Catching Up: Guys Getting Older

I don't see as many dramas as I used to. There was a stage in my movie viewing life, when I was pretty deep in the perceived snob era, where I saw little else worth viewing but for dramas and foreign flicks.  Oh, I was still a closeted genre watcher but there was so very very little that I could say was good.  Now I rather find myself white washing everything with the not-so-good brush or more accurately, not that impressive to me, whether drama or comedy or action or foreign or thriller.

But there are movies that I know I want to see.  I wanted to see The Descendants (2011, Alexander Payne) in the theatre but it escaped me.  It sat on my HDD for ages before I spontaneously put it on one evening.  That may not sound like much but you don't see what it takes for me to put on anything other than toss-away genre and action flicks these days.  When I could be watching movies I actually want to see, I always end up re-watching Netflix Nick Cage movies (Next) or one of my disaster movies (2012).

I like when Clooney does a flick where he is not the Sexiest Man of the Year.  Here he is the dad of two, wearing his grey hair and his flip flops and not a really decent outfit in his closet.  This is not dapper Las Vegas Clooney or even clean and even hitman Clooney.  This is why I like the man; that he is not afraid to play a very deflated version of himself.

It is a light movie but not a light subject.  His wife has been injured and lies in a coma when he finds out she has been in an affair with a local real estate celebrity.  Well, if having your face on a bus poster makes you a celebrity.  Clooney's Matt King is a bit of a celebrity himself, if you consider descended from Hawaiian royalty as celebrity status. He and his family own a massive amount of untouched land and live off trust money, though none as carefully as Matt.  Most just want Matt to finish a big land deal and give them their share of the money.

So, Matt is left dealing with his wife's impending death, his children's reactions to it all and his squabbling family afairs.  Life is not easy even when you are living in paradise.  The movie sweet and touching and generally enjoyable and I got to experience something I enjoy about movies set in paradises -- what it looks like in an average life, instead of all beaches and resort life. Clooney is allowed a sobre role where he is a father and simple man experiencing hard circumstances with dignity despite slapping flip flops.

Michael Caine has been a guy getting older for quite some time of my movie watching life.  I never really got to experience him as the young, vibrant guy of the 60s and 70s.  But Harry Brown (2009, Daniel Barber) is one where he is not a guy getting older, but an old guy.  An ex-military man living in the project towers of London, a widower and living a quiet life of not much more than his old friends (those who are left) and a local pub.  This is the part of getting old that is never glamorous; when everyone else has moved on and you are just biding your time.

Bided time is interrupted by the violent death of his one last pub mate at the hands of hoodie wearing thugs who terrorize the whole project unchecked.  Harry tries to absorb it, let it pass but enough is enough and he resurrects his past skills, to play vigilante.  That is when we see it is not age that slows people down but how society treats you.  If you are thought of as useless then you end up playing useless.  Scary that what makes Harry useful are the local actually, truly wastes of life that plague his community. We are not expected to have sympathy for those he kills but we are left a bit unnerved by how good he is at it. Makes you wonder what Taken 5 will be like when Liam Neeson carries his particular set of skills to the pensioner home.

And then we actually went to see a sweet movie about real people getting old.  The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011, John Madden) is a British comedy about a number of aging brits who end up together in a hotel in India.  No, not a nice resort where the experience the beauty and exotic nature that India has to offer to people brought up on A Passage to India but a small run down hotel re-opened by the owner as a ... well, a pensioner home.  For one reason or another each of our seniors are forced into this cost effective choice that leaves much to be desired.

Each and every one of the "seniors" being played in this movie are not people I ever perceived as old.  Oh I know they are all aging actors but I never saw them play roles where their age impacts the character.  Maggie Smith was in Harry Potter and Dame Judy Dench has been M for a while.  Bil Nighy was an aging rockstar in Love Actually and Penelope Wilton was Harriet Jones in Doctor Who.  And Tom Wilkinson seems to be always playing mature politicians or bureaucratic roles.  But none of these people are what I would call old and feeble.

Dev Patel brings them together in something they never really expected.  His never ending enthusiasm bolstered by deception and sometimes downright delusion keeps everybody on course, but for a few disheartened, to realize a next stage in their lives.  Some find love, some find purpose and others find closure.  Each plays a character who considers themselves as aged but they all end up living more of a life than I probably am at 45.  Perception is the rule.

A Couple of Clooney's

The Descendants (2011, Alexander Payne) -- netflix
The American (2010, Anton Corbijn) -- netflix

You have to give credit where credit is due.  After a stint on The Facts of Life in the '80's and a stint on Roseanne in the flip of the decade, for some time George Clooney was not even a has-been, but more of a never-was.  Then ER hit, and he became "hunky" TV doctor George Clooney, the guy who every dude was sick of hearing the girls and women around them talking about.  Quentin Tarantino, an unabashed pop-culture nut, loved ER and wanted to turn that good guy image on its head by casting him as the ass-kicking, bank robbing, vampire fighting Seth Gecko in From Dusk Til Dawn.  It was an auspicious start to his big-screen career, one that was almost derailed by the expected romantic comedies (One Fine Day) and mid-budget action mediocrities (The Peacemaker) and franchise tent-pole taking-ups (Batman and Robin).

But then, it would seem, Clooney took full control of his career, deciding that he wouldn't work on projects for purely his own bankroll, but rather for directors that interest him, and on projects that stand-out.   He spent the bulk of the late 90's and aughts with Steven Soderbergh, Robert Rodriguez and the Coen Bros., but also stints with David O. Russell, Terence Malick, and Wolfgang Petersen.  It was natural that Clooney would come out of that impressive directorial roster with some damn fine films of his own.

In more recent years, Clooney's status as an A-list star has never faltered, in spite of the fact that he hasn't been part of a commercial blockbuster since the depreciating returns that were the Oceans movies.  He's an innately charismatic personality, an impressively versatile actor and continually interesting in the choices he makes.

The Descendants, an adaptation of the Kaui Hart Hemmings bestseller, seems almost a safe bet, by Clooney's standards, but it's a full-on showcase of the man at his finest. For all his handsomeness, Clooney isn't a slave to an ego, and this film -- about a Hawaiian lawyer facing his comatose wife's infidelity, his troubled children, and a massive real estate deal in which he is the sole trustee of a large chunk of unspoiled land -- finds him in terribly unflattering printed shirts and unglamorous lighting emphasizing his grey hair and wrinkles.  For a man with no children, he certainly proves believable as a father.

The Oscar-winning movie, for it's rather stern subject matter, these very heavy elements weighing on this patriarch, finds a much gentler tone, which doesn't mean that director Payne nor his cast abandon the raw emotional aspect, but it finds more wonder and curiosity rather than fastidious drama in these characters and situations.  Clooney is the figurehead for this balanced approach, providing a handful of memorable scenes in which his affinity for physical comedy shines, but is restrained in such a way as to not jar the even-handedness of the presentation.  Clooney's memorable running-in-flip-flops sequence was probably the key to understanding the film's approach to the story, followed by a brilliant encounter with his comatose wife's best friend whom he prods for details of her affair.

Family dramas have a tendency to skew into over-wrought and over-acted territory, mining far too much drama out of unresolved tension.  On the flipside, the trend has taken them to "quirky" extremes, where the characters play much more broadly, filled with often implausible eccentricity.  Each can have their own rewards, but the derivatives seem endless and frequently tiresome.  The Descendants surprisingly eschews these tropes and in doing so achieves a naturalness that is welcoming and resonant.

If I were to look for an opposing picture to highlight Clooney's range, The American couldn't be a better choice.  In it Clooney plays a mercenary of sorts, a former military man and assassin who seems ready for retirement but can't seem to find peace.  The film opens with Clooney and a lady friend in a remote Nordic cabin, obviously a quiet, semi-permanent retreat, until Swedish gunmen take aim.  Escaping and calling his handler, he's sent to an Italian villa where he forms an uneasy friendship with the town's priest and an unexpected romance with a prostitute.

Clooney's completely restrained in the role, a cold-blooded killer, but not fearless and more anxious than he cares to let on.  Never once does Clooney smile, for true pleasure seems a luxury he's unable to afford himself, and equally he's a man of few words, lest he reveal too much to be used against him.

He's assigned a job from his handler, to build a gun for an assassin, and the film lovingly lingers on the labors of doing so.  It's not quite gun porn, because it has too much respect for the craftsmanship, but it's as interested in the meticulous details of the building of the weapon as it is in exploring its character.

