Unfettered Blather

I love movies. I have a DVD collection that is easily over 200 titles and growing. I see movies all the time, though never as much as I’d like.

For a few years Buddy and I used to get together for a double feature. One of our more interesting outings was a back-to-back viewing of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. While I enjoyed both movies I made an observation about Pirates that I had not noticed before in a movie. I called Pirates “fun”. I’m sure it wasn’t the first “fun” movie I ever watched, it was just the first time I noticed it.

I noticed this again after watching Hellboy II: The Golden Army. While hardly a perfect movie, it again illicited that same feeling of “fun”.

To me, having fun is an interactive experience, and so while I may call a movie entertaining, enjoyable, or engaging I rarely qualify them as fun because I don’t usually feel involved. Movies are a spectator sport for me. I know nothing about making them other than watching some behind-the-scenes special and the business of Hollywood is an alien world compared to the business of software development that I am intimately involved with.

Yet there have just been this handful of films that seems entirely structured around pleasing the audience. I know the Hellboy films are practically a labor of love for Del Toro, and it may be as much about making himself happy as anyone. I don’t really care, because when I watch these films I feel like I’m getting off a rollercoaster at the end. I feel like I was part of the experience even though all I really do is sit there (Hey, just like a rollercoaster!). I wish I could elaborate further but I just seem to be missing the vocabulary to explain what is so different about these films.

I challenge someone to watch Hellboy (another film I enjoyed) and then go out and see Hellboy II: The Golden Army. You’d probably get a good idea of what I mean. Hellboy is a good comic book movie. Hellboy II is fun. I don’t know how else to put it.

Last weekend the whole family went to see Speed Racer. So far the movie has garnered a whopping 37% on Metacritic and 35% on Rotten Tomatoes. I was personally reluctant to go see it because the previews made it look like an assault on my eyes and I wasn’t sure I could take the abuse for over two hours.

Generally I understand why movies get the review scores they do. Fantasy films routinely get raked over the coals for not being dramas and silly comedies are often burned at the stake. If you dare show any themes that are counter to Hollywood culture expect film critics to filet your movie like a trout. While Speed Racer bills itself as a live action version of a cartoon and also markets itself as a family film, it really has not committed any film critic’s cardinal sins, so I suspected the review scores truly represented a bad movie. That said, my youngest son picked the movie and he loves fast cars so we agreed to go see it since he hardly ever gets to pick the movie.

After watching the movie, I truly think the reviewers must be smoking something and it’s pretty potent stuff. While the movie can get downright silly sometimes and some of the visuals look like a big budget version of The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl, the movie is actually pretty well done and fairly well acted. Admittedly there were a couple of moments, and I do mean just two, where the film ventured into less than family friendly fare, but for the most part it was an enjoyable romp for ages 6 to 34, or essentially everyone in our family. Even my wife enjoyed it, and this is just not her kind of movie at all. I don’t know that it is something I would have seen without the kids and I confess that may be coloring my judgement of the film. Even so, 35% seems pretty harsh for what turned out to be a fun movie.

Really it’s too bad because the movie has not done well so far and I’m sure the reviews aren’t helping.

I went to “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” with fairly high expectations. My fault entirely but I’ve always liked the style of the Indy films and I correctly surmised I would for the most part, be in for a good time. True to form, Spielberg seems to leave no question that he is the director of this film as his style is clearly present in some shots. The feeling is so tangible you almost have flashbacks of previous Indy films and during the jungle chase, of Jurassic Park.

This movie initially leaves you with positive feelings and high hopes. This soon become mixed which eventually evolve in to a bad taste in your mouth that lasts pretty much at the point the movie ends.

The Crystal Skull tries to an recreates some key elements of the franchise. The initial premise is rock solid and puts Indy well on his way to a confrontation with an evil empire. Who better to replace the Nazis than the Soviets? The Soviets are after the famed Crystal Skull and the reason they want it is equally logical to Indy films past, world domination.

What the movie does lack is coherence and it isn’t long before we see the film trying hard to tie up every loose end possible with winks and boorish references. This is where George Lucas’ influence is clearly felt and evokes flashbacks of the Star Wars prequels. Lucas seems to think that talking about previous films in current ones and slavishly relating them back to their progenitors is a cheap way to cash in on their popularity. He seems to believe these tie-ins are the only way to legitimize a film as part of the series. What it does accomplish is frustration.

