Movies of 2013, Uncategorized

Uncategorized

            Cause nothing gets the blood going like a category with no uniting theme.  Or for that matter anything that was strong enough to merit its own entry... Well, "Rush" was pretty good.

Admission, or "This is really not as humor centric as the advertising led me to believe."

Overall: 5/10

I like all of the actors.... What happened here?

            This seems like two script ideas that were welded together because they have a common underlying theme, that of "admissions" both in the sense of admitting things to oneself, to others, and the most literal of students being admitted to college.

            The main character played by Tina Fey, being Tina Fey (that is not a complaint) works on the admissions staff to Princeton.  Her life is thrown into disorder when Paul Rudd (playing an optimistic Paul Rudd, not complaining) shows up and tells her that he knows the son she gave up for adoption when she was very young.  The rest of the movie is about the characters admitting things to each other, paralleling Tina's attempt to get her son into Princeton without telling him why she is going thru such great effort.

            The funny parts of this movie are not funny enough, and the heartfelt parts are heartfelt enough.  Overall it hangs together as a forgettable paycheck for all involved... Hence why I have so little to say about it... I mean, most of this was just me recapping the plot.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, or "*Sigh*...  I guess I laughed at something."

Overall: 3/10

I like these actors too.  What the hell?

            This movie kind of, sort of, really sucked.  It is not funny enough because they can't commit to one tone.  Sometimes it seems like it will be a dark parody of performers with ballooning egos, which would be fine.  Then it seems like a comeback story of a guy who lost his way, but since the main character is too much of a dick you can't really cheer him to victory.

            There is some competent direction.  Set up and pay off works in the movie (as it should, if it hadn't that would be an unforgivable irony considering the subject matter is magicians which are all about set up and pay off... they made a movie about how important that is to magic, "The Prestige").

            "It should be better" is the quickest summary I can give.  The jokes miss more than hit, the magic is not all that magical, and as I said, the tone is uneven.

Rush, or "The word Rush mostly sums it up honestly."

Overall: 7/10

I had never even heard of the other guy.  Why is this so much better?

            I really like Ron Howard as a director, most of the material he is working with is only 'meh' (like, "the Grinch Stole Christmas" or "A Beautiful Mind" which have issues that go beyond the role of a director).  But when you look at the amazing classic "Apollo 13", or the by-the-numbers sports picture "Cinderella Man" it is clear he knows what he is doing.  I actually want to go back and find a copy of "Frost/Nixon" to see how it worked out, I had no interest before, but now knowing that it was Howard that did it I will give it a go.

            "Rush" is another historical movie with elements of a standard sports story.  And I think the best comparison is to the movie "Warrior".  In "Warrior" there are two protagonists, one is the A-wall marine who suffered trying to take care of his insane and dying mother and now must win big to support the family of his friend who was lost in the war, the other is a well meaning but broke physics teacher past his physical prime that must fight to save his house from foreclosure and gets a big break.  The twist being that they are brothers.

            This movie has that similar modern sports movie feel, it is no longer good enough to have one guy going through an arc to win the prize like Rocky and Daniel-San, instead you need two guys.  Each needs quirks, personality, and a past, preferably all of these things clash, that way the audience gets the added personal drama of cheering for both even though they know only one can win.  And so it is in "Rush".

            Chris "The Son of Odin" Hemsworth, featured prominently in the marketing because he is a big star and looks good naked (ladies and gay men who read this, he gets 99% naked in this movie, you can bet which 1 percent is missing), but he plays the less interesting character.  The brazen daring maverick of the track, the playboy who seeks glory because he wants to be a star at a sport that is dangerous, fast, and thrilling.

            On the other side is Daniel Bruhl, playing the odd looking, nerdy, technical mastermind who sees racing as what he is the best at (he is right) and pushes himself to be the best while at the same time being a dick to every other racer.  He doesn't go to parties, he goes to practice.  Eventually he is badly hurt and his inability to compete becomes Hemsworth's opportunity to step up and become a champion.

            The movie has its fun moments, its drama moments, at a certain point I would have loved to learn more about the various formulas of racing and the how and why they function the way they do, more talk about how engines work, how to steer in turns or use your opponent as a means to save fuel.  I would have liked more technical aspects... I guess that explains why I thought Bruhl had the more interesting character.

            It is a very good movie about a sport I have no interest in.  I actually learned more about it through the movie, and the short burst of curiosity that made me tour Wikipedia than all other instances in my life.

Movies of 2013, Crime, pt5

Mud, or "Talented child actors?  The hell is this?"

Overall: 9/10

Oh for the halcyon days of McConaughey being in nothing but shit.

            Perhaps the most misleading trailer I have seen since they jokingly recut "Game of Thrones" as a romantic comedy.

            Kind of dripping with visual personality, especially Matthew McConaughey.  The whole movie explores with subtly this small southern town, how complex family dynamics can be, romance, crime... This movie has depth and pacing and is really cool.  There are clever things that show you exactly where the characters are and what they do.  Characters have clever little ideas, like in one scene kids are trying to find a lady in a motel, so they go door to door selling fish so nobody knows that they were there looking for her, that is a simple and clever little plan.

            I don't know why this is so hard to do, but I am giving this movie credit for just being clear and explaining itself well.  Why is that something that deserves an accolade?  Just the idea that a character has a cool name, "Neck Bone", and when he meets someone new they compliment him on his cool name.  You would compliment a kid named Neck Bone, cause that sounds hardcore.  But in a way you have to give credit when a movie does that (some movies... *cough* "Mortal Instruments" *cough* can't do the simple task of just having the characters talking civilly about what the hell is happening).

            The teenage actors act and talk like teenagers, Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland deserve credit in that regard.  Reese Witherspoon plays an emotionally destructive cock tease well, and Michael Shannon plays a nice and laid back guy (complete opposite of General Zod) showing his range of being curious but not having the gall to actually question the kid he is responsible for.

Prisoners, or "I actually did not call the ending.  Good job movie."

Overall: 10/10

There is a thing with Mazes in this movie.

