Category Archives: Film

Priest (2011)

Priest was an odd duck of a movie, because it didn’t really try to be anything. There’s this weird alternate reality, see, where humans and vampires have been openly at war for centuries, and despite that the vampires are far stronger and vastly numerous, somehow the sunlight advantage has allowed humans to progress scientifically and spiritually throughout the years, culminating in some kind of religio-genetic hybrid warriors with cross tattoos on their faces who took the war back to the vampires and pretty much won it.

Only now, maybe the war isn’t really over after all, and the church leadership is in denial and considers anyone who wants to investigate the opposing viewpoint to be anathema. So there’s you a great little theme about corrupt religious power, versus reason, versus true faith, probably versus other possibilities as well, only, yeah, once the premise was settled, they went nowhere with it beyond cartoonish antagonism. And there’s a thick, rich Vietnam metaphor in the priests, who everyone can recognize as having been part of this great war that was a stalemate at best, and they no longer have any place in society now that what they were created for is over, and one of them is beset on all sides, by the law, by his past, by threats to his family, and this is the most Rambo-like character I’ve ever seen, only…. again, they did nothing with him. He almost had a sympathetic superior, but not really. He kind of had people to go rescue to prove the war hadn’t ended, but the scope was too narrow.

So, instead of all this potentially rich territory, there was a lot of CGI kung fu, cool explosions, and implausible usage of motorcycles. Oh, and a giant pile of sequel-bait, except all the possibilities for conflict more compelling than “we’d better kill this next dozen vampires” was already ignored and discarded here in what I hope will not be described by future generations as the first movie.

Batoru Rowaiaru

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There’s only one problem with Battle Royale. The premise doesn’t make even a lick of sense. The introductory text scroll lays it out like this: Japan is in economic turmoil, with record unemployment and an extremely bad delinquency problem among the youth, apparently because they see what they have to look forward to? So, the adults fearfully pass the BR law, which… here’s where it makes no sense. Apparently, once a year, a randomly selected ninth grade class is sent to an island, given bags full of equipment and random weaponry, and asked to kill each other over the next three days. If there is more than one survivor after 72 hours, everyone left will be killed. Pretty straightforward, right?

And the events portrayed in the final 80% of the movie are chock full of hard decisions and violence and teenage melodrama, in which anyone can die at any moment, just like you’d expect of a pack of inter-murderous ninth graders. So if you can get past the premise, there’s a great deal of that, and I approve! But still, I can’t figure out how it makes any sense. That is to say, how does the “law” help anyone? At one class per year, it’s not going to make a dent in any population concerns. And randomized with such a small incidence, it’s not like the kids have any fear-based incentives to change their ways; if anything, I’d expect them to get a lot more disaffected and violent than before. (Except this particular class didn’t seem to have any idea the annual event existed, which is its own kettle of worms, believe me.)

Still, to be clear, that didn’t stop me from enjoying the other 80%, it just drove me crazy at the start of the movie and again while considering my review. So, y’know, mixed bag.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

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I glanced at my reviews of the last couple Pirates movies, and they are a lot more positive than I remember the movies in my head. I wonder which of us is right! My point being, who can say how well you and / or future me can trust this forthcoming review of the fourth poncy Johnny Depp vehicle? Oh well, we’re both here, may as well read it anyway.

So, I have a few disconnected thoughts, and they are presented here in no particular order. On Stranger Tides demonstrates better than I remember the other movies having done that pirates, by and large, are bad people. Not so bad that I wish I hadn’t watched the movie, but I felt slimier than I really wanted to, once or twice. That said, the action set-pieces did a good job of distracting me from that sporadic feeling, much as they distracted me from what were at the time glaring plot holes, most of which I’ve forgotten since, which just goes to show you quite how successful said set-pieces were. The action wasn’t the best in the series or anything, because they’ve always been amazing. But it was absolutely at the same level of quality, minimum.

