Film is Pwn

2009’s big budget/big screen Sherlock Holmes movie was preceded by a subpar trailer and a thorough lack of buzz as far as I could detect, and I am an expert buzz detector.  Maybe the lowered expectations helped elevate the experience, but I thoroughly enjoyed director Guy Ritchie’s adaptation of Holmes.  (more…)

I had to see Avatar. I’m not sure I had another choice in the matter. The buzz oozing from every orifice of movie goers round the world insisted upon it. The bad news is I rarely think as highly of movies with this much buzz. District 9 comes to mind.

For starters, James Cameron is talented. Very talented. He managed to bring life to a story I saw coming within the first ten minutes. He managed to make it interesting, heartwarming and very much engaging. The world was interesting and fresh, even if the story was tired. Somehow he managed to make me look past the thousand plot holes as I sat in the theater. My mind was fixated on the Na’vi and the inevitability of their story.

Visually it was pretty significant (it’s what everyone is talking about), the use of 3D mixed with live action was impressively done. The use of CGI with live action didn’t strike me as especially great or ground-breaking but I’ve seen a lot of movies so maybe that has something to do with it. Biologically I think his world had issues. For instance, why did all of his creatures seem to be carnivores despite mass quantities of jumbo size vegetation? But that’s nitpicking. The world is beautiful, fun and fairly scientifically accurate.

I hate that this film was so socially and politically charged. I like social cause movies and when it’s done well it can really be great. I think of “Hotel Rwanda” which though it wasn’t really accurate it shined a light on a grim reality; which I think is always a good thing. Avatar though didn’t shine light on a grim reality; it was preaching to the choir. The people who agreed with the message would cheer and those who didn’t would groan or get angry.

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I’m a regular viewer of the At The Movies TV show, formerly known as Siskel & Ebert/Ebert & Roeper.  At the Movies is currently hosted by two film critics whose opinions I enjoy even when I disagree, A.O. Scott of the New York Times and Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune.  For the past ten weeks Scott & Phillips have been unveiling their picks for the top ten movies of the decade.  While Scott & Phillips are entertaining and knowledgable film critics, they are your classic film critics.  By that I mean they are prone to like dull, subtitled, Belgian films about the angst of existence when normal humans would prefer a good action film. 

I still count myself as a “normal” fan of movies, despite two years of writing film reviews.  I’m going to give you my favorite ten movies of the decade, but first, let me share with you their selections, with my comments in bold. (more…)

Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Sigourney Weaver
Directed By: James Cameron

I have just witnessed what is allegedly the most expensive movie ever made, James Cameron’s gaudy, luminous follow-up to 1997’s Titanic, Avatar.  Yes, Cameron took a dozen years between releases, in part because he wanted to make Avatar and needed to wait for the technology to keep up with his vision.  What the dozen year lapse tells me is that the shiny spectacle in Avatar is way more important than other little elements like story and characters, and it shows.

The key characters are the alien race called the Na’vi who are sadly impossible for me to take seriously.  They’re giant, blue-skinned humanoid creatures with tails and long necks.  Think if Smurfette mated with Randy Johnson. If that image doesn’t conjure up what the Na’vi look like, imagine a race of blue Jar Jar Binks’. Get the picture? (more…)

Growing up, I was not a big fan of zombies. As a monster, I felt that they were actually quite terrible. They have no personality, are mindless and they move so slowly that one could fight them off with an arquebus (A 15th century muzzle loaded firearm that requires and enormous amount of time between shots – I guess if I have to explain it, it isn’t a great reference). But the problem remained for the poor zombie. They were a lousy monster, and their place in films was limited to low budget drek. But oh how times have changed… zombie are now en vogue and some films have reinvented them as strong, agile creatures (See I Am Legend, but don’t read the book, they are vampires in the book). The trailer for Zombieland was great, and the film looked to be fast paced and exciting… (more…)

I finally got around to watching the latest Pixar movie Up — recently released on DVD — this weekend, and while it’s tough to argue that Pixar movies are consistently excellent (Finding Nemo, Wall-E, The Incredibles, etc.) I wasn’t in a big rush to check out Up.  The film is and was advertised as the adventures of a grumpy old man and a chubby boy scout in a house sent airborne by a gaggle of balloons.  Interesting, sure, but when the choice between Up and The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 came, I opted with the pretty good Denzel Washington thriller.

In retrospect and with respect to Pelham 1-2-3, I made the wrong choice. Up is terrific, thoroughly entertaining and with a great heart. My knee-jerk reaction is that I prefer Up over Wall-E and Finding Nemo, great films both.

The talking dog named Dug cracked me up every time he spoke with perfectly annunciated cadence to great dialogue translated to humanese, “I will stop the dogs! . . .  Stop you dogs!” and “I have just met you, and I love you.” (more…)

I heard there was a trainwreck in theaters this week, and I had to check it out for myself. 

