Jack Reacher

Okay, admission time. Tom Cruise is one of those people you’re just supposed to not like, and considering the way he turned Katie Holmes from an actress into a birthing pod for a few years while simultaneously trying to do the most damage to the mental health industry since we elected an actor to the presidency, well, I get why it would be fair not to like him. But Katie Holmes has been set free and there haven’t been any bizarre mouthpiece moments in a while, and pretty much from the scenes where he made fun of himself in Tropic Thunder until now, the man hasn’t made a bad movie. Which is still probably not enough reason to like him, but dammit, the man has charisma on the screen.

It was my mom who picked us going to see Jack Reacher though, not me. Since I retroactively consider this to be a good decision, it’s probably not fair to disclaim the choice, but, y’know. So, I don’t know much about those books and I didn’t know much about the movie except that action would occur and also that some people were pissed about casting a wiry dude who is probably shorter than me to play a 250 pound slab of giant on the page. (Which, incidentally, has anyone read those? Are they any good? Because my unread bookshelf is not already groaning under its current load or anything.)

…I suppose I’ve given away, by now, that I liked it? Because yeah, if this turned into a franchise, I would keep watching. There’s this guy who has very obviously, with evidence all over the damn place, just sniper-murdered a group of five people walking around on their lunch breaks at the waterfront, but he says he didn’t do it and asks them to fetch along Jack Reacher. Reacher shows up, and, under unlikely circumstances, starts investigating what really happened. And instead of punching his way through everyone involved like the previews kind of implied, there’s a smartly written mystery to be unraveled, with lots of tension and comedy to break the tension, and you know, I laughed frequently and all the characters worked, and what more do I need? Plus, Tom Cruise makes for a pretty great PI type. Also, no worries, there is in fact a lot of the gunplay and car chases and judo that you’d expect from an action movie after all, but there’s a lot more here than what I expected is all I’m saying.

Red Dawn (2012)

Dude, this movie. I have very little to say about the Red Dawn remake, because it only really ever hit one note. Sure, it hit it to hilarious effect, but since it was not the intended effect, I cannot give them even that much credit. …and since it hit a note that Team America: World Police had already hit (on purpose!), it’s not like I was already offering much credit in the first place.

See, there are these kids in Spokane living their Teen America lives, when all of the sudden, North Koreans start paratrooping in and taking over. So what’s a bunch of newly orphaned American heroes to do? That’s easy. Head off into the woods, get some guns, wander back into town, use those guns to steal better guns, then high-five each other a lot, wave their guns around while collaborators sneer (and then get blown up) and the downtrodden non-resisters cheer (and then never get shot by their occupiers), and eventually pull the USMC’s bacon out of the fire.

If all of this sounds like a NRA fantasy without the blue helmets, well, I did say it was entirely hilarious, right?

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

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It occurs to me that, if I am to go to the bother of seeing a midnight movie premiere, I ought to at least have the common decency to get my review up before release-day proper has begun. I would try to defend myself by pointing out the incredible lack of sleep I was dealing with, but if I’m being honest, well-rested Chris would probably not have written his review of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, Part One of Many yet either.

So, let’s see. Was it good? It was, but at the same time… here’s the thing. One of the great strengths of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in cinematic form was that it pared Tolkien down to manageable levels. Because not everyone wants to watch dwarves dance around a kitchen making fun of their host to song and dance collectively written on the spot, is why. And so I want to grouse and complain that some degree of editing should have occurred, yet I really cannot do so in good conscience, because it’s fair to say that there are 13 potentially identical characters out of the 15 that are central to the plot, and Jackson has avoided that trap pretty neatly. And I doubt he could have without paying careful attention to every beat that Tolkien provided. Plus, the small hints of what was going on that Bilbo could not see (that will certainly provide a great deal of meat in future movies) were absolutely worth adding. So, in summation, this trilogy will be way too long and way too Tolkieny, but Jackson has made a compelling case for why he did it this way, and I cannot ask for more. (If I had not enjoyed myself, I could, but, yeah. Good movie. With internal-to-this-entry character growth in multiple places, even! But the rock fight was kind of dumb.)

