(no subject)
Titles Covered: All the Mad Max movies, Home, Heaven and Earth, The Quiet American, We Were Soldiers, The Queen, Swingers, Ex Machina, Lethal Weapon 2
Max Max (** and a half)
George Miller's original Mad Max is quite different from the rest of the series. It has no science-fiction elements, takes place “a few years from now,” and features an economically-depressed but still civilized Australia. The titular “Max” actually isn't mad yet, but rather a caring family man and a member of a still-functioning police force that does battle with biker gangs.
The backstory for this world isn't really explained until The Road Warrior. I'm left to wonder: if there were no sequels, would “Mad Max” even be seen as a post-apocalyptic movie? You could just as easily look at this movie as a contemporary 1970's cop movie that takes place in a rural, crime-ridden province. Indeed, the movie looks and sounds like a typical 1970's movie, complete with over-played music cues to signal when you should react to something gory or shocking.
As for the plot, it's pretty simple. The biker gangs are bad, and they kill some cops and cop family members, until Max snaps and goes on a rampage, killing all the bikers. That real conflict between Max and the bikers doesn't take form until the 3rd act of the movie, so the movie can seem pretty slow until that point. I know a lot of people have told me this movie is boring, though it does get much better towards the end. One of the more inspired scenes involves Max's wife, running frantically through a forest as the camera leans to suggest bad guys behind every tree, without giving you a clear idea of where they are. This is followed by a memorable bit involving an awesome old lady with a shotgun, who single-handedly manages to hold back the bad guys.
Overall, Mad Max is OK, and the second half makes it worth watching. However, it seems pretty dated now. If you're interested in the series, this provides a decent origin story.
Mad Max: The Road Warrior (****)
Prior to Fury Road, this movie was a popular favorite in the Mad Max series. It's easy to see why: it's incredibly well-made, and it has the best premise. Since the events of the first movie, Max has a new dog and travels alone looking for supplies. He encounters a small colony built around an oil refinery which is in the middle of an extended siege. This is an interesting choice: the first major battle scene occurs off in the distance, seen in fragments through binoculars while we hear faint echos of proclamations by warlord “Lord Humongous.”
There are a lot of interesting choices in the movie's design, particular in its ramshackle sets and costumes. Everything looks like it's been assembled from random looted supplies. Meanwhile, the people fight with improvised, simple weapons such as darts, arrows, homemade firebombs, and trained snakes. Bullets are rare, and kept in special locked cases. But one of the most impressive aspects of this movie is the level of personality it gives to the side-characters. Even though the movie has very little dialogue, many of the random people in the background are very memorable: the cute nurse with the silly haircut, the quirky old man dressed as George Patton, the warrior woman wearing football pads (but seriously, why does a colony with only 2 women of child-bearing age put one of them on the front lines?!), the feral kid with a killer boomerang... even though none of these characters have names, they all have very distinct looks and demeanor.
Of course, the main reason to watch the movie is for the big chase at the end. While Fury Road has outdone it in sheer spectacle and technical polish, there is something very raw and brutal about The Road Warrior's simplicity. The chase is constantly moving and constantly evolving, with people driving cars, running on top of cars, jumping between cars, and using all sorts of different weapons. What makes the scene more intense is that it pulls no punches. Likable characters can and will die.
I'd seen this movie way back in college, in a back-to-back showing with Waterworld (which made me realize that Waterworld is basically the same movie!), but I think I was even more impressed upon revisiting it. It's a simple movie, but one done so well that it's a very memorable experience.
Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (*** and a half)
The last of the “old” Mad Max movies, Beyond Thunderdome is also the biggest. While the first two are pretty minimalist action movies, Beyond Thunderdome has a bigger scope, bigger cast, much bigger sets, and a bigger mythology. It acquires some problems while doing so, but it's still an impressive effort.
