Sin City: A Dame to Kill For - Review

DIRECTED BY: Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller
WRITTEN BY: Frank Miller
STARRING: Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Josh Brolin, Joesph Gordon-Levitt, Rosario Dawson, Bruce Willis, Eva Green, Powers Boothe, Dennis Haysbert, Ray Liota, Jamie King, Christopher Lloyd, Jamie Chung, Jeremy Piven, Christopher Meloni, Juno Temple

*SPOILERS AHOY!*

I don't know what it is exactly, but there's something I find kind of endearing about Frank Miller and his...Frank Millerness. Who really knows what caused him to topple off the deep end like he did. I think some people think it was 9/11, though I'm partial to the idea that maybe it was something that was there all along and just manifested itself recently. Whatever the case may be, Frank Miller has become this sort of poster child for that time around the 90's where pretty much everything in comics had to be dark, gritty, and bursting at the seams with musclebound machismo. It's something I think a lot of comics fans are content to forget, or at least put firmly behind them. Frank Miller, on the other hand, represents the remaining vestiges of that dark age of comics still grasping for a serious audience. His comics seem to be stuck in this endless loop of repeating themselves to the point where I honestly can't tell if his work is meant to be taken seriously or as satire.

For all the crap I give Frank Miller, though, I did genuinely enjoy the first Sin City. Not for the story, mind you, mostly because of its unique style and sense of atmosphere that came from shooting it almost entirely on green screen and making it black and white in post. Because of this, it really did feel like the first time a comic was brought literally straight from the page and to the screen and then put into motion, and co-director Robert Rodriguez has said that this was his intention from the very beginning. A Dame to Kill For looks just about the same as the first one, with seemingly little improvement on the technology even ten years later. It might not be using its color splashes as sparingly or effectively as before, but for the most part we get more of Miller's iconic high contrast visuals. It doesn't look bad, mind you, and it does look really good from time to time, but it does feel like more of the same, and in more ways than just the visuals.

Though there isn't a bookend story like the first one, we do get a brief opening that introduces us (or rather re-introduces us) to everyone's favorite square-jawed, scar-riddled psychopath Marv, played by Mickey Rourke in all his musclebound glory. Again, like the first one, the meat of the narrative is made up of three separate but vaguely connected stories that take us into the seedy underbelly of Basin City. The first of these stories focuses on Dwight (here noticeably NOT played by Clive Owen) as he gets embroiled in a power play scheme centered on an estranged but seductive former lover. The second story has a cocky gambler (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) getting in trouble with the wrong people on the wrong night, all the while harboring a dark secret that makes him a target to someone very powerful. The final story centers on Nancy, four years after the end of story in the first film, still mourning for John Hartigan (appearing briefly as a ghost so Bruce Willis can collect his check) and struggling with her desires for bloody satisfaction against the man responsible for his death.

While watching the movie I just kind of went with this setup and didn't think much of it, but after leaving the theater and thinking about it for a while I got confused as to how exactly the timeline here is supposed to work. From what I understand, most of this is actually a prequel to the events of the first film, seeing as Marv is, you know, still alive. Problem is one of the sequences takes place nearly four years after the events of one of the first film's stories, and Marv plays a prominent role in it. If that's true, does that mean that the stories of the first movie take place years apart? Two of the stories here are made entirely for the film and aren't based on any of the existing Sin City comics, so we can't really use the framework of those to judge how time works here. Bah, who cares!? Any excuse to have Rourke chew the scenery a bit more, even if his presence in most of the stories is completely shoehorned, is fine for me as long as it gets us away from the less interesting characters.

In a way that's kind of endemic of another problem the film has. A lot of attention paid to what are probably Miller and Rodriguez's favorite characters (i.e. Marv and Nancy) and not enough to the new or supporting ones. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character, especially, gets the shaft in this regard. While his introduction is interesting and gets us invested in his story, the rest of his time on screen is repetitious and ends with an unsatisfying whimper that leaves the audience wanting more, and not in the good way, either. We have cameos from famous actors all over the place, but they're really not given all that much room to shine. With the first film it really did feel like an ensemble cast, and while you may have found one character more interesting than the others, attention was divided up fairly evenly as far as their overall importance. Here its just all so disjointed and unfocused, like Miller and Rodriguez just had a bunch of really cool ideas and just slapped them together into a vague story-shaped package.

However much I wish anthology movies were more of a "thing", watching this its easy to see how building your movie around separated stories can royally screw with your film's structure. Say what you will about the original, but at least that had a measure of cohesiveness and uniformity in its quality. Each story not only told its own story, but each one in turn gave us a broader, singular look at the world in which it took place. With Dame to Kill For, we spend most of the stories revisiting characters and locations we saw in the first one. Motivations fall squarely in the categories of either revenge or sex (or revenge and sex). Lots of people die in stylish ways, A character shoots a character and...that's it, roll credits. The ending is so abrupt and jarring that it left me feeling hollow and unfulfilled, like there was more to it but they decided to cut it out at the last minute. It's not like I'm looking for a deep, meaningful conclusion or whatever, but really, would a bit of a denouement be too much to ask for? The most fulfilling of the three stories is the title one, and while that one actually does have an ending, it also ends about halfway in and has little bearing on the rest of the stories after the fact.

