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movie review shakespeare tom hiddleston

The Hollow Crown 4: Henry V

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start.

This. The Saturday I’ve been waiting for! Favorite play ever, favorite actor ever, go!

Rather than start this review with seven pages of frantic keysmashing, allow me to just say: Fuck yeah. With bells on.

There was everything to love about the performances turned in for this version of Henry V. Tom Hiddleston was superb. I’ve already gushed and gushed about him as Hal in Henry IV part 1 and part 2. At this point all I can really add is chocolate sprinkles delivered by a magical sparkling unicorn of pure badassery. Which is to say I thought he made a darn good Henry V.

What I noticed most about this Henry V was a pronounced somberness. Hiddleston shows clearly that Henry feels the weight of all his decisions. At the same time, there were lovely moments of supreme temper (such as in Act I scene 2 when he receives the Dauphin’s mocking present) and at the end of the battle of Agincourt with the enraged delivery of:

I was not angry since I came to France
Until this instant.

And then there was the end of the siege of Harfleur:

What is’t to me, when you yourselves are the cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?

That is one scary as hell speech, and Hiddleston delivers it with terrifying implacability. (And achieves a wonderfully disbelieving look from Anton Lesser’s Exeter, but more on that later.) I also was pleased that he still preserved the hints of playfulness that live on in the more responsible Henry. When he confronts the soldier who picked a fight with him when he was in disguise, and later tries to woo Katharine, we’re reminded that there’s much more to Henry than a stern and bloody soldier.

There’s just so much complexity to the character, so many tones and notes, and it was all there. Of course, I can’t go on without mentioning the two greatest speeches. I actually watched the “Once more unto the breach” speech three times, since the first time the delivery was so different from what I’d been expecting that   I needed another view. The tone was much less bombastic than what I’m used to seeing, which I think is ultimately for the good. It suited Hiddleston’s take on Henry well.

And the Saint Crispin’s day speech. My god. Tears. Perfect.

What really sold Henry’s more scary moments was actually the presence of Anton Lesser as the Duke of Exeter. His reaction to Henry at Harfleur, his confidence in his king, his shock when Henry orders the prisoners to be killed at Agincourt all add up to show even the court didn’t quite understand what they’d get by awakening Henry’s “sleeping sword of war.”

I honestly didn’t feel all that enthused about Lesser as Exeter in Act I scene 2, but by the time we get to Act II scene 4, I was sold:

Dispatch us with all speed, lest that our king
Come here himself to question our delay…

At which point I realized that Exeter is a soft-spoken, fearless badass. I was rather amused in Agincourt as well, when he’s speaking with Henry on the battlefield. Everyone is just coated in blood and mud, and Exeter is clean except for some splashes around his hem. Because he is just too much of a badass for dirt.

Paterson Joesph did very well as the Duke of York, and I was extremely charmed by Melanie Thierry as Katharine. Really, I liked the whole cast, but those are the ones that really stood out to me.

Also, while there was a bit of shaky cam in the battle, I have no objections to it this time. It didn’t make me feel motion sick, and I could actually tell what was going on. I was surprised that there were bits of the battle in slow-motion as well. Overall, I thought it was all right, particularly for a BBC production. Tom Hiddleston, Paterson Joseph, and Owen Teale (hope I’m spelling that right, the credits were kind of blurry) as Captain Fluellen were the ones that really did the heavy lifting on the battle. They all had some serious crazy eyes going.

The acting was good. That’s going to guarantee I’ll be regularly re-watching this when I need a Henry V fix. Some things, I didn’t like so much. The score, for one. I found it intrusive in Henry IV part 2 and even moreso here.

I’m also fairly stunned by just how much they cut from the play. Obviously, this was for time constraints, but it was jarring nonetheless. I actually watched the movie with my pocket Henry V in hand so I could follow along, because I’m just that kind of nerd. It meant that I felt like I was tripping over a rock when something was missing.

Several characters didn’t even make it in, notably Gower, and Henry’s two brothers, Gloucester and Bedford. Which seemed particularly strange to me, since they were present in the two parts of Henry IV. I guess this time around they had something better to do than go murder the shit out of the French with their big brother. Or maybe they just got stuck in the pre-Olympic traffic in London. We’ll never know.

With the loss of Gower as a character, that meant we lost most of the character development scenes with Fluellen, which I think are a shame since Fluellen’s quite fun, and he has an excellent enmity with Pistol that doesn’t get nearly as much play because of the deleted scenes. Act II scene 2, where the traitors are revealed and taken away was eliminated.

Now, I can understand doing away with it for time constraints, but it’s a really good scene for Henry:

The mercy that was quick in us but late,
By your own counsel is suppress’d and kill’d:
You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy…

If nothing else, it’s another big point in his development as being so merciless as we see him later.

Also missing is Act V scene 1, where we find out the sad fate of Pistol (his friends are dead, his wife is dead, he’s going back to England to be a thief). While again this isn’t important to Henry, sine we’ve had Pistol throughout the play it does bother me that he’s just left without any kind of conclusion.

Act III scene 7 is also mostly absent, which I was disappointed by. It’s the French camp scene, which always seemed to me to be important setup for the battle at Agincourt – it shows how overconfident the French were, how outgunned the underdog English seemed. That also takes a lot of development away from the French characters, since they really only have a couple of scenes, so seeing them die in the battle later has a lot less impact I think.

I’m also puzzled about the choice to leave out the bit where the French kill all the boys at the English camp and set fire to the baggage. While Henry does order the English to kill their prisoners before that, it’s actually the catalyst for him screaming about how utterly enraged he is. (“I was not angry since I came to France…”) This has the effect of making what was previously Henry’s reiteration to kill the prisoners seem much less justified. So I suppose if the point was to remind us that the man is absolutely brutal when he feels he needs to be, it does do that.

Anyway. I wonder if those scenes are gone entirely, or if maybe some might have been filmed and we’ll get to see them when there’s not the time constraints of television. I guess we’ll find out.

And of course, the inevitable comparison to Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 Henry V. That movie was my first love, so to speak, so it’s not really fair to compare the two. I’ll be watching both movies when I want a Henry fix. I hope they can manage to take turns and not fight, because I do love them both and they have very different qualities.

But I will tell you this. Man, I miss Patrick Doyle’s score for the movie. (And sorry, John Hurt. Derek Jacobi wins. He will always be Chorus in my heart.)

If you want to watch this wonderful Henry V, here’s a recorded livestream, which has something like 10 minutes of sports in front of it. Also a direct download. And you can still watch it on the BBC iPlayer if you get Expat Shield, which is how I did it. (I actually started watching an hour late – shame on me! – because I was out carb loading for tomorrow at a Chinese Buffet.)

