Jack Reacher (2012)

January 6, 2014 Book v. Film, Movie Review No comments
Jack Reacher poster at myopera.com

Jack Reacher poster at myopera.com

“Hell you say.” – Robert Duvall as Cash

 

My wife is a HUGE fan of Lee Child‘s books. She refuses to buy them in hardcover, though, so ever year or so, she spends several months in a state of literary tension, aware that there is a new Jack Reacher story out there yet unable to partake of of it. Her discomfort every time we go into a bookstore during this waiting period is palpable. It really is a site to behold, but it’s indicative of the kind of fans Child has. Everyone I’ve known who likes his books LOVES his books. The only other author I’ve seen exhibit that kind of devotion is Stephen King. These books are not like King’s. I’ve read exactly two of them, his 1997 debut, The Killing Floor, and the book this film is based on, One Shot. They’re pulpy, full of tough guys doing tough things, but they just didn’t speak to me in a way that made me want to devour the whole series the way my wife has. As someone who’s read the whole series, though, and invested hundreds of hours in this world of an ex-Army MP turned crime-fighting drifter, she definitely had some ideas about what our protagonist should look like and Tom Cruise was nowhere in the ballpark. He was such an oddball choice that she refused to see the movie in theaters. I had to wait for it to come out on Blu-ray and then wait for her to be out of town for the weekend before I could watch it. I’m happy to report it was well worth the wait.

It’s hard to describe what this film is other than to say it’s an action film from the late eighties/early nineties but with a decidedly 21st century sensibility. Think of it as Roadhouse without the Tai Chi, or Above the Law without the Aikido, or even Lethal Weapon without Danny Glover (he’s getting too old for this shit). As a writer Christopher McQuarrie has always done a great job with dialog, and this is no exception. The witty back and forth of The Usual Suspects is here, and Cruise does a great job delivering it. True, his not-so-vague threats would be even more menacing delivered by the 6′ 5″, 250 pound Reacher of the novels, but coming from 5′ 7″ Tom Cruise, they have an added punch, a humorous cockiness that belies his diminutive stature. He spends the better part of the film beating the piss out of men much larger than he is, cracking wise the whole time. This is an exceptionally funny movie, with most of the jokes coming from Reacher’s attitude toward the toughs he encounters. I laughed out loud when, just before he beats another bad guy into submission, he looks him dead in the eyes and says, with more than a little malice, “Remember, you wanted this.” There are subtle visual jokes here as well, like when two guys with bats try to beat Reacher and end up doing more damage to themselves. Or when our hero rolls into a nondescript local business and the sign outside reads DeFault Auto Parts, a reference to the fact that no one ever mentions the name of the town even though it was quite obviously filmed in Pittsburgh.

This is only McQuarrie’s second outing as a director, after the criminally under-seen The Way of the Gun, and it’s easy to see why he was chosen for the upcoming Mission: Impossible 5. The car chases are very well done, combining fast and slow sections that made it easy to keep track of where everyone was in relation to one another, a quality missing in many lesser films. The fight scenes were even better, especially one near the end that seemed like an homage to the 1987 Riggs-Joshua bout.

One thing I didn’t enjoy about the film was the relative dearth of Werner Herzog (yes, that Werner Herzog). He was certainly creepy here as a Russian gangster who’s missing a few fingers as well as concern for his fellow man. He’s only in the film for around ten minutes, though, and I’d like to have seen more. Apart from that, though, this really was an enjoyable film I’m looking forward to seeing again. I can’t decide if I want to wait until the next time the missus is out of town or if it might just magically appear on the video shelf at the house one day soon.

Jack Reacher is currently available on DVD and Blu-ray.

AFI Top 100: The Graduate (1967)

January 3, 2014 AFI Top 100, Movie Review No comments

The tenth in a series reviewing the American Film Institute Top 100 in random order.

The Graduate poster at imp awards.com

“Ben, this whole idea sounds pretty half-baked.” – William Daniels as Mr Braddock

“Oh, it’s not. It’s completely baked.” – Dustin Hoffman as Ben Braddock

 

In my quest to watch the AFI Top 100, I’m always worried that the films will seem dated or that the themes won’t feel as relevant today. I probably need to stop worrying quite so much. Though the comedy of Duck Soup seemed dated and more than a little childish, most of the movies I’ve watched so far have included the things I look for most in quality films, fully realized characters that I care about, delivering well-written dialog, and filmed beautifully. The Graduate was no different, and was still very funny to boot.