Two events stood out from the rest, though, and neither are spoilers, so I will tell you them! 1) Impressive use of the Greek literary technique, deus ex mickina. 2) Disturbingly spot-on interpretation of the Japanese dolphin capture / killing bays. (There’s a documentary in the last year or two, if you have no idea what I’m talking about. The descriptions have convinced me I would hate watching it, though.) But anyway, yeah, this was pretty good. Oh, right, some people want an inkling as to the plot, I forget that sometimes. What is is, is they’re looking for the Fountain of Youth.

Bridesmaids (2011)

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I’m going to show my premise here, as it seems kind of important to the rest of the review. I’ve seen a goodly number of Judd Apatow productions at this point (though, bizarrely, still not the earliest big hits that put him in the spotlight after Freaks and Geeks was so soundly ignored), and while I’ve never felt any solid connection to his male ensemble buddy cast members, I understand that there are apparently wide swathes of the male populace who identify intimately with their particular brand of shenanigans. The upshot is that, having seen Bridesmaids, I am willing to take on faith that this is how some significant segment of the female populace behaves among themselves at times when I can’t see it happening.

And see, that is anthropologically interesting if it’s even partially true, because I have no [moral] way of observing how women might tend to behave when men are not around. And Hollywood is notoriously bad at giving this kind of thing any airtime.[1] So, until told that nobody knows any people like this, I’m going to assume it’s probably somewhat valid, and therefore the movie is interesting instead of merely funny.

Which, make no mistake, it really is. See, Annie’s life is a mess. She hasn’t figured out relationships, the economy has destroyed her small business dreams, and for whatever reason, she really doesn’t seem to have many friends. And right when she hasn’t yet acknowledged much of this, much less come to terms with it, her best friend has gotten engaged and named her maid of honor. Only, the rest of the bridesmaids are Lillian’s friends, and therefore strangers to Annie. Plus, the rich and pretty one seems to be replacing Annie as Lillian’s best friend, which is exactly the kind of shit up with which she will not put. Escalating tensions plus a series of unfortunate events bring Annie’s life to a crisis point, after which… I guess this being a comedy, saying “nothing may ever be the same!” is a little over-dramatic? But even though I never stopped laughing, the emotional tension was very real, a feat which impresses me separately from the mostly high comedic quality. Also, it has that not-as-weird guy from The IT Crowd in it. I approve of him! (And his show, for that matter.)

Anyway, don’t go see it for the anthropology, even though I’d be intrigued to see other people’s reactions. Do go see it because it’s funny.

[1] There’s even a term for that, which I know I’ve mentioned here before.

Super 8

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So, the thing about Super 8 is that you’re not really allowed to talk about it. There are these kids making a movie in 1979, as you do when you are kids and have a video camera and a friend who wants to make movies and video games haven’t been invented yet. And while they are at the train station filming a scene, they accidentally witness a pretty huge train wreck. All of this is in the teaser trailer from like 18 months ago, right? Anyway, after the wreck, things get mysterious, and that’s all I’m going to say.

What I suppose I am allowed to talk about, though, is the reactions it has been getting. I’ve seen people say that it implies there used to be magic in the world, but you have to go back in time to get it because now things are way too mundane for a big adventure. I have a little bit of sympathy for this, I do. Because I’ve thought to myself that if I had been older in the ’70s, I might have been one of those people making a Chainsaw or an Evil Dead, so I’m already a little predisposed to see the ordinary, everyday magic of widened possibilities in that era moreso than in this one, where you have to be slick and polished to even get any word of mouth going. (That’s not true, of course, but most of what I’ve seen for which that wasn’t true was just terrible. And clearly it wasn’t always thus.) But when I watch this movie, I don’t see anyone saying the magic has gone out of the world. I see someone saying, this is what the world was like when I was a kid. Of course, I also notice the freedom of movement and association those kids have versus what I expect kids today to have, and I wonder. They’re in a small town, and maybe things haven’t changed all that much? But if things have changed, we’re the adults now, deciding what kids of that age are doing, and if the magic of 30 years ago is absent these days, there’s really only us to blame for it. But for now, I think it’s mostly a difference of place than time, and that the young writers and directors of today will still be finding magic in their own childhoods as we near the middle of the century.

