Category Archives: Action

Movies where things blow up, people run around, and cars get smashed.

Wednesday Review: Sucker Punch

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Susan | Leave a comment

Geoff:
Have studios just given up on telling a good story? Do screenwriters see all the CGI and whiz-bang going across the screen and just no longer care? I wish I could be there for the conversations studio execs and filmmakers had about Sucker Punch and other effects-driven films like it because for the life of me I can’t conceive what sort of narrative merit they might attribute to them. It creates films that are neither distinctive in story nor even distinctive in the way they tell a familiar story, which I could also have fun with and enjoy.

Sucker Punch itself is structured less with a plot and more with a bulleted list, but here’s the rundown: The film starts out with a confusingly shot/edited/acted scene in which (apparently) the female lead (Emily Browning) shoots her younger sister while trying to take out her abusive stepfather (I think? None of this is confirmed through dialogue because the whole scene’s cut to music–in fact, probably nine-tenths of the film are cut to music) who was waiting for the mother of the main character and her sister to die so that he could inherit her money. Enraged over the attempted murder and after being left out of the mother’s will, the stepfather sends the main character to an all-female mental asylum, where the guy who at first seems to be the caretaker (Oscar Isaac) finally at least gives the main character a moniker: Baby Doll (an appropriately and creepily infantile name because bleached, pig-tailed Emily Browning really pretty much does look and sound like a borderline minor made of porcelain). Just as she’s about to be lobotomized, Baby Doll lapses into some kind of fantasy version of the asylum in which it’s actually a gentleman’s club where the confined women are now confined dancers (as if this would somehow be preferable to anyone but someone looking to be titillated by the situation), and here we meet the other women: sisters Rocket (Jena Malone) and Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), the ironically brown-haired Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), and Amber (Jamie Chung), who for some reason gets a regular name. Within this fantasy, the seeming caretaker is the vicious club manager, and the asylum’s psychologist (Carla Gugino, whom I normally love, but who here gets shit to do) is a kindly but obedient trainer for the dancers, so the girl’s scheme to make an escape, which plan they come to thanks to Babydoll’s steampunk battle fantasies that she goes into while dancing some sort of amazing trance-dance (that we never see, probably because it would only look lame by comparison to the reactions from other characters). In these fantasies within the main fantasy, some guy who’s supposed to seem wise tells Babydoll she’ll need a map, fire, a knife, a key, and … wait for it … a mystery item to escape. The wise man actually just says, “It’s a mystery.” The writers don’t even try to be coy or offer any intrigue by having him say something like, “You’ll know it when you see it.” The dancers thus set about getting these items one by one while defeating monsters and defusing bombs in the steampunk fantasy scenes that really have pretty much no dramatic tension except ever so slightly for the procurement of the knife.

Do you know some of the dancers will die? Yes. Does it feel perfunctory when they do? Yes. Will the mystery item be found? Yes. Will it feel perfunctory and lame when it is? Dear God, yes. I know we’re trying to not give away the endings here so much these days, but it, too, feels perfunctory despite a surprise cameo by Jon Hamm. The film is just an autopilot protostory with neat effects and lots of scantily clad women. It’s clearly catering to a specific audience but I feel like even the 14-to-34-year-old male crowd might lose interest with this one.

Susan:
THIS IS FASCINATING. I actually found myself leaving the theater COMPLETELY AMBIVALENT. I assumed you would love the thing, since you suggested we watch it, and I could talk about how terrible it was. BUT YOU THOUGHT IT WAS TERRIBLE!! Now I don’t know what to do, because I’m way too ambivalent to argue that is was unequivocally good.

In the spirit of the film, let’s do some moral algebra via bulleted lists.

Pros:
–The action sequences were pretty good, except for when the CGI was bad.
–The layered plot was actually more interesting than the plot I expected going into it. True, none of the layers really made sense, and the reasons for there being layers were never really explained, but the movie also didn’t seem to want me to care. I feel like the movie intended to be a live-action video game, and so I can’t really fault it for being just that.
–Jon Hamm. I mean, not to abuse the sandwich-eating thing, but seriously, give the man a sandwich and I will buy my ticket.

