinks he's the only sane one surrounded by a bunch of lunatics, but really, he's just as nuts as everyone else. Here, Bradley Cooper thinks he's the one with mental issues surrounded by normal people, but everyone else is just as insane as he is.
Take, for instance, his father, played by Robert De Niro. He's a bookie and a passionate, superstitious Eagles fan. He honestly seems to think that the way he holds a certain handkerchief has an effect on the outcome of the game. De Niro believes that Cooper watching the game with him makes a difference. That's insane. Betting on it is even more insane. That's a weird pressure to put on somebody - I'm betting heavy because I believe you're good luck and the Eagles are going to win because you're at the game. Not playing IN the game, AT the game. You can't do anything REAL to help the team win the game, you can't take the field and catch a touchdown pass, so if they lose and you were there being good luck, what then? You didn't do enough? Didn't do what enough? If my dad bet all he had on a football game because he believed that my good luck presence was going to determine the game - me one out of 50,000 fans attending, 150,000 watching -- I would have a nervous breakdown right then and there.
Lawrence is the hero of the film because instead of resisting everyone's craziness, she just meets them in it. In the best sequence of the movies (and one of the best sequences in movies, period,) instead of telling De Niro that he's insane to think that his son's relationship with her is detrimental to the Eagles, she just goes with it. And she's done her research. I love the way this whole sequence is filmed, directed and acted. There are so many characters involved, really involved in this scene; there's so much energy to it. The plot mechanics are pretty straight forward; you need to film a confrontation scene that ends with this crazy bet upon which the rest of the film will be predicated. But the way it's handled is so loose -- and frenetic -- that it really feels like a situation that just evolves into what it becomes. Nothing feels forced. And so a really implausible plot point -- the calling card of nearly all romantic comedies -- feels honestly believable.
All of "Silver Linings Playbo0k" feels messy, loose and thrown together. At first glance, you'd think the director is hardly in control of what's going on here. But on closer look, it becomes clear that this madness is by design. For instance. Russell uses the editing, and the score, to create a sense of things happening too fast, which I think is supposed to be how Cooper feels about the world - there are just too many things happening, too fast, both inside and outside of his head, for him to deal with them all. If everything would just slow down a little, he might be all right. But everything escalates. On top of that, Russell gets great, fully invested performances from everyone involved. That's no easy task, and I wonder what his secret is. Some of these actors, I've never seen them working this hard. Others, De Niro in particular, look like he just woke up from a long nap of acting in silly and stupid movies. I've stopped watching movies just because Robert De Niro is in them, but I'll hazard a guess - he hasn't been this invested since he directed himself in "The Good Shepherd."
This is a heck of a movie, and David O. Russell is a heck of a director, someone I'll definitely be watching in years to come. His movies are alive in a way a lot of movies aren't, and they're really fun and intriguing to watch.
Monsters University (2013)
Pretty entertaining...if you don't think about it too hard.
Monsters University is an enjoyable film, a riff on the college comedy, borrowing liberally from "Revenge of the Nerds." But the more I think about it, the more problems I detect with its execution. Which is maybe further proof that it's better just to watch movies (especially summer-release movies) and not think about them.
To begin with, what age group is this made for? Tonally, it's definitely pitched at kids - it lacks the kind of deeper resonance that has made Pixar films favorites among adults for the last decade. And I'm okay with that, these days I'm feeling like we need to let Pixar off the hook a little, and let them just make decent kids' movies. But does "Monsters U" work as a kid's movie? The premise of "Monsters, Inc." felt a little difficult for children to grasp, and it's even more so here. You need to understand that in the monster world, children's screams are a valuable source of energy, and the monsters evoking those screams are just doing their job. But what does a first grader understand about energy production and usage? Do they really get that the TV and dishwasher and nightlight all work because of the coal plant? I doubt it. The first movie hedged this bet effectively, both by explaining it to death, and by forging a paternal bond between Sully and Boo. When watching "Monsters, Inc.," a five year old doesn't need to understand the dynamics of energy production in the monster world to understand who the good guys are; they see Sully cuddling Boo, and they get it. But in "Monsters University," there's no Boo. There's no explanation either. The children are scarce, and when they appear, are a source of energy, and nothing else. How does that play for a five-year-old, especially one who hasn't seen the first movie?
