156 posts tagged “movies”

I am not in the habit of seeing animated movies theatrically, if at all.  In my adult life, here are the animated features I have bothered to see on the big screen:

• Aladdin
• The Incredibles
• WALL-E

The reason I don't usually bother with these films is pretty simple: they usually suck.  Also, they always cram in a bunch of stupid singing to disguise the fact that they don't have more than 40 minutes of story.  ALSO, it's becoming more and more common today for the average quickie animated movie to feature CGI that looks worse than a community college student's final Computer Animation project.

But make no mistake about this film: this is a work of art, by craftsmen who care very deeply about such moldy old concepts as story, character and theme.  These concepts are not just rickety skeletons upon which to hang a sequence of tacky gags; they are the fundamental ingredients of a timeless story.

Admittedly, the third act is not as intriguing as what came before, and the story does inevitably bow to the demands of formula.  This is, after all, in the final summation a kids' film.  A very good kids' film, but a movie for tykes nonetheless.

Unless you are possessed of a cold, flinty heart of emotionless obsidian, this movie will touch you, and you will believe that a junky old robot can find love with an iPod.

Pros:  Everything about this film, even the too-pat third act, except for:

Fuck-You-in-the-Eyes Cons:  The pet cockroach.  I'm sorry, Disney Pixar: I can believe in the central premise of your film, but I CANNOT suspend my disbelief enough to swallow a cockroach who acts like a puppy dog.  Fuck whatever focus-group jagoff convinced you to put this bullshit in your movie.

I'm watching it on AMC right now.  It's been awhile.  Jaws is one of my favorite films, and the sequel is nothing more than a cheap knockoff with less talented people and a very obviously tired and resigned Roy Scheider, but it has a certain lunatic charm.  It is simultaneously ridiculous and awesome.  The shark is an unstoppable, superpowered cyborg killing machine.

Next time you're watching a movie, and you're thinking that maybe it's a badass flick, ask yourself this question:

Does it feature a shark eating a helicopter?

If the answer is "no", then it is my solemn duty to report that the film is less awesome than Jaws 2.

I went to see it yesterday.  Here's the official site for those of you unaware of this film.  I have mixed feelings about the movie.  On the one hand, the scale is quite epic and the battle footage appropriately grisly.  The whole thing is filmed with that "tasteful" veneer that you often get with historical epics.  My main problems with it are these:

• After 120 minutes with the character of Temudgin, he is still an utter enigma.
• The story is very choppy and episodic.  At one point, he leaves his wife and rides off alone, and the next time you see him he has assembled an army of hundreds and is fighting the final battle to unite Mongolia.  At least a damn montage showing how he called all of these people to his side would have been nice.
• The film definitely suggests that he was aided at a couple important moments in his life by Tengri the Sky God.  I'd like a little less mysticism in my historical epic, please.

So, what you have here is a very well-made movie which purports to tell you the "untold story" about Ghengis Khan, but which doesn't tell you anything you can't get from a Wikipedia article, gives you absolutely no insight on what drove the man, and is told in a very narratively disjointed fashion.  I still enjoyed it, but I can't help thinking that maybe we got an overly-edited version of the original Russian film.

(Aside:  Was Temudgin's wife Borte really the cutest girl in Mongolia as portrayed here?

Borte

I don't know, but YUM.  Good on you, Ghengis!)

It ain't that bad.

I saw it tonight, with one of my best friends, The King-O-Pop, and we both came away from it with the feeling that it was about as good as we can expect from latter-day Spielberg and Lucas, but that it could have been so much better if the screen story had any sense of urgency.  Instead, it's just a standard adventure tale, with no feeling that anything particularly bad will happen if the Russians get the crystal skull and reach the lost city first.  The ending is also very anticlimactic, and for all the complaints leveled against Spielberg over the years for engaging in empty spectacle, this is the first time I think a film of his has ended with a truly soulless special effects display.  The finale is "neat", I guess, but once again, you don't get the feeling that any of it really means anything.

However, it's a solid adventure flick, it's always nice to see Ford back in the fedora, and it mostly didn't insult the intelligence.  Even those damned CGI prairie dogs didn't offend as much as expected.  Against all odds, I am a fan of Shia Lebeouf (even if I have a hard time spelling his name).  If they want to make further adventures with his character, I shan't complain a bit.  The kid's talented and has charisma to burn.

It was very good to have Karen Allen back.  Marion's bickering with Indy is some of the best character interplay in the flick.

