Archive for December, 2011
Way late review: I Am Legend
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Will Smith is Robert Neville, a scientist in the armed forces, who is the lone survivor in New York City as a virus has spread that turns humans in to blood thirsty vampire/zombie creatures (Darkseekers). The virus came about as a result of an astonishing cure for cancer. Neville seems immune to the virus and is frantically at work in his lab to find a cure.
For much of the movie we spend time with Neville and his dog Sam as they navigate in a post-apocalyptic New York City. Wild animals are found roaming the streets. It’s never clear why lions and antelope are racing through the streets of New York city after a few years of a terrible virus wiping out man kind. Neville has his routines and we follow him as he hunts for food, looks for useful items from all the abandoned homes and makes notes of where he’s been. The first thirty minutes of the film are not unlike those in Cast Away where Tom Hanks is on the island all by himself. And, much like Hanks’ performance in Cast Away, Smith pulls off a tough task by being the lone presence on the screen for large amounts of time.
The suspense of I Am Legend is solid until we get too much of a long look at the Darkseekers. The computer animated human mutants feel like animations when the camera focuses for too long on any one of them. This is an example of where it would have likely been better to take J.J. Abrams’ approach to monsters and do your best to hide the details as much as possible. It not only adds to the suspense (at least in this case) but also covers up some shoddy animated creatures.
I don’t want to go into spoilers, but I will say that one surprising complaint I heard about this film is the overt religious overtones. There is no doubt, they are there and maybe caused me to think a bit deeper about some of the themes. At its core, I Am Legend is an action thriller film but overcomes some poor special effects and potentially baffling plot lines with a solid lead by Will Smith, a quieter than normal first act, and a story that asks viewers to think a bit more than the usual summer blockbuster flick.
This post is part of my Way late reviews. Read more reviews here.
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Way late review: Spirited Away
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Not that it matters all that much, but here’s the synopsis and a juicy Oscar tidbit:
During her family’s move to the suburbs, Chihiro (voiced by Daveigh Chase) wanders into a magical world where a witch rules — and those who disobey her are turned into animals. When Chihiro’s parents become pigs, she must find a way to help them return to their human form. Adapted from the Japanese original, director Hayao Miyazaki’s adventure tale won the Best Animated Feature Oscar for its enchanting story.
What is left out of that summary are the images that will likely give me strange dreams and nightmares for years to come. A giant baby who morphs into an overweight mouse. Three ugly green bouncing heads morphing into the giant baby, morphing into a giant ugly man baby that finally transforms back to three ugly green bouncing heads. Not one, but two, identical witches with oversized heads that include a wart between the eyes that Uncle Buck would offer a quarter to have a rat gnaw off. A “stink spirit” that causes people to either faint or vomit or both. A boy who becomes a creature not unlike Falkor from Neverending story. Unlike Falkor, this creature bleeds from the mouth half of the time its on screen. Frogs with teeth. Raddish spirits. And those are just the ones I can’t burn from my memory nor am I likely any time soon.
Regardless, there is something hypnotizing about Spirited Away. It’s certainly not a coherent plot, character development, nor decent voice dubbing. Maybe it’s the world Miyazaki created and proceeds to run away with. I do have a certain admiration for the guts to do that. On the other hand, I’ve also seen Miyazaki’s Ponyo, a film that makes Spirited Away seem genius in all areas – storytelling, character development, voice dubbing, and all around coherence. The point is that Miyazaki was rather constrained with Spirited Away in comparison.
If you ever get the urge to eat an odd looking mushroom you find growing in the forest or experimenting with hallucinogens, don’t. Put on Spirited Away instead. I’m pretty sure the end result will be roughly the same.
This post is part of my Way late reviews. Read more reviews here.
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Way late review: Friday Night Lights
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Right from the start, the film makes it clear that high school football in the small town of Odessa, Texas is bigger than life. Heroic images of young men making their way to the field for the first day of practice fill the screen. The sounds are of talk show callers rattling on about all things Panthers football. Some might think it’s a bit over the top except this is a film based on H.G. Bissinger’s non-fiction book about the 1988 Permian High School football team.
While the music and cinematography of play on the field tend to glamorize the game, coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton) subtlety makes his way through a minefield of rabid fans who control the fate of his career. Thornton does not play coach Gaines like Al Pacino does in Any Given Sunday – over the top and then some. Instead, we get glimpses of coach Gaines as one who is just as in awe as we the viewers are of the overly passionate adults who live and die by the play of their local high school football team. He can be as intense as any coach on the field, sometimes caving into the pressures he can’t help but feel as every moment of the fall season is filled with expectations of winning the state football championship.
The parents or guardians of the players we get to spend any time with are dysfunctional. A father who lives in the past through his son and leads to constant abuse as a result. A mother in poverty who is incapable of caring for her son. All her hopes are in the son getting a scholarship to college. An uncle who plays the role of part guardian, part Don King to his nephew, the superstar of the team. And while we see dysfunction abounding in these relationships in addition to the misplaced heightened importance of football across the town, the film never gets quite close enough to any of the people. It’s almost as if the director, Peter Berg, is satisfied with giving us a glimpse at the personal. His focus seems to be more on capturing the feeling of being wrapped up in this alternate world where a loss by the local high school football team means people post “for sale” signs in front of the coach’s home. And Berg does an excellent job of that. The music, the cinematography and overall tone of the film never let you forget just how insanely important every moment, big or small, is in the high stakes game of Texas high school football. It would have been even better if we got to know some of these characters a bit more. The dialogue is sparse throughout the film, minus typical locker room speeches. It grows even sparser in the second half, where it seems we’re watching a music video as much as a movie about real people.