Serving as a prequel to "Monsters, Inc," we get to know one-eyed, walking ping-pong ball Mike Wazowsky and intimidating-except-for-the-purple-polka-dots Jimmy Sullivan (Sully) as polar opposite students. Mike is all book knowledge and technique; he can ace a pop quiz and demonstrate zombie drooling with proficiency, but can't spook a tabby cat to save his life. Sully comes from a family of prestigious scarers, and skates on his reputation; he's got a mighty roar and intimidating physique, but not much else.
The two are rivals until they get kicked out of scare school (for the dumbest of reasons) and must find a way to prove to the dean (Helen Mirren, on screen as a creepy cross between a dragon and a centipede) that they have what it takes to be truly scary. The path to victory has them enlisting a fraternity of lovable losers and competing in the scare games, which bear more than a slight resemblance to the Triwizard Tournament in Harry Potter.
Surprisingly, "Monsters University" never deals with its biggest plot point: Mike loves scaring but just isn't scary. Where does he fit? Everyone around him says "nowhere," including the dean of the school, who relegates him to classes on can manufacturing. Anyone who's seen (and remembers) the first film knows that Mike never manages to become scary. In "Monsters, Inc.," He's basically Sulley's handler, but in the timeline of "Monsters U," that job doesn't exist. (Until the montage at the very end, when suddenly it does.)
What changed? Since Pixar movies generally try to play by the same rules as the real world, you would assume that the change didn't happen easily. No corporation is going to employ two people to do the same job they used to get done with just one person. Mike and Sully would have had to fight hard, and demonstrate compellingly, that the handler position was necessary. There would have to be some kind of sea change in the scaring industry. This is a movie I'd like to see; it'd be a creative take on the "workplace crusader" genre. Granted, it would be hard to make it kid-friendly, but Pixar has never before shied away from a challenge (for heaven's sake, "Wall-E" was about a lone robot stranded on a garbage suffocated planet, but they made THAT kid-friendly) but that's not the movie that got made.
But I'll confess, willingly, that this is just me grousing, because that's what I do - I think, and I grouse. There's a lot to like about "Monsters University," but none of it is all that interesting to write about. The animation is beautiful, as it always is. There's a lot of fun attention to detail on the college campus. The voice work is very good, and I'll give a special shout-out to Helen Mirren, who makes Dean Hardscrabble quietly scary. The supporting characters are fun variations on old stereotypes. It's well-paced, and never feels like it's trying too hard. And so forth.
A lot of ink (or pixels? what-have-you) about the decline of Pixar, and "Monsters University" does nothing to reverse that trend. It's about on-par with "Brave," (not the adherence to formula in both) better than "Cars 2," and not even approaching the four films before that. I'd say that at this point, Pixar has settled in to making perfectly adequate kids' entertainment, similar in quality and style to DreamWorks. They're not annoying, and they're better crafted than most. They're not the uncontested champs in the animation world anymore, but they're still top tier. What's so wrong with that?
To begin with, what age group is this made for? Tonally, it's definitely pitched at kids - it lacks the kind of deeper resonance that has made Pixar films favorites among adults for the last decade. And I'm okay with that, these days I'm feeling like we need to let Pixar off the hook a little, and let them just make decent kids' movies. But does "Monsters U" work as a kid's movie? The premise of "Monsters, Inc." felt a little difficult for children to grasp, and it's even more so here. You need to understand that in the monster world, children's screams are a valuable source of energy, and the monsters evoking those screams are just doing their job. But what does a first grader understand about energy production and usage? Do they really get that the TV and dishwasher and nightlight all work because of the coal plant? I doubt it. The first movie hedged this bet effectively, both by explaining it to death, and by forging a paternal bond between Sully and Boo. When watching "Monsters, Inc.," a five year old doesn't need to understand the dynamics of energy production in the monster world to understand who the good guys are; they see Sully cuddling Boo, and they get it. But in "Monsters University," there's no Boo. There's no explanation either. The children are scarce, and when they appear, are a source of energy, and nothing else. How does that play for a five-year-old, especially one who hasn't seen the first movie?
Serving as a prequel to "Monsters, Inc," we get to know one-eyed, walking ping-pong ball Mike Wazowsky and intimidating-except-for-the-purple-polka-dots Jimmy Sullivan (Sully) as polar opposite students. Mike is all book knowledge and technique; he can ace a pop quiz and demonstrate zombie drooling with proficiency, but can't spook a tabby cat to save his life. Sully comes from a family of prestigious scarers, and skates on his reputation; he's got a mighty roar and intimidating physique, but not much else.
