Those Glourious Basterds!

Quentin Tarantino has been talking about Inglourious Basterds for, well, forever. That's what he does, he talks. But I find, more often than naught, the man can put the money where his mouth is. I've adored every one of his films, but for some reason couldn't get behind Inglourious Basterds. I wasn't won over by the trailer and the mixed reactions from Cannes didn't help sway me. It wasn't until Wednesday, August 19 at approximately 2:14 pm that it hit me...a new film by Quentin Tarantino comes out this week! What am I so worried about?

All uncertainty was immediately quelled with the opening scene on Mr. LaPadite's dairy farm. This scene alone is worth your $10 admission. I will say nothing about it.

I'm actually not going to say much about this movie. Most of you have already seen it. The rest of you need to go see it. Then we can all have a nice chat. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll eat nachos, and you may kill a few Nat-zees on the way.


What I will say before leaving you:
This is by far Tarantino's prettiest film. There are shots in there that should be taught in film schools. The dialogue is as good as it has ever been. He wrote the farm scene back in 1998 and has never let go of it. Thank God! And Christoph Waltz? Oscar nomination. Col. Hans Landa may be one of the best villains in a movie ever. And Brad Pitt's Lt. Aldo Raine is so fun to watch I want a spin-off movie! Hell, throw in a spin-off for Landa and Hugo Stiglitz too!

Although it is 153 minutes long, the movie feels short. I need to see it again. Then maybe once more after that.

Ponyo!

Hayao Miyazaki. The name alone puts a smile on my face. Through all of my cinematic exploits, there have been very few things that bring me as much joy as visiting a world created by Hayao Miyazaki. Ponyo is no exception. I already had a bias toward Miyazaki and the films of Studio Ghibli (four of which are among my favorite films ever made), so I expected to like Ponyo. I never would have guessed I'd walk out of the theater having seen a movie I would call perfect.


Studio Ghibli and Pixar are often viewed as equals when comparing both their body of work and their inner workings as a company. Both are overflowing with imagination, integrity, and a deep-rooted love for the medium. Both produce films that are lightyears ahead of the other animation studios, both visually and with masterful storytelling. The attention to detail and vast effort put into their films result a higher caliber of filmmaking. They don't make "kid's movies," they make movies that are marketed to children, because animation equals kids. But what sets Ghibli apart, and puts them closer to my heart, is their love for hand drawn animation. As much as I love Pixar and their films...I will never love computer animation. The layers of hand-painted cells, each one every bit as important as the last, all starting out as a single line from a pencil. I feel more connected to and have more respect for hand drawn art than I do something run through a computer, made up of microscopic bits of data; rendered and perfect. I want to see flaws and imperfections. Because through imperfection I see perfection. I see beauty! And Ponyo is beautiful. You'll notice I haven't really said anything about the movie itself. I don't intend to. The story is simple and it's themes are universal. It doesn't tread any uncharted waters. But the magic of it, for me, is unreal. I don't mean the magic of the world in the story, I mean the hold the film had on me. Jaw wide, head tilted, eyes absorbing eveything they see. Feeling like child again, but not at all. That's what makes Miyazaki a master at his craft. No matter your age, child and adult are synonymous when watching his films. A G rating doesn't have to denote "kid's movie." This is a film for anyone who dreams, loves, hopes, laughs, cries, feels. I'm sure Ponyo isn't going to make a profound impact on your life, or make you stand in the street shouting praise to the heavens, but I hope it will touch you in some way.

I dare you to watch it and not smile uncontrollably.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

District 9. It is a...movie...that I watched. It's also a movie I'm having trouble writing about. I've been staring at the monitor for well over 40 minutes now with nothing but the words District 9 on the screen, so bear with me.


District 9 leaves me very much on the fence. This sentiment will eventually change (and I feel the pull toward the positive side), but my problem lays in how...alien it all was. It's a familiar film, yet entirely new. The mockumentary style feels like it's been done to death, but it works really well here. However, it still feels like this style of film hasn't been perfected. It's still very much experimental, therefore, doesn't feel like a finished product. But at the same time, I can't quite put my finger on how to resolve it. The same problems arise in a biopic that is dramatized yet heavily references stock footage. The stock footage (the real footage) tends to take you out of the reality of the film. At some point, District 9 needed to stop being documented. And to some extent it did, but it didn't feel confident about this decision.

