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[Movie] Her

I’m having a hard time writing about this movie, because it hit me that hard. And Her isn’t nice about the way it hits you, either. No, first it lulls you into a false sense of security, making you think this will be a weird, quirky and awkward comedy where everyone wears high-waisted trousers, and then by the time you realize that this is actually very serious and intensely real it’s too late and you’re crying your eyes out in a theater and just hoping you don’t drip snot on your t-shirt because you didn’t think you’d need to bring a box of tissues along. This movie sucker punches your emotions in the nuts.

And this is the thing. It’s not cheap or manipulative oh my favorite character died. What hits you in this movie is that the pain is so very ordinary and human.

For all that this is a film about a man in an indistinct future year who falls in love with an artificial intelligence, the heart of the story isn’t the science fiction conceit, and I think that’s what makes it so powerful. Most of the time, speculative fiction is at its best when it uses that unreal element to explore what it is to be human, how we relate to each other, how we fit into the world. Her does that with beauty that looks almost effortless.

This is the most human movie I’ve seen in a long time. There are so many moments in the film that are pure, distilled awkwardness, sometimes played for laughs, sometimes painful, sometimes just there. Because let’s face it, being human is fucking awkward. That alone makes everything feel much more real than it has any right to be. The relationships are messy, and there are no easy answers offered. It’s about love, and relating to other people, and letting go, and being lonely, and relationships ending, and relationships beginning and…just everything that is really the lifeblood of being human that is beautiful and agonizing. There are no heroes or villains, there are just people–and I include the AI Samantha in that category.

I also should note that Her is visually gorgeous too, but it’s all a very ordinary sort of beauty, like a shot of steam escaping from under a manhole cover. They used the color orange a lot, which I haven’t seen often, and it feels very earthy, very rich. It’s not a blue-tinted scifi world, and I think even that made it feel more real. Everything looked like the colors we see around us in daily life, with perhaps a bit of haze.

I’m glad I watched Her, even if I spent the rest of the night feeling like someone had run over my heart with a truck. Definitely the best piece of scifi/fantasy from 2013–and 2013 was actually a good year for sf/f–and maybe the best I’ve seen in years. As a writer, I’m still struck by the complexity in the characters and their relationships and I came out of it hoping that some day I can manage to produce a piece of art like that. It’s beautiful. Take a box of tissues with you.

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[Movie] The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is super cute. But first I want to bitch about The Lego Movie. I keep seeing previews for this movie, and beyond the fact that the only funny bits involve Batman and Wonderwoman, it annoys me.

So the whole concept here is that the regular dude main character is “the special” who is foretold by prophecy to…I don’t know whatever. Now, I dearly hope that this is all going to be entirely tongue-in-cheek and at the end maybe the lego action chick will realize that prophecy is bullshit and she’ll save the world because wouldn’t that be different for a change. That would be amazing and I would go suffer through the unfunny jokes so I could watch it. But at this point I would bet you anything that the regular dude main character will discover he is actually super special thanks to everyone else telling him he has to be and the girl BELIEVING IN HIM. Because that’s how these things normally work and I’m SO SICK of the destined savior dude plot I can’t even begin to tell you how much. It just gives me flashbacks to Oz the Great and Powerful where the super competent witches of Oz just couldn’t get their shit together because THEY NEEDED THE MAN FORETOLD BY THE PROPHECY.

Barf. Barfity barf barf barf.

Okay. Now I can get back to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which did not feel me with vomitous annoyance.

Honestly, there isn’t that much I really have to say about the movie, other than it manages to hit all the right notes of cute, funny, heartwarming, and human without it quite seeming like Ben Stiller was going down a checklist to make sure he’d gotten everything. And to be honest, I’ve actually always liked Ben Stiller, and I liked him in this movie. He had a couple moments that played a little too hard for the comedy and came off a bit sour because of it, but otherwise I thought he was incredibly heartfelt.

As far as the plot goes, if you’ve seen the trailer, you know what the movie is about. But it’s ultimately the search for the missing negative as a stand-in for Walter figuring out how to actually get out there and fucking do things, which is the part where so many people fall short. (Seriously, we all know someone or have been the guy who said something like well, I’d write a novel if, or I’d go to Thailand if, or I thought about doing something but then I just didn’t…) But the point of the movie really isn’t the conclusion or the simple concept behind the story…it’s the journey that we go on with Walter.

