It was a weird year for me and film viewing. I ended up spending most of my time in cinemas watching mediocre summer fare, and I had to scramble at the end to rent and watch the films I had wanted to see all along. Well, I finally saw everything on my list and now I can present my top five favorites. Here they are:
1. Blue Jasmine
And I thought I had mixed feelings about the first Hobbit film! I’ve seen Peter Jackson’s second installment of his Hobbit Trilogy, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, three times now and I still don’t know what to think about it. As in the first film, Jackson and his Weta wizards run amok with Tolkien’s beloved novel, cramming cartoony action scenes, bonkers sub plots and alternative character motivations in every nooks and cranny. The result is a film that’s both immensely enjoyable as cinematic entertainment and extremely insulting as an adaptation. I actually walked out of the theater the first time I saw it. It was late in the film, the characters had all strayed as far away from the plot as they possibly could and Thorin was shouting at Bilbo to “pull the lever!” Visions of a drug-addled Bela Lugosi babbling nonsense in an armchair filled my head and I fled, not after hurling a few childish insults at the screen.
I can’t believe I haven’t written this yet! 2013 came on so fast, and last year just wasn’t that exciting film-wise. I could only come up with four films I truly liked for goodness sake! Oh well, here goes…
1. Les Miserables
Directed by Tom Hooper
It was shaping up to be a fantastic summer for movies, so I decided to see as many as I could. In the end, it was a mixed bag, but still mostly enjoyable.
Iron Man 3 – 2013. Directed by Shane Black
This franchise is all about defying expectations, and after a somewhat weak sequel, Iron Man 3 is back with a vengeance, throwing comedy curve balls and plot-defying twists as fast as its screenwriters can dream them up. One of the complaints about Iron Man 2 was its incredibly CG-y nature—the entire climax was just CG animated suits fighting—and I love how the screenwriters dealt with it this time, inventing a wayward suit that always goes to pieces, placing Robert Downey Junior’s character into countless situations where his precious armor wasn’t an option. It’s good to see Iron Man without his Iron Man armor, and its a testament to the power of the character that it works so well. Robert Downey Junior is Tony Stark, and Tony Stark is Iron Man, regardless of what he’s wearing. The story is crazy and fun, the characters and dialog sparkle, and the action is mostly well choreographed and rendered. A good way to start the summer.
I’ve managed to watch a few films this Summer, crazy busy as it is.
Moonrise Kingdom
2012. Directed by Wes Anderson
I love Wes Anderson. He’s one of my favorite film directors. His style is overwhelming and a tad too silly sometimes, but he tells unique stories with such deep emotional resonance that I’m always left applauding and forgiving any and all of his stylistic idiosyncrasies. This is the first of his films that made me pause, though. It’s a sweet tale about two young misfits who run off together in the woods. Set in the nostalgia of the 1960s on a idylic island somewhere in New England, the film just screams Norman Rockwell and classic boys adventure novels. The runaway girl and boy are desperately searched for by their dysfunctional families and the oddball cast of characters that populate the island, all culminating in a bizarre chase scene that involves massive armies of Boy Scouts, what seems like Noah’s flood, and repeated run-ins with lightning. The children and their searchers find grace at the end of it all, and the peace of the island is restored. The art design is lovely, the actors are clearly all having a blast and the film is sweet, but it takes a major misstep about halfway through. Wes Anderson asks the two young actors to play a brief scene that is obviously embarrassing for both of them and feels more like exploitation than realism. Without this scene, Moonrise Kingdom is a lovely film about misfits and the grace they find. With it, it just tastes sour.
Gamera The Giant Monster
1965. Directed by Noriaki Yuasa
Gamera The Giant Monster is not a good monster film. It’s not a good film period. I’d previously seen the much mangled american re-cut, Gamera The Invincible, and I’d imagined that the original would be better. Not so much.
It’s official. J. J. Abrams is helming Star Wars Episode VII, and I am officially relieved.
Gamera was originally created as a rip-off of Godzilla by Toho’s rival Daiei, but over time the giant space turtle morphed from rampaging monster to benevolent defender of humanity and friend of children. The classic series lasted seven films, and was rebooted for three more in the 90s. Gamera the Brave is a second reboot, casting Gamera as a tiny baby turtle that hatches from an egg left by its predecessor and quickly becomes very, very big. Toru, a boy whose mother has recently died and who is struggling to connect with his father and friends, discovers this egg and raises Gamera Mark II as “Toto,” a delightful flying pet turtle that has a few surprises up it’s shell.
Adaptation
Filmmaker Peter Jackson wowed me as a teenager with his Lord of The Rings Trilogy in the early aughts. He took massive books that I knew well and loved deeply, majorly condensed them, added a bunch of crazy action scenes and confounding character changes, and still somehow won my heart and made what I felt were good adaptations that captured both the basic plot and the spirit of Tolkien’s three books. Now Jackson is back at it with The Hobbit, the prequel to his trilogy and what I thought would be an easy adaptation for him to get right. But I was very wrong.
