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[Movie] Man of Tai Chi

So, this movie has a lot of major assumptions to swallow. The most difficult of which is probably Keanu Reeves being an evil martial arts badass that makes people fight to the death for the entertainment of his patrons. And that he lives in an evil Batcave.

Yeah.

No one in this movie seems to believe tai chi is capable of being awesome. Even in a martial arts tournament. I can only assume that none of these characters has ever watched an actual kung fu movie. Tai chi masters are always the biggest badasses to ever badass in those things.

Other than that, it’s a very standard boy learns tai chi, boy doesn’t listen to his master, boy betrays his master and then learns the awesome tai chi technique where you punch someone with your chi and make them vomit blood and thus suddenly knows the True Meaning Of Tai Chi. Only this involved Keanu Reeves looking like he wanted to rob a bank.

I thought the tai chi looked pretty awesome. Mike didn’t complain, though Mike is currently also very sick so he might not have had the strength. There was a sort of meaningless subplot where the police tried to hunt down the underground fighting ring, and it was all really a framework upon which to hang fight after fight.

The fights were… all right. Not bad. Not really good enough to distract me too long from tumblr. But it was nice to see a movie where tai chi was the focus and you could actually see it in action beyond moving very, very slowly. I don’t know if it was $8 worth of nice from On Demand, though.

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movie tom hiddleston

[Movie] Thor: The Dark World

[Seven pages of frantic key smashing later…]

I will keep myself pretty spoiler free for now. There is SO MUCH MORE I want to say, but I need to think, and not have two extremely generous beers flowing through my bloodstream, and see this movie a few more times before I can reach Pacific Rim levels of nerdly overthinking.

As usual for these kinds of movies, there is a MacGuffin. And it’s a silly MacGuffin, though not quite to the level of red matter thank goodness. But the McGuffin really doesn’t matter in the slightest. What matters is that this movie is having fun. And you get to have fun with it. The Dark World filled me with Nutella-flavored glee.

And it’s pretty. Oh gosh is it pretty. And so much snark. So, so much snark. This is the movie I wanted in every way.

I’d actually started getting worried that it would be a bit too much Loki (yes, I do believe there is such a thing despite the fact that he’s my favorite You Little Shit of a character ever) just considering the released footage and the fact that you literally cannot turn around without seeing Tom Hiddleston promoting the movie, to the point that it would almost be a bit creepy if he weren’t an adorable life model decoy made out of sunshine, curly blond hair, and swan-murder. But no. The amount of Loki is perfect and viciously jocund.

And Jane is most excellent. Have I mentioned I like Jane? Because science. This movie finally made me buy Thor/Jane, which I appreciate after being left in such a state of Meh after the first movie. Jane got to be the smart, strong in her own way character I always wanted her to be.

Really, I don’t have a lot of complaints other than I would have always loved more. At least we got a bit of time with all of the side characters. (Darcy-senpai!) They did the best they could cramming that much awesome into 112 minutes. The movie definitely didn’t feel that long, which is always a very good sign. The only reason I knew time was passing as such were the increasingly plaintive signals of distress coming from my bladder. (I did mention the two generous beers thing, yes?) And it had a bonus unexpected mini-heist movie right in the middle because why the hell not. Really, I’d love to see a bit more genre play like that, it was fun.

And there are some excellent cameos that made me repeatedly slap my housemate’s leg but it’s okay she still likes me anyway. If you liked the first Thor, I have little doubt you’ll like this one even more. Because this movie is honestly more fun, and determined in that special way Marvel movies have mastered to be a motherfucking comic book movie, exuberant and larger than life and unabashedly cheesey.

Stay all the way to the end of the credits. All the way. There are two extra scenes. (Marvel, this is getting a bit silly, when will it end?)