I would be remiss, at this point, to not mention that this is a kid-movie. It’s less obviously so than many, but, y’know, kid-book, kid-movie. That is how the formula works. So don’t be surprised by your memory that it is a classic instead of a kid-book. I mean, it’s both, but you’ll only accidentally forget the one. ….and then there’s the technology.

So, the 3D? Quite good. The IMAX? Always dandy. 48 frames per second, which is the shiny new tech introduced by this movie? I believe that it was successful. The image was hyper-real, and I have no idea if this is what people want in the theater, but there’s no question now that it can be done. The biggest problem was with speed; several action shots seemed to be on a slight fast-forward, like when you turn too fast and the world lurches just a little bit. Which is to say, I’m pretty sure The Hobbit will be looked upon as a really clumsy implementation of 48fps in a few years, but for ground-breaking, you really could not request a better representative. (However, if that’s just how it will always work, then I kind of expect the experiment to fail.)

A Crown of Swords

I consider A Crown of Swords to be the most underrated volume in the Wheel of Time. Not because of how incredibly good it is (although, to be clear, it’s very good), but because of how fashionable it was to absolutely hate the book upon release. Yes, there were people dismissing the series by the sixth book and even the fifth[1] one, but here in book seven is where it became fashionable to do so. And I will not lie, I was very much That Guy my own self.

I even know why I was so put out at the time.[2] Part of it was the horror of only ten days passing. Not because those ten days failed to be exciting and action-packed, but because each successive book had already represented a slowing of the pace, and if things had continued at that rate (they did not, but who was to know at the time?), future books were apt to dedicate entire chapters to treatises on the inflexibility of Lan’s facial expressions or on Elayne’s bathing habits. But mostly it was that the driving plot of the book (the quest for weather rectification in Ebou Dar) ended so abruptly, both without a satisfactory resolution and more importantly with an imperiled cliffhanger for my favorite character. And that was before I knew it would be a four year cliffhanger instead of the already untenable two I expected at the time!

So yeah, annoyances. But that’s the joy of this reread in a nutshell: no delays between one book and the next, I am reading the entire motherfucking series from start to finish, with nothing in between, no other distractions of any kind, just the story all in one piece. It’s fair to say I came around on this book for its own merits years ago (it is the last one I had read three times already, I reckon) when I could see it as part of the whole, er, pattern instead of just for what it disappointed me by not delivering Right Now. But it’s also the book that has improved the most for me over time for that specific all-of-a-piece reason. Sure, it has slow chessboard parts, but the main-plot excitement parts are absolutely as exciting as any in the series, which I fear I will not be able to say about this next book.

We’ll see, I guess!

[1] I have a friend who was a little annoyed by my cavalier mention of Moiraine’s storyline in The Fires of Heaven, just as if he ever actually plans to finish the series, even though he stalled in that book something like eight or ten years ago now.
[2] Okay, immediately after the time, I should say. I do not believe that there is more than one book in this series (and quite possibly not that many) that I disliked while reading it. Only after the fact, when I was digesting what I had just experienced and contemplating what was (unfairly?) delayed to future volumes, have these annoyances ever cropped up.

Lord of Chaos

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So, these are certainly getting harder. I mean, yes, Lord of Chaos is a hard book. “Let the Lord of Chaos rule” indeed. Not only is it the book where the first real convolutions of Aes Sedai plot mystery and basically every other type of political mire that you can imagine begin to rear their heads, but it’s also hard to watch such a trainwreck. I don’t mean that in the plotting sense, of course, just in the “Shit just got real” sense.

But it’s damn hard to review. I would claim that this is because of my self-imposed spoiler moratorium from here on out, but that’s not it really. Anything that I would put behind a spoiler cut[1] has already been discussed in every conceivable iteration when I was still young enough to read all of it in all its glory and even participate now and then. (Google Groups may even still have most of it.) And any theme I would try to tease out is right there in the title.

So, I will instead report on the two things that really stood out to me on the reread, although they’re not new either. One is what a huge fan of Min I am. The other is what a huge non-fan of the endless summer I am. Because of how evocative it became, which is certainly praise for Jordan’s talents, but I suppose of the backhanded variety. But not really. Good writing about uncomfortable things should make the reader uncomfortable. Right? (But for so long? Sure, like six months in Randland, but more like six years out here. Hell, even at the pace I’m reading, it is lasting less than regular summer, but I still feel it worse in the book.)