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It’s the eve of Halloween, or “All Hallow’s Eve” if I wanted to be pretentious (and as a writer of a blog, I must be a little pretentious), a fact that’s pretty difficult to escape.  My officemates have filled cubicleworld with spooky decorations and there is a costume contest on Friday (I’m dressing as a human!); the multiplexes are overflowing with the latest batch of horror flicks that I’ll never see (this means you, Saw VI!); and every channel is broadcasting some manner of scary movie or television show this weekend, from the SyFy Channel to the Weather Channel.
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There has been a LOT of buzz surrounding this film, and virtually all of has been word of mouth and through the internet a la The Blair Witch Project.  And there are valid comparisons. Both were shot on a shoestring as DIY amateur “reality” video and featured first time directors and unknown actors. They both used extremely creative marketing tools as well. (Thanks to all those that “Demanded the film come to Charlotte). But where The Blair Witch Project never reveals visually the terror that is stalking the people, Paranormal Activity reveals the faintest glimpse, and it makes it much more terrifying.

The basic premise here is a young engaged couple living in a house in San Diego named Katie and Micah. There have been subtle, but strange happenings in the house. so Micah buys a high end video camera which he sets up in the couple’s bedroom at night to record what happens when they are asleep.  When the video is replayed, you see the hour, minute and second timer in the bottom of the screen. At first, you see video speed up to fast forward through the mundane parts and then the timer slows to real time.  You learn very quickly that something is going to happen. As each night is shown, the tension grows thicker and a knot begins to form in your stomach. At first it only captures harmless occurrences like lights coming on by themselves and strange noises. But as the days and weeks progress, the occurrences become bigger and more terrifying and this is only intensified by the bickering of the couple during the day about what to do about it.  First time director Oren Peli does a wonderfully masterful job at building the tension to the point that even noises in the theater make the audience jump.

Very rarely does a film live up to the hype that surrounds it, and for horror it never happens. Until now. There were mainly young people in the theater, late teens and early 20s and I was afraid I would have to contend with chatter through the whole thing. But once it started, you could have heard a pin drop. I think that says more about the film than anything I could.

There have been a lot of good-to-great movies about cons and con men to date.   There’s the Robert Redford-Paul Newman classic The Sting to comedies like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels to any number of terrific David Mamet films (Heist, Spanish Prisoner, The House of Games), and honestly my knee jerk reaction is that The Brothers Bloom is right up there with the best of them.  (Perhaps in an homage to Mamet, the Brothers Bloom begins with narration performed by Ricky Jay, a magician/actor who appears in most of Mamet’s films, and all three of the Mamet-con movies I referenced.)

There’s a pair of con man brothers, Bloom (Adrien Brody) and Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) who work with a mostly mute Japanese demolitions expert appropriately named Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi).  Stephen is the master manipulator, the designer of the schemes who plots confidence games with the flair for the dramatic akin to 19th century Russian novelists.  Bloom is perpetually unsure of his role in the swindles, ever promising this job will be the last, and always being talked into one more by his protective big brother Stephen. (more…)

One of the lamest, most frustrating contrivances that filmmakers pull out of their hat is the “It’s just a dream” twist.  It’s a rather cheap gimmick where you can have the villain kill off the hero or the heroes girlfriend and then, suddenly, the hero wakes up! *Phew* It was just a dream.  Any movie that shows you a particular series of events and then has the audacity to tell the audience it did not occur risks riots in the theater.

There is no “dream” sequence in director Bryan Singer’s the Usual Suspects, but, without revealing too much, the movie takes incredible liberties with its narrative.  I’ve seen the movie from beginning to end eight times or more, and it’s a matter of debate and interpretation exactly what happens to who and when.  For a lesser film, this would likely be infuriating.  But the Usual Suspects is so exceptional in conception, acting, and execution, in this case I don’t mind the muddle ambiguity,  In fact, I love it.  (Please, Hollywood, this kind of story telling works much better as the exception and not the rule.  Don’t overdo it.  This means you, M. Night Shyamalan!)
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Lord, Save Us From Your Followers  is documentary that takes a humorous swipe at the divisive political and social perception of Christianity and God in general.  The film isn’t a salvo in the culture wars by any stretch of the imagination; rather it is an exploration as to why there is a culture war, if there is a culture war, and why “the Gospel of Love” has become such a contentious topic.  One of the critic quotations used in the trailer hits the nail on the head: “A peace offering, not a battlecry.”  I know, it’s not protocol to site other film reviews in your film review, but Film Is Pwn possesses no standard operating procedure, so let’s move on to some new quotes, shall we? (more…)