I was under the impression that Beyond Thunderdome wasn't considered a good movie, so I was pleasantly surprised that parts of it are actually really great. The settings probably surpass those of The Road Warrior, featuring entire cities and enclaves believably populated by various denizens of the post-apocalypse. “Barter Town” takes the excellent art direction and costuming of the previous movie and ramps it up to a whole new level, while an isolated tribe of Lost Boys (survivors of a crashed airliner) add an interesting element of mythology to the entire franchise. The story-telling traditions of the Lost Boys are a delight, and depict the post-civilization era in a compelling new way without any scenes of violence. The action scenes never quite reach the heights of the final chase in The Road Warrior, but hold their own quite well. There's a big chase on a train that's a lot of fun, but the real set-piece is a one-on-one brawl with 2 men bouncing around on bungee cords.
However, while all the pieces of the film are pretty fantastic, the plot fails to connect its various chapters. First of all, there's a pivotal character who's played by an actor from The Road Warrior, but it's unclear if it's supposed to be the same character (which doesn't make sense) or someone else (in which case... who is he?). The transitions between the different chapters of the movie are just arbitrary. At one point, Max's fate is decided by a spinning game show wheel, but then the movie doesn't even stick with that. Then he's a messiah character, but no one listens to him, and then they go back to Barter Town for no reason, and then rescue some guy because they need him for... something, I guess. Seriously, every time the film changes settings, the story falls apart.
While a very flawed movie, I do think that the good parts of Beyond Thunderdome overwhelm the bad. The visuals are good, the action is solid, and the music is probably the best of the series.
Mad Max: Fury Road (*****)
I should probably wait until the hype and excitement over this movie has died down before trying to place it in the hierarchy of action movies. Right now, my temptation is to proclaim it one of the best action movies, easily joining the ranks of Terminator 2, Die Hard, Aliens, Total Recall, and Hardboiled. It might be that good.
Of course, if you're not into action movies, you're in the wrong place. This is a movie for people who want to see crazy fighting. There's more to the movie than that, but much of the plot and thematic meaning is below the surface, hidden among non-stop chase scenes, shootouts, and car stunts. But boy oh boy does the action in this movie rock my socks! The editing, filming, choreography, visual palette, and sheer imagination and kinetic energy is mind-blowing. Never does the action settle for doing just one thing... George Miller seems to have thought of everything that can be done in a car chase. The film makes use of real stunts and cars as much as possible, combining the realism of old school movies with the slickness of newer movies.
A common criticism of this movie is that it has no plot. I disagree. Fury Road has at least an average amount of plot for an action movie. What it does differently than most movies is that it uses subtext and visual storytelling instead of explicit dialogue embellishing on the plot. An interesting point of contrast is this year's Jurassic World, a movie in which every character shares every thought they have, often without any narrative purpose. In Fury Road, the characters share very little about themselves, but we get the story from their reactions (often non-verbal) and decisions. I don't want to make this movie out to be “deep”, but I will argue that the film gives a lot of personality to its characters and relationships without having to explain them. A great example is the character of Nux, a crazy warboy who speaks only in fragmented English, but quickly conveys in one brief scene that (1) he's dying of cancer, (2) he's desperately seeking a resurrected life by appeasing Immortan Joe, and (3) he is deeply moved by the fact that one of Joe's prized “breeders” shows concern for him.
Much has been made about the “battle-of-the-sexes” feminist aspect of the plot. It's there, but it's handled well as an angle for a science fiction story, rather than some thinly veiled political piece. There's also a bit of nuance: The matriarchal biker gang is met with some disapproval (“You kill people? … I thought you girls were above all that.”) and it is ultimately Max who convinces them to liberate the slaves of the Citadel.
The only criticism I have is that Tom Hardy doesn't command the role of Max the way Mel Gibson did. At first I thought this was simply because he doesn't have much dialogue, but Max doesn't talk much in The Road Warrior either. Regardless, Fury Road is an excellent action movie. This is the type of exquisite film-making that those silly “Fast and Furious” movies desperately need. Whatever end-of-year Oscar Bait ends up on this year's “Best Picture” list, it needs to be compared to Inside Out and Mad Max: Fury Road. 'Nuf Said.