The two are rivals until they get kicked out of scare school (for the dumbest of reasons) and must find a way to prove to the dean (Helen Mirren, on screen as a creepy cross between a dragon and a centipede) that they have what it takes to be truly scary. The path to victory has them enlisting a fraternity of lovable losers and competing in the scare games, which bear more than a slight resemblance to the Triwizard Tournament in Harry Potter.
Surprisingly, "Monsters University" never deals with its biggest plot point: Mike loves scaring but just isn't scary. Where does he fit? Everyone around him says "nowhere," including the dean of the school, who relegates him to classes on can manufacturing. Anyone who's seen (and remembers) the first film knows that Mike never manages to become scary. In "Monsters, Inc.," He's basically Sulley's handler, but in the timeline of "Monsters U," that job doesn't exist. (Until the montage at the very end, when suddenly it does.)
What changed? Since Pixar movies generally try to play by the same rules as the real world, you would assume that the change didn't happen easily. No corporation is going to employ two people to do the same job they used to get done with just one person. Mike and Sully would have had to fight hard, and demonstrate compellingly, that the handler position was necessary. There would have to be some kind of sea change in the scaring industry. This is a movie I'd like to see; it'd be a creative take on the "workplace crusader" genre. Granted, it would be hard to make it kid-friendly, but Pixar has never before shied away from a challenge (for heaven's sake, "Wall-E" was about a lone robot stranded on a garbage suffocated planet, but they made THAT kid-friendly) but that's not the movie that got made.
But I'll confess, willingly, that this is just me grousing, because that's what I do - I think, and I grouse. There's a lot to like about "Monsters University," but none of it is all that interesting to write about. The animation is beautiful, as it always is. There's a lot of fun attention to detail on the college campus. The voice work is very good, and I'll give a special shout-out to Helen Mirren, who makes Dean Hardscrabble quietly scary. The supporting characters are fun variations on old stereotypes. It's well-paced, and never feels like it's trying too hard. And so forth.
A lot of ink (or pixels? what-have-you) about the decline of Pixar, and "Monsters University" does nothing to reverse that trend. It's about on-par with "Brave," (not the adherence to formula in both) better than "Cars 2," and not even approaching the four films before that. I'd say that at this point, Pixar has settled in to making perfectly adequate kids' entertainment, similar in quality and style to DreamWorks. They're not annoying, and they're better crafted than most. They're not the uncontested champs in the animation world anymore, but they're still top tier. What's so wrong with that?
Wreck-It Ralph (2012)
Layered exposition makes this a great film
Taking a page out of the "Toy Story" book, "Wreck It Ralph" is about the characters that populated our childhood, and what they do when we're not watching. (Unlike Woody and Buzz, however, these guys don't give a darn if the kids who play with them like them or not. It's just a job.) Ralph is the bad guy in a video game titled "Fix It Felix, Jr." that occupies space in an old-fashioned arcade - the kind that actually took quarters and was managed by a guy wearing, for some mysterious reason, a referee's striped shirt.
When the arcade closes and the kids go home, the characters' lives go on. But Ralph doesn't have much of a life, because he's a bad guy, and everybody in his game hates him. The rest of the characters throw a party, but they don't invite Ralph. Instead, he goes to a Baddies Anonymous meeting, where he commiserates with Zangief (from "Street Fighter") and Bowser (from an endless number of "Mario" games) about how hard it is to be a bad guy. Zangief reminds him that "just because you are Bad Guy, doesn't mean you are bad guy!" Their motto as a group is "I'm bad, and that's good." The meeting doesn't help Ralph much, maybe because he's not the one that needs to hear it. What they really have is a PR problem; instead of sitting in an Anonymous meeting, these bad guys really should be taking their message to the streets.
Ralph decides he's going to win a medal, just like Felix does, and thus win the love and respect of the folks in his game. So he sneaks into a HALO-style first person shooter and steals the medal from the end, in the meanwhile setting off a chain of events that threaten the existence of the entire video game sub-world.
This all happens in the first half hour, and, if this were just an average movie, I would be able to guess the rest of the film at this point in it. Ralph would spend the next 60(ish) minutes trying to clean up the mess he'd made, and in the process, he would save the video game world, and at the end, just when he thinks of himself as a bad guy for real, everyone would see him as a hero and they would give him the medal he so badly wanted and tried to steal.