As of this writing, by the way, Branagh’s Henry V is available on instant play for Netflix. If you haven’t gotten to watch it, you should. It’s 23 years old but still fantastic.

Henry V is probably the most straightforward of the history plays (less politics, really, more Henry being a shiny badass on a horse) but if you had trouble following it here’s a quick synopsis.

The Hollow Crown blogging:
Richard II
Henry IV part 1
Henry IV part 2
Henry V

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movie review shakespeare tom hiddleston

The Hollow Crown 3: Henry IV Part 2

Finally got to watch this, and not a moment to soon! Darn field work for standing between me and Shakespeare anyway. It’s okay, baby, I’m here for you now. I’ll never let them tear us apart again.

Henry IV Part 2 starts off with scene 1 and 2 being intercut again, as it was in Part 1. This, I like less than I did. It made more sense in Part 1 so we could understand a bit better why Henry IV is having such problems with his son. In this, it’s making Falstaff being, well, Falstaff with what is the setup for the political conflict for this play, and it seems really unnecessary. They also trimmed a bit off the start of scene 1, including the opening monologue of Rumor. Which is a nice speech that’s fun to read aloud, but its loss doesn’t bother me so much, particularly since we only see Rumor once. (It did give me a moment of concern about Chorus in Henry V, but considering John Hurt is on the cast list in that role, I think we’re safe.)

Anyway, little tweaks (and they did exist here and there, probably many more than I realized since I don’t know this play nearly as well as Henry V) like this are normally necessary. I just mentioned the first one because it struck me rather wrongly.

And while I sound like I’m complaining, the only other potential complaint I’ve got is that for some reason the score felt very intrusive in this one, far more than in the previous two plays. I already felt incredibly moved by  Hal’s final scene with his father; I didn’t need all the strings to tell me I ought to be. The music for the coronation scene also made me cringe slightly; I half expected the classic record scratch news when Falstaff breaks through the crowd and stops Hal. Oof.

But other than those minor quibbles? Perfect, perfect, perfect.

While I already gushed about Jeremy Irons and Tom Hiddleston in Part 1, this performance requires even more glee and sparkles. Jeremy Irons was incredible. There is so much pain and marrow in that performance: all the guilt that Henry feels about his acquisition of the crown, all his conflicts with his son, the weight of the crown bearing down on him, his palpable worries that his death might hand the throne to someone who will never be ready for it. The last moment when he reconciles with his son was beyond beautiful.

And of course, his entire monologue:

…Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

The delivery was wonderful. Though there was part of me that found it disturbingly cute to see Henry wandering around in his pajamas.

I feel as if Tom Hiddleston’s performance in Part 1 was really just the teaser for this. Hal lets go of his wild days and finally grows up, when it’s almost too late. It comes back to act iv scene 4, when Henry IV is on his death bed. Hiddleston does an amazing job of taking us through Hal’s grief. It’s that realization that’s unfortunately common to so many of us, that we spurned and insufficiently loved those closest and dearest to us because we thought they would always be there tomorrow.

…And dead almost, my liege, to think you were,
I spake unto this crown as having sense,
And thus upbraided it: ‘The care on thee depending
Hath fed upon the body of my father;
Therefore, thou best of gold art worst of gold:
Other, less fine in carat, is more precious,
Preserving life in medicine potable;
But thou, most fine, most honour’d: most renown’d,
Hast eat thy bearer up.’

The words are powerful enough on their own. The delivery killed. I cried. Not ashamed to admit it in the slightest.

Though if I thought that was the best, then there was the final scene, where the newly crowned King Henry V officially turns his back on Falstaff and the life he once knew. I always thought, “I know thee not, old man,” would be the most powerful line. But in this rendition, I found:

I have long dream’d of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell’d, so old and so profane;
But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.

Ouch, ouch, ouch. The more subtle expressions from Hiddleston (showing this isn’t all that easy for Henry) and the stunned disbelief from Simon Russell Beale as Falstaff just sells this. Of course, a lot of the play focuses on Falstaff being old and his impending death – paralleling the mortality of Henry IV, the father that Hal ultimately chooses. Falstaff and Hal are only in two scenes together; I think even in the first one, there’s a sense of Hal already distancing himself from Falstaff, continuing the process that started in the previous play.

Beale makes Falstaff complex through the end. I was never quite certain if the majority of Falstaff’s upset at the end was because he lost someone he actually cared about, or if he saw his long-cultivated meal ticket walk away without so much as a backward glance. That I’m still not sure reflects incredibly well on the performance, I think.

Also, a shout-out to Alun Armstrong as Northumberland. While the political setting of the play is very much overshadowed by the family drama aspect of it, he turned in a good performance at the grieving father of Henry Percy.

This was excellent, and I recommend it heartily, though you should watch Part 1 of the play first so you can get the full arc of Hal’s character development. It’s definitely worth the time investment.

I watched this and Part 1 on the BBC2 iPlayer with the use of a little program called Expat Shield. If you don’t want to go that route, there’s the whole episode on youtube as of this writing. There’s also an upload of Part 1 on  youtube, but it’s cut into 15 minute sections. You can watch it via playlist here.

Henry V tomorrow. My favorite Shakespeare play ever. I can’t even. I can’t begin to say how excited I am.

…yeah, something like that.

The Hollow Crown blogging:
Richard II
Henry IV part 1
Henry IV part 2
Henry V

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movie review

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

I’ve owned the soundtrack for this movie since it came out, actually, and I never bothered to watch the movie itself. I actually liked the first Transformers movie all right, in that sort of well it’s got explosions and giant robots and it makes okay background noise kind of way. Revenge of the Fallen left me in an underwhelmed place of slow-motion explosions that I didn’t manage to return to again until I had the misfortune of watching Ghost Rider 2.

Though as an aside, I’d still rather watch Nic Cage chew the scenery any day than Shia LeBouf whine.

The thing is, I actually really like the soundtracks for these movies. They make excellent writing music even if the movies themselves make me hope for a nuclear winter. What I’d like to know is how did movies this incoherent manage to have such nice music?

It’s a zen riddle.

I decided to watch Dark of the Moon tonight, just because why not, I had some braincells to kill.

Well. It sure was a thing.

I wish I could write a mocking examination of the reality-bending badness of this movie, the way io9 did back when it came out. But I’ve been working 10+ hour days all week and spending most of my time having my neurons slowly drilled into submission by Microsoft Powerpoint. I just don’t have it in me.

I am as incoherent as Dark of the Moon.