Cons:
–It is exhausting as a real live woman living in the world to watch any film where the female characters are under the constant threat of sexual violence. The movie kept doing this thing where the club boss dude would say threatening things, and you would think maybe they were about murder, but then you would realize they were about rape or sexual assault or something. And then at the end you find out that duder’s been raping the girls at the nuthouse the whole time or something. And also at the beginning Baby Doll gets almost raped and then her sister gets almost raped (or maybe raped? It’s unclear), and at some point you just think, Jesus. This is walking a fine line between sad story about oppressed girls and rape-porn. I mean, if there is even a line between those two things.
–The movie said that BabyDoll was 20 but she’s wearing little girl pajamas and her sister is like 6 so…what? Let’s stop blurring the line between women and girls, what say.
–ALL THE GIRLS WERE CRYING ALL THE FUCKING TIME. It was like Country Strong, where we are asked to believe that we are looking at really powerful, strong female characters, but they are just crying every time anything happens. Sometimes when it’s appropriate, but sometimes just like…because. I don’t know. Yes, strong women can cry, as can men, but I didn’t like the oscillation between kicking everyone’s ass all over the place in dream world and crying their eyes out backstage in the OTHER dream world. Also Vanessa Hudgens: Go away.

So I mean, I thought it was a fun movie to watch, but I also couldn’t decide whether I should hate it or not. I think overall I probably should have. But it’s a movie, and I want to give it a little extra space anyway.

The hemming and hawing continues after the cut…

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Action

Tagged Carla Gugino, constant threat of sexual violence, Feminism, Jon Hamm, lobotomies, mild disagreement, Vanessa Hudgens

Sunday Review: Battle: LA

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Susan | Leave a comment

Geoff:
Battle: LA is less a movie than a video game without a controller, less a story than a total hard-on for the American military.

I’m not sure the names of the characters matter at all, but I’ll list off the stereotypes included: there’s the soon-to-retire veteran marine with a dark past (Aaron Eckhart), the young cocksure commanding marine who learns the hard way that he’s not as savvy a leader as he thought and whom Eckhart has to keep in line as the veteran marine, a marine who’s getting married, a marine who’s been taken from active duty until his military psychiatrist tells him he can get back out there, a marine who’s brother was killed in Aaron Eckhart’s dark past in Fallujah and who therefore says nothing but bitter things like, “We’re all expendable to you, aren’t we?” and, finally, a tough-as-nails female Air Force pilot with recon knowledge who proves she can handle a gun.

These characters aren’t filled in much more than I’ve just described them here, and basically one day they wake up to hear orders from their COs that aliens have landed in the coastal waters off L.A. and other major cities, so they’re stuffed in helicopters and sent to the front lines, where they battle ground troops, computer-piloted spaceships, and eventually a giant alien command center where all extra-terrestrial attacks are being coordinated from (read: the boss at the end of the video game).

There are indeed some spectacular set pieces in the film, including Eckhart’s guerrilla-like grenade-killing of an alien spaceship and an evacuation from the Los Angeles freeway that goes horribly wrong before the young cocksure marine sacrifices himself in a final moment of glory so that everyone else can live. And it was a nice touch that the entire film was shot in an in-the-trenches style through the P.O.V. of footsoldiers, whom one marine in the movie refers to as “grunts like us.” You could see the gritty realism the director wanted to convey.

However, my problems are with the film’s script and heavy-handed message about military might. If the dialogue had been a little better, the characters just a little more fleshed out, the patriotic music not so totally bombastic, then I probably wouldn’t have been playing with my ticket stub by the end. But, as it stood, there just wasn’t enough to hold my interest.

Go ahead and yell at me, Susan.

Susan:
Yell I will, good sir. If this movie is so flat and heartless, THEN WHY WAS I CRYING WHEN AARON ECKHART CALLED THAT BOY HIS “LITTLE MARINE”????

Yes, this movie is so hawkish it is gross. Yes, this movie is basically a live-action video game. Yes, the story is thin and the characters are caricatures. But so what? THIS THING WAS SOOOO AWESOME.

Seriously, guys, the point of the movies is to distract us from reality. I got completely and totally lost in this delicious delirious piece of militaristic/nationalist emotion porn. There were no questions raised by this movie: I knew who was good (humans) and I knew who was bad (aliens). I didn’t have to question the motives of the military or worry about human rights violations. There was no love story to gross me out. And the POV action was so well-paced and intense that my arms kept falling asleep from my tense posture.

I also had a lump in my throat for like 90% of this movie because the filmmakers knew exactly how to emotionally manipulate me in a way that was transparent (and therefore less offensive to me) and pointed. When Aaron Eckhart decides to go it alone to find the alien command center and jumps off the helicopter that will take them all to safety, I was like, Okay yeah, sure. BUT THEN ALL THE OTHER MARINES FOLLOW HIM!! Oh my god the tears. Look at how the Marines stick together! I mean, I hate the military, and this movie made me LOVE THE MILITARY. I’m not proud of that. But I’ll be damned if it’s not true.

