Tuesday, May 31, 2011

How to Train Your Dragon

How to Train Your Dragon features a very standard plot for a children’s movie. There’s the kid who doesn’t really fit in with everybody else but believes that maybe he has a bigger purpose, and then, sure enough, he does and saves the day! In this case, the misfit kid is a Viking who is skinny and weak and doesn’t have the same abilities as all his fellow villagers when it comes to fighting off hordes of invading dragons. But when he befriends a dragon, he learns that dragons aren’t so bad after all, and he and his new pal teach everybody a valuable lesson.

On a whole, this movie was enjoyable, but it also left me somehow disappointed. Maybe the reason for that is simply that I’ve come to expect a lot of animated movies in recent years. Pixar keeps putting out amazing films, and though I haven’t seen the latest Shrek, those are all a ton of fun too. But I suppose as the animation gets better or easier to do or whatever, as more studios are putting out CGI animated movies anyway, the overall quality goes down a little bit. Some of them are thrown together too quickly. I can’t really accuse How to Train Your Dragon of being tossed together without care because it is well made. The dragons are cool, there are many funny parts, but still . . .

Another one that I was a little disappointed in was Despicable Me. It had plenty of funny parts and was cute overall, but I just somehow expected more of it. And the same was true of How to Train Your Dragon. I’d basically recommend it. If I had kids, I’m sure I’d buy the DVD and watch it with them regularly. And, really, I have no actual complaints about it other than just a vague wish that it was a little better than it is.

Maybe once again it comes down to expectations. When I watched Predators, I was expecting a lame sci fi action flick, and I got exactly what I expected, so I enjoyed it. With How to Train Your Dragon, I had heard that it was fantastic, and I expected a movie comparable to the stuff that Pixar is producing, but that isn’t quite what I got. Had I expected a lame, cheap, poorly written animated movie, I probably would have been pleasantly surprised and would highly recommend it to everybody. It’s strange how much difference expectations make.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Cop Out, The Other Guys, Predators, Star Trek

I’ve been sick the past couple of days. It was good timing to get sick since my semester is over, so I don’t have any papers to grade or classes to plan right now. In fact, there is no place that I have to be for about three weeks. So I’m glad I got sick this weekend instead of last weekend when I had dozens of final papers to grade. I wasn’t so sick, however, that I could not have done that work if I needed to. It was the type of stomach bug that is no fun, leaving me queasy and tired but no worse than that. The kind of sickness that you can plow through and try to ignore, but if you have the luxury of just taking time off, it’s better to take the time. And I was feeling just ill enough to not even want to do anything as active as reading. So I lay in bed and watched movies.

I wasn’t in the mood for anything serious that I’d have to pay a lot of attention to, so instead I glanced at some On Demand and Netflix options and chose some low-brow flicks that were exactly what I was in the mood for in that state: Cop Out, Predators, The Other Guys, and Star Trek.

Cop Out is an action comedy that has a fair numbers of laughs, thanks primarily to Tracy Morgan, but is also an actual buddy cop action movie with lots of shooting guns and such. My brother watched it recently (also while feeling bad), and recommended it, saying it was a lot like the eighties movies Fletch and Beverly Hills Cop. I think that’s a fair assessment. In general, it was decent, though not one I’d want to watch a second time. I have a few quick comments. One, it’s directed by, but not written by, Kevin Smith, which seems odd since Smith has a lot of funny dialogue in his scripts but is a fairly mediocre director. Two, Tracy Morgan is hilarious and makes the movie worth watching, which I don’t think it would otherwise be. Finally, I was intrigued, but not pulled into the story, by the major event that sets the action in place: Bruce Willis’s character’s daughter is getting married and wants a dream wedding. He can’t afford to pay the $48,000 price tag and doesn’t want to be shown up by the rich new husband of his ex-wife. So his desire to find a way to pay for the wedding sets ups the action for the rest of the movie. I was really annoyed by this. For one thing, $48,000 is ridiculous to pay for a wedding, especially if you can’t easily afford it. I wanted the character to acknowledge how stupid that was rather than do whatever it takes to make it happen. So the whole set up seemed to me to be a non-issue. I wasn’t really invested in whether he would be able to get the money because his reason for wanting the money was idiotic. Furthermore, his stupid macho pride in wanting to do it himself rather than accept the help of his ex-wife’s new husband was a real turn off for me. That kind of pride is a flaw that, were this a tragedy, should lead to the character’s downfall; but since this was a comedy, I was supposed to like the guy, which I didn’t. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but this big event that I think was supposed to make me sympathize with the character really had the opposite effect for me.