I usually like Cate Blanchett, but her character is ridiculous and unthreatening.  She hardly even seems like a villain, no matter how many times she tries to kill our heroes.  They just don't make villains like Belloq and Mola Ram any more.

Anyway, thumbs up for me.  It wasn't as nearly as bad as I'd feared (even if the third act is a huge letdown).

The advance reviews suggest that it's chock-full of George Lucas's typically tone-deaf "humor" and set-bound, bloodless CGI and green screen.  Is there NOBODY that can stand up to his cheesy, lazy impulses?  Back when Lucas and Spielberg and Ford were all successful but still hungry young filmmakers, George's crappy ideas could be held off by Steve and Harry, but now it seems that the waddle-necked tycoon cannot not be dissuaded from cramming his childish bullshit in wherever it will fit.  This doesn't bother me with Star Wars as much as it used to, because Star Wars was always childish, and was always for kids.

But Indiana Jones is for teens and young adults.  It's for people who like a little blood and danger and cursing with their adventure, and who don't have the comedic tastes of a 5-year old (or a guy in his 60s, apparently).  I hear that the beginning of the movie has some "hilarious" cutaways to CGI prairie dogs in it.

PRAIRIE DOGS.  CGI PRAIRIE DOGS.

FUCK ME.

Fuck me, and FUCK YOU, LUCAS.  Furthermore, FUCK YOU, SPIELBERG, for not having the balls or the pride or the sense of professionalism to KEEP GEORGE ON A FUCKING LEASH.  Or maybe you thought CGI prairie dogs were fucking hilarious, too.  Perhaps you've lost it as badly as your buddy.  After all, you're the guy who said that if you made Close Encounters of the Third Kind today, you wouldn't have Roy Neary get on the mothership at the end, which is like saying, "If I made Jaws today, I wouldn't have the shark eat so many people."  You're the guy who replaced the guns of federal agents with walkie talkies in your Special Edition of E.T.

George, Steve: you were once wizards, but now you are just sad old men sitting on the floor of your den pushing around the model vintage cars you bought from Sharper Image and making vroom-vroom noises.  I hoped against hope that the magic would still be there, and I suppose I'll find out myself this weekend, but I'm not liking what I'm hearing.

My worst fears are being confirmed.  It's Return of the Jedi all over again.  It's Chewbacca issuing a Tarzan yodel.  It's Ewoks.  It's the pussification of Han Solo.  It's the Special Editions.  It's Han shooting first.  It's the prequel trilogy.  It's "Woo-Hoo!" and midichlorians and C-3PO as a child's model kit.  It's JAR JAR BINKS.

I'll let you know how deeply saddened I am this Saturday.  At this point, I'll just be happy if we make it the full running time without a fart joke.

Some pop culture heresy is about to transpire here.

First:  I liked Iron Man very much.  It's a fun, cool, exciting movie, and Robert Downey, Jr. is so at the top of his game, he's about to become one of the biggest movie stars in the world.

However.

I fucking LOVED Speed Racer.  If I could inject this candy into my veins and feel all the time the way I felt while I was watching this movie, my face would eventually cramp up from my ever-present grin of childlike glee.  It's tracking at something like 35% at Rotten Tomatoes, and I can only assume that it's because "serious" movie critics have either a) never seen the source material, which the movie captures perfectly, or b) forgotten how to have fun.  This is a movie for kids, but unlike most kids' fodder nowadays, it doesn't talk down or pander to them (except for one monkey-poo joke, but no movie can be perfect when it's aiming to entertain the midget set).  It's exciting, fun, filled with eye-popping action scenes, and grounded in surprisingly heartfelt emotion.

If you don't take your kids to see this, you are a bad parent; if you see it and don't love it, I'm sorry that your over-developed sense of irony has killed your inner gee-whiz.

I'm not even a fan of the cartoon, but I unreservedly LOVED THIS MOVIE.

----

Not-for-kids addendum: Holy shit, Christina Ricci's Trixie is SO MOTHERFUCKING CUTE.  You can upgrade my Mach 5 any time, sweetie.  WOOF.

It's a funny, sweet little movie.  I didn't laugh until tears ran (when was the last time I saw a movie I considered riotously funny?  I don't know), but it had a couple good chuckles and probably will do well in repeat viewings.  Anyway, all are funny, Mila Kunis is cute as hell, and the character of Aldous Snow deserves his own movie.

GET ON THAT.

Saw the trailer for Pineapple Express...that shit looks like a comedic fastball straight to the nuts.  Can't wait.