With District 9, some things worked and others didn't. It feels like a Catch-22. The mockumentary aspect worked...except when it didn't. The action (namely in the third act) went on too long and was your average popcorn fare, yet the movie needed more action. It's like a recipe that you followed to the letter but the meal still doesn't come out right. What variable is missing?

I loved the shifting sympathies in the film. You start out really liking Wikus van der Merwe and detest the disgusting, bottom-feeding prawn. Wikus and his armed goons are sent to District 9, the camps outside of Johannesburg where the aliens live, to serve them all eviction notices. The aliens are to be relocated some 20 miles outside of the city. So they go around confiscating weapons and evicting alien residents, fining them on unfair grounds, shoving rifles into their faces. Yet the prawn never once raise arms at the humans. The only thing they use these weapons for (weapons humans can't operate) is as tender; they trade Nigerian gangsters the guns for food. They don't seem very dangerous. And they love cat food! How menacing! You spend a good while remaining neutral until introduced to the alien named, presumable by humans, Christopher Johnson and his son. You instantly cling on to them. You also come to realize that they are the most human element in the film. Their desire to get home, to be free, takes precedence over anything else in the film. Although you follow Wikus, he never quite recaptures your sympathy until the very end. Since he is your main protagonist, I think this also means you never really care about the human race throughout the course of the film. While Wikus' motives are self serving, Christopher's are for the benifit of his entire race. The aliens, the prawn, are never fighting amongst themselves. Bickering sometimes, but they never harm or kill one of their own. They never even harm or kill humans unless provoked past the point of their own safety. They are not invaders. They are a lost people. And they can't go home because they are prisoners living in internment camps and the human government wont allow them to. This isn't too unfamiliar considering we're talking about South Africa under apartheid. Why is it I sympathize with these conditions more when it's an alien race this is happening to? Because I can say "It's only a movie?"

I'm put in a love/hate relationship with District 9 because of the disdain I feel for the human race. The cliché is aliens come to wage war and humanity can unite against a common foe. That isn't present here, of which I'm very grateful, of course! But humans are so stupid and don't learn from their mistakes. There's still war. There's still money in war. A peaceful alien race gets lost, we capture them, enslave them, and exploit them to the fullest. It leaves you wanting those clichés. Send the howling beam from the belly of your mothership and wash away this big blue blemish called Earth. We deserve it.

This Recipe Needs More Julia

If I could change one thing about Julie & Julia it would be this: scrap the whole idea and just make My Life In France. I found myself infatuated with Julia Child and, well, her life in France. Conversely, I couldn't have possibly cared less about Julie Powell and her blogging (pfffft, bloggers). I've only skimmed the book Julie & Julia, but it feels like way too much was fabricated to make her life mirror Julia Child's. Or maybe the similarities aren't much of a stretch to begin with, therefore, it feels unnecessary to point them out. Now, there's no real harm in taking liberties and stretching truths to make the story work. And Powell doesn't try to deny elements of her story being fictitious. But it doesn't help the story. All it manages to do is make half of the movie incredibly boring. "Oh, that's cute! That's totally what Julia was doing in the previous scene. And now Julie is doing it!" To put my feelings into layman's terms, I've included this visual aid:


So to boil it down, I loved the My Life In France bits (and Meryl) and Zzzzzzz'd the Julie & Julia portion. Why they decided to fuse these two books together? Who knows. Someone may know. But who?

'(500) Days of Summer' - Review

Like numbers, director Marc Webb? Here’s some simple arithmetic for you:

+
IKEA®
-
Headbands
=
(500) Days of Summer

Watch the trailer here.

And Away...WE...Go!

Away We Go follows Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph), an unmarried couple who are preparing to have a child together. They live in the middle of nowhere in a house that looks like a sneeze could blow it over. They can work from home (or via telephone) so the only real tie to their current residence is that it's close to Burt's parents. With Verona's parents deceased, they want to be close to Grandma and Grandpa. But when Burt's folks announce they'll be moving overseas, the couple decide to take up stakes and go searching for "home". They plot a course hitting up major cites that have one acquaintance or another that could be their friends if the choose to start their new lives there. As you'd expect, misadventure and hijinks ensue.