If anything what probably kills this movie more than its weak story and flat characters is that, like Miller himself, it feels like a creature of its era, temporally out of place, appealing chiefly to teenage boys who like sneaking into R rated movies to see Eva Green strut around naked. Maybe if this movie came out five or six years ago there would have still been an audience for it, but audience tastes have changed over the past ten years. Good on Rodriguez for pursuing his passion projects, but again, like Miller, his inability to branch out from his usual schtick is causing his work to become stale, almost to the point of self parody. Its not like there's nothing to enjoy here if you're the right audience for it, there were flashes here and there of enjoyable madness here and there that kept my interest. For the most part, though, the good stuff in this movie just made me want to go back and watch the original instead. With how meager its box office is, I doubt we can expect any more stories of grit and noir from the world of Basin City, though that may be for the best. Better to leave the good memories of the original intact than drive them further into the ground. Some franchises still haven't gotten that message yet.

The Giver - Review

DIRECTED BY: Phillip Noyce
WRITTEN BY: Michael Mitnick, Robert B. Weide
STARRING: Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Brenton Thwaites, Alexander Skarsgard, Odeya Rush, Katie Holmes, Taylor Swift, Cameron Monaghan

WARNING: Spoilers for both movie and book ahead.

Adaptation is a tricky business, especially when it comes to translating a book into a film. I've never understood why people get so up in arms when changes are made between one medium and another, at least not inherently. Film is a fundamentally different medium than prose fiction, so at least structurally changes are pretty much inevitable and necessary. I think a movie's prerogative is to be a good movie first, and a faithful adaptation second. Hell, some of the most famous book-to-movie adaptations bear almost no resemblance to the source material. As long as the film stays true to the spirit and themes of the work it's based on, cutting or altering the plot in order to fit the dramatic needs of the story is acceptable.

The Giver doesn't do that.

In the far future, following some sort of unspecified catastrophe, humanity rebuilds itself into a collection of isolated settlements known as "communities". Here differences and individuality are all but forbidden, emotion is next to nonexistent, but the lack of passion also means no conflict, strife, or disagreement. On the day of his graduation, when all the other kids his age are assigned regular jobs, Jonas (Thwaites) is singled out to be the next "receiver of memory". According to the elderss, this is because he has the intuition and latent capacity to "see beyond", which allows him to do just as the title implies: to be the receptacle for the remnants of the memories and emotions of the old world the rest of the populace has left behind. Why does this position exist? Supposedly the purpose of the receiver is to act as an adviser for the elders, to offer guidance in matters they can't and won't understand.The only requirements of his training are that must attend regular sessions with the previous receiver of memory in order to...well...receive. As time goes by, he discovers that the truth about the communities is far darker than he ever realized.

Superficially, that's pretty much the plot of the book. As far as story goes, The Giver is actually fairly lean in terms of plot, but there's more than enough there to fill out solid run-time. Problem is, that material doesn't fit today's accepted framework of "young adult dystopia fiction". Instead of using what's there, the filmmaker's decide to fill out the short run time of the movie with all the hallmarks of a Hunger Games ripoff. You know what this intimate, emotional parable on the human condition needs? Chase sequences, yeah, and maybe a tacked on romance sub-plot to raise the stakes. Oh shit, we didn't spend enough time hammering in that the communities are bad and emotions are good, lets have Jeff Bridges read that essay I wrote in middle school about the themes of the book to the bad guy so that the audience won't be too confused.

The long and short of it is that The Giver just isn't suited for the big budget treatment. While the film looks nice its production design resembles too many other YA dystopia movies to stand out. The film needed to be slow, it needed to build its setting and rules gradually to draw the audience in, not drop info-dump narration right out the gate. The growth of the characters needed to be organic, rooted in the interactions they have with each other rather than just being informed. No, using stock footage montage isn't effective on its own isn't going to inspire awe and wonder in your audience. I'm glad they stuck with the black-and-white to color thing, but the fact that they play the "monochrome isn't normal" thing within the first couple minutes, it kind of defeats the purpose. The reveal that the people couldn't see color was one of the best "oh shit" moments of the book, and it's just another example of wasted opportunity on the part of the filmmakers. All it accomplishes is to make the audience feel like their being bludgeoned over the head repeatedly with a message. Any depth and subtly in the book is thrown out the window. The filmmakers didn't trust their audience to be able to infer meaning on their own.

In the book, the dystopian nature of the community reveals itself slowly over the course of the narrative. Here we have a villain in the form of Meryl Streep's Chief Elder, who didn't exist in the book (and for good reason). Some might say that this change is necessary to make an otherwise "boring" story more dramatic and suited for general audiences by giving us a singular antagonist to focus on. What the writers and/or producers didn't seem to realize is that lack of a singular antagonistic force was what made the notion of these communities as scary as it is. It's not that anybody is outright malicious, they just don't seem to know any better, and that's horrifying. The fact that its society as a whole that is responsible for the things that happen forces the reader to question accepted ethics in their own society. Instead of that, here we have a clear villain who's outright manipulating people to act against our hero. Its clear that she's phoning it in too. I'm not really on the Meryl Streep hype train like some people are, but she's more than capable of pulling off better performances with much worse.

Thwaites as Jonas does alright with what he's given, though as many have pointed out he's clearly far too old for the role. I suppose maybe it has to do with the fact that it makes the references to his growing sexuality a little easier on the palette for general audiences, but the parallels to puberty the book had kind of get lost when the lead actor is obviously in his early twenties. He does have a wide-eyed cheerful eagerness he has that makes him endearing, but the fact that it carries throughout the film from start to finish makes it hard for be to connect with whatever arc he may be having. His romance with Fiona (Rush) has the unfortunate distinction of being both forced and very clearly telegraphed from the start. A side character in the book, Fiona is here just a token female friend/love interest who exists solely to be saved by Jonas, nothing more.