            This is my movie of the year.  It has the look and feel of a David Fincher movie, with a dark and oppressive atmosphere and a plot that unfolds to tension and more mystery rather than just tidy little answers.  It makes good use of foreshadowing, has visual motifs, and themes about cycles of violence and acting with certainty on imperfect information.

            Everyone involved does an excellent job with their parts, and they have a lot of visual personality, you can tell things about them just from a glance and listening to them enriches their characters rather than just confirming what you can tell from looking at them.  Gyllenhaal had a hard time growing up and enforces rules in his adult life, Jackman had a hard time growing up and commits to the ideas of self reliance.  The ending is also really good, with a good bit of ambiguity as to what will ultimately happen.

            There are things in it, like police procedure, that are not by-the-book, and from your personal perspective that would make them more real or less real.  I just thought it just got the story moving well and having everything play out in a not-wholly-procedural-not-wholly-loose-cannon way made things a little more dynamic.  I also can't say the movie was fun, it is about missing children, torture, and murder, it is a less boring "Zodiac" not "Sherlock".

            If you like the HBO series, "True Detective" then watch this movie.

Movies of 2013, Science Fiction, pt3, Europa Report

Logically I should have paired this movie with "Gravity" but I only just watched it and decided to add it to the now nearly complete list of movies I have gone over.  So I am going back to Science Fiction with a very small movie that made very little money.

Europa Report, or "The space movie from 2013 that really does not measure up to Gravity"

Overall: 6/10 (kind of ruined by its fake-documentary style)

Surprisingly hard science.

            "Compared to the breadth of knowledge yet to be known... what does your life actually matter?"  Which is kind of bleak when you think about it.

            I don't really like the framing device of the movie.  It is a documentary made from the footage of a lost mission to Europa, a moon of Jupiter (one of the four important ones, there are dozens of moons around Jupiter the short bus cousin to Sol).  It justifies the found footage nature of the story by having cameras everywhere on the space vessel.  Inside the ship, outside the ship, and the totally unnecessary inside the helmet (I guess they wanted to show the actors acting at the things they are seeing, but they can do that with their voices just fine without the excessive close up).  It is the quick breakdown of literally months (22 and some change) of this voyage which captures all the classic problems of the found footage style and the science fiction genre.

            You start with the initial 20 minutes with the characters, though I will freely admit they are better characters than most of these types of movies give you, "Sunshine" for instance focused on mental nut-bars and assholes for the most part, and "Gravity" only had smarmy George and whimpering Sandra as the key characters, with Ed Harris' voice giving us authoritarian if you are generous.  Europa One's crew members have roles on the mission, but nobody is transparently the daredevil or the coward (even though that is suggested with interviews at the start of the movie), they act like actual people.

            The middle section is the mini-boss, the issue that shows the dangers of the environment cropping up before you even get to the actual mission.  In this case a routine maintenance procedure that goes bad.  You can see prior examples of this with "Mission to Mars" (which this movie with very few tweaks might as well be a sequel to), in which micro meteors result in their ship getting banged up and nearly rendering the ship destroyed.  The mini-boss in "2001: A Space Odyssey" was HAL or the concept of the audience being really bored.  The mini-boss underlines a major problem with the movie though: things told and shown out of order.

I consider this to be a rather underrated movie, and while similar in plot to Europa, this one has a much lighter tone.

            The crew land the ship on Europa, then they cut back to before they landed.  This cut is to show what happened to one of the crew members, the mini-boss incident that upped the stakes for the crew.  Why did they cut backwards in time?  That is just confusing.  I thought that I had accidently clicked on the player's progress bar.  If this was a real documentary that wouldn't happen, so why is it in a fictitious documentary?  That sort of thing doesn't happen in most movies unless strange editing in the gimmick ("Pulp Fiction" or "Memento").

            The third part of the story is the mystery of Europa.  Exploring the surface, feeling the immensity of what happened (landing on a moon of Jupiter, biggest event in history up till then), and the tension and creepy nature of an alien world.  It is pretty cool, and I would have liked it a lot if not for the documentary style breaking in to ruin the flow and practically telling the audience outright how to feel.

            Ultimately there is a disaster, that is pretty clear from the nature of the movie, and the final part of the tale is the cool and scary discovery.  Then the documentary keeps talking.  Once you have the money shot of the crew's suicidal last grasp at knowledge, talking doesn't help the audience.

Said every viewer of this movie walking into the theater.  HA!  Walking into the theater!
Nobody saw this in the theater.  They watched it on Netflix months later.

            You want to know what would have fixed this movie?  Issues 1 to 100, the found footage is not necessary, and stupid documentary style takes out all of the mystery.  You know that nobody makes it out.  How about instead you just make the same story with the same cliché beats and just make it play out like a real movie?  And have some ambiguity as to whether the discovery makes it back to Earth.  Thru most of the movie the communications are not working, but we are watching a documentary, so we know that the chronicling of their mission makes it back, but if you had the last act of the crew be the daring attempt to send the message back to Earth (which is part of the climax) but leave it open ended as to whether the message made it off Europa, so that the characters and the audience don't know if the world will ever learn of what happened, that type of ending forces people to think a little.  Maybe even worry.  Really, this is the same flaw as "Gravity" which has no ambiguity to its final scene, it is excessively tied up in a neat little package.

            Problem 101, the editing of this movie is awful.  As previously mentioned cutting back and forth between months of time (even with the hard to read time codes) does nothing to help the story.

            But, whatever, instead we can just tell the audience what happened and explicitly end the movie with the words, "We now know that our universe is stranger, far more alive, than we had ever imagined. The crew of Europa One changed the fundamental context in which all of humanity understands itself. I don't know what greater measure of success they could have achieved."  As if you the watcher could not have put that together by yourself.  It is like a really good movie spliced together with a current generation History channel "documentary" (those quotes are to indicate sarcastic condescension).  It is worth watching.

I actually dislike the idea of aliens having come to Earth in ancient times to teach humans things.  It is a very colonial mindset in the realm of science fiction, the idea of the civilized people teaching the primitives the glory of technology.  Also the idea robs humans of a lot of their agency.  Humans are intelligent and should be accomplishing things rather than being spoon fed.