But this is a better, more interesting film than that. Ralph gets himself into trouble, and is plunged in to the candy-coated world of Sugar Rush, a go-kart racing game where nobody is quite what they seem. He loses his medal to a punk kid voiced by Sarah Silverman, and is forced into an agreement with her where if he helps her win a big race, she'll give him his medal back. But then King Candy, the ruler of Sugar Rush (voiced by Alan Tudyk, doing a spot-on and very entertaining impression of Ed Wynn from "Mary Poppins" and "Alice in Wonderland") pulls him aside to explain that if the kid is allowed to win the race, it would spell doom for the entire game, as well as certain death for her. What's Ralph to do?
"Wreck It Ralph" does an excellent job of layering its exposition, so that a seemingly throwaway comment in one scene suddenly becomes an important plot point ten or twenty minutes later. That's a pretty simple storytelling principle (though it's far too often ignored in Hollywood,) but what's really impressive is that these comments never feel like they're being dropped on purpose; it's never obvious that the screenwriters are telling us something we'll need to know later in the story. That takes talent, and it's on display here. "Wreck It Ralph" creates and inhabits a clearly unbelievable world, but it's written so well that it feels more believable, more lived in, than some movies that purport to exist in the real world. Contrast this, for instance with "Looper;" that movie did a lot of things right, but the hints it dropped were so clunky and obvious that they broke the illusion; I knew what was coming well before it came, and spent nearly the last half of the film bored.
Another of the things that I loved about this film was that both main characters' quest for actualization puts their respective worlds in jeopardy. When Ralph is absent from "Fix It Felix, Jr." the game can't function, and the real world owner of the arcade (the guy in the referee shirt) prepares to junk it. The punk kid (I've been avoiding her name, because it's such an unholy mouthful, but for the record, it's Vanellope Von Schweetz) feels in her bones that she's a racer, but following that impulse threatens to bring her whole world down around her ears. Their problems look like personal problems, but really, they're community problems; for both of them, the perspective of their entire community is going to need to shift before things can be restored to order and harmony.
That's an awfully academic paragraph about a kids' movie. But "Wreck It Ralph" isn't your run-of-the-mill kids' movie. It passed the kids' test in my house; my 4 year old likes it, though she thinks the bugs are too scary. I like it, too, because it offers something deeper, meatier and more nuanced for adult eyes. And I'm not just talking about the '80s video game references that go right over my pre schooler's head. This is one I won't mind watching over and over again.
When the arcade closes and the kids go home, the characters' lives go on. But Ralph doesn't have much of a life, because he's a bad guy, and everybody in his game hates him. The rest of the characters throw a party, but they don't invite Ralph. Instead, he goes to a Baddies Anonymous meeting, where he commiserates with Zangief (from "Street Fighter") and Bowser (from an endless number of "Mario" games) about how hard it is to be a bad guy. Zangief reminds him that "just because you are Bad Guy, doesn't mean you are bad guy!" Their motto as a group is "I'm bad, and that's good." The meeting doesn't help Ralph much, maybe because he's not the one that needs to hear it. What they really have is a PR problem; instead of sitting in an Anonymous meeting, these bad guys really should be taking their message to the streets.
Ralph decides he's going to win a medal, just like Felix does, and thus win the love and respect of the folks in his game. So he sneaks into a HALO-style first person shooter and steals the medal from the end, in the meanwhile setting off a chain of events that threaten the existence of the entire video game sub-world.
This all happens in the first half hour, and, if this were just an average movie, I would be able to guess the rest of the film at this point in it. Ralph would spend the next 60(ish) minutes trying to clean up the mess he'd made, and in the process, he would save the video game world, and at the end, just when he thinks of himself as a bad guy for real, everyone would see him as a hero and they would give him the medal he so badly wanted and tried to steal.
But this is a better, more interesting film than that. Ralph gets himself into trouble, and is plunged in to the candy-coated world of Sugar Rush, a go-kart racing game where nobody is quite what they seem. He loses his medal to a punk kid voiced by Sarah Silverman, and is forced into an agreement with her where if he helps her win a big race, she'll give him his medal back. But then King Candy, the ruler of Sugar Rush (voiced by Alan Tudyk, doing a spot-on and very entertaining impression of Ed Wynn from "Mary Poppins" and "Alice in Wonderland") pulls him aside to explain that if the kid is allowed to win the race, it would spell doom for the entire game, as well as certain death for her. What's Ralph to do?