Man, and it is beautiful. As soon as Walter gets out of the office, there isn’t a shot in that movie that isn’t just breathtaking. I think my favorite shot out of the movie is still the longboard scene in Iceland. Oh gosh.

The only real objection I have is there’s a scene where they drive away from a pyroclastic flow from a volcano. That always drives me batty. But I know it’s just me.

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[Movie] So, about 47 Ronin

All right, so let me tell you about this movie. Once upon a time there was Keanu Reeves I mean a kid named Kai in Japan. He was half-Japanese and half-European and had been raised by the Tengu so he totally has magical powers no really you just read that correctly, I didn’t mistype. Just that sentence right there makes me deeply uncomfortable for a multitude of reasons (you should check out the racebending post about it) but I think what weirds me out the most is that he’s literally a (I am very sorry for using this phrase) “magical half-breed” trope personified and made inexplicably the main character of 47 Ronin. Despite the fact that technically he’s not even ronin (being, you know, not a samurai) and that the real main character of this thing ought to have been Oishi (played fantastically by Sanada Hiroyuki).

BUT ANYWAY.

So all the samurai in Akou are out hunting down a kirin (I think?) because it’s been, I don’t know, leaving massive piles of kirin shit all over Lord Asano’s lawn and that just won’t do because the Shogun is coming to visit. Kai helps kill the kirin and everyone is a douche to him about it. We see a fox with one brown eye and one blue eye and I sure hope you like that close up of those eyes because you are going to be seeing it a lot.

The Shogun shows up with Lord Kira (Asano Tadanobu, perhaps better known to nerds as Sir Not Appearing In This Movie Hogun in Thor) in tow and I’m not event certain why. But you can tell Lord Kira is evil because he smirks a lot and appears to be a patron at the same clothing store that supplies all villains of sentai shows with clothing made out of slightly cheap-looking metallic fabrics. And he has a woman with him who has messy hair and wears a shiny green kimono-ish but not really thing and DUDE LOOK AT HER EYES. NO REALLY. LOOK AGAIN. REPEATEDLY. CONSTANTLY.

This woman is the fox in human form, and she’s a witch. She’s also played by Kikuchi Rinko, doing her best Helena Bonham Carter impression. Her witch powers include:

  • Crazy, prehensile CGI hair
  • Turning into a piece of fabric and flying around the room like a demented magical carpet (but okay, this one looks pretty cool)
  • Being unable to stand up without exposing at least one of her legs up to nearly the hip because SHE IS A WITCH AND THEREFORE SEXY SEXY.
  • Making even the act of saying hello seem like a bad touch is about to happen
  • Turning into a really terribly animated albino dragony thing at the end and getting stabbed by magical Keanu Reeves.

Apparently Lord Kira is at Lord Asano’s house because there’s going to be some kind of samurai combat contest thing. And he has a magical giant suit of armor with a huge sword that he pits against Lord Asano’s champion. Only the witch does something to Asano’s champion so instead Kai steps in and just embarrasses everyone by losing (despite being taught by the Tengu to KILL ALL THE THINGS) and not being a samurai, so he gets the crap beaten out of him.

So then the witch and Kira use a magical spider that poops purple hallucinogenic fluid to make Lord Asano hallucinate and attack Kira. This is a massive no-no, so the Shogun orders Asano to commit seppuku. And once that’s happened, declares all his samurai ronin and decides that Mika, Asano’s daughter, will marry Kira. Mika is TOTALLY IN LOVE with Kai, though, because of course she is, and she has a thing about wearing coats with weird collars over her kimono and I don’t think they dressed like that back then.

Mika gets hauled off to live with the guy who effectively murdered her dad, which could potentially be some interesting character development for her, but instead we just know she’s having a bad time because Kira’s servants make her wear heavy eye makeup and blue-tinted fake eyelashes. Oishi (who was Asano’s chief samurai but enough about him let’s talk about Kai some more!) gets thrown in a hole for a year and then…dragged out. Because reasons.