Movies 2013, Survival

Survival Films

            Yes apparently I have decided to do an incredibly niche setting as an entry in this series of blogs.  Before I saw "Gravity" this was actually going to be Nautical Films.  Why are there so many movies about being alone and adrift?  Is it the economy?

Captain Phillips, or "Huh, there is some pretty good tension in there."

Overall: 7/10

Apparently the real Captain Phillips has been trying to ply this incident for personal gain which has resulted in him being somewhat demonized.... If I ever got kidnapped by pirates I would milk that incident for glory the rest of my life, so I do not understand the supposed hostility.

            There are parts of this movie that I was just fine with, and other parts that I was less enamored with.  Certainly the best thing is showing a lot of it from the perspective of the pirates.  Much like the Sports movie "Rush" there are two protagonists and their bouncing off one another is what the movie is about.  Character interaction is core to any movie which involves people being held in a tiny shelter against the world.  You have to know why people are doing certain things, and have an expectation of how others will react.  This movie nails that.

            I guess there are just long stretches in which I got rather bored.  I just didn't care about what was happening on the boat beyond a certain point, and seeing as I was alive at the time the actual instance was on the news I knew the ending.  Tom Hanks has some really strong acting at the end as he goes through shock while being treated, having just been held hostage and then covered in his kidnapper's gore.  There are other scenes that are tense, but it just didn't stay with me very much.  Overall I think it is a well made movie that other people might like more than I do, but it won't stick with me the way other movies have this year.

            Some people were saying that Barkhad Abdi is a breakout performer in this.  I do not really agree.  He is barely acting.  The nervousness he portrays is being interpreted as a trait of his character, someone who is using violence to try and make money but surrounded by hostile forces... people chose to see as acting.  Really it just seems like someone who doesn't act being in a movie.  He is nervous because millions of people are going to watch this movie for Tom Hanks but there are numerous scenes in which Barkhad is the focus of the scene, and he is probably worried he won't measure up.  And he doesn't for the most part.  He was cast because he looks like a Somali Pirate, not because he is a skilled actor.

All is Lost, or "I would be cursing a hell of a lot more than Robert is."

Overall: 7/10

Seriously, the main Character has no name, he is listed in the credits as "Our Man".
I should note the only reason I watched this is because it was the #1 of a film reviewer I like named Cecil.

            Ever wanted to watch a movie about an old man on a boat that is slowly sinking and the various processes taken to keep the boat afloat as long as possible before finally, ALL IS LOST?

            If you like survival movies with minimal dialogue, and a protagonist that has (Literally) no name and (effectively) no personality beyond an ability to learn to use a sextant use over the course of his ordeal... Well, you'll definitely like this one.  I could talk about it more, but there is not a lot of themes or story, I would just be describing what was happening, "he then patches the boat hull", "drains the cabin", "there is a storm coming", etc.

            It is worth a watch, I liked it more than "Gravity," because it cut out all the stupid dialogue and made things really relatable (MAYBE that is why.  My mood is fickle.  I imagine I will continue to cool on "Gravity" but this will remain at the medium-to-good level).

Gravity, or "All is Lost, but in Space"

Overall: 6/10

If this image were to talk without point then it would perfectly sum up the film.

            Much like "You're Next" I imagine this movie has much broader appeal than I am giving it credit for, but it is first and foremost a spectacle movie and it is in many ways too dumb for me.  I imagine this has a lot in common spiritually with "Life of Pi" which I did not see but was sold on its special effects. to a degree that dismissed the actor's contributions altogether.

            This movie foreshadows things well, you see something and it foreshadows something else happening later, I give it credit for that.  There are effects in this that blew my mind with how cool they looked and how exciting they were, watching in dead silence the complete destruction of the International Space Station (what could be considered the greatest monument to what multinational scientific efforts can achieve) I will give tons of credit there.  This movie is worth seeing, but I am just less impressed by special effects as a technical achievement unless they are used to complement a strong story.

            But there are some aspects I just found stupid, like Sandra Bullock constantly talking to herself.  Here is some SPOILER territory.  In the movie George Clooney sacrifices himself so that Sandra can continue working to get home, but at one point she runs out of ideas and decides to lower the oxygen and let herself go to sleep, she is then woken up by Clooney knocking on the spacecraft window and then opening the pod.  They then have a short conversation on how she can use the ship in a clever way to get to the next station which has a landing module... It is a hallucination, the oxygen deprivation gave her a Eureka moment in the form of George Clooney.  So here is my question: why not just do that all the time?  Have her talk to Clooney through a radio, under the assumption that he is still drifting in his space suit, giving her instructions, but it turns out the radio hadn't been working, that Clooney's voice was just her making sense of the situation and remembering her training, that way you would not have to watch her talking to herself the whole movie.  Actor's talking to themselves is not always an acceptable way to do things.  In Hamlet, the titular character talks to himself to reflect his internal discussion, there was no other way to get that information across in a play, this is a movie in which you could easily get around such things.

            More SPOILER, the movie could have ended with her just getting into the Chinese station at the end.  Showing her falling to Earth, swimming in water, and then walking on a beach was just unnecessary for the story.  Her arc was over with.  Some ambiguity as to whether she made it home would have worked in the movie's favor, but I guess they wanted people to have airtight closure... Though once you introduce the idea of hallucination, as you did with the Clooney ghost, you can no longer trust what is being shown on screen.  For all the audience knows she died in space and dreamed her trip back to Earth.  And really, by the time we are to that point you are almost bored by the idea of being in space.  No kidding the idea of jumping to another satellite is almost played out by the end of the movie.

Movies of 2013, Horror, pt3

Horror

            This is the most awful part of the horror genre this year.

You're Next, or "Is this supposed to be Funny?  I am not sure I am getting this."

Overall: 4/10

Did the villains draw straws for who got which mask?  Cause one of them is a lamb.  That is not very bad ass.

            This movie has a slightly misleading trailer that if I had been in a better mood I would have been pleased with how it subverted my expectations.

            I can actually see this movie being regarded positively by people.  It has a good pace that establishes its characters well enough, but I just couldn't get into it.