OK, on to other stuff that's not Mad Max...
Home (***)
Home is a very silly take on the alien invasion premise. The idea is that a race of aliens take over earth by sending all the humans to a preserve in Australia (it has ice cream and roller coasters, so the aliens figure that the humans will be happy and not attempt a rebellion). A misfit alien played by Jim Parsons decides to throw a house-warming party on Earth, and mistakenly sends a “Reply to All” email that goes to an enemy race of evil planet-destroying aliens.
The Boov are one of the movie's better attributes. I liked their garbled version of English (which swaps around verb tenses), the fact that they change color based on their moods, and their silly bubble-based technology. The Boov also seem to be a satire of humans, or at least what humans could become in the future. At some point in the past the Boov were clever enough to develop advanced technology, but now that this technology does all their work, they've become somewhat stupid, cowardly, and antisocial.
Jim Parson's does well as “Oh”, conveying the weird alien nature of his famous “Sheldon Cooper” character, while also making the character more friendly and sympathetic. However, the casting of Rihanna as his human friend doesn't really work. Her voice is too husky for a little girl, and it gets weird when her character listens to Rihanna music for large segments of the movie. To be fair, the soundtrack does have some interesting selections.
Home is silly fun. It's a mid-level Dreamworks movie, and that's good enough. It's funny, it's well-animated, and it engages just the right amount of slapstick and cartoon craziness without becoming incomprehensible. I don't know that I'd call it a quality movie, but it's easy to enjoy.
For those of you who haven't been following anything I've posted on Facebook in the last few months, I was recently in a production of Miss Saigon and was recommended to watch a few movies about the Vietnam War. Anyway, here they are.
Heaven and Earth (*** and a half)
This could easily be titled, “Miss Saigon, if she actually made it to America.” Following up on Platoon and Born on the 4th of July, Oliver Stone finishes his Vietnam trilogy by telling the true story of a Vietnamese woman who escaped the war by marrying an American. Her story covers a lot more ground than that; the movie starts in a rural village right before the First IndoChina War, and shows the conflict from the point of view of simple people who know little to nothing about the broader political issues. It's a curious situation, as the main character ends up supporting both the government of South Vietnam (notoriously corrupt) and the VC resistance fighters (notoriously brutal and murderous). I felt terrible for the main character, but also a bit frustrated with her. Throughout the entire story she never fully grasps the concept of “consequence” and thus gets helplessly victimized throughout the entire movie.
After a series of unfortunate events, Miss Ly eventually romances Tommy Lee Jones, and here the movie completely shifts gears. Rather than being the tragic story of a peasant girl caught in the middle of a war, it shows the immigrant experience. Oliver Stone brilliantly films the scenes in America with a skewed perspective to make everything look huge and brightly-colored. Refrigerators are colossal monoliths, supermarkets have enough rice to feed entire districts, and all the fat Americans could easily outweigh several skinny Vietnamese villagers.
The movie is beautiful and poignant. So... why is it not held in the same high regard as other Oliver Stone movies like Platoon? Maybe Hollywood was simply tired of Vietnam by 1993, but I also think that Heaven and Earth is a flawed movie. All of its individual pieces are spectacular, but the film has a very loose structure. The first 45 minutes provides backstory and context for the rest of the movie, but doesn't connect on a plot level. Meanwhile poor Tommy Lee Jones is stuck with a character who doesn't make sense because he's representing two radically different real-life men: one elderly and kind, and another alcoholic and abusive. Ly married twice in real life, and stories from both marriages are compressed into a single fictional character.
That said, I feel that the good parts of Heaven and Earth overwhelm its over-arching structural problems. It could have been woven together a bit more cohesively, but it's still and beautiful and heartbreaking story.