It's a methodical -- some might say overlong -- production, one that doesn't abandon the tropes of the "mercenary" genre.  It makes a film like Ronan look like Crank 2: High Voltage in comparison.  Yet for all it's retreading of familiar moments and the fact that the same story could very well be condensed into a 20-minute short, Corbijn provides a distinct rhythm that keeps it from sinking into complete tedium.  This is a part of the influx of Nordic filmmaking into the Hollywood system (see also the Millennium Trilogy, Nicolas Winding-Refn and Tomas Alfredson of late), the antidote to the "MTV Generation" of directors that has exacerbated into Paul Greengrass and Neveldine/Taylor chaos.

Where Clooney is integral to the success of The Descendants, I feel like many different actors could have filled the role of The American, and yet, Clooney provides a vulnerability and shaken confidence that mixes with a sense of experience and wisdom that few others in his age range (say an Alec Baldwin or Tom Cruise) could sensibly provide, so committed they are to holding onto lost youth.  Clooney, on the other hand, is aging gracefully like few others in his profession choose to do.  It's just a small part of what continues to make him so interesting, and make even his more challenging endeavors (like the American, or Solaris) worth seeking out.

We Agree: Cloud Atlas

I am the guy who loves all three Matrix movies, veritably diving into the depths of the multi-level story of realities.  Thus, I knew I was going to love this movie. Here we have a story layered through time, where the histories and destiny of many people are connected via their actions to points in time, some directly some only tenuously.  That we are all connected together, if not always in this life time, is something I can subscribe to more easily than a deity.

Cloud Atlas gives us a number of primary characters in six story-lines scattered throughout time. At the beginning, of the timeline not the storytelling of the movie, we have:

• The 1850s where a lawyer is on the business of his father-in-law in the south seas, where he takes ill and is tended to by a clownish doctor and an escaped slave, on the ship returning to San Francisco.
• The 30s where a young gay composer seeks out the tutelage of an aging maestro where he is to create his masterpiece.
• The 70s where a vibrant reporter investigates unseemly happenings at a power plant and meets a man who instantly falls in love with her.
• Now, where a failing publisher gets tossed into an old age home by his scheming brother and plots to break out.
• the 2100s in Korea where slaved retail clones learn about freedom and the truth of their existence.
• The post-apocalypse future where a primitive man and a more advanced survivor work together to save both their peoples.

The stories are not told with obvious threads for the theme is more quantum than it is linear.  We are connected to each other, not through repeating lives nor reincarnation  but through distinctions that emanate throughout time both forward and back.  It is very complicated science but it is also so very beautiful and it makes you very very aware of what you do now.  I don't think the story tellers, the Wachowskis, Tykwer (who i have been calling Twyker for more than a decade) and the original author Mitchel don't need you to understand every connection or see the exactitude of the movie plot, but to catch the strains of truth in what they are saying --- that we are connected.  Like the strains of he Cloud Atlas Sextet that plays throughout the movie, when we catch the music we may not know why it rings true but it does.

I agree with Kent in his saying that it was a necessary story telling element to have the same actors playing characters (of both genders sometimes) in all the time lines, to give us a visual cue to connect with, but that it was sometimes very distracting.  For me, it was Hugh Grant, who looked out of place in his makeup, especially when he was playing with his nose.  But there were only so many mature primary roles so I am not surprised A-list actors played some support.

I am still startled when I learn the movie was over two hours as I sat, while not entirely enthralled, for I will admit to some boredom with some of the stories, I was at least attentive for every minute.  The threads weave and bob throughout moving us back and forward in time, in plot and occasionally dropping a connection for us to see and understand.  It tells something as to how good the Wachowskis are as craftspeople that they could do this so precisely with the amount of time used.  

This movie will not be for every one.  Some tales will resonate with you more than others.  Me, you know I loved the post-apocalypse one the most with the south seas story not connecting as much.  You may be offended by people wearing "yellow face" or makeup to change their gender but I don't think there was a way to accomplish the story without the sweeping makeup gestures they made.  It may confuse you but try not to explain it so much.  Get swept up, make the connections you do and enjoy it for what it was.

Cloud Atlas

2012, Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski, and Andy Wachowski -- in theatre

Cloud Atlas is a big, bold experiment in cinematic storytelling, not completely without precedent, but truly unequaled in scope.  Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia comes to mind, a broad film of disparate characters and situations tied together through both an emotional connectivity and a thread of loose personal association.  Where Magnolia's characters were all part of the same community, in a manner of speaking, Cloud Atlas explodes the connection across centuries, further distancing one character from another.

Anderson's film is a challenging work, one that viewers have either connected with or been left cold by.  This radical endeavor from a trio of filmmakers who have built careers on trying something different, will do much the same, although at once be more commercially appealing and less critically endearing.

My immediate reaction, upon the start of the credits scroll, was "That would make a great book."  Yes, I was well aware it was an adaptation, having heard more than a few times of David Mitchell's so-called unfilmable story in relation to this project.  While the Wachowski siblings and Tykwer produced a valiant adaptation, it's maybe sixty percent a good movie, and I'm not certain there's a whole lot else the trio could have done to make it much better.  A little, perhaps, but not a lot.

The writer-directors started with a novel that's, in a sense, an anthology, comprised of six stories, each treading different genre waters, from Victorian-era drama, to a high-seas adventure, to a 70's detective drama, a modern-day retirement home farce, and a pair of futuristic set-pieces allowing for action and theological/sociological pondering.  Simply weaving these disparate source elements should prove challenging enough, but the filmmakers do so rather brilliantly.  The key facet of any success the film might have is its masterful editing. Timing the rhythms of the story, hitting upon those synchronous moments is, at first, overwhelming in the opening minutes of the film, but very quickly reveals itself as integral to the storytelling.  Jumping between the eras of the picture is disorienting but proves ultimately rewarding even by the half-way point of its 172 minute run-time.

As long as it may seem from the outside, it's rarely, if ever, boring, even in its unsuccessful moments.  That it managed to effectively condense it all down to under a 3 hour runtime is itself an impressive feat.  To bridge these stories together, Cloud Atlas informally plays with the idea of lineage, thus using the same actors throughout the eras, though most only play a role in two or three of them.  It's both a necessary shorthand, and one of its weakest and most distracting facets, particularly because in doing so the Wachowskis and Tykwer utilize an inordinate amount of makeup effects, to retain the character of an actor or actress but then change their ethnicity or gender in its most extreme cases.  The make-up team is remarkably successful about half the time, but in the times it fails, it's has the most crippling impact on the film, drawing the viewer to focus almost solely upon the make-up.  The option would be to have different actors playing many of the roles in different eras, but the visual connectivity would be lost, so either way there's a sacrifice.

As noted, most of the key actors in the film take on roles in each sequence, but it's Tom Hanks who stands out the most, and not necessarily in a positive way.  His buck-toothed quack from the seafaring sequence is a corny and cliched performance through and through, a decision that condemns an already hokey story even further.  It's as if he took his Professor character from the Ladykillers and went broader.  In a later era, he channels Bob Hoskins to play an aged British heavy, which I realize in hindsight was supposed to be funny, but came off as painful and truly unbelievable.  I like Hanks (and, really, who doesn't) but he's a man who cannot distance himself from his own character, no matter how much make-up or what kind of accent he applies.  He can lose himself in a character, but that doesn't always mean he's believable as that character, and as is the case here, it's another of the great distractions the film has to offer.  Think if Brad Pitt were there instead, how Pitt is able to completely get disappear within a role, what an improvement, if minor one, it would be.

Similarly, Hugh Grant and Suzan Sarandon both play a couple of roles in the film, but in all cases they're minor roles, which leads me to wonder what these A-level players are doing in character actor parts.  Like Hanks, their stature as performers overpowers their ability to be hidden in a minor role, and as such it's something that pulls the audience somewhat out of its investment.

Invariably the film, in its sweeping, circular movement, manages to suck the viewer back in whenever a distraction occurs, and by the end, it's proven to be a rewarding, if not completely triumphant experience.  Sincerely, Cloud Atlas should best be approached as a novel, and thankfully, there is one.

Catching Up: The Rest of Halloween

Taking a cue, more an actual suggestion, from Kent I am going to catch up on all the movies I listed in the drafts section of this blog.  I was considering declaring bankruptcy, as it is always easier to start again than to follow through, but Kent's quick many-in-one post is a good idea.  Which is amusing unto itself considering my 3 Short Paragraphs is already the compromise on doing "proper" movie reviews. But whateverz; into the breach !