Dustin Hoffman does as a great job here as Ben Braddock, a recent college graduate who’s overtaken with ennui, unable to decide what to do with his life, though it’s what’s on everyone else’s minds, especially his parents, who were helicoptering forty years before it was cool. He seems openly dismissive of the professions his parents and their friends have chosen, though unlike many young adults of sixties cinema, he isn’t able to turn those feelings into any kind of action. He’d much rather spend his time floating in the pool, soaking up the sun, even though it appears he’s even unable to take pleasure in that. For a time, he finds a measure of happiness in an affair with his father’s business partner’s wife, Mrs Robinson. She seduces him rather than the other way around (of course), and their courtship, for lack of a better word, provides many of the laughs. Ann Bancroft is wonderful as Ben’s paramour, exuding a confidence and sexiness that overlays a dissatisfaction that mirrors his. When he starts to fall for her daughter, though, she shows that there’s a mean streak underneath all her charm. She was nominated for the Best Lead Actress Oscar that year, rightly so.

The second half of the film, though not nearly as light-hearted as the first, shows Ben maturing, and it’s to Dustin Hoffman’s credit that it’s a very believable transformation. As he takes his first tentative steps into adulthood, you start to see an impish charm that was missing earlier. Counterintuitively, in taking positive steps toward growing up, he’s able to enjoy what almost seems like a second childhood. I imagine it was more enjoyable than his first. His Lead Actor nomination was also well-deserved. If anything, I wish we’d seen more of the object of his affection, the stunning Katharine Ross. She gets to show a little bit of personality and sass in the third act, but not quite enough for my taste. I can see what Benjamin sees in her, but only in the most superficial way. I wish we’d been shown more. That aside, the movie has one of the most appropriate endings I’ve ever seen. In the closing shot, once Ben has finally gathered the courage to act, to fight for the one thing he truly cares for, he lets a rare smile creep across his face. He seems satisfied, hopeful, but only for a second or two, then it starts to fade. You can already see the ennui creeping back in. It is a rare and interesting film that asks the question, “What happens after the credits roll?” and then leaves it to our imaginations to come up with an answer.

 

As a potentially interesting side note, this movie was rated G by the MPAA. There are a few very brief shots of Ann Bancroft’s bare breasts, though they’re almost like the shots of Pazuzu from The Exorcist. In 1976′s PG-rated The Front, the climax involves Woody Allen’s character telling a HUAC-resembling committee, “And furthermore, you can all go fuck yourselves.” It’s interesting to me that both these films would likely receive an R today for these small infractions. Is that progress?

 

Up next in the queue, 1973′s American Graffiti, in which our hero sees what George Lucas was up to in the six years between THX 1138 and Star Wars.

 

Click here for an Index of my AFI Top 100 movie reviews.

Blackfish (2013), Dear Zachary (2008)

December 30, 2013 Movie Review No comments

I’ve been a fan of documentary film for years. The very first disc I ordered from Netflix, back in the pre-streaming days, was King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. I thought Rescue Dawn had some ludicrous plot points until I saw Little Dieter Needs to Fly and realized the feature hewed uncomfortably close to the documentary. And Grizzly Man, while ultimately tragic, also provided more laughs than some films that purport to be comedies (I’m looking at you, Cop Out). I’d happily watch any of these docs again today because they are so enjoyable. Lately, though, I’ve found myself watching documentaries that have such a profound emotional effect I don’t care to ever watch them again.

 

Blackfish poster at kittysneezes.com

Blackfish poster at kittysneezes.com

 

I’ve never been to SeaWorld, but I have been to the dolphin show at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. I found it enjoyable, but nothing spectacular. After watching Blackfish, however, I’ll never attend another marine mammal show as long as I live. The film is the story of the killer whale Tilikum and his involvement in the deaths of three people. It makes a pretty strong case that we are driving him and other orcas to aggressive and violent behavior by removing them from the wild when they are still calves and altering the natural hierarchy they would otherwise experience. Slightly less persuasive, but horrifically disturbing if true, is the suggestion that killer whales have a stronger sense of community than even humans do. If that is in fact the case, then we are torturing these animals by removing them from their families and keeping them in enclosures that couldn’t be more different from their natural habitat. Most frustrating is the holier-than-thou attitude exhibited by several ex-trainers who, rather than trying to bring attention to the situation stayed in SeaWorld’s employ long after they new Tilikum’s behavior was becoming more erratic. They try to paint themselves as victims of SeaWorld’s greed, when in reality, they were a bunch of little Eichmanns, more than willing to play their parts and collect a paycheck as long as they weren’t the ones being attacked.