Lucas seems to be an evil Walt Disney from some parallel universe, sucking the magic out of a film. He does his best to leave The Crystal Skull a shell with no possible mystery. The film is schizophrenic at times, jumping between Spielberg’s desire to make everything look epic and Lucas’ hamfisted attempts to relate the story to the audience, a wasted and pointless exercise because these are probably some of the most watched and referenced films in movie history. There is utterly no need for such things.

There is a sense of disappointment to the way this film ends because it resoundingly ends leaving use with no real mystery, something the previous films gave us by not obsessing over answering every question. Indy is an aging man with a son who is hinted at being his heir apparent. We are left with a coy smile from Indy telling his son he “isn’t done yet” . Frankly, you know he is.

I can’t fault Ford’s efforts, he obviously put a lot of physical effort in this film and he isn’t afraid to mix it up in fight scenes or do scenes most actors his age would shy away from. Ford seems dedicated to making sure Indy, even as an aging professor can hold his own.

The ending of the film jumps so far and away from anything related to the genre that you honestly wonder who could have thought this was a good idea. The earlier films were good fun but there is a difference between fun and nonsense. We knew it was coming earlier in the film but you hoped there would be a skeptical answer supplied instead of little green men in flying saucers. What made the previous Indy films so entertaining was the fanciful take on historical events and myth, this film doesn’t seem to care.

The film is so concerned with loose ends, adding new characters and dashing off to various locals that aspects of the film seem to be stripped down to simply save time. What they stripped away was the premise and reason for many of the actions and events. Even solving the atypical temple puzzles/booby traps seem like a yawn the character blow past instead of stopping to take in the possibility of their own demise that built suspense in the previous films. The last half of the film seems to be in a rush to reach it’s conclusion. It almost feels unfair, I’m here to experience another installment in the Indy saga, not make things neat and tidy as fast as possible.

All of this could be overlooked but in the end The Crystal Skull seems like a wrestling match between the styles of Spielberg and Lucas. I think it’s obvious that Lucas can’t write or direct his way out of a paper bag. Spielberg for all of my issues with him, shows he can still make something shine in a unique way. Ford’s acting and obvious comfort with his character saves the day in a lot of instances but the film falls flat at times because it becomes rushed and totally silly, even by Temple of Doom standards.

Despite all of this, I can’t say I disliked the film, I’m just a tad dismayed

Look, I took off work early on Friday to catch an early showing with my boys on opening day. Does that make me sound like the kind of person who is going to be objective about the movie?

If you’re one of those anal retentive geeks who thinks they have to somehow fit 40 years of comic book history into a 2 hour movie and be completely faithful to everything the character has done during those decades, you will hate this movie. Then again, you’ll hate every comic book movie made ever so really it’s no change, right?

If you enjoy superheroes and popcorn entertainment then you can’t really go wrong.

Let me get one thing out of the way though, the cast was stellar. Not that I ever had any doubts, but I felt like all the major characters went into overtime. No one phoned it in, no one tried too hard. Due to the changes in the Obadiah Stane character from the original comic book, he really wasn’t the kind of villian that could be your scenery chewing type and Jeff Bridges did a great job bouncing back and forth from surprisingly warm and caring to outright maniacal villiany. They say a hero is only as good as his villians, and I got the impression that they believed just that while making this movie.

Anyway, I could write so much more, but I’m not going to blog this movie. If you like superheroes, action movies, Iron Man in particular, popcorn entertainment, or just enjoy big explosions then you should go see this. It’s not a bad little redemption story either.

I’m not a big gamer or moviegoer these days. Once upon a time I used to play pretty much everything and watch just about anything that looked mildly interesting. I don’t have that much time these days due to the businesses I run so when I do game or watch a movie it takes time directly away from other endeavors or forces me to stay up well past bed time. These are reasons that I tend to judge things a little more harshly I suppose than I used to. That being said, I am looking for a good time and if I think something will offer that I give it a fair shot because I really want to have said good time.

I was up late watching Cloverfield and I must say the entire experience was akin to watching a well made Sci-Fi original movie. To those familiar with Sci-Fi movie productions, this is hardly a compliment. Cloverfield received billings as being a “post 9/11″ monster film. I suppose the world itself has changed since most people actually realized life isn’t peaches and cream when it comes to foreign enemies, but unlike the majority of the reviewers, I don’t give Cloverfield points for adopting this trite and cheap way to ellicit emotional responses. I see constant jokes about using 9/11 as a motive for terror alerts or the ham fisted insinuation that it is exploited to keep people in fear. I can hardly give the opposing viewpoint a free pass for using it to sell movies for emotional resonance without saying they are participating in the same behavior they so readily accuse others of.

