Reviews for "It" and "Blade Runner 2049"

Stephen King’s "It" (2017)

I have talked about this movie a little bit in the context of other things, but I figured I can give another short review here.

This movie is great.  Well-paced, good visuals, and great acting.  “It” hits on its themes of sticking together and growing up really well.  I look forward to the sequel.

 

My mom saw a random flash of this thing as part of a movie montage and it spooked her.
Mission accomplished boys.

If I have one suggestion, they should have collapsed the characters of Ben and Mike.  There wasn’t enough time for 7 protagonists and looking over the cast and knowing where the story goes in the next movie, combining Ben and Mike into just Mike would have allowed the characters to have more time.

They kind of already did, apparently Mike was the history nerd in the book, not Ben.  What is more, the burning body imagery is used for both of them, making the image kind of redundant.  I also think that Mike getting cut up by the bullies would also work to collapse the narrative a bit earlier and allow for the full group to be together for longer.  This would also allow some more time to be spent on Stanley, who I think gets the shortest end of the stick.

 

Mike is also a rather heroic character, fighting and defeating Henry Bowers in a tense scene.
I think the conflict with Bowers (AND THE RACE THING) should have gotten a bit more attention.

You know, I recall this common complaint by people saying, "why don't they tell each other about the clown? I would be telling everyone!"

Leaving aside the allegory of stranger-danger and child abuse... Listen assholes, people have a hard time talking about their mental health because it is super stigmatized. Do you think they are going to tell people they have been seeing a clown and shit?

To quote a popular song about suicide prevention I talked a bit about before, "Who can relate?! Woo!"

“Blade Runner 2049” (2017)

            If this movie had been shorter (and let’s not kid ourselves, it could have been shorter) it would be one of my favorite movies ever.  “2049” is SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL.  I consider the original SUPER overrated.

            If I do have a criticism about something other than the length, I don’t get the bad guy, Jared Leto’s plan.  He wants replicants that can reproduce so that he can make them faster to meet market demand?  Okay.  But how is breeding possibly faster than the 3D printer model they are currently using?  Even if the 9-month gestation period is not an issue, you still end up with a baby at the end of that, not a fully-grown worker.

Basic visual metaphor: Have the guy with a twisted mindset have weird eyes.
Because his way of seeing the world is off.

Does it take longer than a decade to grow a full size replicant?  Even if it doesn’t, I have to imagine the memory programming cuts their training time by swaths.

In summation, the plan makes no sense.

Random complaints, the opening text to set the scene is too god damn small and has poor color contrast to the dark background.  That is a fail.  This movie comes off as strangely misogynistic at times, and I am not sure if that is a theme, it is punctuated with a particular supporting character’s death that I did not care for.  I think that these filmmakers have no actual memories of the original “Blade Runner” if they can describe Harrison Ford’s character as being good at his job without irony; Decker sucked, and to say otherwise is delusional.

It's not not-misogynistic.  You know, like the real world.

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5 Quick Movie Reviews

            This is about 5 movies I saw this past weekend and some brief reviews.

            Watch these movies.

Red Box Titles

            "Kubo and the Two Strings" is good, just like everything Studio Laika has produced.  Certainly, the prettiest of their movies as the technology they are using is hitting fascinating new levels of detail and movement.

            To me it is not as good as their last film, “The Box Trolls” but like all their other stuff it does have a core theme which gives it good bones.  The movie is sub-textually about degenerative mental conditions, as many people suffer from memory issues and it is tied into the story well.  Telling stories keeps memories alive.

             Strangely, the idea of a kid playing guitar to battle evil spirits reminded me of “The Pick of Destiny” and I keep picturing Jack Black saying many of Kubo’s more grandiose lines.

            "Hell or High Water" is good, it is a straight up crime movie, while it does have stuff to say about modern America and banks, it does so thru clever dialogue without any bullshit nihilistic philosophizing.  I kept comparing it to others in what I consider a modern genre, “Poor Rural Noir”.

            Along with films like “Green Room”, “No Country for Old Men”, “Winter’s Bone”, and TV shows like “Breaking Bad” and “Sons of Anarchy” this genre portrays poor and rural crime activity with depth and high production value to make very straight forward stories about people with little/nothing, who stand to lose even more or stand to gain too much to pass up, predicated on their committing criminal offenses or navigating a criminal underworld.

Theater Titles

            "Lego Batman" is good, I appreciate the love they showed the character of Robin who has been all but forgotten in the Bat-franchise for 2 decades.  Certain jokes and references to the Batman mythos resonated with me more than others and I appreciated the ever-ramping threat leading up to the climax in which enough resources have been marshalled to turn the tide completely on the villains.