The movie can’t decide if it’s a romantic comedy, a stupid buddy comedy, an action movie, or something else entirely and I don’t even care. I don’t know who Leonard Nimoy owed money to, but I can’t fathom why he got within a thousand miles of this pulsating mass of disagreeing plotlines. Shia LeBouf seems to be a three-year old trapped in a man’s body, vacillating between soulful eyes and quivering lower lip and incoherent tantrums of petulant rage. And how the hell could something make me miss Megan Fox? How is such a thing possible unless we truly do exist in a godless universe of pain?

I never thought a movie could make me long for the smooth and logical plotline of Ghost Rider 2, but Dark of the Moon managed it. It would be a better movie, and more coherent, if you just cut together all the scenes of the Transformers fighting and just enjoyed the pure, explosion-laden eye candy. It would also be shorter, which I consider a good thing, considering every scene involving the human characters is approximately seventeen years long.

The good news is, I will still be able to listen to the glorious soundtrack without having it ruined for me, because nothing in this movie made any kind of impact beyond a vague existential discomfort caused every time Shia LeBouf screamed like an eight-year-old girl.

Next time, self, remember that curiosity caused the cat to watch really terrible movies.

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movie review

Not So Amazing

To reward myself for surviving the never-ending defensive driving course from somewhere not nearly cool enough to be hell, I went to a movie. The only thing I felt motivated to see was The Amazing Spiderman.

My reaction was: …meh.

Yes, I know my nerd card deserves to be taken away. Try it, buddy. I know kung fu.

Part of the problem here is that I just wasn’t all that excited about it to begin with. Not because I have a problem with Spiderman as a character, but let’s be honest. The last of the Tobey Maguire Spider man movies was only five years ago. And maybe you’ve managed to forget the horror that was emo Peter Parker and the inexplicable dance scene, but it’s still pretty well seared into my brain. While I can normally get my juices going for a reboot (Batman Begins anyone?) I need a little more than five years.

Spiderman, how can we miss you if you never go away?

Honestly, I’m concerned that the cycle is ever-shortening between movie release and the following remake of the movie. We may be approaching some sort of remake critical gravitational collapse point, where the remake and movie it’s remaking are released simultaneously, signalling we’ve crossed a ghastly event horizon where Hollywood has just shrunk into a singularity clothed in nothing but special effects. Spaghettification and increasing popcorn prices will inevitably follow.

My enthusiasm level was admittedly pretty low going in. But I was prepared to be entertained, and I certainly was. Don’t get me wrong; I didn’t emerge from this movie bearing Prometheus-levels of steaming nerdrage. Rather, I left the theater with the only thought on my mind as, “Man, I could murder the shit out of a taco salad right about now.”

So that’s really to say, the movie didn’t make much of an impact on me.

It’s got good things going for it. Andrew Garfield is definitely a superior Spiderman compared to Tobey Maguire. The dialog for Spiderman was generally superior as well – finally, all the snark and sarcasm that the comics promised us for years! (Plus, the stunts were definitely better, and hey – electronic web shooters!)

I can’t say I’m impressed with Gwen Stacy as a character over Mary Jane Watson, not that this is necessarily Emma Stone’s fault. (And she had some good on-screen chemistry with Andrew Garfield so I bought their relationship no problem.) There are other problems I have with Gwen Stacy, but it’s all said much better here than I could, other to note that yeah, she did seem a little too perfect. Mary Jane definitely has a much richer internal life going in the first movie than poor Gwen Stacy did in this one.

I think part of the “meh” problem was have the Lizard as the villain. He wasn’t all that exciting, and Rhys Ifans tried his darndest, but he’s no Willem Dafoe. With an unexciting villain, the plot of the week “oh no the city is doomed” wasn’t anything to really write home about.

So it was a fun way to spend an evening, and I don’t regret what I paid for the ticket. But I’m not excited for a sequel the way I was with the original Spiderman, even if Tobey Maguire wasn’t really the ideal Peter Parker.

It’s not you, Amazing Spiderman, it’s me. You should have given me more time to get over the other guy first so I could have come at you with fresh eyes and renewed enthusiasm. Too late.

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movie review shakespeare tom hiddleston

The Hollow Crown 2: Henry IV Part 1

Henry IV part 1 today. Hilariously enough it was delayed by an hour because of Wimbledon. A tennis delay seems like something that would be so much more appropriate to Henry V…

…not that I’m in any way asking for a tennis delay by the time we get to that play. I might implode.

I don’t need to start here with a litany of complaints about the play like I did with Richard II. I loved both parts of Henry IV when I read them – and as with Shakespeare, I expected to like them even better with a proper performance. (Because let’s face it… these works were meant to be viewed, not just read like normal books. Quit torturing those kids in high school.)

Casting was perfect, just as it was for Richard II. Jeremy Irons as Henry IV! Incredible. (Does Jeremy Irons ever get to be king when he hasn’t deposed the rightful monarch first? Just asking.) The man can brood like a champion, and Henry does that a lot in this and the next play – because let’s be honest, he has a lot to brood over! His son is a smarmy, shameful party boy, he’s still torturing himself with guilt over what happened to Richard (as necessary as it was) and he’s dealing with open rebellion that’s only going to cost more lives. Jeremy Irons does a fantastic job of depicting the utter weight that constantly sits on Henry without making him morose.

The best of Irons (and it was all good, so the best was incredible) was when he was playing more as the father rather than the king. He radiates disappointment and despair that he’s ended up with a  poor excuse for a son like Hal instead of Hotspur, who really is depicted as the paragon of all noble qualities – it’s hard not to like him. (And Joe Armstrong does indeed make him both likable and still hotheaded.)

Of course, Irons wouldn’t be in such a good position to be a despairing father if Tom Hiddleston didn’t do such an incredible job playing Hal as an awful little prick. I utterly adore Tom Hiddleston, but by the time Henry actually slaps Hal across the face, I was about ready to cheer for it. Never has a slap been so richly deserved, and it was preceded by a wonderfully insolent look to boot. The beginning of Hal’s evolution from a waste of space to a great king gets a good start, and I can’t wait to see it continue in the next part.

Which then brings us to Simon Russell Beale as Falstaff, because what would Hal without an utterly awful (yet jolly and hilarious) human being to egg him on? Best Falstaff ever, in my opinion. His self-serving interest in Hal is made so clear, though I think there’s genuine affection there as well. The scene between Hal and Falstaff where they take turns pretending to be Henry IV was simultaneously hilarious and uncomfortable; incredibly well done.

Also, Tom Hiddleston’s Jeremy Irons impression made me snort beer through my nose. Damn you, Hiddleston.