 

Dear Zachary poster at collider.com

Dear Zachary poster at collider.com

 

While Blackfish deals with a corporation and its employees who are torturing sentient creatures in pursuit of profits, Dear Zachary is a story of a single evil person, Shirley Jane Turner, and how she destroys an entire family with more than a little help from the Canadian legal system. Though she was never convicted, it would be uncontroversial to say that she likely murdered Dr Andrew Bagby, the father of her unborn child. She then fled to Canada to avoid prosecution. Bagby’s parents followed her north of the border to try to get some sort of shared custody of their grandson with filmmaker Kurt Kuenne, a childhood friend of Andrew’s, in tow. The film starts as a way to introduce Bagby’s son to the dad he never had a chance to know, but it ends up being much more than that as the courts in Newfoundland repeatedly act in ways that are both inexplicable and infuriating. There are a few directorial choices here that get annoying after a while, but the blind rage I felt by the time it was over was well worth it.

In my life, I’ve been known to be a little emotionally detached. It’s not that I don’t have feelings, it’s just that I tend to keep the bad ones buried way down inside where they can’t hurt anyone, just like Marge Simpson recommended. I’d have made a great Stoic back in the day. I do have one outlet, though, where I can let out my emotions in an environment that is comparatively safe, and that is through films. I always enjoyed movies that made me cry because they let me access a part of myself that I normally kept pretty well hidden. These two films have shown me that there’s another emotion I can access with their help: anger. Now I just need to find more documentaries that’ll do so. I’m thinking The Fog of War…

AFI Top 100: The Searchers (1956)

December 28, 2013 AFI Top 100, Movie Review No comments

The ninth in a series reviewing the American Film Institute Top 100 in random order.

bfi-00n-xey

 

“Put an amen to it! There’s no more time for praying! AMEN!” – John Wayne as Ethan Edwards

 

I’ve been a fan of John Wayne movies since I was a kid. Back then, it seemed like every Sunday afternoon had one or two westerns on television, and his always seemed to be the ones that stuck with me. Across all my favorites, Rio Bravo, The Sons of Katie Elder, True Grit, there was comfort in knowing that the Duke would always be playing some variation of the same character. Simultaneously stoic and sarcastic, he was always in control, calm on the outside but quick to draw his pistol when needed to defend himself or others. He valued honor and family above all else. He was a hero in every respect. What he never did was play the villain. Well, almost never.

I don’t remember The Searchers from my youth, though it might have been lost to the back of my mind because it didn’t fit with all the others. Oh sure, many of the John Wayne western tropes are here. It is, after all, ostensibly about a man’s search for his niece (Natalie Wood) who has been kidnapped by a Comanche chief named Scar (Henry Brandon). There are beautiful western vistas, gunfights, disdain for authority, and the ever-present John Wayne swagger. Ethan Edwards is nothing like any of Wayne’s other characters, though. From the beginning of the film, he is set up to be the most unsympathetic of leads. He’s a former Confederate soldier* who never officially surrendered and presumably spent the three years since the end of the Civil War committing crimes that have netted him a tidy sum of Union gold. He spends the better part of the film angry with everyone around him, yelling at, punching, and kicking friend and foe alike. He leers at his sister-in-law in a way that is so lecherous, I wondered if his nephew might not be his son. And let’s not tiptoe around the main issue; he is a horrible racist.

It’s not clear where Ethan’s hatred of Native Americans in general, and Comanches in particular, comes from, but it is strong and deep. Early on, he and a group of Texas Rangers come across a Comanche buried in a shallow grave. Ethan promptly shoots out both of the corpses eyes. Why? Not because he believes, as the Comanche do, that doing so will cause the dead man’s spirit to wander aimlessly forever, but because they believe it will. That’s some next-level hatred right there. By the third act, he’s advocating murder as a proper remedy for a woman who has slept with a Comanche. He not only views them as subhuman, but as able to infect white women with this condition. People who watched this in 1956 would rightly have been uncomfortable with the parallels between this and civil-rights era racism and lynch mobs. I only wish more had been done with this premise.

Sadly, the film spends 95% of its running time painting Ethan as a contemptible anti-hero, so much so it is implausible when he eventually has a change of heart. I think a more modern movie, focused on character development, would’ve shown a gradual progression as Ethan started questioning his beliefs for some external reason, became conflicted, and eventually saw the error of his ways. Instead, he is an absolutely horrible person with almost no redeeming value right up until the moment the plot requires him not to be, at which point he turns on a dime and never looks back. It’s not unlike the scene where Ethan’s nephew (Jeffrey Hunter) sneaks into a teepee at night only to emerge a few minutes later in broad daylight because that’s what’s required at the moment. Both were equally incongruous and jarring.

