Tag: movie review

Categories
movie

[Movie] Zero Charisma

Zero Charisma is a comedy about That Guy1. You know That Guy, if you’re a gamer nerd. Or if you don’t, you should probably take a good, honest look at your life because you very well might be That Guy.

I honestly did not find Zero Charisma all that funny. That’s because I was too busy cringing in my seat, my hood over my head with the aperture drawn as tightly shut as possible under the laws of physics. This movie is made of pure, distilled awkwardness.

The main character of this movie, Scott, really has been written to have a charisma stat of zero. A man-child with no interpersonal skills and a massive chip on his shoulder, he’s even given an incredibly sympathetic backstory, but quickly throws any audience empathy away by never, at any point, taking the high road or learning from the hideous social mistakes he’s already made. We get that he controls the tabletop game he created because he cannot control anything else in his life–but Scott obviously doesn’t.

I suppose it’s refreshing. If this was a conventional studio movie, by the close of the third act we’d see Scott manage to grow up, regain his friends, say sorry, and maybe get a better haircut, a better car, or even a girlfriend. Isn’t that how men are supposed to be rewarded in these films? Nope. The best we see is the barest glimmer at the end, indicating he may have figured out that people other than him are allowed to make decisions in his game.

Make no mistake, I desperately wanted to empathize with Scott; as a nerd, Scott was designed to be one of my people. I’ve even been in a lot of the horrible situations (whence my literal cringing) as the socially awkward person that the world considers a punchline. Watching this movie was fucking painful at times.

Maybe that’s why I didn’t really see the funny in Zero Charisma other than some very uncomfortable laughter at the beginning. I looked at Scott and thought that could have been me if I’d gone with a slightly less constructive coping strategy. Ultimately, it feels less like a comedy and more like a nerd cautionary tale screaming DON’T BE THAT GUY.

 

 

1 – You know, That Guy who always has to know everything and have all the answers and be bored with all of your ideas because he had them first? The one who thinks he’s the Alpha Geek? That Guy who is always nerdier than thou? That Guy who has appointed himself the arbiter of all disputes whether you want it or not? That Guy whose character is the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral? Yeah, fuck that guy.

Categories
movie

[Movie] Gravity

The first two words I said after the credits rolled: Holy shit.

You can tell I’m a writer. I’m good with words.

I really don’t know how else I can react to this movie, though. I spent most of the film on the verge of tears and at the edge of my seat with my hands pressed against my mouth. It’s one of the most if not the most gorgeous movie I’ve ever seen. There’s a constant interplay between the unbelievable beauty of Earth as seen from space and the silent, terrifying void of space, and Gravity just rips your heart open and pours both in. This is one of the few times in my life I desperately wished that 3D didn’t give me headaches and make me want to barf, because as breathtaking as this movie was in 2D I can’t even imagine how it would have looked with an added third dimension.

I know I’m probably the latest to this party. I’ve been traveling for most of the month and literally have not had the time to see this movie until now. And if you, like me, have not yet seen Gravity, you’d better have a damn good excuse.

If this movie does not win five million awards, I’m going to start flying places and flipping podiums like a little bouncing ginger rage ball, I swear to god.

This is probably the most scientifically accurate movie I’ve ever seen. (Which isn’t to say it didn’t have flaws, but if I can manage to enjoy Star Trek without popping a brain aneurysm, I can somehow manage to survive Sandra Bullock’s hair forgetting that it’s in a zero-G environment.) While the visuals are what really stick with you, the sound design for the movie was absolutely amazing.

And there’s something even more horrifying about watching a space station get ripped to shreds without even a dismayed, metallic sigh.

I’ve seen this movie called a thriller over and over, and I suppose it is in the sense that the tension just never stops. It’s a disaster movie in space that never lets you forget just how fragile human life is as opposed to the implacable, inhospitable void. It’s all about human ingenuity struggling against the certainty to death. But the bigger story is really the internal journey of Ryan Stone and her decision to let go of sorrow and keep living by letting go of the comfortable void of space and returning to Earth. It was such a human journey played over a massive spatial scale.