We rather enjoyed, or should I say i rather enjoyed last year's (viewing of) Grave Encounters. It spun the idea of a ghost hunting show on its head, tossed in the found footage idea that never seems to be dying and subjected the cast and crew to an actual haunted house.  Grave Encounters 2 (2012, download) revisits the story with the added fun of people trying to find out if the original movie was real or not.

Film student Trevor is obsessed with the original movie so much that he switches his desire to make an original student horror flick to a documentary about the first.  It doesn't hurt that someone has left a "video response" to his own YouTube posts that depicts the host of the show in the first movie, still very much alive if a bit worse for wear.  So he drags his film friends to Vancouver to find the haunted asylum and continue to search for reality within the fiction.

The movie actually has a bit of fun with the whole what is real, what is not, using actor's and producers real names, even going so far as to show the Vicious Brothers in the background.  But it follows the formula of the first to a tee which is a failing and then tries to expand the "mythology" into what created the asylums monsters, ghosts and pocket dimension aspect.  It was fun but not very satisfying.

I can tell I have now tipped over a peak of too much TV and movie watching when I spend a lot of every new show and movie going "Hey that's Benny from Reaper" or more often, "Who the heck is that guy!?!" when I recognize someone from another role.  Benny is played by Rick Gonzalez, who gets a handful of bit parts but I wish would get more and that guy was Kai Lennox, or Detective Eddie Alvarez from The Unusuals.

This movie was Apartment 143 (2011, download) one of those movies produced by a company in another country but shot as if it was the US.  If the Spanish production of this movie lends itself to anything it is the character of the apartment the haunted family is forced into living -- SUCH a lovely state of old, decrepitude.  Kai Lennox is the father in that family being haunted by what they believe to be his late wife.  It has destroyed his life, taking from him his nice suburban house and job and most of his sanity.  So he has brought in Dr. Helzer and his ghost hunting crew to put the shade to rest.

Unlike most ghost busting crews in movies, this one came with a reputation of actually having done stuff.  We get most of the evidence from their dialogue, where they relate past events to each other and how they should deal with this one and what the apparition is most likely to be. They startle at the ... well, startling events but do not freak out -- its an exciting day at the job.  But what the busters find out the mystery to be is quite.... unique.  I liked it, decent acting and a new premise and finally a parapsychologist crew that actually has encountered things before.  I am surprised more of the world did not like it.

Then we watched Cold Prey (2006, download) a Norwegian slasher movie of the Cabin in the Woods ilk, and by that I mean the Norwegian team serve up some young and pretty people to a killer in the wilderness.  The localization of the premise has the bunch on a ski weekend in the mountains of Jotunheimen (trolls anyone?) and they end up in an abandoned hotel where a slasher resides.  Yawn; I would have preferred a giant troll.

Meanwhile I loved Wind Chill (2007, download), a situational ghost story also set in the bleak cold.  This time we have some college students on a long weekend heading home.  More precisely we have Emily Blunt and her stalkerish driver Ashton Holmes, who fabricates a drive to her home town in order to be around her.  He wants to stretch the trip because, you know, once he explains to her his stalkerish reasons she will fall all over him, by taking a (long) short cut.  Too bad the trip is interrupted by a haunted section of the mountain road replete with vengeful repeating ghosts, dead priests and visions of murders past.  A rather fun and chilling (rimshot) movie.

And finally was Prowl (2010, download), a vampire movie that fits into the action genre more than horror but we have always stretched that criterion.  Amber is a girl unhappy in her small town and convinces her friends to accompany her on he trip to the The Big City.  But the car breaks down and they are forced to accept a ride from a trucker, the Harbinger element of this movie; yes, another Cabin... reference.  He delivers them to an abandoned refinery to be fed on by fledgling vampires.

It was an odd little movie, more like a feral Vampire Diaries than anything.  Pretty young girl turns out to be a born vampire that was sent to be fostered with humans.  It is just pure coincidence she ended up as their prey.  It struck me like the first in a series of young adult novels where the girl would discover more about her past as time went on, hunted by vampires and feared by humans.  But it was one movie and ... well, that's it.

That was all we ended up watching for Halloween with life interfering and the usual interruptions ruling.  We have a number of others sitting on the harddrive ready to be converted and watched and maybe will do a mid-season horror-athon.

Skyfall

2012, Sam Medes -- in theatre

Should it be a good thing or a bad thing to know what you're going to get from a James Bond film?

The franchise, under the watchful eye of the Broccoli family, has had it's turmoil, it's ups and downs.  The last film was nearly derailed by a writer's strike, this one by the collapse of MGM.  There's been controversial choices for the man in the suit, and some questionable choices made for him.  All the while, the Broccolis have made sure that no matter what, Bond is always Bond, and whenever you step into the theatre, you're going to get a opening action sequence featuring Bond in media res, a dazzling title sequence of naked silhouettes accompanying a theme song from a big name musician, and ultimate an overblown super-espionage plot which requires Bond to use plenty of gadgets, guns, wits, cars (and countless other forms of transportation from skis to space shuttles), women, pithy remarks and a hell of a lot of luck.  You may not know exactly what you're going to get, but if you've seen enough Bond films you know enough.  Therefore a Bond outing may not always be surprising, and it may not always be great, but it's rarely ever dull.

Should it be a good thing or a bad thing to be surprised by a 007 picture?

That, then, is the question.  If a Bond adventure takes you outside of the comfort zone of what you know Bond to be -- a vague mystery man who likes his ladies, liquor and license to kill -- does that make it better or worse?  We've had 22 Bond films prior to this, and, in the first 20, five different actors portraying him with their own individualistic flair, but rarely could we say we knew him, truly knew his character.  Bond isn't a superhero, he's a superspy with a weakness for his vices, but he's always going to win it for the good guys, usually by the skin of his teeth. 

It's quire remarkable, really.  What's his background?  Does he have any family?  What toll does his job have on him?  Does being a Lothario or killer affect him at all?  How fragile is his psyche?  Doesn't he want to have a home life to go to?  The questions that never get asked, and just as often get answered.  For some, it's better off not knowing.  James Bond should be as roughly sketched as possible so that anyone can fit into his tux.  Not an everyman, but every man's fantasy.

Skyfall, and in different ways, Quantum of Solace and Casino Royale have been working hard to flesh James Bond out, putting more focus on Bond as a man, a human being, capable of being hurt both physically and emotionally.  Never before has he seemed so vulnerable, so susceptible to death.  Bond has been put in countless of life-threatening situations, but he's always handled them with a calm detachment.  Daniel Craig's Bond faces his mortality like any reasonable man should, with fear and without a cache of convenient gadgetry to save him.

Skyfall is a daring Bond picture, one that dares to even hint at his lineage, one that dares to make Bond mortal, one that dares to give him age and weakness and limitations.  He's not a super-hero, and barely a super spy. Skyfall's cold open finds Bond in chase of a man carrying a hard drive containing all of Britain's undercover agents.  The chase ends with Bond being shot off the top of a moving train, accidentally by one of his own. 

Dead and buried, Bond tries to enjoy his forced retirement, but when MI6 is directly attacked, moreover when M's life is directly put in danger, Bond responds.  With Casino Royale, Bond fell in love, and had his love taken away, leading to much revenge in Quantum of Solace.  In Skyfall, there's a different kind of love at play.  M and Bond have levels to their relationship, master and handler, boss and employee, and, not so curiously, mother and son.  The film dares to explore that dynamic, calling to attention that Bonds and Ms past are made null in its wake.

Sam Mendes was a curious choice to take up the franchise.  Primarily known as the Oscar-winning director of American Beauty, Mendes is hardly renowned for his action prowess (of his half-dozen features, the small dramatic road comedy Away We Go is my favourite) but he's got a competency with characters, which, given the angle that the Craig Bond series is going, couldn't hurt.  For his part, Mendes' action sequences are beautiful, wonderfully composed, brilliantly lit, with a flair for silhouettes and expertly paced.  Skyfall is exciting and terrific to look at.

As far as the Bond mythos goes, Mendes works with what the Craig-starring series has aimed for, a rebirth.  Casino Royal was meant to start from scratch with Bond -- forget the other guys, could they do parkour? -- and with this Mendes wraps the tied and true Bond tropes that had been missing from previous two back in.  Moneypenny, car porn, exotic deadly animals, Q, and more.  It's the most Bond that Bond has been in some time. 

