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Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
Good characters get dragged down by what is, essentially, a remake
The first time I saw it in theaters I thought The Force Awakens was about the level of Return of the Jedi. In their own way they have the same problems, too much revisiting the past, funny and campy but sometimes at the cost of doing something better with the scene.
But upon re-watching it, The Force Awakens just does not hold up well. The characters Abrams and Kasdan came up with resonate well. We like BB-8, Finn, Kylo Ren, and Poe and want to see more of their story. Rey... well she was well cast, but having her go from zero to all powerful wizard Jedi in no time flat isn't a journey, it's speed running a video game and running through destroying everything without any conflict.
But the real problem here is that 70% of the movie is a worse remake of Star Wars: A New Hope. There's the droid carrying top secret rebellion information on a desert planet saved by a soon to be Jedi orphan while the Empire, oh I'm sorry, "The First Order" chases them to recover the information. Oh and then they have to go destroy a death star while doing a trench run.
Except this time "Jakku" isn't half as interesting as Tatooine, the Death Star is now made into literally a stupid assed joke, and all the old characters show up just to sort of butt into the movie when we are 10 times more interested in the new characters and what they're doing.
It's a movie worth seeing once, to watch Kylo Ren be what Anakin should have been in the pre-quels. To watch the extremely well composed action scenes, appreciate Finn and Poe bro-ing off. As a standalone movie to watch once it's perfectly adequate entertainment with some really good parts. But as a "Star Wars" movie, the re- hashing of everything from the first trilogy for no damned reason is just plain boring. Star Wars was great originally because, in part, it showed us a fantastical universe we weren't familiar with filled with fascinating and utterly cool things. Which isn't something you can appreciate when you've already seen all these things before in the previous movies.
Mud (2012)
A fantastically well made, utterly forgettable film
There's little doubt MUD is well made. We can start with the cast. Whether it's McConaughey doing such an excellent job with oddity title character Mud that it revived his flagging career to the, as of this writing, up and coming star Tye Sheridan, to etc. etc. Well, point is everyone here gives a wonderful performance.
And thanks to Nichol's writing and careful direction, and each actor's performance, we care about all these characters, or at least relate to them. And the low key, believable, and morally grey scenario these characters are put in feels interesting and keeps your attention. Which is not to say there's not a cinematic flare to the story, but simply that it's lower key than today's glut of explosion filled blockbusters. More Jaws and less Avengers is the order of the day, with no fantastical elements to speak of.
And therein we get to the crux of the problem. Which is not the scenario itself, of two boys meeting the strangely charismatic, but wanted man Mud and having to decide whether to help him or not. But that this scenario, entirely unlike Jaws, plays itself out to an entirely unsatisfying, and even a bit off tone, conclusion.
And I mention Jaws specifically because, like this movie, it's a fairly low key movie with a bit of cinematic flare but otherwise without any particularly fantastical elements. But to demonstrate what this movie lacks I'll go ahead and spoil Jaws, wherein we build up this challenge, this mountain that is this shark. Oh sure it's one shark, but for the characters involved it is their personal mountain, and the ending battle between them and it feels like the ultimate culmination of the movie. They came to the mountain, they saw the mountain, the mountain was conquered, and we feel a sense of satisfaction and completion once it is.
By comparison, Mud almost forgets that there is a mountain. It hardly concentrates at all on Mud's situation and what it means for the kids. Instead the movie satisfies itself with building the characters in their own right and having each little side story get a huge amount of limelight. Which sounds fine until you come to the end, and the proverbial mountain comes for our characters, and you forgot it was there.
And so the mountain showing up feels odd, it doesn't feel built up much. It feels, in short, like a guest you realized you invited a week ago, but have forgot to prepare for and in fact haven't even thought about all week, and so when they show up the entire visit feels rather awkward and uncomfortable.
And with that awkward, and uncomfortable guest showing up, the movie ends. Flat, straight out ends. The mountain, the shark, killed. The conflict is resolved, and the characters go their separate ways. Oh we like the characters, or at least relate to them, plenty. But we don't feel any particular satisfaction in the end of the story. Because though the main thread of the story is at an end we were never that invested in it to begin with.
Which is why, while I enjoyed the film 95% of the time while I was watching it, I also completely forgot it existed until its director came up in movie news with his next, Midnight Special.
