Another movie I’ve been intending to write about and haven’t gotten to yet is Slaughterhouse-Five. This is another one directed by George Roy Hill. I think I watched this right around the same time as The Sting (maybe even the same day), but I wanted to wait and ponder the movie a bit before writing about it, and then I went out of town and was dealing with other life issues, and suddenly a few weeks had passed and I still hadn’t written about it.
I’m a bit reluctant to frame my thoughts of Slaughterhouse-Five in the old “book vs. movie” frame. That’s such a tired discussion, but it’s sometimes inevitable. I agree with the idea that the book is nearly always better than the movie. There a few instances where the movie is so incredibly good, it’s close to being a match for the book but still falls short (To Kill a Mockingbird and The Remains of the Day, for instance). There are a few where the movie actually surpasses the book (The Godfather, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and maybe The Silence of the Lambs). But usually, that cliché that “the book is better” is true. I remember how disappointed I was when I watched the movie Atonement. I loved the book so much that I knew the movie wouldn’t equal it, and even though I feel fairly certain the movie was actually fine, I couldn’t help comparing the two and feeling incredibly let down.
When I found out that Slaughterhouse-Five had been made into a movie, I was surprised. I read the book a few years ago and loved it, but it struck me as the kind of book that would be nearly impossible to adapt into a movie. So I was curious and a bit reluctant to watch the movie. And, to my surprise, the movie struck me as a good adaptation.
The book centers on a character who is “unstuck in time,” meaning he travels back and forth throughout his life. One moment he is twenty, the next he is fifty. He doesn’t have any control over where he goes or when. He just slips around. This, of course, leads to all sorts of questions about free will, one’s ability to control the path of one’s own life. Billy Pilgrim has no real choice about how his life will unfold, even as he’s living it. He is merely a spectator observing his life as it happens to him. This structure of moving back and forth through time and space, and having a lack of grounding does not strike me as ideally suited for a movie, but it actually worked reasonably well. There is a certain amount of confusion trying to piece together how everything fits together, but the movie unfolds for an audience much like life itself unfolds for Billy Pilgrim: scenes out of sequence but with an inevitability to them.
One major difference between the book and the movie is that I don’t remember feeling a sense of ambiguity from the book about whether Billy Pilgrim was genuinely “unstuck in time” or whether he was suffering some delusions; but in the movie, I think one could reasonably argue that toward the end of his life, Billy has become mentally unstable and is simply suffering hallucinations and confusing memory with the present. The thing that works best for the movie, however, to tip the balance toward the view that Billy is actually suffering from some time travel phenomenon rather than mental illness is the performance of the lead actor, Michael Sacks. He plays the character throughout at every age, and although the character grows older, there is a constant innocence to Billy, a naiveté that shines through. It becomes easy to believe that he accepts his fate, that he understands he has no control over the passage of time around him, of where and when he’ll be next. Sometimes, he struggles with it, but ultimately, he seems to accept his lot and move forward and backward passively. That passivity is tough to keep engaging, but it works. Had Sacks tackled the role with more dynamism, the film might have failed. It strikes me as a performance that is perfect in its simplicity, but would be easy to ignore or dismiss. I looked up information on Michael Sacks after watching the film and was disappointed to discover that he made few movies and retired from acting nearly twenty years ago. I wonder if his performance was dismissed as too simple and not engaging and this lead role in a significant film actually scuttled his career rather than launching it. If so, that’s a shame because he is just right for this role.
There is another difference that stood out to me as well. One thing I particularly like about the book is the metafictional aspect of it. It begins with a discussion by the narrator, seemingly the author Kurt Vonnegut, about how he has wanted to write this book for a long time and has struggled. This sense of reality outside the book adds an extra layer to it, a recognition that the fiction is fiction, but a sense that there is a larger purpose being explored through fiction. Without that frame, the movie feels somewhat lacking in comparison.