            There is a strong central character arc for Batman.  That is right, the main character grows and changes as a result of the story, how novel.

            "Get Out" is good, when I talk about how I want more minority characters in movies because I want to see a fresh perspective on something this is exactly what I am talking about.  I am a white guy, but even I get tired of seeing white guys overcome adversity and get the girl.  I have empathy, I can learn via narrative about social difficulties facing other people.  Do more of that.

            I do have one complaint in that the trailer gives a lot away.  If I had to find another complaint, I think some things got left on the cutting room floor, a prop shows up at one point and I am unsure if it was supposed to have been set up earlier.

            "Logan" is good, SAD! SUPER SAD! That Johnny Cash rendition of "Hurt" they keep playing over the trailer might be the single most thematically appropriate song to a movie ever.

            I made a quasi-prediction about what the movie was going to be about when “Logan” was first announced and I was somewhat right.  But, the movie did so much more and did what I thought it was about so well that it crushed my expectations.

            Maybe it felt a little long, but that probably had something to do with the 3-year-old that was sitting behind me talking whenever there wasn’t a scene of Logan cutting peoples’ faces off and that kept taking me out of it.  Kid, if you are going to talk, talk during the action scenes and listen during the dialogue scenes, there isn’t going to be and exposition during the action, good time to ask your dad to clarify what is happening.  ALSO, parents, don’t take your kids to see this movie, it is violent and sweary as fuck.  Maybe a mature 10-year-old would be able to handle it, MAYBE.

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The Value of "The Razzies" and Criticism of Bad Movies

            I went on Rotten Tomatoes (a website who people really misunderstand the use and value of) to look at the winners of the annual “Razzie” awards.  These awards are often given to high profile flops, vanity pieces, movies that made a ton of money but were garbage in the eyes of the reviewer community, or in this year’s case a propaganda film made by a convicted felon who somehow is still politically relevant.

            Whatever.

            The point is, this is a booby prize, you point to something everyone knows about and say that it sucked, people then talk about the hows and whys of sucking, segway into lesser known movies that were worse, and then hopefully everyone learns something about how you make a movie.

            Discussion and reflection of what you like, what other people like, and what technical proficiency that goes into making things is important.  Talking about this stuff makes you smarter and helps you to learn how to express yourself on other topics, it is why I have written so many movie reviews, not just to tell other people how I felt about some throw away junk entertainment, but to talk out what it is I liked about the throw away junk entertainment.  I am exploring my own values and tastes thru a medium of film criticism.

Here is a criticism from me to "Dawn of Justice".
I have seen every live action and animated portrayal of this character.
This is the worst one.

            These things are subjective.  As pretty much all art is.

            Then I read the comments and some common bugbears made themselves apparent.  I see a lot of comments with the words "bias" and “objective”.

            I don't think people know what those words mean.

            The Razzies are an opinion piece, awards given in a facetious spirit to mock movies whose quality didn't measure up in the film criticism community, but often times had a disproportionate amount of success.  That is bias toward their own opinion or toward certain film making conventions they felt fell short in the execution of the movie.

            If you, like the commenters, liked one of these movies (Dawn of Justice has a shocking number of idiots wanting to throw themselves on their own swords to defend it) go ahead and like what you like.

            If you hated a particular movie that was not chosen (or even nominated) instead of commenting about the award's biases, how about instead use these awards how they are supposed to be used, as conversation starters.  They are a joke meant to provoke good natured discussion about what we like and dislike about movies.

            The Razzies are not "official" or "influential" or part of some conspiracy.  If you don't agree that is fine, but don't just rant about "objectivity" like there is some kind of scientific process for measuring the quality of a film, just point to who won, explain why you think that movie was picked, and then explain why you would have picked a different movie.  This helps you and others understand your world view.

            It is supposed to be fun.

            Have fun.

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Batman of the 90's

Since I wrote about the “Arkham” games last month I have been thinking about Batman slightly more than usual (this includes playing “Arkham City” and lamenting the Catwoman portions of the game more and more).  I figured I would look back thru my “Ideas” folder, a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency section of my hard drive just in case I get the drive to get some words out of my head.   I needed to see if I had any Batman related thoughts this year that I could turn into a full blog today to help me work out a few other ideas that are related but I need some distance from them.  I have two Batman files, and this one relates more to the other thing.  (I will probably put the other one up next week).

Let’s look back on the 1989 “Batman” film directed by Tim Burton and starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson.  A mysterious figure appears on the scene to fight crime, corruption, and inadvertently creates Joker, a crime boss who is using his knowledge of chemicals to poison people on a massive scale, because he thinks it’s funny, “LOL”.

