Category Archives: Film

True Grit (2010)

Little Fockers

I think the most misleading thing about Little Fockers is the title, in that, while present, the Focker children are never quite the focus of the story like you might expect. It’s like… okay, you know how Anton Chekhov[1] said that if you see a gun on the mantel in act one of a play, it had better be fired by act three? This is like that play, in that there the children are on the metaphorical mantel, and in fact they get used in all sorts of ways. But, and here is my point, Anton Chekhov was not talking about a play named The Gun. See? They are a means to several different ends, but never once an actual focus. Maybe lots of movie titles work this way, and I just generally disregard them?

Anyway, though, the plot: a couple of movies ago, Ben Stiller married a blonde chick that I’ve only really seen in these movies, the result of which is that Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman get to be in-laws, and Stiller and De Niro have formed an uneasy truce. But all kinds of small troubles (child-raising, finances, sex lives, home renovations) lead to a renewal of the same hostilities between the two leading men that have been the theme of the entire series, and it’s impossible to avoid an unpleasant sense of déjà vu[2]. Especially when the flick itself is only mildly chuckle-worthy for the first two acts. Still, it eventually does get to be pretty amusing, though whether this was because my defenses were gradually worn down or they really did save the best for last is highly debatable.

Jessica Alba’s by now ubiquitous lingerie shot isn’t worth the price of admission, but it at least lets you convince yourself it was worth the time spent. …and if you know it won’t let you do that, I can safely say this is not the movie for you.

[1] Probably, but maybe someone else; in any event, not Samuel Clemens.
[2] Will they form a new uneasy truce by the end of this one? At what point does the terminology get downgraded to détente?

Moon

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Since I didn’t get Moon through Netflix, I really should have taken my opportunity to skip this review. I mean, it’s the kind of movie where knowing as little as possible is the best, and that makes it hard for me to mention the pure highlight that elevates it above other similarly-constructed movies that we’ve seen in the past, of which 2001 is certainly the most obvious. And yet, it’s a movie that I first heard about on Thursday, and managed to see on Sunday through no great expansion of effort, while gathering that basically every other person on the planet had not only heard of it but really liked it. (Well, almost everyone for that last point.) And so I feel obligated to say something about it, just because it was such a common thread of my weekend.

So, what happens is this: an energy corporation is strip-mining the dark side of the moon for a hydrogen isotope that can power over 75% of the world’s energy needs. (Or it might have been helium, but hydrogen makes a lot more sense, and really we’d have the same story if it had been unobtanon, so stop being so damn picky!) And they’ve got this moon base built that mostly runs itself, including the harvesters roaming around, and all that really needs doing is minor outdoor repair work and also the collection and launching of the hydrogen tubes once they’ve gotten full, for which they have hired Sam Bell for a three year tour of duty. The part where he’s alone except for GERTY, the helpful base computer/tethered robot, wouldn’t be too bad except that satellite links for live relay to earth are down, so he only gets communication with his bosses and family at about the rate of USPS letters. But he fills his time with old television[1] and craft-work and other such pursuits, and anyway, it’s only two more weeks until his tour ends and he gets to go home. Too bad he’s started to hallucinate. …or has he???

And anything after that, even the part I want to praise, even a discussion of theme beyond my willingness to say I think they did a good job there, would be way too much spoiler. So I’ll stop here and only recommend that if you’ve got a lazy Sunday afternoon and a craving for humanist sci-fi, this is a good place to go. (The movie, not the actual moon, which has been strip-mined something ugly, let me tell you.)

[1] If I wanted to pick a part of the movie that was kind of horrible, it’s that the two TV shows that made it on screen were Bewitched and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, both of which took me right out of the moment by triggering the realization that they picked their shows based on what would be cheap to get the rights to from TV Land or whoever owns them now, instead of what someone in a near-future setting would likely be interested in. I mean, geeze, at least Cheers or Cosby or Friends, guys!

Skyline (2010)

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Sometimes, when a movie is universally panned, there’s a reason for it.

Skyline is another in a recent series of alien invasion stories that are told at the personal ground level, rather than with sweeping majesty like Independence Day was back when it re-opened the genre for public consumption. If you imagine War of the Worlds or Cloverfield, you are definitely on the right track. Aside from incidental plot and character arc divergences, these are all three (along with several others I could probably think of if I paused to do so) basically the same movie. So, what makes Skyline stand out? The first thing is the characters; every single one of these ranges between (at the high end) uninteresting and seedily unlikeable.[1] The second thing is the plot, which, after establishing that the Aliens are Here! and People are in Danger!, effectively goes nowhere at all for the rest of the movie, up to and including a conclusion that I can only presume was meant to by heart-warmingly thought-provoking, or perhaps vice versa. The third thing is… well, look, if you need a third thing, it’s because you are more forgiving of badness in movies than I am, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never met the person that fits this description.

[1] I should say that David Zayas, who I hope you will recognize as Angel Batista on Dexter, really wanted his character to be likable, but the script simply wouldn’t allow it.

Black Swan (2010)

An interesting thing about Black Swan is how many different potential movies are crammed into its actuality. For instance, there’s a not particularly compelling ballet movie in it, which is sad when you consider how much effort Natalie Portman told Terry Gross that she put into training for the physical aspects of the part. And then there’s a somewhat formulaic suspense thriller in which Portman vies with ballet company newcomer Mila Kunis for the dubious affections of the company’s French artistic director as well as the lead in the first show of the season, Swan Lake, while a tragically underutilized Winona Ryder looks on from the sidelines as the cast-aside prima ballerina from seasons past. And if you’re getting the impression so far that I found it okay at best, you’re right up to a point; I would have been pretty disappointed if I had been watching either of those two movies.