This movie just makes everything EASY. The world of the film is simple and plain and uncomplicated, which is just absolutely the thing I needed walking into the theater yesterday. This movie does what movies are supposed to do–provide an escape from the difficult act of living in the world.

The hearty disagreement continues after the cut…

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Action, Sci-Fi

Tagged Aaron Eckhart, contention, ham-handed metaphors, military hard-ons, situational crying, Suspension of Disbelief, war movie stereotypes

Sunday Review: Unknown

Posted on February 28, 2011 by Susan | Leave a comment

Editor’s Note: Once again, this review is going to ruin the whole movie for you because Geoff and I can’t be bothered to avoid spoilers. The twist is actually pretty decent this time, so if you want to see the film and be surprised, turn back now.

Susan:
For those of you who are too busy to read the whole of this review, let me offer a brief summary: At first, this movie is lame because January Jones is like, super boring and bad at acting and also kind of over, really, even though she’s still very pretty when she doesn’t try to make emotions with her face. Then this movie gets REALLY AWESOME because it has CAR CHASES and EVIL GERMAN SPY DUDES and TERRORISM and PLOT TWISTS and FIST FIGHTS and what have you. And then it ends which is fine because you get to see January Jones explode and seriously why is she ever even in movies or TV shows when we can just look at still pictures of her which is what she is really good for.

The plot is SUPER AWESOME and you can mostly tell what it is from the trailer: A dude named Martin Harris (OR SO HE WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE; Liam Neeson) goes to Berlin for a biotechnology conference (OR FOR A SUPER SECRET SPY MISSION) and gets in a car accident while he’s rushing back to the airport for the briefcase that he forgot there. After the accident, he goes into a coma for four days, and when he wakes up, he finds that he has been replaced in life by some other dude who is better looking (Aidan Quinn) and that his wife (OR SUPER SECRET SPY PARTNER; January Jones) is also pretending not to know him. Later, when he is in the hospital again after a fainting spell, some scary evil German spy-type dude with a Bluetooth headset comes to kill him in the MRI room, but he escapes by closing a bunch of airlocks and sneaking onto an ambulance (AWESOME). He enlists the help of a ex-East-German-security spy dude named Jürgen to figure out how to prove that he is who he says he is, and right when Jürgen finds the proof, another spy agent guy (also super old — why are all the spies in this movie old instead of young and hot?) comes to kill him because (and here is the big plot twist reveal) MARTIN HARRIS IS ACTUALLY A MADE UP PERSON TO BEGIN WITH and Liam Neeson has gone rogue because of head trauma from the accident. We find out that Neeson is actually part of a spy organization himself and was supposed to pretend to be Martin Harris to get into the biotech conference to kill some botanist who has made some crazy new corn that is going to end world hunger (BOTANY IS THE NEW NUCLEAR ARMS TRADE, Y’ALL). So along with the super hot, illegal Bosnian cab driver who saved his life (Diane Kruger), Neeson (after realizing who he actually is) decides to set things right (for reasons that are not clear) and to kill the would-be assassins that have taken his place. Did you follow all that?

Best line of the movie: “I didn’t forget everything. I remember how to kill you, asshole!” Action movie lines, psychological-thriller-style drama and intrigue, AND a love story (or two maybe, although that part is not very well developed)??? SO MUCH AWESOME FACTOR!!

Geoff:
I don’t know if I loved it on the scale you did, Susan, but I can’t deny this movie’s a lot of fun. I almost always love Cold War spies, and maybe my favorite character in the whole film is Jürgen, who sits there and sips his straight glass of bourbon or scotch or whatever while listening to Liam Neeson’s not-Martin Harris (I don’t know how else to name the character) tell his tale, who still solves puzzles by calling his old intelligence buddies and writing things down on paper while looking over the top of his glasses. No computers, no gizmos. Just a sharp mind, a good memory, and cyanide for when the enemy comes to get information the hard way.

With a thriller like this, about 75 percent of what you’re waiting for if you’ve seen the preview is to find out whether the pay-off is going to be as intriguing as the setup, and here I was sufficiently satisfied. Is it unlikely and a bit ridiculous? Sure. But is it fair? Yes, for the most part, so I can go along with it. One of my other favorite things with this kind of movie is is to ponder the characters’ life after the credits start rolling. Liam Neeson’s not-Martin Harris has just remembered he’s a deadly assassin, but he doesn’t want to go back to that life, so now he’s going to … start fighting back against the very people who trained him and made him who he is? Pull a Jason Bourne and try to go into hiding, only to be drawn back out by the people who know his secret? Get a nice little place for himself and tend to a garden? And where’s that Bosnian going? I want to see the movie about her life ten years from now, when she tells some friend in the land of American Bohemia (for, you see, she’s portrayed in the film as a starving artist struggling to escape Eastern European hardship) about the time she helped a spy remember his past.