It was good to see John Wayne portraying a character different than what I was used to. I only wish he’d had more of a character arc rather than the abrupt turnaround with no explanation. Also worth mentioning is that this film is absolutely gorgeous to look at. Director John Ford really knew how to bring the majesty of the Old West to life. Watching this at home on Blu-ray was just striking. I’d like to see it on the big screen some day if it ever makes the theatrical rounds again. One thing I absolutely don’t understand is how this went from #96 on the AFI’s 1997 list to #12 on the 2007 update. That’s a jump of eighty-four places, far more than any other film on the list.

 

* Yes, Rooster Cogburn was also a former Confederate, but it he seems to have made his peace with their defeat in a way that Ethan Edwards has not.

 

Up next in the queue, 1967′s The Graduate, in which our hero finds out what so important about plastics.

 

Click here for an Index of my AFI Top 100 movie reviews.

AFI Top 100: High Noon (1952)

November 18, 2013 AFI Top 100, Movie Review No comments

The eighth in a series reviewing the American Film Institute Top 100 in random order.

High Noon poster at doctormacro.com

“You’re a good-looking boy. You’ve big, broad shoulders. But he’s a man. And it takes more than big, broad shoulders to make a man.” – Katy Jurado as Helen Ramirez

 

Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) has it made at the beginning of High Noon. He’s just married the young and beautiful (and Quaker) Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly) and once he hangs up his badge and gun, they’re off to start a new life together as shopkeepers in another town or some such. There’s only one problem. Frank Miller, a crazed killer Will helped put away years ago has just gotten released on parole and he’s on his way to town. He’ll be arriving on the noon train, and everyone knows he’s got revenge on his mind. Against all advice, Will decides to stay and fight.

What follows is a Western that plays out in realtime, though without most of the traditional Western tropes. There are no sweeping vistas, no face-to-face showdowns in the street, and thankfully, no singing sidekick. [Look, I love Rio Bravo as much as the next guy, but Ricky Nelson's presence in that film is just unforgivable.] Most of the film unfolds as Will tries to raise a posse to fight off Miller and his gang. Despite everything he’s done for the town over the years, taking it from a rough place where women can’t walk the streets alone to a place where one can safely raise a family, there aren’t many folks willing to lay down their lives for what they perceive to be certain death. Except for Jimmy, the one-eyed drunk, of course. Through it all, Will remains stoic, going about his duty, refusing to run away, even when doing so would make the most sense.

This is a good film, though I wouldn’t describe it as exciting. It’s more of a meditation on duty and courage. Cooper embodies both of those, sometimes to a foolish degree. It’s one thing for a marshal approaching his twilight years to bravely stay and fight for what he thinks is right. But are we really to believe that when Amy demands that he leave with her, just a few minutes after their wedding, that he’d essentially say, “Sorry, babe, but the job I just quit is more important than you are”? I doubt it. In this way, I think Will’s tale is best viewed as melodrama, where the heightened emotion is an unwavering sense of duty. As a sort of cinematic ValueTale about doing what’s right, it works well, though I don’t know that I’d be that interested in watching it again. Apart from the one gunfight, that plays out more realistically than you’d see in most Westerns, there just isn’t enough going on here for a guy raised on more action-oriented fare.

 

Up next in the queue, 1956′s The Searchers, in which our hero wonders how big a racist you have to be to shoot dead Indians in the eyes.

 

Click here for an Index of my AFI Top 100 movie reviews.

AFI Top 100: The Philadelphia Story (1940)

August 18, 2013 AFI Top 100, Movie Review One comment

The seventh in a series reviewing the American Film Institute Top 100 in random order.

The Philadelphia Story poster from http://images.moviepostershop.com

“Aw, you don’t look old enough to get married, not even the first time, but then you never did. She needs trouble to mature her, Kittredge. Give her lots of it.” – Cary Grant as C. K. Dexter Haven

 

I had my doubts about whether a romantic comedy from 1940 set among the wealthy would still hold up after all these years. After all, what lessons could possibly be gleaned from watching a group of socialites fret about what to canapés to serve at a posh, upper-crust wedding? I’m happy to report that high society, apart from being the impetus for getting James Stewart‘s working-class voice into the film, plays little more of a role than just providing the setting. The situations the characters find themselves in and the emotions that result could be told again today about any class of people with very little re-imagining.

