Tag Archives: Drama

Oct 18 2014
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Reviews

“BIRDMAN” Review (✫✫✫✫)

The artist’s struggle, all in one take. 

Birdman, or otherwise known as The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance is one of the most mesmerizing films I’ve ever seen. It is also one of the most unique, disturbing, shocking, and confusing films I’ve ever seen too. That’s okay. This film was reaching for a specific vision, and director Alejandro Inarritu has expanded beyond it. I admit I don’t know what to expect as far as the public reacting to this, and I also don’t know how accessible it is to non-film aficionados either. But I have seen the movie frame by frame, and I think it’s one of the best films of its kind. On the surface value, it’s about the struggles of Broadway theatre. In deeper insight, it’s about ego and the obsessive human condition.

The film stars Michael Keaton as washed-up actor Riggan Thompson, who has been forgotten by his adoring public after portraying the lead role in a series of superhero films titled Birdman. This is ironic, because in real life, Keaton portrayed a superhero in Tim Burton’s 1989 film Batman. Desperate for a comeback, Thompson sets out to write, direct and star in his favorite Broadway play: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver.

Things immediately hit the fan during the week of their first preview. One of Riggan’s actors gets a head injury from a loose light on the set. His replacement, Mike Shiner (Edward Norton) is a talented but brash and arrogant actor who sees himself as Riggan’s superior. And, as he faces personal problems with his estranged daughter Sam (Emma Stone), Riggan begins to feel the closing pressures of Broadway when a malicious theatre critic tells him she’s going to “kill his play.” Now Riggan is trying to keep the play and his sanity afloat, and he will make whatever sacrifices he needs to make sure both happens.

Written, directed and produced by Inarritu, Birdman is the first black comedy made by the filmmaker, his most successful films to date being Oscar nominees Babel and Biutiful. Now he has made Birdman, and I am tempted to say it’s the best film he’s made yet.

What worked so well with the film? The first thing is the editing and the cinematography, which was shot so wonderfully by Oscar winner Emmanuel Lubezki that it places you in the moment, in the reality of the film, not making you watch it from a cushion seat on the eighth row of a dark movie theater. Lubezki, who worked with Inarritu on short films in the past, decided to shoot the film and edit it into a continuous fashion, giving off the illusion that the entire film was filmed in one take. Even though the movie wasn’t filmed in one shot, the feeling it gives off makes it feel alive and moving, not unlike the world of theatre that Riggan is trying to prove himself in.

I wonder how much effort this takes, not just from the cinematographer and director’s point of view, but from everyone else involved in the film as well. How many hours did the actors need to rehearse their lines in order to get their roles right? How much pressure was the tech and lighting crew under while they were filming, knowing that if they screwed up, everyone would have to start back to square one? How many hours did film editors Douglas Crise and Stephen Mirrione have to sit in front of a computer, making sure the shots transitioned so well that you couldn’t even see the transitions? The illusion not only worked because of the idea that Lubezki and Inarritu offered, but because of the commitment it received from everyone involved with the film. In many ways, their efforts were all worth it: the camerawork here expresses more of the story than the character’s dialogue does.

The parallels in this movie are also ingenious. How does Keaton feel playing as Riggan Thompson in the movie, knowing that he reached international fame as Batman earlier in his career and having since then never been able to match a more recognized role? How does Inarritu feel, going through all of the production pressures Riggan did in making the play as he himself did in making the movie? Did he intend this movie as self-reflection? Is he telling the audience what he goes through daily as a filmmaker? Or is he using his struggles as a platform to tell a much deeper, more important story to the audience?

For me, I don’t get as much joy out of interpreting as much as I do out of experiencing. And make no mistake: Birdman is an experience, surreal, tantalizing, and thought-provoking all at once. I’m still sitting here, hours later, not quite fully realizing what exactly Inarritu was trying to portray in this film. Is he commenting on the artist’s struggle? Commercial vs. independent film? Fatherhood? Friendship? Family? Lost love?

I think it’s all of the above. Or maybe none of the above. I honestly don’t know. In the movie, Inarritu battles labels that are placed on artists and on the art that they produce. Is Riggan Thompson a superhero, or an actor portraying a superhero? Is he a former shell of who he is, or a flower that has yet to bloom? We see in this film how these labels influence his life and how much stress and anxiety it presses upon him. To put labels on the movie would contradict Inarritu’s intentions. It would be offensive to the film.

My bottom line: Birdman is a masterpiece. It is so distinct in its own language and style that I think it is impossible to define it, let alone replace it. Critics will applaud it for it’s technical and emotional achievements. It will definitely garner some Oscar nominations. It’s a sure contender for visual effects, cinematography and editing. It is also sure to confuse certain people, to which I would recommend stop trying to understand it. Birdman is not meant to be understood. It is meant to be experienced, and if you can help it, interpreted.

Post-script: A thought I had after seeing the movie that I think viewers will also have. Because of how profoundly his role as Birdman affected Riggan, is Inarritu attacking the superhero genre of film? I believe he is, but I choose not to acknowledge that. After all, for every time a superhero film was called too simple, couldn’t you call any art film too complicated? I quote Mark Twain: “Too much of anything is bad.” 

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Oct 14 2014
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The Scope

An Afternoon With Alejandro Inarritu

“And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.”

– Raymond Carver

These were the words that director Alejandro Inarritu (Babel, Biutiful) chose to quote at the beginning of his meticulous film Birdman, or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance. It was also the first words that came back into my head minutes before I was to interview him.

This weekend, I had two great experiences happen to me. Firstly, getting to see Birdman, a viciously unique film that tackles it’s characters and themes with pinpoint precision: a masterwork by a master director. The second you already know. If you don’t, you didn’t read my first paragraph.