            Since the appeal of this is the subversion of expectations I don't want to spoil anything, if you like slasher movies then you will like this.  I am kind of softening to it a bit as it rolls around in my head.  I doubt I will ever watch it again, but I can imagine myself looking back on this having judged it too harshly, if for no other reason than the hero character is a woman, and she takes actions to further her position in the situation.  The hero actually has agency.  Maybe I will have to take another crack at it.

The Purge, or "That's it?  What was the point of the premise?  This plot has been done a hundred times before."

Overall: 4/10

Also, there is no distinct iconic bad guy in this movie, so emphasizing the masks is a little dishonest.
This isn't "Friday the 13th", which has sort of a recognizable mask centered character.

            This is a basic home invasion movie.  A group of creepy assholes are trying to get in and the residents have to take steps to protect themselves.  This is the same movie as "You're Next" but with the pretense of having social commentary.

            It's social commentary is never explored, nobody talks about how the titular Purge affects the poor and homeless disproportionately, or how the social good of the annual violence mostly has to do with those who can afford to participate killing those who don't have the financial means to defend themselves.  The areas in which that issue is addressed are handled with the subtlety of "Elysium", paper thin and blaringly obvious to the point of being insulting.  But it is not explored or debated.  I can imagine this idea in that hands of a madman like James Gunn, Peter Jackson, or good old Paul Verhoeven, if Paul had done it he would have had live coverage of the murder and chaos coming from street correspondents who are in indestructible witness booths constructed to give on the scene reports, with color commentary for those watching at home and advertising weapons to be used next year, "ooh, look how well the long range rifle works here, but a molotov delivered from an artillery shot of a pitching arm is far more colorful and fun!"  It writes itself and would serve as a final cherry on the sundae of anti-rich science fiction action movies ("RoboCop" "Total Recall" and "Starship Troopers" being logical spiritual predecessors).  What I am saying here is, "Weak execution, needs more dark humor."

            There is also a lag in logic, once the intruders realize that the people in the house have the means to defend themselves with guns and security systems they logically should just fuck off to find easier prey, why risk getting gunned down for the pleasure of killing a stranger?  Also, how did they locate this guy to hunt?  Was he kidnapped?  Well, if that happened before the start of the Purge then that means these guys broke the rules of the Purge and that would give them reason to go after him and the family because they would all go to jail once the events ends... But that side of things is never explained, I just made all that explanation up.  I tied up a plot hole in their movie that required maybe two lines of dialogue to explain.

            This is an interesting premise, but it is not used to any effect, and judging by the sequel trailer they have decided not to bother trying to comment and instead just trying to make the standard lost-in-the-wilderness horror chase movie, except the wilderness is the deserted city... Which makes it look like "Night of the Comet"... a more fun and interesting movie.

MaMa (walked out), or "Startling: The Movie."

Overall: 1/10

And the ghost in it looks really silly.

            Shitty.  This thing could have been good but the laziness of how it executes its scares kill it dead.  Piercing music stings coupled with a scary face on screen shock but they do not scare in an interesting way.  you are not filled with dread, you are filled with tense anticipation for when you will be startled.  It is a shame because the characters in the movie could have been good, the actors are strong and the premise of children trying to acclimate from being in the wilderness is an interesting concept.  From what I hear the ending is bad.  Bad to the point of being insulting.  Fuck this movie.

            If I were to offer some constructive suggestions, I would say use James Watkins who made the very okay "The Woman in Black" which captured its tone easier, and had a better mystery element (even though it ended up not making a lick of sense.  Which would mean taking the writer off the director's seat and that would be complicated.  Andres Muschietti is the prime creator of this thing, and the idea that he would not have the clout to make the final big movie out of it... would be a bad shot against him, and I wonder if the problems I have (since they appear in tons of movies) are not just shoved in by a studio who wants to shock the audience, making it more like the found footage garbage that is still getting churned out.  At least when the tension is broken in "Woman in Black" by a screaming ghost face it had a lot of build up and serves as a starting gun rather than stop sign to action, things heat up when that happens rather than it cutting to something else and leaving that screaming tension hanging.

Movies of 2013, Horror, pt2

Horror

            The medium-good horror stuff this year.

John Dies at the End, or "I feel I should take it easy on the shit effects because it is so charming and weird."

Overall: 6/10

This movie was based on a book by a contributor to the online magazine, Cracked.
Supposedly inspired by a night taking drugs.  That last part I believe.

            "Let's get high off the blood of an Old One."  Fantastic.  That is a thing we should do.

            "Dies" is so weird, that I love it a lot more than I really should.

            This is probably one of the only movies in which I will say without question: it needed more money.  The dialogue is funny, the acting is solid, tons of cool props, intriguing premise, such odd little episodes, and characters that you actually like and give a shit about.

            This thing is so in sync with how my sense of humor and action that I kind of love it, but the absolute climax of the movie looks and feels so cheap that it poisons the rest of the film a great deal.  It is so obviously green screen, so poorly cut trying to hide the issues... It looks just terrible.  If this movie had only a little more money... There are numerous episodes of "Doctor Who" that look better than this.

            If you like horror comedy ("Army of Darkness", "Todd and the Book of Pure Evil", "Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters") then this is a must see.  But if you dislike cheap and hokey stuff give it a pass, because it really requires you to buy into the idea of parallel worlds, topless cults, and Jamaican fortune tellers.

V/H/S/2, or "Certainly better than the first one.  Still a lot of room for improvement."

Overall: 6/10

Not quite as visually offensive as its predecessor.

            When I watched the first "V/H/S" I frequently found myself having to look away from the screen because the constant camera movement made me ill.  Not all of the short films grabbed me, and the framing device of assholes stealing videos and then inexplicably sitting down to watch some was so stupid and over stylized that I actually hated it.  This movie fixes most of that.

            While the short films featured vary in quality.  The first story has the biggest issue in my opinion, a guy gets an optical implant that allows him to see ghosts, and acts as a recorder, then meets a woman with an ocular implant that allows her to hear them, and then ghosts attack... That is cool, but I kept asking myself, "So, is his fake eye recording sound too?  If so, why?  And if not, then why does this video have real time high quality sound?"  Other issues crop up, one of the stories is just non-stop horror visual bombardment and in spite of some stuff being gratuitous and distracting it stands head and shoulders above the others.  There is also the first zombie story I have seen in a while that was good (I enjoyed the zombie short in this more than I liked, "Warm Bodies" in its entirety).

