UNTIE THE BOAT

056. The City of Lost Children (1995)

I need to train myself to go into films without any expectations whatsoever, so that when it’s all over I won’t feel so let down.  I’m actually really shocked that I didn’t like this movie more than I did, having heard nothing but good things about it.  Maybe starting this blog has made me overly critical but man, I really thought there were too many flaws in this flick.

It has a great pitch.  Frankenstein’s monster (or equivalent) lacks a key characteristic that would otherwise make him human: the ability to dream.  He enlists his fellow freaks & creations to kidnap children and steal their dreams away.  Meanwhile, a man witnesses his ‘little brother’ being taken and leaves the small life he knows to steal him back.  Intimate and beautiful, therein lies a story that could be deeply moving and equally disturbing.  Why the hell isn’t this the movie I watched?

The City of Lost Children can be described in one dreaded word: overcomplicated.  There were too man damn characters that I didn’t care about.  The Cyclopses were a waste of a cool idea.  Why were they there, again?  Couldn’t one of the five (or four?  or six?  I lost track / didn’t care) identical henchmen go out and nab the kids?  Why did it have to be a secret society of zealots who liked to stab their eyes out?  And I’m always going to be the first person to demand to know why there’s a random female character thrown in and here is no exception: the girl was unnecessary and all she was good for was creating an uncomfortable, creepy sexual tension that any of us with siblings can tell you is agonizingly wrong in ten thousand different ways.  The only thing she contributed to the story was an excuse to show the fascinating Siamese sisters, who served as a sort of Fagin character (to the best of my interpretation) and tripped up our intrepid heroes.  They are badass, make no mistake, the keepers of the orphans running around this dank city.

Speaking of the city: fantastic location design.  I’m a massive steampunk fan and love anything copper and mechanical and anachronistic in a gearhead kinda way.  However, when your entire world is populated with the same brownredorange dirt, with minimal interesting lighting (or lighting at all), your eye gets bored and it is easy to lose track of where we are.  Also the whole thing felt very small and stagey, as though it were based on a play with rotating sets that could only be used in so many ways.  It didn’t feel lived-in or real.

The filmmakers of City of Lost Children also took a huge risk by having a cast of such vastly unappealing characters.  I’m not one to criticize people for their on-screen looks (I am, after all, BEHIND the scenes here) but it was either very brave or very stupid to have so many unsympathetic faces on screen.  In animation we learned the difference between unappealing and unattractive, that everything needs appeal but that doesn’t mean it has to be pretty.  It is an extremely sensitive subject, but I feel no remorse in saying that this film, overall, leaned towards the unappealing side of  things; in their content, in their characters, and in their execution.

5.5/10

I DON’T ASSUME, I KNOW.

047. The Ugly Truth (2009)

This movie was godawful.  And I’m not just saying that because I don’t generally enjoy romantic comedies I’m saying that because it was godawful and it can all be attributed to Katherine Heigl.  This girl can play one character and only one character, Izzie Stevens, and she’s been playing Izzie Stevens since she was Izzie Evans on “Roswell.”  She takes everything too damn seriously and it hinders more than it helps.  I wanted to fast forward every scene she was in.

The rest of the characters were better, you could really tell they were having fun with the show.  Gerard Butler completely stole every scene he was in, his accent was perfect and his attitude was fearless, he didn’t seem to be acting at all.  Unfortunately one character can’t carry a film based on the dynamic between two.

It’s weird; Abby Richter is custom built to be relatable to women, and yeah, one or two ladies I know personally sprang to mind that fit her character to a T, friends I would cheer for emphatically should they find themselves in a comedically romantic situation.  I wasn’t cheering for Abby.  She pissed me off.

I won’t get into the story, which was dry and predictable and nothing resembling interesting.  The comedy fell flat, the arcs were weak, there was little to no wit involved.  Based solely on the merit of every cast member except the leading lady:

3.5/10

I’VE NEVER KNOWN ANYONE LONGER THAN A SHORT TIME

053. Love Conquers Paul (2009)

What IS it with movies that make creepy psycho stalkers look so utterly adorable?!  First we had Good Dick, now this?  Sigh.  if only real life worked that way.  IMEANNOWAIT-

so, Love Conquers Paul.  I’ll try to do this without spoilers because so few people have seen this film.  You should see it for yourself fresh.  And yes, for sure, you should see it.