This was also a much needed reminder for me that Sandra Bullock is a very good actress. The movie rides mostly on her shoulders, with a little support from George Clooney, and she makes you feel every second of fear, uncertainty, and hopelessness that lead up to that terrifying decision to keep fighting. I read a couple of articles about Gravity before seeing it, and one mentioned that there had been pressure to change the character of Ryan into a man. I’m so glad that they didn’t. Honestly, the characters in that movie really could have gone any way with gender, I think; there was nothing intrinsically male or female about any of them. But keeping Ryan as a woman made this one of those rare films where the woman is unquestionably the main character. (And Gravity was #1 worldwide for three weeks straight; maybe something to point out the next time someone trots out that bullshit about people not wanting to see movies with women in the lead.)

Categories
movie

[Movie] Only Lovers Left Alive (Alt: of Love and Vampires)

I was waiting to write my thoughts about this movie in the hopes I’d get to weasel my way into another showing of it sometime this week, but that didn’t happen. So I’m sad it’s not longer fresh on my mind, but the film made such a vivid impression that I still have so many thoughts and feelings about it.

The two things you hear most often about Only Lovers Left Alive is that it’s much funnier than expected, and that it’s a story about something (love and art being the most commonly cited) that just so happens to have vampires as characters. Both of these things are very true. The movie is actually very funny, if in the subtle, often very dry way that is my absolute favorite. Just the scenes with Adam (in his Dr. Faust nametag) and Dr. Watson at the hospital are lovely.

The love seen in this movie isn’t the sort normally glorified on film. It’s not first love or love in crisis, where the very story is driven by the question of if this love will survive the plot. Rather, the crisis of the movie is the survival of Adam and Eve themselves, and the love they share is part of what will sustain them and keep them alive. Their love for each other doesn’t require constant contact, has passion without being obsessive, is between equals, and supports rather than conflicts. It’s love that feeds the people who feel it, rather than love that needs to be fed.

So that was intensely refreshing, as a reminder that love is supposed to be something that strengthens and supports us rather than a source of endless (if entertaining) drama.

The other part of the love seen in the movie is the passion for art. Feeding of the soul rather than the body, I suppose. The character of Eve is a lover of literature, sustained by her endless joy in the creations of others. On the other hand, Adam is driven to ceaselessly create music and invent, while expressing disdain for the idea of receiving recognition for his art. Which I suppose you could frame as the purest form of artistic creation, art for its own sake. I find it interesting, though, that the one in the movie who is miserable is Adam, constantly depressed by the state of humanity and the treatment of those who do create.

(I do love that the vampires here revered scientists with as much fervor as artists, by the way. I think it’s to do with the passion of creation or discovery more than anything else. But I could go on and on about that.)

So that’s where you get this being a movie about love as a powerful vital force, where the entire idea of blood for the vampires is incredibly secondary. You really do get the impression that if they lost their motivating love, they’d give up on the blood drinking too and call it a day.

This is kind of a record year for me, since this is the second vampire movie I’ve actually liked, Byzantium being the other. And one common thread between both of these movies is the fact that there was nothing really intrinsically sexual about the vampires. Clara in Byzantium was quite sexual, but that was more a flow through from her mortal life than the defining characteristic of a vampire. In fact, Eleanor (also from Byzantium) really has more in common with Adam and Eve, thanks to her passion for writing.

But anyway, Adam and Eve definitely weren’t running around and seducing mortals with their undead sexiness. (Thank goodness, I’m so very done with that.) In fact, after thinking about it, I now have a real appreciation for the utterly manky wigs all of the vampires wore in Only Lovers Left Alive because it simultaneously marked them as a bit inhuman, and also as people that really couldn’t be bothered with conditioner. Not anyone you’d expect to stand in the sunlight and sparkle while women fall at their feet.

So really, the vampirism was there to allow for a grander timescale of life, because the real question of the film was what sustains people and keeps them living rather than merely surviving. It’s a point that Eve makes to Adam several times in the movie, trying to get him to look outside himself and feel that passion again.

And then there is dancing in the living room, which is an example we all should consider following.

(tl;dr version, 750 words later: This movie is gorgeous and you should see it as soon as you are able. Also, Tilda Swinton is a magical unicorn of dance. Just be prepared for a little anti-Stratfordianism in with all the love.)

Categories
movie

[Movie] +1 (alternate title: A Congress of Unnecessary Tits)

(Alternate title in honor of the US Congress.)

There are a lot of tits in this movie. And no, I don’t mean the birds.

Look, the tit overload getting on my nerves might not be +1‘s fault when you come down to it. I saw it at 10PM on Sunday, after I’d already seen Don Jon on Saturday and Rush earlier on Sunday. And both of those movies? A lot of tits in those too. I mean sure, Don Jon had a good excuse because porn was actually quite integral to the plot and points the movie made. And Rush? Well, I guess at least it gave us Chris Hemsworth’s bottom as kind of a well look I know there are a lot of tits but here’s some fan service from the other end of the gender spectrum apology.

