Category Archives: Film

Management

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Last week I think was a good week for catching an indie romantic comedy. Management was an enjoyable, if deeply flawed, example of the genre. There’s this guy, Steve Zahn, who is the night manager at his parents’ small-town motel. He’s the kind of actor that you know who he is, but have no way of saying what it is you’ve seen him in before.[1] One day, corporate art saleswoman Jennifer Aniston stays at the hotel, and he gets the idea to give her gifts, courtesy of “management”, in the hopes that… well, I doubt he knows exactly what it is that he hopes for, being the sad sack of a lonely man that he is. Whatever he hoped for, he got a whole lot more than that. But what would have been an unlikely one night stand is turned on its head when he flies out to see her after her departure the next day.

And that’s where the implausibility comes in. I don’t think he was a stalker, so much as a sad sack of a lonely man who also has no sense of realistic boundaries. But she didn’t have the audience’s insight into his head, and would surely have seen him as nothing but a stalker. So, we have about 75% of a movie that is predicated on the least likely reaction I can conceive of, wherein she decides to keep him in her house overnight so that they can hang out for a day or two. There are many more obstacles on the path to what may or may not be true love, as the genre dictates, but it’s hard to really buy anything after that one glaring flaw.

Still, if you can ignore that, it’s pretty decent, starting out with Office-style discomfort humor but frequently branching out into the genuinely funny kind that has no need to be preceded by “horrified”. The best acting is turned in by Steve Zahn’s mom and by his Asian sidekick; as you would expect of an indie comedy, the bit characters are the ones to shine. And I guess that’s mostly why I still watch these: yay, acting surprises!

[1] But not, I think, a character actor. It’s hard to explain why not, which possibly indicates my inaccuracy as to this point.

Terminator Salvation

MV5BMjA5MzE0MTMyM15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDYwNjAzMg@@._V1__SX1859_SY893_So, it’s a Terminator movie, right? These are basically brilliant studies of predestination versus free will and where humanity exists, set against the backdrop of evil robots bent on making explosions happen. Very much a win-win. The latest entry in the series, Terminator Salvation, made the good decision of ignoring the third movie (without necessarily contradicting it) and the understandable decision of ignoring the recently lamented Sarah Connor Chronicles. With all of the time travel events over the course of the series, pretty much anyone could create a canonical Terminator story these days, saving only that it doesn’t contradict the first two flicks. I still haven’t completely decided how I felt about this one, but I’ll say this in its favor: it made me want to rewatch the originals.

Our setting is some years after Judgment Day. Skynet has broken humanity but not destroyed it. There are still roving bands of civilians, and there is a serious resistance against the machines, and a young man named John Connor has had some solid successes thanks to his mother’s advice and foreknowledge, enough that people see him as at least a mascot and possibly a prophesied savior. And while Connor is preparing to fulfill the destiny that will cause Skynet to try to kill him via Austrian time travel desperation, an unexpected new party, Marcus Wright, shows up with information about the whereabouts of one very necessary Kyle Reese[1] and a decided lack of information about himself, such as where he came from and why he’s a robot. And suddenly our hero is adrift in a sea of questions with no more prophetic answers.

As far as the whole question of where humanity exists, this movie was a champion. I know I just called Connor the hero, and he’s always been half of the hero of the series. But for this movie, and without intending the claim to be a spoiler, Wright was very much the hero. Or, let us say, main character, as that’s equally precise and far less prejudicial. The predestiny part was kind of handwaved but ultimately irrelevant, which makes it hard for me to accept this as a pure Terminator movie; except that the original ignored questions of humanity, so I’ll let it pass. As part of a likely series of sequels, there’s still some time to address all relevant philosophies. So, for explosions and things, yeah, it’s here and Connor is ready to deal with it. But for philosophical discussion, the camera is firmly on Wright from start to finish.[2]

[1] John Connor’s father, thanks to a crazy-ass time loop. But seriously, I’m sure you must already know that.
[2] Well, and on the talented but tragically named Moon Bloodgood.

Star Trek

MV5BMjE5NDQ5OTE4Ml5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwOTE3NDIzMw@@._V1__SX1859_SY893_Obviously, you are aware of this movie, and you’ve probably already formed your own opinion. And anyway, I’d be leery of spoilers for anyone who hasn’t seen it. In theory, this constrains my review by quite a lot, but I figure it leaves me free to talk about what I really wanted to anyway. But, first things first. Did I like it? Enough to see it three times on opening weekend. Did it have flaws? I can think of a couple offhand, one extremely nitpicky and one that, absent, would have failed to feel like a Star Trek movie anyway. Plus, I think I’m willing to claim that at one point, there was actually an insufficient amount of technobabble. Was it accessible to non-fans? I feel as though it really was, and the reviews I’ve heard from non-fans (and in one case, an actively anti-fan) have borne this impression out. So you should really go see it, if this has not already occurred.