On a more technical level, I’ve also heard people make comparisons to Goonies or Gremlins. While those are both fine movies, I didn’t tweak to either comparison myself, except at the most superficial level. No, what it immediately made me think of, and I never found myself disagreeing later, was a sweeping Stephen King small-town epic, along the lines of It or Under the Dome. Only, presented on the screen far better than any of those have ever been. You may be aware that’s pretty high praise.

Ôdishon

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What’s that, you say? You want to see a really, really weird movie? Let me recommend Audition, in which an aging Japanese widower mocks up a TV show in order to get girls in to audition for one of the parts, when in reality they are auditioning to be his new girlfriend. And… well, the thing is, anything beyond the premise is a spoiler, including honestly the ways in which I have categorized the type of movie. But on the other hand, I’m pretty sure we both know you aren’t gonna go see this, so I am obligated to make this a conversation by elaborating. If you are in fact planning to see it, therefore, please disregard anything below this paragraph. (Oh, and my short answer is that it is worth seeing, I’m not trying to trick you over here.)

So, there are a number of open debate topics around the way the movie played out. First, there’s the widower guy. His whole plan sounds really damn creepy in a one-line sentence, no denying. And he is clearly entrenched in what is apparently Japan’s paternalistic relationship culture. But I couldn’t bring myself to look too unfavorably upon him, because despite his wealthy-version-of-a-stalker means, his heart really did seem to be in the right place. So I wonder if I’m taking that all wrong[1], and one of the points of the movie is that he did in fact deserve… well, okay, that’s too much spoiler even for me.

And then there’s our star auditioner, about whom… well, she is in fact my biggest open question. The only solid hints of her history we get seem to be from the perspective of someone else’s hallucination, so she is by and large a complete cipher to me. Does she believe herself wronged by, well, various people? Has she been extensively wronged in the recent and/or distant past? Is she simply insane? Is it a hefty combination of all of the above? Perhaps it’s okay that I don’t know, and perhaps, as per my footnote below, she plays a role instead of a character. I hope not, as it’s the same trap that her role is being used to punish, if so; just a different angle on it.

Anyway… by and large, the thought exercise presented here was better than the movie itself. Probably this is because it bucked my expectations via its near glacial pacing, and for no other reason directly related to the plotting or acting. But even if I’m objectively right, I will never call a movie that put this much contemplation into my brain anything less than good.

[1] For one thing, I started to say that there’s no counter-example in the film of someone interacting with the opposite sex on more equal footing[2], but then I remembered that his son seems to do fine. And while I will be the first to take notice of how meeting people only gets harder as time passes, there are still reasons to believe his counter-example is central to the themes of the film.
[2] Heh.

Green Lantern

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Going into Green Lantern, I knew very few things about the character. He does stuff in space, and he can do anything at all with his magic ring, unless what he is opposing is yellow, in which case he’s completely powerless. (DC, you know, about which I know little enough except for their very majorest characters.) My point is: yellow? Really? High budget effects or not, I wasn’t very hopeful. Yellow.

I’m not sure, but I think that may have been the movie’s saving grace. It had a lot of “gee, whiz” coolness going for it, don’t get me wrong, but the plot was really quite predictable, and the origin story fell flat for me when they spent half the movie establishing that Hal Jordan isn’t reliable and needs to grow up to realize his potential, and then had the turn-around occur on a dime for the flimsiest of reasons. So while I can’t say that it was one of the great comic book movies, it easily surpassed my tragically low expectations.

I mean, yellow!? I’m not saying yellow lameness was absent from the movie, but either they fixed whatever made it especially horrible in the comic, or else I’ve had a misguided notion of how things worked all these years. Either way, really. What’s important is nobody painted a baseball bat yellow to defeat the otherwise cosmically powerful good guy.

X-Men: First Class

MV5BMTg5OTMxNzk4Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTk1MjAwNQ@@._V1__SX1859_SY847_Do you know what is embarrassing? When you get about halfway through a review and then realize you forgot one that should have come first. And it’s all the worse in this specific case, because you-the-reader will now inevitably think that my forgetting is a knock against X-Men: First Class rather than a reflection of the truly massive amount of overtime that is happening to me and the correlatively massive lack of sleep that is also happening to me. But my point is, while I only finished that book last night, I saw the X-Men movie on Saturday, aka 40 hours of work ago. And you know, I liked it.