A special shout out to the gentleman who played the Sheriff. I wish I knew his name, but it’s not currently listed on IMDB. When he comes to collect Hal from his den of iniquity, the Sheriff says:

Good night, my noble lord.

And never has the word noble been delivered with such pointed and censorious air quotes. It was lovely.

So the cast? Excellent. I expect to keep repeating this sentiment for the next two plays as well. (If nothing else, one more play with Jeremy Irons and two with Tom Hiddleston? I am a happy girl.)

This had the same quality on costuming and sets as Richard II to my untrained eye, and I have no complaints there. I wasn’t sure how I felt about scene 1 and 2 of Act 1 being intercut originally, but it grew on me. It did make sense to get people clued in to just who Hal was and why he was proving such a thorn in his father’s side.

Some of the other editing/filming decisions, I liked a little less. There were two major monologues that were delivered as voice overs. One was Hal’s Act 1 scene 2 closing speech:

I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness:
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world…

And the other was Falstaff’s Act 5 scene 1 closing speech:

‘Tis not due yet; I would be loath to pay him before
his day. What need I be so forward with him that
calls not on me? Well, ’tis no matter; honour pricks
me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I
come on? how then? Can honour set to a leg? no: or
an arm? no…

Both of these are incredibly important and I’m puzzled why they were delivered that way, particularly since it was basically just a voice over while the character in question just sort of… walked around and took in the scenery. There might have been a little showing in their expressions, but not nearly as much as we would have seen if they’d actually spoken the lines and played them out. It’s not as if there aren’t other times where someone talks to themselves for the benefit of the camera – Falstaff’s dastardly scheme to pretend that he killed Hotspur was spoken aloud. So I’m not sure why that was done, and I felt like it really detracted from the play.

I have very mixed feelings about the battle and the way it was filmed. There was shaky cam in it, which I am beyond tired of but I guess it’ll never go away so I’ll just be a useless curmudgeon about it. But I think during the main part of the battle there was some kind of change on the camera filter… so during the action all of the colors were incredibly muted. This made it harder to tell who might be who – maybe that was the point – but as soon as Hal and Hotspur split off to have their confrontation the colors came back to normal and it just seemed very jarring. I was not a fan of that. There were also people complaining on Twitter that they didn’t feel there were enough people involved in the battle – I didn’t feel like it was too sparse, myself. I just wish I could have seen better what was going on!

These are really the only two complaints I can come up with for the production. I enjoyed it greatly, more than I did Richard II. I’m looking forward to them coming to the US so I can get DVDs. (Though I fear Tom Hiddleston will likely still have to take turns with Kenneth Branagh for Henry V duty. Sorry, Tom. A girl doesn’t forget her first love.)

I’m just incredibly sad I won’t get to watch part 2 on streaming next weekend. I’ll be in Pennsylvania for a field trip, so I expect I’ll be in a quarry, getting eaten alive by bugs when I’d much rather be watching Irons and Hiddleston rule the internet. Hopefully I can sneak a peak at it later.

[I’ve now seen Part 2, and it was good. So very good.]

The Hollow Crown blogging:
Richard II
Henry IV part 1
Henry IV part 2
Henry V

Categories
movie review

An open letter to Prometheus

Yo, here be spoilers.


Dear Prometheus:

I wanted to love you, I really did. From the moment I first saw the trailer I thought this was going to be one of the movies I was born to love. Horseshoe ship! Space jockey! Michael Fassbender! Flamethrowers!

And it’s not like I generally have standards that high, right? I mean, you did see my review of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, didn’t you?

Though I did go in with higher expectations than that, and maybe that was the problem. I liked Alien and I loved Aliens and we’re just not going to talk about those other movies okay? I was willing to forget the horrors of the past because this was Ridley Scott coming home to his baby.

Because this is the problem. Alien was a horror movie with a scifi background. Aliens was an action movie with a scifi background. But you, Prometheus, you were touted to be an honest-to-goodness real science fiction move, which means that as a lover of science fiction I had no choice but to expect more of you.

This was the thing about Alien and Aliens. While there was the occasional whoops moment in those  movies, the characters that populated them weren’t dumb. They were just generally up against an implacable, terrifying enemy that out-everythinged pitiful humans who never had all the facts about what they were facing until it was too late. That was what made those movies good. You were rooting for the humans to triumph because damnit, they were trying so hard.

Why couldn’t you be more like your mom and dad, Prometheus? But no, instead you were populated with a collection of scientists so dumb I feel like there must have been a writing process where, in draft after draft, the script was read and someone said, “Well yes, but they’re still too smart. Try adding some drool.” Where did you dig up the geologist and biologist? Mail order from Planet Ohmyfuckinggodwhateven? Did their graduate degrees include, as a door prize, a full lobotomy given by a janitor with extremely shaky hands? A geologist bitching that there are no rocks when he’s on a planet with no vegetative cover? And what’s this shit about him just being in it for the money? And the biologist, what was that even? Calling evolution Darwinism and playing coochie-coo with an alien cobra that has a terrifying vagina instead of a face?

I figured we were in real trouble when the scientists repeatedly couldn’t remember the difference between a theory and a hypothesis. Between that and the Darwinism thing, I’m throwing some serious side-eyeing at this script writer. Let’s just say I could keep ranting about the unnecessarily stupid science gaffes that could have been corrected and would only have served to strengthen the story. But at this point all I can hear in my head, repeating over and over is, “A super nova that was going to destroy the galaxy let’s fix it with red matter! Yeah!”

And Charlie. Don’t even get me started on Charlie. As far as I can tell his entire contribution to the movie was getting shit-faced and then sexing up Dr. Shaw so she could have an evil alien squid baby in one of the better (and more disturbing) scenes of the movie.

Oh yeah. And he got set on fire. That was pretty boss. Actually, I liked that scene quite a bit, and not just because it meant we no longer had to suffer through Charlie’s weird pouting about gee we only just made the single most important discovery EVER IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND but it’s somehow not good enough because all the aliens are mysteriously dead. No, that scene was awesome because of Meredith Vickers wielding a flame thrower and setting Charlie on fire. And in that moment when he’s dropped on the ground and screaming there’s an amazing shot of her face where you realize even she can’t believe she just did that. (So good on you, Charlize Theron. But we already knew you were awesome.)

But I digress.

Also, there’s the matter of the aliens. I knew going in that we weren’t getting xenomorphs, and that was fine. Because we were going to get the space jockey and hell yeah. But instead we get giant white guys with bulging muscles. I get the punchline that apparently we were created in their image (somehow, only we got their DNA and evolution happened and… oh hell with this) but they just want to kill us all now for some nebulous reason. It was all very unsatisfying. Xenomorphs, I could buy. They want to fucking eat us, or lay eggs in us, and it makes sense. But frankly, the engineers felt like a giant navel-gazing cop-out where confusion was substituted willy-nilly for deep.