Taylor Swift makes a brief cameo, surprisingly enough. Honestly, I didn't realize it was her at first, which was a good because stunt casting celebrities usually just takes me out of a story. It seems odd to give her top billing when she's barely in the movie, but I guess the studio needed that extra draw to bring in that teen demographic. Of the main actors, the clear standout here is Jeff Bridges as the Giver. Though the script doesn't give him a lot to work with, every moment he's onscreen you can get a clear sense of the weight of the knowledge he bears. You can feel the profound loneliness that comes with being the only person who is capable of true human emotion. I know that Bridges has been trying to get this film made for a long, long time, and its sad that after nearly twenty years this is what ends up being the result.

The only reason it probably got made at all was to capitalize on this weirdly specific "dystopian teen-lit" trend that's going on right now. I suppose its heart is in the right place, I almost feel as though these movies reflect a growing sense of social consciousness in young people towards oppression and a growing desire for action against repressive regimes. Problem is, it also reflects the tendency for surface level examination of social issues that don't really delve into the reasons why, only that these institutions are bad and need to be torn down. I wonder if the movie's target audience even realizes the irony that for all the talk about freedom and individuality these films are pretty much locked in a cycle of mediocre imitation and shameless bandwagoning. What, with it upping the main characters age and adding action and special effects its clear its just fishing for a piece of that Hunger Games pie, and judging by its box office earnings, its clear the "target demo" isn't biting.

I Just Watched - Wolf Children (2012)

DIRECTED BY: Mamoru Hosoda
WRITTEN BY: Mamoru Hosoda, Sakoto Okudera
STARRING: Colleen Clickenbeard, David Matranga, Jad Saxton, Michah Solusod, Lara Woodhall, Alison Viktorin

Recently I came across this really great YouTube channel called "Every Frame a Painting". There aren't a lot of videos there yet, but what is there does a great job in breaking down specific visual mechanics in films in a way that's easy to digest and understand. I'd recommend checking it out if you're interested in filmmaking, even just a little bit.

One video that particularly caught my eye was this one which focuses on the potential uses and drawbacks of lateral panning. Its chief example: the animated film Wolf Children by Mamoru Hosoda.

Having not seen this movie before, I thought I'd track it down and maybe give it a watch.

I'm certainly glad I did.

I've been a big fan of Hosoda longer before I even knew who Hosoda was. His movies really aren't that well known outside of anime fan circles, but for fans of Digimon (yes, I know you're out there) he played a big role in the creation of the original series. He even directed a couple of the Digimon movies (namely the first and second ones). Now those movies never did get a proper english release, instead they were chopped down and and shipped mangled to America as the first two thirds of what was called "The Digimon Movie". For many a budding anime fan that mangled cut was the first glimpse they had of Mr. Hosoda's work, and even in that state you can really get a sense of his unique style shining through.

After directing a spinoff film for the series One Piece and turning leaving a gig directing Howl's Moving Castle for Studio Ghibli, Hosada began working with Madhouse, one of the most respected animation houses in Japan. That start of that collaboration, along with his collaboration with screenwriter Sakoto Okudera, was the point where his work really started to shine. Films like The Girl Who Lept Through Time and Summer Wars brought him both critical acclaim as well as wider international recognition. People were hailing him as the next Miyazaki (though any reasonably talented Japanese anime feature director with pretty visuals seems to get this title). In 2012 he released Okami Kodomo no Ame to Yuki, his third film with Madhouse, whose name translates in English to "Wolf Children Ame and Yuki". This time he also decided to form his own studio to co-produce the film: Studio Chizu. The year after its release, Funimation released an English language dub for the film and shortened the original title to simply Wolf Children (because western audiences don't seem to share Japan's taste in overly long descriptive titles).

On paper the story sounds pretty straightforward (and maybe a little cliche at first). Hana is a beleaguered but upbeat college student living alone paycheck to paycheck. One day she meets an aloof, brooding man in one of her classes and immediately takes an interest to him. Like many an anime romance, the two fall in love, and begin seeing each other more and more. One night, the man reveals to her his true nature: that he's the last in a line of people who can transform to a wolf at will. The two live happily for a time, and eventually have two children. Their first is a daughter, Yuki, and the second a son, Ame. Their happiness is short lived, though, as one day the father leaves and is found in wolf form dead in a river. After this extended prologue, the rest of the film centers on Hana's efforts to try and raise her children on her own, but she finds that raising children who can turn into wolves presents its own sets of...unique challenges. We follow their lives over the next ten years and as time goes by we see Hana and her two children grow and change, both literally and figuratively, right in front of our eyes.

Hosoda's films always seem to be stories that center around notions of family, both the ones the characters are born with as well as the ones they make for themselves. You can see this as early as his work on Digimon. While there's always a "leader" of the group, its through the efforts of the group and the pooling of their individual talents that things get done and the day is saved. That's especially true with Summer Wars (which is basically a remake of his second Digimon movie after all). In the case of The Girl Who Lept Through Time, the main character loses a lot by being selfish and acting in her own self interest. It's a particularly Japanese thing, I think, the way they focus on community and unity. It's presented in a way that's strongly idealistic, and sometimes verges on being overly sentimental. That sentimentality, though, is often so central to what I think makes his films resonate so much with audiences. Over and over in his work he uses summer vacation as a shorthand for good times and being together with friends and family, it's something a lot of kids and young adults can relate to. The bitter-sweetness comes with the realization that summer doesn't last forever, eventually people do grow apart and go their own ways. While that motif isn't used in specifically in Wolf Children, these themes are still as present as ever. If anything, the fact that it uses the broader canvas of early childhood and motherhood to paint its story gives it a much greater capability of exploring not just the impending separation, but why that separation occurs.

