The Adventures of TinTin

The Adventures of TinTin is a wonderful movie.

This animated adventure, filmed with a motion capture technique that keeps us just this side of the uncanny valley, features ‘splosions, chases, floods, storms at sea, pirates, more ‘splosions, elaborate and exhilarating chases, a massive flood, a great mystery, and gun battles in which all of TinTin’s adversaries seem to forget how to aim at just the right moment..  What more do you want?

Here’s the setup: TinTin, an investigative reporter, finds himself in the middle of a mystery.  He has, unwittingly, purchased that most dangerous of all objects: a Maguffin.  Problem is, he’s unsure exactly what the Maguffin is and why anyone would want it, much less kill for it. 

The Maguffin, of course, is just a reason to get TinTin on the road to adventure, just as Maguffins have in the past and, one assumes, they will again.  The joy of TinTin lies in the road itself, in the delightfully idiosyncratic characters our protagonist meets there, and in the flawless execution of the film’s elaborate set pieces. 

Though created with 3D in mind, the film looks beautiful on an iPad, its voice acting is first rate, and its story blends just the right amounts of danger and levity.  I can’t wait for the sequel.

War Horse

The problem with War Horse is right there in the title. It isn't Person in a War who Owns a Horse or People, War, and Horses. It's War Horse. It is, quite literally, a movie about a horse which finds itself in a war - WWI, to be precise.

The problem is that horses lack moral agency. They can't grow.  They can't choose to become better horses. They can only react to their experiences. Consequently, they make for lousy cinematic protagonists. In this film, the horse passes from owner to owner, from Englishman to German to Frenchman and back again, but so what? We don't spend enough time with the various owners to invest in them and it's impossible to invest deeply in a horse.

So that leaves us watching the film as a technical exercise. Oh, it's horrible. The zoom-in after zoom-in on the faces of various players while saccharine-sweet orchestral music swells and swells and swells. The compositions and set pieces that recall a technicolor version of How Green Was My Valley, had that movie been nigh-unendurable. The screenplay that sets up one overblown cliffhanger after another for a horse that is, in the end, just a horse.

Unquestionably, Steven Spielberg ranks among the finest American film makers. Even the best, however, can fail occasionally. War Horse represents such a failure. I just don't know if it's possible to make a compelling film about a creature that lacks self-awareness.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The very worst thing about INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL is John Hurt. Hurt plays an old friend and colleague of the Joneser, one who has lost his wits after peering too deeply into the eponymous Crystal Skull. The problem with this is that Hurt's performance recalls his Fool in the 1982 BBC production of KING LEAR. Attention filmmakers: if you want to drive a stake through the heart of your movie, cast a great character actor in a pale shadow of one of his career-high performances. It's a sure-fire way to get your audience thinking about how much better that other picture was than the one it's currently watching.

That may be the worst thing about Indy IV, but it has competition. The opening sequence, a car chase between people we don't care about and whom we'll never see again (punctuated with supposedly amusing animal reaction shots), starts the film on an offputting, wtf note. When the picture finally gets around to giving us Ford and Ray Winstone (clearly wishing he was in Ibiza), we've already nearly lost interest. Then Cate Blanchett shows up as the villain, she gets a boner joke, and the whole thing just runs off the rails.

Ok, I admit it. I wrote that whole paragraph just to find an excuse to work in a SEXY BEAST joke.

INDY IV is just plain boring. Dull. Flaccid. A yawner. And I like Spielberg. I like Ford. I like Allen, Winstone, LaBeouf, Blanchett, and Hurt. But my pulse never quickened. I never believed in what was happening. And at the climax, when I was supposed to be going, "Wow," I was only thinking, "Huh. Spielberg and Lucas didn't trust me enough to have the Blanchett speak Russian."

I may have seen this one for free, but I still want $10 back. For my time.

Transformers

If you like your movies bright and loud, then TRANSFORMERS is for you. I like my movies bright and loud, so I blocked out a chunk of time, darkened the basement, fired up the big screen, and got the surround speakers humming. I was ready to be blown away.