He'll look pretty different by the time the Fourth movie rolls around.

At the time it was a cultural phenomenon, with an avalanche of toys and other merchandise, and the best interpretation of the character in the animated series was created specifically to capitalize on this movie’s success.  “Batman” was (perhaps) the most iconic film of the year.  I thought it was pretty boring at the time (I was four), and now I just look back on it with only two complaints of any substance:

1)     The story structure is completely insane, most of the movie we are left following a reporter and photographer… Who seem to line up personality wise with Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane…?  Or, we are following Joker’s rise with Batman mostly relegated to the shadows.  There is also the decision to make Vicki Vale into the target of a love rhombus, as she draws the attention of the reporter, Knox; Bruce Wayne (& Batman); and becomes the taste of the month for Joker’s violent obsession.  The story is kind of all over the place.

2)     I think that both Jack Nicholson and Michael Keaton were miscast in their roles.  I think that Alec Baldwin would have been a better Batman, and I think that Michael Keaton should have played Joker.  If you think that is an odd choice keep in mind that Baldwin later played “The Shadow” (the character that Batman was originally the rip off of) and Keaton was already known for playing “Beetlejuice”, who is basically what people would picture the ghost of the Joker to be anyway, and a film that had Baldwin too, playing against type as the put upon everyman.

Keeping those two things in mind, there are two complaints that lots of people have that I do not share.  One that many fans of Batman would point to as a fundamental betrayal of the source material is the comically high body count Batman has by the end of the movie, which includes not only Joker, but the dozens of henchmen in the Ace Chemical Factory, and at least a handful of goons killed in hand to hand combat.  The Murderous Vigilante angle doesn’t bother me for the simple reason that not killing is just not brought up as an issue in “Batman”.  They chose not to make it a part of this Batman’s mythos, so it isn’t.  You are allowed to ignore elements of a character for the sake of telling a story in a new medium.  You are allowed to make a fundamentally different interpretation of a character.  They are, after all, fictional.

The other complaint is actually the one that inspired me to write this blog.  And that is this, “Joker did not kill Thomas and Martha Wayne in the comics, and by making him the killer the world gets very small and makes Batman’s character more about revenge than seeking justice.”  I disagree with this too, but keeping with my deluded fantasy of me being a mad genius, I disagree with this for reasons you will not expect. 

"You ever danced with the devil in the pale moon light?"
"What?"
"I always ask that of all my prey.  I just like the sound of it."

In Tim Burton's "Batman", you could make the argument that Jack Napier wasn't the killer of Bruce's parents. That Bruce just conflated the two. It might be that every criminal Batman punches in that movie shares a face with his parent's killer, Jack was just the one that stuck out and crystallized in Bruce’s mind because the transformation into the Joker mirrored Bruce's transformation into Batman.

That change made Bruce think of Jack as a suitable foil to Batman. A good last chapter to him being the dark knight, a final dragon for him to slay to get his happy ending.  At the time Bruce probably thought that if he killed Joker he wouldn’t feel the drive to be Batman anymore.  Bruce already wanted out, that is why he wanted to tell Vicki Wale (A REPORTER) his secret identity, he wanted to be just Bruce, he wanted the hurt to stop, he wanted things to be okay again.

The theme of Bruce wanting the hurt to stop is explored deeply in this animated movie.
In it he speaks these words to the grave of his parents.

Bruce Wayne: It doesn't mean I don't care anymore. I don't want to let you down, honest, but... but it just doesn't hurt so bad anymore. You can understand that, can't you? Look, I can give money to the city - they can hire more cops. Let someone else take the risk, but it's different now! Please! I need it to be different now. I know I made a promise, but I didn't see this coming. I didn't count on being happy. Please...tell me that it's okay.

Why do I think this is the case?  Because it is the theme that carries thru the rest of the franchise.  “Batman Returns” has him fighting three villains that all mirror him in ways.

1)     Penguin, a disfigured millionaire who was abandoned by his parents as a child who grew up to become a criminal that uses gadgets and a legion of goons to commit crimes, which is a pretty distorted reflection of millionaire pretty boy who had his parents taken from him and uses gadgets to fight a lone war on crime.

2)     Catwoman, a person victimized by crime who takes up an animal totem in a black outfit to strike back at who wronged her and those like them.

3)     Shrek, a millionaire who wishes to use his good will with the city to push thru development to drain the city.  In the original script Shrek was supposed to be Harvey Dent who gets burned and transformed into Two Face at the end of the movie in the scene with Catwoman using the electrical cable… in the final version it just toasts him to a skeleton because they didn’t need him for a sequel.