One additional element that stands out to me about the movie is the occasional lapse in point-of-view. We follow Billy Pilgrim throughout his life, through World War II, through married life afterward, all the way to a distant planet when he is abducted by aliens, and even to the moment of his death. The story demands a close point-of-view limited to that character’s experience, yet that isn’t what the movie gives us. The movie begins with Billy’s daughter and son-in-law, and there is an extended comic sequence late in the movie that follows Billy’s wife. These shifts away from Billy’s consciousness feel out of place and become distracting flaws in the film’s coherence.
Although I hate to phrase my thoughts quite so simply, the bottom line is that the book is better than the movie. But the movie is worth checking out in its own right. I would be curious what somebody who had never read the book would make of the movie, whether they would appreciate it more since they wouldn’t be comparing it or if they might appreciate it less since they lacked going in the understanding of the unusual chronology. Although it falls short, it’s still a good attempt to adapt a book that was not written to be easily adaptable.
Monday, June 27, 2011
X-Men: First Class
It just occurred to me that I haven’t written about X-Men: First Class yet. I guess I wanted to wait a day or two and then it slipped my mind. I’m not sure if that’s a comment on the movie itself, but maybe it is. Maybe that’s a common characteristic of this type of big blockbuster summer movie. And actually, as I think back on the other X-Men movies (I’ve watched all the previous ones), I don’t have any strong impressions. I basically remember finding them enjoyable enough (except that Wolverine one, which was definitely below my basic expectations for comic book movies, and my expectations are not that high). I can picture the characters more or less, but I’m having trouble thinking of a single scene from the first few X-Men movies. I really couldn’t describe the plots at this point other than the simple version: the good guys fight the bad guys.
It’s only been a few weeks since I saw the newest addition to the X-Men franchise, and I remember more about it than its predecessors, but my ultimate verdict is pretty much the same as for most of this type of movie: it’s fun and worth seeing but not especially memorable.
Here’s a bit more detail if you’re debating seeing it and for some reason you find my perspective influential.
The characters. There are too many characters to really get to know most of them in any detail, but they’re easy enough to keep straight because of their different mutant powers, unlike some movies where the mess of characters becomes impossible to untangle because they all look alike and act the same and have no particular distinguishing features.
The actors. I’ve read a lot of reviews that comment on how good Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy are in this movie. James McAvoy is fine. In everything I’ve seen him in, he’s fine, but he’s never really stood out to me as particularly exceptional. Michael Fassbender, on the other hand, is phenomenal. He’s intense, with a complex potion of emotions that really make the character engaging. Ultimately, I felt like the transition the character makes to become the villainous Magneto was a bit abrupt and obligatory, but still the performance made the movie.
The Setting. I liked the 1960s setting. I wonder now, however, what they’ll do in future installments. Will they continue in the ‘60s or jump around in time a bit? Will they make movies in the modern setting alongside more prequels? Another thing I’ve read a few times in reviews is that this film had a 1960s James Bond vibe to it, which I agree with, and that was part of the fun (I am a fan of Bond flicks, which are a lot like this type of comic book movie in also being entertaining but highly forgettable). Going back to Michael Fassbender: he would make a heck of a James Bond. I know that franchise is currently in some trouble due to financial difficulties at the studio, so it may be a few years before another one comes along. If they decide Daniel Craig is too old by the time they’re ready for another, Michael Fassbender would be a good choice as the next Bond.
Pace. The movie felt a bit too long. It dragged in the middle and picked back up by the end. I read that the director had said he liked having so many characters because when one story thread began to drag, he could switch to another one. But it seems a sign of trouble if any story threads are dragging, and sure enough that was a problem here, but not a huge one. The movie could have been tighter. And if they release an extended director’s cut, I suspect it will be best avoided.
In the end, this is a movie I might not bother watching again, extended director’s cut or not. And actually, I don’t think I’ve seen any of the previous X-Men movies more than once, so it’s likely that this will be one timer for me as well. Thor felt the same way. But that’s fine. Sometimes I really enjoy just sitting back and watching something that distracts me from my life for a couple of hours, even if I soon forget quite what happened in the story.