Sufficient is the word I’d use for this movie overall, I think. On a level, the movie’s just plain fun, and I’d wholly recommend it on that level. I don’t know if the acting, editing, direction, or writing are going to be remembered by anyone anywhere five years from now, but there are worse ways to kill your afternoon than watching Neeson bring out his gravelly voice and kick some serious ass before January Jones gets blown up in a scene that, while I don’t think it was being played for laughs, ended up being pretty amusing.

The mostly-agreement continues after the cut…

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Action, Thriller

Tagged awesome factor, creepy old-man hands, Germans with hypodermic needles, January Jones, Liam Neeson, new-classic thillers

Sunday Review: Resident Evil: Afterlife

Posted on September 13, 2010 by Susan | Leave a comment

Geoff:
Resident Evil: Afterlife is bad. It is so bad. It is Paul W.S. Anderson’s ode to everything that is bad, and that man has made some bad films, including Alien vs. Predator and the first Resident Evil film, both of which were measurably better than this … this brainless, lifeless thing, which Susan and I both went and saw in 3-D.

The plot isn’t really relevant, but in the unlikely event of reader interest, I’ll summarize it as follows: we’re now four movies in to the post-apocalyptic, T-virus-ridden future in which the Umbrella Corporation fucked everything up for everyone else. Somehow there are still survivors. Somehow L.A. is STILL on fire (it’s been several years by this point, yeah? Yet the city still burns as if there were riots yesterday). Somehow there are still armies of corporate goons with heavy assault rifles and massive underground facilities that Alice (Milla Jovavich) can break into with ease. I guess it helps though that the facilities don’t even have basic safeguards, such as the ability to stop their own computerized elevators.

The movie isn’t even scary. It is glossed up, cold-ass shit where people fire weapons without a hint of expression on their face. To describe the characters as stock would not express how convinced I am that Anderson just pulls their traits from a sparse Rolodex. You have the evil guy that shouts a thousand commands and then states in a low voice, “And I want DAMAGE REPORTS.” There’s the cynical guy whose every line is a wryly spoken cliche. Every character is just a thing to move around a gameboard that by this point has been completely emptied of all color and intrigue, if it really even had any to begin with.

I paid $15 to see this thing in 3-D. I beg the rest of you not to see it at all, lest Anderson get the sense he’s done something right.

Susan:
UGH NO KIDDING. THIS MOVIE WAS FUCKING AWFUL.

I am going to stop using all caps because it would be annoying if everything in this part of the review were in all caps, but please, imagine that I am using all caps here: The 3-D wasn’t even good. There was no discernible plot or character development, the action sequences were boring, the zombies were stupid and boring (which I didn’t even know was possible), and on top of all that badness, the 3-D wasn’t. even. good. It was totally unnecessary. There were maybe two scenes where I even remember it making an impact. I only paid $11.50 for my ticket, but it STILL was WAYYYYY too much. WAY too much. I think the minute portion of the cost of my Netflix subscription that I would technically pay to watch this thing on streaming and NOT in 3-D might not be worth it. This movie was really effing bad.

I went to see it with Nick and Jeffi, two Austin friends who checked with me beforehand to make sure Milla Jovavich was in it because they were basically going so they could look at her. When we left, Jeffi said that during the portions of the film where Milla does her close-up video diary entries, HE GOT TIRED OF LOOKING AT HER FACE. This movie was so bad, IT RUINED MILLA JOVAVICH’S FACE. It was the worst movie in the history of movies.

I am trying to think of the things I marked in the film as being “redeeming” when I was watching it, but they have all left me. The only thing that remains is memories of terrible, awful action movie lines like Alice’s incredibly stupid, “Is that any way to treat a lady?” and of those stupid slow-motion action scenes that were cool in the Matrix but became overused and played out like 10 years ago or something. Oh wait, no, there is one thing I liked: The scene where the ladies fight the giant dude with the hammer in the shower room. That was the most video-game-esque scene and it was the only one where I was like, well, okay, this is kind of cool. But seriously, too little too late, Resident Snoozeville.

The throwing up all over the place about this movie continues after the cut…

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Action, Sci-Fi

Tagged Agreement!?!?!, Ali Larter, boring zombies, Milla Jovavich, Paul W.S. Anderson, unneccessary 3-D

Sunday Review: The American

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Susan | Leave a comment

Editor’s Note: This review has spoilers in it, but whatever, I don’t know that it even really matters.