The Quiet American (***)
Americans understand what one means by “The Vietnam War,” but to the Vietnamese such a phrase should prompt the question: “Which one?” The Quiet American is set during the French Indo-China War, which could be seen as the prequel to our Vietnam War. The story is told from the point of view of a British journalist (Michael Caine) and a curious love/hate relationship he develops with an American aid worker. The men are friends and romantic rivals all in one, and are strangely cordial about fighting over the same woman.
Michael Caine's performance is interesting, in that he does his usual old-man-with-a-sharp-tongue shtick, which might trick you into believing the character is wise and benevolent. But he's not. He's a selfish bastard with few redeeming qualities, a man who gets away with everything because he's old and well-spoken. Brendan Frasier is a sharp contrast: a more brash, idealistic American who actually wants to help. Even when his more sinister secrets are revealed, Frasier seems to be fighting for a larger cause then just himself. If he was as selfish as Caine, he would have no reason to be in Vietnam at all, or do any of the stuff he does in the movie.
The historical context is interesting because the book was written in the 50's, so the author has very a
very limited perspective on legacy of Vietnam. The movie came out in 2002, so it is able to add a post-script about American involvement in the war. Even so, the movie refuses to engage a larger view, and I think this might be a deliberate choice. The main character is actually criticized for ignoring the big picture, and at least 2/3rds of the movie's run time hides the plot behind a fairly standard love-triangle drama. To be honest, the actual plot of the movie kind of snuck up on me.
The Quiet American is a pretty good movie. It didn't quite thrill me, and there really aren't any characters besides the two main men who are worth talking about, but I enjoyed the setting and the lead performances. The main plot reveal is handled well, and the moral ambiguity of the whole movie is interesting.
We Were Soldiers (*** and a half)
Based on the memoirs of journalist Joseph Galloway, We Were Soldiers portrays the Battle of La Drang, one of first major battles of the Vietnam war. It's a battle with a complicated legacy, one in which both sides claim victory. If we believe the “North Vietnamese estimates” posted on Wikipedia, the Americans did so badly that they lost all ~1000 men involved... plus a few hundred more guys who weren't even there.
Anyway, the movie is mostly from the American side. The Americans are brave and heroic and the NVA sometimes seem to forget how guns work (most notably in one brief scene where Sam Elliot takes down several soldiers who just charge him without even firing their rifles). However, the film has a bit of nuance. It briefly engages the enemy side of the war, which is a nice touch, especially when questioning what was really accomplished by the entire conflict. The US spun the battle as a victory due to the kill ratio, but the movie shows what that really amounts to: a grotesque pile of dead bodies, and grieving family members. Meanwhile, a subplot of the movie shows the wives of the US soldiers delivering an ever-growing pile of death notification letters.
The movie is structured a bit like Black Hawk Down, in that the later 2/3rds of the movie is mostly fighting, fighting, and more fighting. The battle scenes are filmed and edited extremely well, and are a major reason to watch the movie. I feel that Saving Private Ryan set a new standard for war movies, one which films in the early 2000's often struggled to reproduce. While We Were Soldiers may not be the greatest movie in terms of character development, it's definitely hits high notes on technical production, with amazingly detailed, brutal, and huge battle scenes. Most notable is the “Broken Arrow” scene, in which the Americans are barely saved by last-second air support. This section also heavily features enemies wearing costumes identical to one I wore in Miss Saigon, which was pretty surreal to see.
I don't consider We Were Soldiers to be one of the greatest war movies, but it's a good war movie. It's solid, technically flawless, and moves at a good pace.
The Queen (**)
Oh boy oh boy! I now have another perfect illustration of perfectly fine-tuned “Oscar Bait” that would never be made otherwise. See, all the individual aspects of The Queen are actually good. The filming is good, the art direction is good, the dialogue is good, and all the actors are good. Everyone involved with the film did a great job, with one notable exception: whoever decided to make the movie in the first place.