Alejandro gave myself, along with about ten other college journalists, the privilege to talk to him about his upcoming limited release. After seeing the movie, this surprised me, because there was a moment in the film where a journalist accuses the main character of injecting semen into his pores to maintain his young features. I suspect Mr. Inarritu hosts a very guarded spirit while being interviewed by the press, and I certainly don’t blame him for that if that is the case. Now that I think about it, maybe that’s why Inarritu wanted to host the interview over the phone in the first place.

Anyhow, I had 20 minutes to listen to the director’s innermost thoughts, and while I only got to ask him one question, I enjoyed the experience as much as any other college journalist who participated in the call. While all of these aren’t my questions, these are the ones I found the most relevant to the film, and the ones I believed Inarritu would have preferred to be answered in the first place. So without further adieu, here is Alejandro Inarritu on the unexpected virtue of ignorance.

Question: Your film is unique, hyperactive and full of energy. How do you communicate to your cast the complex tone you’re wanting to portray?

Answer: I always try to be very specific, help them to clarify and simplify things by having a very clear objective. I think every scene has an objective, and every character has something they want to achieve in each scene. When you have cleared your objective, and to try one or two possible ways to get that done through an action verb, I think that would simplify the work not only for me, but for everybody.

Q: What were some of the challenges you faced while making the film? 

A: It was a very short shooting — 29 days. We rehearsed a lot before arriving to the set, so basically it was a very intense and meticulous work of precision with actors, camera and crew. Everything was designed and matched the needs of the film that was basically predecided in rehearsal.

Q: You have a big role behind your scenes in producing, writing and directing all of your films. What is it like taking on all of those jobs at once? 

A: I have been lucky to have been the producer and be involved in all of my films in a very personal way. I think there is no other way to make it. I think if you have a film that is personal, if you are doing your own film, there is no other way to not produce it, because I think it’s a part of the film. Producing means a lot of decisions that will impact your film one way or another.

Q: In the movie, Riggan Thompson is overshadowed by a superhero role he played earlier in his career. In real life, Keaton is overshadowed by his role in Tim Burton’s Batman. Is that an intentional casting decision that you made?

A: Keaton adds a lot of mental reality to the film, being an authority and one of the few persons of his work that pioneered the superhero thing. But at the same time, he has the craft and the range to play in drama and comedy, and very few actors can do that. He plays a prick in this film, and I need someone who was adorable, somebody who you can really like. He has that likeness, that likeness that was required. All of these things made him the perfect choice for it. I think he was very bold in trusting me with this role.

Q: One of the things that is particularly interesting with the film is the long take. Can you talk about why you made that visual choice?

A: I wanted the long take to make the people really feel the experience of this guy. I think it’s important for every director in every film to pick the point of view, and in this case I wanted radical point of view, and the people were in the shoes of the character to experience his emotions. I felt that was the most effective way to do that.

Q: Why did you choose to portray mental illness in a film that is at least extensively a comedy?

A: I think ego is a part of our decease as a society. I think the ego is a necessity, but I think when the ego takes over and we attach our personalities to the ego, and he domains a person absolutely without being discovered or controlled. That’s mental deceit, and I see in a way Riggan Thompson suffering from that illusion of ego that’s distorting him. He thinks he does things that he does not do, he’s in like a manic state of mind. He’s an extreme case of ego.

Q: Is that part of the commentary?

A: Everything is part of the tone of the film. That’s why it opens with a guy meditating in tidy whites.

– David Dunn

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Oct 12 2014
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Reviews

“GONE GIRL” Review (✫✫✫1/2)

Gone Girl

What happened to Amy Dunne?

When I started watching Gone Girl, I had no idea what happened between Nick Dunne and his wife Amy. Now I have finished the movie, and I still have no idea what happened between the two of them.

Gone Girl is a very strong psychological thriller, packaging the essential elements of tension, grit, and confusion to make an extremely fascinating, yet equally frustrating, watch. Imagine you’re driving on a highway, except you take a wrong turn. Then you take another wrong turn. Then you take another, then another, and then another after that. Gone Girl is that highway, taking you through so many twists and turns that you don’t know which way you’re going anymore. The only problem is that there’s no end destination when you get off of the highway.

Based on the book of the same name by Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl starts with Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) coming home to see his living room torn apart and his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) missing. There are a few details that disturb him upon this discovery. The glass table is smashed in. Chairs are overturned. A blood splatter can be spotted above the stove in the kitchen. Suddenly, Nick finds himself swept into a media frenzy as everyone everywhere cries out “Where’s Amy?” as he and Amy’s parents work to find Amy and bring her back home.

Yet, in the midst of all of this media attention, people start to recognize strange things about Nick. He’s behaving oddly for someone who has just lost his wife. A woman outside of a press conference takes a selfie with him and posts it online. He smiles at the conference when people take his picture. And as police discover Amy’s diary and uncover incriminating evidence about Nick’s marriage with Amy, people start to ask one question: did Nick Dunne kill his wife?

Let me start by saying this: there’s no way to expect anything from this film. The minute you think Gone Girl is going in a specific direction, it does a reversal and goes in the complete opposite direction, setting you on another prediction track until it does another reversal. There are many factors contributing to these twists, the biggest one being the writing contributions of Gillian Flynn. Flynn, who wrote the original book, was adamant about being involved in writing the screenplay for David Fincher’s adaptation, and she’s a good sport as far as working with him. Even though there are a few differences conceptually from the book, the work remains a whole emotionally, and lets off this gnawing paranoia on both characters as we question who is the victim and who is the perpetrator. This movie is like a game of cat and mouse, except no one really knows who is the cat or mouse.

