Odds and Ends

The Bounty

The Bounty tells the story of H.M.S. BOUNTY, Captain Bligh, and the mutiny led by Fletcher Christian.  It features a delightful, Vangelis synth score, magnificent overacting by a young Mel Gibson, and a glacial pace.  If that sounds like your cup of coconut water, have at it.

Ricki and the Flash

Ricki and the Flash tells the story of an aging would-be rock star in a San Fernando Valley cover band, the ex-husband and children she left behind to pursue her dreams, and the year when the chickens come home to roost.  It’s solid material, anchored by a powerhouse Meryl Streep performance, some subtle work from Kevin Kline, and even a solid turn by Rick Springfield in a supporting role as Ricki’s lead guitarist and love interest.

This is the kind of character study that depends utterly on its star, and it will surprise no one to find that Ms. Streep is entirely up to the task.  She makes us want to watch her even when we don’t like her, and want to watch her even more as or perceptions begin to change.  Truly, this actress Can Do No Wrong.

The Salvation

Hey, do you like Westerns?  Do you like Mads Mikkelsen and Jonathan Pryce?  Me too, but I’m sorry to report that not even Mssrs. Mikkelsen & Pryce can save this Western.

The Salvation is your basic revenge tale, with Mikkelsen going after the thugs who do away with a couple of barely sketched out characters named, I think, “Wife” and “Son.”  Things spin out of control, there’s a showdown, blah blah blah.  The movie looks cheap, the villain lacks complexity, and the whole thing is a drag.  If you’re really in the mood for a Western, go watch Open Range again, instead.

Let Me In

Let The Right One In is a brilliant, Swedish take on the modern vampire story.  Let Me In, the American remake starring Chloe Grace Moretz, lacks the beauty and subtlety of the original and exchanges it for ugliness and plodding literalism.  Stay outside.

The Jungle Book

The Jungle Book is a triumph of storytelling and technical filmmaking.  It’s beautiful, engaging, age-appropriately scary, and entirely convincing.  We loved it.

Thor: The Dark World

I didn’t care for Thor (see my review).  It was a movie about people I didn’t care about fighting for stakes that didn’t matter.

I’m pleased to report that Thor: The Dark World fixes its predecessor’s faults.  This time around, the titular Thor is an interesting guy fighting a threatening villain over something worthy of the effort.  Both hero Chris Hemsworth and nemesis Tom Hiddleston have found their groove.  Villain of the Week Christopher Eccleston seems a credible threat to the universe in general and Earth in particular.  Even previously misused Natalie Portman comes across as competent and capable, as opposed to just another Pauline.  The action sequences pop, the jokes land, and everything hangs together.

I admit, I watched most of Thor: The Dark World while troubleshooting a technical issue with one of my gadgets, but that’s ok.  This is light action entertainment, perfectly fine to play in the background while folding socks or debugging code.  Let’s just forget the first outing even existed.

RED 2; Oblivion

RED 2

I enjoyed RED, the movie about Dame Helen Mirren machine-gunning baddies while wearing a slinky white evening gown.

RED 2 is more of the same, but it suffers from its lack of novelty. There are new baddies and a new evening gown, but the entire film basically exists to showcase older actors shooting younger ones while tossing off one-liners that make us worry more for their mental health than their physical safety. It's still fun, but it's not much of a surprise this time around. You may want to give this one a pass.

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Oblivion

Oblivion is a beautifully crafted, high-concept sci-fi action picture – the kind of thing I usually go for.

In the film, Tom Cruise plays a drone repairman in a post-apocalyptic hellscape. By night, he lives in a beautiful, modern outpost. By day, he braves the wilderness to find downed (alien-hunting) drones, fix them, and sic them on any Morlock-like aliens they should happen to find.

And away we go. As I said, I enjoy this kind of thing. And I enjoyed it well enough, but something about it seemed rote. Cruise ran away from an explosion. Cruise was forced to choose between improbably beautiful, age-inappropriate women. Cruise saved the world and earned a respectful head-nod from a reluctant ally. You know – the usual. The big concept was the metaphor for American drone wars in a part of the world that's basically a pre-industrial hellscape. And that was it.

I'm not saying that Oblivion was bad. Generally speaking, Tom Cruise doesn't make bad movies. It just seemed limp, uninspired. If you're in the mood for a Tom Cruise science fiction film, go see Edge of Tomorrow again. Now, that's a movie!

Thor

I didn’t care about Thor, so I didn’t care about Thor.  Since I didn’t care about Thor, I didn’t care about Thor’s antagonist, his love interest, his friends, or his problems.  You know who I did care about?  Agent Coulson, the guy who appeared to be Samuel L. Jackson’s #2 at SHIELD, which was sorta the FBI for superhero stuff.  He played a minor role in Thor, but I’d go to see a movie about him.

Here’s the problem: Thor (a totally ‘roided out Chris Hemsworth – I mean, really: compare a photo of him from the Star Trek reboot with a photo of him from this film) is a god.  Yeah, the film presents him as super sci fi bs alien, but he’s basically a god.  Not only is he a god, but he’s a dick of a god.  He’s obnoxious and egotistical and has a lot to learn.  The film is all about him learning to not be such a dick, but so what?  Show me a movie about a guy who isn’t a dick in the first place.

Natalie Portman plays Thor’s love interest, a graduate student in physics with her own ‘roided out Land Rover, her own supercool lab, and her own sidekick.  When I was a grad student, I could barely afford ramen.  How was I supposed to care about this magic princess scientist, doing research in her fantasy world?  Now, fine, I know what you’re thinking: this is Natalie Portman we’re talking about.  I don’t contest that she’s an absolutely outstanding actress, but this film gives her nothing to do, really.  Any reasonably competent, age-appropriate actress could have played this role (that is, pretty girl who digs ‘roided out guys who are dicks).  I doubt I’d have believed in any of them.