Away We Go is certainly a charming little film. Its characters feel like real people in real life situations. Granted, they're strange, uncomfortable situations with odd-ball (and often loose) acquaintances, but never anything outlandish. Or least it wouldn't feel that way if the film treated them a little more seriously. With the exception of the leads, Burt and Verona, every character feels heavy handed. I don't blame the characters in the script so much the actor's use of the characters. It's like they read the script thinking they would be alongside Maya in a series of SNL sketches. That sort of over-the-top caricature acting works if that's what the source material is requiring. Take Christopher Guest movies, for instance. But I don't feel that's what Away We Go was trying to be. It' a sweet, poignant film about love, family, and the meaning of home. Oh, and being scared silly of bringing a life into the world. How can you care for a life when you don't even know how to live your own? As their journey progresses and they encounter bad parent after bad parent, you start to realize they're going to be wonderful parents. This hits you during an impromptu puppet show the two give for Burt's neice as they are tucking her into bed. Maybe love is family and family is home?

Overall, I enjoyed this film. It was hard for me to warm up to it, and again, I wish it took itself a bit more seriously, but the good bits outweigh the bad. Don't force jokes to try and make things funny. Let the humor of the situation reveal itself. You may want to strangle almost everyone Burt and Verona meet along the way(Maggie Gyllenhaall's character LN! Ugh!), but that makes you love the couple all the more. Life can be scary and nobody has all of the answers. People are different and there is no definitive right or wrong way to live your life or to raise a child. In this case it took a cross country trip and a lot of soul searching to come to a conclusion they knew all along. As The Beatles say, "All You Need Is Love".

Terminator: SAVE ME!

(Remember when they'd send one of us to do what thousands are incapable of?)

In the start of the film you witness a prisoner put to death via lethal injection. To keep it clichéd, this is administered by mustachioed, grimacing Texans in ten gallon hats, stroking their gaudy bolo ties. As the fluid slowly drips down the vial and is being pumped into the convict's veins, all I can think is, "Save some of that for me!" It's generally a bad sign to long for death when you've yet to reach the 10 minute mark. I'm sure plenty of people will like (or love) Terminator: Salvation, but I'll take T3 over this any day. T3 is not a good movie, but it at least feels like a Terminator movie (albeit by ripping off its predecessors). Salvation does not. A few music cues and the use of classic lines and names from the series doesn't make it a part of the series. It doesn't even feel like it was influenced by Terminator. It feels like Aliens meets The Road Warrior...plus every other action movie you've ever seen.

And boy is it an action movie! There is never a moments peace for these poor characters you couldn't give a shit about. I personally am sick of watching stuff blow up. Correction: I'm sick of watching stuff blow up for two hours straight. If I want explosions and shooting and no story whatsoever, I play video games. This movie opens the door to many questions but chooses not to answer any of them.

Here are a few I had: Why is Skynet doing this? What is the purpose of wiping out humanity? Why are Terminators humanoid if they don't need to be disguised as humans? Shouldn't the machines be threatening or at least hard to thwart? How did Christian Bale manage to be a more annoying John Connor than Edward Furlong? When will they realize rappers can't act? How many times are they going to say Kyle Reese (it could be a drinking game)? Why is it that Marcus Wright (a Terminator, for anyone who didn't see the trailer) is the most human character in the film? ( It must be his strong human heart).