And therein lies the problem: despite an exquisite production, The Queen has a god-awful premise and boring plot. The entire conflict is that people want Elizabeth II to give a speech about Princess Di, and the queen would rather not, because she is too busy doing whatever the Queen does (i.e. nothing). I realize that Oscar Bait movies are usually not “high-concept” (in other words, their appeal is more in writing and performance, rather than having some cool story idea), but this is a whole new level. Throughout the entire story, all I could think is “WHO CARES?! WHY DOES ANY OF THIS MATTER?!” I'm not trying to be disrespectful towards the sudden death of Princess Di; that might have made for a decent movie. The Queen isn't about Diana's death, or the subsequent thought-provoking issues (celebrity worship, gossip culture, responsibility of paparazzi, etc.). It's not even about the royal family's grief. It's just Elizabeth II reacting to other people reacting to news stories with the relevance of modern-day “click-bait” articles. The whole plot reminds me of discussions on social media, where two groups of people with way too much free time get so involved with accusing each other that they quickly lose sight of the original issue. Seriously, why pay attention to such nonsense?
I haven't even gotten to the irrelevance of the British monarchy, but it's a specter that looms over the movie. The movie focuses a lot of Tony Blair (a great performance by Michael Sheen), and shows him being won over by the Queen's quiet dignity. His advisers and wife argue that the monarchy is just a silly tradition, but he ultimately sides against them. Whether Blair really felt that way or not, the movie seems to be preaching a moral that rings completely false.
Perhaps a fair comparison is The King's Speech, another classy Oscar-Bait movie about a mostly irrelevant monarch dealing with personal issues. I was trying to figure out why I liked The King's Speech, and not The Queen, and I think it comes down to 2 basic issues: stakes (The King must inspire people during WWII whereas the Queen merely says some nice things at a funeral), and conflict (The King must overcome a physical difficulty; the Queen just has to make a rather painless decision). Solid writing and acting can go a long way, but without identifying a solid dramatic center, it's all for naught.
Swingers (*** and a half)
OK, now THIS is a much better example of a low-concept movie...
The premise of Swingers is that Jon Favreau is sad about a breakup he had, so his other friends try to cheer him up and get him to date again. That's it. There's not much of a plot, but the character dynamics actually carry the movie. I've avoided this movie for awhile because it seemed to glorify the kinds of guys I completely despise (cocky pick-up artists), but it's a lot more complex and nuanced. The self-proclaimed pickup artist (Vince Vaughn) actually ends up being “cock-blocked” in a rather hilarious way, while the center of the story is a more likable and timid man.
In the end, it's really Jon Favreau who makes the movie work. Yes, the movie has funny jokes, snappy dialogue, and plenty of scathing satire, but ultimately a story needs something that we really care about. And that's what Favreau provides: a sad-sack comedian who's so pathetic yet so earnest that you want to see him succeed against the odds. I feel like this character is very relateable; if he doesn't remind you of yourself, he should remind you of friends you have. Actually, all of the main characters are relate able to some degree, as they go through different struggles. A sad but funny subplot concerns Ron Livingston as an actor who resorts to playing costumed theme park characters.
“Sad, but funny,” describes a lot of this movie. In one especially memorable scene, Favreau tries to leave an answering machine message for a girl he likes, but keeps getting cut off. You immediately know where the gag is going, but it's stretched to such extreme lengths that it's all the more hilarious. However, the movie does end on a slightly uplifting note. I was pleasantly surprised by the balance the movie found between its different character perspectives. I would have expected the script to insist that one of the characters undergo a drastic change (i.e. Favreau becomes a lady's man, or Vaughn becomes a sensitive guy), but instead it lets them operate on their own terms.
Despite the party atmosphere and frat-boy catchphrases (“Vegas, baby!”), Swingers is a surprisingly sweet movie. In a way, it reminded me of the classic film Marty, another love story about an awkward bachelor struggling to find his way. There are plenty of movies about handsome suave guys... it's nice to see filmmakers acknowledge the rest of us.