But the point is, by the time I’d gotten to Rush, I was already spending a lot of time asking myself, …are these tits really necessary? And then with +1 it just became sigh was there a four for two sale on tits or something?

And +1 was not nearly so generous to potential hetero female viewers as Rush. Look, I get it. +1 was probably trying to play off of the teen party movie tropes, which always involve a ridiculous party where everyone under the age of 24 in the immediate area is drunk, high, and fucking, and of course all the women are dressed in bikinis and flashing their tits with abandon. But by the time I got to it, that just didn’t feel like a joke any more.

It felt tired. There wasn’t enough winking to go with the tits to make it feel at all clever. Maybe if there had been a “more than just meat” moment like Don Jon gave us, it wouldn’t have felt pointless and exploitative and well gosh hopefully we’ll make our money back because we’ve shown enough skin to get young men to want to watch a small scifi film. (I doubt it works that way.)

Which is sad, because the actual plot of +1 has some pretty good moments, and the movie says some delightfully dark things about humanity.

The basic plot is that a MacGuffin from outer space does a thing to the power grid, which somehow causes our universe and what seems to be a parallel universe where the same ridiculous party is happening intersect briefly, with a slight temporal delay that shortens every time the McGuffin goes off. And people from both universes can see and interact with each other and know something is seriously wrong.

So long as you buy the MacGuffin (and you kind of have to, because the point here isn’t how it all works but rather how people react) they actually played it off as very interesting. The characters in the movie interact with their alternate selves in an array of ways, and you see both groups reacting in predictable and horrible ways to the nebulous threat of “what will happen when we all occupy the same time and space?”

But there was actually a really excellent but subtle bit of horror in there I want to talk about, one that really does play off the teen movie/teen romance tropes brilliantly. That’s going to require spoilers, so I’ll put it behind this cut.

Continue reading “[Movie] +1 (alternate title: A Congress of Unnecessary Tits)”
Categories
movie

[Movie] Rush

This is one of those movies that pretty much delivers what the trailer promises. In fact, if you watch the trailer, you will know all of the plot points for the movie.

It’s about Hunt, James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth), and Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl), who are best frenemies and drive around in circles really fast in Formula One. They both want the same thing: the championship title.

Or do they?

It takes a well done movie to get me to give even half a shit about race car drivers. This one managed it. And I think it’s entirely because both Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Brühl were excellent. And honestly, I feel like Hemsworth kind of got put more in the forefront for this movie, but Daniel Brühl is really the one who made it. Niki Lauda came across as a much more intense and complex character because he wasn’t the typical death-chasing party boy that is normally presented as the race car driver “type.” Plus, Brühl just convinced me solidly that there was a lot more going on beneath the brusque surface, and it was all very subtly done. I don’t know if Chris Hemsworth didn’t have enough to work with, or if he just didn’t get to go that deep, but Hunt was much less compelling.

The movie was very much set up and conducted as a comparison of the two men, up to and including their marriages.  It’s about their rivalry and seems to sketch a journey from enemies to a surprisingly supportive friendship, though I think it comes across as far simpler than it deserves. Even if Hunt came across as less complex as a character, he provided an excellent foil for Lauda. Rush builds them up as equally determined and driven men with very, very different personalities, goals, and needs. Niki Lauda was definitely the one I was with at the end of the movie. Even more interesting, apparently Lauda was very involved in the making of the movie.

Big personalities and fast cars. There you go. Also, the movie is gorgeous.

And I suppose I would be remiss in my red-blooded woman duties if I didn’t note that there’s a healthy whack of nudity, and some of it involves Chris Hemsworth’s bottom. Just in case you wanted to know. But even without Chris Hemsworth’s bottom, it’s a gorgeous movie.

Categories
movie

[Movie] Don Jon

There is a beautiful moment about a third of the way in to Don Jon that shows a commercial on the television that’s always on during Jon’s (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) meals with his amazing caricature of a New Jersey Italian family. The commercial is for a fish sandwich (I want to say cod) and involves a woman who is naked except for her underwear and appears to be about to orgasm over this fish sandwich; the parallels to the crazy amounts of porn Jon watches are very thickly drawn. The commercial ends with the message: More than just a piece of meat.