Susan:
I’m sure that at some point in my life I’ve said the following sentence: “If there were a movie called George Clooney Eats a Sandwich that was about George Clooney eating a sandwich, I would see that movie.” Clooney is a dreamboat, and I really thought that I could be satisfied watching him watch paint dry. That is, until I saw The American, which is basically a series of pretty pictures of George Clooney interspersed with some shots of the Italian countryside and some shots of boobs. TOTAL SNOOZEFEST.

The plot is basically that George Clooney is like, a hitman or a weapons manufacturer or something who is doing a job in Italy while being chased by some Swedes who apparently want to kill him. He goes to a little town where a lot of tense things happen. Then he falls in love with a hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold, because that is what you do when you are a lonely white dude who isn’t allowed to get close to people. Because he is so in love with this awesome hooker stock-character, he decides to get out of the spy/hitman/gun-builder game, but then some people try to kill him and when he goes to meet his lady at the river, he dies as soon as he gets there. OH, THE PAINFUL IRONY OR NOT IRONY BUT THE THING THAT PEOPLE ALWAYS THINK IS IRONY.

The first two minutes of the movie are probably the best introductory two minutes of film I’ve ever seen: Clooney and his ladyfriend (not the hooker one, another one), living in Sweden or something (the snowy part of Europe, basically), are walking one morning when some dudes in snow-camo come out of nowhere and start shooting at them. A tense shoot-off entails, and then the movie begins. It was suspenseful and disorienting and awesome. But then the rest of the movies happens, and you get kind of sick of George Clooney brooding and tense things happening and blah blah blah. You don’t get to know any characters in the flick and you don’t see any real or believable relationships develop. It’s just a lot of trite, spy-movie crap and a BS plot line about a troubled man falling for a whore. I liked it better the first time when it was called every film noir/spy movie ever. I mean, I don’t even know who that dude is supposed to be or why he’s doing what he’s doing or what the fucking point is of the things that are happening. I dunno, it all just seemed pretty rote and recycled to me.

Geoff:
Interesting. Rote? Recycled? Every spy movie ever? It was a very quiet film, I’ll grant that. And yes, some of the characters are a little odd (your friendly neighborhood prostitute who runs into you at the coffee shop with her friend, your fallen priest who’s accepting of egregious sinners and who can’t help talking in broad, grand statements — okay the second one’s a stereotype, but I’ve never seen a working girl meet her mark at the store). But I found myself pretty immersed in the tension of Clooney’s character, a man who spends every day waiting for a bullet to enter his brain from the front, back or side, a man for whom the walk to the grocery store, or even to the mailbox, could be the final one.

I guess when I think spy film, I think James Bond or Mission Impossible, and I think thrill-a-minute: bombs inside briefcases that nobody in the room but the main character knows about and acrobatic people breaking into super-secret areas without tripping any of its dozens of security measures. It seemed like this film was trying to go against some (not all — you’re right that there were boobs aplenty) of the tropes of the spy film, to just show the workaday life of an assassin for hire, one who plays so far off the grid that he can’t even trust any of the people he’s been hired by.

Ultimately, the pretty shots of Italy and the moments of silent intensity worked for me. My interest was held trying to guess whether his prostitute/girlfriend/whatever was assisting the Swedes or whether she was just another innocent party like the unfortunate gal in Sweden. I can understand why someone would be bored, but I myself was pretty into it.

The polite disagreement continues after the cut…

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Action

Tagged boobs, George Clooney, impending skin-hang, Italian countryside, polite disagreement, spy movies

Tuesday Review: Knight and Day

Posted on June 29, 2010 by Susan | 1 Comment

Geoff:
So, this week’s selection was Knight and Day, the beginning of the maybe comeback for Tom Cruise, who’s spent the last few years trying to get past all the TomKat jokes and Scientology. It should be noted that for tonight, the film’s premiere in Chicagoland, the theatre was pretty much only half-full. That’s how much faith the world has in Tom Cruise these days. That, or (less likely to my mind) the preview so turned them off that they just didn’t feel like going.

I don’t know what you’d call this kind of narrative, but basically you’re following the side character instead of the person who seems like they should be the flashier main character. We’ll call it the “Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead” narrative for lack of time and creativity on my part. Cameron Diaz plays June, a pretty gal who likes to restore old muscle cars from the ’70s, and in a Kansas airport she accidentally bumps in Roy Miller (Tom Cruise), which run-in turns out to not have been an accident at all. You see, Roy’s actually a secret agent with the U.S. government, and he’s been betrayed by one of his fellow agents for a little battery that can run forever (the battery’s the McGuffin, so pay it no mind), and part of his escape from Kansas (where super batteries are apparently made) involves getting the battery through security using sweet, innocent June.