Marcus is easily the most interesting character in the film, so it's sad he doesn't just destroy John Connor and the resistance and travel back to a time before this script was "written" and start fresh. Terminator: Salvation is as unnecessary as a junior novelization or comic book adaptation. It doesn't contain anything you needed to know, wanted to know, or didn't already know about the mythos. But it's big, expensive, and explodie, so if that's what you're looking for...go play Halo.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I remember leaving X-Men: The Last Stand in a flurry of emotions. Rage. Sadness. Betrayal. More rage. I left X-Men Origins: Wolverine feeling...nothing. Void of anything that could even remotely be mistaken for giving a shit. The title is redonkulous, the trailer was terrible, yet, you hold on to that little sliver of hope that maybe it will at least be fun. I think I may have had more fun in The Mummy. The fucking Mummy! To say X-Men Origins: Wolverine (you have to say the whole thing because its so stupid!) is a bad movie doesn't really cover all of the bases. I wont go into too much detail, because I'm still recovering, but this movie falls into the category of unnecessary. It brings nothing to the titular character that wasn't already established in X2. In fact, most of the scenes involving the "weapon x" project already had a counterpart scene in X2. Granted, most are via flashbacks, but wasn't that sufficient? Do I really need to see fifteen minutes of Wolverine being pumped full of adamantium? Wouldn't those fifteen minutes be better suited for, I don't know, cutting shit? Or trying to develop a character? Any one of them! I don't even care who! It's funny that Wolverine's name is in the title considering how little presence he actually has in the film. Sure he's in every frame, but every piece of him (or any character for that matter) is so basic. Everything goes from point A to point B, but we don't care about getting to point B, nor do we enjoy the sights along the way. It's like having to drive 30 miles into the desert to get to the dentist - a tedious chore with nothing to look at and is likely to result in pain followed by numbness.

Like X3, this film suffers from having too many characters that you couldn't possibly care about. Not only that, but you may even hate most of them. You may even hate characters you love! Gambit and Cyclops...what were they even doing in this movie? But the biggest bummer, and something I'm curious to see how it'll be received, is the treatment of the character Deadpool. Ryan Reynolds, for like two whole minutes, had me into his character. But then he's MIA and doesn't come back until the end of the movie, and when he does, he isn't Deadpool. I think someone in costume design confused Deadpool with Baraka from Mortal Kombat. Maybe it was an honest mistake?


I think I've said all that I can because frankly, I don't want to spend any more time thinking about how royally they botched a movie that should have been able to write itself. The best course of action would have been to word-for-word plagiarize Daniel Way's run of Wolverine Origins, which uses Deadpool so well that it's likely the reason he gained the popularity to make it into the film. If you want to dig your claws into some Wolverine how he is meant to be, start there.

My Trip To Adventureland

A good comedy is hard to find. They're usually too stupid, too gross, or both. Sometimes they're SO stupid you can't help but love them, but I long for a different breed of comedy. One that worries more about being a good movie and less about how many jokes they can squeeze into a given scene. I can't think of the last genuine comedy (outside of Wes Anderson) that didn't let "being a comedy" get in the way of being a good movie. Adventureland is one for that list.

I knew I'd be seeing Adventureland from the moment the trailer hit and I laid eyes on Bill Hader's epic mustache. I didn't like director Greg Mottola's previous film, Superbad, and was a little worried that Adventureland would be Superbad...but with rides! I was relieved to find a deeper, more sincere story waiting for me.

James (Jesse Eisenberg) has just finished college and is planning on grad school in New York. His plans fall through, however, when his dad looses his position at work and ends up taking a substantial wage cut. The family moves to Pittsburgh and James is reduced to finding a summer job. It seems like his only option is Adventureland, an amusement park well past its prime. He makes friends out of circumstance (just like in any work environment) and they spend most of their time getting high or drinking beer. Most of their day to day interactions are pretty mundane and everyone thrives on the next bit of gossip just to keep their sanity. James falls for a fellow "games" operator, Emily (Kristen Stewart), who seems to like James, but has her own unresolved baggage.

Let's stop for a second.

Everything I've described to you is as basic as a movie can get. There's nothing unique, no shtick. Adventureland takes all of the boy meets girl and coming of age stereotypes and makes them work with rich characters and situations that you actually care about. You can look at the nerdy, unappreciated Joel (Martin Star) and feel like you know him, or at least know someone like him. Or maybe, you are Joel. Every character feels this way, even the ones that are there mainly for laughs, like Bill Hader's mustache. But they never feel forced. No one feels out of place even though EVERYONE is out of place, because that's where twenty-somethings spend most of their time. I don't want to say much about the movie because there isn't much to say other than I liked it and I hope you see it and you like it too. I'm tired of movies that feel restricted to their genre. This is a comedy, this is a drama...can't it just be a movie. I just want more good, real movies that can draw out real emotion. Like this one.

Did I laugh out loud and slap my knee? Not once. But what's more important, those few big laughs you get because Oh, that Will Ferrell is just so darn silly, or something that, maybe only once or twice, really made you smile. What a great feeling.