"Wreck It Ralph" does an excellent job of layering its exposition, so that a seemingly throwaway comment in one scene suddenly becomes an important plot point ten or twenty minutes later. That's a pretty simple storytelling principle (though it's far too often ignored in Hollywood,) but what's really impressive is that these comments never feel like they're being dropped on purpose; it's never obvious that the screenwriters are telling us something we'll need to know later in the story. That takes talent, and it's on display here. "Wreck It Ralph" creates and inhabits a clearly unbelievable world, but it's written so well that it feels more believable, more lived in, than some movies that purport to exist in the real world. Contrast this, for instance with "Looper;" that movie did a lot of things right, but the hints it dropped were so clunky and obvious that they broke the illusion; I knew what was coming well before it came, and spent nearly the last half of the film bored.
Another of the things that I loved about this film was that both main characters' quest for actualization puts their respective worlds in jeopardy. When Ralph is absent from "Fix It Felix, Jr." the game can't function, and the real world owner of the arcade (the guy in the referee shirt) prepares to junk it. The punk kid (I've been avoiding her name, because it's such an unholy mouthful, but for the record, it's Vanellope Von Schweetz) feels in her bones that she's a racer, but following that impulse threatens to bring her whole world down around her ears. Their problems look like personal problems, but really, they're community problems; for both of them, the perspective of their entire community is going to need to shift before things can be restored to order and harmony.
That's an awfully academic paragraph about a kids' movie. But "Wreck It Ralph" isn't your run-of-the-mill kids' movie. It passed the kids' test in my house; my 4 year old likes it, though she thinks the bugs are too scary. I like it, too, because it offers something deeper, meatier and more nuanced for adult eyes. And I'm not just talking about the '80s video game references that go right over my pre schooler's head. This is one I won't mind watching over and over again.
Epic (2013)
Overstuffed and Empty
I'm getting tired of reviewing animated children's films and saying "it's not Pixar" -- and it's growing irrelevant, as Pixar's last two outings were disappointing. Nonetheless, that run from Toy Story in '95 to Toy Story 3 in 2010 -- 15 years, 11 classic animated films with a nary a dud in the bunch -- set the bar so high it's impossible NOT to compare everything else to those films. "Epic" wants to be classic and grand, strives to be on a level with Pixar, but falls short. What's interesting is where it falls short. It pretty much nails the epic scenes, the big action pieces. They are exciting and graceful, sometimes approaching breathless. And it looks great, no doubt about that. But "Epic" crumbles badly in the in-between scenes, the ones that make the action matter. The subtle gestures, the ticks of personality, aren't there. The characters feel thin, like cardboard cutouts or on loan from a stock animation company. We have the gruff protector who struggles to express his love for anybody or anything. The reckless but talented young buck who butts heads with him, but does the right thing when the chips are down. The Abbott and Costello sidekicks (a slug and a snail.) The wise man who doesn't know half as much as he pretends to and is kind of a slob, but once again, gets it done when everything's on the line.
But the worst of the bunch is the villain. Christoph Waltz voices the character, and that ought to be a casting jackpot - Waltz was one of the most chilling villains of recent years in "Inglourious Basterds," (as well as an equally chilling good guy in last year's "Django Unchained") but the writers and directors of "Epic" have no idea what to do with him. Frankly, I'm not sure Christoph Waltz is anything special outside of Tarantino's writing and pacing. He excels gloriously in those slow, tortuously suspenseful, dialog-heavy scenes that nobody but Tarantino seem to get right.
Actually, I felt a bit sorry for the bad guy, whose name is Mandrake. He's the ruler of a kingdom of rot and decay, diametrically opposed to the kingdom of life and growth ruled by Queen Tara and her Leaf Men. Tara is voiced by Beyoncé, who, with her distinctive urban/ ghetto accent, seems like a weird choice for Queen of the Forest, but whatever. Early in the action, Mandrake's oafish son is killed by a Leaf Man, and apparently reproduction is extremely difficult for tiny creatures of the forest, because Queen Tara has one chance in a hundred years to produce an heir, by picking a water-lily pod and making sure it blooms in the moonlight. So Mandrake decides to steal the pod, make sure it blooms in the dark, and thus claim the progeny as his own. So basically, the bad guy is just looking to replace his dead son. That's not so terribly evil and villainous, is it?