Perhaps the best facet, an honestly charming villain in Javier Bardem as Silva, an ex-MI6 agent and metaphorical brother to Bond.  Love and used by M, Silva was the golden boy agent of his day, a half generation ahead of Bond.  Left for dead with drastic sub-dermal disfiguring, Silva's long plotted destruction and dismembering of M and her arms is at hand.  Of course, Silva would hope Bond would see things his way and join him, but he's also accounted for the opposite to happen.

Silva, unfortunately, only has minimal screen time, and not nearly enough of it shared with Bond (I doubt if he even makes his debut within the first hour of the film) but what time he does have, Bardem doesn't chew the scenery, but savors it like a connoisseur, masticating it slowly, drawing out all its flavours.  Le Chiffre and Dominic Greene are eminently forgettable in comparison.  I was actually hopeful we would have a new Blofeld, multi-film nemesis with this one, alas.

It is a good thing to know what you're getting out of a Bond film, but when it doesn't always deliver, or tries to deliver too much of a good thing (as was the case with most of the Brosnan run), it can be disappointing.  At the same time, there can be surprises along the way, things unexpected from a Bond movie, such as drama and pathos, that don't have to be bad things, unless you want them to be.

Looper

2012, Rian Johnson

I want to like Looper more than I do. I also want Looper to be better than it is. Rian Johnson's first film, Brick, is one of my all-time favs, and Brothers Bloom, his sophomore release, had a wonderfully curious energy, so I'm a fan. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for his part, has gone from being a solid child and teen star to one of the most versatile and interesting actors of his generation... a career shift that not coincidentally started with Brick. Yes, I'm a bit of a fan of his too. So collectively, with Looper, a mini Brick reunion, I was both excited (and being a science fiction buff, even more so) and rooting for the picture.

It would be wrong to say I had high expectations, since I've stopped actively reading news and rumour websites and a multitude of reviews, I go into films with a lot fewer preconceived notions about what films should be. Looper I did enjoy at the time, but, many weeks later, it hasn't resonated as strongly as I'd hoped. Johnson's future is a conscious and imaginative one, extrapolating upon society current progress, establishing a broader expanse between the rich and the poor, while at the same time indulging in flights of fancy like hover-cycles and, yes, time travel.

The crux of the film, in which Levitt, a hit man in the present for mobsters from the future, has to "close his loop" by killing the future version of himself is at once a curious and ridiculous premise. The film does make something out of it though, examining both the emotional toll being a killer (and then having to face killing one's self) and the odd cat and mouse game between the two versions of himself. The film invests well in Levitt's character, lesser so in his future version played by Bruce Willis, so at times they feel like they could be the same person, but that connection doesn't hold constant throughout the film.

I think the film would have benefitted from a bit more focus on the hide and seek of Levitt and Willis squaring off. It instead opted for more of a lay and wait approach which permitted the film more characters (including a never unwelcome cameo from Garrett Dellahunt, a great supporting role from Jeff Daniels, and a surprisingly effective Paul Dano) and story development, but equally reduced the spectacle and goofy pleasure the film could have had.  The laws of time travel, as appearing in this film anyway, are vague and hard to pin down (particularly, how does one's injury today, affect someone from the future, today?)  If you don't think too hard about it, the film holds up, but scrutinizing too much will lead to headaches.

It's evident Johnson had loftier ambitions for Looper than a straight-up action movie or typical Hollywood sci-fi but without ever actually abandoning those tropes it sinks his film.  It doesn't have the budget of a summer blockbuster, so it should rely on the actors and script more fully.  In trying to deliver the chase sequence and the shootouts, it sinks the film somewhat to B+ movie levels.  In other words, enjoyable, but not great.  Good, but not dazzling.  I liked it, but not enough to want to watch it again.

Four Actions and A Comedy

(..wherein I present a review of a quintet of films brought together by the meager connective thread of having watched them months ago and are not quite fresh enough in mind to write longer reviews)

Baby Mama - 2008, Michael McCullers - netflix
Serenity - 2005, Joss Whedon - blu-ray
Salt - 2010, Philip Noyce - netflix
Centurian - 2010,  Neil Marshall - netflix
Kill List - 2011, Ben Wheatley - netflix

For no reason other than I don't remember in what order I watched these, let's start with the comedy.  Baby Mama came out many years ago as a vehicle hoping to capitalize on the notoriety Tina Fey and Amy Pohler gained for playing Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton, respectively, on Saturday Night Live.  It's not strictly an "SNL movie", as it doesn't take an existing sketch and stretch it well beyond its breaking point to 90 minutes, ala Superstar or A Night At The Roxbury or Stuart Saves His Family, but it is the product of a writer-director coming from the SNL writers' room and, to no surprise, producer Lorne Michaels, so it's close.

I remember the commercials advertising the film back then and they seemed to center around Amy Pohler's lowbrow character going to the bathroom in the sink, and playing up heavily the sitcom-like scenario of a professional, well-to-do, single woman winding up sharing a her home with a crude, lower-class surrogate mother.  It looked forced, direly so.

Years later, Fey and Pohler are two of the most iconic female comic actresses on television, with their starring vehicles, 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation, being mandatory watching for comedy nerds.  My affection for Liz Lemon and Leslie Knope drove me back to Baby Mama, to see just how these two powerhouses handled themselves in a feature setting together.  Their intimate rapport creates an immediately likeable dynamic between the two of them, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that Pohler's character carried intellect, just not so much education or cultural refinement.  Fey's character is Liz Lemon played far more straight laced, though she makes a charming lead.

The script itself is bland, generic, which explains why it didn't come out to Bridesmaids-style "women are funny too" raves in '08 nor has it maintained any kind of cult status like Fey's Mean Girls.  It's a 1980's style comedy mixing the odd couple, the buddy comedy and the romantic comedy genres, but without really focusing upon the comedy.  It has heart, lots of it, but at the expense of humour.  I was hoping for an under-appreciated gem in which Pohler and Fey cut loose but they're fairly reigned it, though proving that they're both quite good at investing in their characters and roles.

Of all the films I'm covering, Serenity is the only one I've seen before.  I liked the Firefly TV show well enough, picking up on it shortly after its cancellation, but the spun-off film has always been where it's at for me.  I'm not a "Browncoat" by any means, but I still maintain that Serenity is the best space opera since the Empire Strikes Back.

Whedon's had a banner year with the Avengers, which was a necessary vehicle to show the non-geek masses exactly what this guy does.  The ensemble is his forte, but he's well versed in comedy and action, and certainly knows how to innovate and bring you concepts you've never seen before.  Serenity, 7 years prior, showcased all this with about a third the budget but just as much scope.

I don't think I've watched Firefly since before seeing Serenity in theatre, so the details of the program have gotten incredibly hazy, and I likewise probably hadn't seen Serenity since it's video debut, but I remember it with much, much more clarity.  Watching it again, on blu-ray this time, was like visiting with an old friend, and I was as rapt in its story as I know I was the first time I watched it.  Whedon's planet-hopping story brilliantly reintroduces the characters from the series, carries forward plotlines without requiring any of the background, and builds its own epic around them that is cerebral yet accessible.

I watched with a keen eye to see whether Serenity did work as a cold introduction to its characters and universe, and I'm pleased to say it does an exceptional job.  It skips over the "getting the band back together" bit, but presents each of the characters in a way that you understand their general being and their dynamic with one another in short order.  I particularly like the way Book, a regular character on the TV show, is reintroduced as that ancillary supporting character that gives the heroes aide in time of need, provides the hero guidance, but he himself remains much a mystery (as he was in the TV show).

The action in this film still wows me, the digital effects are one polish removed from those of today, but largely hold up.  I love the face-off between Mal and "The Operative" (Chiwetel Ejiofor is brilliant in this role of a mercenary with a serious conviction to his beliefs,  believably dangerous), both of them, though the later one is a classic.  The film still gives me tingles, and while the serialized nature of Firefly worked very well for the show, the epic scope of film worked even better.

Where Serenity mixes its SF and western genres impeccably well, and Baby Mama even managed to mash up different 80's comedy genres to some degree, Salt couldn't manage to bridge the gap properly between suspense, spy and action, not for lack of trying.  There's strong waft of Bourne Identity in the air of Kurt Wimmer's script, the quest for truth in identity is the center focus here as well.  Yet, the heightened tension and drama of trying to understand whether Evelyn Salt, the film's protagonist, is or isn't a deeply implanted Russian spy keeps getting deflated every time we're subject to another action sequence.

