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Elysium

Finally, finally saw Elysium. Glad I did.

As scifi movies go, I’m honestly fairly pleased with it. Elysium was directed by Neill Blomkamp, the guy who brought us District 9, and it’s easy to see the thematic similarities between the two: haves and have-nots, segregation, abuse of power. District 9 was very much about Apartheid, however. Elysium goes more toward the increasing distance between rich and poor, down to the distribution of healthcare. And of course, there are quite a few very pointed scenes regarding illegal immigration, well-suited perhaps because those movie was set in Los Angeles rather than Johannesburg.

One thing I found very cool about Elysium was just how much Spanish was used in the movie (note: though I have no idea if the Spanish was any good) and how natural it felt. Blomkamp imagined a future Los Angeles with a heavily Hispanic population, which I think made it feel more realistic. (Also made the talk on the space habitat about illegal immigrants and the threat they pose all the more pointed.) Of the major supporting characters, two were played by Brazilian actors and one by a Mexican actor.

Elysium is decent scifi. It asks “what if” and then explores how humanity might change around that development, embracing it or fighting it or using it. I thought the space habitat for which the movie is named was pretty interesting, particularly that it was set up so the atmosphere was kept inside entirely by the rotational force that created the artificial gravity. (Kind of like a miniature Ring World.) Though occasionally some of the scifi elements were also plainly set up to force the plot in a particular direction to stay on message, which is not so good.

 

To be honest, I think the only reason I’m at all disappointed in Elysium is because I’ve watched and loved District 9 and can’t help but compare the two. That doesn’t seem too unfair with their undeniable similarities. While Elysium benefits from a much larger budget than District 9 (and Matt Damon was more than satisfactorily Matt Damon in it)–the special effects are excellent and I didn’t feel they were overdone–it’s also much more heavy-handed and much clumsier in the way it deals with issues. It’s much more of a big budget scifi/action movie than District 9. Which was honestly to its detriment, I think.

SPOILERS

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movie

The World’s End

The Worlds End is the final installment of the “cornetto” trilogy written by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg. It’s a satisfying end to a set of fabulously hilarious movies.

I don’t make any secret of the fact that Hot Fuzz is my favorite movie ever. (Or as I like to call it: the greatest movie ever made.) I’ll admit, I didn’t like The Worlds End quite as much. But that’s kind of like complaining about the sex because you only had three orgasms instead of five and are still capable of walking afterwards.

There’s a really different tone to this move than there was to the other two. Shaun of the Dead is very much a zombie apocalypse movie, Hot Fuzz is a buddy cop film, but The Worlds End doesn’t fit so neatly into the apocalyptic move (since honestly, most movies in that slice of the genre are actually post-apocalyptic) nor quite into the alien invasion slot. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, because this movie feels much less like it’s film tropes with a side of feelings. The feelings and relationships are the red meat of The World’s End, with the blue-blooded and easily broken not-robots (robot is a word that means slave, yanno, it’s not accurate) as more of the backdrop.

And there was a lot of meat there. I very much enjoyed that it was Nick Frost’s turn to be the competent guy who has it together, with Simon Pegg as the colossal fuck up. There’s so much in the movie about how you can never go home, how you have to move forward with your life, and it makes a compelling case for an idea I’ve believed in for years: there is something seriously, seriously wrong with anyone who believes high school was the best life ever gets. Or, more accurate, there is something seriously wrong with their adult life.

Because the movie is about a set of adults going back to their old home and interacting with their past, there’s a lot of other great stuff in there that just touches my nerd heart. One of the characters interacts with someone who bullied him, and it just about broke my heart for all it was hilarious.  It’s also the reminder of the wild and crazy free-spirited guy/girl who tends to be presented as an ideal in movies (hello, manic pixie dream girl) isn’t necessarily the kind of person with whom you want to be friends. There’s also a few lovely stabs about the homogenization of local culture.

And it’s funny. It’s laugh out-loud funny. (And sometimes cringe in your seat funny when Simon Pegg’s Gary King is being particularly awful.) About the only complaints I have is that I felt like there was a teeny something missing between where we finally see Gary’s crisis and where he ends up, and that I felt like the arguing at the end (you’ll see what I mean when I get there) went on a tad too long for my tastes. But maybe it needed to for Bill Nighy’s excellent closing line as the king of the nobots.

See it. If you liked the other two movies, definitely see it. I’m hoping to go again this weekend. Hopefully with fewer problems getting there.

Because on the way to the Alamo, I had an adventure with my housemate. The kind of adventure I prefer to never have. We were trying to make it to the theater so we could also see Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz beforehand. But instead, my housemate’s car (an automatic) stopped changing gears, and then white smoke began to pour out from under the hood. So that was fun. We managed to pull off into a commercial/light industrial park that literally had nothing but fenced-in lots and had a nail-biting time trying to find somewhere to park the car before it died entirely. Then I remembered HEY I HAVE AAA, and at least we got a free tow back to the apartment. (So yes, I’ll be renewing AAA, it was worth it for that alone.)