Once that happens, June finds herself on the business end of a lot of explosions and gun play as Roy attempts to save her after getting her involved in the whole mess in the first place. I haven’t said it yet, but this is a comedy, and Diaz and Cruise do play well off of each other with some funny dialogue. Lines such as “I shot the first pilot, and then he shot the second pilot. It’s just one of those things,” end up getting a lot of laughs, and the movie is actually pretty fun for about it’s first three fourths.

Unfortunately the end of the film turns completely cookie-cutter with lines that’ll make your eyes roll so much they’ll wind up in the back of your head, and Roy and June fall in love, and everything ends pretty fucking lame. Until then, I was having a good time.

Susan:
I don’t know, Geoff. I thought the whole thing was pretty damn charming. And don’t get me wrong, I expected to hate hate hate this thing. I mean, HATE it. I’m using the word “hate” here, about my expectations for this movie.

But Cameron Diaz remains charming and Tom Cruise, though seemingly unaware that he is supposed to act WITH anyone else, pulls off his end pretty well too. This flick defines the Cute Summer Date Movie genre — romance for her, action for him, and Cameron Diaz gets to shoot a few guns at the end of the movie too. The end of the flick isn’t NOT cheesy, but it wasn’t saccharine or stomach-turning. You might have been rolling your eyes, Geoff, but that’s probably because your heart is made of stone.

In fact, the dialogue bothered me far less than June’s inability to stay out of goddamn trouble. Not since Kate on LOST has a character so riled me with her stupidity and unwillingness to just listen to people when they tell you NOT TO FOLLOW THEM. Lord knows I’m all for not letting some dude tell you what to do, but when said dude is a secret agent and you are a mechanic or whatever, just listen to him for Christ’s sake. I know this is how they moved the movie’s plot along but seriously. So obnoxious. I will watch people fall in love in a sappy way til the cows come home (okay, that’s actually not true, but bear with me), but don’t make me watch some stupid girl get caught up in international espionage because she wouldn’t just hang out at a swank-ass hotel in Austria for an hour or two.

The conversation continues after the cut…

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Action

Tagged Agreement!?!?!, Cameron Diaz, Cute Summer Date Movies, McGuffin, Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead narrative, Tom Cruise

Wednesday Review: Sherlock Holmes

Posted on December 30, 2009 by Susan | 2 Comments

Susan:
Ostensibly, I should have loved Sherlock Holmes. Shirtless Robert Downey, Jr.? Check. Hyper-masculine, aesthetically-pleasing violence and action? Check. Homoerotic tension? Um, CHECK. Indeed, this movie is chock full of that Hollywood brand of AWESOME I love so well. Yet something about it just didn’t sit right with me.

The aforementioned Robert Downey, Jr. stars as a haggard, troubled, possibly queer version of the classic literary character Sherlock Holmes. Jude Law plays Dr. John Watson (of “It’s elementary, my dear Watson” fame), Holmes’ partner in crime-solving and possible object of his affection. Rachel McAdams rounds out the lead threesome as Irene Adler, the only woman to ever outsmart Holmes and therefore the only woman to ever capture his heart. The movie opens with Holmes and Watson fighting their way to Lord Blackstone (played by Mark Strong, who looks more like Andy Garcia than Andy Garcia does) and arresting him for performing black magic. Blackstone is hanged, but comes back from the dead (OR DOES HE??) to lead the local chapter of the Evil Secret Fraternal Organization That Is Kind of Like The Masons. There is far too much double-, triple-, and quadruple-crossing that goes on in the rest of the film to try to summarize the plot here. Suffice it to say that Holmes gets into a number of sticky situations, Watson and Adler come to his rescue, he comes to theirs, Blackstone tries to kill members of Parliament using some sort of wacky 19th century device, Holmes hangs him off an unfinished London Bridge, and the movie ends with Holmes reopening the case to chase down another villain dude, setting Guy Ritchie up to direct Sherlock Holmes II: Maybe Holmes and Watson Will Do It In This One.