After being released from the pit and no doubt smelling terrible, Oishi stops at home just long enough to get his son Chikara and have a beautifully understated and tender scene with his wife, then ride off to go get Kai. Because we can’t do this without Kai. Obviously. He hasn’t been in the movie nearly enough. Kai has been sold into slavery on Dejima because reasons. As Oishi arrives at Dejima, he runs across that dude you saw in the previews, you know the one with the whole body tattoos that makes him look like a skeleton, and asks for directions. Well, take a nice long look, because this thirty seconds is the ONLY time you will see that guy, despite the fact that he appears in the trailer and on the fucking poster.

I think Kai is supposed to be somewhat mad, indicated by Keanu Reeves staring at Oishi a little more vacantly than normal. Oishi manages to snap him out of it and then they run away together, cunningly using the fact that apparently oil lanterns are like poor man’s plastique.

And then all the ronin meet up! Yay! Except they don’t have enough swords! Boo! Oishi leads his men to a village of sword smiths so they can get some there, but Kira’s men have inexplicably taken over the village and we learn Kira’s evil plot is to take over Japan…somehow. Kai kills the shit out of everyone to impress the other ronin, and then takes them to the forest of Tengu, because if there’s one thing we all know Tengu have, it’s swords. (…actually no.) Oishi gets tested by the Tengu, where they show him some illusions of his men getting killed to try to force him to draw his sword, but he refuses. Kai shows off he has magical Tengu powers, I’m sure this won’t come up later at all.

Then there are swords! Yay! All the ronin gather again, accompanied by music that is pure desperation given audible form. They decide to try to kill Lord Kira when he goes to his ancestor’s shrine, but it turns out it’s a trap. The witch sets everything on fire and flashes some leg, and the lovable fat ronin gets shot full of arrows, after which he shares a scene brimming with manpain with Kai and Oishi and then expires.

The ronin decide they’re not going to give up. They write down their grievances and all sign their names and add a drop of blood. Including Kai, who is now apparently a ronin because one of the guys who was a dick to him at the beginning of the movie has given him a second sword to carry, and samurai all carry two swords and aggggggh. But anyway, they find a troupe of actors who have been hired to play at the wedding Kira will have with Mika’s fake eyelashes, and since everyone in the world thinks Kira is a dick even though as far as I could tell he hasn’t done anything but secretly betray Asano and make some really questionable fashion choices, they agree to help the ronin sneak in to his castle.

The battle scene is actually pretty cool, I’ll give them that. Up until the witch turns into a dragon thing that Kai has to kill using his super special magical Tengu powers so he can save Mika. Oishi kills the shit out of Kira, which was a relief to me because at this point I’d half expected Kai to show up out of nowhere and save him and do the deed the way they’d been playing him up as the most important character ever, no really. But no, Oishi cuts off Kira’s head and all of Kira’s samurai simultaneously shit in their hakama.

The ronin go back home with Kira’s head in a bag. The Shogun is annoyed with them, but lets them all commit seppuku instead of hanging them like commoners. Which they do. And just to remind us what the most important bit of the movie is, all of the close-ups and focus is pretty much on Kai and Mika, because fuck the ronin, we’ve got a love story with the unnecessarily added character.

And done.

So, I kind of figured the movie would be bad, but I decided to see it anyway because I thought it would be super pretty and bad. Well, it was super pretty, but the pretty did not outweigh the badness. It was the little things, like the awkwardness of some of the English lines when contrasted with the fluidity of hearing the Japanese actors speak names. The editing was even. There were a lot of little scenes that felt random, like they didn’t fit a narrative that seemed cobbled together. (And why did so many of the night close-up shots look so dang grainy?) The scenery was beautiful but the CGI monsters were distracting and looked mostly terrible.

But it was really the huge things, like the way Oishi again and again got shoved out of the spotlight that really should have been his so we could have even more emphasis on the barfalicious love story between Mika and the character who was added to the story because maybe Hollywood thought audiences couldn’t handle a 47 Ronin movie if all the ronin were actually Japanese. It was the way the final scenes of the movie were stolen from the titular ronin, making it about Mika and Kai’s vow to find each other in the next life instead of the incredible determination and sacrifice of the ronin and their deaths.