            “Batman Returns” is about duality, and trying to take away the rest of the world’s power to hurt you by hurting it first.  Seems like killing the Joker was not the denouement Batman was hoping for.

FYI: This is my favorite of the 90's Batman movies.
It takes the crazy and darkness of the first movie and commits more fully to them.

In “Batman Forever” you can tell his being Batman is wearing on him because he talks about it with Dick Grayson, "You make the kill, but your pain doesn't die with (him), it grows. So you run out into the night to find another face, and another, and another, until one terrible morning you wake up and realize that revenge has become your whole life. And you won't know why."  Bruce can't stop.  He can't feel closure.  Though at the end of "Batman Forever" he makes peace with the idea. "You see, I'm both Bruce Wayne and Batman, not because I have to be, now, because I choose to be."  You’ll notice I spend less and less time on these movies, because we are getting away from my original point, bear with me.

This movie also has a theme of duality.
In case that wasn't obvious with Two-Face, and Riddler asking "Who are you?" as the climax of the movie.
But, to say this movie is less subtle would be an understatement.

As strange as this may sound, “Batman and Robin” continues the trend by having Bruce create a legacy with Batgirl and Robin just as Alfred, the man who raised him, slowly dies.  This makes narrative sense, forcing Bruce to acknowledge his limitations and the need to accept death, something he has been fighting against since he was a child, “No one dies tonight” is a common refrain for Batman in the comics.

This movie has an additional theme of, "Action figures make us a lot of money."

To recap: Batman is a crazy person who projects his inner demons outward, and internalizes his villains as part of his psyche.  This is not an original interpretation of the character.  Grant Morrison has written a lot on this with “Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth”.  This theme also appears in “Batman: Earth One” in which it is shown that the city of Gotham is designed like a giant spiral (or drain) that pulls in and traps crazy, and that Martha Wayne’s maiden name was Arkham, and her family had a big part in the design of Gotham.

You could say that 1989’s “Batman” differs in that the person who killed Bruce’s parents is an idea, while the Joker is a person.  In the comics and other media Bruce’s parents were killed by a person, Joe Chill, while the Joker is an idea, in that his secret identity is not known and his origin changes constantly (I have my own theory, I won’t get into it right now as this is already super long).

Whenever you look back on that scene of Bruce recalling young Jack Nicholson saying, “Ever danced with the devil in the pale moon light?” that Bruce is a crazy person desperately seeking closure on the event that has dominated his thoughts and life since he was a child, and that scene might just be a metaphor for him constructing his own ending to the story… an ending he never gets to keep.

Until Nolan came along and realized the symbolic nature of Batman allows for him to carry on without literally still fighting.
Also, spoilers for a movie that is now 4 years old and has been seen by everyone.

            Let’s take this all a logical step forward and apply these lessons to our own lives.  That when trauma damages us, not only on an individual level, but at a cultural and national level, that we must remember not only the who and the why, but go deeper than that.

Rather than transform ourselves into vigilant and vengeful monsters, out to destroy the various skulking predators of the world.  Out to stop those who seek to remake our safe world in their own mad image.  Instead, let us walk a different path.  Let us acknowledge that for some wounds there is no closure.  That for some things no justice can ever be fully felt.

We must stop constructing new targets and seeing every stranger as a potential foe.  We must stop demonizing those who are different from us or those that are like us but for small nuances.  There are two wolves within every person, one of good and one of evil, and as they battle only one thing can determine which will be the victor within each of our souls, the one with the strength to succeed will be the one we have fed with our own deeds.

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Movies of 2014, Uncategorized

      Welcome to the miscellaneous category of movies that I watched and do not fit into any genre in particular.  There are several movies that I wanted to see, and now that some are on Netflix could have watched with ease, but for whatever reason I just didn’t bother to.  Films that while they look interesting, are popular after a fashion, or are 100x’s more relevant than they should have been, I just feel no drive to watch.  Maybe I am missing out on something that would surprise me (one of my top movies this year I watched on a complete lark when it was free and it blew me away), but I may never know.

      “Frank” is on Netflix, stars one of my favorite actors, and has a quirky premise that is probably very amusing; haven’t seen it.  “The Interview” is one of the most talked about movies because of its relation to a hacking scandal, saber rattling by a third world dictator, and that its digital release was a very interesting impromptu experiment; I do not really want to watch it.  “A Million Ways to Die in the West” has been blasted as one of the worst movies of the year, I am sure I would have had a much more middling reaction, from what I have heard of the thesis of the movie about traditional masculinity vs intellectualism it sounds like a movie that failed in spite of itself.

