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Resurrecting the Site

Despite the fact it’s been ten months since my last post and the completion of the 2010 Movie Marathon, I can’t help but notice that this website consistently gets ten times the hits of my portfolio site.  So, without further ado, I’m thinking of relaunching.

The premise of the original site – the 365 in 365 – isn’t one I’m likely to try and recreate but I did enjoy the process of writing and critiquing (and, of course, complaining, because that’s what the internet is for).  I’m looking into registering a new site that would host a conglomerate of movie reviews, yelp posts, and other miscellaneous critiques.

This site’s archives will stay up but the goal (eventually) is to have in365reviews.wordpress.com to redirect to a new and improved site.  See ya there!

whoops.

Hey guys.   Sorry I’ve sorely neglected this site over the past month(s), as usual a lot has been going on in Real Life that has caused a disturbance in my reviewing and posting habits.  I certainly haven’t stopped watching movies – I’m up to 212 right now – but I noticed that the quality of what I was watching was declining steadily as I became more desperate, sifting through the depths of Netflix.  I mean, GI Joe?  really?  While my reactions to these movies are just as strong as ever, the desire to document said reactions has waned quite a bit.  We’ll see where the new year takes us.

I dream of the day that Netflix decides to sponsor this addiction of mine, a movie and review a day for a tidy, rent-paying sum?

Yeah right, keep dreaming.

InAlienable (2008)

This movie wasn’t a wide release and wasn’t even in theaters, but I’m breaking my own rule here because watching this movie is a life changing experience.  It moved me.  InAlienable wasn’t just a film about a man replacing his negligently killed son with an extra terrestrial, it was about love and what makes us human.

With a budget of $1,500,000 (give or take, according to imdb) you might expect flashy effects or, at the very least, some intriguingly articulated Styrofoam for our multi-limbed alien, but here our filmmakers have their priorities straight.  Rather than distract from the heart of this tale with visuals which clearly may have unnerved audiences by reaching ‘uncanny valley’ status, they have instead focused on bringing together the best cast they could, featuring cameo after cameo of sci-fi veteran in a parade of support.  And who could blame them?  No man is an island, and this particular man’s rightful love of the parasitic being inside him is a unique but touching story that all can relate to.

InAlienable speaks to us not only as individual beings but as a society.  As Tom Zarek demands equal rights for his surrogate son, as Deanna Troi claims that comparing the new species’ struggle is unequal to that of African Americans, I couldn’t help but shed a tear.  Truly the writers of this masterpiece have lived the emotion and strife of these characters.

But seriously though.

1.5/10

Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974 (2009)

I decided to post just for this first movie rather than for the whole trilogy because (at least with the first two, I haven’t seen the third yet) the same criticism applies overall.

This’ll be a short, quick post, mostly to ask a question:

Should great acting and a good pitch redeem a script full of clichés?  We’ve got the young, naive go-getter reporter and the older, wiser coworker, the angry boss and everyone under the thumb of the villain (including the police force, newspapers), the list goes on and on… I literally scoffed at the “going through old articles” montage, the “hanging maps with pins and sharpied circles” moment.  I get that there are only so many ways to get these ideas across, but I’d really rather just watch Zodiac again.  At least there the puppyfaced hero is a cartoonist.

Sean Bean’s grand evil motivation is to bulldoze a gypsy camp and build a mall.  I can’t help but be reminded of Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and that’s about how seriously I can take it.  Frankly this side plot serves no purpose, at least so far.  It’s odd how much they struggle to make this a point when in reality all we care about are the murdered girls which, to him, are a side note.  Maybe the two will tie together more cohesively by the third movie?  I hope so.

The best part of 1974, by far, was the ending.  All the predictable set-up was thrown out the window and in one scene our hero defies expectations and grows some genuine character.  Without giving too much away, he acts as a man of his age and emotional state might actually act, which was a refreshing surprise.

A close second redeeming factor is how it was shot.  The style and cinematography were pretty cool, it certainly wasn’t boring to look at.

I wanted to like it.  In fact, I sort of do like it when I don’t think about it too much.   Too bad thinking about movies is what I do.

5/10

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2009)

I love John Krasinski as much as the next person (birthday buddies! high five!) so I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one, but no.  I could see this maybe as a stage show, or yes as a book (which it was originally), but as a movie it fails.

