Category Archives: Film

Underworld: Awakening

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I had to rewatch Underworld first, plus also read a Wikipedian summary of Underworld: Evolution, because it turns out that my review of that movie didn’t tell me a damn thing about what happened in it. Which I think is more good than bad, but in the moment it was decidedly inconvenient. And then I still didn’t have to watch the third movie, since the other two already explain in flashback everything that happens in it. Between a wholly retreaded plot and no trace of Kate Beckinsale in skintight leather, I really can’t figure out what someone was thinking when they made it. But the upshot of all this is that I was able to go into Underworld: Awakening without being confused at all. Mind you, probably none of it was necessary, since they had a brief synopsis at the beginning of the movie, as if to acknowledge that not everyone has the films readily available and it’s been like six years since one that mattered.

I guess what made me think I needed to watch them in advance was previews that talked about Kate’s vampiric Selene having been imprisoned for twelve years, and I couldn’t really remember anything like that. Well, it turns out that it’s because there was no such imprisonment; instead, the movie starts off with Selene and Michael Corvin on the run in the aftermath of humanity discovering the existence of vampires and werewolves and reacting, well, predictably. And then she gets captured, and then twelve years pass, all in the prologue of this movie. So, oops. Still, Underworld is not a terrible movie, so it’s not like I am filled with regret. Anyway, she eventually gets free, as implied by the time limit on the imprisonment, finds her leathers and then starts looking for Michael again. I suppose Scott Speedman is holding out for the next sequel, because there were lots of sidetrackings that happened, including some kind of big conspiracy! Which is about all there is to say about that without spoilers, but I’d just like to add that this, as with the first and probably the second movie, was not terrible. And also, I really kind of dig ruthless Selene. (Not that she was chock full of ruth before, but I’m confident there was some there, as how else to explain the contrasting dearth today? (Well, okay, yesterday is when I saw the movie, and the series is set in purposefully non-specific modern day, anywhen from 1990 to 2020.))

The Adventures of Tintin

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You know that guy Tintin? Because The Adventures of Tintin definitely assumes you do. Anyway, I gathered that he’s a reporter who has accidental adventures, I guess? I also gathered that he’s significantly smarter than everyone around him, except for his dog, who is as much smarter than him as he is than the other people. This is irritating only because he should be smart enough to notice how smart the dog is. But I digress.

So this guy Tintin goes on the slowest adventure ever, accompanied by his dog, a few model ships, the descendant of a sea captain, the Perils of Alcoholism, oh, and some bad guys, because they want the treasure (probably) too. Perhaps objectively, or perhaps because I had been given miscalibrated expectations, the movie was just way way way too slow for me to maintain interest. That said, there’s a five or ten minute sequence in Casablanca[1] that was worth the price of admission, if perhaps not sitting through the rest of the film.

Or, maybe if I knew and therefore cared more about Tintin, the rest would have worked out? But mainly I just wanted the dog to take over. And, while I’m here, the animation was pretty dang okay. More realistic than not, but no uncanny valley moments. So that, at least, was entirely awesome.

[1] Well, I think so? Probably Morocco anyway. I forget.

Haywire

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When the credits rolled on Haywire, I immediately felt kind of dumb for not having already realized it was a Steven Soderbergh movie. It just filled that obvious space in my head, the moment I knew. Not that he writes a lot of action, but when he does, it is exactly this kind of kinetic, stylized to the point of nearly being its own character, loudly impactful action. And certainly the characters are all Soderberghian ciphers, begrudgingly giving up any hint of motivation that you do not fill in for yourself. And the plot is I think Soderberghian too, in that it is easily summarized in one line that doesn’t exactly belie hidden depths, even though they exist. Upon reflection, I’m not sure why I like his movies. On paper, it seems like I would hate every one of them, but somehow they’re always engrossing. I should try to figure that out sometime.

Oh, as for the one line plot, there’s this awesome spy chick who gets burned (a la Burn Notice the TV show, obviously, but with a completely different mentality) and then goes on a hunt through every person involved in her last mission, including her superiors, to find out why and take her revenge. …okay, technically that was more than one line, but I bet if I were the kind of person who was actively interested in terse editing, I could have trimmed it down.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

MV5BMTgwNjEwODcxNF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNjU3MDY5Ng@@._V1__SX1217_SY911_You know those Swedish books everyone has read and Swedish movies everyone has seen, and now there’s an American version of the same stuff? Yeah, I never did any of that, so I showed up for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo knowing nothing except what was in the previews, that an investigative journalist and a punk hacker join forces to solve a forty or fifty year old murder. I will add for the purposes of anyone who did come in like me with no idea of what was going on that said team-up, while natural and organic, took a good long while to accomplish, so it was kind of unsettling (from a story balance perspective) to watch Daniel Craig all embroiled in plot progression while this justifiably angry chick was just kind of living her life and developing her character and seemingly completely uninvolved with anything else in the other scenes.