Thor’s friends?  Hey, they’re gods, too!  One’s a younger version of Xena, one looks like a youthful Cary Elwes with silly facial hair, one’s a glutton, and one’s just a guy with a mace who doesn’t even do anything cool.  I couldn’t relate to any of these gods.  If I met them socially, I wouldn’t like them and they wouldn’t like me.  Why should I care about them?

Loki’s the antagonist, here presented as Thor’s brother and, essentially, the nerd to Thor’s jock.  Problem is, he’s a god, too, so his problems also aren’t my problems.  What are his problems?  I’m not entirely sure (Well, he does wear a goofy helmet, and there have been times in my life when I could relate to that.).  Is he consumed with jealousy?  Is he ambitious?  Self-hating?  How ‘bout just plain evil?  I don’t know, and neither does the film.  It keeps changing.

Ok, so I didn’t like the characters.  What was so bad about Thor’s problems? I didn’t feel like I had a dog in the fight.  Since I didn’t care about Thor, I didn’t care whether he or Loki sat on the throne of Asgard.  Yeah, there was some stuff in there about evil frost giants, but I didn’t see them as a threat to Earth, so what exactly were the stakes for me?  I’ll tell you: zippy.

And yet, Thor manages to stay marginally entertaining for a couple of hours, thanks primarily to Kenneth Branagh’s direction and the presence of one Agent Coulson of SHIELD, assayed by Clark Gregg.  Coulson’s an actual human being, a disciplined and efficient government agent bringing cold federal processes to a fantastical world of heroes and monsters.  Now, that’s interesting.  I want to know more about this guy: where does he come from?  How’d he get into this business?  What does he think of all this craziness?  There’s your movie.

Generally speaking, I enjoy spectacular action movies.  I wanted to get into Thor.  It looked pretty, lots of stuff blew up real good, and Natalie Portman did bite her lip once or twice.  But I needed more.  I needed some skin in the game.  I needed to care.

Beowulf

The motion-capture version of BEOWULF, written by Neil Gaiman and directed by Robert Zemeckis, is a great time at the movies.

Since BEOWULF puts its technology front and center, I think it’s fair to comment on that technology. In deciding to go with motion capture animation for this film, Zemeckis made a conscious decision to trade Uncanny Valley drawbacks for the freedom of vision afforded by computer graphics. His choice pays off in riveting battle sequences, impossible camera movements and viewpoints, and the realization of a complete world. The price he paid shows in sight lines that are sometimes confusing and a certain deadness to the eyes that no computer animator has yet been able to overcome. In some cities, BEOWULF is available in IMAX 3-D, but such was not the case in Salt Lake City, where I happened to see this film. Watching it in 2-D, I noticed “payoff 3-D” shots that were more of a distraction than an entertainment. Overall, however, the presentation looked sharp and interesting.

Now, on to the movie. Neil Gaiman has long been among my favorite writers. He combines a love for and knowledge of folklore and literature with sensitivity to the human condition and remarkable storytelling talent. With BEOWULF, Gaiman wrote a screenplay whose deviations from the source text served to further the story, provide multiple viewpoints on the action, and stay true to the heroic tradition of which Beowulf is a part. It’s terrific, moving stuff that lends immediacy to both character and action sequences, not to mention serving up a few surprises.

As for the performances, they’re fine. Anthony Hopkins was bearable, for a change, and no one dropped the ball. Having said that, nothing stood out as being particularly noteworthy. It’s hard to act past those dead, dead eyes, no matter how much you try.

Taken together, the animation, story, and performances craft a two-hour film that made me lose track of time, that got my heart racing in all the right places, and that even managed to make Angelina Jolie look attractive. BEOWULF is fine entertainment, technologically marvelous, and, as I said, an all-around great time at the movies.

Now, if I only could see it in IMAX 3-D.

The World's Fastest Indian

In THE WORLD'S FASTEST INDIAN, Anthony Hopkins plays an eccentric Kiwi engineering genius. He lives in a shack and tinkers with his motorcycle, and he eventually decides to head to the U.S., where he plans to take his bike the Bonneville Salt Flats for the speed trials. Once in the U.S., he meets a variety of colorful and harmless characters, makes some friends, sets some records, and generally has a delightful time.

And that's the problem with THE WORLD'S FASTEST INDIAN: it's basically a movie about a nice fellow having a delightful time. There's no real conflict (at least nothing that can't be cleared up in no time), no real character development, no real anything. Now, I like Anthony Hopkins, but not enough to justify a whole movie without a compelling dramatic throughline.

What a disappointment.

Howards End

Back in college, a girl I was seeing dragged me to A ROOM WITH A VIEW. The movie, all 36 hours of it, was painfully, excruciatingly long. I promised myself I'd never see another Merchant-Ivory picture again. Well, time dimmed the promise, as it often does, and I queued up HOWARDS END a short while ago.

I liked it. I really liked it. If I had to boil down my reasons, I'd find Emma Thompson's Margaret Schlegle. She begins the movie an engaged, joyful, dynamic woman. As time wears on and her choices tell on her, we see that she's put herself in an ever-shrinking box. We've seen that type of character before, but Thompson's triumph comes from her endowing Margaret with the self-awareness to know whom she is, whom she was, and whom she may become.

Thompson's dedication to her character's full humanity is of a part with the entire film's approach to its characters, its settings, and its situations. HOWARDS END is populated with real people, with real problems, who make real decisions. At no point do we hear the plot's gears grinding, and at no point do we lose our investment in these people. Time with HOWARDS END is time well spent.

But I still won't give A ROOM WITH A VIEW another go. Life's too short.