      “The Monuments Men” looked to be a good and original take on World War II, with commentary on art, and an all-star cast; I actually don’t know why I didn’t see it.  Conversely “Fury” is a very traditional looking take on WWII and I didn’t see that either.  “The Fault in Our Stars” is based on a book by John Green, of who I am a fan for his work via Crash Course and Mental_Floss, I would have liked this to be some kind of gateway into his work, but I just didn’t get around to seeing it.  “Nightcrawler” is a movie I still plan to see and will probably do some kind of review in March once I get around to it, though I would have put it into the CRIME category based on what I have seen in the promotional materials.

      I wish I were a professional critic so that I could have been paid to see for free lots of movies and to write about them at time of viewing, but instead I do this run down more as a writing exercise to increase my own proficiency in recognizing what I like and dislike about things so that I can relate them to others.

Muppets Most Wanted

            This was disappointing.  After the focus that the first movie had with a main character, a clear goal, and a road trip that was a natural outcropping of the plot… This movie was sort of a mess.  While it certainly has its funny elements and many characters get chances to shine with silly moments and sketches… It doesn’t work as a collective whole.  The best part of the movie is when the cast is trimmed down to Walter (the main character from the first movie) and some others going on a mission to save Kermit.  If that had been the whole plot with a ‘b’ plot of Gonzo and Ratso trying to catch Kermit’s impostor, or running the stage show in Kermit’s absence (in that instance there would be no villain) then I think this would have worked really well.  But it is cluttered and that causes an emotional distance from what is happening, the jokes start to fall flat and then… It’s over.

            Maybe I just lack the nostalgia for this property that is needed to love it, because I would be happy to see much of the old cast fade to the background to make room for a new generation of characters.  I have seen enough of the originals and would like to see them pass the baton to some new muppets.  “Muppet Babies” was my gateway drug to this franchise and it had a much smaller cast with a much tighter environment to work humor in.  In the context of a variety show having lots of characters makes sense, but a movie needs to keep things smaller and on target.

Overall: 5/10 

Strangely this poster which just is a group shot of 1/5th of the cast is not that bad.

They Came Together

            This was also disappointing.  I like everyone in this movie, I do not think there is a single actor not pulling their weight, everyone brings something to the table, nobody misses a beat, nobody’s time is wasted and there are a lot of gags that I am still referencing with my roommate months later.  “You can say that again.”

            So why do I find this movie so ‘meh’?  “Tell me about it.”  What was missing?  Why am I just looking back on the parts I liked?  What am I blacking out?  I can’t tell you.  Maybe this thing is actually some kind of masterpiece but I am just having a fit of depression and can’t appreciate the genius.  I doubt it, but how else do I explain that I just did not feel it?

            I wanted to like this movie, but I can’t recommend it.  Just watch the best parts on youtube maybe?

Overall: 5/10

 

Get it?

22 Jump Street

            (Maybe this should be in the CRIME section).  I thought the first one was fine.  I have issues with comedies based around police because of how little they have to do with police work ("Hot Fuzz" and "Super Troopers" being notable exceptions), hence why I did not bother to see "Let's be Cops" which looked painfully unfunny.

            This one is also fine.  There are lots of good parts and little gags, I laughed loud and hard several times.  The plot and the mystery of it work well and the chemistry between Tatum and Hill is on target and the core the movie rightfully uses as its bedrock.  It has the funniest credit sequence in the history of cinema.  The issue with comedies is judging whether they made you laugh and this one did, but it didn’t make me feel deep and lasting feelings.  It was just a fine little movie to pass the time.  Go ahead and watch it, I am sure many people will get deeper and more lasting enjoyment from this movie than I managed.

Overall: 6/10

 

The Spring Break portion is a very small part of the movie (roughly the last 5th) but is in a lot of the advertising.

The Lego Movie

            I really liked this movie (I went to see it to kill time, I had accidently locked myself out of my apartment, not much of a story so I will not dwell on it).  The way it subverts the very nature of the “chosen one” hero’s tale narrative structure that is the go to hack script of the modern era elevates it to being something special, and the twist that shows how imagination and creativity with structure and purpose yields fun and enjoyment on a deeper level than merely collecting ever could… That is a message that more people in Hollywood could stand to learn.

            Maybe the best interpretation of Batman ever on film, though the other superheroes get the short shaft in their cameos, I would have liked the joke version of Superman or Abraham Lincoln to have more time, but I guess that Batman is more in need of being made fun than nearly any other character in media.  It is most definitely worth a recommendation, go watch it and enjoy it.

            I do find it strange how many people keep referencing “Everything is Awesome” as some kind of message the movie is putting forth… IT IS NOT.  That song is used as a tool for brainwashing.  It is a tool of evil.  You can enjoy the song, but only ironically, you should recognize it for what it is a parody of hollow entertainment that makes you complacent in your day to day life.