This was the moment I started taking notes. Because I realized for all Don Jon is hilarious, this movie was really not fucking around.

There is a lot of porn in this movie. And a lot of sex. And a lot of porn. And yet somehow, it doesn’t end up being at all exploitative, I think because the movie is so conscious of how it uses those images. Just as when the camera takes a good look at a woman’s bottom in a night club, it’s because it’s standing in for Jon’s eyes, and you hear him and his “boys” baldly rating women with numbers. Why yes, he is treating women like objects, he does see the world this way, isn’t it a bit pathetic and empty?

I’ve seen Don Jon described as a romantic comedy. I don’t think I quite buy that, since it ignores or actively mocks the tropes of the genre, which I appreciated greatly. It’s more a comedy about false expectations, particularly as they relate to romantic and sexual relationships, selfishness, authenticity and hypocrisy. And it’s hilarious. It was even funnier than I expected to be.

“The shit I watch on here, they’re not pretending.”

“Of course they are.”

In the movie, a parallel gets drawn between romance movies and pornography multiple times, implying both are fake, unrealistic, and ultimately set up one-sided expectations. Now, I don’t entirely buy that parallel or the idea that both are equally harmful, but it’s a powerful statement. Jon whines about “real pussy” not being as good as porn, because real women won’t do the same things porn actresses do. Barbara (Scarlet Johansen) has several wonderfully cringe-inducing rants about how in a relationship, the woman should be all the man needs and he should do everything for her, and also what “real men” do or don’t do. (Jon is apparently not a real man because he takes pleasure in keeping his apartment clean.) Both of them seem addicted to their poison of choice, and constantly trying to reshape the world around them into that very processed vision, then very disappointed when their efforts fail.

It’s a movie about incredibly artificial and self-centered people.

“You’re a real winner. You respect people. You listen to people.”

And then Don Jon becomes, at its heart, a movie about people attempting to honestly connect.

So there’s a lot here, and it’s also hilarious. I definitely want to see this one again; it’s rare for me to get this thinky about a comedy. And I do not want to spoil it, because I really enjoyed the ending and felt like it sailed in to a good spot and resisted the urge to get schmaltzy.

But I will say one more thing. My favorite character in the entire movie is Jon’s little sister Monica (Brie Larson); she speaks only once, but the rest of the time she doesn’t have to. Her constant, wonderful I cannot fucking believe the bullshit soap opera that surrounds me looks just make every scene involving Jon’s family a treat.

Categories
movie

[Movie] Salinger

I’ll note right now that I went into this documentary absolutely blind. I know nothing about JD Salinger beyond the fact that he wrote Catcher in the Rye and fought in World War II. So I honestly can say nothing in regards to the veracity of anything that was said in the documentary. I can, however, tell you if I liked it.

And… I mostly did. The focus was definitely more on JD Salinger himself than on his works, which makes sense. There were quite a few interesting interviews, which covered his more reclusive days, his lingering trauma from the second world war, and his (in my opinion) incredibly creepy thing for really young women. What I found most interesting about the people discussing his reclusive tendencies was the divide between those who really saw him as Howard Hughes in author form, and those who pointed out he wasn’t a true recluse, because he still reached outside his own world and seemed very conscious of the power behind his name. (And used that power on the aforementioned really young women.)

Really, the best and most powerful piece of the entire film was the portion about Salinger’s experiences during World War II… and the fact that he continued to write through all of it. The continued struggle to keep writing no matter what is something I really appreciated as a writer (though obviously, I have never experienced that kind of adversity, and hope that I never will). Also, his determination to be published in the New Yorker really struck a chord. (And nice to know rejection letters really haven’t changed much.)

I also found notable the interview with a fan of Salinger, who had gone to the man’s home and wanted to speak with him. Going in to Salinger’s antagonistic relationship with his own fame was something I found fascinating, particularly the way people would feel as if they had a deep connection to him because of the way they related to his work and felt they were entitled to his time.

While I still don’t think it was anything close to a full portrait of the man, it did all add up to a very multidimensional picture of a human being deeply wounded, intensely flawed, and beautiful.

So all of that was excellent, and kept my attention.

Unfortunately, there was a lot about the documentary I didn’t like. All of the above that I spoke of was done with interviews and fairly sparing analysis from the director. But there was a lot of flash and bombast that kept making me ask why is this necessary. The music was often intrusive and frankly annoying. There was also reenactment footage (way too much of it, in my opinion) which really did not add any value; rather, it was more distracting than anything else. Seriously, the movie didn’t need minute upon minute of a man, smoking, clacking away at a typewriter while the music pounded home that something portentous had happened.