First and foremost the screenplay is terrible.  You can tell it’s based on a book, it’s practically divided neatly into chapters for you, and nearly all the speaking is done in monologue.  They’re stellar monologues as far as they go, but five to ten minutes of a single person talking while nothing else happens is not something I generally want to see in a movie.  The only saving grace would’ve been a captivating, engaging, emotional delivery, but unfortunately Krasinski’s monologue only emphasized how much he cannot carry a serious role.  In his ending tirade you can tell that he’s just reciting something he’s read and memorized, the emotion seriously lacking.  Perhaps was was an acting choice, but a poor one; I felt in that moment like I was listening to an audio book.  On the other end of the spectrum is a monologue that appears a bit after halfway through, by one of the interviewed subjects, about his father who worked as a bathroom attendant.  This was handled beautifully and, for me, was the highlight of the entire film.

Most of the main characters were just tragically flat.  Daniel (Dominic Cooper) and minor characters Kevin (Max Minghella) and Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) completely stole the show for me.

The way Brief Interviews was assembled is rather strange.  The timeline was jumbled and hard to follow for what should have been a linear story, and while repeated takes felt charming in Conversations with Other Women, here they felt only like lazy editing.  About a third of the way into the movie we’re also shown, rather randomly and abruptly, a sort of fantasy element where our conversationalists are in the situations they’re talking about.  It could have been a genuinely clever bit of filmmaking had it only not been so strangely introduced to the audience.  Once we are aware of it though, it works, and also lends itself to that same powerful scene of the man talking about his father.

I think, overall, this film was trying to be Kinsey, trying to be revolutionary and personal and deep, but it fell far short of its mark.  I imagine (and hope) the book was better.  This was overcomplicated and under-adapted.

4/10

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)

I was fortunate enough to attend a writers’ screening of Scott Pilgrim so the obligation is there to review it – but man, this movie!  I’d write about it anyway.  It doesn’t matter if you haven’t read the books, though I’m sure if you have you’ll understand or appreciate the film on some deeper level, but as it stands on its own this is something unlike anything I’ve ever seen.  The most spectacular video game movie ever made isn’t even based on a video game.  Go figure.

First a warning: If you’re prone to seizures, view with caution.  The opening credits alone gave me a bit of a headache, but don’t worry, it’s not all flashy for flashy’s sake.  The visuals are unreal, the editing is seamless, the effects create a world that is somewhere between reality and electronic simulation without straying into terrible-CG-land.  The stylistic choices of on-screen labels, visual sound effects and other elements drawing back to its comic book roots are hardly distracting, and more often than not got a good laugh from the audience.

Oddly enough I can’t help drawing parallels between this game/comic movie and the musicals genre.  To paraphrase Edgar Wright, in musicals people break into song.  In Scott Pilgrim, characters break into fight.  The supporting characters seem to be distracted but not perturbed by the situation, nobody questions when a character dissolves into coins or a pair of DJs summon dragons with the power of amps.  This is clearly a world apart from our own, but constructed so believably that it’s hard to escape from.

On the subject of music, I can’t speak highly enough of Scott Pilgrim‘s soundtrack.  Given that our hero is in a band we’d expect some original songs for the film, but man!  Each composition, be it background music, a Sex Bob-Omb original or something else entirely, was so well produced, so catchy, so dang good that I don’t care if these bands are fake.  I’d go to their concerts any day of the week.

The acting is superb.  I had an aversion to the idea of Michael Cera playing Scott at first.  Always typecast, with his stature and voice and meek presence, but he pulled it off with surprising energy and spunk.  Anna Kendrick once again completely transforms her personality for her role, from Twilight to Up in the Air to now this.  Also a brilliant job of casting because when you see her onscreen with Michael they clearly look like siblings.  Kieren Culkin, whom I now have a crush on, had just the right little smugness for his role and Alison Pill played deadpan Kim with a level of flatness that I would’ve thought would be boring, but instead was hilarious.  I could go on but I won’t waste your time.  The entire cast was perfect.

Strangely the only thing I haven’t touched upon is the story, which is something I usually try to pick apart.  But the fact is with Scott Pilgrim you just kind of have to dive in and accept the story, with all its weirdness.  There are some very minor things I wish they had addressed more strongly in the last act but overall the pacing – which for the most part is at breakneck speed – keeps you too engaged to care.

I have no place within the review to fit this, but I need to say that Knives Chau, whose character seemed completely hopeless throughout the film, redeemed herself with a single line at the end that made her stronger than any fight scene could have.  Perfect writing.

See Scott Pilgrim.  It’s too outrageous to miss.

Thanks to the fuzzy headache I was left with, I’m going to give this

8.5/10

edited to add: it’s better the second time. wow.