Overall: 8/10

 

Strange thing wrong with this poster: Not enough Lego bricks.

Wish I Was Here

            This movie snuck up on me because I never saw (and still have not seen) Zach Braff's earlier film of "Garden State".

“Wish I was Here” is really touching.  It manages to touch on a lot of modern life (albeit a very millennial, upper middle class, white people problems sort of modern life) with issues of educating kids, religion, the death of a parent, and the overall shit nature of working in an office.

They could have cut a few lingering shots of the desert, or the long driving scenes that are more about showcasing the movie’s music than advancing the plot… but they go out of their way to have gorgeous shots to keep you visually engaged.

The movie has a lot of humor to offset the very heavy conclusion which involves the death of the main character’s father who left a lot of unpacked emotional baggage behind.  It is a good sort of sad.

Overall: 8/10

 

Awful poster.  Should have been one of the long shots of the beautiful landscapes.  Interesting use of the blue/orange color contrast that dominates modern media advertising.

Birdman

            While this movie is not in my top 5 I understand its appeal and would be happy with it winning an Oscar for best picture (it is one of the 3 movies in that category I have seen... and I am sure that means I have seen more of those movies that a good number of the academy... but whatever).

            Dealing with the creeping realization of one’s own obsolescence and the desperate struggle to establish a professional and creative legacy before finally (literally) bowing out, that is a good topic.  And the casting is great, with the three main characters all being chosen for meta-textual reasons related to their past careers in the superhero genre and their real life reputations in the industry.  Michael Keaton is funny as hell, especially when working with Edward Norton… Really everybody is great, it is almost unfair to point to anyone specifically because I am sure even the minor characters would have consistently delivered on all the material they could be given.

            I would like to take a second to write about GIMMICKS (I will do this again in my top 5, and again when I talk about the worst movie of the year).  I tend to come down on movies that have a Gimmick.  Some silly trick or set of production rules that makes things harder on the actors and crew.  An increase in difficulty that adds an element to the craft of film making that can elevate a movie that would otherwise be a ho-hum entry in history.  “Under the Skin” had nudity and improve acting (including Scarlet Johansen trying to pick up real men hidden camera style).  “Muppets Most Wanted” has the gimmick of celebrity cameos and most of the cast being puppets.  “The Lego Movie” is made to look like the entire film is constructed of Lego. “Birdman” has the appearance of having been filmed in one long continuous take.  The one long take illusion is used to emphasize the fact that the movie is about theater work, that there are no cuts when working on stage.  There is a hidden cut every time the movie goes to complete darkness and there are other hidden cuts whenever there is no one on the screen, but I imagine the typical take on any given scene was 10-20 times the length of a typical take for a modern movie, longer if you take into account the frantic cutting used in modern action movies.  So do I think this gimmick is something that elevates the movie?  Kind of…

For instance, the Kinect was definitely a gimmick that detracted from what it was trying to do.  (image)

            The movie would be fine without the gimmick, it is a solid story with good dialogue, good actors, a good theme, and lots of craft and hard work went into the movie, even with a traditional editing mindset the movie would still be really good, and that is the key in my opinion to making a gimmick work: that the gimmick doesn’t really matter.  It is a flourish that makes a good production better with the added context.  It is a detail that makes those who learn of it say, “Wow, that actually sounds really difficult, I am surprised the movie was so good under those circumstances”.  “Birdman” does that.  Its flourish adds to the production.

Overall: 8/10

I get what they were going for with this.  Except for it being animated/cell shaded.

Movies 2014, Good Super Heroes

Big Hero 6

            I liked this movie.  It does a lot to correct what I think are some issues with how Disney has been managing Marvel, 1) most of Marvel's animated properties are frothy mugs of poop, and 2) serious lack of diversity on the macro scale, especially considering how many diverse Marvel characters there are.

            This movie is colorful, has likable characters who have a lot of visual personality, with clothing and costumes that give the audience quick insights into their characters.  He's precise (and works with lasers), she is bubbly (and works with bubbles of strange chemicals), he wears a beanie and is clearly the stupidest person in the film.  It is all very clean and uncomplicated allowing for them to put in a lot of action, gags, and cool inventions.  And I really liked the robot, I like pretty much all robots in fiction, but this one especially.