Ex Machina (*** and a half)
A low-budget hit from this year, Ex Machina is a minimalist movie about robotics and artificial intelligence. The plot is that a computer programmer is invited by his reclusive boss to interact with an experimental AI. At first, it seems that he's participating in a Turing Test, but then it turns out that the robot is beyond that. She can already imitate human speech, so now the test is to see if people connect to her emotionally even while knowing that she's fake. This is an interesting idea.
All three lead actors give pretty solid performances, but the stand-out is really Oscar Issac as a slightly unhinged genius (this makes me feel better about the cast of The Force Awakens). He successfully conveys the idea of a boy genius, rich in ideas and know-how, but very immature and off-putting at the same time. He waxes on a bit about how is AI is created, both by quantifiable data sets (facial expressions) and intuitive non-rational thinking. The robot embodies this well, at least in the sense that she creates the illusion of intuitive thinking even when her motivations are entirely cold and mechanical.
Ex Machina is certainly much smarter than your average action blockbuster. Yet, considering that the movie is basically just 3 people sitting around discussing AI, it seemed that a lot more could have been done. The movie briefly touches on a lot of interesting ideas, but tends to change the subject before getting too deep. The plot twists are decent, but all way too obvious (almost nothing surprised me). The ending of Ex Machina is also a bit problematic. It makes sense on a plot-logic level, but it fails to reach any form of catharsis, which can be achieved with either a happy or sad ending. Either the ending needed some extra dialogue to wrap things up, or it needed to close much faster.
Ex Machina is interesting, and smarter than your average bear. I ultimately felt that it didn't stick the landing (and is probably a bit over-rated...), but it's a solid film nonetheless. I'd recommend checking it out.
Lethal Weapon 2 (***)
This movie might be most famous for propagating misunderstandings about the concept about “diplomatic immunity” (a fairly complex tradition to ensure that ambassadors are admitted regardless of the diplomatic status between 2 countries) which I'd seen referenced a lot in TV shows like Family Guy and Dilbert. The plot of the movie concerns a South African ambassador who uses his diplomatic status to cover up a drug operation, because it's the 1980's and all foreigners and criminals are involved in drugs. Unfortunately, for Mr. Ambassador, 1980's movie cops can do whatever they want without getting fired or thrown in jail.
The result is a solid if somewhat typical cop movie. The cops are reckless, the bad guys are bad, and big stunts and shootouts are the result. I think the main highlight is the chemistry between Danny Glover and Mel Gibson. They've gotten past their “odd couple” tension in the first movie, so now they have a cordial but still dynamic and interesting relationship. There's also some very effective comic relief delivered by Joe Peschi as a low-level criminal in the witness protection program. While the Lethal Weapon series is mostly drama and action, this installment has some decent humor, including a running gag about Glover's teenage daughter appearing in a risque TV commercial.
On the other hand, the romantic subplot is pretty painful to watch. Basically, Mel Gibson repeatedly harasses and embarrasses a woman until she sleeps with him. I'm not even a feminist and it makes me so sad that movies taught us that this is the way to get a date.
Overall, I'm not quite sure how this series became as famous as it is, but Lethal Weapon 2 is a solid, if unexceptional action movie.
Max Max (** and a half)
George Miller's original Mad Max is quite different from the rest of the series. It has no science-fiction elements, takes place “a few years from now,” and features an economically-depressed but still civilized Australia. The titular “Max” actually isn't mad yet, but rather a caring family man and a member of a still-functioning police force that does battle with biker gangs.
The backstory for this world isn't really explained until The Road Warrior. I'm left to wonder: if there were no sequels, would “Mad Max” even be seen as a post-apocalyptic movie? You could just as easily look at this movie as a contemporary 1970's cop movie that takes place in a rural, crime-ridden province. Indeed, the movie looks and sounds like a typical 1970's movie, complete with over-played music cues to signal when you should react to something gory or shocking.