Though to be honest, I still prefer the giant white dudes to the squid baby and it’s horrifying vagina dentata. At the end the engineer + squid = xenomorph-ish was a math problem far too disgusting for me to even want to see the proof.

You were trying to ask big questions. I felt it. It was obvious you were trying to take something from the mashup of science and religion and the question of who created us – and hey if it was aliens, who created them. But then instead of going anywhere with that, having any real development it was just the same lines over and over again. Well why do you believe X? Because I choose to. Perhaps this is a problem of mine because I’m an atheist, but I feel like that’s a giant cop-out, particularly when it’s just sort of dropped on the floor and left there to pathetically roll around like a turtle attempting to right itself. Really all it tells me is that Dr. Shaw is really stubborn, since that’s basically her answer in both the beginning and end of the movie despite all events that occurred.

Really at this point all I can do is cross my arms, sadly shake my head, and say I expected so much more of you.

Oh no, please stop crying. It’s not all bad. I’m not demanding my money back. I’m not comparing you to, say, The Last Airbender, where I left the theater and then immediately fell to my knees to scream “WHY?” at the uncaring sky. There were things I liked.

Charlize Theron, for example. Idris Elba playing a concertina was something that will keep me warm and smiling on a sad, cold night or two. (Though him keeping Charlize Theron warm for no apparent reason was just another bit of in-theater facepalm for me.) Noomi Rapace as Dr. Shaw managed to operate like she had half a brain more often than any of the other sacrificial lambs (this is not saying much) and she does have a few excellent moments, so that’s something. And you are visually lovely.

But I’ve also got to be honest. The only character I really gave a shit about was David, because he was interesting. He had a plan, and even if it ended badly for him, you could see everything he did was in service of that plan and not just because the script needed him to do something utterly moronic. I was also quite captivated by the way he was played, because to me it seemed like every time people tried to reassure themselves that he had no emotions (being a robot and all) it was rather plain that he did have feelings. There seemed like a lot of sarcasm in his agreement with people whenever they pointed out something in his robot nature – and some genuine pain when Weyland calls him the closest thing he’ll have to a son followed immediately by pointing out that he doesn’t have a soul. (Weyland, you turd. Don’t mess with my boy.) David’s obviously got some very rich internal life going on, and I think that was why I was much more willing to buy the sillier bits of him being the macguffin and instantly knowing how to operate the alien machines and speak giant white dude-ese.

I was willing to forgive David because when he wasn’t being the plot’s bitch, there was something there to find interesting. You paying attention, other characters?

To be honest, Prometheus, I think I’d rather just rename you The Unfortunate Adventure of David and Some Jaw-Droppingly Stupid People.

Sorry, but even then I still wouldn’t buy the DVD.

Categories
movie review

Brave

There are many things I manifestly Do Not Get about the reactions people seem to be having to Brave. I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about it not being up to the standards of other Pixar movies. Or it’s just too much of a girl movie. Or something. What? Did we even see the same movie?

The only thing that keeps Brave from being my favorite Pixar movie ever is the existence of The Incredibles. (It’s a solid tie, in that case, with Wall-E and Up.) I liked it as much if not more than I liked any Toy Story, and I feel far more attached to Brave as a story than I do to Finding Nemo or Monsters, Inc. (Confession: Still haven’t seen Cars. Just can’t seem to care.)

I suppose you could call Brave a girl movie in as much as the main character is a girl, but that’s about it. You know what, boys? Girls constantly are forced to identify with male main characters in stories. You can give going on the journey with someone that isn’t your gender a whirl. It doesn’t hurt, I swear. And while the main conflict of Brave is something that happens between mother and daughter – and in a situation that could be considered more female eg: being forced into a betrothal – focusing on the gender of the people at conflict is frankly unnecessary. It’s about a teenager who wants to be control of hir own life struggling with the authoritarian parent, the two of them butting heads, and ultimately redefining their relationship in a way where they both better understand each other.

There is nothing uniquely female about that, other than the bit about enforcing gender roles, which I almost think is beside the point. Boys know just as much as girls what it’s like to struggle against what feels like the unfairness of parental edicts. And it’s revealed within the movie that while Merida is the most vocal about not liking the tradition – and the most combative against it – the young men that are supposed to be trying to win her like a prize aren’t necessarily in full agreement with the arrangement either.

Okay at this point, if you want to avoid spoilers you should probably just stop reading and go see the movie first. It’s a good movie. You should see it anyway.

Really, one of the things I liked most about this movie is that it avoided the typical Disney Princess Shit. Merida struggles to define her own destiny by not having to follow tradition and get married. In what I would think of as a typical Disney storyline, she would have ended up deciding one of the boys wasn’t so bad after all, or falling for a complete out of left field candidate, and still ended up in a saccharine happily ever after relationship. Brave doesn’t do this. At the end of the movie, the suitors sail away, and Merida hasn’t made any kind of choice. In fact, her sexuality hasn’t been defined at all – something my friend David pointed out that he really liked, and I do as well. Maybe Merida is lesbian and that’s why she didn’t want to get married. Maybe she’s heterosexual and just not ready. Maybe she’s asexual. We don’t ever find out and it doesn’t matter because it’s beside the point of the movie.

The movie isn’t about who Merida will choose. It’s about Merida fighting for the ability to decide for herself with none of the above as an available option. And I think that’s a very powerful thing, and something that should be a message people of any gender or sexuality could identify with. In this movie Merida wins the right to not be defined by a relationship and to be herself.

So no. I don’t think this is a “girl” movie. And I would also like to note that I find that implication insulting, as if somehow something being a “girl” thing makes it inherently inferior. As if “boy” movies have broad appeal and “girl” movies are only for a lesser audience. Fuck you, marketing people.

But I digress.

This movie is also manifestly not some sort of ‘parents know best’ trope. Ultimately, Elinor comes to see things from Merida’s viewpoint and even urges Merida to make a speech about bucking tradition in front of the men. What I see Merida learning is that her mother still loves her even when they disagree viciously – she learns that her mother is fallible, and human, and not simply an obstacle she needs to tear her way through.

One of the major plot points for the movie is when Merida and her mother have a really nasty argument about Merida bucking tradition. I think that’s another point that anyone should be able to identify with. Anyone who has ever been a teenager has probably had that fight with one of their parents, and remembers it with an internal cringe. You know, the fight where you both get so angry you say incredibly stupid, mean things to each other, where things both physical and emotional get broken and you aren’t certain if they’ll ever be fixed.