The writing is ingenious, but the real star of this show is David Fincher. Fincher, who is no stranger to mind-bending plots (1997’s The Game, 1999’s Fight Club, and 2007’s Zodiac), incorporates elements from all of his movies into this one mind-bending thriller. It has plot twists as big as those in The Game, the pseudo/suicidal/mind trickery in Fight Club, the dark, disturbing realism in Zodiac, and the broad, expressive shots, angles, and edits from The Social Network. I like this about Fincher films, that they’re so distinct in visual style that you can almost instantly tell that it’s a David Fincher film.

Example: In the opening sequence of The Social Network, we capture the essence of the scenery as a lonely Mark Zuckerberg trots back to his dorm. We get a sense of the campus he’s on, the bridges, the buildings, the sidewalks, the trees. We not only feel the physical surroundings around him, but also the life that’s in it, almost like the scenery is breathing around him. Fincher did the same thing during The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and he did it again with Gone Girl. When he’s not filming a scene where there’s a tense exchange of dialogue between characters, he’s quietly viewing the scenery all around him, telling a story with silent images just as much as he does with outspoken characters.

More than what he does shot-wise though, I’m impressed with how he handles his cast. Look at the names associated with this film. Ben Affleck. Rosamund Pike. Tyler Perry. Neil Patrick Harris. Are any of these names what you’d expect to see in an intricate crime-thriller, let alone give a decent performance? I mean, the last memorable role Perry had since dressing up in drag as Madea is Alex Cross, and that was about as complacent as an action movie can get. Neil Patrick Harris’ most serious movie role is as himself in Harold and Kumar. Rosamund Pike is most known as a Bond girl. Affleck’s acting career is self-explanatory. I looked at all of these actors cast in these roles, and I couldn’t help but wonder what they were doing in a Fincher film.

Then I saw what he did with them, and I couldn’t see anyone else in their roles. Perry played Dunne’s attorney Tanner Bolt, and he was so smug and straightforward that he could lend Robert Downey Jr. a few tips for The Judge. Harris steps so wonderfully into a role he’s never played before, and Pike is exemplary too, though I won’t exactly specify how. Affleck to me was the most interesting. He uses awkward lulls, blank expressions, and his sterile voice just like he did during some of his bad performances in past movies. It’s not a bad performance though. Fincher is just using Affleck’s natural reactions to lend details to Nick Dunne’s character, like how he could be smiling in pictures while his wife is missing, or why he sounds so unconvincing when he gives a speech about how he loves his wife to ongoing listeners. Fincher uses both Affleck’s strengths and weaknesses as an actor to the film’s advantage, and that goes the same for everyone else in the film.

I liked many things from this film. The cinematography, the editing, the thought-provoking plot, Fincher’s masterful direction of the film and it’s cast all culminated into a jaw-dropping experience. My only regret about this film is it’s ending. I won’t spoil it for you, but I will say that it ends in the same way that it begins, posing questions and vague thoughts so that the audience may fill it with their wild imaginations. I realize Fincher and Flynn did not intend to have a straightforward, clear-cut ending, but I have a stubborn need for closure. Films are supposed to provide answers to the questions they’ve already posed to you. Gone Girl does not provide an answer. It provides a question.

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Oct 05 2014
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Reviews

“THE FAULT IN OUR STARS” Review (✫✫✫✫)

And the stars have never shone brighter.

The Fault In Our Stars is one of the most magical films you will ever see. It is also one of the most tragic, heartbreaking, funny, genuine, and real films you will ever see. It does exactly what the book does, and exactly what movies are supposed to do: it sweeps you away, transporting you, making you forget about your own reality and immerses you into the reality of these fictional characters that don’t seem so fictional. While I was watching the movie, someone in the audience leaned over to me and asked if this was a true story. “No, but it deserves to be,” I thought to myself.

Based off of the highly popular book of the same name by John Green, The Fault In Our Stars follows the story of Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley), a spirited, spunky, and sarcastic teenager who loves to read books, watch horrible reality TV shows, and question everything her parents tell her to do. Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort) is another spirited, spunky, and sarcastic teenager who loves to watch movies, play video games, and ponder the many questions about the universe. Hazel and Gus are both like any regular teenager but with one significant difference: they’re cancer survivors.

Note that I said survivors. They’ve had cancer in the past, Hazel in her lungs and Gus in his right leg, but both have since moved on from their ordeals to try and tackle their lives as any other teenager would. Because of Hazel’s lungs, she has to carry around a respiratory machine (Oxygen tank instead? Machine sounds intensive) with her everywhere she goes, and what would seem like a simple task to anyone else (I.e. standing up, or walking a flight of stairs), nearly exhausts Hazel after doing so. Gus, on the other hand, has a prosthetic replacing his right leg in exchange for being cancer free.

One day, they both meet each other at a cancer support group meeting. Hazel notices Gus having a bounce to his step, despite only having one full leg. Gus notices Hazel’s beautiful face even though she’s deoxygenated. As they continue to meet and see each other, they soon realize that they have a special relationship with each other, one that no “normal” human being could ever possess.

From a first glance, some people may look at this movie and see it as an overly optimistic tween romance, where two characters fall in love, and their love beats all things, including their ailments. I know I did when I first heard about it, and why wouldn’t I? Romantic dramedies have a way of underemphasizing conflicts just so characters can have happy endings. As a result, we get movies that are more cheesy and insincere than they are genuine and heartfelt, much like those ungodly Nicholas Sparks movies.