And TRANSFORMERS tried hard to blow me away. Lots of stuff blew up. It was very bright. And loud. But it was so unreal that I was unable to suspend my disbelief enough to care about any of the giant robots or believe, on a visceral level, that the havoc they were wreaking was anything more than a combination of pixel arrangement and foley work. In fact, during the climactic battle, I was more concerned with whether protagonist Shia LaBeouf was gonna score with the apple of his eye than I was with the fate of the world (There's something unsettling about Megan Fox, the romantic interest, btw. Since she reminded my of a psycho ex-girlfriend, I was torn between rooting for LaBeouf and urging to run far, far away.). Romantic subplots are great and all, but that’s no way to run a movie.

On the up side, LaBeouf is a likeable presence, and John Turturro was utterly brilliant in his role as a slightly unhinged Man in Black. Never before have I seen a government heavy played for laughs in an action movie such as this, and it was a wonderful choice. Every time Turturro showed up on screen, the film recaptured my complete attention, making TRANSFORMERS worth watching for him alone.

I didn't go into TRANSFORMERS expecting CRIES AND WHISPERS, but I was hoping for something more evenly entertaining than Michael Bay's latest turned out to be. A little more Turturro and a little less CGI, and this one could have been a winner.

Duel

I'd been meaning to see DUEL pretty much forever. I knew it was
Spielberg's first picture, and that was enough to get me to queue it
up. Had I known that Richard Matheson had written it, however, I'd've
queued it up much sooner than now. Matheson, of course, wrote some of
the best episodes of The Twilight Zone. How could I have missed his
involvement in DUEL?

DUEL plays like a long-form Twilight Zone episode. A man is cast into
a stressful and eerie situation and the drama goes from there. It's
successful, in that it takes a premise that makes one think, "How are
they going to spin this out for an hour and a half" and manages to
work that premise to great effect. Dennis Weaver, as the hapless
everyman, does fine work, and the movie grabbed me from the opening
shots.

DUEL is a winner.

War of the Worlds

Logic and science quibbles aside, WAR OF THE WORLDS is simply an unsatisfying movie. It's spectacular, yes, and I appreciate its decision to make its centerpiece the human drama of a family coming together. Problem is, I didn't have any investment in that drama. Tom Cruise gave me no reason to root for him instead of the guy next to him; Dakota Fanning is a disturbing little childbot; and the guy who plays the son needs a good swift kick in the ass.

I couldn't help but compare this movie to SIGNS, a picture with a similar premise and much less spectacle. SIGNS, I think, was much more effective in its portrayal of a family under pressure, and I was right there with Mel Gibson every step of the way.

Chances are, I'll never sit down for another screening of WAR OF THE WORLDS. I would, however, be happy to spend some more time with the people from SIGNS.

Munich

Tony Kushner is a man to watch. He caught my attention with ANGELS IN AMERICA, a surprisingly beautiful, funny, and moving film that addressed AIDS and homosexuality with insight and grace. With MUNICH, Kushner again brings beauty, humor and pathos to a subject fraught with emotion. Even more importantly, he writes characters with unique, interesting voices; characters who sound like people while reflecting universal emotions.

Some who see the picture focus on Munich's political and philosophical ramifications. I'm more interested in its personal ones. By giving us a tortured, unsure, yet ultimately effective protagonist ("A chef's heart and butcher's hands," as one character describes him), then surrounding him with a sufficiently wide variety of characters to give most viewers an "in" to his story, Kushner walks us through the toll inhumanity takes on the humane.

The protagonist, Avram (masterfully played by Eric Bana), is the kind of guy who comes home from the war with a box full of medals he never opens. I know guys like that. In particular, I'm reminded of the father of a childhood friend. This man, a Marine, had killed a Japanese soldier with his knife. The act of killing the soldier hadn't bothered him, he said. It was a few minutes later, when he was going through the man's things and came across a wallet photo of his family, that the enormity of what he had done fell in on him. It was a long war and this Marine killed again, but he never forgot that Japanese soldier with the wallet photo of his family. My friend's father knew his cause was just, but he carried his guilt all the same. Imagine, then, how it is for Avram, who sees the wallet photos (in effect) before he drives the point home.

IMDB says that this is only Kushner's second screenplay. Two scripts, and this guy has already created a resume most screenwriters coudn't match in a lifetime. I can't wait to see what he does next.