Tracy Lord (Katherine Hepburn, reprising the role she played on Broadway) has divorced her first husband, C. K. Dexter Haven (the supremely charming Cary Grant) and two years later, is about to marry the self-made George Kittredge (John Howard). Haven has other plans, though, and enlists the help of writer-turned reporter Macaulay Conner (Stewart) to disrupt the event. What follows might seem like a comedic love triangle of sorts, though being released squarely in the meat of the Hays Code years, about the most lascivious thing you see is Stewart carrying Hepburn, both dressed in floor-length terry cloth robes, away from a pool while singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’. The nice thing about the film is that it really does belong to Hepburn. She’s the lynchpin that holds the whole thing together, and not for once are we ever left doubting what each of her three would-be suitors see in her. She is so legitimately charming, she’s able to carry this movie having us believe she’s the object of Cary Grant’s, James Stewart’s, and John Howard’s affections.

And speaking of James Stewart, he really was a treat in this. After just having watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (which was released the year before), it was good to see he’d lost most of his doe-eyed innocence and even managed to pick up some cynicism, a drinking habit, and a mean, populist streak. I was beginning to wonder what it was Alfred Hitchcock saw in him that made him so right for the movies they eventually made together. After seeing him play a bit of a more believable, three-dimensional character here, I’m anxiously looking forward to watching them again as part of this series.

Back to the film, it’s interesting that each of these men has fallen in love with certain aspects of Hepburn’s character, and to be honest, she doesn’t make it easy to root for any of them consistently. She can be a little flighty, and perhaps didn’t have the best parental examples when she was growing up. But she’s a strong, independent woman who’s pretty sure she deserves to be loved for whom she is, not who her suitors want her to be. And that’s a lesson that women (or men, for that matter) can learn, no matter what time period or social class or city they live in.

 

Up next in the queue, 1952′s High Noon, in which our hero wonders what the hell Ronald Reagan was talking about.

 

Click here for an Index of my AFI Top 100 movie reviews.

AFI Top 100: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

August 17, 2013 AFI Top 100, Movie Review, politics 3 comments

The sixth in a series reviewing the American Film Institute Top 100 in random order.

“The people of my state need permanent relief from crooked men riding their backs!” – James Stewart as Senator Jefferson Smith

 

There’s a great scene early on in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington where our naive, newly appointed Senator realizes that several newspaper writers have printed out-of-context pictures of him in his first few days in town, ascribing views to him he does not hold. There follows a montage of him storming the streets of DC, looking menacing and punching the offenders in their faces. It’s meant to be cathartic, and Dimitri Tiomkin‘s swirling, whimsical score that plays over the scene reinforces that we should vicariously enjoy Smith’s righteous anger. It was a scene that would be echoed decades later at the end of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (this time accompanied by Stroke 9′s ‘Kick Some Ass’), with one important piece missing. Jeff Smith eventually gets called down by members of the National Press Club who inform him, in no uncertain terms, that he is in fact a joke, a ceremonial appointment whose only purpose is serve out the two months left on his predecessor’s term and not make waves. It’s the first moment when the doe-eyed Smith realizes that not everything he’d been taught about how the government works was on the up and up. Throughout the rest of the film, he comes face to face with how corrupt the system really is, how biased lawmaking is toward wealthy contributors, and how little power our elected officials wield when they have to choose between getting reelected and following their consciences.

It was difficult watching this film, almost three-quarters of a century after its release, and realizing that so little has changed for the better. In fact, it seems as if things are much worse than they were back then. Once Smith realizes that graft is such a big problem in his state, he launches into a Quixotic crusade to try to fix the situation. He’s helped along the way by his lovely and politically astute secretary, Clarissa Saunders (Jean Arthur), and together, they devise a way to foil his home state’s political machine and expose the corrupting influences for who they really are. It involves a marathon filibuster session, wherein all Smith has to do to keep the kickback-laden bill from passing is to keep talking, not yield the floor, and not sit down. It’s really quite up-lifting.