But The Fault In Our Stars is different. It is not manipulative of it’s emotions and it doesn’t downplay the severity of character’s problems. It’s honest and up front about the challenges these teenagers face, and doesn’t shy away from the severity of it just because they’re children. In fact, Hazel Grace herself dispels the notion at the beginning of the film, saying to her listeners “That wouldn’t be the truth. This is the truth. Sorry.”

I know, I’m late on writing this review. Why am I writing this in October, when the movie has already come out on DVD? I was waiting, dear reader. Waiting to read the book and see not only how faithful the movie was to it’s source material, but also to it’s emotions. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: you can bend the plot of the original story, but you cannot bend the emotions and still remain faithful.

Now I have read the book, and I can tell you firsthand from my experience that the movie held up to the book on both counts. The Fault In Our Stars is a breathtaking experience: touching, deliberate, and beautiful all at once. To say it’s faithful to the book is an understatement. It’s quite possibly one of the best book-to-movie adaptations I’ve ever seen.

The things that work so well in the movie are the same things that work so well in the book: the writing and the characters. At the heart of the entire story, movie and book included, is Hazel Grace, who is such a fascinating and singular character that it makes me sad to think that she doesn’t exist. Hazel isn’t like other cancer-ridden characters. She neither has an overly defeatist attitude of her ailment, or an overly optimistic perspective one either. She’s in the neutral realm, seeing her sickness as a part of her no matter what she does, and choosing to accept it because she’s more or less forced to.

And yet, she’s so much more than her sickness. In many ways, she’s just like any other regular teenager. She has a favorite book. A favorite author. A favorite show. A favorite food. A crush. And like any other teenager her age, she’s bursting with opinions, hopes, fears, and desires, all of which combine to make a completely fascinating, involving and passionate character. We quickly learn to love Hazel not because she has cancer, but because she is unique.

On that note, let me talk about Augustus. Can I just say that I love this kid? Gus is filled with spirit and enthusiasm, having a bounce to his step that contrasts with Hazel’s shy trotting. I find it interesting that even though I don’t like it when characters are unrealistically happy, here Gus is almost nothing but happy. He thinks it’s cool that he has a metal prosthetic leg, seeing it as him being half-cyborg. He likes video games, zombies, and heroism, seeing himself as one of the brave movie heroes who sacrifices himself for the sake of the people he loves. In many ways, that’s who he is: the hero of the movie, bringing all of the love and affection he could for the woman he loves. He’s so great in the film, he could have a movie all to himself if he wanted to.

You’ll notice that I’ve referred to both of these persons by their characters, not by the actors that portray them. That’s because Woodley and Elgort slip so wonderfully into their roles that they’ve completely disappeared into them. I didn’t think about The Descendants when I saw Woodley tear up and cry, or when she picked up her BiPAP and exhausted herself walking up the stairs. I didn’t think of Divergent when Elgort so tenderly cared to her needs, or sweetly telling her that he would be honored to have his heart broken by her. I saw these actors and was so immersed into their performances that I no longer thought about what they were and thought more about who they were. These two are not Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort. They are Hazel Grace Lancaster and Augustus Waters.

Everything else in this movie was made to near perfection. The screenplay by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber adapted the story and emotions wonderfully from the book. The camera work by Ben Richardson was elegant and harmonic, much like the great work he did with 2012’s Beasts of the Southern Wild. And director Josh Boone guides the actors through the blissfully tragic story created by John Green, whose wondrous words were what made this entire movie possible.

That ends the review with one question: which is better? The book, or the movie? Neither. I could argue that the book is better because it has more content, or I could argue the movie is better because it brought the story to life visually. Both arguments are pointless. They are both two different mediums, but they both tell the same wonderful story.

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Aug 31 2014
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Reviews

“BOYHOOD” Review (✫✫✫✫)

A scrapbook by Richard Linklater.

The main character’s name in Boyhood is not Mason. His name is also David. And Connor. And Warren. Aaron. Stacey. Tony. Eric. Steven. Ben. Richard. And so on and so forth until you’ve listed every masculine name in the dictionary. I probably went eight names over how many I needed to list, but you get my point. We’re doing more than just watching one boy’s journey into adulthood here. We’re watching ourselves grow with him.

Strange, I think. I don’t normally sympathize with characters to the point where I feel like I AM them. Relating to protagonists is a somewhat straightforward task; you merely need to introduce the character along with their conflict, and then let the filmmaker do his work to bringing their arc to life.

But with Boyhood, I face an interesting prospect: there is no one conflict that Mason faces in the story. Like myself and my closest family and friends, Mason’s conflict is life itself, complete with all of its blessings, gifts, challenges, and turmoils alike. If you’re still not getting the picture, let me put it to you this way; if I were a filmmaker, and I were adapting the full story of your life, would I be able to condense it into one or two events?

The answer is no, I couldn’t. There is a whole multitude of issues you’ve faced in your life, just like I did, and I’m sure we could turn those issues into ten or twelve more movies if we tried. Director Richard Linklater chose not to do that. With Boyhood, he took one boy’s life, a small child he found named Ellar Coltrane, and followed him from age six until age 18, gradually showing his life progress and the challenges he faced as he grew into a man year, by year, by year.

It’s fascinating I tell you, to watch a movie progress from one generation to another. I look at Ellar as a young boy obsessing over cartoons and action figures while his sister, portrayed by Linklater’s daughter Lorelei, constantly talks about makeup and Britney Spears. I look at these children’s parents, played by a significantly younger Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke, as they struggle to connect and be there for their children and to be the best parents they possibly can be. It’s interesting to see these children mature from young, simple-minded beings to young adults, trying to find their own paths in life while their parents mature from being those young adults to the older, more mature parents that have faced, and survived, every difficulty they could have ever faced.