The first half hour is annoying and laborious first dominated by clunky exposition and a terrible performance from Jason Sudeikis as the only big person who believes that Leaf Men exist. He is clumsy and dorky and hare-brained; basically Rick Moranis from "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" minus any of the charisma and cuteness Moranis brought to that role. But once all the exposition, and all the big people, are out of the way, "Epic" picks up steam and moves from painful to pleasing. That's because the characters stop talking and start swooping around on hummingbirds and stuff. It looks good, it moves great, but it somehow lacks that sense of enchantment that it so desperately needs to really succeed. At one point (during the laborious first half hour) I found myself wishing they had just made little action figures, with their leaf outfits and saddled birds, and let the kids loose in the forest with them. A couple of 7 year olds could come up with a fresher, more exciting and intriguing story than the one on the screen.
I'm not sure the plot even makes sense -- the more I try to write about it, the less I find I understand. To put it briefly, Seyfried gets shrunk down to leaf man size, the queen dies, the pod gets stolen, and a motley crew of adventurers set off on an epic quest to save the forest. Life lessons are learned, young folks fall in love, relationships are restored, and long-hidden emotions are finally expressed.
There's just way too much going on here, leaving us little time to enjoy or explore the tiny world of the leaf men and their adversaries, or to feel like we know and care about the characters. Watching it, I got the feeling that the producers and animators spent the majority of their time and resources on the action scenes, and then hurriedly wrote and drew the scenes in between them. That's not the way you tell an epic story. That's the way you make a big, busy, beautiful but ultimately heartless and empty summer blockbuster. To put it succinctly, "Epic" isn't.
If you're all excited about seeing an animated flick about tiny people, let me recommend a much better movie - last year's overlooked and underrated "The Secret World of Arrietty," from Studio Ghibli, creators of kids' classics like "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Spirited Away." "Arrietty's" not quite up to that level, but it's a much more carefully crafted tale, and captures the wonder and magic of being six inches tall in a world made for much bigger folks.
But the worst of the bunch is the villain. Christoph Waltz voices the character, and that ought to be a casting jackpot - Waltz was one of the most chilling villains of recent years in "Inglourious Basterds," (as well as an equally chilling good guy in last year's "Django Unchained") but the writers and directors of "Epic" have no idea what to do with him. Frankly, I'm not sure Christoph Waltz is anything special outside of Tarantino's writing and pacing. He excels gloriously in those slow, tortuously suspenseful, dialog-heavy scenes that nobody but Tarantino seem to get right.
Actually, I felt a bit sorry for the bad guy, whose name is Mandrake. He's the ruler of a kingdom of rot and decay, diametrically opposed to the kingdom of life and growth ruled by Queen Tara and her Leaf Men. Tara is voiced by Beyoncé, who, with her distinctive urban/ ghetto accent, seems like a weird choice for Queen of the Forest, but whatever. Early in the action, Mandrake's oafish son is killed by a Leaf Man, and apparently reproduction is extremely difficult for tiny creatures of the forest, because Queen Tara has one chance in a hundred years to produce an heir, by picking a water-lily pod and making sure it blooms in the moonlight. So Mandrake decides to steal the pod, make sure it blooms in the dark, and thus claim the progeny as his own. So basically, the bad guy is just looking to replace his dead son. That's not so terribly evil and villainous, is it?
The first half hour is annoying and laborious first dominated by clunky exposition and a terrible performance from Jason Sudeikis as the only big person who believes that Leaf Men exist. He is clumsy and dorky and hare-brained; basically Rick Moranis from "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" minus any of the charisma and cuteness Moranis brought to that role. But once all the exposition, and all the big people, are out of the way, "Epic" picks up steam and moves from painful to pleasing. That's because the characters stop talking and start swooping around on hummingbirds and stuff. It looks good, it moves great, but it somehow lacks that sense of enchantment that it so desperately needs to really succeed. At one point (during the laborious first half hour) I found myself wishing they had just made little action figures, with their leaf outfits and saddled birds, and let the kids loose in the forest with them. A couple of 7 year olds could come up with a fresher, more exciting and intriguing story than the one on the screen.
I'm not sure the plot even makes sense -- the more I try to write about it, the less I find I understand. To put it briefly, Seyfried gets shrunk down to leaf man size, the queen dies, the pod gets stolen, and a motley crew of adventurers set off on an epic quest to save the forest. Life lessons are learned, young folks fall in love, relationships are restored, and long-hidden emotions are finally expressed.
There's just way too much going on here, leaving us little time to enjoy or explore the tiny world of the leaf men and their adversaries, or to feel like we know and care about the characters. Watching it, I got the feeling that the producers and animators spent the majority of their time and resources on the action scenes, and then hurriedly wrote and drew the scenes in between them. That's not the way you tell an epic story. That's the way you make a big, busy, beautiful but ultimately heartless and empty summer blockbuster. To put it succinctly, "Epic" isn't.