That made me so. Angry.

Why. Why, 47 Ronin. All you had to do was suck just a little less and I would have come away not feeling like I’d been robbed of two hours of my life and ten bucks of my money. Had it not been for Kai, this movie could have safely joined Onmyoji in the “campy historical fantasy film” box in my brain. But no. You just had to give us another shot of Mika and Kai staring at each other while the soundtrack tearfully begged us on its knees to care.

ETA: Well, this explains why the thing felt so disjointed. Even a lot of the dialog.

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[Movie] Blackfish

Some nebulous time when I was in grade school, my family went for a roadtrip vacation in South Dakota. We did that sort of thing, just driving to the other nearby square or nearly square states, because we most definitely did not have the money to fly anywhere, let alone places that involved Disneyland and Sea World.

On this vacation to South Dakota, I remember going to see a dolphin show. Yes, in South Dakota. I think it was at the Marine Life Center in Rapid City, which no longer exists–but don’t quote me. Like a lot of little girls my age, to go with my strange horse obsession (I grew up in the suburbs, for goodness sake) I had a dolphin and whale obsession. Big, cool mammal obsession, I guess. But the idea of getting to see real live dolphins was compelling. I’d been reading about them in various middle-grade books (like this one) where you came out feeling like dolphins were similar to dogs in how much they just love humans to bits.

The dolphins in South Dakota jumped and dove in the pool like you’d expect, but in my memory it was all very… gray. I remember the facility better than I remember the actual dolphins now. The pool was concrete, surrounded by metal bleachers, and I can only recall it being my family there and a group of Mennonites watching the show. (I remember them because all the women were bonnets and long, very old fashioned dresses.) Everything felt very strange, dingy and run-down. It wasn’t like the advertisements for Sea World, where everything is clean and technicolor. It felt like an old high school gymnasium, complete with funky smell.

I don’t think I can honestly tell you what my reactions were, that day. Looking back on the memories now, it all makes me intensely uncomfortable. But I don’t know if assigning that kind of discomfort to my grade-school self would be rewriting history and giving me an awareness I didn’t have at the time. Maybe I was just excited about seeing Real Live Dolphins(TM) and let that kind of overtake the creepy gas station bathroom feeling that I get from these memories now.

But I can tell you, from more than twenty years in the future, I know there was something deeply wrong about it.

Blackfish made me think about that that trip to South Dakota. I put off watching this documentary for a long time, to be honest, because I knew it would wreck me, and it did. It’s something everyone should watch, and then think, really think about the ethics of using wild animals for our own entertainment–let alone wild animals who are so plainly intelligent.

The framework of Blackfish is an incident in which Tilikum (the largest killer whale in captivity) deliberately killed his trainer, Dawn Brancheau. The documentary builds a compelling case that neither Dawn nor Tilikum (who had probably already killed two other humans before her) was to blame, but rather the conditions in which the killer whales were kept.

The documentary tries to take care to not anthropomorphize the animals. But it’s not a stretch to understand that in general, captivity in a small space with absolutely no entertainment isn’t healthy for any living thing. It’s not a stretch to realize that any living thing that has family groups will have problems when those family groups are artificially disrupted. There are parts in the documentary that are existentially horrifying, and other parts that are simply heartbreaking, such as when a female orca has her calf taken away and keeps trying to locate her.

And for what purpose? Entertainment. Money.

This is the sort of documentary that makes you feel horrible for being a human being. And it’s well-earned, in this case.

I’ve never been to Sea World. It’s safe to say that I never will go to Sea World. I’ve also never been to any circus that uses animals, and that won’t ever change either. I still think of watching the dolphins in South Dakota, and I’d like to believe that even then I knew there was something fundamentally wrong with marine mammals surrounded by land, jumping through hoops for our supposed entertainment.

It’s a shameful memory, and I never want to forget it.

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[Movie] The Hobbit 2: The Desolation of Smaug

I’ll admit it right up front: the only reason I went to see The Hobbit 2: The Desolation of Smaug opening weekend in the theaters was so I could hurry up and say snippy things about it. I wanted to get my snark on before it got tainted by everyone else’s. And obviously, we already know I did not take it at all seriously.