The action sequences are actually quite good, but they seem desperately overblown and out of place in what should otherwise be a cold war spy drama.  Basically think about if Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy were adapted into a James Bond flick, that's about how well Salt works. 

2011's Hannah explored much the same themes but with greater success and style.  Director Philip Noyce has played at this kind of thing before with the Jack Ryan films starring Harrison Ford, and this feels like a 2000's deviation on those films.  That the character of Salt was originally scripted to be a man and the film was rumoured to be positioned as a starring vehicle for Tom Cruise makes perfect sense, as this seems like just the kind of unmemorable, lacklustre action movie that major stars like him, or Harrison Ford in his time, or Angelina Jolie should be featured in.  

I actually wish screenwriter Wimmer had directed this, as, for all the faults of his previous efforts like Ultraviolet and Equilibrium, at least he was adventuresome in his presentation and provided something different.  Salt could stand to deal with a somewhat misguided and spastic flavour, as when it gets plainly ridiculous late in its third act, it needs a ridiculous director to spice that up even more.  Wimmer still would have directed it with a direness to the situation, but in his experimentation there would have been some much needed fun.  And that's precisely what Salt is missing.

Neil Marshall is a contemporary of Wimmer, similarly having a few cultishly adored genre pictures under his belt in Dog Soldiers and the Descent (not so much Doomsday though, I believe) but never having launched to the next level as a director, because of the material he's working with.  Centurion is definitely a complimentary film to his existing repertoire, a decently conceived and shot Roman Empire-period action-adventure, but well shy of meeting the touchstones of blockbuster status.

The film opens with a long helicopters shot of the Scottish Highlands (of course it wasn't called Scotland back then, but neither were there helicopters, so whatever) with some hella cheesy sweeping title cards that are like Superman meets Fringe meets Braveheart.  From there it leads into a brief but CGI-enhanced bloody attack sequence, a Pict raid on a Roman encampment, where the film's primary protagonist, Quintas Dias (Michael Fassbender) is the sole survivor, taken prisoner.  It's all, well, not so good.  It looks alternately cheap and corny, but cheap in the sense that its trying to hard to cover its minimal budget, and corny in the sense that it doesn't do a very good job at it.

The second through line is the dispensing of the famed 9th Legion (led by Dominic West as Titus Flavius) to quell the Pictish threat.  That doesn't go so well, but in the process they rescue Quintas Dias and we have a Saving Private Ryan or Blackhawk Down-type scenario, only in this case, the person being saved is a total badass warrior and tactician and pretty much takes the lead of the remaining Legionnaires.  After Quintas' escape he's set upon by a horde of picts, led by their greatest tracker, the mute and entirely vengeful Etain (played by a fierce, gorgeous and decidedly scary Olga Kurylenko).

The first act is pained by it's uncertain focus and its attempts to cram too many ideas and characters into one space.  I'm trying to determine if the set-up spent too much or not enough time (I'm thinking the former) in getting to the meat of the film, the cat-and-mouse chase, as the overwhelmed Romans try in desperation to maintain their cool and make it to the safety of a Roman fortress.  By the end of the second act the film shows signs of real life and the third act is largely entertaining.  Though it does try, it never successfully surpasses its B-movie roots.. Not-yet-a-superstar Fassbender and not-yet-a-cult-hero West do provide the film a needed amount of not just credible, but bravura acting, especially in the face of some opposing dire performances.  The majority of the cast is fairly solid, but one or two of them... yowza, which producer's kid and/or father were they?  It's not a fantastic film by any stretch, but also not as dire as the opening act would suggest.  Centurion is the rare film that somewhat redeems itself in its third act, rather than throws away all its good will.

Speaking of which, Kill List doesn't necessarily throw it all away in the third act but it certainly takes a surprising dovetail into far stranger territory than the opening two acts would suggest, one that the viewer will embrace wholeheartedly in it's no doubt affectionate tribute to Wicker Man and it's likeminded 70's brethren, or flat out reject. 

My initial reaction to the unravelling threads in the third act was rejection, but in hindsight I have a surer appreciation for it and what co-writer/director Ben Wheatly was attempting to do.  The basic plot of the film finds former contract killer and now full-time family man wrestling with the idea of taking on another job, even though he desperately doesn't want to.  The film opens with some intense relationship drama as Jay and his wife Shel argue heavily about finances and anything else that comes up in the process. Wheatley's script (co-written with his wife Amy Jump) is blisteringly intense and grounded in these relationship sequences.  The performances here by Neil Maskell and the fetching MyAnna Buring are frightening, awkward and far too believable.  That they can play these roles so naturally, incorporating the whole angle of contract killing as if it's a natural part of life for this couple is by far the film's greatest strength, building a foundation that allows the wonky third act to remain grounded and frightening, instead of silly and stultifying.

As Jay and his partner, Gal, proceed with their assignment -- one paying big bucks, but providing no answer and carrying far too many secrets -- Jay begins to unravel under the stress.  His violent, thoughtless reactions to his victims and their increasingly erratic response to his arrival ("Thank you", they say, smiling) is indeed distressing.  There's obviously a reason he tried to quit the business, but this particular assignment seems almost designed to push his very mental limits.

I didn't love this film, at least not initially, but it's stuck with me in the recesses of my brain.  Wheatley created a simplistic seeming story that is clever in its intricacy and subtlety.  The sometimes confounding, almost forgettable subtle, yet bizarre touches and asides throughout on have a later payoff that is impressive in its execution, since they come up so brazenly yet are paid little attention to. It's sparse soundtrack, limited more to atmospheric noise than music, maintains a certain chilliness throughout the proceedings, while equally Wheatley marks his settings, wardrobes, and lighting with a largely natural sensibility. 

That third act is a divisive doozy, a quasi-twist which seems like a remnant from '70's suspense filmmaking.  The Wicker Man remake proved that it's hard to execute that kind of scenario without seeming ridiculous (but that could be all Nic Cage) and Hot Fuzz managed it but through the filter of absurd comedy.  Kill List manages to make it logical and intriguing, but it still feels quite out of date, which may be why it's so surreal (but I'm still discerning whether it's effective or inappropriate).

Kid Flicks

The Nightmare Before Christmas - 1993, Henry Selick - DVD
Frankenweenie (Short) - 1984, Tim Burton - DVD
Hotel Transylvania - 2012, Genndy Tartakovsky - in theatre
Wreck-It Ralph - 2012, Rich Moore - in theatre
How To Train Your Dragon - 2010, Dean DeBlois, Chris Saunders - tv

The bane of many parents' existence is the prevalence of obnoxious children's programming in the household.  In Canada, the dedicated children's programming channel, Treehouse, is equally a parent's saviour (for times when you need to get stuff done, and need the kids out of the way) and nightmare (pretty much any other time you're exposed to it).  Some of the kids programming, like Yo Gabba Gabba, Octonauts and, even still, Sesame Street, is actually quite surprising, and casually engaging for even adults.

My household is a little more complicated, though.  With one television and two kids -- of different genders and seven years age difference -- it can pose a little more challenging to entertain both kids at once (or it should, but for some reason the 10-year-old still has no problem watching banal kiddie pap like Mike the Knight or Bubble Guppies).  As parents, we have to take a little ownership over what the kids watch and try to guide them towards quality entertainment, and in our situation, find something that will stimulate a 10-year-old boy that will also not be too advanced, frightening, violent, or challenging for a 3-year-old girl.

With the boy, he's always been cool with watching anything, so long as its a cartoon.  Live action stuff like Star Wars was never his thing.  As geeks, the wife and I have long had DVDs of cartoons we liked for him to watch: Batman The Animated Series, Justice League, Looney Toons, the Tick, Samurai Jack, as well he took a shining to the more mainstay Nickelodeon animated comedies, the children of Ren & Stimpy, like Spongebob and Fairly Odd Parents (the more palatable of the genre, the knock offs are atrocious and annoying).  As a result, though we've tried to reign our daughter into more age appropriate fare, we learned quickly that she could no only handle, but liked her brother's programming.