The Other Guys, like Cop Out is a buddy cop action comedy. However, instead of being on that line between traditional cop movie and comedy, this is firmly over the edge in dumb comedy territory (it stars Will Ferrell and is directed by Adam McKay, so it’s what you’d expect from them), and it made me laugh many, many times. Again, it’s the kind of movie I especially like to watch when I’m not feeling well, so it did the trick for me.

Predators also was exactly what I expected it to be. I saw the ads when it came out last year and thought it might be brainless fun, and it was. If you thought from the ads you might like it, then you probably will like it. If you thought it looked stupid, you’ll probably think it’s stupid. I mean, frankly, it is stupid. But it’s got badass aliens hunting humans, so what do you expect?

Star Trek, once again, was what I expected it to be. I had heard that this was much better than anyone expected from a new Star Trek movie, and I suppose I can see what people were saying, though I didn’t feel all that strongly about it. I guess the old Star Trek movies, and the show especially, were really cheesy, and this tones down the cheese quite a bit, but it’s still just Star Trek. There’s nothing amazing or especially thought provoking about it, and it even acknowledges the cheese factor and has fun with some tropes of the Star Trek world. For instance, Kirk is remembered for bedding green alien women, so he does that in the movie. There’s the stereotype of the one random guy in the red shirt who is sent down to a planet with the main characters and who you know is going to get killed, so in the movie there’s a sequence where three characters go on a mission, two are principles and one is a random guy who, sure enough, is wearing red and doesn’t have long to live.

My verdict: big blockbuster action movies and dumb comedies are particularly enjoyable when I’m in the mood to just turn off my brain or when my brain is running at half speed due to illness or exhaustion. So these four movies were a pretty good way to relax and distract myself from my grumbling stomach awhile.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Source Code

I just saw Source Code at a second run theater. I don’t remember hearing a whole lot about it when it was released several weeks ago. I vaguely remember seeing a trailer at some point, a friend of mine mentioned on Facebook that he liked it, and a podcast I listen to referred to it as interesting. It wasn’t one that I was especially drawn to from the trailer, but because I heard it was interesting, I glanced at some reviews (which were generally fairly positive) and figured it would be worth checking out at some point, maybe on cable down the road. But then I noticed it was playing at a second run theater, and since my semester just finished and I’m in the mood to just relax a bit as summer break begins, I decided to see it.

I think the reason that it didn’t get as much buzz as some other recent movies is that it’s one of those science fiction movies where the premise is hard to explain well in a trailer; furthermore, the premise doesn’t really make a lot of sense. However, if you just go with it, it’s really a good time. Here’s the situation. There’s a bomb on a train (no this isn’t a new sequel to Speed). The train has already blown up. But our hero wakes up on the train in another man’s body eight minutes before the explosion. He’s being sent back in time to try to discover who the mad bomber is so he can prevent a second bomb from destroying the city of Chicago. I know: What? But there’s an explanation for how the military scientists can send somebody back in time into somebody else’s body, but only for eight minutes at a time: something called source code. How does source code work? Blah, blah, blah. Quantum physics. Blah, blah, blah.

You can see why it was tough to make an appealing trailer from this material. And, seriously, it sounds pretty ridiculous. But this movie is thrilling. It reminded me of several other movies. There’s a pinch of Speed (but in a good way), a dash of Memento (because the movie begins in the middle of things with a guy waking up not knowing where he is or how he got there or even who he is), a heap of Groundhog Day (as he relives the same events, only eight minutes at a time instead of a full day at a time), and even Inception (since there’s the weird world of “source code” and the sort of real world after the explosion and they keep going back and forth between the two). And all of those elements make for a fun, engaging movie.