I love independent films because they always have something to say, they are screaming their cellulose nitrate lungs out to the masses and hoping they’re lucky enough to find an audience that will respond in kind.  They need to convince you they’re good, to achieve something wonderful since they have no name and no reputation to fall back on; to stand on their own as a viable, watchable piece of film.  Paul is a fantastic example of this.  It has a strong point of view and an engaging story.  And yet, somehow, I can’t decide what my opinion of this movie is.

It was clever and well assembled and the cast was great, and the script – oh the script was excellent, it’s so hard to write just a normal conversation, a simple subtle interaction and Paul has it.  But there’s just something about it that was…off.  Actually y’know what?  it does remind me a lot of Good Dick.  The less I know about the characters, the better.  The more I find out about their histories, why they are they way they are, the less I relate to them.  I see a guy too nervous to live, introvert, channeling his insecurities through a camera and I’m wholeheartedly into it, love it, unquestionably.  Stop giving me reasons why.  I understand that some people appreciate that kind of thing but me myself and I, personally, don’t.  As long as your character is believable – and Paul is, no doubt – I couldn’t care less why, or how he got to where he is today.  I get that it creates a more emotional moment if your character then decides to change or move on, but you should have built up enough in the present, as we see your character now with his quirks in the very plot of the story, to make that moving-on moment solid.

I was also uncomfortable with Erica.  She served her purpose, but she was kind of … well I mean, she’s not so much deus ex machina but oddly convenient in what’s she’s doing, what she’s into.  She left me with a bad taste and not just because she was supposed to.  Alternately, there wasn’t really another way to achieve what moment of mirror-image point of view clarity without Erica and her exceedingly apt methods.  Or at least none I can think of off the top of my head.  Give me a few minutes.

Off-topic, but perhaps this will give you insight into the way my brain works:  There are bits of the film when we see somebody watching Paul through a camera as he has been watching his women.  There was a moment where we glimpse Death – or someone that takes on the appearance of Death – and in my head I was like YES! yes!  Death was watching him this whole time, handycam style, and now xyz happens and the story will continue on with those left behind and their various weirdnesses and how it effects them.  Suffice to say, something else entirely happened.

Wow, that was an awkward paragraph to write without saying exactly what happens.  Moving on –

I want to yell from the rooftops that THIS IS NOT A ROMANTIC COMEDY but goddammit, the last like ten minutes makes it a (dark) romantic comedy.  It would have worked without one specific thing and you know exactly what I’m talking about.  Why did you do this to me, Mr Bannon?

There’s a line where Paul is talking to Erica (well, to the camera anyway) and thanks her, “for introducing me to myself… and we’re getting along swimmingly.”  I know that feeling, I’ve lived that feeling and I think everyone has to a certain extent.  Love Conquers Paul isn’t a love story in the traditional sense, not by a long shot and not just because it’s untraditional, or creepy, or weird.  It’s a story we rarely see with such honesty.  A man learning to love himself.

7/10

IT’S A PEN.

051. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010)

BE ADVISED: this post is going to contain LOTS AND LOTS OF SPOILERS so if you care at all about this movie, skip it.  The other 6.69 billion of you, keep reading.

I love mythology.  I don’t consider myself a scholar by any means, my knowledge of it is skewed and biased and hells yeah I love Disney’s Hercules almost as much as I love the original Clash of the Titans.  But this movie… this movie was so dull that I couldn’t even come up with a good quote to use that wasn’t already something everybody knew from the trailer.

I suppose that in some not-so-subtle way they were trying (and failing) to throw in a ‘pen is mightier than the sword’ idea but in this case I think, or hope, that the pen was not only mightier than the sword but the fleet of crewpeople and terabytes of rendering that went into this movie.  Nothing will ever compare to the emotional devastation that accompanied the complete and utter bastardization of The Golden Compass, one of the best narratives ever put to paper, and I especially cannot compare as I have not actually read any of the Percy Jackson books.  But there was some underlying impression that there was a spark of a story there, that maybe at some point in its conception it could have been good, that it could have been something.  It’s a shame it failed, but oh lordy did it EVER fail.