Scream (1996)

I’m not into horror movies.  I’m just…not.  It’s not that I don’t like the gore, or the suspense, because when the two are done well it makes for a really exciting experience.  But generally horror movies are so flat (or so overdone that they become flat) that I hardly find them worth watching.  Of course there are some classics, The Birds, Night of the Living Dead, that practically spawned their own sub-genres with their genius.  But I mean…I don’t even know how to properly state my case, because honestly the fact is I haven’t watched enough horror to really MAKE a case.  So instead I’ll just shut up and tell you about Scream.

The first ten minutes of Scream are perfect.  I had expected to let this movie play in the background while I worked on a project but man, that was not going to happen.  This scene, which can only be described as a short in its own right, was so gripping I had to watch.  This wasn’t what I was expecting.  I was expecting something between Buffy and, I dunno, Orca or Harper’s Island or something.  Cheese and fluff and gratuitous violence.  This movie – whatever it was – I would watch.

Unfortunately the rest of the film didn’t live up to the suspense and glamorous evil that the first ten minutes promised.  None of the characters were likable, except perhaps the bumbling deputy (played by David Arquette) and the “Best Friend” character (Rose McGowen), so I just kind of sat back and waited, trying to guess what order they’d get killed in.

Is it worth noting there are going to be spoilers?  The movie’s fourteen years old already, everyone’s seen it that’s gonna see it, right?

I was surprised at the actual lack of death that went on in this movie.  Generally speaking, that’s a good thing, but I felt like half the time was spent running around playing games, and not in the psychothriller cat-and-mouse way but in the “we need to waste time” kind of way.  Early on they show us that the killer is clumsy, definitely not a professional, he trips and slips and generally isn’t all that scary except for the mask and the stabby end of his knife.

There are moments in the film that give us a peek at the cleverness of the filmmakers, minor things that could have added up to a better story given the chance.  Billy’s “one phonecall” from jail is probably the best example of this.  I think (and this isn’t much of a stretch) that the whole thing was dumbed down for teen audiences.  I can hear you all now going WELL DUH, THAT’S THE POINT, and I say to you, well then, duh, I guess, that’s why I don’t like most horror movies.

Maybe the movie’s just outdated but it really just felt like everyone was acting on a higher level of stupid than anyone in the real world would.  I want to hate it, but I can’t, because it knows what it is and it’s not meant to be brilliance.

4/10

Friends With Benefits (2009)

It’s rare that you can look at a movie title and know exactly what it’s going to be.  For good or for bad, everyone knows what’s coming when this tentative title is uttered.  Friends with benefits.  Fuckbuddies.  It’s dangerous, it’s a terrible idea, it’s something everyone wants, it’s the theoretically easiest and realistically hardest relationship to maintain.  Anyone who can pull it off without anyone getting hurt?  I hate you.  Tell me your secrets.

There’s an element of predictability to this indie film that isn’t as bothersome as it could be.  It takes advantage of the “Well, we were all thinkin’ it, I’m glad somebody finally said it,” mentality.  Oh look, I see a group of friends that’s three guys and three girls, I wonder what’s going to happen.  Lord knows any even number is going to pair off at some point, so yes, let’s see how we get to point B from point A because we know it’s going there and – wait a second, is this going to point C?  what the hell?  I didn’t even know point D was an option!  Rein it in, rein it in!  Don’t lose control, don’t pull a Chasing Amy and suggest an orgy to break the tension and-oh! oh god, okay, well, hmm.  Okay, that’s one solution.

All of the characters in Friends with Benefits are solid.  They all remain in the realm of believability, even when faced with life changing self-revelations, even when the situations push what we’re comfortable accepting as a truth.  Chloe and Owen, our main couple, launch themselves into uncertain waters so we don’t have to… but here’s the thing.  We establish early, too early, that they’re in love.  Early enough that typing it here isn’t much of a spoiler.  Early enough to make us pretty damn sure we know how it’s going to end.  As with most movies, it’s the getting there that’s the interesting part, the part that makes us question the direction and second guess how well we know the characters, how we think they’ll arc and where those arcs will take us.