            It will still cause you motion sickness from the constant camera movement.  But I never had to look away from the screen.  Big improvement, definitely worth having another sequel to further refine the franchise.  The framing story was also better, though the idea of staying in a hazardous place to watch movies is just stupid.

Movies of 2013, Horror, pt1

Horror

            These were the good horror movies.

The Conjuring, or "Based on actual events my ass."

Overall: 7/10

I look forward to the inevitable franchise this spawns.

            James Wan is a skilled director who can frame a shot, pace a scene, and evoke performances from actors.  Patrick Wilson is an underappreciated actor who has been in a lot of really good stuff, he yells with real conviction, and actually looks concerned when a situation calls for concern... You would think that such a skill would common with actors, but for some reason the horror genre is mostly the dredges of movie production (perhaps romantic comedies are worse off, but not by much).

            "The Conjuring" is an elaborate story by a married couple of charlatans, the Warrens, who worked as ghost hunters and paranormal investigators for several decades.  They are notorious for making up "The Amityville Horror".

            Thankfully this film takes "realism" or any hope of committing to the "real" story and locks those uninteresting things in its creepy basement and commences to beat your sense of, "I could see that happening" with a truncheon.  Instead they opt to just tell an engaging story plotted out really well.

            Exposition is woven into the narrative with clues at the start whose intrigue is satisfied as the story progresses... You know, like a mystery story should.  Shocking, someone managed to write something that doesn't just tell you what is happening, nor do they fail to find out or fail to act on what they already know.

            I should also point out the good acting from Vera Farmiga and Lili Taylor (who convincingly looks terrified).

            There are scenes in this that are absolutely bone chilling especially with the quasi hide and seek game featured prominently in the trailers.  Simple things, that makes my skin goosepimply as I write this in the quiet of late hours.  One of the better films I saw this year.

Insidious: Chapter 2, or "There are like 3 or 4 movies that the writer and director must have been watching to assemble this thing."

Overall: 8/10

And I look forward to the continuing adventures of the heroes in this movie.

            See the opening paragraph under "The Conjuring"?  Repeat that for the opening here and add in how this is the best sequel to a horror film I have ever seen.

            The first "Insidious" was a fantastically paced movie with numerous scenes that were tense, creepy, and visually very pretty.  This movie weaves its narrative into the previous film damn near flawlessly, making its own additions to the mythos and using simple behind the scenes production decisions to build entire plot lines around.  There is little neck tingling stuff and big shocking stuff.  It is a fun movie.

            What is more this thing apes stuff from other really good movies and blends them in.  There is stuff from "The Shining" and "Silence of the Lambs" that make the central antagonist just fascinating.  They also, through use of established supernatural elements explore back through time creating a very interesting way of doing flashbacks.  They create a story reason for why the characters are watching the past... It is like in "Dredd" when they create a drug that slows down time, so that they can shoot some actions in slow motion and pretty and it makes sense in the narrative.  Excellent, excellent work.

            There is only one complaint that I can point to in the technical department: they dub over an actress in the opening scenes of the movie with the voice of a much older actress.  I have no idea why, I knew which character the actress was supposed to be a younger iteration of without the additional audio clue.  That starts the movie off on a bad foot for me, but unless you are the type of person who would notice and care about those sorts of things (like me) then I doubt you will care.  As far as story is concerned, I don't really care for how they ultimately resolve the issues of Patrick Wilson's character and his son, played by Ty Simpkins (who did a good job), but that really wouldn't matter to most people as their story is pretty much over with.

            Also, good job on the part of Rose Byrne.  A good portion of the movie is her moving around the house and looking like she is going nuts.

            So those factors kept this from being a truly great movie, but I would definitely put it in the top 10 (maybe the top 5) of the year.  Watch it back to back with the original and you probably wouldn't notice that they were produced nearly 3 years apart (the kid actors aged I suppose).  I am probably being too hard on this movie, and I definitely feel it is not getting enough credit from critics and audiences that said it was not as scary as the first one.  I thought it was more scary because the antagonist is a ghost rather than a demon, and ghosts get to have back stories and motivations that inform their actions and can serve as stand ins for deeper and darker subject matter than a demon, which by definition is evil for its own sake.

Movies of 2013, Science Fiction, pt2

Science Fiction

Star Trek Into Darkness, or "Damon Lindelof seriously needs to stop 'contributing' to franchises I like."

Overall: 6/10

Most of the posters suck.  This one is okay.

            I have talked about this movie before.  And have emphasized its studded nature.  The idea that it has a lot of symbols and iconography to give it the semblance of meaning without actually being meaningful.  This is practically the trademark of Damon Lindelof, creator of "Lost", whose one true gift if giving characters distinctive voices, and whose much lesser gift is throwing a lot of shit at the wall to see if it sticks.

            This movie has more twists than pretzel bread, and each makes less sense than the last.  It robs itself of emotional and intellectual resonance by immediately undoing huge plot developments.  Background characters have more visual personality than the main hero, leaving me wanting to hear their story rather than another story about Kirk.  And you know what, I am kind of tired of these characters.  I am a huge fan of all of these actors, but I am tired of these characters because the reboot is doing nothing with them.

            Christopher Nolan took a 70 year old comic book franchise and used it for complex discussions about perseverance, iconography, order and chaos, the nature of fear, and the role of security and privacy.  "Star Trek Into Darkness" rehashes stories and ideas to say nothing.  The idea of WMD's and terrorism were done better in the "Iron Man" franchise.  The idea of a villain who is out to protect his people was done better in the "X-Men" franchise.  "Star Trek" (2009) was given a pass on saying anything because it was a reboot, it showed the new visuals, it showed the new tone, it introduced the characters, this movie does not have that excuse, and by putting in shit like a tribble, and rambling about the Prime Directive makes this movie really stupid regardless of how pretty, exciting, or well acted.  That is not okay.