The movie is glossy, the action is well-shot and fun to watch, and the actors all do a great job with their respective characters. But the problem with Sherlock Holmes is that it tries to be too many movies all at once and becomes muddled in the process. There were moments that felt like a crime-caper movie (Snatch, for example), and others that reeked of From Hell or The Da Vinci Code or some other movie about the boundless power of secret fraternal organizations. Holmes breaks into houses and destroys property and the what not, but we find out at the end of the film that he wants to arrest Blackstone rather than kill him because of some kind of reverence for the law or something. Sometimes he seems like he’s in love with Watson, sometimes he seems like he’s in love with Adler, but mostly the plot just appears to exist to facilitate more slo-mo fight scenes and awesome exterior shots of a CGI 19th century London. Not that I necessarily have a problem with that, but I guess I just expected or hoped for more.

Geoff:
I must say, I’m a little surprised, Susan, not because I disagree with you but because (as you already mentioned) all the ostensible requisites I’ve taken to be your bread and butter were there. I guess the glistening chest of Mr. Downey Jr. only carries so much weight.

From your reaction, I don’t know if we’re on exactly the same plane, but I think we’re close. If it’s possible to enjoy oneself without ever really being completely blown away, then this is that. The movie’s worth a viewing. The acting’s fun (Downey Jr. in particular). But never once do I remember snapping smartly to attention at something I didn’t expect or something I felt I needed to pay particular attention/interest/respect to. The double-, triple-, and quadruple-crosses come at such a rate that you’re just waiting for the next one after a while, and objects are constantly introduced in such a way that it’s impossible you won’t remember their significance for later (Holmes might as well have said things like, “Look, Watson, a bridge! Please take note of that bridge!”).

Guy Ritchie’s all about the flash and the fun, which is great, but he gets into trouble when characters have to talk beyond quips and/or interact without their fists. During the subplots (such as Watson’s marriage), you get the sense that Ritchie might have been just as uninterested in filming them as we then are while watching them.

Not that I hated the thing. It’s an okay film to spend an afternoon with. It’s just that it feels more like another ride at the fair instead of being the new roller coaster you want to get in line for over and over again.

The general agreement continues after the cut…

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Action

Tagged Agreement!?!?!, awesome factor, Guy Ritchie, homoeroticism, Masterpiece Theater, Robert Downey Jr., Suspension of Disbelief

Sunday Review: Inglorious Basterds

Posted on September 14, 2009 by Susan | Leave a comment

Geoff:
Susan, Susan … I’m stealing your word because this film warrants the word. Inglourious Basterds is AWESOME.

All of it. Every last bit. The hilariously sized pipe, the boot-shaped beer stein, the line “I LOVE rumors.” Seriously, why are there not more directors this smart who still want to have this much fun?

Quentin Tarantino’s seventh film is the World War II epic he’s been talking about for years, stripped down from the trilogy he once talked about into a single, amazing film. Summarizing it might get rather convoluted, but here we go. Brad Pitt stars as Lieutenant Aldo Raine, leading eight Jewish soldiers in a campaign of fear against the Nazi regime in occupied France. Melanie Laurent stars as Shosanna Dreyfus, a young Jewish woman running a theatre in Paris where Joseph Goebbels is set to premier his new film, a premier that Hitler and several of his top cronies will be attending. Both Raine and Dreyfus seperately conceive plots to blow up the theatre, all the while being hunted by the manic, sociopathic Colonel Hans Landa of the SS, aka “The Jew Hunter.” Landa is played by Christoph Waltz, who outshines even Brad Pitt as the stand-out actor of the film, which is even more amazing when you consider that his film credits up to this point are mostly from German television. Other favorite line:

“OOOHHHHOHOHHHHH, That’s a BINGO! Is that how you say it? ‘That’s a bingo’?”

I have too many favorite lines from this movie, though. It’s the kind of movie I want to take friends to and watch their reaction. It’s the kind of movie I’ll see a second time (and did I, oh did I) and notice fantastic details I didn’t the first time around: Hans Landa’s obsession with dairy (the milk, the cream) and Monsieur LaPadite’s intentional habit of staring forward without ever looking down, to name a few. The film is over-the-top and crazy and entertaining, but it also gives you so much to talk about afterwards. I haven’t even gotten to Tarantino’s rewriting of history yet (Spoiler alart: Shosanna and The Basterds succeed, and Hitler is killed, blown to bits after being shot to bits). Nobody else out there (at least nobody else this good) would have the gall to say, “You know what? I’ll just have Hitler die at the end. I’d rather see that.”

The final product is fascinating, entertaining, even enthralling. It’s the kind of movie that makes me like movies.

Susan:
I agree, Geoff. Awesome it is. At some point, I’m going to have to admit that I like Tarantino movies — I’ve been avoiding that generalization for years, but I can feel it sneaking up on me.

