40 posts tagged “film”
We saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix last night, and it totally lived up to the hype. I had just a few minor gripes (why did they establish that Ron, Hermione, et al couldn't see the thestrals and then not play that up for humor when they were flying on them?), but I think it's my favorite of the movies to date. They mostly cut out the right things to cut to let the story move forward, though I'd maybe have liked a few scenes to be a bit longer. Another minute with Sirius wouldn't have hurt, nor would have explaining a little more clearly why they all get mad at Cho. Rowling's strength is not in writing action, and I found the ending battle to be more exciting on film than in the book. Like the cemetery scene at the end of Goblet of Fire, the end could have been scarier and sadder, but it worked. I especially liked the way the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters flew around and flicked spells at each other, and then how the Voldemort vs. Dumbledore battle looked like they were conducting an orchestra with their wands. It was no Yoda vs. Darth Tyranus fight, but the following internal conflict between Harry and Voldemort was great. They're lucky Daniel Radcliffe grew up to be a good actor.
I spent a few minutes today looking through Netflix for movies to watch while Katherine's away on business next week. The last time she went away I rented Stealth and The Tuxedo. Katherine hates Jennifer Love Hewitt. I'd secretly love to have The Ghost Whisperer on my TiVo, but she wouldn't abide it. Anyway, I had selected a few horror movies to watch next week when I realized that Harry Potter comes out on Saturday. I think Hermione really might die this time.
Transformers is a straight action movie, and in being an action movie it succeeds wonderfully. Certainly the script could have benefited from some more work. Hot computer hacker girl and her wise-cracking black friend eat up too much screen time while not advancing the story whatsoever. John Turturro's government agent character is simply lame. There are too many cheesy lines. They say "more than meets the eye" twice. But robots blow each other up. The action is just perfect. Big, loud, exciting.
It isn't the cartoon you watched as a kid. It's just not, and don't expect it to be. A few of the robots have enough of a resemblance to the original that it's still Transformers, but it is an action movie version of that cartoon, not an adaptation of it. In this regard I think Michael Bay was right in making the robots look more alien and less like the original characters. It removes them a bit from needing to be what they were in the cartoon.
There's a cliché in monster movies where Godzilla shows up, the army comes in and fires its useless weapons, and then the scientists find a way to stop him. Transformers, not terribly subtly, turns this around. The film opens in Iraq with a Decepticon blowing away an army base. Josh Duhamel and his squad escape and, by the climax, get to blow up their own Decepticon. It's like Michael Bay is saying, "Hey America, I know it's depressing that we can't win in Iraq, but our military still kicks ass! They can blow up Transformers!" In fact, one of the key climactic Transformer-on-Transformer battles happens off-screen while Josh Duhamel and his squad get to do the ass-kicking.
In the hands of a better director the movie could have been a deconstruction of monster movies and 80s nostalgia. Instead Bay blows shit up, and does it spectacularly. I'd have loved it to have been smarter, but wouldn't be willing to sacrifice any of the wall-to-wall carnage for it.
Ratatouille's up to 95/100 on Metacritic now, which is exactly right. It's not a perfect film, but it's damn close. I'd rank it below Finding Nemo, my favorite Pixar movie, and about even with The Incredibles.
It's a bit of a shame, really, that Pixar isn't putting more weight behind this one. I've seen some advertising, but not much. It's coming out right before Transformers, which will probably hurt its box office earnings. Cars got a lot more press, but I guess the subject matter speaks to lots more people than a movie about fine food, despite that Cars had a terribly flat, predictable story. I guess it's hard to compete with Shrek, with its stars and its franchise power, but the effort that Pixar put into the storytelling of Ratatouille is as palatable as the food its characters produce.
Anyway, I recommend this one. One small thing: for some reason I can suspend disbelief that all these French characters are speaking English (and of course that rats are speaking in the first place), but it bothers me that onscreen, diagetic written material isn't in French. What's wrong with me?
It says something about how good a movie is when you found it by reading a spoiler on a list called The Top 50 Movie Endings of all Time, and you're still on the edge of your seat.
Audrey Hepburn was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her portrayal here of Susy Hendrix, a blind woman whose husband accidentally comes into possession of a doll filled with heroin. As three criminals try to find the doll in Suzy's apartment, the level of tension rises to that of Rear Window and more recently Red Eye. At times it's a little cheesy, as movies made in the 60s can be, but it's worth it by the time you get to the ending.
Metacritic's currently showing Knocked Up at an 85, which is about right. Very funny, not quite historic. As in The 40 Year Old Virgin [sic], writer/director Judd Apatow knows how to make an amusing, raunchy comedy, but doesn't know which scenes to cut out. 129 minutes was too long for this movie, as much as I enjoyed it. The extra running length gives time to flesh out the characters, but it also makes the formulaic "characters go into a slump before the third act" part seem way too perfunctory. Wedding Crashers was guilty of this, too. Aside from that, unless The Simpsons Movie turns out to be way better than anyone expects, this will probably be the comedy of the summer.
Remember how Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was this awesome movie about a ghost ship?
Remember how Pirates of the Caribbean: Dean Man's Chest was almost an awesome movie about sea monsters, but it was 15 minutes too long and didn't have an ending for no reason whatsoever?
Now, imagine if instead of being 15 minutes too long, it was three hours too long!
If you haven't seen it, the teaser trailer for this winter's The Golden Compass is out. Bear with the LotR plug for its first few seconds:
Not a lot of daemon action in the clip, but it's possible they're going to be CG and the animation isn't finished yet. Reading the book I always pictured them looking a little bit magical, maybe slightly transparent, but I think probably they're just supposed to look like normal animals.
According to an interview done by The Guardian, director Chris Weitz is going to be downplaying some of the anti-religious themes, which doesn't seem possible by the time you get to the third book, though I think in fact the books end up in a pretty strange place and maybe cutting some of the more out there themes isn't so bad an idea. I like that he says he's going to let the film speak for itself in the face of inevitable American criticism of its take on religion. I'm pretty sure though that there's little chance the ending of the books will remain intact.
Going in, I expected The Fountain to be a bit more literal than what it turns out to be. I thought it was a set of three stories, one set in the past, one the present, and one the future, which it is, and that there was a story about reincarnation and lovers finding each other in different lives, which it sort of is, but in watching it you realize it's much more subtle and spiritual than that. I do recommend seeing this film, but it's not for everyone. It's a bit slow and there's no explained connection between the three stories. Pay close attention to references to the Garden of Eden and to the Mayan creation story.
Wired has a good writeup about the story behind the film. It took Aronofsky years to get the film made. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett were originally attached but had to back out, forcing Aronofsky to stop and bid it back out for half the budget.
(I hate the style of artwork Amazon uses on some DVDs. Hey look! There's a DVD included with that DVD! You can see the DVD right there next to the artwork!)
Christopher Guest movies, you may not have realized, are very hit-or-miss. The reason you may not have realized this is that, starting with This is Spinal Tap through A Mighty Wind, they've all "hit." For Your Consideration sadly just doesn't fit together like the others have. The quirky characters and absurd plot turns are there, but it seems like there's something missing. According to this interview with Guest and Eugene Levy, they write the plot for the film and then let the actors improvise all of the dialog. The actors who usually work in his films are good enough that usually it works, but here it never quite adds up to a complete story. The plot of the movie is about how the studio tinkers with the film they're making, and about how a marketing buzz leads to some high expectations, but neither story is fleshed out properly. I wonder if maybe they had to cut some of those scenes because they weren't working. There are lots of great moments, but they don't all add up to a great movie. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the film, but it's not one I need to have on my shelf alongside the others.