My primary problem with PJ is strangely the same problem – and the only problem, I should note – that I had with Coraline.  And don’t get me wrong, I adored Coraline, but there was one fatal flaw that kept it from perfection: it felt like a video game.  Any situation where a character (or group of characters) needs to get to points A, B and C to collect items 1, 2 and 3 by defeating monsters Tom, Dick and Harry – with very little side story or additional development, which thankfully Coraline had in abundance – will always read as a video game.  And if I’m not the one holding the controller then I ain’t as interested as I could be.

Secondary to this was its butchering of mythology.  As I stated earlier I’m no scholar, my knowledge of it is rudimentary at best, but let’s just start with the basics as they relate immediately to this film in particular.

Item one: if you’re going to reference Perseus in the first fifteen minutes you cannot, can NOT have Medusa in your film.  Perseus killed Medusa by beheading her, and from her blood sprung Pegasus.  DONE.  (or, y’know, as ‘done’ as any myth with eighty interpretations can be.)  If she’s dead, you can’t have her as one of your villains and you can’t kill her again, because heck folks, if Perseus killing her wasn’t enough than little Tiger Beat heartthrob Percy Jackson isn’t going to fare much better.

Item two: since when does the Hydra breathe FIRE?!  Last I checked, Heracles defeated a water serpent.  oh, irony!  Percy’s waterbending powers would’ve probably just made it happy & refreshed.

Item three: HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THAT YOU DON’T EAT THE LOTUS FLOWERS.  guys, guys.  okay.  Each location you’re going to in the good ol’ US-of-A is based on a mythological place, yeah?  So when you go to a casino called “Lotus” you should probably be expecting something, y’know, Lotus-related going on.  Let’s see, who else was on a long-winded quest and encountered some sexy ladies offering up flowers to eat?  Odysseus, who then had to drag his men away by force.  He had to tie them to the effing ship to keep them from diving back into their drug induced haze.  If you’ve been going to demigod summer camp, they should teach you this BEFORE you’re woken up and everything becomes blatantly obvious.

Item four:  Hermes did not wear chucks.

There’s so much more but I can’t even get into it.  It burns.

Okay let’s jump back to the basics of movie-making and/or storytelling again shall we.  Again, as I have not read the book I can’t guess as to how obvious it was that evil-hottie Luke was the bad guy, but the millisecond I saw that kid I was like, “YOU.  You bastard, you are the evil one, I know it.”  And as far as hiding the bolt in the shield… shouldn’t Percy have some kinda Spidey Sense to tell him it’s in there?  No?  Really?  and if Luke is the son of Hermes couldn’t he have just snagged one of those pearls for himself and high-tailed it to Hades on his own?

Don’t even get me started on the characters.

So many things wrong with this movie, so little time.  oh and if I hear the phrase “If you ever want to see ____ again” I am giving up all faith in writers, writing, and the writing process.  It’s the equivalent of Disney using the phrase “deliberately disobeyed.”  GET OVER IT, find something better.  And hey, did anyone out there believe his mom really died?

If I didn’t have a personal love of mythology this probably would have fit into the “meh” category, as opposed to “the bad.”  I suppose it’s like when that chick wrote to Universal claiming that the Wolfman ripped off Twilight’s spectacularly original idea of ‘werewolves,’ and what’s this about silver bullets?  No.  Just no.  I will hit you.

4/10

oh yeah and Pierce Brosnan is a centaur. what the what?

I LOVE YOU, EMILY

046. Altered States (1980)

I’m in shock at how much I enjoyed this movie.  Though, I suppose ‘enjoyed’ isn’t the right word… it wasn’t playful or, well, joyous for the most part, in fact it was surprisingly thought-provoking on some superficial level, desperately trying to be deep and sometimes succeeding.  I loved it.  I was expecting to laugh at its thirty year old effects, sneer at its self-importance, shrug off its theories on life and evolution.  But I freakin love this movie.

First and foremost I want to address the effects.  Yes, they’re old as hell and yes, they could probably do better now.  But the fact remains that “they,” the filmmakers of the present, don’t have to.  The first transformation sequence, the first ripples of disturbance in the flesh of Eddie’s arm, the uncomfortable bulging of his chest, was phenomenally and disturbingly well done.  To see it now would be to know it was CG and to dismiss it as CG, but however they made that goddamn arm distend freaked the shit out of me.  The “acid trip” moments and the end chaos could have been better edited, but whatever.  They work.