Both kids thankfully enjoy and can sit through movies.  The Pixar films are a particular hit with everyone in the house, but most other kid-centric films don't appeal as broadly.  So, it can truly be a crapshoot, a roll of the dice to find the winners that are not only worth watching, but worth watching again and again.  Outside of the mostly reliable Pixar, I've only found a handful of other movies that I like as much as the kids do.  Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs is ridiculous but tremendously funny with a great voice cast.  The Muppets, including the latest Jason Segal effort, Muppets From Space and the early films all hold a nostalgic potency that the kids seem to tap into as well.  I haven't test run The Fantastic Mr. Fox on my daughter yet, but the boy said, after watching it in the theatre, that it was probably the best movie he ever saw (I wonder if that would hold up).

Sitting on our shelf for years, untouched and unloved, was The Nightmare Before Christmas.  I've had this movie in my collection since it first came out on DVD in 2000, and if I've watched it more than once (until recently) I would be surprised.  I was, in the 90's, a Tim Burton devotee, and as a result I was committed to loving Nightmare even though I'm not all that certain I was as enamored with it as others became.  It wasn't a flop, but at the time it seemed a disappointment at the box office.  However, within a few short years it became a monster cult hit, spawning an endless barrage of collectibles still found in record stores, comic shops and novelty boutiques.

I recall trying to expose my step-son to Nightmare a few years back but he was creeped out almost instantly, and I don't think we made it ten minutes into the picture.  To be honest, I don't think I'd watched it in over half a decade and at that point couldn't recall any details beyond the chorus to a few of the songs.  Recently, it the pursuit to diversify my 3-year-old's viewing regimen, I asked her if she wanted to watch it, and I sat, hesitantly watching her in the opening minutes, waiting for her to cringe and tell me she didn't want to watch any more.

It would seem I have a little goth in training, as she adored it instantly.  It's beautifully creepy in its design, with cheerfully morbid songs and an ominous joie de vivre that my little girl obviously keyed into immediately.  With this, his feature directorial debut, Henry Selik proved himself a stop-motion animation wizard, rapidly earning prestige and clout within the industry and with fans alike.  Working from Tim Burton's poem and with his lanky and lean character designs, the figures give wonderfully expressive physical performances, while an unprecedented number of head sculpts (about 400) gives lead Jack Skellington (voiced by Chris Sarandon with Danny Elfman subbing in for the songs) a richly emotive face, while other characters had some subtle traditional animation overlaid for lip synching.

Almost two decades later, Nightmare still feels very fresh and unique.  Stop motion animation is such a heady commitment and time consuming endeavor that Nightmare's modest initial returns didn't spawn the spate of imitators it would have were it a blockbuster.  Combined with it's gothic sensibility, it's borderline creepy aesthetic and its unusual holiday connection, as well as a soundtrack that was far more sinister than the usual Disney fare (although they paid for it, Disney scuttled it under their Touchstone Pictures masthead, when it could have used the Disney push... but then the traditional animation brand was still riding its Lion King/Little Mermaid/Beauty and the Beast high, so they weren't willing to risk the brand on this unusual offering).

The film holds up as a holiday classic for two holidays, meaning parents can get a lot more mileage out of it.  It maintains a holiday movie sensibility but by splitting the difference between Halloween and Christmas it actually separates itself somewhat from both, meaning it can be enjoyed outside of any festive spirit.  It's soundtrack has maintained a classic sensibility, the songs having a compounding infectiousness that may not appear so catchy at first but certainly digging into the ear after multiple exposures.

It's obviously not going to catch every kid's interest, but those that do key into it will love it deeply.  If there's any negative to The Nightmare Before Christmas, it's that it is not long enough.   At a meager (but wonderful) 75 minutes, it seems over as soon as it starts if you're trying to occupy your kids while you go off and do something else.

The 2000 release of the DVD (and subsequent Blu-Ray releases) for The Nightmare Before Christmas contains Tim Burton's 1984 live-action short film (roughly 30 minutes) Frankenweenie, naturally the source for the 2012 animated feature of the same name.

Using black and white film, shooting with a low-budget, delightfully retro 50's sensibility and a style reflective of a hybrid Twilight Zone and Leave It To Beaver, Burton tells the story of a boy, Victor, whose dog, Sparky, is unceremoniously killed.  Though wallowing in grief, he learns of the wondrously restorative capabilities of electricity in science class, and spares no effort in attempting to revive his best friend from his mortal slumber, an effort which does not go unnoticed by a suspicious neighbour.

When Sparky is fully revived in a grade-school interpretation of the science lab from the classic Frankenstein movie, he unintentionally gets up to no good, riling up the neighbourhood and causing a panic.  This leads to another homage to the classic Frankenstein, with the neighbours taking up arms and chasing after the dog, only to unwittingly trap Victor and Sparky in a mini-putt windmill set alight.

It's a charming short with quality performances from child star Barrett Oliver (D.A.R.Y.L., Cocoon, The Twilight Zone The Movie) as Victor, Daniel Stern and Shelly Duvall as his parents and characters actors like Joseph Maher and Roz Braverman as the neighbours, and even kid supporting actors like Jason Hervey and Sophia Coppola in the mix.  Burton's natural flare for off-beat children's stories shines through, but filtering it through the peachy-keen 50's aesthetic lessens most of the darker edges.  It's that same retro-50's filter that gives this nearly 30-year-old production a timeless feel, as it adopts the vibe wholeheartedly rather than doing so through an 1980's filter.

If anything, it's overlong for a short feature, which makes me wonder exactly how padded out "Tim Burton's Frankenweenie", the new animated feature, must be.  (I believe David has a review in the pipeline).

This year has seen a curious trend in spooky children's entertainment, as if Hollywood has only recently caught on to the fact that kids like creepy things too.  David covered Paranorman recently, though it was released in August.  Frankenweenie came out in time for Halloween, preceded by Hotel Transylvania, a monster mash of a film, meant to be more of a comedy than fright fest.

The titular hotel in the picture was started by Count Dracula as a refuge for all monsters to come, to be free from the oppression of human society and to relax in the assurances of both security and camaraderie of fellow monsters.  Upon the celebration of his daughter, Mavis' 118th birthday, all of his monster friends have arrived at the hotel, but amidst the joyous occasion Dracula frets as his daughter seeks to establish her independence and venture out into the human world for the first time.

Dracula does manage to trick her into staying home, but the human world comes knocking on their door in the form of a young backpacker, Jonathan, who is both completely freaked out and equally enamored with the hotel and its denizens.  Disguised as a distant relative of Frankenstein by Dracula so as not to freak out his patrons and friends, Jonathan becomes the hit of the festivities and the object of Mavis' affections.

It's a cute plot that's equal parts parental anxiety and teenaged romantic comedy, but it's hindered by a painfully high number of puns and obvious gags involving the various monsters traits.  Featuring a script from British sketch comedy wizard Peter Baynham and Saturday Night Live/Late Night With Conan O'Brien alum Robert Smigel,  and featuring the voice talents of a largely ex-SNL cast, including Adam Sandler, Andy Samberg, Molly Shannon, David Spade, Jon Lovitz, and Chris Parnell, the film should have been far more amusing.  It is pretty sharp at times from a storytelling standpoint, but the overall tone of the humour and proceedings seems dumbed-down to juvenile levels.  Given how successful Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs was at being absurd but hilarious and romantic and sentimental, there's no reason Hotel Transylvania, with all its talents, couldn't have replicated that same sensibility.  Sandler, for his part, commits to one of his less annoying voices in his cinematic career, doing a hybrid of cliche Dracula and Triumph The Insult Comic Dog (actually it was mostly the latter... I wonder if there's a "for me to poop on" outtake or ten somewhere).

In a valiant but unsuccessful effort the film features a half dozen original songs.  It's definitely a preferable route than plugging in the kid-approved hits of the day, but also futile as they all sought to replicate those very same hits, to largely painful degrees.

The name that initially sold the picture for me, however, was director Genndy Tartakovski.  Tartakovski's brilliant resume, including the Powerpuff Girls, Dexter's Lab and the first (and best) animated stab at Star Wars: The Clone Wars, was the main draw.  My daughter has discovered Tartakovski's Samurai Jack, a favourite of my step-son's as well, and I hold that show as the epitome of animation at the point where art crosses entertainment.  I was hoping some of Tartakovski's more unconventional influences and inspirations would come out in Hotel Transylvania, like they did in most of his previous work, but it's a fairly straightforward directorial effort.  The only scene that had any particular impact was a sweetly framed sequence of Dracula walking down the steeply-pitched roof to join a moping Mavis.  One stand-out composition was far less than I was expecting out of this (from what I've heard, however, Tartakovski was a late arrival on the project, its sixth director).