As for the plot, it's pretty simple. The biker gangs are bad, and they kill some cops and cop family members, until Max snaps and goes on a rampage, killing all the bikers. That real conflict between Max and the bikers doesn't take form until the 3rd act of the movie, so the movie can seem pretty slow until that point. I know a lot of people have told me this movie is boring, though it does get much better towards the end. One of the more inspired scenes involves Max's wife, running frantically through a forest as the camera leans to suggest bad guys behind every tree, without giving you a clear idea of where they are. This is followed by a memorable bit involving an awesome old lady with a shotgun, who single-handedly manages to hold back the bad guys.
Overall, Mad Max is OK, and the second half makes it worth watching. However, it seems pretty dated now. If you're interested in the series, this provides a decent origin story.
Mad Max: The Road Warrior (****)
Prior to Fury Road, this movie was a popular favorite in the Mad Max series. It's easy to see why: it's incredibly well-made, and it has the best premise. Since the events of the first movie, Max has a new dog and travels alone looking for supplies. He encounters a small colony built around an oil refinery which is in the middle of an extended siege. This is an interesting choice: the first major battle scene occurs off in the distance, seen in fragments through binoculars while we hear faint echos of proclamations by warlord “Lord Humongous.”
There are a lot of interesting choices in the movie's design, particular in its ramshackle sets and costumes. Everything looks like it's been assembled from random looted supplies. Meanwhile, the people fight with improvised, simple weapons such as darts, arrows, homemade firebombs, and trained snakes. Bullets are rare, and kept in special locked cases. But one of the most impressive aspects of this movie is the level of personality it gives to the side-characters. Even though the movie has very little dialogue, many of the random people in the background are very memorable: the cute nurse with the silly haircut, the quirky old man dressed as George Patton, the warrior woman wearing football pads (but seriously, why does a colony with only 2 women of child-bearing age put one of them on the front lines?!), the feral kid with a killer boomerang... even though none of these characters have names, they all have very distinct looks and demeanor.
Of course, the main reason to watch the movie is for the big chase at the end. While Fury Road has outdone it in sheer spectacle and technical polish, there is something very raw and brutal about The Road Warrior's simplicity. The chase is constantly moving and constantly evolving, with people driving cars, running on top of cars, jumping between cars, and using all sorts of different weapons. What makes the scene more intense is that it pulls no punches. Likable characters can and will die.
I'd seen this movie way back in college, in a back-to-back showing with Waterworld (which made me realize that Waterworld is basically the same movie!), but I think I was even more impressed upon revisiting it. It's a simple movie, but one done so well that it's a very memorable experience.
Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (*** and a half)
The last of the “old” Mad Max movies, Beyond Thunderdome is also the biggest. While the first two are pretty minimalist action movies, Beyond Thunderdome has a bigger scope, bigger cast, much bigger sets, and a bigger mythology. It acquires some problems while doing so, but it's still an impressive effort.
I was under the impression that Beyond Thunderdome wasn't considered a good movie, so I was pleasantly surprised that parts of it are actually really great. The settings probably surpass those of The Road Warrior, featuring entire cities and enclaves believably populated by various denizens of the post-apocalypse. “Barter Town” takes the excellent art direction and costuming of the previous movie and ramps it up to a whole new level, while an isolated tribe of Lost Boys (survivors of a crashed airliner) add an interesting element of mythology to the entire franchise. The story-telling traditions of the Lost Boys are a delight, and depict the post-civilization era in a compelling new way without any scenes of violence. The action scenes never quite reach the heights of the final chase in The Road Warrior, but hold their own quite well. There's a big chase on a train that's a lot of fun, but the real set-piece is a one-on-one brawl with 2 men bouncing around on bungee cords.
However, while all the pieces of the film are pretty fantastic, the plot fails to connect its various chapters. First of all, there's a pivotal character who's played by an actor from The Road Warrior, but it's unclear if it's supposed to be the same character (which doesn't make sense) or someone else (in which case... who is he?). The transitions between the different chapters of the movie are just arbitrary. At one point, Max's fate is decided by a spinning game show wheel, but then the movie doesn't even stick with that. Then he's a messiah character, but no one listens to him, and then they go back to Barter Town for no reason, and then rescue some guy because they need him for... something, I guess. Seriously, every time the film changes settings, the story falls apart.