            Either have it be a fun adventure movie, or have a movie with intrigue and complex discussions, having both is like mixing ice cream and mashed potatoes.  It doesn't work!  At least not on any level that will last or stick with the audience.

Ender's Game, or "Would I like this movie better if I had not read the book?"

Overall: 6/10

Posters are overall better for this movie.  But some of them suck a lot.

            Compliment 1: This is a visual triumph.

            And it is kind of distracting.  When reading the book the video games and simulations are barely described, I personally imagined them as something like 3D "Dig Dug" and "Space Invaders", games that are not about graphical presentation but about teaching the mechanics of the game and developing a skill set related to them (a completely useless skill set for the real world, but a skill set).  I guess the filmmakers had the freedom to make the video games and simulations look however they wanted, but when everything looks so real, it is really hard to believe the twist that they tried to throw at the end.  The idea that Ender would have believed what they said he believed is preposterous when looking at this stuff.  It undercuts the movie's message for the sake of looking much cooler.

            SPOILER (skip to next compliment): There is of course a way they could have done both things, show them playing simple games at first, and then after they reveal what those games were really about flash to the actual battle and show it.  It would have helped to illustrate Ender's revelation at what he had done.

I am having Deja vu again.

Is there only one art department doing spaceship designs now?

            Compliment 2: The story is technically proficient.

            There is a set up and pay off that existed in the novel, the use of human shields later pays off in the use of space ships to protect a particular weapon.  But elements of the story, numerous conversations about the ethics of using Ender like they did, and nearly everything having to do with the tertiary characters is lost, the story is proficient, but bare bones when it comes to introspection and insight.

            Compliment 3: The acting is not nearly as bad as I had been told to expect.

            Butterfield is the bedrock the movie is built on and he is a really good actor, they actually step on his acting at one point by talking over a moment of epiphany, but overall he is really good, and deserves more credit for adding depth to a script that does not have a lot of clever dialogue.  Ben Kingsley commits to his part really well, and shows a level of true professionalism that can be missed when huge talented actors get roles in science-fiction-or-fantasy-coming-of-age stories (which is a genre that is surprisingly robust).  And Harrison Ford, is kind of wasted, growly and pissed are the emotions that come across, but there was a sort of tough love that the role called for that I did not feel come through, he doesn't interact with Ender in way that shows the complexity of that relationship, really he needed a lot more to work with.

            No more compliments.

            That is pretty much the end of the good things I have to say.  This movie is kind of a turkey, especially when compared to the book which is a god damn masterpiece.  It has pacing issues that nearly kill it.  Characters are introduced and dismissed so quickly that they can hardly been said to have existed at all.  And while I can understand that removing the plot about Ender's siblings conquering the world via effective blogging (symbolically mirroring how Ender is coming to terms with his own duality as a killer and compassionate leader, it is a METAPHOR), the fact is, nothing is given time to sink in, nothing is given time to be understood on a level deeper than skin.  Also, the actress that plays Ender's sister, Valentine, has to angrily storm out of a room in one of her two scenes and she looks funny doing it, kind of killed the scene.

            There is also a slapped on environmental message about how the aliens are invading Earth because they need water... Which is stupid horseshit.  Water is an incredibly abundant substance that can be harvested from space (something we see the aliens doing in the movie), there is no reason to talk about scarcity in regards to a civilization that has interstellar travel.  Much like the needless pollution and global warming crap from "Pacific Rim", and the kind of pointless environmental message of Krypton's destruction in "Man of Steel", this is out of place in here.

            There is also a major omission from the book in the number of times Earth was invaded by the Aliens, and why Earth thinks that attacking in an all out scorched world strategy is so necessary to secure the safety of the human species.  In the movie there was one invasion, in the book there had been two.  And while the near annihilation of the Earth in the movie is shown to be a strong motivator for a counter attack, Ender brings up a point that is never properly addressed, "Why have the aliens built up a huge fleet, and not attack Earth again?"  It is explained in the book, not in the movie.  That is a problem with the narrative on a deeper level than it should be because it robs the military of a good bit of justification for what they end up doing.

            Another problem is with the training.  In the book, you understand what is happening, the rules, and why it works the way it does.  You also understand how and why Ender is seen as good and smart because of how he changes the way the game is played through exploiting rules and mechanics.  The movie doesn't explain the game well, so when Ender starts winning it comes off as an attributed ability, rather than a demonstrated ability (which breaks the rule of movie making, "SHOW DON'T TELL").  For a movie that is so visually rich this should not be an issue.

            Also, it is yet another movie that walks up to an important line of violence, and then backpedals.  In the book Ender murders another child that is physically abusing him.  And later on he murders another child.  Ender doesn't intend either murder, he is just fighting hard and without restraint to secure his own safety, this movie has him violently win a fight, but does not have that core idea, it doesn't kill the kids, and those actions foreshadow other events in the narrative that are important.  If you are committed to not showing this sort of violence then you should not make the movie.

            Overall, this should have been a cartoon series, giving it time to do all it needs to do rather than the extremely condensed narrative that it is.

Movies of 2013, Science Fiction, pt1

Science Fiction

            I like Dystopias.  I have talked about this in the past and keep coming back to it.  I find it hilarious that in the 40's 1984 was considered the height of controversy because it depicted a future that was not bright and shiny because Orwell had the audacity to say Communism was bad (even though that book could just as easily be about Capitalism, not a lot of detail is put into the economy of a world in which the main focus seems to be a media retarding people through telling them what to think).  In modern society dystopias are all over the place and have been since "Bladerunner" became the most overrated movie in nerd culture.

Elysium, or "DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE INCREDIBLY SUBTLE MESSAGE I AM TRYING TO CONVEY TO YOU?"

Overall: 6/10

Also, boring, boring posters.

            I would not call director Neill Blomkamp's first movie, "District 9" subtle, but compared to this it was cloaked in shadow and obscurity.

            The bad guys are cartoonish in their evil... Actually that is a disservice to Ursalla and Cruella de Vil.  The bad guys are so evil that it kills your ability to buy into the movie.