Elysium (2013)
Fun sci-fi action that tries to have an actual moral
Elysium, first off there's something one should really know about this movie. The end is Matt Damon getting into a Cyborg fight with a samurai sword involved while in space. If that sounds kickass to you, then you'll probably have a good time watching this.
But beyond the well directed action scenes, and some beautiful FX work, the story of Elysium feels rather too small for the big screen. It feels like District 9, but less personal, or "Source Code", that's a good comparison. There's neither a real personal attachment to our protagonist and his struggles, where he comes off a bit too much of a "generic everyman with generic feeling problems".
Nor yet is there some overwhelming feeling of attachment to large events. Elysium, the super cool looking space station, feels like an abstraction. We never get to know about the people there, what they're like, who they are, what the station is about. So when the fate of the station hangs in the balance we just kind of shrug.
The same goes for the people of this future Earth. Beyond "shitty" we don't really get a sense of place or purpose. Is the whole world like this, is it just LA, what is the world even like? We don't even get to see much of beyond a few locales Damon visits.
The second problem is with the morale of the whole thing. What exactly is it? It feels like there should be one, like it's trying to say something or other about... healthcare. But what it's trying to say beyond "it would be really nice if there were enough cool robot doctors to treat everyone on the planet" isn't really clear.
Which is a shame, because an action movie with an actual moral beyond some idiotic and meaningless platitudes/totally weird megalomaniacal plots like in The Dark Knight or The Winter Soldier would be nice. Like something that makes sense and people can relate too. And Elysium feels like it wants to have a morale like that, but can never quite decide what exactly it is so viewers are left feeling like they were hit over the head by very vague and unclear morality tale.
But let's go back to the beginning. Because I said there was a cyborg fight in space involving a Katana. And it did indeed kick ass, and there were more such moments all throughout, interspersed with awesome sci-fi eye candy and solid acting jobs from Matt Damon and Sharto Copley, even if neither really had some sort of overarching bigger story to add too.
Horrible Bosses (2011)
Comedy in pure crazy, silly, gross form
There's nothing more divisive in taste than comedy. Airplane! Can be either one of the funniest movies of all time, or something you just don't get at all. So when I say Horrible Bosses is damned funny, and sometimes just plain hilarious, I say that with my own taste in comedy firmly in place.
And this is a comedy in the vein of Crazy, douchebag, and weird. If some guy getting back at his douche of a boss by rubbing the man's toothbrush along his ass seems funny, then this is your type of movie. If you think douchebag is an offensive word, then screw off and watch your own type of comedy.
Because this is one in which three average, nice guys plot to kill their own crazy bosses for ruining their lives, and it's damned funny. The main cast all nail their parts, and manage to do so playing roles different from their most familiar parts. Jason Bateman isn't the blank faced niceguy from Arrested, he's still subtle but is a lot more confident. Charlie Day is the sweet bumbling nice guy here, but still manages to get all the comedy out of that. Jason Sudekis is horny average guy, and we relate to all of them.
Which really makes the bosses the stars of the show. Aniston is damned hot, and a solidly crazy slut. Spacey is even better as an openly hostile and douchebag psychopath, the kind of person you might secretly suspect is in charge of many a large corporation. But Colin Farrel as the completely whacked cokehead steals the show in this case. I won't give it away, only to say I'd now automatically pay for any comedy Farell is in after this performance.
So if you want three average idiots played by three solid comedy stars to square off against three others playing their most douchebag crazy for laughs, then this is for you. If random and explicit sex jokes, casual talk of murder, and well done if well worn gags like accidentally inhaling a bunch of cocaine aren't for you, then this movie isn't either.
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013)
Forget the haters, this is amazing
OK, this doesn't work all the time, and it's not the exact same sense of humor as the first. But when Anchorman 2 works it's amazing. Anything with Brick is worthy of the funniest movies of all time, Steve Carell kills it even more than the first. And the continually amped up ridiculousness of the entire affair is just something to marvel out. Even if the jokes aren't connecting it's just gawping to see what it is they're doing.
So forget the haters, even if this isn't going for directly quotable one liners it's still hilarious and one of the funniest movies in many years leading up to 2013.