I love Baymax.  I feel his existence is damn near an absolute good.,

            That being said there are a lot of little things about this movie that drag it down.  The bad guy is so obvious that the red herring they threw out seemed insulting to my intelligence. There is also some clunky dialogue that tells the audience explicitly what they already knew by implication, they live with their aunt so their parents are gone, he bult a robot so he is really smart and wastes his genius... but one brother tells the other brother, "Our dead parents would not want you to waste your super smart brain, dur, dur, dur".  That is lazy writing.

            There are sections that I think missed a gag (at one point a character has to spin at super speed to escape a slowly crushing space, she gets out and is then fine... I wanted her to say, "Yeah, I am *Hurk*" and puke, that would have been a good punctuation to the scene).  Even in a world of super science some of the things the characters do stretch believability (the main character whips up about 7,500 lbs of tiny robots in his garage in two weeks... Bull shit, even writing the soft ware for such a program... THAT READS THOUGHTS would require more time than that) when your movie starts to make Iron Man look like a drooling buffoon you might want to dial things back toward reality. 

            And now for some SPOILER discussion because I want to talk more about the bad guy.  In them movie the college professor who I consider to be too obvious a villain is a villain, he does this because his daughter was ostensibly killed while testing a teleportation device.  Except that is not foreshadowed, he is working with numerous young geniuses and not once do you see him wistfully look at them like they were his own kids, not once does he let slip a remark about missing his daughter, and at no point do you see a picture or memento that would hint to the audience that he had any personal tragedy.  It is revealed at the end of act two.  That is weak writing.

            STILL SPOILERS: Also, the professor is a weak pick for the bad guy.  The main character only knew him for two weeks, not long enough to form a bond, so when the opportunity for bloody revenge comes along (the professor having caused the death of the main character's brother) of course the protagonist attempts to kill him without moral consideration... and in most instances he would be totally right, the bad guy has a doomsday weapon and is a real danger to lots of people, and it could be argued that he deserves to die for his reckless violent behavior causing the deaths of others.

            STILL SPOILERS:  Here is a better idea for a villain: make it the main character's brother.  Have it so the fire at the beginning kills the professor and it is revealed that the reason the brother went bad is that the rich guy of the movie caused the death of he and the main character's parents in a reckless experiment.  So now you have the brother (who built a healthcare robot) using the main character's robots as a weapon for evil, and the main character using the healthcare robot to fight back.  You have parallels, and a moral question as to whether you stop you brother from avenging your family.  There is complexity.

            In a way this movie fails the same way "Rise of the Guardians" failed in that there is just a much better, deeper, richer movie that could have been made from the same parts... and they didn't.

Overall: 7/10 

I actually find this poster to be rather awesome.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

            Bryan Singer hated all the movies following his departure (with good reason) so he killed them... and the original movies he made that spawned them.  This thing has so much going on that I wrote a trillion random thoughts down in a mild haze and am trying to connect them together into a coherent whole... Like this movie tried to do with the rest of the franchise.

            (So are spinal injuries a super power in this universe?)

            It felt like two movies... The final two movies for the franchise.

            The first was "Wolverine sent back in time to stop an assassination" it has the stakes (multiple X-Men murdered by robots in the future), it shows the means (psychic time travel to rewrite reality), it has the players (Magneto who is in prison and Charles who has no powers will need to convince Raven from killing Bolivar), Wolverine goes into the past, finds Charles, they gather allies (Beast, and more importantly Quicksilver), they spring Magneto, go to the assassination, stop it, and then the climax happens (Wolverine freaks out, Magneto takes the practical unethical measures, Charles is the powerless idealist, and Beast is a blue wolf man), then that movie ends, with the bad guys getting away, the group broken up and the assassination stopped.

Think about this for a second.  The cast is so large, that Emmy Winner Kelsey Grammer is an uncredited cameo.
It is so big that Anna Paquin has an Oscar, but no lines.  They got talent coming out of their ears and ass over here.

            (Why did they kill all the villains from the first movie off?  Why did they do that off screen?)

            Then the next movie starts.  They show the stakes (still killer robots), they have the means (Raven's DNA which will ultimately make for deadlier robots), they have the players (Raven, Magneto, Xavier, Wolverine, and Trask), they rally their forces (Xavier commits to using his telepathy, Magneto gets his helmet and sabotages the original Robots), then they collide, and then that movie ends with half the "bad guys" getting away and the killer robots defeated.

            Seriously, its like they had two movies and just put them together.  Like they were going to have trilogy of First Class films and this is the last two of that series combined.  It erases a lot of continuity (thank the gods) and makes things smoother and all tied up.  You could end the entire franchise here because it shows the brighter world of tomorrow at the end, all of the sins of the first few movies got resolved.  There is nothing left to say.  Really, if they wanted to shake things up they should have just killed Wolverine for real and left the future up to interpretation.  That would have shaken the franchise to the core.  Wolverine dying would have changed everything and been a lot more ambiguous.  Instead, not only does he get a happy ending.... Everyone does including a lot of people who died.

