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

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

PODCASTING / The Frighteners

I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a Podcast and this weekend I figured what the heck, why not, and just dove in.  I think from now on I’ll be recording my reviews instead of just typing them up because, frankly, it’s WAY MORE FUN.

The podcast is going to negate the need for (and use of) this blog quite a bit, if not entirely.  I don’t want to take it down completely, because it still houses the old reviews, but I don’t want to have to update it every time I post a new podcast… that’s just redundant.  so! we’ll see how things change in the next few weeks.

You can listen to Episode 01 of JDTcast and subscribe to future episodes RIGHT OVER HERE.  Obviously I’m just starting out on this and according to my friend Kim it’s not a real podcast until I have a theme song (somebody want to get on that?) but it would be great to get some subscribers right on in the beginning.

In amongst the introductory nonsense, this first episode features some thoughts on The Frighteners.

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

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

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

WHAT IF I WIN?

008. Good Dick (2008)

Netflix kept insisting that this was a movie I would like so I decided to watch it, concerned though I was about its name.

I had little to be concerned about.  This isn’t porn.  It’s not even really about porn, though it does somehow simultaneously play a central role while hanging on the sidelines.  What it’s really about is the people.  And speaking of people, Marianna Palka somehow managed to write, direct, and star in this movie – and she didn’t do half bad in all respects.

First I liked it, then I was skeptical, then I didn’t like it, then I liked it again, then I hated it, then I sort of liked it.  And now, after having watched it, I am still somehow skeptical.

Aspects of Good Dick are superbly done.  A completely strange and unlikely situation that, in reality, would probably result in a restraining order and therapy, is somehow believable.  You find yourself rooting for this unnamed stalker character who should probably be thrown in jail, not cheered for.  (Though the fact he’s played adorably by Jason Ritter probably helps.)  Marianna’s character, also unnamed, is intriguing in her repulsiveness, and the less we know about her the better.  The more we find out about her, the less interesting she becomes.

Overall I think this movie succeeded in what it was trying to do, however I would have liked it better had it stayed in the realm of ‘what the hell is going on?’ and left the secrets as such.

5.5/10

DOING SCIENCE

004. Avatar (2009)

If I wanted to do this right it would take me four days, a couple beers, and a screener I could pause, rewind and take notes on, but all I’ve got is about an hour and a mug of hot chocolate and my quickly fading first impressions so that’ll have to do.  I’m going to preface this one by saying that the only thing keeping me awake through the latter half of this movie was my skull-splitting headache, so that already gives you an idea of my attitude towards Avatar.  Additional disclaimer: my opinion of movies, what movies are and what they should be isn’t necessarily the same definition you have, or the same aspects that you appreciate.  Also, this is absolutely spoileriffic.  okay?  I promise this isn’t entirely me ripping it to shreds.  Just mostly.

We good?  Good.  I’m putting this behind a cut because it’s five times as long as any other thing I’ve posted so far.