Jurassic Park (1993)
One of the greats
OK, is the plot that good? No. At least the set up isn't, it's cheesy monster movie stuff. Absolutely every bad decision that could be made generally is. Let's automate an entire park full of giant man eating dinosaurs in 1993. Then let's low ball the entire operation out to one guy. Then let's let the automation with thousands of bugs run the whole park before its ready. Then let's evacuate everyone because of a hurricane ensuring now one is there in case anything goes wrong, except about 10 people including the people inspecting the damned safety of the park for no reason. Then let's have the low balled guy screw everything up in the worst corporate robbery attempt ever by turning off every security system, stealing valuable goods, and just making a run for it onto the boat despite not being told to evacuate and him being the ONLY PERSON on the entire island that could've stolen the goods.
And to top it off lets bash science in general as a main theme just because, despite science bringing the dinosaurs which is the entire thing that makes the plot cool to begin with. I know it's a movie, but at some point you begin to question the entire thing.
But none of that makes more than a one star dent. Because you know what? The cast is just about absolutely perfect. Jeff Goldblum is so awesome in this movie it's ridiculous, same with Richard Attenborough. The rest of the cast is damned good, John Williams score soars as high as it ever has, and Spielberg is as on point in every shot and step of the way as he was with Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The dialog has a weirdly memorable snap and flow to it that makes it as easily followable and memorable as movie like Star Wars: A New Hope and Pulp Fiction. And best of all, dinosaurs are awesome! No matter much progress was derided, no matter many people got eaten, you finish the movie thinking the same thing every time "Damn, seeing a real life dinosaur would be like the coolest most awesome thing EVER!" And that's why it's a must watch. It's just plain entertaining. It's fantastic, it's awesome. When you hear the word's "Welcome, to Jurassic Park" you'll feel like you're watching a real life dinosaur not ten feet in front of you, and that is one the most magical things you'll ever experience.
Killing Them Softly (2012)
Almost Great
Almost great.
That's what this movie turned out to be. Almost.
The opening is brilliantly entertaining in a bleak and sad kind of way. A heist by two of the kind of people you can easily picture are the exact kind of people who'd go and risk their lives for a few thousand bucks. Both actors sell their parts as impossibly, almost unbelievably sad, gullible, rather brainless shitbags.
And Brad Pitt turns out another great performance as a sociopath. His capitalistic sociopathic hit-man is brilliant to watch. As are some incredibly well filmed scenes. There's even and interesting undercurrent of political commentary. An explanation of the 2008 financial crash and recession as a parallel to the very illegal poker game heist pulled in the movie.
But none of it really comes together. A lot of the screen time just goes for the sake of going, with nothing happening. There's this entire sideplot with James Gandolfini that, while sometimes amusing, also has shots that just last for minutes of people sitting in a perfectly ordinary restaurant, doing nothing. And the entire sideplot doesn't go anywhere and doesn't seem connected at all to the aforementioned political commentary.
Nor does the whole political commentary thing work in the end. While it's just drawing interesting parallels to illegal gambling it works fine and is weirdly interesting. At the end of the movie, when the director has Pitt just come out the make the political statement "America isn't a family, it's a business, NOW PAY ME!" It just falls flat.
Parallels between the real world and the movie's world were interesting, but until that moment nothing else was really building up. It just feels like an explanation of what happened, rather than a judgement one way or another. So to have this seeming crime caper just go all political in your face at the end was weird. Almost as weird as much of the movie being spent not really doing anything. Pitt's hit-man spends a lot of it waiting around for his break to kill the guys he's there to kill. There's no real cat and mouse or tension, he just spends minutes and tens of minutes sort of... checking around to find them, finding them, then killing them, and then he's done. And so is the movie.
Payback (1999)
A great non Hollywood action movie
No good guys, no evil plots, no cackling villains, just a guy that wants to get his damned money. And yet it's entertaining, and that's what makes this movie kind of great. Mel Gibson is a heartless, kind of soulless criminal. And he just wants his damned money, no matter what it takes. Not that he's suicidal, but that he figures the value of his life is probably less than $70,000; a kind of bleak realism and frankness surrounds what he does.
As the ending line puts it "We agreed that if she'd stop hookin, I'd stop shootin people. Maybe we were aiming a little high." It's those two sentences that sum up this movie so well. An amusingly bleak kind of entertainment, with no need to shove a philosophy or lesson about society or anything like that in your face. Turns out it can be fun just to watch criminal pricks murder each other without having to "learn" anything.
The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)
A could have been, and almost was
The Day the Earth Stood Still.
