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.

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games is a ridiculous film made plausible through its singularity of vision and the brilliant casting of Jennifer Lawrence, an actress who is rocketing her way toward Can Do No Wrong (CDNW) status.

The film is a take on the conceit of Battle Royale, which was a take on The Most Dangerous Game.  In The Most Dangerous Game and all the films that copy it, people are the quarry for hunters either rich or alien, which is basically the same thing as far as the films are concerned.  In Battle Royale, contemporary Japanese high school kids are trapped on an island and must hunt one another until only one remains.  In The Hunger Games, a random selection of teenagers from the provinces of a dystopian future America are forced to fight for survival amongst themselves in a high-tech dome that happens to replicate our heroine’s home environment of Appalachia.

By backing off from Battle Royale’s unflinching brutality, The Hunger Games allows the audience to maintain a kind of distance.  We know that kids are killing kids, but Battle Royale puts the horror front and center through grisly, unsettling practical effects.  The Hunger Games, on the other hand, shows us enough to get the point across while keeping enough back to maintain its tone as a grim adventure, vice nightmare-inducing horror show.  Further, The Hunger Games creates distance through its setting in a ridiculous future, one in which the ruling class prances about in laughable costumes and makeup that we barely accept only because its members are portrayed by gifted professionals such as Stanley Tucci and Elizabeth Banks. 

It keeps the distance in check through its conviction.  The film never winks at the audience, it builds and maintains its world consistently, and it shines in the casting of its star, Jennifer Lawrence.  Lawrence, who broke out in the magnificent independent film Winter’s Bone and showed that she could hold her own with performers like Kevin Bacon and Michael Fassbender in the tentpole X-Men: First Class, brings an earthy realism and courage to her role as Katniss Everdeen, a young woman who volunteers to compete in the eponymous games in place of her younger sister.  She comes across as smart and resourceful and completely engaged, and she takes us along with her because if she buys in, why shouldn’t we?

The result is a successful film, one that creates a consistent world, populates it with interesting people, and makes us care about what happens to them.  I understand that The Hunger Games is to be the first of a franchise.  I look forward to the further adventures of Katniss Everdeen.  This film made me believe in her.   

Short Takes

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

I saw Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy while recovering from surgery.  I was not at my cognitive best, and I remember little about it other than that I enjoyed it.  Sorry, friend.  Not much good to you here.

MY DOG TULIP

My Dog Tulip is the animated memoir of a man who loves his dog about as much as a man can love his dog.  Problem is, the man is a terrible dog owner. 

The dog’s an Alsatian, which should live in a house with a big yard.  The man lives in an apartment and wonders why the neighbors complain about his pet’s barking.  The dog’s out of control, not properly housetrained or taught to heel, and her bad behavior alienates everyone around him.  The man doesn’t clean up his dog’s waste if nobody’s watching, leaving landmines around his neighborhood.  The list goes on.

Somehow, we’re supposed to see man and beast as the man does.  We’re supposed to smile at the dog’s foibles and sympathize with the man’s “human troubles.”  Me, I spent the whole movie waiting for Cesar Milan to show up and set this family right.  90 minutes of anger is not my idea of a good time.

WIN WIN

Win Win, on the other hand, is my idea of a good time.  Written and directed by Thomas McCarthy (The Station Agent, The Visitor), here’s a family drama with tension, humor, and pathos.  McCarthy has a great pen and a gift with actors, and it shows.

Judging by the cast he’s assembled, he must also have serious credibility in his profession.  Paul Giamatti (CDNW) stars as a struggling small-time attorney who shares a building with Jeffrey Tambor (CDNW), an accountant and his fellow high school wrestling coach.  He’s helping his best friend (Bobby Cannavale, also of The Station Agent) through a rough divorce.   Giamatti loves his wife, Amy Ryan (of ‘The Wire,’ which is required viewing) and his kids, but he’s swimming upstream and bills are due.  Enter the great Burt Young, who presents him with an opportunity, a burden, and a threat to his entire life construct.

And away we go.

Here’s the thing that makes Win Win special: McCarthy casts legitimately great actors to play these people, and it takes the time to let us get to know them.  Consequently, I felt immersed in their lives.  I laughed when they laughed, cried when they cried, chewed my fingernails when they got worried.  Win Win immersed me, engaged me, and moved me.  I loved it.

Captain America

Captain America failed to capture my imagination.  It never made me feel like I was watching people, even extraordinary people, in dangerous situations.  It made me feel like I was watching characters go through the motions of yet another ‘origin story’ that really served as a prelude to the big Avengers movie the studio has planned for next year.  Its perils didn’t feel organic, its villain struck me as silly (The villain’s someone called Red Skull, who’s a really evil Nazi because – what? – regular Nazis aren’t evil enough?), and Captain America’s “super-special good guy team” just looked goofy.

Hey, I like star Chris Evans, who was the best thing about the Fantastic Four movies and Sunshine.  I like Hugo Weaving and Tommy Lee Jones and Stanley Tucci; and Hayley Atwell is easy on the eyes.  But I never believed in what I saw, and it wasn’t long before Captain America had me looking at my watch.  I hope The Avengers will surprise me with something wonderful.  Based on what I saw in Iron Man 2, Thor, and now this, I’m not holding my breath.

W.

W bounced on and off my Netflix queue a number of times. I knew that Oliver Stone is a major director, but I didn't particularly care to sit for a two-hour tomatofest directed at our 43rd president

Yep, I expected a hatchet job, and some blademarks are clearly visible: Dick Cheney's Strangelove moment in the War Room, the mannequin that stood in for Condi Rice. But the movie got at what I perceive to be the fundamental nature of its subject: a good man out of his depth. Josh Brolin was phenomenal, making us believe in his character at every step in his journey, and taking all those Bushisms and weaving them into the natural language of a guy whose brain often outpaces his mouth.

While watching the film, I wondered why it needed to be made in 2008. I think there's a difference between a sitting president and and an alumnus, no matter how recent. As the Obama team has learned with the lack of traction of its "blame Bush" public strategy, unless the last guy in the job was a towering figure, he may as well be Jim Garfield. W was urgent during 43's presidency because then, he formed a member of our perceived "circle," those people in our daily lives who have the greatest impact on us. Now, he's like a member of that circle who has since moved away. He's a person in whom we're still interested, but that interest lacks the immediacy it once had.

Immediacy aside, W is still a film worth watching. It's a take on a man and a time by a master filmmaker with a surprising point of view. It looks great, most of the supporting cast is terrific, and it was over before I knew it.