Until, that is, you realize that few if any of our elected officials would give enough of a damn to mount such a fight even if they were so inclined to today. For crying out loud, nobody even has to filibuster in the Senate anymore. All one has to do is announce one’s intent to filibuster, and the questionable legislation is tabled. No one seems to have the time to do the actual legislating we’ve sent them to Washington to do. Last year, Sen Dick Durbin told NPR’s Planet Money podcast, that the average Senator was spending three to four hours every day working the phone banks like a telemarketer, raising money for his or her next reelection campaign. Considering that’s what it takes to even keep one’s seat at the table, it’s no wonder Congress has passed fewer than twenty laws so far this year. Who’s got the time when re-election campaigns start from Day One…?

Horrible.

 

Up next in the queue, 1940′s The Philadelphia Story, in which our hero hopes to learn that back in the day, rom-coms had a more believable romances and funnier jokes. 

Click here for an Index of my AFI Top 100 movie reviews.

Pacific Rim (2013)

August 14, 2013 Movie Review No comments

Pacific Rim poster at twitchfilm.com

“One, don’t you ever touch me again. Two, don’t you ever touch me again.” – Idris Elba as Stacker Pentecost

 

I was never a huge fan of the giant monster movies that played on TV when I was growing up. The few times I would happen upon one, surfing through the three or four channels we had back then, they just seemed cheesy. The creatures always looked exactly like what they were, some guy in a foam dinosaur suit, tearing up a knee-high, cardboard model of Tokyo. The actors may or may not have been fine; I was too young to care. The horrible dubbing of their voices, though, was distracting beyond words. Luckily, there was always a western on another channel that I could watch. More recently, I’ve not been very interested in the big-budget CGI summer action movies like Transformers. It’s probably my age showing, but the trailers for those films always seemed too big and loud an confusing to be enjoyable. Besides, who makes a film based on a cartoon based on a toy from over thirty years ago? I’m looking at you, Battleship. I have no aversion to visual effects per se (hell, my favorite movie of all time is Star Wars and I am a proud Prometheus defender), but I normally need a little more by way of character and plot to get me into the multiplex these days. It’s odd, then, that I was interested at all in seeing Guillermo del Toro‘s latest film, billed as a mashup of all those giant monster movies of the mid-twentieth century doing battle with giant, computer generated robots. But that’s exactly where I found myself on a recent Sunday afternoon.

To be completely fair, I wasn’t a hundred percent in my right mind. Just two weeks prior, I’d been diagnosed with large B-cell lymphoma and was set to start my first round of chemotherapy the next day. My wife and I decided to take in a matinee to get our minds off the monumental task before us. We wanted something light, but I wasn’t about to put more cash in Gore Verbinski‘s pocket* by seeing The Lone Ranger and I hadn’t seen Despicable Me, so its sequel was a non-starter. I knew I’d enjoyed del Toro’s Hellboy and had always planned to see Pan’s Labyrinth, so despite being a little trepidatious, I opted for the giant monster flick.

The story is a simple one. Giant, interdimensional monsters known as kaiju are emerging from the ocean to terrorize humanity. We respond by creating giant mechanized robots called jaegers that are controlled by two-person teams using a joined neural… Oh, never mind; nothing beyond that matters. It’s giant robots fighting giant monsters. To refer to the other plot points as cliches almost understates how shallow the plot really is. But this isn’t really a film about the subtle complexities of interpersonal relationships. It’s eye candy with just enough melodrama to keep things moving along. The actors involved do their best, but they’re hamstrung by the overly simplistic plot. There’s a love story between our main hero, Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) and rookie pilot Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) that reads like it was written by a twelve year-old girl. Idris Elba (AWESOME as Stringer Bell on The Wire) does a serviceable job as veteran pilot Stacker Pentecost. Really. Even del Toro’s favorite jaw, Ron Perlman, has a minor role as the improbably-named kaiju-organ recycler, Hannibal Chau. Cataloging every aspect of the movie that was cheesy or smirk-inducing would be a monumental task. There is, to be sure, much here that could be mocked or derided.

And yet, somehow, I loved damn near every minute of it. Initially, I compared it favorably to Star Wars, and I stand by that statement. It wasn’t nearly as large of a cultural touchstone to be sure, but what else ever will be? It had that same sense of adventure, of a scrappy crew taking on a much more powerful enemy. For as cheesy as some of the melodrama was, I did find myself caring about the characters more than I have with more serious dramas. And the visual effects were omnipresent but fit well, never overshadowing the plot, which is saying something. It was, in a word, fun.