It’s pointless to describe what the plot of the movie is like. What is the plot of the movie? Fill the movie with your life experiences, and you have the plot. I caught myself many times reliving past memories while watching the movie, sympathizing with Mason as I remember how I too faced issues such as bullying, peer pressure, puberty, growing up, and finding a place where I belonged.

It’s not so much a movie as it is a scrapbook of memories, and Linklater is merely showing the memories on screen like he’s pulling a photograph out of a book.

What of the performances then? Patricia and Ethan are the most emotive performances out of the movie, but that’s to be expected considering they’ve been working on this movie, among others, for literally a decade. Lorelei is cute as a child at the beginning of the film, but as the movie continues on, it begins to focus more on Ellar while Lorelei, more or less, fades in to the background.

That being said, Ellar isn’t the most compelling actor in the film. As a child at the beginning, he is the most believable, but that’s because he’s living, not acting, in the moment. When he’s playing with his friends or when he’s dressed up for the Harry Potter premiere, you know that’s him being excited in the moment, similar to how Drew Barrymore believed E.T. was real during the filming for E.T: The Extra Terrestrial. As he gets older, however, he gets less emotional about things and more or less goes through the motions wherever Linklater guides him.

At first, I thought this was an obvious criticism to the film, because how is a kid going to maintain his acting ability through 12 years of his life? As I look deeper, however, I realize that Ellar isn’t intended to give a performance. He isn’t meant to be an actor, but a surrogate, a character whose emotions and memories we fill in the film and then we sympathize with because those are the same emotions we faced when we were his age.

Mason goes through a lot in this movie. As a toddler, he witnesses his parents go through divorce. As a child, he faces abuse from his alcoholic stepfather. As a teenager, bullying. As a high schooler, heartbreak. This movie is so tangible that it made me want to grab hold of Mason. It made me want to hold him and hug him, telling him the same thing my mother told me when I was going through my own issues at his age.

I want to grab him and say to him, “You’re going to be okay, Mason. You’re going to be okay.”

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Aug 24 2014
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Reviews

“SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR” Review (✫)

Can you kill me too while you’re so busy at it? Thanks. 

There’s a character early on in Sin City: A Dame To Kill For that describes the city as a place “where you go in with your eyes open, or you don’t come out at all.” He’s wrong. I went in and out with my eyes fully open. I only wished that I kept them closed.

Oh, where to begin with this. Sin City: A Dame To Kill For is, in a word, messy – a neo-noir thriller as confusing as a detective’s murder case and more violent, putrid and horrific than a crime scene. The only brains this movie has are the ones that it blows out of peoples’ heads.

The plot takes place sometime within the Sin City universe. The question is when? I honestly don’t know, and I don’t think the movie knows either. It’s part prequel, part sequel and part in-betweenuel that cuts to wherever and whenever it wants to.

Like the first movie, there are three main stories the plot revolves around and, likewise, three main characters to sympathize with. You have a young Dwight McCarthy (Josh Brolin), who, before he met Jackie Boy, was obsessing over a rich housewife named Ava (Eva Green). There’s Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an overly-cocky poker player who wants to come to Sin City and beat the king of all cards himself — Senator Roark (Powers Boothe). And then there’s Nancy (Jessica Alba), who is still coping with John Hartigan’s (Bruce Willis) suicide at the end of Sin City.

Following this easy enough? Good, because that’s all the explanation you’re going to get. The biggest problem with Sin City: A Dame To Kill For is that it’s so convoluted. Stories are meshed, mixed and thrown together without any sense of connection or correlation to its plot, and the entire time while I was watching it, I kept wondering where these stories were taking place and why I should care. Some movies do well with intertwining narratives, such as Pulp Fiction or Crash. This is not one of them.

A good example of this is in the very first scene of the film. Marv (Mickey Rourke), the hard-headed thug who was framed for the murder of Goldie in the first movie, wakes up next to two crashed cars with no memory of how he got there. He goes through mundane dialogue for five minutes in his obviously exaggerated thuggish accent, then the movie cuts to the story and almost completely forgets about him.

My first thought after watching this: why was that scene necessary? As the movie continued its runtime, I continued to ask this question in my head until I realized that none of it was necessary, that it was just a continuous farce of violence and delinquency that the kids who play Grand Theft Auto would just drool over.

This movie is definitely violent. That’s to be expected, I know, especially when you remember how violent the first one was. There is, however, a stark difference in how the violence is used in each movie. In the first Sin City, the violence was both shocking and satirical, at times being so disturbing that you can’t help but reel back from it, and at other times being so exaggerated that I laughed at it. Whether it was positive or negative, however, I at least felt something.

Here, nothing is felt. Here, we just look at all shades of black, red and white among severed body parts while we plod through the final act like it’s a homework assignment rather than the climactic ending that it deserves to be.

I’ll admit to having disliked the first Sin City. Does that matter? I give credit and criticism equally where it is due, and even though both Sin City’s are equally violent and despicable, the first one was at least more intriguing and had more cohesiveness both as a whole story and as smaller, separate narratives. This one fell flat, crumbled to pieces and was about as clear as a muddy window pane. Maybe that’s why Marv couldn’t remember anything at the beginning of this movie – he realized what he signed up for, and he tried to forget all about it.

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Aug 24 2014
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Reviews

“SIN CITY” Review (✫✫)

“There ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone.”

You’re either going to love or hate Sin City. There’s no getting around that fact. Like the movies directed by Quentin Tarantino or Eli Roth, Sin City is a movie specific to its own tastes, and doesn’t care much about the opinions opposite of it. It’s a violent, gross, disgusting and putrid film full of the stuff that would make a Catholic priest faint. If that sounds like something you would like, by all means, be my guest and have at it. If you are repulsed by my description of the film, I certainly don’t blame you.