This is such a disappointing movie, and should be for many. Not because of any pre-conceived expectations, right or wrong, of remaking a classic. But because it does enough right that it's failings shine out all the more.
There's a story here, of our first alien contact, a warning from more intelligent life that humanity is on the brink of destroying itself. It's a bit cliché, but alright in concept. Especially as the human paranoia and ignorance immediately turn our first contact into something violent, unintentional as it is.
What follows is both potential and the disappointment. Potential in showing that humanity as a whole fundamentally disagrees with itself, as some humans try to help and learn from our first contact with intelligent life, while the large bureaucracy of government, fearful of change, sees only something to fear and to control.
It's a good use of science fiction, to show an indictment of how our world is run. That we are lead not by people looking out for our benefit, but by people looking out first and foremost for their own power. Meanwhile the people that have lead humanity through actual advancement over the millennia, our scientists and thinkers, want only to learn what it is that these aliens have come for, and what it is we can learn from them.
And insofar as the movie goes it succeeds well in this aspect. Keanu Reeves, for all the appropriate jokes, does indeed do well as an alien sent to earth. The height of the movie is him and John Cleese solving a troubling physics equation together, in harmony and to the tune of a classical piece of music. It works wonderfully.
But the movie begins to fall down on other pieces. The crisis mentioned earlier is that humanity is pushing the planet into unsustainability, a perfectly true message many are glad to ignore. But then takes this idea, and instead of the aliens coming here to warn humanity to save itself, they see humanity as doomed and choose to save other species because life bearing planets are rare.
Which is troubling as it's untrue, Mars itself may have had life on it, as well as there being little doubt as far back as 2008 as to the at least tens of thousands, if not millions upon billions of life bearing planets in the universe. A niggle at first, but still it's there, and one that could have been avoided had the writer simply kept the aliens to warn of our own impending self destruction.
But the movie really falls down on the other portions. Jaden Smith, while not necessarily bad, is an unnecessary addition as a prototypical "child we are supposed to attach to" role, and has no other purpose in the story. Despite this he takes up and inordinate amount of running time, being framed as sympathetically innocent and relatable.
And then comes the ending, which starts right after the best scene in the whole film with Reeves and Cleese. The aliens decide humanity must all be killed to save the planet earth. Which doesn't really endear them to the audience that much obviously, nor does it make sense as, while we as humans can kill ourselves, killing the entire planet would be much harder.
To make matters worse, Reeves the alien decides to give humans a chance, but for no apparent reason other than to have some action scenes can't do so until he reaches the spaceship he came in. Meaning the humans have to drive him back there while the nightmare of Von Neumann machines wipe out the earth. For those that don't know, Von Neumann machines are self replicating robots. In the nightmare version, they feed off anything applicable, breaking down everything in there way into more of themselves.
Meaning the Von Neumann machines get to go around in a cloud of silvery particles devouring everything. Which turns out to be really boring to watch as everything just sort of dissolves into a silver cloud without anything being able to stop it.
In the end the McGuffin of the spaceship is turned off, after killing several hundred million people, but its OK because the main character and Jaden Smith are alive! Reeves says that he'll give humanity a chance not to destroy itself, but to guarantee that chance he'll disable all electronics and power on earth permanently. And then the movie ends.
Gee, thanks advanced aliens. You came here, casually decided to murder hundreds of millions of people because someone got scared and accidentally shot you because you showed up suddenly and basically unannounced in the middle of New York. And now, as a "chance" you've disabled the entire basis for modern civilization and technology, presumably causing most of civilization to collapse into chaos and anarchy and killing billions of more people. But it's OK because the plants and fish will survive now! And why do this? To shoehorn in one of the big plot points of the original movie at the end of course.
What vast disappointment to a movie with some clever ideas, casting, and even directing.
Inception (2010)
Either a great sci-fi flick or general disappointment
There's something very important to note about this movie, and what a watchers opinion might be of it before almost anything else is said. And that is to consider whether the person watching it is a fan of other mind bending sci-fi stories to begin with.
The reason for this is, Inception is not a great mind bending story questioning the nature of reality. But it is a very accessible one. "Questioning the nature of reality" is not a huge sub-genre of science fiction, and the most notable author of it's kind, Philip K. Dick, has often been criticized as something of a hard read for a general audience.