Which is okay, because I think maybe it didn’t want to be taken seriously? I’m not sure. And that’s part of the problem.

First, let me note that I have very purposefully not reread The Hobbit since I heard the movies were being made. I want to address these on their own merit. (At one point, I used to believe movies should be faithful to books. I don’t any longer.)

And then spoilers:

Continue reading “[Movie] The Hobbit 2: The Desolation of Smaug”
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[Movie] Frozen, I feel guilty for not liking you more

So…Frozen.

Full disclosure: I’m one of only a handful of human beings who hasn’t seen Rapunzel sorry I mean Tangled haha that’s right these movies totally aren’t about women. At all. Anyway, I haven’t seen that movie. I keep meaning to, and then don’t get around to it.

I’m honestly not sure if Frozen makes me want to give Tangled a chance or not. I have really, really mixed feelings about this movie.

So, spoilers coming if you care about those.

Continue reading “[Movie] Frozen, I feel guilty for not liking you more”
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[Movie] The Hobbit 2: Alternate Titles

Considering you don’t actually see the titular desolation until over halfway through the movie, I thought perhaps some alternate titles would be more appropriate. [Spoilers]

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[Movie] Catching Fire

This movie made me actually cry twice and tear up an additional four times. What even gave you the right, Catching Fire? You’re supposed to be a big-budget sci-fi action movie. What’s with this actual heart-punching emotion in the middle of all the wacky fashions and shouting and stabbing things?

Effie made me cry. Effie Fucking Trinkett made me weep a silent, manly fashion. (Those weren’t tears. It was just sweat from my heart.) I can only guess that Elizabeth Banks is actually some kind of goddess.

I really enjoyed the entire Hunger Games series as books. I read all three of them in four days because I refused to put them down. The first movie was… all right. I wasn’t quite so excited about it probably because I loved the books so much, but I liked it in the theater even if I never felt compelled to actually buy it on DVD. In the first movie, the only scene that actively destroyed me was Rue’s death, and I’d gone in expecting it. (Though I should have known, you can never be prepared enough for that.)

I really feel like Catching Fire took everything that was good about the first movie and turned it up to eleven. There was just so much more emotion in it, loss and rage and helplessness. And the acting was all around so excellent that scenes didn’t so much tug at your heartstrings as wrap them up in a fist and just rip them right out of your chest.

All the major action points out of the book were there, but I never once hit a point where I felt like the action was going on too long, or like we were getting some big cgi production piece in place of actual character development. It’s incredibly unusual for me to feel that way about big budget movies these days. (I’m looking at you, The Hobbit.) I felt like there was a lot less shaky cam in this movie than in the previous one, and that it was better used as a way to make the action feel very immediate. Considering the movie was well over two house and didn’t feel nearly that long, they kept it cranking along.

There was a lot to put in the movie because there’s a lot of character development and emotional meat, and there’s no skimping on that. I think that’s why there’s so much emotional impact–the movie gives you a chance to get to know everyone, and their conflicts. You get to know that Katniss is not some kind of superhero, but rather a terrified, angry girl who is being pulled in far too many directions at once. The ways she’s being manipulated by nearly every person around her are very clear…as are the multitude of different ways she loves the people in her life. I’m so glad we got that instead of an extra ten minutes of CGI monkeys chasing very fit people in spandex body suits.

Oh, and Jennifer Lawrence? Still the most perfect. I adore her.

And I just want to say that while the guys all did an excellent job, to me the people who really stood out were the women. Jennifer Lawrence, Elizabeth Banks, and Jena Malone (Johanna) were all powerful. And Lynn Cohen as Mags, who did everything without even being able to speak, won the whole movie as far as I’m concerned.

So yes. I liked it. I’d recommend it. However, if you haven’t seen the first movie or read the book, you’re really going to need to do that beforehand. Catching Fire wastes no time at all on retreading the background story. And I’m glad for that.

Looking forward to being utterly destroyed by Mockingjay.