Based off of the comic book series by Frank Miller, Sin City is a film that follows four separate stories that (mostly) intertwine together. John Hartigan (Bruce Willis) is an aged police officer who is viciously pursuing child rapist Roark Jr. (Nick Stahl). Marv (Mickey Rourke) is a rough-around-the-edges thug who is framed for the murder of a prostitute he slept with named Goldie (Jamie King). And Dwight (Clive Owen) is a private investigator who gets pulled into a turf war, risking the lives of cops and prostitutes alike.

What do all of these stories have in common? They all started because of a woman, and these men go out to kill because they love their woman. Or, at least, whatever constitutes as love in this universe, in which case it’s a one-night stand.

It’s so difficult to review a movie like Sin City. Why? Because it’s not for people like me, that’s why. I don’t like watching movies like Sin City. I don’t like watching blood and violence for the sake of blood and violence, or watching sex and nudity for the sake of sex and nudity. It’s hard to be non-biased with movies like these because I watch moments where a naked woman walks out with bare breasts and all, and I can’t help but imagine the director thinking “Hey, let’s have this actress naked in this scene, because boobs.”

Sin City is aggressively, unnecessarily violent. How violent? So violent that the least bloody scene in the movie came from Quentin Tarantino. That’s how bad it gets. Red, white, black and yellow blood splatter across the screen like Jackson Pollock was making a painting. Severed heads and body parts are frequently cut off and thrown around in the film like missing pieces to a G.I. Joe. Those body parts include testicles, by the way, on multiple occasions. And don’t even get me started on the absurdity of its kills. In one scene, Marv gets beaten, stabbed, shot, and crashed his car into a lake and still gets up to pursue Goldie’s killer. Good God, are these guys made of kevlar or something?

Remind you, I have no problem with violence in movies, but here it’s just far too absurd and disgusting to be able to fully stomach. When it’s used to illustrate an emotion or a point in movies like Pulp Fiction or Taxi Driver, I praise its purpose and its usage. Here, it illustrates no emotion or urgency. It’s a glorified selling point for a really long, disgusting, stupid movie.

I did like the visualization of Sin City. That, and its opening scene. I liked it’s black-and-white style, it’s sense of contrast and expert use of shadow and lighting. It gave it a strong reminiscent feeling of the classic neo-noir films that inspired the original Sin City comic books, the ones that have the snazzy saxophone playing in the background as two lovers stand on a balcony, telling each other that they love each other and that they never want to leave each other. The film itself, in fact, functions as a parody of the neo-noir genre: characters stand on balconies, docks, outrun police cars, smoke cigarettes and talk in thickly exaggerated accents to the point where it can’t be taken seriously.

Realize, however, that this wasn’t on accident; director Robert Rodriguez wanted you to see how he exaggerated details so you would understand that him and Frank Miller were lightly poking fun at the genre, all while at the same time suggesting delicate homages to it as well. I like that they tried to reach for a deeper effort with the film, even though their intentions were smarter than the film itself was.

So what’s my end consensus? Is it a movie that you should see or skip? I’ll leave that decision in your hands. For now, I have done my job in telling you what the movie is like, and I will wash my hands clean from it. I have church in the morning.

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Aug 02 2014
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“GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY” Review (✫✫✫)

 

A  lovable group of space idiots.

Now here’s a movie I wasn’t expecting to be any good. No matter how you phrased it to me, I went into James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy completely expecting to hate it. None of the heroes were as popular or as interesting as the other characters Marvel had to sport in its universe, it’s a sci-fi buccaneering adventure about an evil race intent on destroying/ruling the galaxy (I wonder where we’ve seen that before), and on top of all that, and it has a talking raccoon and a tree as two of it’s main characters. Believe me, I went into this movie fully expecting to dislike it on all counts. Turns out I was wrong on all of them.

Based on the Marvel comics superhero team of the same name, Guardians of the Galaxy follows a whole slew of space misfits as their futures suddenly become entangled because of one blasted macguffin: the infinity stone, an object we’ve been introduced to in earlier movies in the form of the tesseract and the aether in The Avengers and Thor: The Dark World. Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is a Han Solo-ish kind of scavenger who steals items of value and sells them to buyers. Gamora (Zoe Saldana) is a trained assassin and adoptive daughter of a cruel omnipotent being called Thanos (Josh Brolin). Drax (Dave Bautista) is a brutish warrior who seeks vengeance against Thanos after the death of his family. And then Rocket and Groot (voiced by Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel, respectively) are a bounty-hunting duo who travel together. Remember me mentioning the talking raccoon and tree? This is them, although Groot’s speech is merely limited to “I am Groot.”

Sounds like a lot of characters to deal with, I know, but don’t worry: the movie does a better job at explaining them than I did. Their fates become intertwined  with that of Ronan (Lee Pace), a vicious hunter who will stop at nothing until he has taken the infinity stone for himself and uses it to destroy his enemies. It’s up to Quill, Rocket, and the rest of the troupe to rise up and defend the galaxy from Ronan and the threat he holds with the infinity stone.

Written and directed by James Gunn, the wacko that directed the 2010 satire film Super, Guardians of the Galaxy is a wacky, oddballish film, a movie that doubles both as a sci-fi blockbuster actioneer and as a space comedy parodying… well, itself really. The biggest concern I had with this movie was how it was going to handle itself, because it really had everything working against it. Think about it: talking animals and trees, a copy-and-paste space plot, and a director whose work before this was a line of small-budget independent films. How on earth was any of this going to work?