But for fan's of Dick, or mind bending movies such as The Nines, there's just not too much to get into in Inception. For it's genre it's a rather basic idea, laid out as clearly and often as possible to make sure everyone's following along. For those that were engaged by say "Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said" then the idea, which is central to enjoying the movie, will probably seem workaday, unoriginal, and a bit boring.
And that right there is the crux of whether you like this movie. Because without the idea, without the science fiction behind it, much of the rest of the movie reveals itself to be workable, but not overly remarkable.
Certainly the camera work and sense of style is unique and quite entertaining. But the actual plot, of breaking into a man's mind to plant an idea, feels a bit bereft. The only thing "at stake" is a man returning to his family, a family we never actually get to see him interact with directly, and so doesn't have the impact it could. Nor is there any real villain involved, and so no one to root against either.
Nor is the action particularly inspired nor very well filmed. The one exception, of course, is the short but rather spectacular altering gravity fight.
But beyond this three minute sequence Nolan's inability to actually concentrate the camera on the action happening is repeated again and again. Grenades are thrown, and we get a bang and cloud of smoke off to the side, mostly obscured. When the characters shoot guns, that's mostly what they do, we rarely get to see what their effects are unless it's highly obscured and off to the side. Nolan always keeps the camera solely on the characters, never on the results of their actions, nor are the characters usually doing much more than shooting at half seen "bad guys".
When the characters have more to do, such as in a brief on foot chase or the above altering gravity scene, the action is good. But the majority is just the uninvolving action of killing half visible at most baddies with no character nor emotional impact. And considering there's a lot of action at times, that steals a lot of screen time.
So, Inception is either a great sci-fi idea that you've not been introduced to, or an average movie with a sci-fi idea that you've seen done much better elsewhere.
Star Wars (1977)
The Perfect adventure movie
How many influences did Lucas bring together for the first truly big sci-fi (ish) box office smash? Classic Samurai films, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Buck Rodgers. He took a clash of the greatest adventures of the first half of the twentieth century and brought them all into a single, sublime movie.
Read/seen/played a kid with his parents/guardians murdered by the bad guys? Or a slightly mysterious/wise/cooky old teacher to teach the protagonist the "ways" of whatever? Or perhaps a grinning, sarcastic buddy that gets the protagonist out of trouble? Odds are if it was made sometime past 1977 you have Star Wars to thank for that.
Heck, the very idea of background characters being named and rising to prominence is thanks to this movie. Or more specifically thanks to the toys eventually born out of it. Lucas negotiated the toy and merchandising rights and went right to work putting out every character there was, and since they had to have names in order to sell they were given names. Thus birthing the idea that characters once thought totally unimportant might be more than they seemed for fans of an IP.
Oh, and as for the movie itself? One of the best scored movies in history, there might not be another movie in history with music more easily or widely recognizable than Star Wars. It was also written in a way so easy to wrap your head around that much of the dialogue can be recognized even by people that have seen it maybe once or twice.
But the biggest claim I would make for the original Star Wars is that its the best edited and paced movie in history. Every movie study and screenplay writing example I've seen (and having taken college classes, and seen quite a few I have wide sample) has the original Star Wars as its perfect example of how to pace a movie. If you want to look for the perfect example of "the roller-coaster" of movie excitement, rising action spaced out with occasional dips, rising to a peak and then falling as the story ends are tied together; well, you're going to find its the original Star Wars.
Like with any category of product or scientific field, forms of entertainment have things that shove them forward, that innumerable people after the fact owe a lot too. "Standing on the shoulders of giants" as it were. And Star Wars is one such thing, a giant of entertainment that so many works after it have stood upon to reach for their own heights.
But even more important than that, it's just a damned fun movie. I've seen it more times than I care to admit. And yet even years later, years after the rabid Star Wars fanhood of my preteens has long faded, after I've grown bored and have little interest in seeing most any movie a second time I can still watch the original Star Wars and by the end have a huge grin on my face.
Star Trek (2009)
One of the greatest adventure movies ever
J.J. Abrams Star Trek is, simply put, one of the greatest adventure movies ever made. The cast is pitch perfect for just about every character, each of which manages to be a fully rounded character while nailing the cheesy, hyperactive pace of the movie. The action is well filmed, the score hits the right notes, the story is solid.
But its the characters that get us there, that back up everything with emotion. Captain Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Uhura, all with the actors to back them up. You come to like all of the cast, and so you enjoy the ride their on as well. A must watch for anyone who's a fan of adventure.