If you're all excited about seeing an animated flick about tiny people, let me recommend a much better movie - last year's overlooked and underrated "The Secret World of Arrietty," from Studio Ghibli, creators of kids' classics like "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Spirited Away." "Arrietty's" not quite up to that level, but it's a much more carefully crafted tale, and captures the wonder and magic of being six inches tall in a world made for much bigger folks.
Tabu (2012)
Two pretty good movies don't add up to one great one
Sometimes I think critics include a movie on their top 10 lists simply because it's the last one they remember seeing. That might be the case with "Tabu," which showed up on more than one list, but isn't nearly as interesting a film as it pretends to be, or as the critics who rave about it seem to think it is.
"Tabu" is full of auteur tricks and cinephile homages. It borrows its name from an obscure FW Murnau silent, it's filmed in black and white and utilizes two different film speeds, and the entire second half has no dialog, only voice-over. But underneath all those tricks is a surprising conventional film. Well, more precisely, two films.
After a brief interlude involving an intrepid explorer, a ghost and a crocodile, Part 1 begins, which is titled "Lost Paradise." It's about three women living in present-day Lisbon -- Pilar, her neighbor Aurora, and Aurora's African caretaker, Santa. Aurora is wildly dramatic, and probably senile. She sneaks away from Santa to gamble away any money she comes across. She corners Pilar one day and shares her fears that Santa is a servant of the devil who has imprisoned her and cast a curse upon them all. Of course the truth is much less dramatic, but Pilar still feels obligated to try and do something for her aging neighbor. And when her health takes a turn for the worse and Aurora asks her only friend to track down a man she once knew, of course Pilar obliges her.
The man's name is Ventura, and he's not very hard to track down. The second half of the film, titled "Paradise," is his recounting of his relationship with Aurora; the entire thing is narrated by him but acted out like something from "Unsolved Mysteries" -- the actors on the screen speak but we never hear their words, only ambient sounds around them. It is an interesting way to portray a memory, to keep us aware that this isn't happening, it's being remembered. But really - an hour of flashback? The contrivance grows old fast, and we never transition out of it into more immediate and direct storytelling.
The memory takes place in Mozambique, back when it was a Portuguese colony. Aurora is the beautiful bored wife of a rich merchant, and Ventura is a rake and a roustabout. He looks an awful lot like pirate Johnny Depp in "Chocolat." Of course this is the kind of guy you should never trust around your women, but Aurora's husband is out of town quite a bit, and there's the matter of a constantly escaping pet crocodile. Pretty soon they are in bed (Aurora and Ventura, not the crocodile) and not long after that they are in love. But she is pregnant, and the baby is her husband's, not her lover's. This is a love story that can only end in tragedy. (Which, of course, we already knew, because this is all being tragically remembered, mind you.)
So essentially, we have two movies -- the two parts are too stylistically different to be considered anything else. The first half is a quiet, borderline boring Euroflick about aging and loneliness. It has a vaguely Almodovarian feel, though there are no transvestites or ghosts, only a cadre of middle-aged women. The second half is more classical, and also more formulaic, reminiscent of sweeping, exotic romances from the golden age of Hollywood without ever approaching that kind of grandeur. (Indeed, it uses pretense to steer clear of that kind of grandeur and emotional intensity. Of it was as overheated and melodramatic as the movies it's emulating, it would probably be unbearably campy.) Both halves are decently made short films -- probably better than average, but I think for "Tabu" to really work, the two halves need to connect on a deeper level than the plot. And that never materializes. I want the two halves to comment on each other, to enrich each other in some way, but it's just not there. So really, all it amounts to is, "hey, you know that crazy old lady next door? She's got a quite a story, set in Africa, about infidelity and murder and crocodiles. Imagine that!"
"In all my films there is an urge for fiction," Mr. Gomes said in an interview with Slate. "There is a first part that begs for another film to appear, and it does because of our common desire." I'd say he's accomplished about half of that goal, twice over. While watching "Tabu," I kept waiting for another film to appear, a more interesting, more subtle and complex, more deeply layered film. But it never does. So I guess I'll move on to the next thing, and keep looking.
"Tabu" is full of auteur tricks and cinephile homages. It borrows its name from an obscure FW Murnau silent, it's filmed in black and white and utilizes two different film speeds, and the entire second half has no dialog, only voice-over. But underneath all those tricks is a surprising conventional film. Well, more precisely, two films.