The movie that I was watching, which I more or less loved, was a psychological study of an obsessive mind pushed to the brink of utter collapse under a myriad of internal and external pressures. And I don’t want to say more than that, because it made for utterly compelling watching as each element unfolded. I’ve been on record in the past as approving of unreliable narrators in fiction. I think this is the first time I’ve seen one on film that wasn’t eye-rollingly bad; to the contrary, I hope Portman earns some awards over the next few months.

TRON: Legacy

Faster (2010)

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Remember when there used to be tons of action stars? I mean, there still are, but there are no longer tons of young action stars. Really all you’ve got is Jason Statham and The Rock.[1][2] Anyway, the next one has Jason Statham, so necessarily Faster has The Rock. And while I think he’s really quite a good actor, most of the awesomeness in this movie happened when he wasn’t speaking at all. But I’m ahead of myself. What you should ought to know is that said Rock has just been released from prison and is on a mission of revenge against the people who murdered his brother right before he went to prison. And, man, what a mission. His first victim is felled within maybe an hour of his release, which I “spoil” only to make it clear (as the previews did identically before me) that this is a movie that is not fucking around.

Everything from there forward is a race between our anti-hero, an assassin hired by one of his impending victims, and a broken down cop at the end of his career, to see which of the three missions will be completed first. The Rock really is the star of the show, and not just because the script dictates it. The first shot shows him pacing across his tiny prison cell, waiting for the moment of release, and it’s easy to believe that, like a shark in a goldfish bowl, he’s been pacing those same steps all ten years. And after release, he never really seems to stop moving, not to emote, hardly ever even to speak, and that’s what I meant earlier. The only really deep theme of the movie is that (again, like a shark) motion equals life, and any time spent away from that, the character is diminished.

It’s a spare movie with almost monomaniacal focus, but what it is doing, it does very well. It’s not that important or anything, but it’s quite good. My only real complaint is with the assassin character, and it’s a weird one. He was over-developed, which of course you want character development, right? But he’s really an outsider to the plot, and to the extent that you care about the plot, every scene that delves into his backstory is fingernail-on-chalkboard levels of out of place. As a foil to The Rock’s non-stop brutality, his careful planning and finesse would work really well. As an alternative main character, and that really is the amount of development he receives, it feels like he wandered into the wrong movie by mistake. Which is too bad, as either movie might have been decent (though I’m sure this one was the better of the two options); but both of them suffer by being crammed together like this.

[1] Vin Diesel kinda disappeared; I can only assume he is in the middle of a really excellent D&D campaign and will rejoin us by 2012.
[2] Shia LaBeouf? Seriously? I can end you, you know.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

At this late date, it is essentially a given that a Harry Potter movie will be financially successful, capture some number of iconic moments, and have pacing problems inherent in adapting a multi-hundred-page book to a substantially-fewer-minute movie. Upshot: except in case of unforeseeable production errors, you already know everything you need to know to decide whether or not to go see part one of the series’ climax. Which leaves me with the unfortunate task of coming up with something to add to a closed topic.

Well, first I have the task of saying that there is no inexplicable failure right at the end, and that after a breakneck-paced opening in which we establish that evil is ascendant in the wizarding world, nobody is safe, and our heroes don’t have much in the way of a solid plan for how to do anything about it, the film settles into an excellent character study of Harry, Hermione, and Ron on the cusp of adulthood, finally set free from Hogwart’s apron springs, with the weight of the world on their shoulders. In a very real way, every scene of every previous movie has been leading to the last two thirds of this one, where we get to see what has been forged. And I have to say that the same segments of the book didn’t really give me that sense of completion to the series; which is not to say that the movie is better than the book, but that it’s nice to be able to contrast them and find strengths in each.

So, okay, I had a little to add to the topic after all, and that’s cool, because those three actors and the various directors who have led them through this past decade of films deserve a lot of credit. But still, on the whole you really already knew what you wanted to do about the latest Potter extravaganza long before I popped open my laptop to give you my opinion, and since you deserve my opinion on something, it’s this: I came out of the movie extremely disappointed. Disappointed, that is, that at least the sixth and probably the fifth movie deserved a similar amount of extra time to flesh out those stories as well, with these actors.

Too late to do anything about it now, I guess, but it’s at least nice to see they would almost certainly have been excellent.

Paranormal Activity 2

When I saw the imaginatively-named sequel to last year’s Paranormal Activity, I achieved at least a little of what I then claimed would have made it better to watch: to whit, there was far less of an audience distracting me with their overblown terror, making it much easier to focus on the tension growing into dread that both movies most likely contained, though for obvious and difficult-to-validate reasons, I think this latter had a lot more of. The plot is similar to that of the previous movie, which is to say there are people in a house, cameras running all the time (this time from a security system), and gradually more terrifying events occur over a period of weeks, all caught on these cameras and presented to the audience only through those lenses. There are a few more answers than last time, which works out well when you consider that it’s more or less a prequel to the first movie and even includes some of the same characters.

But I have to hope you didn’t come for answers, because the point of an old-fashioned haunting story like this is to get nervous, occasionally jump, and spend a little time thinking about the not-always-comprehensible world around you, where answers can be hard to get to on the best of days, and let’s be frank, these cameras are not recording the best of days.[1]

[1] Someday, when HTML 5 (or 6) can see where peoples’ eyes are on a screen, I’ll code one of those jump-out jpegs to pop onto the screen just as you finish the review. That’ll be pretty awesome, yo.

Shards of Delirium

Fragments of Delight