So what is Cloverfield? In a nut shell the story is the Blair Witch Project with a giant monster thing terrorizing Manhattan. The story begins at a party where a sorry bunch of socially stunted wannabe New York socialites are holding a going away party for a tragically inept friend who sleeps with a long time friend and love interest only to avoid her after said evening causing a love cliche that will permeate and drive the actions of the cast for the duration of the film. So much for the claims the film is unique. Yes, this is a monster movie, bear with me, because I had to.

The surprise party they hold for this shaggy 20-something is shown from the perspective and narration of hsi obnoxious friend who films the event from a first person perspective. This setting eats up the first quarter of the film. It seems to drag on forever and the shaky camera style and lack of focus on any character for more than a few seconds makes you want to wrest control of the camera away from the narrator and beat his skull in for stupidity. This is where Cloverfield makes it’s first series of major mistakes. The characters aren’t very likable as in most films. They are cardboard interpretations of real people from people who have spent entirely too much time in Los Angeles and North Hollywood around fellow cliche riddle cardboard cut-outs.

While their reactions and actions aren’t all totally stupid (mainly because they seem to accept whats going on around them - take note science fiction movie authors) the simple fact is the painfully excessive party scene reveals them to be mostly shallow people I could never imagine myself being friends with. This kills the connection fairly quickly and instead of being a cheap and overused method to make them more human and approachable it only served to make me care even less about most of them if they had spared us the dithering and kept their stupid maws shut. One character is downright unpleasant from the first moment we meet her.

And that’s the next cardinal sin of the film. The entire film is recorded on a video camera with the overbearing shaky image approach which includes such grating things as:

Repeatedly dropping the camera
Random image switching
Lack of focus
Never focusing on one thing for too long.

While this is understandable to the plot of panicked people in extraordinary circumstance, Abrams didn’t seem to have the good sense to know when to let it go. In a few rare scenes it does actually work well to convey scale or terror. The bulk of the film abuses the above tricks in a near seamless rotation between them meaning at times when the camera should steady just a tad or give us a nice clean shot for the sake of the story, it doesn’t even manage to do that. Instead immediately rotating back to one of the listed cliches. The film never really balances this out to any satisfaction and comes off as overbearing and in a few cases (oddly enough in the moments not driven by panic) flat out disorienting. Even scenes where the characters are resting and trying to make sense of the situation, the cheap tricks just keep coming. It ruins what impact the camera aspect might have had. I pity any person with a equilibrium issues trying to watch it because it gave me a hard time.

The film ends in typical cliche modern Hollywood style where we are given hints about the monster, no real reason for the events and an ending that while expected drops on top of you. Cloverfield is one of those films that just ends and while you can see it coming the entire premise feels like a tease more than anything. You don’t have any doubts how it will end, they blandly state it at the first of the film, but getting there seems long and unnecessary and when the end does arrive you are given a sense of a terribly incomplete experience mixed with a certain pain for having endured the mess just to see if at some point they could bring it together.

In the end Cloverfield is a Frankenstein collection of film tricks and current fads, hailed as something it’s not, and thats inventive. The entire film is the application of a sloppy romance with transparent people set the tune of a standard giant monster story as a backdrop. Pretty much everything in the film we’ve seen before expect it makes no real attempt to make it anything more than make it feel disjointed to add a sense of supposed realism and at the end of the day it just feels like we’ve seen it all before, except in much better movies.

The only complaint I don’t have is with the main character’s near inhuman effort to save the girl. Most films suffer from making him indecisive and while still a pussy for not expressing his love for her and running away like a 15 year old from her in the first place, there is something to be said for a film where the main character will stride down a street with a 50 story tall monster at the end of it because it’s standing in his way.

Cloverfield has it’s moments but they are very rare and seemingly random events where all of the cheap tricks come together for a few brief seconds to make it work. At times I tired of the journey with these people, at a few you find yourself staring, waiting for what comes next. Overall the moments of interest are simply rough patches that jar you on a bland highway in some visual desert. Movies are about an entire experience but Cloverfield struck me as a collection of moments, some good, most off balance and a movie to me is something that entertains entirely, not in small, random spurts.