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[Movie] Lady Eve

As a happy birthday to myself, I decided to go see The Lady Eve at the Alamo Drafthouse, since it was one of their special offerings for badass ladies month. The Lady Eve was filmed in 1941, so I wouldn’t blame you if you’ve never heard of it. I certainly hadn’t, until I watched the trailer at the Drafthouse before Thor 2.

“I need him like the axe needs the turkey.”

And that was the reason I decided I had to see the movie. Just for that line alone, which was spoken by Barbara Stanwyck in an utterly predatory tone.

The Lady Eve is a romantic comedy, of sorts. I’m honestly not that big into romantic comedies, because any more they fall into the formula of a man-child causing a woman to give up her independence to become the stand-in for his mom while hijinks ensue. The Lady Eve is definitely not of that mold. Jean Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck) is a con artist who manages to utterly wreck the same man twice while he looks on in deer-in-the-headlights befuddlement.

And this movie is hilarious, with a distinct lack of the scatological humor that bores me half to death in a lot of new comedy movies. This one gets its humor from taking romance tropes and turning them on their ear. There is a marriage proposal scene that could have come out of any cheeseball romance where Jean and Charles are cuddling on a hill at sunset, and the entire time Charles is trying to make a romantic speech, a curious but insistent horse is trying to eat his hair. It’s wonderful.

I think the best part of The Lady Eve (other than that it almost caused me to pee myself laughing) is that Jean is the driving force behind the movie. She’s the one in charge. And even if the trope is that she’s the con artist that made the mistake of falling in love with her mark, she is still in control of the situation. It’s a wonderful inversion of gender roles that just filled me with glee.

Even better? If you want to see it, it’s on Netflix instant. And trust me, you want to see it.

(Also, it will forever be my headcanon that “Colonel” Harrington and Gerald are Jean’s gay dads. GO AHEAD, TELL ME I’M WRONG.)

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[Movie] 12 Years a Slave

12 Years a Slave is an absolutely brutal movie. It gives the audience no breathing room and no escape from the horrors of slavery on full display; not just violence, but the twisting of relationships, the abuse of power, the dehumanization. Director Steve McQueen is fond of letting scenes run long, far longer than where you’d expect there to be a cut to spare us some stomach-clenching cringing.

Which is at it should be, considering the absolute injustice and horror of what is often termed “America’s original sin.”

That phrase sprang to mind often as I watched the movie, because the other word I’d use to describe it is beautiful. Steve McQueen lets the landscape of the south speak volumes in long shots of moving water, reeds, or trees covered in spanish moss. It’s this last that makes the beauty feel distinctly sepulchral. The landscape is haunted.

The horror of 12 Years a Slave is in what humans do to each other, in the evil lies of justification they tell themselves, and what was pitilessly done to an entire people. The story of the film is built on betrayal after betrayal, from the foundation up when Solomon (Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is utterly perfect) is tricked to coming to Washington, DC in order to be drugged and sold into slavery in sight of the US capitol. Near the beginning, a plantation owner’s wife says to an enslaved woman who has just had her family broken up, “Something to eat and some rest, your children will soon be forgotten.” Even that is a casual, terrible brutality.

Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack was good–as usual, come on, it’s Hans Zimmer–but far more striking were the silences in the movie, where there’s nothing but the sound of insects, of wind, of people crying out. In one scene, Solomon is hanged from a tree with his feet just barely touching the ground so he can just manage to breathe. And he’s left there for nearly the whole day in a long, endless scene that made me want to beg for mercy so I could look away. There is no dialog in that scene, no music, nothing but the sound of the rope creaking, Solomon gasping for breath, the soft sound of his feet digging at the ground as he fights to stay upright and alive. These silences, too, are absolutely brutal.

But 12 Years a Slave is also about survival in the face of these horrors, about one man fighting against despair for twelve years. Early on, Solomon says he doesn’t want to survive–he wants to live. And later: “You let yourself be overcome by sorrow, you will drown in it.” That he maintains some sense of hope as he is repeatedly betrayed and brutalized is the truest beauty of the film.

This is a movie filled with more truth than is easy to stomach. More truth than I could handle without crying, that’s for certain. But I think that’s what makes it important.