I've heard a lot of people say that on a visually Hosoda's films look very similar to Studio Ghibli's, specifically those of Hayao Miyazaki. Other than the fact that both director's films look gorgeous and have highly detailed backgrounds, I don't think there's as much a similarity as people seem to think there is. For one, there's much less emphasis on character detail than there is in a Miyazaki film. Between any one scene the level of intricacy a character is drawn can shift drastically. If you look at the scene used in the video above, the characters are little more than solidly colored, almost featureless outlines. Even within the same scene the level of detail can shift and change just like the children themselves. It's almost as if staying on model is more of a suggestion to Hosoda than a strict rule. In a way I can see why some people have a problem with it, but at the same time I feel like this style of his allows the animators to really be expressive through the motion of the characters.

It's also worth noting that this movie integrates a lot of computer animation into its visual make-up (which is another thing you won't find much of in a Ghibli film). While there are the usual things its used for like animating crowds and hard to draw moving vehicles, it's most powerful use tends to be when its used for environments. All throughout the film there are moments where CG landscapes that are textured with hand-painted images. In a movie where the freedom and speed of wolves needs to be communicated for the themes and emotional core to really resonate, the usage of CG environments allows the camera to fly, dodge, and zoom into and out of the landscape, giving us a wolf's eye view of movement. One of my favorite scenes is when Hana, Ame and Yumi encounter snow for the first time, and there that effect is in full swing.

Its all so corny, but even then despite myself I can't help but smile and laugh at all these happy little moments peppered throughout the film. I think a part of that might be because Wolf Children tempers these happy moments with a real undercurrent of sadness and loneliness. As with summer, those moments are made all the happier and precious with the knowledge that they're all so transient and fleeting. Because of the unique circumstances of her children, Hana doesn't feel she can relate or interact with any one else for fear of revealing her kids' secret. Even before she's saddled with being a single mom, before she even meets her dearly beloved, it doesn't seem as though Hana has any real friends or family to speak of. For a while, her children are her one true source of happiness in her life because she already lost the first person she loved. Its only when she becomes acquainted with her neighbors in her new country home that her circle of friends begins to grow. Once Ame and Yuki are sent off to school and distance themselves from their mother, their own sense of loneliness and alienation begins to grow within them as well. All three of them start to become their own people, but at the same time that forces them to drift apart when their wants and needs don't align like they used to. It's through this that I think the movie delivers its best emotional moments. If you want to see where that leads you'll have to see the movie for yourself.

Guardians of the Galaxy - Review

DIRECTED BY: James Gunn
WRITTEN BY: James Gunn, Nicole Perlman
STARRING: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Lee Pace, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Djimon Honsou, John C. Reilly, Glen Close, Benicio Del Toro

You know, to be honest, I think I'm kind of getting bored of Marvel movies. Oh no, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy thoroughly. Definitely one of the best blockbusters of the summer. Funny, quotable, nice to look at, and full of all the charm and colorful characters I've come to expect from the studio. If anything, "Guardians" bucks a number of the issues I have with past Marvel movies in that its not locked into just being continuity porn hung on a skeleton plot. It's not that continuity can't be a good, or even a great thing. In the grand scheme of things, Marvel's push for more continuity driven storytelling is in many ways unprecedented in the history of film-making. The cost of that, though, is that it feels like the individual film is becoming less and less the focus, and that as long as it fits in the grand Marvel plan it doesn't have to stand on its own two feet. Though it's story is well worn and falls squarely within the Marvel formula, as its own thing Guardians of the Galaxy still stands tall as one of the best entries in the franchise.

First off, can I just say how glad I am that blockbusters are aloud to be fun and colorful again. What with Pacific Rim and this leading the way, we might finally be entering a time where blockbusters don't have to be dark and grim to get an proper audience. We're able to have rowdy space pirates, multicolor skinned alien people, space markets made out of the severed heads of celestial beings. This is a universe where we can have talk about a peace treaty between Xandarians and Kree and not have it sound absolutely ridiculous. If all of this sounds like it requires a metric fuck-ton of tedious world building to get everything off the ground you'd be wrong. Outside of a few instances of quick exposition, we're introduced to this world largely by experiencing it. By rooting itself in a familiar story, the wild and weird world(s) this film has to offer can let loose and have fun with itself, stretch its wings a little and go crazy with it all.

Ultimately the film focuses chiefly on its most valuable asset, the characters, and man are these characters great. They all fall into broad character archetypes for the most part, but with the level of sheer force of personality and wit pretty much the whole cast it never feels forced or phoned in, even from the characters that don't quite work as well. With this and The Lego Movie, Chris Pratt's high-flying ride to Hollywood stardom is now complete (and well deserved). Just seeing how much he got in shape for the role of Peter Quill just goes to show just how much effort he put into this role, and it shows. Dave Bautista's performance is stiff and blunt to the a fault...and that's absolutely perfect for his character. The literal-minded Drax the Destroyer has some of the funniest moments in the film, and surprising some of its more poignant moments as well. His backstory is pretty usual as far as revenge seekers go, but there's a kind of innocent single-mindedness to him that makes him really endearing when it counts.