It isn’t just thrills, however. Yes, there’s the mystery of trying to find the bomber and the mystery of trying to figure out what the hell is even going on, but there’s also a fair amount of character development. And I think the performances of the main actors are really what make this movie work so well. Jake Gyllenhaal, in particular, gives this oddball premise a sense of weight. As I watch the events unfold, I’m far more concerned with how he feels than with whether or not he can prevent a nuclear bomb from destroying millions of innocent folks. And by the end of the movie, I had actually run the gamut of reactions from sitting up in my seat with excitement to laughing to pondering the notion of multiple parallel universes to even tearing up with emotion.

The one caution I’ll give here is that this might be the kind of movie that is best to go in without big expectations. I went in thinking, “I’ve heard it’s interesting. I don’t exactly know what the whole story is, but I’ll give it a try.” And I was really surprised by how enjoyable it was. I wonder, though, if I would have liked it quite so much if I had expected it to be amazing. Often expectations make a big difference. The movie that everyone raves about turns out to be good but also disappointing. So to prevent you from having that experience, I’ll add a few final thoughts: the premise is ridiculous, it does bog down a little in the middle when he’s going back through the same eight minutes over and over again, and the end takes maybe longer than necessary to wind down. See? It’s not that amazing. So go in thinking it’ll maybe be a decent way to distract yourself for a couple of hours, and you might be surprised how good it is.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Thor

It was a very Norse weekend for me. On Saturday I went to see a broadcast of Die Walküre as part of the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series. Then on Sunday I went to Thor. I won’t write too much about Die Walküre because even though I saw it at a movie theater, it wasn’t really a movie, and this blog is devoted to movies. I’ll let it suffice to write that I enjoyed it, I left with “Flight of the Valkyries” stuck in my head, and that it (along with Thor) inspired me to want to learn more about Norse mythology.

I know a little bit about Norse mythology, but just the generic stuff—that Thor is the god of thunder, Odin is the big chief god, Valhalla is where heroes go when they die, and so on. My interest in Wagner’s Ring Cycle in recent years has given me a bit more knowledge, but I’m not sure what is classic Norse mythology and what Wagner changed around for his own purposes. But I’m not particularly familiar with the Marvel comics character Thor. My brother, Nate, is a Marvel fan, and he told me that Thor is to Marvel comics what Superman is to DC, in that he is otherworldly with super strength and can basically fly and so forth. So I went to see Thor without many particular expectations beyond just hoping to see a fun comic book movie. I did have fun at the movie, but somehow, despite what I thought were my lack of expectations, it wasn’t what I expected.

I have seen a lot of comic book superhero movies over the years, and I generally enjoy them. I suppose that, without giving it too much conscious thought, I have come to expect certain traits from the first movie in a superhero series. I’ll meet the hero, find out what type of powers he has, where he came from, how he became a hero, etc. Sometimes it starts off with the hero as a child and leads up to the point where he becomes a hero (as in the original Superman movie), or it might present the character before getting powers (as in Spider-Man), or maybe just start with the hero already doing his work (as in the first Tim Burton Batman). But at some point, there will be a double identity and conflict between the desire to be a normal person and a heroic super human. But Thor is different. It begins much like Superman. We’re in a different world, there’s the backstory of a father and son. Instead of Marlon Brando as Jor-El, we have Anthony Hopkins as Odin, but still, I can see where this is going. But then the movie doesn’t go there. One of the big differences is simply that Thor has no secret identity. When he arrives on Earth, he’s just Thor. And the fun isn’t in him dressing up like a hero, it’s in him dressing down like a regular guy and trying to figure out how to relate to his new surroundings.

Another big difference is in the major conflict. Again, I expect from past superhero movies that there will be one major villain, a Lex Luthor or Green Goblin or Joker. But the villain in Thor emerges much more slowly and subtly than in many other superhero stories. The villain in this movie is probably the most fully fleshed out, complexly motivated character of the lot. This contrasts quite a bit with our hero; even though there is an arc to Thor’s story, during which he achieves some growth as a character, it’s clear from early on what that growth will be, so we aren’t surprised when it happens. But it’s not clear from the beginning what exactly the villain’s arc will be or even whether the character we suspect will be the villain will eventually emerge to be the clear villain.