I am not a Bond fan. An alcoholic heartless killer addicted to sex is not my idea of a hero. I admit, I occasionally enjoyed watching a kitschy moment or two of a classic Bond film on cable, but that’s where my fandom ended.
There’s this hit-man, played by Joseph Gordon Levitt, who’s supposed to kill his future self, played by Bruce Willis. He doesn’t. Now it’s a battle between protecting the hit-man’s future and surviving his present.
Melancholia
2011. Directed by Lars Von Trier
“The world is evil and no one will miss it.” “We’re alone.” “Life is only on earth, and not for long.” These are just a few cheery quotes from the characters of Lars Von Trier’s latest nihilist undertaking, Melancholia.
Take Shelter
2011. Directed by Jeff Nichols
Take Shelter is cryptic cinema. Michael Shannon delivers a solid performance as a man who keeps having horrific visions, visions that lead him to put his family’s well being on the line in pursuit of protection from what he sees as a massive approaching cataclysm. The acting is good, the cinematography is understated and lovely and the visions are realistically nightmarish, but the story is overly cryptic and just falls flat. This, plus a bizarre twist ending, leaves the viewer with a well-made yet confusing and seemingly pointless piece of cinema.
Much to my chagrin, I went to see The Hunger Games when it came out in March. It was playing a few blocks from where I live and I was really bored. I hadn’t read the book, but I’d heard enough negative comments about this cultural phenomenon to expect the worst. I took a notebook to keep track of my thoughts. I meant to write a review based on these notes, but I just couldn’t waste my time. The whole thing was just too laughable. So here are my random, mostly chronological thoughts, MST3K quip style for your perusal and, hopefully, your enjoyment.
These have been piling up. Time to unleash them on the internet public!
Broadcast News
1987. Directed by James L. Brooks
Broadcast News plays out like a modern day Jane Austen novel in its social perceptiveness and its wit. Writer/producer/director James L. Brooks has his finger on the pulse of his times, and he delivers a funny and biting yet dramatic and sympathetic look at the television news business of the late 1980’s. The film focuses on the relationship of three mature yet flawed individuals working together at a Washington news station: the producer, played by Holly Hunter, the writer, played by Albert Brooks, and the announcer, played by William Hurt. These three rely deeply on one other, developing friendships, clashing emotionally, and engaging in a constant debate over the ethics of television: what is and is not news, what can and cannot be manipulated, if and how announcer star power hurts the industry. All three actors are brilliant, but Hunter especially shines as an overachieving, emotionally stressed out miniature dynamo of a woman. Her life is her work and she struggles to differentiate the two. She’s so stressed out that she bawls her eyes out for twenty seconds every morning. She has two men in her life, Brooks, the selfish, self-deprecating best friend and Hurt, the kind and charming yet power hungry new hire. How these two men relate to her and how she reacts to them is the heart of the film, and through all the muddy power politics of television a terribly realistic, bittersweet story of love, hurt and forgiveness unfolds. It’s really quite a breathtaking film to watch and by far the meatiest bit of screenwriting I’ve seen in a long time. It made me re-think the power of the cinematic drama. They rarely make ‘em like this these days.
It’s been a while. I’ve seen plenty of films lately, but I just haven’t had the desire to write about any of them. Until I do, here are some mini reviews that have been sitting on my hard drive collecting dust.
Paper Heart
2009. Directed by Nicholas Jasenovec
Charlyne Yi is a performance artists of sorts. A geeky, gawky Asian twenty-something, she plays extremely loud on her electric guitar and sings passionately about silly things. You wouldn’t expect her to do this, and that, coupled with her awkward persona makes for a Kaufman-esque experience that leaves her audiences both laughing and confused. Enter Michael Cera, a young actor who has capitalized on an equally awkward persona. Together the two embark on a quest across the states to discover the true meaning of love. They interview all manner of couples about love, they hang out, they write and perform some silly songs, and something develops between them. What starts out as a real-life documentary becomes an obviously staged, faux-documudrama about awkward, twenty-something love. Charlyne Yi’s abrupt, incoherent exclamations of her feelings get really annoying really fast, and Cera, though enjoyable to watch, is a bit too cloying here. That said, Paper Heart is an interesting film with an unique approach to storytelling. It doesn’t really say much about love past worn-out truisms, but it delivers these truisms in a novel way, which makes for a fun, if unenlightening viewing.
It’s that time of year. the holidays are over, the new year is upon us, and the blogosphere is noxious with top ten lists. I don’t see half as many films as I should in theaters, so, like last year, here are my top five favorite films instead. (And some bonus material.)
1. The Tree of Life
V For Vendetta
2005. Directed by James McTeigue
V For Vendetta is a film loosely based on a graphic novel by Alan Moore. I’ve never read Moore’s book so I can only comment on this film. I say loosely based because I do know that Moore took his name off the film because he felt co-writers Andy and Lana Wachowski strayed too far from his original intent. I can only surmise then that this film represents the beliefs of the Watchowski brothers more than anyone else.