The moral of the story, kids? If you know something is busted in your car, don’t procrastinate about fixing it.

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movie

Byzantium

“It is still a fact that the day you are born is the day you are most likely to be murdered.“

There is a lot from Byzantium that sticks out in my mind, but that line is perhaps the strongest. I’m not even certain why, but it feels right when you roll it up with the rest of the bloody meat that makes up that movie. Yeah, write this on the calendar. I found a vampire movie I liked.

Visually, it’s a beautiful movie. It goes from period piece to modern day, and both have their beautiful and disturbingly gritty sides. It’s really two stories running in parallel and explaining each other. In one story, we find out how Eleanor, and before her Clara (her mother) became vampires. This in turn explains what they’re running from in modern times, and their fucked-up family dynamic. And on top of that is Eleanor’s story of breaking free from her mother, reconciling her desire to the tell the truth with the necessity of lying, and falling in love.

Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan were both excellent as Clara and Eleanor respectively. I was already impressed by Ronan in Hanna. Honestly, I felt the only shortcoming of the entire movie was Caleb Landry Jones as Frank, Eleanor’s love interest. It doesn’t feel like there’s anything to that character, let alone any chemistry between him and Eleanor. I also honestly had a hard time understand Jones when he spoke sometimes… and I was just never able to grasp Frank as a character. He just didn’t seem consistent in how he acted from scene to scene, sometimes too young and sometimes much too old and… bleh.

But I really liked all the bits that didn’t involve Frank. It was excellent. And now I’m going to get a bit more in to why I’m still thinking about this movie, so you can consider it spoilery. But the following ramble is exactly why I think this was a good movie. I love it when movies keep me thinking and interested. (As opposed to keep me thinking about how much they pissed me off hello Oblivion.)

SPOILERS

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movie

2 Guns

I didn’t go into this movie with high expectations. I mean, just look at it:

Guns and shooting and guns and explosions and Bill Paxton being hilariously evil and southern. And let me be honest: this is one of those rare movies where what you see in the trailer is exactly what you get. There are guns and shooting and explosions and a bit more brutality than is perhaps necessary and oh lord the banter. It’s basically a buddy cop odd couple movie with a bit of a twist, since the two buddies start off by betraying each other right before they get betrayed by everyone else and driven back together. That’s the entire motive behind the story. There’s not a back story for either character you ever learn, and you don’t need to; they live in the now, dealing with the current crisis and exchanging quips between bullets.

And yet, I fucking loved this movie. I think I might have laughed for this more than I did at This Is the End. Because ultimately, it’s not about the little twist on a fairly standard plot. It’s all about Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg snarking at each other like a married couple. Those two actors (with a side of Bill Paxton) carry the entire movie and make it fun, because they seem to be having a damn good time with every moment they’re onscreen. It’s fast paced, plot twists exist just to give the apparently indestructible Wahlberg and Washington another chance to hilariously bicker, and the soundtrack is excellent.

2 Guns is ultimately two grown men snarking, blowing things up, and then exchanging more witty banter. It’s exactly as advertised on the packaging, no surprises. If you like that kind of thing (and I sure do) it’s more than worth the price of admission.

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movie

Europa Report

This is an independent science fiction movie. It was released a week ago, but the release is so limited it’s not in any theaters near me. Thankfully, it’s also available from On Demand for $8, which made it cheaper than actually seeing it in a theater. I was excited about this movie. It didn’t disappoint.

To be honest, watching it on the home screen I think might have worked better than at the theater, just because of the film style (found footage, so generally not high quality) and the CGI wasn’t the greatest; what flaws I was able to see on a 55″ flatscreen would have no doubt been all the more glaring on a movie screen.

This is definitely one of the most scientifically accurate movies I’ve seen in a long time. (Per Phil Plait, JPL scientists were consultants on the film, and it looks like the filmmakers really took what they said to heart.) And the science really plays into the story and helps drive and define the plot. It’s the motivation and not the villain, which was very refreshing. It also serves as a good reminder that accurate, basically present-day science still has some amazing storytelling possibilities for speculative fiction in it.

At its heart, I think the movie is very much about science, and the wonder scientists feel, and the sacrifices they are willing to make for the sake of answering one of the greatest questions to ever face our species: are we alone? The cast really sold it, I think, and Daniel Wu and Anamaria Marinca were particularly good I think.

And there’s an adorable reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey at the beginning, which I loved.