I get the majority of my movie news from CHUD, because it's better-written and funnier than most of the other movie-geek websites, but I have a major problem with it lately.  Namely, it's that Nick Nunziata, the guy who runs the site, who is far and away the most imbecilic and childish writer on their staff, has been taking a more active role in the place lately.

That dude needs to just get his own blog to post his idiotic crap on and leave the serious movie-writing to people like Devin Faraci and Jeremy Smith.  Go over there.  Check out anything with his byline on it.  Odds are, it's moronic, filled with schoolyard bravado, vulgar for no reason beyond shock value, and barely even on-topic.  The man is an embarassment.

Plus, his movie-watching instincts are nearly always completely fucking wrong.  I've seen a lot of movies, and I'm pretty good at discerning quality from shit after over three decades of watching, and the surest sign that I should stay the holy fuck away from a film is if it has Nick Nunziata's seal of approval.  On the other hand, if he hates and demonizes an offering, odds are it's worth checking out.

Here's a typically boneheaded venom-spewing regarding the John Hughes classic Ferris Bueller's Day Off:

I find this movie borderline offensive and always have. Matthew Broderick's work here has pretty much made it impossible for me to like him ever since, portraying this man of leisure as a smug, thoughtless, and conniving asshole whose selfishness almost costs everyone around him and NEVER GETS PENALIZED FOR IT. Does that mean his performance is that great? No, it just just means Fuck Ferris Bueller. Funnily, I love Ralph Fiennes to death even though I first got to know him as Amon Goeth. That's how much Fuck Ferris Bueller.

Ferris Bueller is an antagonist, not the guy you want to center a teen comedy around unless it's a Heathers type of black comedy. Ferris is a manipulative, cocky, and greedy jackass and I'm still a little pissed at John Hughes for making him happen. What's with the fucking Twist and Shout sequence? What kind of bizarre fantasy film is this? Aside from Jeffrey Jones and Charlie Sheen's legendary work here, this is an unholy offering.

Hey, Nunziata: the movie makes NO SECRET of the fact that Ferris is smug and manipulative.  Other characters call him on his shit THROUGHOUT THE FUCKING MOVIE.  Can't you just sit back and enjoy one of the cleverst teen comedies fucking EVER?  Watch the smart-ass kids pull one over on the adults and have a good smirk, why don't you?

In language Nick Nunziata would understand: reading his shit makes me want to cunt-punch a nun.

So, I watched I Am Legend today, the same day I posted a trailer for Omega Man, which is an interesting coincidence.  Here's a quickie review:

Will Smith's performance was pretty awesome.  I finally consider him a "real" actor.

Keeping the bit with the dog from the novella was a brave decision.  Richard Matheson broke my fucking heart by killing that dog.  Hey, fuck you, Richard Matheson.

Cgi vampires, zombies, infected, whatever you want to call them?  Yeah, they suck.  Note to Hollywood: try casting HUMAN actors as HUMAN monsters.  You'll save a bundle on your effects budget and your movie won't look like shit.  Also, they weren't very effective as adversaries.  The vampires (yes, vampires) in the novella talked.  They start off the story standing outside Neville's fortress calling for him to come out.  That is much scarier.  Plus, the script is very back and forth on how intelligent they are.  They're portrayed as fierce animals, but they manage to rig a complicated bait-and-snare?

The third act is total balls.  Deus ex machina screenwriting makes William Goldman cry, and so do tacked-on uplifting endings that seem focus-grouped  Totally false, unearned, and untrue to the spirit of both the source material and the first two-thirds of this movie.

It wasn't bad, but it could have been so much better.

It's a good, nasty little horror film involving the usual rich white kids who make one bad decision and pay for it the rest of the movie.  I enjoyed it.

The buzz on RottenTomatoes seems to be that it's not very good and has an abrupt ending.  I like abrupt endings, like in An American Werewolf in London, where it just ends with David lying dead and naked in the alley (is a spoiler alert necessary for a movie that came out two decades ago)?  That's how a movie is supposed to end: when your protagonist is dead.  There's no need to go on with any explanations, history or postscripts: the movie is OVER.

Some viewers probably want a comprehensive history of the ruins, who built them, where the vines came from, who the people are who guard the ruins to this day, etc., etc.  In other words, they want more information than the characters have.  I like an air of unexplained mystery, and besides, that's what sequels are for: to over-explain everything until the elegantly simple original premise has been buried beneath pages of pointless exposition (the same thing is true, even more so, of prequels).

So, this movie is what it is.  A nasty little piece of business with some decent scares, some really disturbing gore, and an ending that isn't abrupt, just bleak.  Recommended if you like this sort of thing, which I very much do.