It’s only been a few weeks since I saw the newest addition to the X-Men franchise, and I remember more about it than its predecessors, but my ultimate verdict is pretty much the same as for most of this type of movie: it’s fun and worth seeing but not especially memorable.
Here’s a bit more detail if you’re debating seeing it and for some reason you find my perspective influential.
The characters. There are too many characters to really get to know most of them in any detail, but they’re easy enough to keep straight because of their different mutant powers, unlike some movies where the mess of characters becomes impossible to untangle because they all look alike and act the same and have no particular distinguishing features.
The actors. I’ve read a lot of reviews that comment on how good Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy are in this movie. James McAvoy is fine. In everything I’ve seen him in, he’s fine, but he’s never really stood out to me as particularly exceptional. Michael Fassbender, on the other hand, is phenomenal. He’s intense, with a complex potion of emotions that really make the character engaging. Ultimately, I felt like the transition the character makes to become the villainous Magneto was a bit abrupt and obligatory, but still the performance made the movie.
The Setting. I liked the 1960s setting. I wonder now, however, what they’ll do in future installments. Will they continue in the ‘60s or jump around in time a bit? Will they make movies in the modern setting alongside more prequels? Another thing I’ve read a few times in reviews is that this film had a 1960s James Bond vibe to it, which I agree with, and that was part of the fun (I am a fan of Bond flicks, which are a lot like this type of comic book movie in also being entertaining but highly forgettable). Going back to Michael Fassbender: he would make a heck of a James Bond. I know that franchise is currently in some trouble due to financial difficulties at the studio, so it may be a few years before another one comes along. If they decide Daniel Craig is too old by the time they’re ready for another, Michael Fassbender would be a good choice as the next Bond.
Pace. The movie felt a bit too long. It dragged in the middle and picked back up by the end. I read that the director had said he liked having so many characters because when one story thread began to drag, he could switch to another one. But it seems a sign of trouble if any story threads are dragging, and sure enough that was a problem here, but not a huge one. The movie could have been tighter. And if they release an extended director’s cut, I suspect it will be best avoided.
In the end, this is a movie I might not bother watching again, extended director’s cut or not. And actually, I don’t think I’ve seen any of the previous X-Men movies more than once, so it’s likely that this will be one timer for me as well. Thor felt the same way. But that’s fine. Sometimes I really enjoy just sitting back and watching something that distracts me from my life for a couple of hours, even if I soon forget quite what happened in the story.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
The Sting
This past week has been a weird one for me. I broke up with my girlfriend and have been going through the emotions of dealing with that. Fortunately, I’m not slipping into something as serious as a major depressive episode, but I am certainly dealing with a down mood. And for me, dealing with a bad mood often means in part trying to distract myself from overanalyzing everything. Unlike when I was sick a couple weeks ago, I have also been doing a lot of reading this past week, which has helped, but movies are definitely a part of my recovery process too. I didn’t want to watch anything too relevant to my current woes, so no romances at the moment. Instead, I’ve been watching quite a few cheap horror movies. I think I’ll hold off on discussing those for the moment, however, and deal with all of them in one big post since I’m still in the process of going through them. But to supplement my desire for brainless horror fun, I also watched a classic I’ve never seen before: The Sting.
The Sting has been on my list of movies I need to watch for years. I enjoyed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and figured this Oscar-winning second team up of Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and director George Roy Hill was definitely worth checking out. But, as often happens, it took me years to bother getting around to watching it. Finally, yesterday, I was moping around, feeling down and tired and in the mood to watch something other than a cheesy horror movie, so I checked to see what movies were available On Demand (man, modern technology can be great sometimes!). The Sting was listed, and it seemed like just the type of fun movie to suit me.