            (Why were there so few returning characters from "First Class" [Banshee is gone, Moria is gone, White Queen is gone], and so many new ones that had nothing to do?)

            This movie has the exact same themes as "Captain America: Winter Soldier".  Drones in the sky killing extraordinary people who would upset the status quo.  Wolverine and Cap are the heroes of different eras (though Charles is really more the hero than Wolverine toward the end).  Bucky and Mystique are the wild card middle men who need to be stopped/saved.  Beast and Falcon are the ones encouraging the hero to just take out the bad guy rather than save them.  Black Widow and Nick Fury take the role of Magneto, more ambiguous characters who are about practical mission objectives.

            (Why would Mystique's DNA help make robots that can steal powers?  She can't mimic powers... And ROBOTS DON"T HAVE DNA!)

Just for your knowledge, this type of Sentinel is called a Nimrod.  In the comics they were damn near unstoppable.

            Magneto's plan would have worked better had he just covertly used the sentinels to kill President Nixon, his staff, and a lot of civilians, and then just let the humans eventually kill the robots.  People would have blamed the MUTANT TARGETING SYSTEM as being unable to tell the difference between humans and mutants and then scrap the idea of robot soldiers altogether.  And he wouldn't of declared war on behalf of mutants like a crazy asshole.  Also, all humans are mutants, blonde hair, dimples, webbed toes, and nearly any genetic trait is a mutation... so is dwarfism.  The main villain is a dwarf and the idea that he creates a robot apocalypse because he got stunted growth rather than laser eyes and well defined abs is an interesting idea left bubbling under the surface of the movie, but it also asks the obvious question of how a mutant detector would work and why it doesn't kill everyone.

            (Why did they write the movie to send Wolverine back to the past?  Yeah he is a popular character but the last movie did fine with only a cameo by him.  Why not send back some of the cool new characters and Ellen Page' Shadow Cat?  Would have done a lot to further the idea of minority rights by having some characters who are minorities in the picture.)

            This movie has both a great ending, and a bad one.  Because, they clearly want sequels, but you already know what is going to happen ultimately as it shows a future with the X-Men triumphant in a utopia... so I guess the next movie is not going to have any affect on that?  Is Apocalypse not going to do anything?  That is not good.

            The movie holds together so well though, and has depth and themes explored by skilled actors with good effects, and a sense of scope and creativity that makes it so good that I forgive the flaws (mostly).

Overall: 8/10

 

I would also like to point out that several of the predictions I made for this movie were right.  Though I cast a wide net and thus was bound to catch something.  (Poster)

Guardians of the Galaxy

            I do not know why everyone thought this movie was going to be a huge gamble.  Everyone kept saying that an obscure comic book would never be able to carry a movie... But let's be honest, pretty much 99% of comics are obscure, and 99% of movies are adapted from books or TV shows and other mediums that have audiences of less than 1,000,000 people.  And original movies have no audience till release.  So why would something like Guardians be seen as so out of the box?  Because it has aliens?  Shit, that has been around since the silent era.  Because it is more of a comedy?  I think there is a clear track record in modern history that comedies can be about anything ("Galaxy Quest", "Shaun of the Dead"... hell, look back to the 80's and you have "The Princess Bride").  I was looking at it assuming it would be an interesting addition to the Marvel movies and guess what: IT WAS!

Look at this.  It is the severed head of a god that floats in space and is a city.  How is my life not enriched by this?

            This movie is gorgeous.  The dialogue pops.  It is funny.  It has heart.  It has broad appeal with a big diverse cast of characters traveling thru beautiful living environments dealing with a villain that is clearly out of their weight class.  Leading a rag tag group in resistance to a total planetary genocide.  It is awesome.  Even the cheezy part where they use the power of friendship to beat the bad guy like it is a freaking "My Little Pony" episode (Though I guess Nightmare Moon was more like Malakith in "Thor: The Dark World" with the eternal darkness and all).

            I am not going to say this movie touched me on some deeper level, but it did its job well, and I am glad that Marvel feels that space is a much more creatively free place for the Marvel universe to be silly and strange.  I look forward to the sequel which I am sure will be even better.  (Here is my pitch for it, they are employed to break into Asgard and steal the Tesseract in hopes of keeping it out of Loki's hands... and inadvertently put it into the hands of Thanos.  It could be a heist movie, "Guardians of the Galaxy: The Asgardian Caper").

Overall: 8/10

This is a third party poster.  One of many alternate designs that these people whipped together.  Check them out.