Speaking of character arcs, you can tell this movie was written (primarily, at least) by a dude.  Not necessarily a bad thing, but surprising.  Brad and Jeff, the two friends of our lead, unexpectedly gain their own stories and own developments while Alison and Shirley neatly wrap up their issues quickly and harmlessly.  In the kitchen, no less.  (For what it’s worth though, I did like Shirley’s story about cooking… and also I like that it focused not only on Chloe and Own, but also – or even especially – on their friends.)  Chloe also does something completely stupid to test Owen’s love for her, which in turn resulted in a couple minutes of confused, unnecessary back and forth.  That one act bugged me more than any other thing in the movie, because no girl I know would ever, ever do something like that.

There are a few loose threads by the end, for example one pair hooked up and never reflected back on it which kind of defeats the entire point of the movie.  The looming summer in France is almost a nonissue.  Most distractingly there’s an otherwise good use of each character speaking with a therapist, but we never get a feel for when everyone is in this therapy session that gives us so many Real World-esque interviews, or what the resolution of it is.  The group therapy didn’t have a point other than to let everyone air their dirty laundry for the audience.  I also resent that girl + girl + beer = lesbian makeout session, but hey, it’s a movie, whatareyagonnado.

Technically this is a pretty well made film.  I really do like the use of split-screen and repeating takes (as formerly seen in Conversations with Other Women), and the division into ‘Chapters’ wasn’t as distracting as I thought it would be.  It did, however, make the movie feel a bit like a many-act play.  Relatedly a good deal of the dialogue delivery felt staged and too well timed.  This is especially true in the first few chapters, thankfully after which everybody seems to wake up, fall easily into their roles and become more casual in their delivery.  The use of a countdown clock and Brad’s list – which has some gems, if you can pause and read it before it flashes by – were clever in their moments, but nothing of similar style was used through the rest of the film.  Looking back it makes these elements seem a little out of place.

Overall though, I did enjoy it.  I was pleasantly surprised at how far out of the typical rom-com-dram (drom?) it ventured.  By expanding the narrative’s perspective to include more than just an A to B love story, which we all know and hate, Friends with Benefits was turned around into something singularly new.

6.5/10

Toy Story 3 (2010)

Trying to organize my thoughts on this movie is like trying to bag a hurricane, if you’ll pardon the cheesy metaphor.  There are way, way too many things swirling around to address in a simple movie review because the fact is, this isn’t just about the movie, it’s about the studio, the medium, the audience, the critics and the awards.  So I’m just going to type for a while and see what comes out and if I need to go back and organize, I’ll go back and organize.  This isn’t a review so much as a reaction, it’s going to have spoilers so be warned.  Away we go…

I liked this movie, obviously.  It was good, it was great, it was Pixar, but I’m not so sure it was the end-all, be-all of films that people have been making it out to be.  I liked Toy Story 2 more.  Hell, I liked How to Train Your Dragon more.  I didn’t cry.  If that makes me a terrible person, so be it.

Pixar is confident and courageous when it comes to filmmaking because they’re run by successful creatives, an exceptionally rare group.  They have the unusual ability to take an idea and run with it as far as they can without fear that an exec is going to shut them down because it’s not marketable.  It’s the magic of filmmaking at its best.  And let me make one thing perfectly clear: in my humble opinion, (as this entire post is, for the record,) if TS3 didn’t have the first two Toy Story films to stand on, if I wasn’t already in love with these characters, it would be a hard sell.  Without built-in fans from Pixar’s 24 years of existence there is no way they could peg a demographic for this movie.  I mean I recognize that that’s the nature of a sequel (or third film or whatever), to make use of existing fans and connections, but I felt like my attachment to these characters was being abused.  This isn’t a movie I would have gone out of my way to watch if it was anyone other than Buzz, Woody and Jessie in the lead. So with these characters and with their confidence and with their throngs of unwavering supporters, Pixar and their team of exceptionally talented artists were able to crank out yet another earthshattering success, despite scene after scene that would make any other studio pause.

Let’s talk about death for a moment, shall we?  Disney has never, ever balked in the face of death in their films.  Who hasn’t been quizzed on which Disney films have both parents alive?  And in one of the few – 101 Dalmations – the characters are under a constant threat of being skinned, drowned, having their heads bashed in.  Death and Disney are good friends and good business partners, it seems, and obviously with last year’s Up Pixar is following suit, using the loss of a loved one to tug at our heartstrings and bring the audience in.