In general, I like movies about con men. There’s just something fun about the twists and turns of double crosses and tricks involved in grifting. There is a weird issue, though, with such movies in that the protagonist con men are essentially bad guys, right? They are criminals swindling people out of their money and, therefore, should not have our sympathy. And unlike, say, gangster movies like The Godfather, where the protagonists are understood to be villains and the interesting thing is to watch how they descend into villainy despite being family men and having some redeeming qualities, con men don’t tend to feel so much like antiheroes. They feel like heroes. They win like heroes, right? Isn’t it kind of the same thrill to watch the con man’s scheme come to fruition as it is watching the hero of a sports movie win after training so hard? But con men shouldn’t be upheld as heroes. They are criminals, after all. So how to reconcile this is one of the big challenges of this type of movie.
I remember watching Matchstick Men several years ago and thinking about this issue then. (I’ll spoil the ending here since that movie wasn’t so great that you might care too much at this point). Matchstick Men’s method of dealing with this concern was to have the main character ultimately get conned himself and thus receive his comeuppance, which I think then makes it a bit more palatable that we’ve been enjoying his swindles earlier on. The Sting has a different way of dealing with this problem, however, and that is to have the victim of the big con be a worse villain than our heroes. If the guy getting swindled deserves to get swindled, then we have no real moral objection to our heroes being criminals too.
Anyway, the big con is complex, and there are twists and turns along the way. Paul Newman and Robert Redford are so likable that even if they were swindling little old ladies out of their retirement money, we’d probably still want to root for them. There’s humor and action and even some touching moments. Ultimately, it’s just a straight out fun movie. And if you’re ever feeling down and want to be distracted for a couple of hours with old fashioned, well put together entertainment, you could do a lot worse than The Sting.
The Sting has been on my list of movies I need to watch for years. I enjoyed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and figured this Oscar-winning second team up of Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and director George Roy Hill was definitely worth checking out. But, as often happens, it took me years to bother getting around to watching it. Finally, yesterday, I was moping around, feeling down and tired and in the mood to watch something other than a cheesy horror movie, so I checked to see what movies were available On Demand (man, modern technology can be great sometimes!). The Sting was listed, and it seemed like just the type of fun movie to suit me.
In general, I like movies about con men. There’s just something fun about the twists and turns of double crosses and tricks involved in grifting. There is a weird issue, though, with such movies in that the protagonist con men are essentially bad guys, right? They are criminals swindling people out of their money and, therefore, should not have our sympathy. And unlike, say, gangster movies like The Godfather, where the protagonists are understood to be villains and the interesting thing is to watch how they descend into villainy despite being family men and having some redeeming qualities, con men don’t tend to feel so much like antiheroes. They feel like heroes. They win like heroes, right? Isn’t it kind of the same thrill to watch the con man’s scheme come to fruition as it is watching the hero of a sports movie win after training so hard? But con men shouldn’t be upheld as heroes. They are criminals, after all. So how to reconcile this is one of the big challenges of this type of movie.
I remember watching Matchstick Men several years ago and thinking about this issue then. (I’ll spoil the ending here since that movie wasn’t so great that you might care too much at this point). Matchstick Men’s method of dealing with this concern was to have the main character ultimately get conned himself and thus receive his comeuppance, which I think then makes it a bit more palatable that we’ve been enjoying his swindles earlier on. The Sting has a different way of dealing with this problem, however, and that is to have the victim of the big con be a worse villain than our heroes. If the guy getting swindled deserves to get swindled, then we have no real moral objection to our heroes being criminals too.
Anyway, the big con is complex, and there are twists and turns along the way. Paul Newman and Robert Redford are so likable that even if they were swindling little old ladies out of their retirement money, we’d probably still want to root for them. There’s humor and action and even some touching moments. Ultimately, it’s just a straight out fun movie. And if you’re ever feeling down and want to be distracted for a couple of hours with old fashioned, well put together entertainment, you could do a lot worse than The Sting.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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