            In Greek mythology the Fields of Elysium was a sort of heaven that existed beyond the horizon where great heroes went to live forever in legend.  And I guess this movie does sort of acknowledge that Greek mythology exalted "virtues" that were at best questionable, with greed, glory, and self aggrandizing being seen as noble... This movie gets that right.

            The science fiction element doesn't really make much sense because the metaphor is stretched past the breaking point.  They have humanoid robots with super strength that can comprehend complex tasks... Why is there any menial labor left on Earth?  Just have the robots do it.  Instead they have the robots doing the LAST THING YOU EVER WANT ROBOTS DOING, oppressing humans with violence.

            Moving past that the reason people on Earth want to go to Elysium isn't for work, or luxury, it is instead to get one use out of magical super beds that sure all disease and cure all injuries... Okay, I get it.  Universal health care.  Here is the thing, if such a device existed they would just set them up on street corners like phone booths, have you swipe your credit card, and charge you a fee for their use.  They have hospitals and a pharmaceutical industry on Earth, but why not just have a bunch of these magical super beds in the hospitals?

            Monetizing the magic beds is easy to figure out.  Take the cost of the machine, divide that by the number of typical uses you get out of the machine, then figure how much it would cost to pay a technician to maintain and operate the machine (which are household items that operate automatically on Elysium), add on a small mark up for profit purposes (10-15 percent) and then just have people use them.  No pill deliveries, or sorting, doctors and nurses would exist in far fewer numbers, no other medical devices of any type.  This movie presents a potentially post scarcity society and then pretends scarcity still exists.

            Then there is a radiation scene.  At one point Matt Damon accidently gets trapped in a chamber that irradiates him... What that chamber exists to do is unclear because all it seems to do is fill with radiation.  (Is it a giant microwave?)  Anyway, one of the villains of the movie is sees that the factory Damon is working in has stopped operations because of the accident, and the villain complains that things shouldn't stop and orders them to start cranking out more material.  This is sort of reminiscent of "The Jungle" in that on the job injuries happening during the Gilded Age would be met with a "back to work" by management (there is a reason Anarchism was a mainstream movement at one point), but this movie takes place in the future, in which lawsuits presumably still exist, shouldn't he be pissed that he is about to get sued out of his suit?  If anything Damon should be happy, getting irradiated would mean a lawsuit big enough to go to Elysium, get a cure, and live happily ever after.  But apparently Morgan and Morgan up and vanished at some point.

            The need of metaphor... Science breaks down as you approach the needs of the story.

            This is a mostly cool, and mostly miscast film.  Matt Damon seemed out of place and they probably stuck him and Jodie Foster in for name recognition, but neither seem right for the part, and since Foster is so evil and there is no complexity to the issue it just comes off as really dumb.

Catching Fire, or "We Are the 99%."

Overall: 9/10

Actually, there are dozens of posters for this movie, many are awesome, others are like a set of trading cards for characters fighting each other in the movie.

            The fact that this movie was good shocked me.  I thought the first film was at best passing with camera work that was so frantic that I found myself looking away from the screen (though I consider the book, "The Hunger Games" to be one of my all time favorites).  This movie totally fixes the problem of the screen shaking like Michael J Fox is the cameraman.

            Beyond that this movie has more scope, higher stakes, lots of cool characters with a great deal of visual personality.  There is a scene in which a guy is tied to a post and whipped by some military police, and guy with the scourge has flecks of blood on his face from the flipping the whip around.  Not to say all the violence is so poignant, the hero of the film shoots people with arrows, but there isn't a lot of blood.

            There is another instance in which a character curses out the audience for having to compete in the titular Hunger Games, and her swearing is censored... a world in which "vulgarity" is censored but in which teenagers are murdered by one another on live television and it is state policy that people must watch?  Wouldn't you hate to be in a world in which violence was okay, but speaking your mind is impolite?  I know such a world is one I wouldn't want to be in.

            Also, the main character of Katniss is great.  She is kind of a stand off bitch because she grew up in poverty, her Dad died tragically working a job that is miserable, and her Mom couldn't handle that shit; Katniss grew up too fast and in a world with too little love, which makes her emotionally retarded.  It is wonderful.  You never see women in this sort of role and they got probably the best actress of her generation, Jennifer "I'm kind of a weirdo and dingbat" Lawrence to play the character.

            There is one bigger break down in reality though that comes with all science fiction.  District 12 is a poor area that mines coal, no one else mines coal, and the coal goes somewhere and is used for something (presumably power).  This means that the economy has use or even need for coal.  So how can the Capital threaten District 12 (or any district) with annihilation?  Each district produces something that the other districts do not produce, so they are needed.  I guess they could just use something other than coal for power... Which makes me ask why they mine coal at all.  It is in a way the same issue that "Elysium" has, that there is technology with higher utility that isn't being used... for no reason.  But since that is not the thrust of the movie (violence and politics as entertainment is) the technical issues of the fictional economy is easier to ignore.

Movies of 2013, Superhero, pt4

The Wolverine, or "Really?  Have we not had enough of Wolverine yet?"

Overall: 6/10

Hugh, buddy.  Can you stop looking amazing?  Kind of setting the bar for guys like me a little high.

            I enjoyed this movie a hell of a lot more than I thought I would.  They give Wolverine a sidekick to play off of, though the actress' hair is weird (I like the color, but her bangs are sideways or something, and her eyes are super wide, I don't know why, she just looks odd).  They give him an enemy with a clear motivation and resources to pose an actual threat, they have tertiary villains with interesting and distinct looks, action sequences that are varied in execution (if not color scheme, metal and black are the colors of this movie to the point of being kind of annoying).  Now to the real complaints.

            Problem 1: The love interest.

            Wolverine does not need a love interest, he is a knight errant, he does extreme violence to serve his personal code of honor but never feels tied down (that is his character).  Yeah, sure he beds women when the opportunity presents itself, but the love affair in this movie does not work.  There is no chemistry and the speed of the situation does not behoove the development of feelings.  He is a violent, headstrong, culturally insensitive thug who kills people by the bus load in this film... There is no reason for the woman who he bangs to be attached to him.  Also, he is old, like 100+, he should not be banging a 20 something unless she shows real emotional depth and maturity (this one does not).  It is the Edward and Bella problem of modern romantic subplots.