The pay-off, of course, is that Lisbeth Salander is Incredibly Cool. So, totally worth it, just briefly unsettling. Speaking of unsettling things, I should mention every other part of the movie, because I assure you it does not pull any punches. You will see things nobody should really ought to see, and you will meet a spectacularly dysfunctional (yet entirely plausible, just like the eventual team-up was from earlier) family, and you will probably care about what happens to any and all of them. Which is part of why the “no punches pulled” part of the movie is even rougher than you think it is. And you will find that research can in fact have dramatic tension. You may find that Trent Reznor’s soundtrack, while every bit as meaningfully atmospheric as the act of filming a scene outside in Sweden is, sometimes drowns out the dialogue. So that’s unfortunate but it’s really the only thing I didn’t like. Rumor has it that the book is pretty hard to read, so I suppose I’ll just stick to the sequels.

One thing I wonder, though: are we meant to care that she has a dragon tattoo? Other than its existence, I could not find any underlying purpose for it, neither in subtext nor plain text alike. It’s cool if it was just an identifier, but I can’t help wondering. (Another thing I wonder is whether it is possible for a Swedish film to be non-bleak? Is it like a climate thing, or does the happy stuff just never get exported?)

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

The bad thing about the new Mission: Impossible flick is that the plot felt occasionally rushed. I’m not talking about one of those things where reviewers say, despite being paid actual money by actual media organizations to have no other job besides sitting in a dark room with popcorn watching magical images appear in front of them and then talking about those images, that they were confused because the plot of the movie was too hard to follow.[1] There was definitely no point where I said, “Wait, what, they left something out!” I’m just saying that, now and again, you could tell that there was room for more backstory and it had been squeezed out. (I am thinking here specifically of Bogdan, who was really given nothing to do except have a goofy smile and be a plot catalyst; but that is not the only example of what I mean.)

The good thing about Ghost Protocol is you don’t have to care about any thin areas in the Pattern, because everything else was in fact really pretty cool. Was the mission actually impossible? Pretty much! Was the gadgetry really cool? Yes, yes it was, and on top of that it was involved in an unacknowledged-by-the-dialogue running joke that I will not spoil because it has plot implications. Did Tom Cruise smirk his way through the whole movie? I mean, obviously he did since that’s what he has done in every movie he’s ever been in[2], but it’s not like his smirk is off-putting, and it conveys a whole range of emotion beyond general punchability. Which when you think about it makes him an incredible actor. And the rest of the cast had generally good chemistry, and character development beyond ‘helps Tom Cruise do the Impossible’. So I’m saying, there’s very little not to like here. But none of these are the reason I’d recommend the movie.

Go see it in IMAX, because just about every action scene is put together in a way to showcase the immensity of that screen, and frankly very few IMAX films that come out have that particular sensibility. It was close to as good as a nature documentary, in those terms. And it had rather more explosions per capita than a nature documentary generally does, so you can see how this would be a win-win. IMAX or not, though, I wish more action movies were put together on this scale. Big is not a necessary thing by any means, and look no further than Die Hard before you consider disagreeing. But it should happen more than it does, is all I’m saying. Most of these kinds of movies are not designed to be small, but they’re filmed that way anyhow.

Okay, digression over. Review, too.

[1] Not that I’m bitter.
[2] Maybe not Eyes Wide Shut. Maybe.

In Time

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You know that science fiction trope where there’s one guy who both sees the system is corrupt and has the moral / mental fiber to do something about it? And usually there’s a lot of running involved? In Time casts Justin Timberlake in that role, railing against metaphor run amok. Actually, it’s not that bad of a metaphor, and it’s certainly[1] timely, it’s just that I can’t decide if I wish there had been a subtler writer or if in fact the metaphor itself is too hamfisted for any given presentation of its message.

See, it’s like this. For reasons that are unexplored (and there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s why sci-fi exists), humanity has been genetically engineered to remain forever young, the aging process halted at 25. On the downside, the currency of trade is time, and the only place time comes from is the one year of additional life beyond 25 that everyone is born with. (Well, okay, there are mathematical problems with that claim, but as far as I know nobody ever claimed to an additional source.) And so the poor people live, literally, day to day, while the rich are functionally immortal. And if you thought that ‘day to day’ reference was a little bit twee, well, that’s my point when I was wishing for a bit more subtlety. But still, it is a genuinely apt metaphor that brings into stark relief why someone might have a problem with a CEO earning an eight-figure salary, even if our fictional née gold-backed currency system is less literally deadly and less literally draining out of our accounts, moment by moment. Plus, there are lots of pretty people running and a somewhat hilarious central irony.

But man, it would piss me off that I was paying to be at work, even if I made back more at the end of the day. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that it does piss me off, since the currency being split into two forms doesn’t make it less true that I’m spending my life away in this office, one second at a time. On the bright side, though, I got to spend a few of them on you, my readers!