Any narrative where the love story is present and heartfelt and honest, but not cheesy or overly romanticized also gets very high marks in my book.  Emily’s situation was heartbreaking, and their very real bond in the present kept each of them from slipping into some dysfunctional primordial humanoid past.  (whoops, spoiler alert.)

That being said, my main negative for this film is its tiptoeing the line between science and mysticism.  I was totally with it until the crazy lightshow from the tank, the unseen force that blasted doors shut and pipes apart and created a freakish, bio/electroluminescent swirling fog.  eff that nonsense.  I bought it when Eddie was reverting.  I didn’t buy that the environment would revert with him.

All’n’all, thumbs up.  Surprisingly good, it’ll probably be remade someday when some otherwise unemployed filmmaker stumbles across it.  Done properly there’d certainly be an audience for it, but until that happens there ain’t a damn thing wrong with watching this copy.

7.5/10

INHERIT MY KINGDOM

042. The Wolfman (2010)

Is there a competition to see how many clichés you can cram in a single movie goin on that I’m not aware of? I had hopes that Wolfman would resurrect the old Hollywood monster genre the way Twilight did for vampires (oh look, an unintentional joke, whoops) but if this flick was its last hope we’re in trouble.

Don’t get me wrong, it certainly had its moments. It was clear the filmmakers – and audience – were having the most fun in scenes where the Wolfman just ran rampant; so basically the scenes that didn’t need plot or dialogue or character. The transformation sequences, as Lawrence was climbing up the stairs and later at the observation in the asylum, were probably the most effectively crafted sequences in the film. They should’ve milked these moments for everything they had. Using classic silhouettes and jarringly detailed close-ups, THIS is the Wolfman movie I wanted to see.

Everything else was nothing short of a joke. The actors didn’t seem to care about the movie (except maybe Emily Blunt) and it showed. Del Toro’s accent wavered throughout, why they couldn’t have had him living in Spain instead of London by way of the United States…I have no idea. The use of startling, sudden and loud sounds was irritating, not frightening.  The locations and sets of the village would have been wonderful if they had built more than four buildings to be shot at different angles to make it seem larger.

The audience at this screening laughed throughout the film, and not in the good way. Moments not meant to be humorous were so ridiculous you just had to question the taste of the filmmakers.

A very minor spoiler, so consider yourself warned…if you deeply care about this movie enough to avoid spoilers.

I really didn’t like (among other things) that Lawrence, as the Wolfman, threw the head of the asylum out a window. That was a very human thing to do, frankly, and in a film that seemed to want to emphasize man versus raving uncontrollable animal, it made no sense. (Again, among other things.) If you put a yipping chihuahua in front of a rabid dog, would the rabid dog thow it out a window? No. He’d rip the damn thing to shreds, and it would be infinitely more satisfying. Have him throw some random doctor out the window in his efforts to reach the man he hates, THAT would worked – showing disregard for human life – if you really want that shot of the guy impaled on a spiked fence. (hello cliché, we meet again.)

My favorite part of the film, by far, was when a man tried to kill himself rather than be ripped apart by the monster. You’ll know exactly what I mean when you see it. If you see it.

4/10

IT’S KIND OF, AH, FOR ADULTS ONLY

034. The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964)

In order to understand great cinema you really should take a moment – or an hour and a half – to understand horrible cinema.  Enter The Incredible Mr Limpet.

I’m a huge fan of the technique of overlaying traditional animation on live-action.  My favorite film of all time is Who Framed Roger Rabbit, so on that note I decided to give this awkward little movie a chance.  The verdict?  This is quite possibly the worst movie I have ever seen.  And I saw Orca.

After seeing this film once I decided I needed someone to empathize on how ridiculous it is, so I had my roommate watch it.  Her reaction was, quote, “Why did this need to exist?!” minus a few interrobangs.  Quite frankly that sums things up.