Better than I expected, apparently. The best thing about Guardians of the Galaxy is that it doesn’t take itself seriously. It’s so irreverent, so shameless and so unabashed that it might as well be a clown throwing pies at its own face. There were many moments in the film where it called itself out on the flaws that I was prepared to criticize it for (such as it’s hammy one-liners or it’s talking animals), then it turned around making fun of itself because of it (Drax boasting about his reflexes when figures of speech go over his head, or Rocket asking Quill what a raccoon is.)

It just loves to make fun of itself, so much so that I want to call this a comedy more than science-fiction.

To make the comedy work though, you need a cast of equal caliber to make it work. And I’ll be completely honest here: the cast was exceptional. Even the cast members who I don’t like, consisting of Bautista and Diesel, gave performances that surprised me, effectively portraying their characters in a uniquely charismatic light that made them stand out from the obvious sci-fi fanfare. (One argument someone might pose to me is that Diesel’s job was easier because he only had to say three words over and over again. Believe me, his character wasn’t that simple.)

The element that stands out the most in the film is ironically the one I was most worried about: Rocket. Oh my gosh, was this guy a big ball of laughter. Cooper was excellent in voice performance, shooting out snazzy, snarky, sarcastic one-liners like he’s a New York taxi driver.

But it’s not just his voice performance that I love so much about the character. It’s how he’s animated and modeled too, with animators giving him life through his detailed, intricate emotions and movements as a CGI character. Rocket is much more than just another Guardian. He is, in many ways, the life of the film: a living, breathing embodiment of emotion, sentiment, sarcasm, hilarity and attitude. Every attitude that the film is, at least.

There’s no way to get out of the film’s silliness, but you shouldn’t let that stop you from enjoying it. Believe me, I tried. I went in fully equipped and prepared to blast this movie with a negative review, and I came out instead feeling like a kid after he finished watching his favorite Saturday morning cartoon.

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Jul 25 2014
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“GODZILLA” (2014) Review (✫✫1/2)

Should have been called “Mutos” if you ask me. 

There are two questions that always come into my head every time I watch a reboot: Is it different from the original, and is it necessary? The answer to both is usually no, it isn’t. Why would it be? Most studios just cash in on the name of their franchise and re-brand it, rather than coming up with an original take of their story, breathing life and energy into a franchise that has since been left stale. Perfect example: did anyone find Roland Emmerich’s 1998 version of Godzilla to be even remotely tolerable?

With this new version of Godzilla, I can say that it at least succeeded as a reboot in that it is different from the original. Whether that is a good different is something I’m still struggling with. I feel like I’m one of the helpless human beings running away from all the giant monster ruckus going on in the middle of Japan: I’m in the middle of a disarray of loud noise and violence, and while I’m fascinated by what is going on, I’m ultimately distraught because these giant monsters are destroying the things that I love.

Directed by Gareth Edwards, the writer/director behind 2010’s Monsters, Godzilla stars Aaron Taylor Johnson as Ford, a lieutenant who just came back from his service in the Navy. His wife and child (portrayed by Elizabeth Olsen and Carson Bolde) are more than eager to have their family whole again, and couldn’t be happier to see him when he finally comes home.

Only one problem: Ford’s father, Joe (Bryan Cranston) just got arrested in Japan for intrusion on private property. You see, about fifteen years ago, poor Joe was dutifully working as an engineer for a power plant in Japan. After scanning some strange readings off of the richter scale, he witnesses the death of his wife as the power plant quickly collapses before him.

Everyone around Joe believes that what he witnessed was a massive earthquake, including his son Ford. Joe doesn’t believe that it was an accident, and thinks there’s something much more sinister afoot than what everyone thinks. As Joe and his son continue to investigate the evidence he’s collected, they begin to become more aware of a giant conspiracy that the Japanese governments are working to hide, and soon, they come into contact with the biggest and most dangerous secret of all: a giant monster, the king of all beasts nicknamed “Godzilla”.

Looking back at this film, I am reminded by not how much I enjoyed this movie, but how much Peter Jackson’s King Kong got right as a remake. When reboots are done right, they are like King Kong: they are smart, clever, well-structured stories that are exciting, involving, and pay delicate homages to the source material. When they go wrong, they are like Emmerich’s Godzilla: explosions of CGI and visual effects garbage that go in every direction except for to the point.

With this new Godzilla, it takes steps to be a unique monster-sized reboot, but whether it reached the top of the staircase is another thing to be decided. I liked a lot of things about this movie. Edwards does a good job balancing the destruction with the human interest. Godzilla himself is a sight to see. The fights between him and these Cloverfield-like monsters called “Mutos” are a thing of classic Godzilla fandom. And Bryan Cranston was a clear emotional standout in the movie, giving a invested performance that was more than what the movie deserved.

One my biggest gripes with the movie is this: Godzilla isn’t in it. Or at least, not as much as I would like him to be. When you watch monster movies like King Kong or Jurassic Park, you get an overwhelming sensation of the scope and size of the creature’s presence, of the ground shaking when they take a step, or their shadows lurking over you as they quietly stalk their prey. I’m frustrated not by Godzilla’s physical appearance, but rather how infrequently he appears during the movie. The Godzilla movie has a total run time of 123 minutes, and where is he during the most of it? Swimming around in an ocean, spikes popping out, chasing monsters smaller than him that he could have easily killed 30 minutes ago.

Granted, I know what Edwards was trying to accomplish here. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Cranston compared the film to Steven Spielberg’s 1970 classic film Jaws, in that it doesn’t immediately show the monster, but its tension and presence could always be felt in it.