[1] Forgive me.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Things the Sherlock Holmes sequel did right, in no particular order:

Less action-for-the-sake-of-action feeling to it than the original. Sequences that showed the inner workings of Holmes’ mind; not so much how he is eight steps ahead of anyone else, but at least the demonstrable fact that he is. (Though maybe the first one did too? I can’t recall.) Sufficient use of Doyle’s canon that I was able to anticipate certain events and recognize others. Robert Downey Jr. Stephen Fry. Still excellent Holmes/Watson chemistry.

Things the movie did wrong, in no particular order:

Y’know, I got nothing. It was light and fun and better than its progenitor, and what more do you really need? Oh, right, if you care, blah blah Moriarty, anarchists, gypsies, unstable Europe, Reichenbach. That should pretty well ought to cover it, except to promise that you will laugh.

Hugo (2011)

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One of the cool things about Hugo (and believe me, there are many) is that it contains multitudes. It explores with uncomfortable realism how it would feel to be an orphan in 1930s Paris, forever doing the (apparently unpaid!) work of an adult, because to let it go undone is to be caught and exiled to the orphanage. It has the best use of 3D I’ve seen since My Bloody Valentine. It has one of my favorite character archetypes in fiction, the (in this case) girl who desperately wants adventure and has no idea what she’s letting herself in for. It has all kinds of foreshadowing, frequently in multiple layers. It tells a lot of the different stories swirling around Hugo, not just his own one. It has a robot! It is one of the funniest non-comedies I’ve seen in a long time, and while it’s not a “kid’s movie that is great for adults too lol!”, it is almost certainly a movie you could take your kids to, if you care about that kind of thing.

Most of all, permeating every other aspect of the movie (even if it’s not obvious at first), it is Martin Scorsese’s love letter to the art of cinema. And it’s a damned good one.

Also… that girl Isabel was both the second main character in Let Me In and the girl hero in Kick-Ass? Damn.

Immortals

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Later, I saw the big 3D event movie of the season, which balanced its time between being in your face with 3D actiony combat (not ever over the top, though …well, I mean, the 3D wasn’t; the action very explicitly was, over and over again) and feeling very naturalistic, enough that I had to pause and think about whether there was a 3D image in front of me. Not unlike real life, you understand. So that’s probably good, right? Or I’m jaded, like I said earlier. Definitely one of those.

Immortals pits Theseus against rampaging conqueror Mickey Rourke, in the hopes that he can stop Mickey from unleashing the titans who would then destroy humanity and the gods alike. (They are grumpy for having been trapped all this time, you know?) Normally, the gods would just smack Mickey down like they used to do, but apparently somewhere along the way hubris became more socially acceptable or else the gods learned about the Prime Directive. So it’s up to Theseus and his plucky peasant know-how and his tragic, revenge-inducing backstory to save the day. Of course he’ll be assisted by a number of rapidly dying allies and Sexina the Oracle, because this is after all a Greek mythological quest movie, and that is how they roll. To preserve an air of mystery, I will not spoil the presence or absence of a minotaur somewhere along the way.

But seriously, everything is pretty (though perhaps a little monochromatic) and lushly over the top, like a peach that’s just gone overripe and this is more bad than good, except without the sexual connotations of that particular metaphor. If you like things that are Greek or things that make limbs roll or things that make heads explode, either watch this one, or travel 18 months along the timeline and watch the next / previous one, because really, this is the kind of movie that comes along once in a lifetime. If you are a betta.

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

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I saw a couple of 3D movies over the course of my weekend, and I’m coming to the conclusion that they need to reduce the markup. It’s not that I have the thing where it looks bad to me that so many people seem to have, it looks fine. But the thing is… it looks fine. It looks normal. I am perhaps jaded? But I sometimes have to pause and remember that what I’m watching is actually 3D, except for the times when they are going out of their way to make it obvious. On the bright side(?), the latest Harold & Kumar sequel went so far out of its way that it might have come all the way around to accidental 3D hyperbole.

As far as the flick itself, you know what you expect from the boys at this point, I reckon. But, in case, here is what you should expect: Cheech & Chong for the new millennium, complete with gratuitous T&A, more drug use than you can shake a stick at, random violence, and an outsized version of Neil Patrick Harris. And of course we get all of these things in abundance, plus they… well, they don’t learn the true meaning of Christmas, but they do learn a valuable lesson about friendship, family, and responsibility. Honestly, the presentation is a lot better than that sounds, but then again, it would be. The people behind this movie grew up with afterschool specials, of course they’re going to subvert them in entertaining ways!

As far as the Christmas theme? It’s still not as good as National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, because, how? But it’s the only other Christmas-themed entry in an ongoing series of movies that I would bother to recommend to people. Probably because of how irrelevant Christmas-as-a-theme really was in the scheme of things; it was setting, at best. So no worries on that account. And anyway, there’s a WaffleBot, which would be worth the rest of the movie all by itself, probably even if it had felt cloyingly Christmasy.