When I started writing this, I wondered if the theme of using technology to fight evil, unsightly monsters bent on human destruction had some relevance to my current health situation. It would have been easy to see the kaiju as a stand-in for the existential threat that cancer is and mankind’s use of the jaegers to destroy them as a form of monster-fighting chemotherapy. In retrospect, though, I don’t find the analogy apt. For one, I don’t think  the writing here is deep or profound enough to warrant that level of introspection. Also, despite the fact that I try to jokingly insert the word “cancer” into nearly every conversation I have these days**, I don’t want to be the guy who eventually talks of nothing but blood counts, constipation, and all the other side effects of chemotherapy and radiation. I am more than my cancer diagnosis and I demand to not be treated like a walking corpse or PSA. With that in mind, I reject the very concept of this film as an anti-cancer, pro-technology, look-what-we-humans-are-capable-of allegory. To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a giant, ape-like, inter-dimensional monster is just a giant, ape-like inter-dimensional monster.

I missed out on seeing this in the theater a second time, so I’m really looking forward to the BlueRay, even more so now that we have the 55-inch LCD in the living room. I will be needing to buy a stereo with a subwoofer, though. A movie this large won’t be the same using a television’s tiny (and tinny) built-in speakers. I feel like my enjoyment was contingent on the overwhelming scale of the battles. If you’re looking for a solid science fiction film with good visual effects, I highly recommend checking it out. Just don’t expect high art or anything groundbreaking. For that, I think I need to finally check out Pan’s Labyrinth.

 

* Full disclosure, I loved The Mexican (review to come), which Verbinski also directed, but I haven’t been interested in a thing he’s done since the first Pirates of the Caribbean film back in 2003.

** Last week, after my tastebuds were getting back to normal, I actually said to a coworker, “Rod, I have cancer,” as a way to justify my taking of the last sprinkled doughnut out of a box one of our vendors had brought. I’m not proud of that maneuver, but damn it was effective.

AFI Top 100: The Sound of Music (1965)

July 14, 2013 AFI Top 100, Movie Review 2 comments

The fifth in a series reviewing the American Film Institute Top 100 in random order.

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“There’s nothing more irresistible to a man than a woman who’s in love with him.” – Eleanor Parker as Baroness Elsa Schrader

 

I’ve never quite understood the appeal of musicals. I think it stems from a desire to have a movie appear to be as realistic as possible, especially with regard to the interplay between the characters. Sure, Star Wars may be a work of science fiction where even the most basic laws of physics are ignored (I mean really, lightsabers? How do they work?), but at its heart, it’s the story of a boy who’s dissatisfied living in a small town and wants out. It’s easy enough to conjure up a memory of that time of my life when I wanted the same. It’s even easy to imagine wanting out so badly you’d follow some old codger you met in the desert on a damned fool’s mission. What is not easy to imagine, no matter how hard you try, is a person breaking into song in the middle of a conversation. Any conversation.

The sad part is, the story being told in here is a pretty interesting one, loosely based on an actual family. Capt. Von Trapp (Christopher Plummer), a former officer in the Austro-Hungarian Navy and a widower, hires a young governess, Maria (Julie Andrews), to care for his seven children. He’s a bitter old man who treats his kids like a group of conscripts. She’s a free spirit who can’t quite manage to fit in at the nunnery. They meet, quarrel over ultimately insignificant things, glare at each other, fall in love, she runs away and comes back, they get married, and are pursued by Nazis intent on having him serve in the burgeoning Third Reich. There’s lots of political tension, especially in the third act, the love story takes its time developing the way a real one would, and Herr Von Trapp is damned sexy, in a vaguely menacing kind of way.

And then they sing.

At all times, whether happy or sad, to each other during intimate moments and to large groups of strangers. Some of the singing is organic, like when Maria sings to the children at bedtime, or the family’s performance during Salzburg’s music festival. But by the time Rolfe (Daniel Truhitte) started singing to Leisl (Charmian Carr) about working up the courage to kiss her for the first time, I had checked out. And don’t get me started about the nuns. You know, the ones who make it a point to mention that singing is forbidden inside the nunnery? Yeah, they sing too. In the nunnery.

To its credit, this movie is beautiful to look at. It was filmed mostly on location in and around Salzburg and the architecture is gorgeous. The 45th Anniversary Blu-Ray is stunning to look at, though it does make it much easier to pick out which shots of the Alps were filmed there and which were done on a soundstage. If you can get past the musical numbers, and there are many to get through, it’s easy to see how this ended up in AFI’s Top 100. I just couldn’t, though. Every time I’d start getting invested in someone, the music would start, and I’d be jerked out of the narrative yet again.

In all, I’m glad I watched it, all two hours and fifty-four minutes of it, but I’m not in any rush to do so again any time soon. Not when Moneyball is playing on Encore thrice daily.