That said, it does raise a discussion point I don’t remember seeing crop up back in the day. Non-specific magic weather, or stopped-the-earth-in-its-orbit magic weather? I’m sure the latter has more physics consequences than I could shake a pointed quark at, but it’s kind of cool to consider nonetheless.

[1] Taim. I paused several moments to consider, and that’s the size of it. It doesn’t properly capture the scope of the discussions I would rehash, of course. Man, that guy is a compelling character, and one of the best examples of the cyclic nature of the Wheel of Time. All the moreso if he had never knowingly spoken to a Darkfriend when he first met Rand.

Skyfall

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So, no tension here: I really liked Skyfall. I mean, yes, James Bond movie, cars, girls, guns, explosions. But I especially liked it, because of what a personal story it told. Mostly Bond is the opposite of personal, right? And Daniel Craig’s Bond moreso than most, nevermind how tragic that one Vesper Lynd scene might have been. If anything, it sealed his “no personal stuff”, er, persona.

Anyway, it seems some years have passed since the first pair of movies. Bond is a seasoned agent and M is nearing retirement in the wake of a pair of pretty large disasters. But when MI6 blows up, everything is suddenly much closer to home. And to put in perspective what I mean about it being a close, personal movie: blowing up MI6 is about the smallest of the personal things that happens, and it’s not even the first one in the movie.

What Skyfall reminded me the most of was On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. And no, Bond does not get married. This is a tone issue, and I was grateful to see it, because Lazenby was the most underrated by history of the Bonds thusfar, and it’s nice to see someone finally pull off that degree of empathy for a character who is usually a sociopathic, albeit cool, cipher; even nicer to see it done by a Bond already ajudged to be a success.

Otherwise, there’s little I can say other than pure spoilers, but I must add what a delight it was to watch Javier Bardem chew the scenery. It’s been a while since there was a really solid Bond villain, you guys. I am, as usual, relieved that James Bond will return. Pretty weird that he turned 50 this year, though. (I mean, the cinematic version of him did. The book version is, of course, older.)

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D

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Okay, look. Yes, the next movie I saw was also a horror movie based on a video game franchise, and yes the previous entry in that series was objectively worse than any of the Resident Evil movies. That is no excuse to just skip to the next review. Thbbt, I say.

I actually do have at least a handful of things to say about Silent Hill: Revelation. The first is that it was shockingly coherent, with plot turns that could be predicted, characters that (mostly, at least[1]) had explicable motivations, and a by-the-book cultist storyline that was definitely a viable sequel to the earlier work. The second is that it used up a lot of that goodwill by giving none of its non-cultist characters agency after the first third of the film. The third and most mysterious is that the girl you undoubtedly saw walking around in a red Marty McFly vest in the previews is actually not Michelle Williams, a possibility that never entered my mind until her name wasn’t in the closing credits. (Sean Bean is still her father, though.)

The last thing is that the various nods to videogame iconography thrown around have made me itchier than ever to play Silent Hill 3, which it turns out is directly what this movie was based upon. Who knew? I thought all of those games were standalone, but I guess not.

[1] I mean, I guess you accept that cults want to raise some god or demon, or bind one, because some awesome thing will happen if they do, but as the awesome thing is never quite explained in such a way as to illuminate the uninitiated and never particularly comes to pass either, one must settle for accepting (or not).

Resident Evil: Retribution

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I haven’t reviewed anything in like a month, which would be embarrassing enough in any event, but is possibly more embarrassing because of all the movies I’ve seen over that period. So, I guess it’s time to catch up?

The first thing I saw was in the dollar theater, since (for some inexplicable reason) the fifth Resident Evil movie did not stay in theaters for even a month. It’s almost like people think that series is trashy and has no staying power? I don’t buy that for a second, of course. Any movie that takes zombie ass-kicker Milla Jovovich and puts her in a clone-filled series of cityscapes in a secret base under the Arctic ice shelf[1] and makes her fight her way through zombies from half a dozen ethnicities, not to mention a skinless, brain-exposed[2] saber-toothed cat-looking thing and Michelle Rodriguez, can be described as a lot of things, none of them trashy nor lacking in rewatchability.