The Incredible Mr Limpet left me confused.  Not about the plot or anything involving the film, mind you, because all that was too ridiculous to even worry over.  I was confused how this film was pitched, green-lit and produced without anyone saying, “Are you effing KIDDING me?” or even, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

This movie is about a guy who turns into a fish and in doing so finally finds a way of helping his country by hunting Nazis.  Seriously.  There’s more, but that’s all you need to know.  I’ll not say anything further in case you ever watch Mr Limpet as to not ruin the little surprises along the way, but rest assured, there is more.

I have to give it a couple points for technical achievement, but otherwise…wow.  No.  Just no.

2/10

WE COULD BE HEROES

032. The Cove (2009)

This documentary will do nothing short of rip your heart out.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a vegetarian or a carnivore, a modern tree-hugger or a hardcore industrialist, if you are not moved by the footage displayed here you may just be a sociopath.  Get checked.

For those of you hesitant to go out of your way to see this documentary due to preconceived notions of environmental films, about them being preachy or strictly educational, don’t worry about it.  The Cove feels more like an action film, literally referencing Ocean’s 11 with it’s “crack team” of assorted experts, each a real person with real skills and real emotions.

I regret that my first (and so far, only) perfect review will be of a documentary, as there are no writers to congratulate, no costume designers or makeup artists to admire, no actors to award.  But maybe that’s why it’s so touching, it’s so solid in its straightforwardness, there’s no glam or effects – and as soon as you realize there are no effects, that the water is really and truly running red with blood, that’s when it hits you.  This film is severe, cruel in its honesty, and that is what makes it so damn good.

10/10

D.

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

I hate game shows, for the most part, or at least that’s what I tell people until Wheel of Fortune comes on.  When this movie caused such a stir a couple years ago I couldn’t imagine why, it was just a kid on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and something about a girl in yellow.  What’s the big deal about that?  And by the time I started gaining interest it had gotten to the point where everyone had seen it already and would talk about nothing else, you know how that goes, you get over-saturated and sick of it.  Too much of a good thing when you don’t even know what the good thing is.  So, I never saw it.

I told a friend of mine a few months back that I hadn’t yet seen Slumdog Millionaire and his immediate reply was, “What, do you have something against being happy?” so I guess all the suspense an intrigue of it was lost at that point.  But I see what he means now.  Slumdog exceptionally well-told, well choreographed, well timed and well shot.  It’s never slow eventhough the story spans a lifetime, I never got bored with it.  And of course, I adored the nod to Bollywood with the huge dance number in the credits.

Correct me if I’m wrong but they never did show how Jamal got on the show, did they?  He mentioned the “dialing when he says the word if” thing, but they never really showed that scene, did they?  It left me feeling like I’d missed thing.

I guess there’s nothing I can say that hasn’t already been said!  Great movie, and I’m glad I’m no longer the last person on earth who hasn’t seen it.

8/10

WE TRAVEL JUST TO TRAVEL.

033. Diarios de Motocicleta (2004)

One of the most important things about films is that, to a certain extent, they’re self aware.  They know what they’re portraying, what genre they’re in, and they know who their audience is and can play to that.  Unfortunately The Motorcycle Diaries didn’t seem to know where it was going.  It alternated between documentary and buddy comedy, historical fiction and pure preachy.

I know absolutely nothing about South American history.  I don’t know who Che is other than a face on a poster and I have no idea whether or not if I didn’t live in my bubble it would have been easier to get absorbed in the film.  I felt, for the duration, that everything was being played out in front of me and I was never involved.  There was no personal investment in big emotional moments.  There were definitely stretches of time when the only thing keeping my eyes on the screen were the subtitles.  A lot of stylistic choices made in the filming of Motorcycle Diaries hindered, rather than helped.

The cinematography had the potential to be stunning, given the locations, but someone decided it would be a great idea to divide the shots directly in half for 90% of the movie.  This is intensely distracting.  I suppose it could be artistic intent but there’s a reason films generally adhere to a rule of thirds.

Another quick stylistic oddity is the use of jump-cuts to show the passage of time.  It’s a cool concept but in a movie that already barely held itself together it just served as another distraction.

Interspersed throughout the film are also short shots of people and cultures Ernesto and Alberto encounter, captured in black and white.  I can only assume they are meant to resemble (or recreate) photos captured from that era to make the movie seem more “real.”  It backfires, if anything making the film feel extra fake like costume jewelry, meant to approximate but not taken seriously.

5/10