All of Andy’s beloved toys, with the exception of our leads, are long gone.  Poignantly shown in one wide shot this requires no further explaination.  Addressing the departure of Bo Peep with a single throwaway line, however, made me a little sad.  She was never really a main character, never part of the adventure and I know most people think she was a waste of space, but I did like her and I was happy that Woody had someone, as Jessie and Buzz worked so hilariously well together.  It is unclear whether she was literally thrown away or if she was donated, but I was secretly hoping that Bonnie would have that Bo Peep lamp in her room and the two would be reunited.  This would have effectively kept her away from the main adventure but at the same time have made Woody’s decision to leave Bonnie’s room that much more dramatic, and finally creating a true homecoming at the end.  But, unlike big brother Disney, Pixar is not in the business of romance.  Bo’s exit was swift, painless, and her character easily forgotten.

But that’s not what you’re thinking of when I mention death in Toy Story 3.  What you’re thinking of is that scene in the incinerator when our heroes hold hands, sit back, and calmly accept their impending, unavoidable and downright horrifying fate.  To this scene I say, WHAT THE HELL, PIXAR.  I frankly don’t even know how to react to this.  It’s unexpected, it’s terrible and wonderful, it’s unmistakably mature to the point of shining a light on more silly parts of the film.  Any movie that has our hero flapping his arms like Wile E. Coyote to stay afloat doesn’t lend itself to see that same hero laying down to die. It is truly fascinating to see the two personalities shine through in one film, but I’m not so sure if I, as an innocent viewer, was ready for it.  Go ahead and say that makes me immature, but keep in mind this film is being marketed towards 10 year olds and if I was thrown for a loop, imagine how THEY feel.  I’m 23, born a mere few months after Pixar was founded, and that goddamn studio is more mature than I will ever be – or ever want to be.

Through it all though, we never lost sight of the fact that these characters are TOYS, and it was completely eye-opening how much this was finally used – moreso in fact than in Toy Story or Toy Story 2.  It was as though for the first two movies they were merely little people (with the exception I guess of Slinky Dog), doing things as people do, but in this movie, oh in this movie were they ever toys.  Resetting Buzz to factory demo was flawless, I’m not quite sure how they brought him back but I’m not going to question it.  Mr and Mrs Potato Head were really brought into their own, using and abusing their limbs and parts more than anyone would have thought possible.  At first the Dali inspired Mr Tortilla Head weirded me out, but after the initial “wow, I don’t think I’m comfortable with this,” you just have to give in and laugh.

Speaking of things I wasn’t fully comfortable with – the baby doll?  The baby doll.  Necessary character, perfect character, EERIE AS HELL CHARACTER.  Not even going to begin to dive into the psychology of a grown baby mind in a stronger-than-it-should-be body, good grief.  I haven’t even been able to look at Lee Unkrich’s “big baby” photo tweets.  I should note that baby dolls have always creeped me out a little bit so this certainly didn’t help any.

I liked everything about Sunnyside.  Lotso was PERFECT and I am thrilled that he remained a villain ’til the very end and didn’t bother to redeem himself.  Ken was amazing, of course.  The cymbal monkey scared the everloving crap out of me but hey, that’s what he’s there for.  I also loved that they found ways to include the Pizza Planet truck and especially Sid and the nod to Wheezy (Joe Ranft) and all the other little easter eggs that we nerds keep an eye out for.

A quick word on awards: TS3 is going to be nominated for an Oscar and it’s going to win an Oscar because it’s a Pixar movie and that’s how it works.  I’m not saying it doesn’t deserve an award – because rest assured, it certainly does – but I’m concerned about which award it receives.  It is more than likely going to be nominated for Best Picture which I’m oddly okay with – more okay, in fact, than when Up was nominated.  But this introduces a debate which I’ve been wishing would take the mainstream by storm and I hope someday will: animation is a MEDIUM, not a GENRE.  Anything that encompasses both VeggieTales: The Movie and Mary & Max is not not not a genre.  If you want to have an award for “Best Animated Feature” you’re categorizing it as a genre alongside Comedy/Musical and Drama and so on.  So if we want to consider “Best Animated” as animated films have been described, referred to or otherwise considered for years, as light family fare, I offer you this perplexing (and potentially upsetting) statement: I, personally, believe TS3 could easily win Best Picture, but should not win Best Animated.  What bugs me above all else is, similar to Up last year, if it is nominated for Best Picture the other animated films released this year don’t stand a chance, and frankly that’s not fair.  All comedies were made to be comedies, all musicals were made to be musicals.  Not all animated films were made to be heartstopping works of drama.

There’s more I could write but I’m running out of steam.  Yes it’s a good movie, yes it is deserving of praise, yes it is unique and game-changing in terms of mainstream animation.  Hate me for my critique if you like, feel free to disagree, but be constructive about it.

8/10