There are obligatory scenes of fighting that feel comparable to other comic book movies, and there are some deliberate tie-ins with other Marvel movies and setting up next year’s Avengers movie; but despite all of this, it still didn’t exactly feel like a superhero movie to me. I suppose that if I hadn’t known it was based on a comic book, I might have just thought it was an intriguing original idea to take a mythic god and put him into our modern world, and I don’t know if I ever would have thought of the term superhero at all. And that’s kind of refreshing.

There have been a few movies recently that have taken the superhero genre and played with it. Watchmen, Kick-Ass, and Super (which I haven’t seen yet but want to) all toy with the premise of real people deciding to become superheroes. But here’s sort of the opposite approach. Thor is a super human, literally a god. But for most of the movie, he isn’t dressed in a cape and flying around catching bad guys. He’s just a fish out of water, walking around, trying to get his bearings. In a weird way, maybe more than Superman, Thor reminded me of Crocodile Dundee.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Drag Me to Hell

I just watched Drag Me to Hell last night. I saw it originally at the theater when it came out but hadn’t seen it since. I’ve been in the mood to watch it recently because I’ve been joking with my girlfriend, Tiffany, that she’s suffering under a gypsy curse since she has the worst luck of anybody I know; most recently, she’s had two car accidents in the past few months, both ending with her car totaled (yes, that includes the car she bought to replace the first totaled car). After the second accident, I asked if she had pissed off some old gypsy woman. Then a Blockbuster nearby was closing down, so I stocked up on a few clearance DVDs, including Drag Me to Hell. Yesterday was Friday the 13th, so my sister-in-law, Kelly, suggested watching a horror movie, so we all (Tiffany, Kelly, me, and my brother, Nate) gathered to watch it.

As I mentioned, I had seen the movie before at the theater and remembered liking it, but I had forgotten how good it really is. I am a fan of the director Sam Raimi. I’ve seen nearly all his movies (I did a quick search on imdb.com, and I think the only feature film he’s directed that I haven’t seen is The Quick and the Dead, which I really should see). Not all Raimi’s films are great, but they range from decent enough (Darkman) to hilarious and silly (Army of Darkness) to actually far better than I might have predicted (A Simple Plan), considering Raimi is the guy who directed Bruce Campbell fighting against his own possessed hand. After Raimi made the three Spider-Man movies, which I liked pretty well but wasn’t as thrilled with as some other superhero movies like the Christopher Nolan Batmans (Batmen?), I wondered if Raimi would stick to bigger budget action movies, but then he returned to a movie that had a very similar feeling to the Evil Dead movies that made me a Raimi fan in the first place.

Somehow, Drag Me to Hell manages to feel fresh and original while simultaneously feeling like a much older movie. Maybe it feels older to me just because it reminds me of Rami’s earlier work, or maybe it’s just that the gypsy curse plot hardly feels unique. But once the premise has been established, there’s a lot of fun as the curse develops. There are laugh out loud disgusting moments, including the old gypsy woman’s slobbery biting attack, vomiting maggots, and perhaps the worst nosebleed in cinema history. If such splatstick (a term I believe coined by Raimi about his approach to horror back in the Evil Dead days) doesn’t appeal to you, then this certainly isn’t your kind of movie. But if it does, if you like the idea of horror movies but also recognize that most of them are terrible, then this movie is probably the type you’ll enjoy.

Taking itself too seriously might be the worst trait a horror movie can have, and Drag Me to Hell is not guilty of this offense. Certainly horror can have social messages, as in Dawn of the Dead; in fact, I think the science fiction genre, which often overlaps with horror, can be a great medium for social commentary. But the filmmakers need to accept that the genre is full of clichés, that the premises are ridiculous, and that the fun isn’t really in being scared (after all, unless you’re a little kid, you probably never get genuinely scared at horror movies), the fun is in playing with the elements of the genre. And this movie has a lot of fun. Horror movies are full of blood? OK, then how about a bloody nose that sprays all over the room? Horror movies feature creepy dead bodies? Then how about the heroine accidentally knocking over a body at a funeral and having the rigor mortised fingers clutch at the heroine’s hair, ripping out a chunk?

The best horror movies do play on real fears, even simple fears like darkness, death, and strangers, and Drag Me to Hell does that. But the best horror movies also know that since the tongue probably won’t be genuinely screaming, a good place for it would be in the cheek.