I’d heard mixed things about this film. People liked the parts but didn’t like the whole, or had a problem with the ending. Call me simple (I might be), but I really didn’t have trouble enjoying this film. The actress who played Shoshanna was wonderful and Brad Pitt also shone. Not to mention that there was at least one scene where you could hear Paul Rust laughing (GO IOWA). Overall, I found the performances great and the gore just gory enough.

One thing about the movie that has had me thinking was the fact that it wasn’t made by a Jewish filmmaker. A friend of mine brought that up the other weekend, and after seeing the film, I have to admit that gave me pause as well. A Nazi revenge fantasy made by some white dude? Maybe you know more about how exactly the movie got made, Geoff, and the involvement of Jewish Hollywood in its creation.

The speculation about cultural insensitivity continues after the cut…

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Action

Tagged Agreement!?!?!, awesome factor, Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Iowa RULES!, Melanie Laurent, Paul Rust, Potential Racism

Sunday Review: District 9

Posted on August 31, 2009 by Susan | 3 Comments

Susan:
It’s been a long, hot, dry summer here in Austin. The relentless heat is exhausting and stupefying. You’d think that would lead to my spending the whole of the summer in the movie theater, but sometimes the heat makes me so lazy I can’t even get up the effort to go out to the car and drive somewhere. All this is to say, apologies for our absence. School has started, which means I will be procrastinating again, which means we’ll probably get back to weekly posts. But now, on to District 9.

WOW. The only thing better than summer movie AWESOME is summer movie AWESOME plus ambiguous political metaphors!! For those of you who didn’t see the awesome trailer for District 9, the premise is that twenty years ago, an alien spaceship came to rest over Johannesburg, South Africa. After a while, the military flew up to the ship and found that the aliens on board were malnourished and otherwise in bad shape. We never find out why the aliens are here or what exactly happened to them, but in the present of the movie, they live in Johannesburg in what amounts to a crime and corruption-ridden refuge camp, and a defense contractor called MNU has undertaken the task of relocating the aliens to what amounts to a concentration camp, we later find out. The head of this mission? The hapless Wikus Van De Merwe, who, to make a long story short, gets sprayed in the face with alien spaceship fuel (?) and begins turning into an alien himself. His former employers try to experiment on him, but he escapes and finds his way to the home of the one alien who knows how to get back to the spaceship and then back to the home planet. They enter into a partnership to get back the alien spaceship fuel from MNU headquarters, and all hell breaks loose, and a bunch of awesome fighting happens. Then Wikus turns into an alien. The end.

I think this movie probably would have worked better as a three hour epic in which the alien backstory was explained and the politics of the thing could have been more fully fleshed out. That having been said, for a two hour summer action flick, District 9 was surprising, enjoyable, and just smart enough to keep me trying to figure out just what the filmmaker was trying to say.

Geoff:
Ah, thinly veiled references to apartheid (and/or just plain general segregation and discrimination). As I was sitting and watching this film, I tried to think of what movies and storylines it seemed to be combining. It was like The Fly mixed with documentaries of the slums mixed with Cloverfield mixed with every single movie ever made where individuals from two disparate groups find common ground and respect for each other.

Wikus’ transformation from corporate shill to confused hybrid being to unwitting fighter for the alien race is terrifically effective in the way it makes your skin crawl. When he pulled out his own nails, then his own teeth, I could actual hear gag reflexes being tested in the audience. I think what I actually liked the most, though, was the opening set-up, when the documentary footage gives us a lot of vague, mysterious foresight into Wikus, painting him as the mastermind of a conspiracy that we only later understand he never intended to be a part of. It plays up the intrigue and gets you thinking before things get blowed up real good. And sometimes jumping between documentary footage and plain ol’ narrative footage can get really annoying (I’m thinking of The Office), but here I understood well enough when it was a documentary (or faux-documentary, as it were) and when it wasn’t, which helped me to just concentrate on the amazing visuals, like every window in the Johannesburg skyline shattering at once.

There were times when I did think about the film’s political message. I know I mentioned apartheid, but there’s also the fact that the alien race in this film is clearly destructive, capable of tearing apart human bodies in seconds, and has weapons that put our own to shame. Exactly why they’ve agreed to be cordoned off and to follow our rules once they’d fed themselves is unclear to me. Perhaps it shows that humans aren’t the only ones who can freely choose peace? Humans aren’t the only ones with free will? I think I too would have liked a three-hour flick that could have explored some of those ideas more, but as it stands, the movie’s still a damn good time.

The general agreement continues after the cut…

→ 3 Comments

Posted in Action, Sci-Fi

Tagged Agreement!?!?!, aliens, Apartheid, awesome factor, emotional manipulation, political metaphors