            Problem 2: This movie has terrible gameplay.

            The movie is ordered like a video game, Wolverine fights hillbillies, then mobsters, then mobster hit men on a train (boss fight), then ninjas, then a master sword fighter (boss fight), more ninjas on their home turf, a snake lady, and then a giant mecha (that can cut thru his bones and drain his powers, bigger boss fight).  He even gets a lot of his powers toned down to add tension (as if the protection of the various vulnerable squishy humans was not enough to add tension... It doesn't because they are paper thin characters, but it could have).  I am not even sure this can be considered a complaint, because I thought the variety of fights worked to a benefit, but it is oddly structured for a movie narrative.

            Problem 3: Dulling of claws.

            There are plenty of scenes in which Wolverine kills people who are actively harming other people.  LOTS OF MOBSTERS DIE POINTY DEATHS.  But there is a scene which I felt was really bad and kind of dulled the movie.  Wolverine captures a police official who is helping the mafia, then interrogates him in a cool funny scene, he then throws the asshole off a hotel balcony.  That is awesome.  But (and I am sure this is what happened), since you can't have the hero of a PG-13 movie kill a helpless guy in an awesome fashion (unlike, say, "DREDD"), we instead see that the guy fell into a pool that Wolverine claims to have not known about.

            Here is the thing.  If you are going to not kill the bad guy, having the hero say, "What pool?" makes him seem dumb in addition to ruthless.  Either have him kill the guy to show he means business, or have him throw the guy into a pool just to scare him.  Trying to have your cake and eat it too doesn't work.
           Problem 4: Wolverine is played out.

This follows what I consider to be the best scene in the movie in which he cuts out his own heart.
Similar to that only good scene in "Prometheus".

            I like Wolverine a good bit, he has a distinctive power set of indestructible man with knifes for hands, he has a cool back story of mysterious soldier of fortune, and he is part of a disaffected minority (Canadians).  But he has been the star of 5/6 X-Men films, and we have seen nearly every aspect of his life and all the interactions he has had between numerous characters, be they romantic rivals (Cyclopes), kid side kicks (Rogue), professional rivals (Sabretooth), authority figures (Prof X, Stryker), and comrades in arms (Storm, Wraith).  Can we get a movie that focuses on the actual main conflict of X-Men... in addition to "First Class"?

            The end of this movie is actually a microcosm of the issues, the movie ends with Wolverine getting on a plane with his new sidekick with no direction.  Then the after the credits sequence skips ahead a couple years (his sidekick now gone, we never learn of her fate.  Dead?  Back in Japan?  Who knows?)  And there is Magneto (with his powers returned) and Prof X (now no longer a pile of dust).  Wolverine has no reason to be a part of their story, and his story is so unimportant that it is dropped so he can be pulled into X-Men drama.  Why?  Let him go.  If you want to make Wolverine movies, then make them and let the X-Men do their thing, they have enough interesting characters that are thirsty for screen time that you don't need Logan to be there.

Kick-Ass 2, or "Rape isn't funny.  How about attempted rape?  Wait, why are we trying to make that scene funny?"

Overall: 5/10

Ironically if Hit Girl were real and watched this movie she would probably call it pussy footing bullshit.

            This movie skull fucks my sense of reason because it is really hard to evaluate on its own.  I have to look at it as both a sequel to the first movie, as an adaptation of the book, and how it stands on its own, but I don't know how to reconcile all of those parts in a meaningful way.  There are lots of things about it I would like if it were in a different movie, and there are lots of things I hate because they are in this movie, or because they short change the books.  I don't know.

            The first "Kick Ass" was alright and had a lot of problems, mostly with the subject matter itself.  And this continues that grand tradition.

            In regards to being a sequel to the first movie, there are issues with continuity, like how they ditch Kick-Ass' girlfriend (who knows he is Kick-Ass in the movies, and should trust that he is not fucking the now 14 year old Hit Girl, but for the sake of the story calls him a pervert and ditches him).  And the movie has lots of little things like that, especially in the glorification of Big Daddy who should be seen less as a hero and more of a complex figure, if not an outright monster like he was in the comics.

            This movie does something the books did not do, attempts to show the villain's journey in addition to the heroes'.  I don't think that works.  Trying to rape a female superhero and failing because he is so impotent isn't funny.  Either have the guts to have rape, or don't.  Being too flaccid to actually follow thru just serves as metaphor for the movie as a whole.  Constantly backing away from the violence of the comic in favor of soft and goofy action that doesn't work.  It Feels weird to call it soft when you consider the amount of murder and blood in this.  I would compare it to "the Walking Dead" TV show, which is so loosely based on the comics that I find it to be odd to watch, the violence in it is just not hard enough, it lacks the shock and terror it could have.  It is 'meh'.

            On its own, as if I had not read the books or seen the first one, I still have issues again with Hit Girl being too grown up on certain subjects.  She is a psychopath.  Just because she has the ability to kill the bad guy does not make her "mature" or capable of healthily expressing emotion, but if anything they make her far too dutiful and reasonable.  She should be a broken person, but instead they play her up as a hero or role model.  That does not work.  They almost show her as she should be, but again they dial it back.  It fails.

            I can't believe I am saying this, but "The Wolverine" fits better into his crazy and poorly thought out mythos than this movie fits into its own.  Which considering it is the second movie and is based on a comic series that only consists of "Kick Ass" and "Kick Ass 2" how is that possible?  How can you eschew things so completely?  How is it this jumbled?

            There is also the controversy of Jim Carrey, who plays an interesting character rethinking his stance on violence in the media because of the recent mass shootings.  Jim believed that he should not promote the film because of its violence (even though his character in the movie is a staunch opponent of gun violence being a former hitman turned born again Christian).  If I had to guess Jim made this known to do two things: one, settle his conscience for participating in a movie that both glorifies violence while portraying it as not terribly dangerous; and two, stir some controversy because he did not want to torpedo the work of his costars.  Cause things are complicated.