Because what J.J. Abrams made here was a philosophical, character-driven action movie, and really, how many of those do you think exist? Of the ones that exist, how many do you think aren’t insufferably smug about it? This right here is a narrow field to occupy! Action: ’cause, you know, space battles and laser gun fights. Character-driven: the driving forces of the story are all based in interactions. Kirk and McCoy’s friendship. Kirk and Spock’s rivalry. Spock’s relationship with his human mother. Nero’s irrational impulse for personal rather than systemic revenge. (He’s the bad guy.) Philosophical: take a group of people that shook the foundations of the Federation (and, projecting outward less than you’d think, the galaxy) and drastically change their history. Okay, many of the changes were not drastic, but one was, and there are clear, subtle ripples from there even before the main plot of the movie takes over. And then explore the question of random chance versus unalterable destiny.

I liked that by the end of the movie, the history of the Federation is vastly divergent from the one that fans of five TV series and ten movies know. And I like that it’s not going to be “fixed.” It was a bold move that I think is going to pay off in spades for the future of the franchise. But as much as I approve of that, I absolutely adored watching as, moment by moment, destiny pushed beloved characters into roles that they had fallen into by seeming happenstance in the original timeline. This new Trek may have surprisingly non-causal time travel that never really existed in “my father’s” Star Trek, but it also has some modicum of fate. And that’s kind of cool.

12 Rounds

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I ducked into the dollar movie last Wednesday to watch 12 Rounds, which is kind of a puzzling film. At first glance, it’s a cross between Speed and Die Hard 3, in which our New Orleans cop hero is forced by a vengeful international terrorist to cater to his every whim, one round at a time, or risk the death of his pixie-looking but tough wife. And within the set time limits, for added tension. The characters’ puzzle-solving skills are dumbed down just a little too much for my personal taste, possibly as an artifact of the WWE audience that was its primary target, but by and large it’s a serviceable action movie as put together by a, y’know, vengeful international terrorist.

And then there’s this weird turning point in the final act where the cops and FBI guys suddenly get a lot more intelligent than they’d been at any previous moment, and using clues that do not actually exist anywhere in the prior scripting, they determine that this movie has a twist ending wherein revenge was never really the point. And suddenly there are unreferenced helicopter pilots in the cast, and it’s all very much like a particularly imaginative audience member at one of the test screenings had said, “You know what would be a cooler ending than what we just watched?” and the writer and director had nodded and just created this new, purportedly cooler ending out of whole cloth without worrying about the fact that they needed to alter the rest of the movie for that to make any kind of sense.

This is maybe not as bad as it sounds. I mean it was bad, no question, but it was also interesting in a head-spinning kind of way to see the rules of plotting be so flagrantly ignored. Very few movies are (let’s say) brave enough to make this kind of artistic decision. Kudos?

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

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Summer arrived at last. Technically, it arrived in the form of a horrendous downpour that was among the worst I’ve experienced from the driver’s seat. But the important thing is, I and my companions got to the theater in time, so none of that matters. What does matter is having seen the Wolverine movie, and having it work pretty well. Explosions: check. Pathos: check. A few new mutants, both familiar (to me, that is) and un-: check. Matches current movie series continuity: check. Matches current Marvel continuity: well, okay, that part not so much, although it could be that it matches some Ultimate continuity I have not yet exposed. However, I do not care that it didn’t, because all the other parts were done pretty well.

In the end, it was a nice little summer comic book movie, better than some that have been released over the past decade; and I have no driving need for more. Though if they want to give me a simultaneously hysterical and horrific riff on the Superman origin story while they’re at it, I am willing to laugh and cringe appropriately, and with a song in my heart. Well, y’know, sort of. Maybe less so during the cringe?

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

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This is a really easy review, because of how the story is well-covered ground. You know, A Christmas Carol? Or the Disney version, or the Muppets version, or the Bill Murray version? I’m saying, you know this story, and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past does itself the service of not leaping out with a sudden surprise twist that leaves you wondering if you’re watching the right movie after all. The question, then, is what’s the point of watching a romantic comedy remake of an old story you’ve already seen (or read) several times? The point is this: it’s very, very funny. Funny via quite a few different genres of humor. It’s also a little bit sweet, like you’d expect from the “romantic comedy” tag, but it’s not cloying by any means. Mostly, though, funny. If you like laughing for an hour or two, check it out!

Friday the 13th (2009)

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Without meaning to, I let a good two months slip by before I finally saw the Friday the 13th remake. And when I did see it this weekend at the dollar theater, it was by myself and a little bit creepy. I mean, not the movie, which was every bit the traditional slasher flick. No, it was the theater crowd. Five minutes before the movie started, there were four men scattered in various parts of the non-stadium theater with decaying seats. It was starting to feel like I imagine a porn theater did, back when those were still around. But yay, some people finally came in together, even a woman in one case. And thus the day was saved and I was able to focus on the plot.