After a brief interlude involving an intrepid explorer, a ghost and a crocodile, Part 1 begins, which is titled "Lost Paradise." It's about three women living in present-day Lisbon -- Pilar, her neighbor Aurora, and Aurora's African caretaker, Santa. Aurora is wildly dramatic, and probably senile. She sneaks away from Santa to gamble away any money she comes across. She corners Pilar one day and shares her fears that Santa is a servant of the devil who has imprisoned her and cast a curse upon them all. Of course the truth is much less dramatic, but Pilar still feels obligated to try and do something for her aging neighbor. And when her health takes a turn for the worse and Aurora asks her only friend to track down a man she once knew, of course Pilar obliges her.
The man's name is Ventura, and he's not very hard to track down. The second half of the film, titled "Paradise," is his recounting of his relationship with Aurora; the entire thing is narrated by him but acted out like something from "Unsolved Mysteries" -- the actors on the screen speak but we never hear their words, only ambient sounds around them. It is an interesting way to portray a memory, to keep us aware that this isn't happening, it's being remembered. But really - an hour of flashback? The contrivance grows old fast, and we never transition out of it into more immediate and direct storytelling.
The memory takes place in Mozambique, back when it was a Portuguese colony. Aurora is the beautiful bored wife of a rich merchant, and Ventura is a rake and a roustabout. He looks an awful lot like pirate Johnny Depp in "Chocolat." Of course this is the kind of guy you should never trust around your women, but Aurora's husband is out of town quite a bit, and there's the matter of a constantly escaping pet crocodile. Pretty soon they are in bed (Aurora and Ventura, not the crocodile) and not long after that they are in love. But she is pregnant, and the baby is her husband's, not her lover's. This is a love story that can only end in tragedy. (Which, of course, we already knew, because this is all being tragically remembered, mind you.)
So essentially, we have two movies -- the two parts are too stylistically different to be considered anything else. The first half is a quiet, borderline boring Euroflick about aging and loneliness. It has a vaguely Almodovarian feel, though there are no transvestites or ghosts, only a cadre of middle-aged women. The second half is more classical, and also more formulaic, reminiscent of sweeping, exotic romances from the golden age of Hollywood without ever approaching that kind of grandeur. (Indeed, it uses pretense to steer clear of that kind of grandeur and emotional intensity. Of it was as overheated and melodramatic as the movies it's emulating, it would probably be unbearably campy.) Both halves are decently made short films -- probably better than average, but I think for "Tabu" to really work, the two halves need to connect on a deeper level than the plot. And that never materializes. I want the two halves to comment on each other, to enrich each other in some way, but it's just not there. So really, all it amounts to is, "hey, you know that crazy old lady next door? She's got a quite a story, set in Africa, about infidelity and murder and crocodiles. Imagine that!"
"In all my films there is an urge for fiction," Mr. Gomes said in an interview with Slate. "There is a first part that begs for another film to appear, and it does because of our common desire." I'd say he's accomplished about half of that goal, twice over. While watching "Tabu," I kept waiting for another film to appear, a more interesting, more subtle and complex, more deeply layered film. But it never does. So I guess I'll move on to the next thing, and keep looking.
Battlestar Galactica: A Measure of Salvation (2006)
Episode 7, Season 3
Missed Opportunity
One of the only times I've seen the writers miss an opportunity -- and a big one.
What we have here is essentially an opening for Mutually Assured Destruction. The humans could've forged a lasting peace, but blew it by going for genocide.
Here's what you do: Take the five Cylon prisoners. Distribute them throughout the fleet in secret locations. Sue for peace with the Cylons. Let them know that you have the prisoners, and any attack upon humans will result in an execution of a prisoner. Any attempt to discover the location of the prisoners will result in the execution of a prisoner.
Then return to Caprica and move back into your homes.
And tell the Cylons to stay the hell away. Or else.
What we have here is essentially an opening for Mutually Assured Destruction. The humans could've forged a lasting peace, but blew it by going for genocide.
Here's what you do: Take the five Cylon prisoners. Distribute them throughout the fleet in secret locations. Sue for peace with the Cylons. Let them know that you have the prisoners, and any attack upon humans will result in an execution of a prisoner. Any attempt to discover the location of the prisoners will result in the execution of a prisoner.
Then return to Caprica and move back into your homes.
And tell the Cylons to stay the hell away. Or else.