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June 14, 2011

Carl’s Movie Mini-Review: Midnight in Paris

The annual Woody Allen film can be hit or miss, but this year’s Midnight in Paris is a comedy-with-a-message homerun.

Owen Wilson’s character is a Hollywood screenwriter trying to go “legitimate” and write a novel. He romanticizes 1920s Paris and lost after a night of drinking, takes a seat on a set of stairs. The clock strikes midnight, and an old-fashioned car pulls up in front of him, the inhabitants insisting he join them at the party they are heading to. At that party he meets F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Cole Porter. The next evening, not sure that what he experienced that night was not just a hallucination, he tries to bring along his fussy fiancée–played by Rachel McAdams (whose figure ::ahem:: looks lovely walking away from the camera)–to the same spot to prove to her he hasn’t gone loony. Fed up of waiting, she takes a cab back to the hotel before the clock strikes midnight, and he continues his strange time-traveling adventure without her, meeting more and more of the period’s notable artistes. He finds himself enjoying the professional support and personal company of the writers and artists and winds up further rousing suspicion with–and annoying–his wife-to-be and future in-laws with his insistence on nightly “walks around town.”

Let’s call the movie something of a mix like Bill & Ted meets Easy A meets The Hangover meets Donnie Darko. I’ll explain. (more…)

Carl @ 4:20 pm
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May 30, 2009

Carl’s Movie Mini-Review: Up

Up

Pixar remains untouchable with their latest film, especially when led in by a trailer for Sony’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, which, in its first minute looks like a total Jimmy Neutron rip-off.  The last time I read the book was in first grade or so, but I don’t recall a kid inventor making non-sensical contraptions.

One of the themes of Up seems to be that misery loves company.  The cast of hereos consists of outcasts, misfits, or sad-sacks in various forms.  Through their mis-adventures together, each starting off with seperate goals for journey, they eventually learn to lean on each other, making a whole new family of their own.

The movie is full of laugh out loud quirks which work for both kids and adults.  Note I said “and.” Normally there’s jokes for kids and jokes for adults.  Many of the jokes in Up are truly multi-layered with an extra kick for those with more life experience.

Humor aside, the opening montage in itself is a wonderfully developed, touching, impactful beginning-middle-end story and could easily have been its own short.  More sensitive folks may want to pack tissues; many in my theater were audibly tearful.

Pixar is known for tackling very specific technical challenges with each film.  In A Bug’s Life, it was crowds.  In Monsters, Inc., it was hair.  In The Incredibles, it was humans.  Between the front-attached animated short Partly Cloudy and the iconic balloons lifting a house, I think their challenge here was complex soft-body collisions.  However, the balloons are far from always on screen, so maybe I’m just imagining the showcase because it was far from highlighted.

What is masterfully showcased is the use of depth.  Normally when you see CG films in 3D, all layers are more or less in clear focus.  The primary method of funneling the viewer’s attention is by popping something out of the screen.  Up utilizes traditional camera lense techniques (the “imperfect lense” seen in Wall-E) to make sure that the viewer is not overwhelmed and unsure of what to look at.  The clouds, fog, light/shadow, and frame composition also noticably contribute to the incredible sense of dimensionality. I’m 100% certain that it would still pop without the glasses.

Back to talking about people, I noticed there were numerous elderly couples or small groups attending my showing.  They weren’t accompanied by families or grandchildren, and several groups stayed through the credits.  I don’t recall any similar situation in other family movies, and I wonder if the turnout had anything to do with the protagonist.

Highly recommended.

Carl @ 12:37 am
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May 10, 2009

Carl’s Movie Mini-Review: Star Trek

Star Trek

From my perspective, as not-a-Trekkie, this movie reboot is nothing if not crowd pleasing for every second.  Action, adventure, comedy, and drama fueled by strong personalities.  I was floored by the visuals because it seems for once there was no “B-team” doing any portion of the effects.  I was also amazed at the effort made in actually constructing large sets (at least I think those were practical stage elements).  Every cent spent on production is undoubtedly seen or heard.  Not a penny wasted, not a penny spared.

My only complaint is the all-too coincidental parallelism of the antagonist’s motive.  Nero’s pregnant wife dies when his planet blows up, and it just so happens that he meets face to face with Kirk whose pregnant mother escaped with him in-utero from an exploding space ship.  It doesn’t even matter that Nero was the one attacking that space ship, it’s just too coincidental to believe, and that was my only real eye-rolling moment.

Highly Recommended.  If you’re not invested in the Star Trek lore, then I’ll guarantee you’ll find something to enjoy.  Unless you’re the kind that only likes Euro indie dramas where everyone’s suicidal.  And if you are a Trekkie, I’m sure members your “team” on your favorite forum have already developed opinions one way or the other that you’re likely to share.