And now that all of you are (incorrectly!) backing away from your screens, shaking your heads in mute disbelief, I’ll go ahead and cut short the review, since it’s not like I’ll be able to add anything else convincing. But I should mention there are strong hints that the next sequel will also be the last[3]. I should also mention, in fairness to equal time, that the series has a hard time deciding how doomed humanity is at any given moment in the sequence of events. I mention this latter because it’s really the only major plot hole in an otherwise tightly plotted- …oh come on! Fine, I’m done.

Sheesh.

[1] I mean, maybe it was the Antarctic? But as I saw no giant flying zombie penguins… no, wait, those are in the Arctic circle, aren’t they? I’m so confused.
[2] Or maybe those are radar pods?
[3] To be fair, the film was in the can long before Star wars Episode VII was announced, so they may change their minds.

Paranormal Activity 4

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So, hey, I finally saw a movie! I still have at least three more I need to see, but just breaking the dry spell is a plus. You may recall there were two previous movies in this series as well as a prequel? Well, Paranormal Activity 4 is a sequel again, and… well, there are two ways to watch it. If you like cameras filming all the things and people refusing to take seriously what they are seeing and eventually scary jumpy things happen[1] and then suddenly everyone starts to die, and especially if you like seeing just how creepy Katie Featherston can be? (Answer, as you know if you’ve seen any of these: seriously damn creepy.) If that is what you are watching for, you will like it just dandy, and are welcome to have all kinds of fun.

If, on the other hand, you are watching it because of the compelling story that has played out across the three previous movies, you will be very sad. Yes, there is creepy Aunt Katie. Yes, this is still about demonic possession as it relates to Katie’s doomed and/or creepy extended family. But really it’s about what happens to a group of innocent bystanders, with only the barest of incremental additions to the overall mythology. Maybe there will be a fifth entry to the series? But, much like the end of the second movie, I still don’t see what would be gained by making a new sequel. Demon wants baby, demon got baby. What else really is there to say?

Well, one thing. The infinite number of infrared dots that a Kinect fills a dark room with? Perfect backdrop for, er, paranormal activity.

[1] Also, there was a basically great reference to The Shining. Not enough reason to watch the movie, but entirely giggle-worthy if you do so.

The Fires of Heaven

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Yes, it really did take me this long to read The Fires of Heaven. (Yes, I really haven’t watched a movie in this long either.) No, it’s not because I suddenly liked the book a lot less than I have liked the previous ones during this re-read. Yes, it spells all-but-certain doom for my hopes of being caught up with the series by the time the last one comes out in three-ish months. Yes, that makes me pretty sad.

But damn, it doesn’t make me as sad as watching Moiraine’s noble-tragic march through the book, every bit as cognizant of the outcome as I am.[1]  It doesn’t make me as melancholy as the loss (in one way or another that is probably not as lossy as you might expect) of three characters I would like to have watched for longer than I got to.

The metaphor breaks here, because most of the rest of what I have to say is good. So much of what isn’t melancholy trending toward tragic is ridiculously awesome (Mat finding his place in the world, finally) or downright hilarious (any given scene from Nynaeve’s point of view, and I feel bad relegating her to the hilarious when there is so much awesomeness to be had by her along the way). Plus, this is the first book where we see into the minds of the bad guys in a sincere and meaningful way. Those sections have always been my favorites, I think, once they were not solely the province of Ishamael, the 4,000 year old lunatic.

If I have to pick a character to dislike (and save for Elaida, this is probably my first time in the read), it’s Egwene. Her rise to power is cool in its way, I like how much she is learning and how much she wants to learn, but the way she turned the balance of power on her friends solely to keep them from ratting her out for doing something she had sworn she would not do, and especially for her feeling so gleeful about being able to upset that balance of power for such an ignoble end? Pretty icky, Egwene. Just saying.

[1]I have read this book at least four times, and every one of them (well, okay, not the first one in 1994[2]) I have felt increasingly more sad over the course of her scenes and inevitably become teary by the time Rand is reading her letter.
[2] This was the first book in the series I had to wait to read. I did not have to wait long at all, maybe only a month or so? But I did have to wait.