Of the main five I think only Zoe Saldana as Gamora is the only one that kind of falls short, though through no fault of her own. Marvel, can you please have an woman in your movies whose arc doesn't revolve around being a potential love interest to our main hero? At least with Black Widow they left it ambiguous, but when that's the best you can do you might need to rethink how you approach your female characters. I mean for fuck's sake, you've got a gun-toting talking raccoon as one of your breakout characters, a three-dimensional character with breasts shouldn't be that much of a challenge.

Of the supporting cast, there were two real standouts, the first being Benicio Del Toro as the enigmatic "Collector", who we already saw briefly at the end of Thor: The Dark World. As his name suggests, his whole thing is that he has this vast assortment of creatures and artifacts from all across the universe for reasons that aren't entirely clear beyond just for the sake of, well, collecting them. Honestly, though, I'm surprised at just how little screen time he actually got. His ham-tacular performance is mostly reduced to being a vehicle for a bit of expository dialogue. With the way he was built up, I thought he'd be a little more...I don't know, important. I mean we're only just now seeing the cosmic side of the marvel universe open up, so I doubt this is the last we'll see him, but his gonzo performance was one of the things I was really looking forward to going into this movie. Oh well, gotta give us a reason to pay and see the next one, right?

The other major standout supporting character for me was Michael Rooker as Yondu, captain of the pirate-like ravagers who abducted Peter Quill as a child. Looking back over his filmography, it looks like he's a bit of a regular in James Gunn films, and it shows. He gels so much with the style this film is going for and I wish he got more screentime just so he could mug for the camera some more. It's like every single pose of his face could have been ripped straight from the panels of a comic book. His character has this strange back and forth kill him/don't kill him relationship with our intrepid hero, though what that exactly is isn't really made clear. He looks cool, though, and hey, his whistle controlled arrow-dart-thing is one of the coolest movie weapons I've seen in ages.

When it comes to the rest of the characters, though, can I just ask one thing: why is it so hard for Marvel to make interesting villains? Villains OTHER than Loki that is. It's not like Ronan isn't...intimidating or anything, but he makes a whole lot of noise about vengeance and power but never reveals a motivation deeper than that he's a "fanatic" who I guess doesn't like the peace treaty his people signed with the Xandarians. He's not as bland as that dark elf guy I can't remember the name of from Thor: The Dark World (Malakite or something?) but he's a far cry from the better villains the Marvel universe has to offer. Nebula could at least chalk up a bit of her character to jealously, but she wasn't onscreen enough for her motivation to be anything other than surface level. As such, her confrontation with Gamora hinted in the trailer doesn't feel tense or emotionally charged in the slightest. We get a glimpse of Thanos, that guy from the stinger in the Avengers, but while intimidating the fact that all his associates seem to have chronic betrayal syndrome makes me seriously question his leadership abilities.

On the visual end of things, you can kind of tell that James Gunn is kind of new at this whole "action blockbuster" thing. While the action is certainly serviceable, even pretty good at points, none if it ever really stuck out in my mind as particularly memorable outside of a couple humorous moments. The close up hand to hand combat, especially, seemed a bit clumsy and lacking in the rhythm and visceral feel that Winter Soldier had (which is odd considering that movie had first time action directors too). Its a shame too because otherwise the cinematography is really solid. Also, I get that they're blockbusters and they've gotta spend their special effects budget on something, but do we really have to do the same CGI dogfights and casual slaughter as our final action set piece? When the "Guardians" as a group are doing things its fun and interesting, but watching the rest of the cast fly around and make...spaceship nets, it just made it feel like the climax was being drawn out way longer than it needed to be.

Speaking of climax, for a movie that spent most of its runtime being so irreverent and tongue-in-cheek about...well, pretty much everything, trying to convince me that I should be invested in the emotional stakes of the final battle is a bit of a stretch. They're fun characters, but having those emotional story beats at the end when the audience isn't primed for them really does kind of make the fact that the story is formulated to a fault all the more apparent. The movie is full of heart and a rowdy sense of fun and adventure, but that clashes sometimes with attempts at weightier drama it tries to inject towards the end. It's almost like its trying to be a film its not. It's not that these moments aren't well executed in their own right, but when put against the movie as a whole they really just don't fit all that well.

Maybe I'm just being too hard on it. Does it fall into some of the usual pitfalls of Marvel films, yeah, but on the whole genuinely does genuinely feel like the breath of fresh air this franchise needed. If anything, this'll encourage marvel to pursue its other obscure properties so we're not just subjected to the same superheroes again and again every single year. Time will tell whether Marvel is able to continually re-invent itself as it needs to, I mean they can't keep this up forever. Certainly the tension between the needs of the franchise and the needs of the individual artists is fairly evident (Edgar Wright anyone?) If this is any indication, though, its proof that there is at least room for some voice in the corporate machine. Avengers 2 and beyond is where the real test will come, and with D.C. stepping up with their own behemoth continuity machine, there isn't any room for error it seems.

Lucy - Review

DIRECTOR: Luc Besson
WRITER: Luc Besson
STARRING: Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Amr Waked, Choi Min-sik

Pretension is a word that gets thrown around a lot when it comes to movies. More often than not it just feels like a cheap, easy way to dismiss films that are ambitious and tackle really big ideas. Depending on their budget they may also have lots and lots of neat special effects to show the audience all the computer generated wonders of the universe. Personally I've never really been a fan of the word, mostly because pretension is usually such a vague and subjective measure. In this case, though, I can't think of a better word to describe Lucy, a movie that tries so hard to be "about" something but fails miserably at doing it, other than pretentious. Want to stop and develop our characters? *pfft* No time for that! Instead lets inter-cut some footage of animals, because get it, humans are animals. Symbolism, right? Oh no, we've run out of animal stock footage twenty minutes in, now what do we do!? Quick, lets throw some more special effects and mediocre gunfights at the audience, maybe they won't notice!