If you’ll have a hard time concentrating on Catcher in the Rye with the knowledge of the more sordid aspects of the author’s life banging around in your head, I’d recommend skipping this one. And if you’re hoping for more depth about Salinger’s work, this documentary won’t cut it. Salinger might have believed that a writer should be known solely through his work, but the documentary was determined to find out as much as possible about the man himself. If only it could have worked on that question without the music.

Categories
movie

[Movie] Prisoners

I have very conflicted feelings about Prisoners as a movie. I’m going to say there are some mild(ish?) spoilers in this one. I’m not going to go in depth on a lot of the plot points. (Honestly, if you watch the trailer you already know 90% of what I’m going to be talking about.)

I will say one thing flat out–it’s a very well put together movie. The cinematography is excellent. The way the movie was shot really adds to the suspense, and makes it feel very enclosed and claustrophobic… which of course goes with the entire Prisoners idea. There were several scenes where I hunched over in my chair, covering my mouth with my hands because the movie did drag me along into a dark and terrible place.

The entire reason I wanted to see Prisoners was because I thought it looked like an ode to vigilante torture porn, basically, which is normally how kidnaping movies go. You know, kids get stolen, police can’t find them, someone (normally super manly dad) takes matters into his own hands, goes vigilante, saves the day, and we all live happily ever after.

For all the very real problems Prisoners had, that was surprisingly not one of them. There are some bloody and intensely discomfiting scenes where Keller (Hugh Jackman) beats and tortures the man who he is certain kidnapped his daughter. Perhaps the only payoff on this is that the ending in no way justifies what he did; him torturing the mentally disabled Alex Jones does not really help him find his daughter.

Rather, what saves her in the end is the continued efforts of Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal and seriously Detective Loki???), and I’d even argue Keller’s activities actually delay Loki solving the case. And the point is brought up subtly and largely ignored by the other characters that ultimately, Keller was torturing a victim. (In fact, Keller’s wife Grace, who has spent most of the movie in a sleeping-pill-induced stupor, tries to convince both herself and Loki that Keller is a good man and what he did was somehow necessary.)

So Prisoners didn’t, to my relief, overtly lionize what should be considered an appalling act. And there are some interesting points it raises along the way–like when Franklin (father of the other abducted girl, played by Terrence Howard) tries to talk Keller out of torturing Alex, and basically gets steamrollered by Keller’s utter certainty. There’s definitely something there to the way Keller drags more people into the horrors he’s perpetrating… and then ultimately is left to his own devices as Franklin and his wife Nancy (Viola Davis) refuse to participate but also refuse to actually stop him.

Keller is also presented as a very stereotypical religious hunter/survivalist/gun nut–the movie opens with him taking his son hunting and reciting the Lord’s prayer before they shoot a deer. Which I’m sure will rub some people very much the wrong way, but it’s also very believable he’d be the sort to talk tough about trying to make like Jack Bauer and beat someone half to death until they tell him what he wants to know.

There’s a lot of mileage you could get out of how Keller dehumanizes Alex (he even literally says, “he’s not human any more”), or how he seems to be a very weak man desperately trying to be strong and take control of a situation that is by definition uncontrollable by means of violence. There is even a point in one of those oh god I can’t watch this scenes were Keller screams at Alex, “Why are you making me do this to you?” I honestly think the movie is at its (horrified cringe-inducing) best when it’s focused on Keller’s transformation into something monstrous.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t stay on target. Instead of keeping with the true horror of the film, it goes off into serial killer conspiracy symbolism land, and that’s kind of where it started spinning off its axis. There are several instances in the plot where the choice to make it that much more convoluted really added nothing to the story and just created more loose ends that were never satisfactorily tied up. I also think those plot decisions meant that details got lost in the shuffle.

This is not a movie I would tell people to go out and watch. It was creepy and made me cringe in my seat and not because it was bad. I don’t generally go out of my way to watch movies like this one. But I will say that I thought the cast was really excellent (and Jake Gyllenhaal specifically, though I’m still not sure about his spasmodic blinking) and obviously it made me think a lot. This one is going to stick with me and keep making me feel deeply uncomfortable for a while.

Categories
movie

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

Continue reading “Elysium”