In Watching Watchmen

Watchmen. I find it hard to imagine anyone familiar with the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons masterpiece not having reservations when thinking in terms of a live-action film adaptation of the complete and utter perfection that is Watchmen. I find it harder to imagine anyone who is intimate with this seminal masterwork wanting to see a movie made at all. Well, unless you live in a cave under the sea (without an internet connection), then you know all too well, there is a Watchmen movie and there's nothing we can do about it.

It's no surprise that Hollywood has wanted their grubby mitts on Watchmen since its initial publication in 1986, but the project never took flight (pun very much intended). It came very close in 1991 when Terry Gilliam was hired on at Warner Bros. to try and tackle the project. He couldn't. He dropped Watchmen saying it was "unfilmable," and that, "reducing the story to a two or two-and-a-half hour film seemed, to me, to take away the essence of what Watchmen is about." I feel the same way, Mr. Gilliam.

It came close again in 2001 with David Hayter writing/directing, which of course didn't bear fruit, and again in 2004 with Darren Aronofsky using Hayter's script. Well, that didn't work out. Aronofsky was replaced the same year by Paul Greengrass, but guess what...that didn't work out either! So, do you take it as a sign from God (or Dr. Manhattan) that you should let Watchmen be? No. You get Zack Snyder, the guy who graced us with 300 and the Dawn of the Dead remake to take a stab.

I feel that with all of this lead in, I'm avoiding talking about Watchmen, the film. That's partially true. I never wanted a Watchmen movie and I never will. Its just too goddamn big, not only in length, but complexity. A character study to end all, reflections on war and human behavior; a bold piece of humanity. That's just the beginning. If you haven't read Watchmen, you fucking need to, but since I'm supposed to be talking about the movie...here goes it.

I didn't hate Zack Snyder's Watchmen. I certainly didn't love it, and not sure if I liked it, but it went beyond my expectations...which was failure. I don't think it failed, I just don't think it hit the mark. Again, there's too much there. To make Watchmen right is simply impossible. But the movie did some things, the elements it could, very right. Casting was great (with the exception of Silk Spectre who was AWFUL! Seriously, Malin Akerman who played Silk Spectre should go back to porn or the street or wherever the hell she came from because she was fucking terrible!). But everyone else was handled very well, namely Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan who I was the most nervous about. I'm sad movies need to have over-stylized fight scenes where you super slow-mo for a punch, show a goofy expression, and then double forward to two seconds after the blow connects. EVERY action sequence was like this. It's distracting. The only time it worked was when Rorschach was escaping down the stairwell, through a SWAT team, with an aerosol can flamethrower or when slowing frames to show Ozymandias' amazing speed.

I never thought I'd say this...sex & gore...totally unnecessary. Less is more. The moment I ease up and start to enjoy a fight scene in the movie, I get a splintery broken femur rip through a thugs arm and blood squirted into my face. Its gore for the sake of gore and that shit belongs in slasher flicks. Bone crushing sound effects as Laurie Jupiter works a guy over and slams him up against a dumpster: badass! Gooey meat hanging from the ceiling and blood splattered on nightclub patron's faces: too much. Don't get me wrong, I can be a fan of such things, but they didn't belong here. And I'm sad Snyder swapped a sensual (and crucial) lovemaking scene toward the end of the book for a borderline raunchy one that he made up for the movie, again, graphic for the sake of being graphic.

The soundtrack was another element that was hard to swallow. The songs never feel right in the movie. Especially when they are winking at you. Nena's "99 Luftballons," for instance. Ha ha, nuclear war, I get it. Oh, and "Flight of the Valkyries," da na na NA NA, this is so stupid! The worst being "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" playing overhead in Veidt's lobby. You should have taken a page from The Dark Knight and had an epic score. Not winks and nods.

Aside from that, and a Nixon that wouldn't pass for Nixon in a high school play, the movie was...watchable. Everyone I've talked to who hasn't read Watchmen, enjoyed the movie, but were lost. And those who had, could follow along but were left wanting more. Art direction and casting were spot on, direction and sound were lacking. What would this movie have been with the same production team but Gilliam, Greengrass, Aronofksky? Who's to say. Watchmen is by no means a bad movie. Its just not Watchmen.