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movie shakespeare

Muse of Fire (Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the Bard)

Thanks to the wonders of magical, lying VPN services, I got to sneak in a watch of Muse of Fire [Warning, video begins to automatically play on the site, SHAME ON YOU DAN AND GILES.] on the BBC iPlayer. I really wanted to watch this slim little documentary because I was in on interviewing Dan Poole for The Reel Britain and it sounded like great fun. And also, I’m a giant Shakespeare nerd, for all that my Shakespeare nerd cred is often called into question because I cannot memorize for shit.

The documentary is excellent. It’s very personal, since it’s all about following Dan and Giles on their journey, and it’s done with a lot of love and humor. Hopefully it’ll be available to American audiences who don’t want to engage in internet cheating relatively soon. And the interviews they got–aaaa! Dame Judi Dench! (I got to shake Dan’s hand, so does that mean I’m now one degree separated from Judi Dench oh my god I’m hyperventilating.) The topic is framed as Dan and Giles getting over their own fear of Shakespeare, so it goes to why people find his work so intimidating and how it can be made more accessible.

Anyway, good documentary, watch it when you can, Dan and Giles are both adorable and adorkable and they put the film together in a very fun way.

One point they bring up is often, how someone first comes to Shakespeare is really what colors their feelings for the rest of their life. (Though when you put it like that, it sounds like when people talk about how they came to Jesus, and it becomes quite evangelical.) I’ve always been bothered by how Shakespeare is presented as so intimidating and impenetrable, because I never really found him to be so… but I also got into Shakespeare entirely because of Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 Henry V movie. He got me when I was young.

Which was for the best, come to think of it. When we hit Shakespeare in school, the first (and sometimes only) play that seems to get done is Romeo and Juliet. I don’t know why. Maybe teenagers are supposed to identify with the characters more, since they’re teens as well, but ugh. I just thought they were very stupid, to be honest. (I can appreciate the play more now, but as a bitter and angry teenager, not so much.) I think if that had been my first exposure to Shakespeare, I wouldn’t like him nearly so much now.

But instead, thanks to Branagh’s Henry, I’m stuck on Shakespeare. I was even excited to take a Shakespeare for Non-Majors class as an undergrad, despite the fact that it was an 8am class (yes, those are things that exist and proof that we live in a godless universe of pain) and the teacher constantly used the word problematize. I read and re-read plays all the time now, though the funny thing is, I still have difficulties with Shakespeare when I’m just reading it to myself.

Which is why I read it out loud to my cats. Shut up, that’s totally normal. I’m teaching the furry little bastards to love Shakespeare too.

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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.

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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.)

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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.)

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movie WHY

[Movie] Filth (for real this time)

Now that I’ve had a twenty-four hour recovery period, I’m going to try to have a coherent reaction to this film. I really am. So here goes.

Filth emotionally violated me.

I think that just about covers it.

Okay, maybe a few more details.

It’s a dark, horrible, filthy movie. The title has it right. And it’s hilarious in a dark, horrible, filthy way. I laughed, a lot, and then felt like a terrible person for laughing, so I laughed some more. And then it becomes utterly heartbreaking, but you don’t want to let it break your heart because the main character is such a hideous excuse for a human being, so the you feel bad, yet somehow awful for feeling at all bad. It’s a masterwork of utter, fucked up discomfort.

James McAvoy gets so much credit here as the greasy-haired, nearly psychopathic main character, Bruce. Bruce is an awful, awful person. There is no excuse at all for his existence, or for what he does. I think even the most hard core of villain defenders (daddy didn’t love him enough! he had a terrible childhood!) would be hard-pressed to justify Bruce. Yet there is such a deep, raw core of pain to him that you can’t help but empathize with him when he breaks down just because McAvoy is so damn good. (And of course later, you can ask yourself just how many of Bruce’s actions were really under his rational control, though I think the end number would still be utterly inexcusable.)

Add to that the visual effects, flashes of Bruce’s insanity and just the way the movie is cut makes it surreal, disturbing, and vertiginous. Which is to say it’s a stunningly well-filmed and well-done movie but WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK, JON S BAIRD.

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movie WHY

[Movie] Filth

WHY.

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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)”
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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.