And it’s that argument that’s the catalyst for the rest of the movie, because it leads Merida to the witch, where she asks for a spell that will change her mother. Not, as the trailer would have you believe, a spell that will specifically change her fate – because she believes changing her mother will change her fate somehow, since her mother’s become the stand-in for all of the tradition she wants to buck.

I think the trailer for Brave did the movie a real disservice. Maybe they were afraid of revealing too much about the movie. But basically what you get from the trailer is that Merida is rebellious! Merida argues with mom! Merida wants to change her fate! Whatever that means.

What Merida actually does is change her mom into a bear. And she then has only two days to try to fix the situation, which involves mending their relationship and admitting that she’s the one responsible for this particular screw-up. (Along with a whole other plot line about the scary demon bear that ate her dad’s leg, but I feel like that’s more a vehicle for Merida’s mom to get to be incredibly awesome.) Honestly, I think people would have been a hell of a lot more eager to see Brave if Pixar had even just let it out in the American trailer that Elinor gets turned into a bear. I’m mystified why they didn’t; it’s in a lot of the international trailers, so I actually knew it was going to happen before I saw it.

Honestly, I also think putting that aspect of the movie into the trailer – Elinor is turned into a bear and Merida has to reverse the spell! Danger! – would make it a lot harder for people to dismiss Brave offhand as just some girl movie about mothers and daughters and the tricky relationships between the two.

But I’m not a marketing person, I guess, what do I know.

Actually, I think I’m done with spoilers now if you want to read this next bit.

So yes, the plot interesting, and a lot of ink (or pixels) can be spilled examining different aspects of it, I think.

But more to the point, it’s just a good movie. It’s fun, the plot has suspense, the characters are lovable. The same set of people who have been complaining about Brave being a girl movie have complained that the male characters are just caricatures, and I’m again forced to wonder if we saw the same movie. While a lot of the supporting characters are pretty two dimensional, both male and female, the main male character is Merida’s dad, Fergus, and I think he’s lovely. He’s a guy who loves his family, respects his wife, and just wants to have a good time and keep everyone safe from the evil bear.

The characters definitely get a thumbs-up from me. I’m particularly amused that one of the clan heads is named MacGuffin.

Pixar outdid itself on the visuals for the movie. The scenery is fantastic. Merida’s hair is indescribably amazing. The music was done by Patrick Doyle, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a soundtrack from him I didn’t like.

Honestly, thinking about it, there’s not really one bad thing I can think to say about the movie. I wish I could take my niece to see it, but it’d still be a little too scary for her. It’s good. It made me laugh out loud and sniffle and gave me surprisingly complicated things I could think about after. Just what I expect from Pixar.

Categories
movie review shakespeare

The Hollow Crown 1: Richard II

I have been in a state of nerd DEFCON 2 all year, I swear. 2012 is starting to feel like the apology for the (other than Thor) rather thin offerings of things that to watch in 2011. But I haven’t just been vibrating with barely controlled glee over the various extravaganzas of shit blowing up and bad things getting punched in the throat (slow motion optional). I’ve been counting the days until the start of the BBC’s The Hollow Crown, which is their presentation of four of Shakespeare’s history plays: Richard II, Henry IV part 1 and part 2, and Henry V. The name “The Hollow Crown” actually comes from a line in Richard II (act 3 scene 2):

For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison’d by their wives: some sleeping kill’d;
All murder’d: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits…
Nice pick for three plays about the life and death of kings.

I love Shakespeare. I have since my mother had me watch Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing. I regularly go for plays in Boulder’s summer Shakespeare festival, though unfortunately none for me this year since I’m in Houston. But hey, the BBC is helping me out with this one.

I actually took Shakespeare for non-majors to get my upper division literature credit for my BA. We ended up reading Richard II and both parts of Henry IV, though to my eternal sadness didn’t continue on to Henry V, which is still my favorite out of all the plays. That class is also the source of one of the worst sentences I’ve ever written in my life (in a paper about Macbeth) but I digress. We did get to watch a video of the production of Richard II that Derek Jacobi starred in, and I liked it well enough.

Full disclosure: I probably would have just been at nerd DEFCON 3, if it weren’t for the fact that Tom Hiddleston is playing Prince Hal/Henry V in the next plays. Favorite actor in favorite play ever? Gosh BBC, I would have just been happy with a box of chocolates and a stilted love letter, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble, but THANKS.

I will admit that of the four plays listed, Richard II is probably my least favorite. I’m not really wowed by the fact that it’s written in full verse, since I feel like the rhyming gets a little tedious or strained at times. I feel like it’s got some structural weaknesses in the plot – for example, I’ve been trying for years to actually give a crap one way or the other when Richard’s sycophants get put to death, but it’s pretty hard to do so when they don’t actually do anything as far as we can tell. We only hear about their misdeeds as a quick litany right before the head chopping happens. (I’m thinking this might have been less of an issue for audiences who were historically closer to the events being described, and also likely less picky.)

There’s also the fact that it ends up feeling very uneven; Richard is basically deposed at the end of Act 3, and it takes two more acts (which feel a bit drawn out) of him emoting before the thing is really done. I watched the #TheHollowCrown twitter tag the entire time the play was going, and saw quite a few people who were unacquainted with the play feeling very confused that Richard was deposed with something like another 40 minutes to go, because that really does feel like the end right there. A lot of action happens offstage that makes it much less satisfying than what we get out of Henry IV and Henry V. And so on.

Which is not to say that I dislike the play. Obviously, I was still utterly geeked to sit down and watch it via streaming. I’m just setting what I feel are flaws of the play out because I went in expecting those flaws to be in evidence. They’re structural to the play and can’t really be escaped.

So with that in mind, I thought the production was excellent, and I enjoyed it even more than I expected to.

Costumes and sets were just fine for my untrained eye; to me it looked better than a lot of BBC shows I’ve seen in the past thanks to the magic of PBS.

Really what blew me away was the casting. There wasn’t a single actor in there that I’d even begin to complain about. There were actually several non-white actors cast, which I thought was excellent. Lucian Msamati was the Bishop of Carlisle, and I thought he did great. Someone actually complained on twitter about it, which gave me some serious rageface1.

Ben Whishaw did an absolutely amazing job as Richard, handling all of his lightning fast swings between manic hope and rage and utter despair deftly. On one hand he made me want to punch Richard in the throat for being such a self-absorbed, petty tyrant, and on the other he still managed to make Richard a sympathetic character at the end, because you really could feel his complete loss of all hope. There was some commentary on twitter that he was getting a rather effeminate treatment; maybe a little, but that seems pretty in keeping with the play, I think, particularly since it makes Henry look like more of a badass.