There, however, is one big reason why that doesn’t work with this movie. The shark in Jaws is a 300-foot shark lurking and sneaking through it’s quiet habitat in the waters. Godzilla is a 9,000 ton monster stomping his way through cities. I don’t think subtlety is supposed to be part of its nature.

As far as it’s lead goes, Taylor-Johnson is stock, a plain and uninteresting cutout of a soldier whose character is so one-note that he might as well be a cowbell instrument. For Pete’s sake, if you’re going to go to use the Hollywood hero archetype, can you at least get someone who is good at it? I could easily see someone like Tom Cruise or Jude Law in Taylor-Johnson’s role and succeed just as much at doing it. In fact, I almost prefer it. His emotions aren’t subtle, he doesn’t do a good job at expression, and at times he recites lines so casually that we could possibly be fooled into thinking that he was reading off of a cue card.

I went back and forth on whether or not I liked this movie, juggling around the things in my head that I did and didn’t like in the film. Ultimately though, if I’m having this hard of a time understanding what the movie was supposed to be, then usually so did the film itself. Godzilla is a decent reboot, restarting the franchise with a modern twist that I know many film aficionados will appreciate, but it should have been more. More as in better acting. More as in better handling, and more as in more of the freaking monster, period. Either way, the movie didn’t leave its mark on me, and when I talk to fans of the franchise since it’s debut, they too indicate that they prefer the original over the reboot. Hey, at least Godzilla had more screen time.

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Jul 11 2014
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“DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES” Review (✫✫✫1/2)

The predator and the prey are one and the same.

It all started with the eyes.

Looking deeply into them, we see the angry, vicious, relentless energy behind them, as hungry as an animal and as wild as a beast. A somewhat appropriate description, because these are the eyes of the ape Caesar (Andy Serkis), the intelligent primate we’ve come to know from Rise of the Planet of the Apes. As we continue looking at his eyes, his steady, violent stare, we see his army of followers climbing on branches behind him.

He drops his hand, motioning them to attack.

After we see this powerful, expressive opening sequence, we are taken through this epic journey that is Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, a compelling and exciting survivalist-drama that looks at the human-primate condition from two different perspectives, as if they are two sides to one coin. The leader of the apes is Caesar, who now has his own family in his wife Cornelia (Judy Greer) and his son Blue Eyes (Nick Thurston). The leader of a band of human survivors is Malcolm (Jason Clarke), who also has his own family in Ellie (Keri Russel) and his teenage son Alex (Kodi Smit-McPhee).

Both of these band’s stories take place years after the virus attack that destroyed the most of humanity years ago, which we got a glimpse at the end of Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Both sides have lost loved ones in the wake of the disaster. Both sides do not trust the other. Yet, as Caesar and Malcolm share close encounters with each other, they slowly begin to understand and see that their races are not so different from each other. As the human-primate war rages on, Caesar and Malcolm must combine their efforts to protect each of their families, and seek out peace between their established societies.

Remembering fondly of how I enjoyed seeing the ape empire’s beginnings and relishing in the context of human-animal abuse in Rise, I went into this movie knowing it had a strong foundation to build it’s story on, hoping that they wouldn’t fail. Not only did director Matt Reeves not fail in telling his story of Dawn; he expanded further upon the Planet of the Apes story in detail, action and commentary than I estimated him to. His film ended up being better than Rupert Wyatt’s film in spades.

Firstly, let’s talk about the similarities between each film. Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, the writing/producing team behind Rise, returns yet again to contribute to Dawn’s story and to the production of this film. In many ways, I argue that both are better in this film than they were in the last one.. The plot of the first movie was an involving, interesting and emotionally compelling sci-fi thriller, a story that showed the worst of humanity and their cruel mistreatment of animals. Here, this movie has a more of a political facet in its structure, a drama that shows each race as a mirror of the other. It shows a civil anarchy blooming in the heart of each race.

The characters are compelling and have genuine interactions with each other, from Caesar confronting Malcolm on staying away from their home, to intimate scenes when Alex interacts with Caesar’s new baby boy. What I liked so much, however, is director Matt Reeves details not only to these emotions, but the visual display of the story in itself.

Being no stranger to visual effects or emotions with a filmography including Cloverfield and Let Me In, Reeves is skillful in making an exciting action movie while at the same time making a involving apocalyptic thriller. It surprising with this film that the basis of the film wasn’t grounded in action or ridiculous CGI stunts, but rather, in small, intimate moments of conversation and ape-sign-language that characters share with each other. It’s nice to see a big-budget blockbuster movie reaching for more intimate, personal situations, rather than the billion-dollar-sized explosions of garbage you’d see from the Transformers movies.

I do have a criticism in the movie in that the human characters were mostly boring. I have a rule of thumb that if I can’t remember a character’s name by the end of the movie, then that character is mostly forgettable. By the end of the film, I only remembered Malcolm’s name. I called Keri Russel’s character “Keri Russel” in the film while I labeled Smit-McPhee as a Jay Baruchel rip-off. I even looked at Gary Oldman’s character in the film and smirked in my head, “Well, hello there, Commissioner Gordon! Did you end up surviving the nuclear fallout in The Dark Knight Rises?”

What I realize though is that the humans aren’t supposed to be the main anchor of the film. The apes are center focus here, and this is really their story, figuring out their emotions, finding their identities, and realizing their faults as they look at human beings and see themselves deep within.

I think I realized this was a masterful film when it approached its final minutes, when we once again returned to the eyes of Caesar that we saw at the beginning of the movie. Only this time, they weren’t as aggressive as they were before. These were not the eyes of the predator, the hunter eagerly waiting to hunt his prey. No, these eyes were solemn and sad, as if they were looking at a bleak, grim future, one they were powerless to stop.

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