Basically, this is a reimagined Friday the 13th Part 2, after a straight port of the original movie was covered in black and white flashbacks prior to the title screen.[1] The reimaginings are a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s pretty smart to have the new victims not be a batch of camp counselors come to reopen Crystal Lake a few years after a series of brutal murders. Because, that would never happen, right? Much less four times in a row as in the original series. On the other hand, it’s strange to have an explicit hero character in Jared Padalecki[2], roaming town and environs in search of his missing sister. One of the brilliances of the Friday the 13th series was that the characters were almost always on an equal footing going in, such that there was no way to guess who might live.[3]

The important part, though, is that they waste no time getting to the action, which follows the formula almost to a tee. A large number of TV-recognizable[4] young people in the woods who take drugs and engage in premarital sex are punished by a deformed, avenging spirit with a machete. Do heads roll? Are pokers shoved through faces? Are feet liberally stabbed? Are minorities slightly more likely doomed than everyone else? Yep, it’s a slasher movie. 14 bodies. 6 breasts. Drive-in Academy Award nomination to Julianna Guill for flirting so hard with the Asian kid that she literally burned his lip and then having the grace to be hung from a pair of antlers in penance, and also for her “spectacular” talents.

[1] Not that it matters one way or the other, but I’m almost surprised they didn’t take the color out of the original’s footage and use that, instead of filming their own version. They added some new footage right at the end, sure, but it still could have been done.
[2] That guy from Supernatural. Yeah, that one.
[3] Caveat: the We Have Seen Your Breasts, You Must Therefore Die rule was of course always in effect.
[4] Sam Winchester[2], Dick Casablancas, Kira the Bajoran (not technically young, her), and a handful of others from shows I don’t watch.

Adventureland

Have you noticed how practically everything that’s going on in Hollywood in the past three or four years isn’t more than a degree of separation from Freaks and Geeks? Which was a short-lived NBC coming of age drama, in case you entirely failed to be aware of it. But then I doubt you’d have noticed this new thing. I’ll tell you who has, though: Terry Gross, that chick from Fresh Air.

The latest such endeavour connected to a failed-but-brilliant decade-old high school show is Adventureland, a nearly perfect fusion of coming of age drama and romantic comedy in which a kid whose failure to be Michael Cera I could only rarely get past loses his chance to explore Europe and find himself in the summer of 1987 between college and grad school, when his father runs into an economic downturn. Instead, he comes home to Pittsburgh and takes a job at the local amusement park. Hijinks as well as self-finding ensue.

There are two things that make the movie better than it has any right to be. The first and more universally applicable is that the characters are so fully realized. Lots of them are annoying as all get out, but even the ones for whom the audience feels little or no sympathy are still completely believable, with nary a caricature to be found. And the main characters are as flawed, sympathetic, and nuanced as you could really ask for. (Particularly Ryan Reynolds’ lothario of a maintenance man, who could easily have been one-dimensional with little to no quality drop-off for the film.) And the second thing is that the female lead hits all of my buttons for The Right Girl.[1] I know a movie can only give a cursory character study at best, but, yeah.

If you’re wondering why I’m leaving the Not Michael Cera guy out of this review? It’s mostly because I don’t want to spoil the experience of him.

[1] Also, I am not alone in this assessment, though this is not the first time Ryan and I have agreed on such things.

Knowing

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Nicolas Cage, right? Right?![1] So, he’s an astrophysicist, and his son comes into possession of a sheet of paper full of numbers. Said numbers have been locked in a time capsule for the past fifty years, but they also have predicted every major disaster worldwide over that period. And now that there are only a few numbers left on the list, Nic has a few mysteries to solve. Plus some overacting to perform, including some seriously iffy drunkenness that I actually know he’s capable of in other circumstances. And an out-of-place religious subplot to adhere to.

It’s not that Knowing was actively bad. It had a pretty decent hook, above-average effects, and a whole lot of angel-seeming dudes that all looked like Spike.[2] It’s just that the iffyness sticks out in my head far more, after the fact, than the upsides did. Also, the conclusion was a bizarre departure from the rest of the movie. It’s not really that I can say it contradicted the rest, there were just too many genres for one movie. Someone, somewhere, is far more pretentiously impressed with this movie than they have any real right to be.

[1] I really, really wish I had it in me to stop the review right there, including not having added this footnote.
[2] Said confluence of role and appearance leads to a pop-culture pun which pleases me to no end.

Duplicity

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I like it when movies are smarter than I expect them to be. Not the ones with paradigm-shifting plot twists in the final act, though I like those too if done well. It’s just, if I know there’s a twist, I can usually work out what it will be. No, I’m more talking about the movies that are created to be twisty and confusing right from the start, and revel in letting me know they know I know, but are confident I won’t figure it out anyway. And I can figure out a lot of those ones too, but not always.

Duplicity straddles the line. I kind of knew what was going on right away, but then I let all the nested switchbacks lull me and therefore dismissed my instinct, because the movie was cleverer than I gave it credit for. And this is exactly what I’m saying I like, so. The deal is, Clive Owen and Julia Roberts are retired spies who have moved into the private sector where they continue to spy, only now they call it corporate espionage. And they’re engaged in a steamy cat-and-mouse game between their respective companies, their respective teams, and (inevitably) themselves. The chemistry is not at all bad, but as the characters themselves acknowledge early and often, the main draw is to find out who will finally come out on top. …professionally, I mean.

It’s an entertaining movie, and I can happily recommend to anyone who likes a) to untangle puzzles or b) things that are fun.