David Suchet made an amazing Duke of York. I loved him to pieces in every scene he was in. He had all the internal conflict of choosing between Richard (the rightful but total crap king) and Henry (the usurper but much better king) and it came through very powerfully.

And of course, Patrick Stewart as John of Gaunt just stole it completely. Which I guess is what you’d expect from Patrick Stewart. John of Gaunt’s big speech in Act 2 scene 1 just gave me chills.

The only thing for the production I really didn’t care for was I felt like the divine imagery got hammered on a little too much. Yes, I get it. Richard being deposed was a massive blow against the idea of the divine right of kings. And he certainly felt himself persecuted. But somewhere between him laying out on the floor of the throne room in his white robe and being tucked in a coffin with some very well-placed wounds, it got to be just a bit too much for my taste. At the point the coffin was open and we got a full view of mostly naked Richard with his knees bent in a rather familiar pose, I turned to Mike and said, “He just went the full Jesus. Never go the full Jesus.” So obviously, this did not have the desired effect on me as a viewer if my reaction was sarcastic paraphrasing of Kirk Lazarus.

Anyway, if you like Shakespeare, definitely give this one a whirl. If you want to try Shakespeare out, it’s not a bad place to start, though the verse can be a little rough if you’re not used to it. The actors are all excellent, though, so you can get a good idea of what’s going on even if you have a hard time following some of the dialog – though I’d recommend perhaps reading a summary of the play first just in case since that does help.

What this has really done is given me a massive case of anticipatory squee for the next three installments. If they managed to impress me this much with a play I’m pretty lukewarm toward, I may just explode in a shower of sugary sparkles of happiness by the time we get to the Battle of Agincourt in Henry V.

1 – Obviously in his day, everything was about white dudes, and all the actors were white dudes, because duh. I’m really happy that non-white actors are finally scoring parts, and within the context of the plays it’s being treated as a complete non-issue. I just keep wondering when women are finally going to get that chance in mainstream productions. There are obviously some places where that wouldn’t work, but for example in Richard II it doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of a difference if Bagot is played by a man or a woman. This is just a thing I think about on occasion, because if this were fantasy mirror world where I could actually magically be an actress, I would still never get to play any of the parts Shakespeare wrote that I love best, because back in his day women didn’t get to do a whole hell of a lot. (Including acting, so hey at least we’ve gotten that far!) So it just makes me sad. Not that it stops me from reading scenes to my cats when no one is around and I feel like making dramatic pronouncements.

The Hollow Crown blogging:
Richard II
Henry IV part 1
Henry IV part 2
Henry V

Categories
awesome movie review

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Try, for a moment, to imagine the most ridiculously awesome thing possible. Imagine a unicorn composed of woven rainbows and cotton candy with hooves of chiming silver bells and a goofy, horsey smile. Imagine this unicorn galloping across a sky made of pie and pudding and baby giggles while Eric Prydz’s Call On Me remix plays in an endless disco loop in the background. And on this unicorn’s back are Lady Gaga and Tom Hiddleston, wearing matching meat dresses, holding hands and singing along while fireworks and magical sparkles burst into being and simultaneously Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks a velociraptor in the face over and over again for all eternity.

Got that all?

Okay. Now imagine something even more awesome.

You can’t.

That’s because you haven’t seen Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter yet. You lack the necessary vocabulary for the sort of awesome we’re talking about here.

Let me put it to you straight. This is not a good movie. God no. The pacing gets weird, some of the characters can’t seem to figure out who exactly they are from one scene to another, and to call some of the dialog cringe-inducing would be a kindness. And it doesn’t actually matter.

Because let’s be honest. You aren’t watching this movie because you want to watch something good. You’re watching it because you want to see Abraham Motherfucking Lincoln kill a shitload of vampires. With an ax. Which he twirls around like he’s in the color guard contingent recruited directly from Hell. You’re watching this moving because it’s shit-eating-grin cracked-out fun.

Which is exactly what it is. Anyone who tries to take this movie seriously (or thinks this movie is in any way taking itself seriously) is missing the point entirely. It’s not supposed to be serious, or good, or compelling. It’s supposed to be a thing that makes you giggle so hard with pure, child-like glee that you think you’re going to strain a muscle in your face.

I paid $10.50 to see this movie and I feel like I got every penny of enjoyment I was owed and more, from the first ridiculous moment of bitty Abraham Lincoln running at a bad guy with a hatchet to the first part of the credits where they make a map of the US out of flowing cgi blood.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is one of those rare movies where what you saw in the trailer is exactly what you get out of the movie. So if you watched the trailer and thought “Hell yeah I want to eat some fucking popcorn and watch vampires with bad southern accents get chopped apart in random moments of super slow motion” then go to your theater, throw money at them, and get on your goddamn magic unicorn.

If me stating: Dude. It’s a hatchet. With a gun in it. It’s a fucking HATCHETGUN, doesn’t make you want to instantly reach through the internet and engage in a serious brofist, this is not the movie for you.

Trust me.

Honest as Abe.

Categories
liveblog movie

Bad Movie Liveblogging: Dante’s Peak

It’s a cassic, and I haven’t seen it yet.

Get ready for bad geology in 3… 2… 1…

1740: Here we go. The opening titles have some brooding strings going. (Ellen: “Pierce Brosnan? WOO!” Woo indeed, Ellen.) Oooh, look at those flamey opening titles. THE RAGING FURY OF A VOLCANO.

1741: Make no mistake. This is a movie about volcanoes. Volcanoes that will FUCK YOU UP. Run from the flames pathetic humans! RUN! RUN!

1742: Is that a sparkler?

1743: I don’t know what’s the bigger emergency. The volcano or that man’s shirt. Wow.

1744: Okay, I will say. I like the volcanic bombs.

1745: “A volcano killed my wife. I am now doing pushups so I can kill the next volcano I meet WITH MY BARE HANDS.”

1746: “Going on vacation isn’t going to kill me. BUT IT KILLED MY WIFE.”

1746: For the record, kids, most geologists are not that obsessed with pushups, unless it’s an arm strengthening exercise for developing your drinking arm. And admittedly our hair generally isn’t that good either.

1748: He just left his glasses behind in the shop. Because A VOLCANO KILLED HIS WIFE.

1749: And then the mayor just leaves her car in the middle of the street. What is it with this town?

1750: A major investment in your economic future? Doomed. You’re all doomed.

1750: Also, naked coeds in the hot springs? Doomed as well. Because everyone knows that pigeons can sense volcanoes coming.