The film wastes little time getting to its story. Lucy is an American studying in Taipei who gets tricked into doing a delivery for her shady boyfriend (who she's only been with for one week). This ends up involving her with a violent gang of Taiwanese mobsters (who speak Korean for some reason) who force her to participate in a drug mule scheme for the new synthetic drug she just delivered. When her captors accidentally rupture the bag of drugs stored inside of her, instead of killing her via overdose it ends up giving her super-powers via unlocking the untapped potential of her brain. After that its a race against time to deliver the knowledge in her brain to Morgan Freeman because...reasons I guess.

Speaking of Morgan Freeman, his character (who I can't even remember the name of) seems to exist only for two reasons: to deliver exposition and to be amazed at stuff. That seems to be a running theme with Morgan Freeman's characters in recent years, like the studios are just renting his voice to spice up their exposition whether he's actually good for the role or not. Don't get me wrong, tries his darnedest to make what he says sound remotely convincing, but not even his silky smooth voice can make this movies script sound anything less than ridiculous. What he says doesn't mean anything anyways. Everything he has to say is already known by Lucy by the point she even knows he exists. Every opportunity we have to discover for ourselves what's happening to Lucy is undermined by these really awkward cutaways to Dr. Freeman's lecture to a bunch of scientist folk (or us, depending on how you view it) where he basically tells us exactly what's going on at any given time. It ruins any kind of natural suspense the movie could have had. It doesn't help that the movie basically calls out explicitly that he's pulling pretty much everything he says out of his ass.

By around the 30 minute mark, it becomes pretty clear that our protagonist is pretty much indestructible, so whatever tension there might have been goes straight out the window. You'd think Scarlett Johansson literally becoming God for an hour would be more entertaining, but after the first few tricks it's clear all she's going to do are a few tricks like flinging people around  and typing really really fast, maybe give the vfx guys an excuse to splash a few special effects at the screen. Considering all the power she supposedly has, you'd think some of the action sequences might be a bit more...creative. Instead, we mostly just get some mediocre, stake-less gun fights and car chases. The movie has such a (thankfully) short runtime that I spent most of it checking off neat moments from the trailer, and yes all the cool stuff was in the trailer. Mind you, that's not a knock on the trailer, its just that there's just so little good stuff that there really wasn't much they could advertise.

Bottom line is that because there's no threat of harm, there's very little reason for the audience to be interested in what happens. It's a similar to the problem the Matrix sequels had: how do you make a character that's far more powerful than any other character interesting when nothing can really hurt them. There are only a few ways I can think of to go about it. The story can either:

a) Make their opponent(s) powerful enough to match them - the old shonen route.

No such luck here. Our Korean speaking Taiwanese gangsters are little more than a nuisance to our heroine, though they do randomly kill people every now and again just to let you know that they're still the bad guys.

b) Have an interesting supporting cast that we can invest our interest in.

Nope.

or c) Make our heroes stakes something that isn't necessarily tied to external conflict

Now the third one here is where Lucy at least makes an attempt at deriving conflict, though to call it an attempt might be a bit generous. Because Lucy is rapidly becoming more and more powerful, and her knowledge more and more vast, she feels she is losing the parts of herself that make her human. Her out of the blue romance with a french policeman is justified in that she's looking for a reminder of her humanity or something. I guess knowing a guy for a couple hours is enough time for nigh-omnipotent beings to fall in love or something. Other than catching the other drug mules, the french policeman (whose name I didn't forget, they just didn't give him one) is a completely pointless character who, like Dr. Freeman, does nothing but cue the audience on when they should be amazed at all the neat shit Lucy does.

In one of the film's better scenes, Lucy breaks into an hospital and nonchalantly kills one of the patients (after all, she says, she knows he's going to die anyways). This is so that the doctor operating on the guy can cut her open and remove the bag of drugs from inside of her. While this is going on, she borrows someones cellphone and calls her mom seemingly out of the blue (all of this while the doctor cuts her open). Through her tears she tells her about how she can remember things from her life she shouldn't even be able to remember, and feel things she's never felt before. This goes on for a while, and eventually she ends the call by telling her mother that she's going to die and she loves her very much. Now initially I thought when she said she was dying that she literally meant that she was dying (which she was...I think) but thinking back there might be another layer to it. As she gains more and more use of her "brain's capacity" her capacity for human empathy slowly disappears. She's losing what makes her her, so in that way she does kind of die. After that scene Lucy pretty much becomes an emotionless blank slate for the rest of the film. It could have been really chilling if the reaction from her mom hadn't been so hilariously clueless.

As it is, Lucy seems content more so with just seeming smart rather than actually being smart. Moments like the hospital scene show the kind potential this concept has, but Besson seems content to squander all that on portentous tracts on "human potential" and pseudo-scientific techno-babble.  Any chance for intelligent subtext is replaced with a surface layer lecture and fake science, brokering no ambiguity and leaving the audience with little to think about once they leave the theater. In fact, I'm not even entirely convinced this isn't some sort of elaborate parody of "pretentious" movies. Its great that movies like this and Maleficent have female protagonists are doing well, but when are writers going to realize that a powerful character doesn't equal a strong character.

So what did you all think? Leave a comment below with your thoughts.

