Short Takes: December 20th, 2013

Monsters University

I loved Monsters University.  It's delightful, funny, beautiful to look at, and heartwarming. It captivated my family, which ranges in age from 7 to 45, and it's the first prequel I've seen in a very long time that doesn't feel like it's just putting the pieces in place for the movie that inspired it.

The Iron Lady

This just in: Meryl Streep is really good at acting. I spent the 90 or so minutes of The Iron Lady feeling like Margaret Thatcher was in the room with me.

Unfortunately, it seemed like she was there only to show me a "greatest hits” reel of her life. The Iron Lady skips along Thatcher's biography like it's in a hurry to get to the end, when I'd have appreciated a deeper examination of one particularly illuminating period of her life. The Iron Lady and the Miner's Strike, for example, or The Iron Lady and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. As it was, The Iron Lady gave me a sense of who Thatcher was, but it really didn't tell me how she ticked. That's a film I'd have found much more engrossing.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a perfect movie. It's well-shot, elegantly constructed, finely performed, and satisfying on every level.

It's so well shot that it'd benefit from a scene-by-scene analysis of its use of framing, lighting, and depth of field to tell its story and illuminate its characters. It's so elegantly constructed that every element of the script fits together like an elegant watch. It's so finely performed that you'll believe in the heroes right down to your boots, and you'll come away hating Lee Marvin so much that you'll actually have trouble rooting for him in films where he's the hero. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance works, and it works in every way. If you love movies, you need to see this one.

Looper

Looper is basically The Terminator, with Bruce Willis playing the T-1000, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Kyle Reese, and the wonderful Emily Blunt as Sarah Connor. Looper's twist is that the T-1000 is a later version of Reese.

I'm ok with that. It's a good formula, and Looper executes it well. Bruce Willis is as convincing an action star as ever, the multitalented Gordon-Levitt excels at putting a human face on the most despicable of characters, and I don't think Emily Blunt has ever been bad in anything. Rian Johnson's writing is clever as always, and Looper is a good time at the movies.

The Dark Knight Rises

I saw The Dark Knight Rises while staying home with a sick child.  Consequently, I saw it in two sessions while my little one slept.  I spent the film’s entire 2.5-hour running time with my finger on the volume control.

The problem, at least with the film’s BluRay release, lies in the sound mixing.  The gunfire and explosions are so loud in comparison with the dialogue that I felt it was giving me a choice between waking my son during the action sequences or understanding the dialogue during the rest.  If you live in an apartment or share space with people who don’t wish their living room to sound like Armageddon, be warned.

On to the movie.  The Dark Knight Rises asks the filmic question: what if the Occupy people get their wish?  Its answer: French Revolution 2.  Despotism.  Kangaroo Courts.  Chaos.  Only the rich, working anonymously and unfettered from the rule of law, can protect the cringing middle class from the depredations of the fickle mob.

I’m not even a hippie, and I could see that message as if it were carefully painted in Sterno on an icy bridge in the middle of the night and set afire because some rich guy thought it would look cool.

Ok, but is the film any good?  Well, it does move along at a speedy clip, the freakishly beautiful Anne Hathaway actually made me forget about Michelle Pfeiffer for a good two hours, the rest of the cast turns in respectable performances in none-too-demanding roles, and lots of stuff blows up real good.  In other words, you get what you paid for.

Just keep your finger on that volume button.

Brick

I enjoyed the heck out of BRICK. The movie does so many things right, it's hard not to.

First, we have the location. It's hard to imagine a less threatening, more sterile city than San Clemente, CA. It's the kind of clean-scrubbed, utterly dull town that made me itchy to get out of California. BRICK makes San Clemente feel like the scariest city on Earth, all the more so for its surface sheen of wholesomness.

Second, we have the dialogue. It's a stylized form of speech, a noirish banter that no one would actually use, but which we wish they did. The speech could easily descend into self-parody or throw off the entire picture, but it does just the opposite: it takes us into a parallel world that's familiar enough to be relatable but just different enough to be unsettling.

Fourth, we have the performances. I didn't recognize any of the players, but knew going in that the protagonist is the kid from ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD, all grown up. They were terrific, and not in the terrific-for-kids sense. The cast took to the stylized dialogue and fanciful situation and played it dead straight, giving the proceedings a tension and danger that even one wink would've have dissipated.

Fifth, we have the music. IMDB credits Nathan Johnson and Larry Seymour with the score, and they do a masterful job here. The music, like the dialogue, isn't normal. It fits its milieu, however, keeping us off-balance and tense. While it did call attention to itself, it did so in the most positive way, making me seriously consider purchasing a score for the first time in a very long time.

Rian Johnson, a first-time filmmaker, did BRICK on a shoestring and edited it with his home computer. With a debut like this, I can't wait to see what this guy can do with a little studio money behind him.

What a treat.