1752: Oh Sarah Connor. You used to be so much more badass. Why are you just honking your horn? Go in there and drag that kid out by the scruff of his neck with your LADY BICEPS.

1752: And now that we’ve put the single mom mayor in the car with the hot widower from the USGS, are we telegraphing much? That’s where my money is

1753: Also, almost no one calls it ‘the United States Geological Survey.’ Everyone I have ever met just calls it ‘the USGS.’

1753: You can tell he’s a geologist. He correctly identified a quartz crystal on the first try.

1755: Are you Mayor McSingleton’s boyfriend? She wishes.

1755: Yes. Mt. St. Helens. Nothing happened then.

1755: I wonder what mountain played Dante’s Peak?

1756: The glasses have mysteriously reappeared.

1757: Look at that picture he took with no scale. Fail geologist.

1757: “A man who stares at a rock must have a lot on his mind.” And we all LAUGH.

1758: I think they should have made this a zombie squirrel movie instead of a volcano movie.

1759: I love how he waits until the little boy is about to dive in before saying anything.

1800: …wait, how is the carbon dioxide killing trees? Ellen offers that maybe it’s like oxygen poisoning. But then all the humans would be dead too.

1801: Ah, douchey bald guy that thinks money is more important than human life. This is a familiar character. Thank you for providing the necessary fig leaf to explain why we aren’t immediately GETTING THE FUCK OUT OF HERE.

1803: And here’s the grizzled old geologist (you can tell he’s grizzled because he actually uses USGS) who is overly cautious because Pierce Brosnan is a MAVERICK! A maverick with a DARK PAST. Who NEEDS A VACATION.

1806: Oh don’t be silly. Geologists drink BEER, not whiskey.

1808: Oh, and of course Mayor McSingleton runs the coffee shop. And spills coffee on them so they can flirt.

1808: “I’ve always been better at figuring out volcanoes than people and politics.” /groan

1812: Those kids are not very bright.

1813: Okay, sorry, he wasn’t married. So he just had the love of his life MURDERED BY A VOLCANO.

1814: I’m glad you’re here, Harry, so we can all die a fiery death together.

1815: “Good coffee… you know what Harry? This town might just be worth saving.” Okay, I’ll admit. That’s kind of accurate. If it’s good beer we will go down into the Earth and punch the magma chamber in the face to stop it from erupting.

1815: LOL. “She was in to cyrstals. Not rocks, crystals.” Okay, that is beautiful.

1819: “I don’t think this is a very good idea.” Gaby: Aw, grow a pair.

1823: This is probably the least compelling helicopter rescue I’ve ever watched. Though I do like the mid-air cuddling that’s going on.

1825: Wait, if the biggest quake was 2.9, how would you feel it? OH MY GOD PEOPLE JUST FACT CHECK. Three minutes on the internet. That’s all it takes.

1830: I just. I don’t even know what is up with this scene. She’s like wanting to give him coffee, except it’s totally sex and not coffee, only he says he doesn’t like her coffee but sex is TOTALLY LIKE A BICYCLE. This is some of the worst romantic dialog ever.

1831: I feel like it was a relief to everyone involved that the kid woke up.

1832: I do like that they bring up Mt. Pinatubo.

1834: Ah, the free-spirited old lady who refuses to leave the volcano. I can smell where this part of the plot is going. Like sulfur.

1838: That was an awesome scream out of that woman.

1838: “For what it’s worth, you were right, I was wrong.” /looks at erupting volcano. YEAH NO SHIT.

1846: Good effort with the helicopter crash, but I think this movie still needs more fireballs.

1847: He doesn’t have enough time, but he’s a MAVERICK! And not this time you damn dirty volcano! NOT THIS TIME!

1847: Now the volcano is throwing plastic boulders at his car. No fair.

1849: Yeah Ruth. Way to murder your whole family by being a crusty old bitch that wants to prove she isn’t afraid of a volcano.

1850: Crazy movie geologists: We’re riding this one all the way down! God’s big show! John: Hell with you guys, I’m out of here.

1850: OH MY GOD LAVA FLOWING INTO THE CABIN AND THEY JUST RUN AWAY FROM IT AND THEN JUMP IN THE BOAT WE ARE DYING. Because everything is on fire from the AWESOME HEAT OF THE LAVA. Except for you know, the humans.

1852: Volcanic activity has turned the lake into acid. But it’s okay, because okay because there’s a quartz crystal. And singing. Though I will note, Pierce Brosnan sings MUCH BETTER in this movie than he did in Mama Mia!

1854: Because the water. Is acid. And wrapping your hand in a shirt will totally help? Not unless it’s water proof. And apparently that’s some hella acidic water considering it’s MELTING GRANDMA. This scene is unspeakably ridiculous.

1855: Gaby: Just leave her behind. Me: Yeah, she wanted to stay behind anyway. John: Is that how Venezuelans treat their grandmas?

1857: Her legs look like a terrible suntan bed accident but it’s okay HAVE THE CRYSTAL.

1900: I bet you didn’t realize that all geologists know how to hotwire cars. It’s grad school 101 baby, because we’re fuckin badass like that.

1902: Gaby: What are you doing, fool! Just get out of the van and run! Me: But the new paint job! And I just had the satellite dish put on! And the shag carpeting in the back!

1903: /Willhelm scream

1904: Stuck in the lava! Just rock it back and forth. There might be some cat litter in the back of the truck.

1904: And… a daring puppy rescue? That was random. Grandma died, but we saved the dog. I don’t have words for this.

1907: OH MY GOD! WE PREDICTED THE MOUNTAIN IS LIKE GOING TO ERUPT EVEN MORE. How do you even predict that? YOU CAN’T.

1907: You correctly identified a pyroclastic cloud. You’re such a geologist.

1908: OH MY GOD PYROCLASTIC FLOW IN THE REVIEW MIRROR DRIVE FAAAASTEEEEEER (Okay, you realize these things move at something like 700 km/h.)

1909: They act like the force of the flow is the issue instead of the fact that it’s made out of FUCKING SUPERHEATED (1000C) GASES AND ASH and should have broiled them alive instantly. /facepalm That’s what makes pyroclastic flows so scary!

1910: Oh wait, I figured it out. It was a supercooled pyroclastic flow and that’s why it was moving so slowly.

1911: Annoying little girl: my head hurts. Mayor McSingleton: My head hurts too. Me: Bitch, you ain’t even WATCHING this movie.

1911: Harry: You ever go deep sea fishing? – “You like watching gladiator movies?”

1916: Yay, Harry managed to get the McGuffin turned on. Good for him.

1921: And thus the village was saved. At least this movie wasn’t as long as 2012. Or it sure didn’t feel as long.