Begin Again - Review

DIRECTED BY: John Carney
WRITTEN BY: John Carney
STARRING: Kiera Knightly, Mark Ruffalo, Adam Levine, Hailee Steinfeld, James Corden

When it comes to movies about artists, I always seem to go into them with a bit of trepidation. Considering they're, you know, made by artists, they have a slight tendency to...I guess romanticize things a little bit. I mean, write what you know, sure, but financially well-off, attractive white people trying to find themselves for an hour and a half can only work for me so many times for me. This particular movie is written and directed by John Carney, whose movie Once was a big hit amongst critics and musician types alike.

The story centers on two people: down on his luck music producer Dan (Ruffalo), and recently heartbroken singer-songwriter Gretta (Knightly). Dan's been booted from the label he co-founded, partially because of his clashing with the direction the label is going, and partially because of his own self-destructive behavior following his separation from his wife. Greta, on the other hand, has had the world she's lived with for the past five years ripped from under her when her boyfriend cheats on her after he hits it big with a major record label. When Dan hears Gretta play in a bar one night, he's so inspired by her that he resolves that he HAS to produce and album for her. The rest of the movie follows their trials and misadventures as they gather their friends together to build their passion into something great despite whatever "the man" tells them.

I went into this movie not knowing anything about what it was about, and all things considered I came away pleasantly surprised. It was sweet when it needed to be, but overall felt more grounded than the initial premise might suggest. Even with a story that lends itself to the occasional cliche and contrivance (really, do we need to see the same "separated father reconnects with his estranged daughter" story again?) it manages to keep interest through really solid performances from the well rounded cast. As it is, its content to stick mostly with what's comfortable, which I guess is fine. If anything I get the feeling that the overarching story here is mostly just meant to be a vehicle for the smaller moments and loosely connected individual scene.

On a technical level its certainly a step up from Once. While Once was filmed almost like a documentary, Begin Again is filmed in a way that's far more like your standard indie film. Its New York, you've seen it a million times on film, but despite the familiar setting it uses a lot of vibrant colors in a way that makes the setting feel uniquely alive. The trade off, though, is that it does feel less raw than Once did. What's weird is that this movie does on occasion dip into "documentary style" for a few shots here and there, which was jarring but never to the point where it completely took me out of the film. There were also a few pretty blatant continuity errors, but I guess that comes with the territory of shooting a low budget film on the streets of New York.

Its refreshing that, unlike a lot of other movies about struggling artists, this one spends its time focused more on the actual creation of art rather than just the superficial aspects of the lifestyle. Instead of romanticizing the appealing idealism of individual artistic achievement, it instead focuses more on the collaboration, people getting together to create rather than it all being about the lead artist. Dave-as-musician only features briefly, with his role as a producer being not just respected, but outright lauded. I also really liked how the movie highlighted how consumer technology and the internet has really lowered the barrier for artists to get their voices heard, which to me was a refreshing outlook. In other words, it's just as much about the process as it is about the result. It's clear that none of these characters would be able to do what they do without the friends and family that help them. They may each be talented in their own right, but its when they pool their talents and hard work together that they make something really worth sharing.

Someone asked me whether or not this was a romance movie. Its not...kind of. Don't get me wrong, there is love and romance and stuff, but it's not front and center what its all about. The relationship between Dave and Gretta is fairly platonic, despite hints at their having feelings for each other. I was waiting the whole time for the plot to take the requisite needless detour into her strained relationship with her now-famous-ex-boyfriend (Levine). The movie would then spend its precious run time on how that ruins all the good she'd been doing pursuing her own passions until she realizes what she really wanted all along. Nope! Not here! Instead the characters actually talk to each other like (*gasp*) adults. We're not pulled into a needlessly contrived will-they-or-won't-they subplot that would have screwed with the brisk narrative pace. I won't spoil how it resolves, but I was taken by just how non-intrusive it was and how much the resolution made with so little time spent on it. There's an undertone that the diverging relationship of Knightly and Levine's characters is illustrates the diverging interests of artists making art for themselves and making it for an audience. It's clear what side the film is on, but it doesn't rely on making people caricatures in order to get its point across (mostly). Once the credits rolled I heard people in the theater calling out "that was it", like maybe they were expecting something more dramatic or something. I personally found it refreshingly low key, completely in line with the tone of the rest of the film.

On the whole, though, I think what I liked most about this movie is that it does feel very...I don't know if I'd say relevant, but timely in a way. After all it's a movie about people facing hard times, I don't think those ever really go out of style. As a college aged person facing the inherent insecurity of going into an artistic field as a career I guess I'm drawn to stories like this regardless of how plausible or not they are. I think I need to keep perspective that that sort of uncertainty never really goes away, that you've gotta make the best of it with your friends and not give up on that. Corny, I know, but what the hell, its good to get a little corniness every once in a while.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - Review

DIRECTED BY - Matt Reeves
WRITTEN BY - Mark Bomback, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver
STARRING - Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, Keri Russel, Toby Kebbell, Kodi Smit-McPhee

*Some minor spoilers ahead, ye have been warned!*

Before I begin, lets just appreciate the sheer unlikelihood of this movie even existing. It's the sequel to a reboot of a prequel to a movie that was remade, but is a different remake than this one, based on a book. By all accounts this should not be as good as it was, and yet here it is. Maybe that's just a testament to how flexible the core concept is. The whole idea of an intelligent society of apes interacting with humans is an easy shorthand for such a wide variety of topics. The apes are essentially "different" than humans, but they share enough characteristics with us that we're still able to empathize with them on a fundamental level. The fact that they are "other" allows the audience observe the flaws of their society detached from the baggage of strict societal allegory, while still allowing us to detect the aspects that are familiar.