Friday Night Lights fails at telling a complete story with characters we can connect with at a deeper level but succeeds in capturing the insanity that can be sports. In that way it’s a rare sports movie. A pleasant surprise.
This post is part of my Way late reviews. Read more reviews here.
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Way late review: Win Win
Sunday, December 25, 2011
A struggling lawyer and high school wrestling coach, Mike (Paul Giamatti), is stressing out over finances. To help pad his wallet, Mike takes guardianship of an elderly man, Leo (Burt Young). Leo discovers he has a grandson, Kyle (Alex Shaffer), which causes a sticky situation for Mike and his wife, Jackie (Amy Ryan). Kyle’s mom is in drug rehab and Kyle came to Leo in hopes of a better living situation. A fairly typical act follows where Jackie is upset about the mess Mike has made by secretly taking guardianship of Leo. Eventually they come to grips with allowing Kyle to stay with them.
One wrestling practice Mike invites Kyle to join. It doesn’t take long for Mike to discover that Kyle is a great wrestler and from there we’re supposed to experience these two lost souls in Mike and Kyle finding strength in one another. Unfortunately, the story goes nowhere fast and everywhere all at the same time. Needless plot twists mire the last third of the film. The triumphant wrestling montages are uninspired and feel disconnected.
If there is anything redeeming about Win Win it’s Giamatti’s performance. It’s not ground breaking but it makes the movie tolerable. There is only so much one can do to overcome a story that lacks a drive, lacks characters worth caring about. Giamatti does his best to make up for the flaws. Credit him for that.
Win Win? Not for me it wasn’t.
This post is part of my Way late reviews. Read more reviews here.
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Way late review: Super 8
Friday, December 23, 2011
Super 8 is a throw back to the ’80s where a rag tag bunch of kids set out to shoot their own movie. While sneaking out one night to shoot a scene by the railroad tracks a horrific train wreck takes place that leads to mysterious activities throughout the town. The town’s sheriff disappears, leaving Jackson Lamb (Kyle Chandler) in charge.
Jackson is a recent widow left to take care of his son, Joe (Joel Courtney). From the start, we see that Jackson and Joe are not close. Both are struggling to come to grips with life after losing the love of their lives. Joe finds comfort hanging out with his friends while Jackson buries himself in his work as a deputy sheriff. For much of the movie, their stories only occasionally intertwine. Both father and son become more deeply involved with the after affects of the train wreck, neither sharing in each other’s struggle to make sense of what is going on around or inside of them.
While a good half of the movie focuses mostly on the lives of the kids, their interactions, their making a movie, their budding relationships – the other half of the movie is sci-fi action. It feels like this should be the perfect mix for this type of a movie, but something is off. For instance, the first big action sequence is the train wreck. It must be the most dangerous train wreck ever, as train cars fly for what seems like minutes. The action is over the top and feels out of place when compared to the quiet moments we spend with the kids. All the kids are fine actors. None of them were intolerable to watch but neither were any of them much fun. The tone was overly serious with some lighter moments feeling forced or out of place. And maybe this is where nostalgia backfires. It’s either my nostalgia for films of the ’80s that tainted my feelings for Super 8′s tone or possibly J.J. Abrams’ misplaced nostalgia. Maybe Abrams’ misunderstood what made films like Goonies, Gremlins, Stand by Me, etc. so appealing. Those films were at times serious but never so much that they lost their sense of childlike wonder.
The production values of Super 8 didn’t help balance the tone of the film. Abrams’ is obsessed with lens flares and some baffling camera work that leaves his mark all over the film. Unfortunately, I often felt like I need to wipe clean those marks. While the lens flares in Abrams’ reinvigoration of the Star Trek film fit the overall look of the movie, with its futuristic gloss and shine, here they feel unnecessary at best. Rather than let the kids’ filmmaking escapade take center stage, we’re left to fend off excessive blue glares. In addition to lens flares there are numerous jump scares that are often followed up by extremely loud sound effects and flashy special effects. It’s in these moments I wonder if the intent is to be more of a sci-fi thriller than an adventure flick with sci-fi elements. The difference between the two is large and floating between them makes for an uneven tone. And, ultimately, the uneven tone made Super 8 feel to me like Abrams was trying to forcefully morph his modern day sensibilities with the nostalgia he and so many of us have for movies from the ’80s.
There are moments in Super 8 that are enjoyable. Moments that capture some of the magic I recall from films of my youth. The scene where the kids scheme to get their friend back and try to save the day in the process was fun and exciting. The small moments where Joe and Alice (Elle Fanning) fall for one another (even as their fathers forbid it) are genuine. The enthusiasm Charles (Riley Griffiths) has for making films is contagious. The ending, which I’m sure left many rolling their eyes, came closest to embracing both the joyous wonder that was missing from so much of the film. There are moments that are special in this film, but they compete with a melancholy and seriousness that overwhelms much of the rest. It’s a shame too, because Super 8 could’ve been great.
This post is part of my Way late reviews. Read more reviews here.
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