The movie is mostly found footage style, which is a format I’m increasingly disenchanted with, though I understand why it’s used–it’s generally a cheaper option. For the most part I felt like it worked pretty well, and it put us in the action with the crew. I didn’t like how some of the jumps and cuts were done, since it really didn’t fit with the narrative frame of “here we edited this together for you.” It felt like a transparent attempt to make the movie seem scarier than it was or needed to be.

This was not a scary movie, despite what the trailer wants you to think:

If you believe the trailer, this is going to be a “found footage thing where team of astronauts goes to alien world and gets horrifically eaten by sneaky, evil aliens that may or may not look like giant space spiders.” And it’s really not. It’s tense, it’s heart-wrenching at times, but this is definitely not a horror movie.

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movie sexism you need to do better

Hey Thor 2: Star Wars Called, It Wants Its Poster Back

I had about three seconds of excitement yesterday when Marvel dropped the new Thor: The Dark World poster on Twitter. I’m so excited about that movie, I can barely stand it. And I really loved most of the posters there were for the original Thor. So… yay! And here it was!
thor poster
Well. That’s sure a thing. I don’t like the composition (she says as if she has more artistic ability than the average potato).It’s really… busy. Unlike the posters for the first movie. But more than that… wow. It feels really familiar. Reeeeeeeally familiar.
iron man poster…wow. Yeah. But no, that wasn’t what I was thinking about. We have to go back further. Much further. Like maybe…
star-wars-return-of-the-jedi_movie-poster-01A bit like this, perhaps. Except while they put Leia in the stupid-ass bikini, at least she’s not clinging to anyone. But of course, Star Wars really owes its artistic allegiance to far pulpier roots…
UFO_MovieArt_01
Just as an example. That’s art from a release called UFO from the 70s. Though then we need to add a little side of this just for full replication:
eileen-dreter-barely-a-lady-cover-art-by-jon-paul-ferraraAnd there you go.

Why the hell are we still doing pulp movie clingy woman and manly men posters in the year 2013? There is just so much about the poster that I really, really don’t like. About both the TDW and IM3 posters, really. I’m not a big fan of women with their necks broken, to start with. But the position is so classic clingy damsel in distress oh let me lay my hands on your manly manly chest so you can save me. I loathe it. Particularly because in IM3, Pepper was pretty fucking awesome. She saved Tony’s ass twice. She was not the damsel in distress.

That gives me hope that maybe the TDW poster is a big troll just like the IM3 poster kind of was. (Or maybe we’ll get an awesome joke poster for Captain America 2, like this idea.) But it just upsets me on a basic level to see another awesome female character turned into the visual clingy appendage of the guy. I actually like Jane as a character. She kind of fell by the wayside when I first watched Thor because I was too busy losing my shit over the complexities of Loki. But in subsequent viewings, I’ve come to really like Jane.

In a super hero movie, it’s nice to have some normal human characters around who aren’t just living furniture. That they’re regular people means yes, they occasionally need their bacon saved by the super hero, because that’s what super heroes do. But both Pepper and Jane are eminently competent women, and they solve some great plot problems by being excellent at what they do. While I didn’t really buy the Thor/Jane romance in Thor, I loved that Jane was the one who decided to kiss him. I loved that she was impulsive and smart and very much had a life and a being outside of the whole romance angle.

The one thing that I’m still mad at Thor for was what I felt was the lazy writing. We need some redemption–quick, have him instantly fall in love with someone and that will make him a better person because boobies are magic! It was cheap, formulaic, and trite. I’ll still be seeing the new movie who knows how many fucking times because Loki. And Sif. And Loki. And Frigga in armor. And Loki. But I’d love to not give myself a headache from rolling my eyes through the rest of the movie. At this point I’m already assuming that Jane will get kidnapped by Malekith and Thor has to almost die again to save her life because obviously Malekith blowing shit up across the Nine Realms isn’t sufficient motivation for the man to be self-sacrificing. Barf. (I’d love to be wrong, by the way.)

I’m sick of shit like that. I’m so sick of it. It’s ultimately disrespectful (if that’s the right word) of two really awesome characters. It reduces Jane to just being an object to motivate Thor, and it reduces Thor to someone who can only stir himself to do great and noble things and grow as a person if his dick warmer is in danger.

Really. Do better.

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movie

Sword Button Redux (I See Pacific Rim Again)

I saw Pacific Rim again over the weekend. The movie was even better the second time around, because I wasn’t so focused on OH MY GOD SHINY SWORD BUTTON and paying more attention to the characters and what they were saying and doing.

Spoiler warnings for this whole thing since I am wibbling about the characters.

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movie

RED 2

Saw this in Sunday after my century, so my memory of it isn’t as clear as maybe it could be, since I was already tired and thought three beers were an awesome idea. Also, I apparently missed the best fight scene of the entire movie because my brain still thought I was dehydrated and my bladder begged to differ.