Carl @ 5:43 pm
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May 9, 2009

Carl’s Movie Mini-Review: Scoop

 

Scoop

This Woody Allen/Scarlett Johansson team-up comedy/crime thriller comes between Match Point and Vicky Christina Barcelona.  The two star as an unlikely pair of amateur detectives.  Allen plays a stage magician, and while inside his “disappearing man” box during a performance, Johansson comes face to face with a ghost.  The ghost (played by Ian McShane) is a deceased newspaper reporter who, receiving a hot tip on a serial killer case while chatting with other dead people in the afterlife, tries to channel himself back into the world of the living to any reporter he can come across and pass on the juicy lead.  It just so happens ScarJo’s character is a fumbling writer for her college newspaper.  And so begins a series of deception and coincidences as the characters exchange rapid, funny dialogue while investigating Hugh Jackman.  (Note, also in the same year Johansson and Jackman starred together in another magic and mystery movie, The Prestige.)

A Woody Allen mystery movie is like Kevin Smith crossed with M. Night Shyamalan.  You get expansive lengths of funny, character-tinged dialogue and a twist at the end explained briefly by an incidental character who the leads met earlier in the film.  I won’t bother trying to sell you on it, you either love it or hate it.

What I really want to mention is Scarlett Johansson’s perfomance.  She begins by really playing off-type from the roles she’s known for.  Instead of a smoky-voiced femme fatale, she plays a very young, naive, but still headstrong girl.  Who is always conservatively dressed, even post-coitus.  She knows what she wants, but is not sure how to achieve it.  Despite that, she still tries, clumsily, anything she can to pursue the story.  She begins with some uncertain, stuttering vocal quirks when she’s first trying to make up her cover story, but that goes away as the film progresses.  It seems as if as she became less confident that of the guilt of her investigative mark, she became more confident as a woman.  It was a bit of a confusing switch for me, and I’m not convinced it was intentional.  For me, it feels like the character’s interesting quirks that first hooked me just disappear halfway through the movie.  Still, I liked seeing a different side of her, rather than the increasingly played out focus on sexuality or whiny neediness.

Recommended (for Woody Allen’s conversations).

Carl @ 10:42 pm
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May 5, 2009

Carl’s Movie Mini-Review: The Wackness

The Wackness

What a refreshing surprise!  In short, it’s a coming-of-age movie dealing with first loves, last summers before college, and trouble at home.  But that’s merely the plot that takes us from place to place.

It was a surreal, bittersweet dreamscape movie similar to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  The cinematography really sells the random uncertainty of what we see in our dreams.  Not very often do you see things clearly.  Rooms are shrouded in darkness, silhouettes barely lit by their edges by a single light way off in the distance.  A shallow focus blurs out everything in the periphery, and extreme close-ups swallow you in the raw essence of the here and now.  Sometimes the camera bobs and rolls, the action sped up or slowed down, and individual sounds or random background elements aggressively take the fore.  A lot of what you see is just shapes and colors, all of it open to interpretation.  Time jumps happen making you uncertain of where you are and how you got to this point.

Taking place inside this audio/visual framework is an unlikely bro-mance between a drugged out, old shrink Jeff (or “Mr. Dr. Squires”) and his young patient/dealer Luke.  They’re unlikely best friends, offering each other advice good and bad and serving as each other’s emotional rock during their individual and shared experiences getting into trouble.  Their maturity sometimes switches places, both having a chance to be the “big brother”/”father figure.”

The soundtrack is mostly good old ’90s hip-hop from long before it turned from rap-to-crap and drowned the Top 40 airwaves and nightclubs.  The lead character is a drug-dealing white teen, but his music influences the way he speaks.  He’s not a gangsta, but he talks like a thug.  It’s often comic when he (and eventually his older friend) slip into manners of speech that seem less than fitting with the otherwise “normal white guy” way they look.  One especially funny moment is when Luke is rehearsing how he’ll tell a girl “I love you” in the mirror several ways before thugging it up and casually calling her his shorty.

Acting is 100% stellar all around and everyone really owns and lives their character.

Highly recommended.

Carl @ 5:40 pm
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May 1, 2009

Carl’s Movie Mini-Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

The movie is melodramatic. Though there’s only a few “slow” emotional scenes in the parade of action set-pieces, everything that happens is “super serious and very important, just look at the scowl on my face.” And I mean a parade of set-pieces. Even if several of them are incidental and small setups for later plot points, the production always makes sure there’s some eye candy, be it aggressive cinematography and/or something ‘sploding.

I jokingly call the movie Wolverine & His Excessive Co-stars, and I still think there are far more characters than necessary. However, their relational network is kept small, so it didn’t wind up feeling like Mortal Kombat Annihilation where there are characters just for the sake of ticking up some arbitrary cameo counter.

I’ve got two major complaints for an event pic like this. 1.) After all these years and advancements in technology and techniques, why does some of the wire-work still look laughable? 2.) You know what else is laughable?  There is no excuse for the CG claws to stand out and look so obviously bad and fake.