Given that I had really no preconceptions and no expectations from the film, I was neither disappointed nor pleased.  It was moderately entertaining, well animated, but overall a forgettable experience.

Getting away from all the creepiness, yet, still focussing on supposed bad-guys, Wreck-It Ralph is a kid-flick in the vein of Toy Story, wherein it builds a world for our playthings unknowingly in our midst.  In this case it's the shared world in the arcade, where video game characters can interact not only in their own game, but with any game.  Like Toy Story, the characters "come to life" after the arcade has shut down and there's no people to notice them.

But Wreck-It Ralph isn't so much about the world it inhabits, but the characters that inhabit it, which would actually be disappointing if the story and characters weren't so involving.  The titular Ralph is the bad guy in a vintage Donkey Kong/Rampage hybrid  arcade game called "Fix-It Felix Jr.", but after 30 years, Ralph is sick of being the bad guy and sets out in search of a gold medallion of his own, if not to be the hero, then at least be seen as less of a bad guy.  Of course, by abandoning his game, in the real world, they think the machine needs to be put out to pasture, so Fix-It Felix Jr. has one night to find Ralph and bring him back before they're unplugged.

Ralph, however, is a catastrophe waiting to happen and, true to his name, he kind of wrecks everything he touches, whether it's his intention or not.  When he winds up in the cutesy "Sugar Rush" racing game, he meets Vanellope Von Sweet, a glitchy character within the game who is similarly deemed an outcast by the other game characters.  The two characters naturally forge an uneasy friendship, Vanellope's playful, precocious, sarcastic nature continually sitting uneasily with Ralph's surly, patience-free, singularly focused demeanor.

To continue explaining the ins and outs of the film would take some time, as it's not so easily summarized.  For what's ostensibly a family movie, it's surprisingly dense in its structure, with moments building upon moments, and keeping virtually everything relevant.  Though it may seem like it at the time, there's truly no fluff in the film.

Wreck-It Ralph features a seemingly endless array of sight gags and gamer in-jokes, many of which I -- a very minor dabbler in video games -- picked up on, but I'm sure there were even more that I didn't.  Thankfully these types of jokes, unlike Hotel Transylvania, were laregely unobtrusive, and mostly set deep in the background.  They certainly weren't key to enjoying the film, which I think is its brilliance, that it could make a movie about video games, fill it with nuances that only gamers could appreciate, and yet make it accessible to almost every viewer.

The central story is about what it means for Ralph to be a bad guy, and the film very, very quickly takes the black and white of good and bad and plays with its shades of grey.  A formidable moment that kickstarts the third act finds Sugar Rush's monarch, King Candy (voiced with gleeful, lispy aplomb by Alan Tudyk) having the unfortunate job of convincing Ralph that in being a good guy and helping his friend Vanellope, he's actually going to do her more harm.  Then, upon returning to his own game, Ralph sees the effect of his quest for heroic redemption, the end of his own game.

The main voice talent is perfectly cast.  John C. Reilley provides the precise awkward voice for a gigantic, disheveled ape-man, while Sarah Silverman is the only person who can make being an incessant annoyance endearing and cute (well, perhaps Kristen Schall).  Jane Lynch playing the tough as nails sergeant from a Halo-esque shoot-em-up provided the perfect amount of edge and balls, but also just the right hint of fragility, while Jack McBrayer's puritan, high pitched, mid-western drawl is perfect for a beloved 80's video game handyman hero in the Mario vein.  That the cast largely recorded together as well makes for a noticeable impact on the repartee between characters, particularly Ralph, Vanellope and King Candy (though I don't know how anyone kept from giggling when Tudyk did his thing).

The animation, quite frankly, is some of the best I've seen with regards to attention to detail, and I'm not talking in the design of the worlds (although the central hub is brilliantly conceived, while the landscape of Sugar Rush is a thorough delight) but in the nuance of movements and the shifts in pixellation between games, and those moments where we see what's happening in-game from an outside perspective.  The animators, and the director, obviously know their gaming history and put their knowledge to good use.

And then there's the soundtrack, which blends video game sound effects from across the ages and old 8-bit style compositions with modern composition techniques to wondrous effect.  It's hard to pull one's self away from the visual stimulation of the images on screen, and even more difficult to remove one's self from the story to notice, but at times I found myself smiling only to realize that it was the score that was triggering it.

I'm more impressed with Wreck-It Ralph in hindsight than I was after first viewing.  Not to say that I disliked it, far from it, but I wasn't as enamored with it as early reviews seemed to imply I should be.  Yet, in thinking about the film, and writing about it now, I find myself flat out impressed by it.  Where Pixar let us down with the tepid mommy-issues story in Brave, Wreck-It Ralph (though a Disney proper film and not a Pixar effort) truly is the heir to the Pixar throne.  All that John Lasseter, Brad Bird, and Andrew Stanton built, designing wholly unique worlds amidst our own and populating them with characters worth investing in and seeding their movies with the broadest range of emotions and excitement, from empathy and humour to suspense and even mild horror, Wreck-It Ralph truly carries that torch.

Speaking of Brave (and to a lesser extent, Hotel Transylvania) and the whole "parental issues" subgenre of kid-flicks, How To Train Your Dragon is ostensibly of this ilk, and yet transcends it in ways Brave just couldn't see fit to do, by actually giving the main character a journey that wasn't so much about their parents but about them.

In HTTYD, Hiccup is the scrawny, wimpy son of the leader of a Viking clan, and though he's been given the role of apprentice to the weapons smith, he's aware how big of a disappointment he is.  The town they live in is occasionally attacked by dragons, and the culture takes great pride in the hunting and killing of dragons, as well as dying by them too.  During one such attack Hiccup manages to injure a fabled Night Fury in flight, and the next day, upon coming face-to-face with the wounded creature, finds that the killing spirit is not within him.

Naturally the two bond, as Hiccup studies the Night Fury, "Toothless", and learns more about their nature than any viking past.  Simultaneously, Hiccup is forced to participate in dragon-fighting training, but using his newfound knowledge of dragon whispering, Hiccup soon bests every captive dragon his trainer has, without ever having to use a weapon or harm the creature.  By the time his father returns from a hunting party, he's a celebrity, but naturally it's completely misunderstood.

The film develops the characters and their relationships nicely, including the kids, who are quite apparently born and raised amongst a warrior community.  The dragons equally have a mix of different races, each with their own nuances, and individual dragons with their own personalities.  There's a lot of emotion (a surprising amount for warriors, I would assume) throughout, all of it well earned.  Hiccup's path to hero, not just amidst his people, but amongst the dragons as well, is a wonderful tale with plenty of depth, humor and heart, as a well as a surprising amount of intensity and a respectable amount (for a kids picture) of the viking brutality in tact.

(Side note: I did find it odd that this Norse-god loving clan spoke with Scottish accents, save for the kids who spoke with conventionally North America accents, and yet, it kind of worked for the film.)


Of all of these, my 3-year-old is most enthused with The Nightmare Before Christmas.  She was about as enthused with Hotel Transylvania as I was, and while she liked Wreck-It Ralph, I'm not sure that it resonated with her like Iron Giant or Monsters, Inc. has.  I don't even think she stayed and watched all of Frankenweenie, while How To Train Your Dragon, she watched somewhat passively (though she mirrored my wife's comments that Toothless looks and acts very much like our black cat).

The 10-year-old, well, he's harder to read.  He tends to avoid Nightmare when it's on, and I think he really enjoyed Hotel Transylvania in that it seemed targeted specifically to his age group.  He seemed to assume that because Frankenweenie looked old (ie. 1950's old) that it was old (which it is) and seemed to dismiss it, only somewhat retaining interest because he knows there's a cartoon of it out there.  Wreck-It Ralph, well, he stayed through to the end credits, so I imagine he liked it, but he's not always the most forthcoming with his response to seeing a movie (I think the biggest responses I have seen out of him were the aforementioned Fantastic Mr. Fox and an arms-up-high, "AWESOME!" for John Carter).  He saw How To Train Your Dragon in theatres two years ago, and seemed to enjoy it, but he poo-pooed reading the novel series when suggested to him, so I guess he wasn't that enamored with it.