That said, this movie was a lot of fun. This isn’t something I’m going to squee over or write blog post after blog post for. It’s not that kind of movie. It’s just fun. And everyone in that movie sure looks like they’re having a great time and were just nice enough to bring you along.

I think this is the only non-Batman DC comics movie franchise I have ever given a shit about. And frankly, given the choice between Batman and RED, most days I’d actually go for RED because its raison d’être isn’t the idea that western civilization is a crumbling, cynical wreck from which only a rich guy with awesome toys can save us. RED is brain candy where senior citizens blow shit up.

Basically, if you liked the first RED, you’ll like the second just as much. Same sort of humor, same sort of action, same poking fun at spy tropes. John Malkovitch was so intensely John Malkovitch that I may have sustained a slight John Malkovitch burn, which may some day give me skin cancer. Helen Mirren is still the most perfect. Anthony Hopkins is just gleeful.

I think Lee Byung-hun as the super assassin Han Jo-Bae was actually my favorite though. (Except Helen Mirren because she will forever be queen of my heart.) He starts out as just the creepy angry badass and then there’s some really fun development, just to turn that trope on its head. Oh, and his fight scenes were lovely. Hope to see him in more movies.

RED is an action world at 90 degrees off the normal plane and I enjoy it for that. It’s where age and treachery win every time, the ultimate sign of affection is giving someone a gun, and yes, that really is a stick of dynamite in John Malkovitch’s pocket, but he is happy to see you nonetheless. I’m not sure why the franchise never quite makes the leap for me into something truly memorable as comedy. Maybe because it is just about finding tropes and twisting their nipples in the must amusing way possible, but without much of a heart behind it all. It’s telling that I can remember all the actors by name, but couldn’t tell you what their characters are called to save my life. I’d watch it any time it was on TV, but I can’t say I’d bother to buy it.

But definitely worth seeing in the theater if you like that kind of movie. I will say of it’s the choice between this and Pacific Rim, you should see Pacific Rim instead. There’s so much more meat there, and it’s just as much fun.

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lgbt movie

More on the Ender’s Game Thing

Lionsgate has apparently copped to just how many people are pissed off about OSC being a giant homophobe. They’re hosting a benefit premiere of the movie for LGBT groups.

To a certain extent, I feel for them. Ender’s Game is a novel that’s been screaming for a movie for years. It has everything you could want. Except for the part that the author is a giant homophobe and people don’t want to support him because he gives money to anti-gay organizations. (Unsurprisingly, I am one of those people.) They picked up a good story with a giant lead weight attached to it, and they’ve been fighting against that ever since. That… really sucks. Honestly, Ender’s Game was a very special novel to me when I was growing up, and I wish I could feel good about going to watch the movie.

But then again, this should not have come as a surprise to them. It’s not like OSC waited until the movie was in production and then came out of the closet (hur hur hur) as a homophobe. He’s been saying that for years. In fact, I used to read his blogs and regular articles until the homophobia came up, at which point I had to stop because it was too upsetting. This happened over ten years ago, so yeah. It’s not a surprise.

Lionsgate trying to offer the olive branch with the benefit premiere just gives me even more conflicted feelings. Because it does make me happy that they’re trying to do something. But they’re the ones that stepped into the middle of this mess to begin with–did they think people wouldn’t notice? And would the amount of money coming in from such a benefit premiere outweigh the support given to the author? I have no idea.

I want there to be more good science fiction movies. I really do. I’d hope this would be one of them. But… but. I’m glad Lionsgate has stepped up, but why didn’t they see this coming from the beginning? It feels like a response to a PR nightmare, not necessarily a real acknowledgment of the fundamental problem.

Lionsgate would like us to separate the art from the artist. I wish I could. But not today, I’m afraid, and I don’t see that changing when the movie comes out. I wish things were different. I really do.

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movie

Pacific Rim and the Bechdel Test

It has been noted by many (including myself) that Pacific Rim fails the Bechdel Test rather spectacularly. It has only two female characters of any note (Mako and half of the Russian Jaeger team, Lt. A Kaidonovsky) and they never have a conversation.

Thinking back on it, I desperately wish that had happened. That would have been amazing, maybe a conversation after Mako almost had her drift-induced disaster.

But I was thinking about it this morning, and the movie has something very few others have: two male characters talking about a woman and neither of them wants to fuck her. And it happens several times. And they talk about how competent she is, with the problem being Stacker is protective, not that she doesn’t have the chops.

That is refreshing. Even if I would have preferred a no bullshit female Jaeger pilot conversation and a little less Stacker and Raleigh butting heads.

I could go on about this movie forever. I need to see it again.

And a few more thoughts: [slight spoilers here]

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