The tricky part is figuring out how to say why I liked it. I’ve seen several one-line reviews, some positive, some negative, some thoroughly tangential, and every single one of them is correct. January Jones either made no attempt to inhabit the character of Emma Frost, was incapable, or the character was flatly written[1]. Some of the mutant powers are really pretty stupid. That was unquestionably the funniest f-bomb in superhero history. And this was very likely the best X-Men movie, or at worst tied with the one about Weapon X. If you can ignore the fact that the villain and his Hellfire Club failed to ever really make it clear what was the underlying purpose behind their efforts to drive Kennedy and Kruschev to World War III, the spectacle of the thing alone will carry you through most of the movie. And when you are able to add to that the interrelationships between the characters who are not quite yet Professor X and Magneto and Mystique, and especially the tragic relationship between humans and mutants that has led to some of Marvel’s best collective writing over the decades, I guess you’ll be able to see why it is so easy for me to say I liked it.

[1] I haven’t gotten to Emma Frost in Marvel continuity, and in the Ultimate continuity, like in this movie, the character is too much of a cipher, relying on what people “already know” about her to flesh out the missing pieces. (Or January Jones was indeed terrible. Beats me!) My point, anyway, is that I have no way of knowing the cause; maybe Emma Frost is just a terrible character and that’s why nobody seems to be able to make me get it, instead?

The Hangover Part II

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The Hangover Part II is the perfect sequel, in that the exact same movie was made for a second time. Everything I liked about The Hangover, I liked here too. It’s not that I like humor based on other people’s discomfort. I do sometimes, but to a pretty limited degree. What I really like is humor based on situations that are spiraling out of control. And if waking up in a room in Bangkok with no memory of the previous night, a severed finger, a missing wedding party member, and a stray monkey isn’t out of control, not many things would be.

Still, after that, the untangling what actually happened and trying to make sure the wedding goes off and finding all kinds of hilariously horrible situations along the way, like I said, same movie. So there’s hardly anything to add. I just dig the genre, is all. (And I hope that I never have anyone like Zack Galifianakis’ character in my life, ever. I like the idea of inexplicable, out of control adventures in my life, I do. I just want them to be accidental. And not involve frozen mountain passes or blood-thirsty, one-eyed warlords. Already covered those.)

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

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You know what there are not a lot of? Documentaries about serial killers. Well, no, that’s the opposite of what is true, there are actually like a ton of those. By literal film-reel weight, I mean. But there aren’t very many documentaries about uncaught serial killers. Well, that might not be true either. Because, like, Unsolved Mysteries, right? I’m pretty sure that show became a genre once there was a Court TV. But, okay, this time I’m going to be right: there are very few documentaries about uncaught serial killers from the perspective of the serial killer. Including, you understand, interviews and other literal documentary footage.

Before yesterday, as it happens, I would have said there were actually no such documentaries. But now I have seen Behind the Mask[1], and I can say that there’s one, anyway. It actually starts off playing for comedy to some extent, both because our slasher[2] is personable and funny in the confines of his soulless psychopathy and also because the very concept of a documentary crew following around a murderer is kind of laughable. But the moment when the horror of what they are witnessing (and, let’s be honest, doing) finally begins to sink through, the movie shifts from comedy to the finest example of post-modern horror I’ve seen since Scream. This is definitely a must-see for genre fans, and I’m sad I had never heard of it until a month ago!

[1] I should note, incidentally, that the mask itself is in fact at the intersection of cool and creepy to such degree that I’m very slightly surprised there hasn’t been a sequel based on that alone.
[2] Oh, right, I lied a little bit. “Serial killer” is the best way to portray the type of person I mean in a documentary setting, but truthfully this guy is a slasher; some famous previous-movie slashers are his heroes, and there’s obviously some nod to the idea of, if not the supernatural, at the very least that these guys work damn hard to appear supernatural.