3 Short Paragraphs: Dredd 3D

2012, Pete Travis (Vantage Point) -- cinema

Walking out of the movie, I had an adrenaline high and was easily able to say it was my favourite movie seen this year.  Best?  Probably not, but definitely the one I have most thoroughly enjoyed.  This is a high action, high melodrama, ultra-violent genre flick that knows exactly what it wanted to be.  For me, it was what The Raid: Redemption wanted to be -- a floor by floor assault on the apartment complex owned by the bad guys.  But that is where the comparison ends. It is such a tight movie, a narrow and focused plot that provides just enough room for character development. The action is brutal, bleak and solidifies the world this is set in.  Karl Urban is spot-on as Dredd, never showing his face above the mega-scowl he permanently wears. Olivia Thirlby is the judge being judged, new to the brutality of this side of her world and we travel along with her and the transformation she experiences.

This is a movie based on an existing genre comic book franchise -- 2000 AD from which Judge Dredd is a primary character.  No, this is not the remake of the Stallone flick, which was an offense to every fan of the British comic books.  This is not even a properly over-the-top recreation of the comics, more a grittier (is that even possible?) down to the ground story telling in that world. In some ways it is hard to remember it is a genre flick for the bad guys are typical, more appropriate to any cop movie or an episode of The Wire.  It is the world that this is set, something the movie constantly reminds us with fly overs of Mega City One and the complete lack of regard for innocent life.  It is a dark near future after a holocaust in America, where irradiated wastelands (what better cliche phrase describes this genre's physical setting?) cover most of the land leaving singular walled cities that cover hundreds of miles.  In these cities are tower blocks, the projects of the future.  Each can easily hold 50,000+ residents.  And there are the judges easily described in the idiom, "judge, jury and executioner."  They are literally given the permission to perform these acts of justice, should the crimes call for it.  Of course, the stories are as much a comment on police states as they are balls to the walls scifi action stories.

We had to see this movie in 3D, which might be the only way it was released, considering that it is part of the title of the movie.  I have an eye condition that makes seeing 3D difficult and often headache inducing.  I also join Ebert in my contempt of 3D as an imposed technology not enjoying the inflated price, the post-production additions and the muting of colour.  But here they found an appropriate use as it added soooo much to the displayed effects of the slo-mo drug that plays a part in the movie.  These drug scenes, depicting how the drug slows your perception of time down to 1% of normal, were beautiful and colourful full of sparks and motes of dust that were just enhanced by the 3D effect.  The rest of the movie is dark and dirty, as we follow the two judges being hunted by the criminals who control the Peach Trees tower block.  Luckily colour schemes were already muted, so I doubt we noticed any alteration by the 3D tech.  And there were few "look its THREE-DEE" moments of sticking things in your face.

3 shrt prgrphs: The Catechism Cataclysm

2011, Todd Rohal -- netflix

This is an odd, odd little movie.  I'm not certain what the point is.  I definitely didn't know what a "catechism" is before watching the movie, and now, having read numerous explanations, I'm not entirely certain I understand how it's applied.  So either the film is deeper or more shallow than I thought.  But, truth told, I haven't thought about it all that much, except in appreciation of the oddity it is.

The film stars Eastbound and Down's Steve Little as a far-too-old-to-be-so-wide-eyed-and-naive priest, Father William Smoorster, whose teachings to his local congregation are less than imbued with the holy spirit.  He's told to take a week off, during which he reconnects with his sister's former high-school boyfriend, Robbie Shoemaker (Robert Longstreet), a man whom he's idolized deeply for decades.  The haggard Robbie seems perplexed by their reunion, obviously overwhelmed by the hyper, cheerful and unsullied personality before him.  Father William goes on and on about Robbie's shorts stories and his awesome metal band, presuming Robbie to have the superstar life fitting his adulation, and seems completely unable to hear the actual truth.  Suckered in by his energy and perhaps a little lonely himself, Robbie agrees to take a canoe trip with Father William, where, naturally, things go south.

Along the way Robbie, upon request, tells William a few stories, each of which are actually quite clever and entertaining, but their vague resolutions leave William wanting more concrete answers.  The film opens with a death metal, flames-and-pentagrams infused opening title sequence, leaving one to expect an in-your-face horror of some kind, and the entire canoe trip, up to the point where they realize they're lost, has this sensation lording over it.  After they get lost, and the truth gets laid on the line, the intensity ratchets up, but doesn't pay off quite as expected.  What ultimately occurs is best left unspoiled, but suffice it to say, it's totally random, exceedingly odd and, depending on your perspective, delightfully oblique, or confusing, pointless and inane.  I fall in the former camp, so, truth told, I kind of love this movie.  Both Little and Longstreet are fantastic, and definitely bring something special to each of their roles.  An buddy-less buddy comedy, a horror-less horror, and just plain weird lost-in-the-woods adventure, I smell a cult favourite in the making, one that's likely to take a long time, even in the internet age, to catch on, but there's definitely something here to come back to and keep enjoying.

The Other Guys

2010, Adam McKay -- netflix

 I'm a Will Ferrell fan.  I'm not a fanatic, so I don't rush out to see everything he does, but I acknowledge how talented a comedian and performer he is and have never turned my nose up to seeing one of his pictures.  He's got a gift, whether innate or carefully crafted, he's able to generate physical, cerebral, base and absurd comedy on a whim.  He's not a broad comedian like Jim Carrey, or as goofball as Adam Sandler, or as vulgar as Eddie Murphy (in his heyday), or as arch as Bill Murray, but he's capable of all these kinds of comedy, making him a much more adaptable comedian than almost every huge comedy star from the past.  Truly though, his biggest successes come when he's in control, especially in his pictures with Adam McKay.

With McKay he created Anchorman, Talladega Nights and Step Brothers (as well as the revolutionary Funny or Die web-channel), funny often brilliant comedies that encourage the performers to improvise, leaving as much funny stuff on the cutting room floor as in the film.  The Other Guys, however, is a much different picture, surprisingly so, and perhaps a necessary one to show what McKay and Ferrell are capable of.  The Other Guys is a full-on homage to the buddy cop action-comedies of the 1980s.  One would expect a rather pointed skewering of the genre out of McKay and Ferrell, but they keep it fairly broad, and limit it to the set-up.

As with most old-school buddy cop comedies, the hero of the picture tend to be the wild card, the off-the-book type constantly butting heads with the chief, but getting results.  He's usually partnered with the straight-laced guy who follows him dutifully as he goes off the books, providing a minimal effort to reign him in.  In The Other Guys, the buddy cops are both wild cards, and all I really need to tell you is they're played by Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson, and you know what to expect.  The difference is, the chief loves them, as do the press and everyone in the precinct.  They're rock-star cops, seemingly impervious to harm, able to accomplish any feat, or so they think, right up to their shockingly hilarious end.

Mark Whalberg's Terry Hoitz is a disgraced cop, or rather an embarrassed one, put on desk duty after an unfortunate discharge of his weapon.  With the city's heroes having fallen, he sees an opportunity to step up and take their place.  Unfortunately, he's partnered with Ferrell's Allen Gamble, the most straight-laced of straight-shooters, a guy who's more than happy to be a desk cop, file reports, and be the subject of other's practical jokes.  Hoitz and Gamble stumble on a seemingly innocent clerical error, but as they follow up on it, the innocuous balloons out into the biggest police case in New York history, which they tackle with an incremental amount of gusto.

The Other Guys doesn't play it completely straight, as it's funnier than, say a Lethal Weapon or a 48 Hours, but unlike so many genre comedies today, it's not completely spinning the subgenre on its head at every turn.  It invests in its characters, and far more than most McKay/Ferrell pictures, the comedy is largely scripted in, deriving from the characters and situation rather than through improv.  It delivers on the action, which is limited to being as over-the-top as most 80's action pics, not pushing it any further.

The film is a product of the post-bailout financial crisis, and while it doesn't lay heavy on the commentary, nor is it exceptionally relevant in-the-moment watching it, it yields a remarkable end credits sequence that's potent, informative, and not at all out of place.


Whalberg, not one of my favourite performers, puts in a good turn here, a cop full of bravado without much to back it up.  It's a role with surprising range that shapes up nicely against Ferrell's reigned in, buttoned-down performance.   All told, it's a solid, constantly entertaining picture.  While I'm looking forward to the Anchorman sequel/reunion, I hope that McKay and Ferrell have more straightforward vehicles like this in their reservoir as well.