 

Up next in the queue, 1939′s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in which our hero gets all fillibustery.

Click here for an Index of my AFI Top 100 movie reviews.

AFI Top 100: Chinatown (1974)

July 12, 2013 AFI Top 100, Movie Review 2 comments

The fourth in a series reviewing the American Film Institute Top 100 in random order.

“Of course I’m respectable; I’m old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.” – John Huston as Noah Cross

 

One thing I struggle with as a film buff is separating the films I love from the personal lives of the artists involved in making them. Rationally, I like to think I can divorce the two. After all, I don’t care a whit about whether my grocer or mechanic are good people or not, so long as the tomatoes are fresh and my oil drain plug gets put back in. Shouldn’t I treat actors and directors with the same indifference? With film though, and music to a lesser extent, the personal lives of the artists have a greater impact on whether I’m going to like their output or not. No matter how much I enjoy The Beaver (a movie EVERYONE should see at least once), I can’t quite look at Mel Gibson without seeing a raving ant-Semite. Mark Wahlberg, awesome though he is in The Departed, will always be the guy who beat a man unconscious and permanently blind while yelling racial epithets. As bad as they are, Roman Polanski manages to put both of those two reprobates to shame. If you’ve never had a chance to read the court documents associated with the case, they are not for the squeamish. If someone you know has ever tried to defend him by referring to the crime he committed as, “just sex with an underage girl,” that person is lying to you. Polanski is, by any reasonable measure, a monster. When I saw that I’d be watching one of his films as part of this project, I wondered if I’d be able to separate the artist from his art. I was pleasantly surprised that about twenty minutes into this film, I’d stopped worrying about Polanski’s crimes altogether. This is a supremely engrossing film.

Essentially, it’s a classic film noir, complete with the hard-boiled private investigator (Jack Nicholson, before he made a habit of playing a caricature of himself), a truly seductive femme fatale (Faye Dunaway) for whom lying seems more natural than telling the truth, and a villain so morally bankrupt, he makes the director’s transgressions seem innocuous by comparison. There are double-crosses around every turn, dirty cops, corrupt politicians… This film has it all. The plot is a little convoluted, as it will be in any good noir, though I never felt like important facts were being deliberately kept from me. The story is just told from Nicholson’s point of view, so we’re left to find out things at the same time he does. Compared to The Maltese Falcon, it’s not quite as funny, though Nicholson does get to deliver a few zingers here and there. It’s also not nearly as subdued, though that could result from being filmed in color and set in Los Angeles. Another thing of note was the costume design, just spectacular, with 1930s-era suits abounding. Someday, I’ll own a pair of walnut and cream spectators like Nicholson wore in this film. They are the very definition of cool.

I’m a firm believer in the auteur theory of film, which basically holds that the director is the author of the film, that it is his or her creative vision that gives the film its final shape. As such, the success of this film, its mood, its pacing, the score, the excellent performances by those involved (even Burt Young, in a small but revealing role), all reflect back on Polanski’s direction. I’d call it an unqualified success, and absolutely deserving of its eleven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. It’s saying something that I can now recommend a film made by a man I find so morally loathsome.

Recently, there’s been some debate over the movie adaptation of Orson Scott Card‘s sci-fi classic Ender’s Game. This is a literary touchstone for many fans of science fiction and fantasy writing, though one I managed to miss out on, even though I was 15 the year it was published and it was aimed at my demographic. The problem isn’t with the questionable morality and resulting violence displayed in the book, though. Rather, it’s the author’s support, both financial and rhetorical, of numerous anti-equality groups and measures around the country. In the lead-up to the Supreme Court’s rulings on DOMA and Proposition 8, Card was a vocal opponent of equality for gays. In response, gay rights advocacy group Geeks OUT! called for a boycott of the film. It isn’t scheduled for release until this November, so I don’t know yet whether it will be a success or not. If it isn’t, though, it will be hard to argue that the original work’s author had something to do with it. Card is most likely a homophobe, certainly a bigot, and has somehow managed to play the victim when his team lost the marriage equality battle. Does knowing that he is, by most accounts, the douchiest of douchebags take away from the quality of his work? I used to think yes, but considering I was able to get a lot out of Polanski’s Chinatown, today I’d be inclined to judge Ender’s Game on its own merits.

 

Up next in the queue, 1965′s The Sound of Music, in which our hero ponders the presence of Nazis in musicals.

Click here for an Index of my AFI Top 100 movie reviews.

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