I've never understood how people are able to segregate sci-fi as something "lesser" than other forms of fiction. Among other things, science fiction has always had this ability to contextualize relevant modern day issues in a way that allows us to explore them without being inhibited by the limiting bounds of the modern day. If I sometimes have a problem with genre, it's when the story is more about the message than about...well...the story. The science fiction stories that work best for me are the ones that are able to blend high-concept ideas with good narrative and characters. The Planet of the Apes series is no stranger to exploring ideas, and not averse to being "about" something, but sometimes that lends itself to being focused on the world and themes rather than pushing for greater depth in its characters. Don't get me wrong, I love the original 1968 film, but its safe to say that the later entries haven't always lived up to that film's lofty standard.

In this entry, though, there's a much greater sense of clarity as to what it's "about" that sets it apart from the rest of the series' broader social commentary. What qualities make a good leader. Whether compromising your own morals is sometimes necessary in order to prevent greater loss of life. How people cling to the lives they once had or try to recreate them instead rather than move forward. How even when we try to move forward our past can still define who we are and how we react to others and the world around us. It shows how misunderstandings between different peoples can breed distrust, and distrust hostility. How that hostility can turn into all out war with just the slightest push. How even with the best intentions the desire for self-preservation can ultimately lead to one's own undoing.

In other words, it's a story about peace and the things that people do to f*ck it up.

Now this isn't exactly a new concept, especially for science fiction. As they say, though, it's not so much what it's about as it is how you go about it, and "Dawn" goes about it with style to spare. Through fantastic production design, cinematography, and direction, we have an apocalypse that's very different the usually wastelands we so often get. This film differs visually from "Rise" in that it has a far more stylized choice of color palette, using mellow blues and greens and dark oranges to evoke a greater sense of mood and atmosphere than its predecessor. Though we get the usual urban overgrowth setting, there's just something about it that feels more...alive, like it hasn't gone so far that there's no chance of going back. Ten years really isn't that long a time after all. Any glimpse we do get into the old world feels almost alien, which is weird because the old world is our world. In a literal sense, it's that feeling after a long power outage when the lights flicker suddenly back on, and while it's familiar you've gotten so used to the darkness that it still kind of feels foreign to you. It's a different visual approach that's woven into the story the film is trying to tell, and sets it apart from its bleaker cousins.

Another unorthodox visual choice for a summer blockbuster was the film's choice of the narrower 1:85:1 aspect ratio as opposed to the usual 2:35:1. Every other Apes film has gone with the latter, so that makes me wonder where the decision for this change may have come from. I'm not complaining, actually the opposite. I'm so sick of blockbusters using 2:35:1 and similar ratios to artificially make their movies seem more "epic" when really, they don't need all that extra space. The fact that this movie chose to go such a non-traditional route shows that the filmmakers were confident in their ability to create something visually enticing with less horizontal space. It shows that they valued intimacy and character over spectacle, because even with the stunning special effects it's clear that the real heart of this film comes from its characters

At the center of all of this is Caesar, who, no exaggeration, is one of the most fully formed, well conceived characters in any science fiction film. There's been some debate as to how much of the performance is Andy Serkis's motion capture and how much is the animators. Whatever it is, I'm sure it wouldn't have been possible without either, and the fact that special effects have gotten to the point where we can create computer generated characters with this kind of nuance, this level of expressiveness is just astounding. Our antagonist, too, is compelling even in his own right. It isn't Gary Oldman, as the trailers would have us believe, but Koba, Caesar's power hungry second in command. He elevates himself from his archetype by having a motivation that's both. His motivation is spelled out in one of the movies standout scenes, which I won't spoil, but it involves the repeated use of the phrase "human work".

If there's a weakness its that the human characters aren't nearly as compelling as the ape characters are. Malcolm, the movie's other protagonist, acts as a human counterpoint to Caesar. He's not as strong or inspiring as Caesar, but his desire for peace and a bright future forges a connection between the two that illustrates the surprising amount of optimism in a film with such a forgone conclusion. Ultimately, though, his character lacks the sense of inner conflict and moral shades of grey that would make him interesting in his own right.

Gary Oldman, underused as he is, is probably the most interesting of the human cast. He eschews the usual paranoid war-monger type character we're used to by framing all of his actions in a way that makes is reasoning seem completely rational from his own point of view. That's the thing about this movie, it frames all the conflicts in the movie as the product of rational decision-making from a certain point of view. It shows that looking past prejudice and your own strict sense of self-preservation that makes the possibility of peace even remotely tangible. Caesar knows this, Malcolm knows this, but the problem comes with convincing everyone else. It's particularly potent in this day and age where our greater interconnectedness brings cultural boundaries closer and closer together, forcing us to consider whether we all really can "just get along".

Like The Empire Strikes Back and The Dark Knight, this is a movie that does what any good sequel should do: act as an extension of the original rather than just a retread, push the themes and characters further instead of stagnating in repetition. It forgoes obvious references to the original 1968 film, which even "Rise" couldn't seem resist the temptation of doing, and forages its own narrative path. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes shows that sci-fi cinema doesn't have to sacrifice intelligence for the sake of emotion and thrills. It can stand on its own two feet (so to speak) and be its own thing while still honoring the legacy of the films that came before it. We've still got a few more big ones left to go, but at this point I'm willing to call it and say that this is definitely my pick for best blockbuster this summer. Guardians of the Galaxy's got a lot to prove now to top this.

So what did you all think? Did you like it? Love it? Hate it? Are you somewhere in between? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.