And speaking of fakes, there are actually two post-credits bonus scenes. Don’t leave after the I’m-not-sure-why-that-was-made-a-big-deal Stryker scene.

Not as good as the X-flicks, but worth it for the grand fight scenes.  I suppose it’s fair about how they’re different.  X-Men is a parable about society, and Wolverine is just about the visceral rush.

Carl @ 1:38 am
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April 9, 2009

Yes, I still adore Disney animation…

…but to be fair, Robin Hood was notorious for being a reheated mess and that ’80s period was a low point in general.

Watch Disney Templates on CollegeHumor
Carl @ 2:47 am
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April 7, 2009

Carl’s Movie Mini-Review: Fast & Furious

Fast & Furious

First, a little background.  With the notable exception of Tokyo Drift, I’d never seen any of the previous movie in whole.  I caught bits and pieces of them on TV or on flights, but I never got pulled in.  This past weekend, in anticipation of catching director Justin Lin’s second go at the franchise and the original’s direct sequel, I watched my DVD of the first movie.  I bought the DVD long ago as part of a promotional two-pack of the first two movies that also included a preview DVD and ticket for Tokyo Drift.  The “acting” of the first movie was painful, the production value and lighting awful, and plot plodding.

The article-free sequel is a noticable improvement on all fronts.  Everything and everyone is much prettier, the line delivery adequate, and pacing brisk.  Tons of exciting car (and foot) chases, fights, and explosions.  It does, however, assume previous knowledge of the procedings of the first movie (and does have a tie to Tokyo Drift) and squandered some perfect opportunities to slip in a non-hokey introduction dialogue to explain certain initially vague and confusing pre-existing character relationships (that does get cleared up for any confused viewers in the second act).

There isn’t really more to say other than it delivers the fun.  Hey, it even has the “rambo lambo,” the Lamborghini LM002.  Also, if you actually watch the end titles, you’ll see it’s actually a continuation of the final scene and not just random computer effects.

Carl @ 2:11 am
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March 6, 2009

Carl’s Movie Mini-Review: Watchmen

Watchmen

(Note: I’ve never read the original graphic novel, so I can only judge the film on its own merits.)

First, a tangent: Chuck and I randomly decided to catch the midnight showing of Watchmen rather than simply purchase tickets for Friday.  Being that we’re pretty far from the college, it turns out that they hadn’t sold out of tickets.  In fact, when we returned to the theater after wasting a few hours in wait, there were still people buying tickets.  We finally let out right at 3am.  I don’t know whose crazy business decision it was to stay open and keep staff until past 3am for a single screen.  I mean, unless it’s a Friday or Saturday night, final showings are usually around 10:40pm, letting out around 1-ish.  That’s an extra 2 hours they had to pay staff!

It’s no secret that I’m no fan of director Zack Snyder’s previous work 300.  It was just a bunch of naked dudes screaming and yelling.  With no background on Watchmen, my only expectation/hope coming in was that it would be better than 300.

Watchmen was a stellar and tight effort.  There’s a small core cast, and there’s enough time spent on them individually and in pairs that you get a feel for the character and their chemistry amongst each other.  There are several extended vignettes for a handful of the characters that further delve into their backgrounds, but not all of the represented characters are given that same treatment.

Those who come looking for a wham-bam action flick will be disappointed…to a certain degree.  The story unfolds slowly and meticulously.  The plot itself is more akin to a mystery, but the significant focus is on exploring the characters.  How do certain people react to bad situations?  To distant partners, to break-ups?  To professional obligations?  To being “fresh meat” in a prison?  To the generational misunderstandings between parent and child?  To convincing people that contributing to the greater good means “cracking a few eggs to make an omelette?”  To impending global thermonuclear warfare?  That said, the action presented is intensely brutal with just the right amount of editing.  Cuts are made to make sure the composition remains dramatic, but the camera can, at times, be unflinching in presenting grotesque scenes.

I have a few technical issues with some of the effects work, notably the obvious wire-work assisting Rorschach’s prowling and the odd lack of shadow when compositing CG characters.

There is a tremendous focus on using 1970′s/1980′s media to date the setting.  There is plenty of TV-watching and perhaps overly prominent use of licensed songs.

Those looking for another dose of superhero action will be sorely disappointed; this film’s strongly in the drama category.  It’s a cerebral, meta take on masked crusaders as real people and something I will highly recommend.

After the movie Chuck told me about how things played out in the original book.  It seems to me it was a very wise decision to adjust the focus, trim down the cast, and avoid a likely awkward deus ex machina plot device that would make an already long movie quite clumsy.  I just ordered the book off of Amazon (on sale for $10.99!), so maybe I’ll have a different take on it after I’ve read the source material.  Chuck said that though he prefers the way things are handled in the book, as a stand-alone work, the film was great.

Carl @ 4:36 am
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