While a very flawed movie, I do think that the good parts of Beyond Thunderdome overwhelm the bad. The visuals are good, the action is solid, and the music is probably the best of the series.
Mad Max: Fury Road (*****)
I should probably wait until the hype and excitement over this movie has died down before trying to place it in the hierarchy of action movies. Right now, my temptation is to proclaim it one of the best action movies, easily joining the ranks of Terminator 2, Die Hard, Aliens, Total Recall, and Hardboiled. It might be that good.
Of course, if you're not into action movies, you're in the wrong place. This is a movie for people who want to see crazy fighting. There's more to the movie than that, but much of the plot and thematic meaning is below the surface, hidden among non-stop chase scenes, shootouts, and car stunts. But boy oh boy does the action in this movie rock my socks! The editing, filming, choreography, visual palette, and sheer imagination and kinetic energy is mind-blowing. Never does the action settle for doing just one thing... George Miller seems to have thought of everything that can be done in a car chase. The film makes use of real stunts and cars as much as possible, combining the realism of old school movies with the slickness of newer movies.
A common criticism of this movie is that it has no plot. I disagree. Fury Road has at least an average amount of plot for an action movie. What it does differently than most movies is that it uses subtext and visual storytelling instead of explicit dialogue embellishing on the plot. An interesting point of contrast is this year's Jurassic World, a movie in which every character shares every thought they have, often without any narrative purpose. In Fury Road, the characters share very little about themselves, but we get the story from their reactions (often non-verbal) and decisions. I don't want to make this movie out to be “deep”, but I will argue that the film gives a lot of personality to its characters and relationships without having to explain them. A great example is the character of Nux, a crazy warboy who speaks only in fragmented English, but quickly conveys in one brief scene that (1) he's dying of cancer, (2) he's desperately seeking a resurrected life by appeasing Immortan Joe, and (3) he is deeply moved by the fact that one of Joe's prized “breeders” shows concern for him.
Much has been made about the “battle-of-the-sexes” feminist aspect of the plot. It's there, but it's handled well as an angle for a science fiction story, rather than some thinly veiled political piece. There's also a bit of nuance: The matriarchal biker gang is met with some disapproval (“You kill people? … I thought you girls were above all that.”) and it is ultimately Max who convinces them to liberate the slaves of the Citadel.
The only criticism I have is that Tom Hardy doesn't command the role of Max the way Mel Gibson did. At first I thought this was simply because he doesn't have much dialogue, but Max doesn't talk much in The Road Warrior either. Regardless, Fury Road is an excellent action movie. This is the type of exquisite film-making that those silly “Fast and Furious” movies desperately need. Whatever end-of-year Oscar Bait ends up on this year's “Best Picture” list, it needs to be compared to Inside Out and Mad Max: Fury Road. 'Nuf Said.
OK, on to other stuff that's not Mad Max...
Home (***)
Home is a very silly take on the alien invasion premise. The idea is that a race of aliens take over earth by sending all the humans to a preserve in Australia (it has ice cream and roller coasters, so the aliens figure that the humans will be happy and not attempt a rebellion). A misfit alien played by Jim Parsons decides to throw a house-warming party on Earth, and mistakenly sends a “Reply to All” email that goes to an enemy race of evil planet-destroying aliens.
The Boov are one of the movie's better attributes. I liked their garbled version of English (which swaps around verb tenses), the fact that they change color based on their moods, and their silly bubble-based technology. The Boov also seem to be a satire of humans, or at least what humans could become in the future. At some point in the past the Boov were clever enough to develop advanced technology, but now that this technology does all their work, they've become somewhat stupid, cowardly, and antisocial.
Jim Parson's does well as “Oh”, conveying the weird alien nature of his famous “Sheldon Cooper” character, while also making the character more friendly and sympathetic. However, the casting of Rihanna as his human friend doesn't really work. Her voice is too husky for a little girl, and it gets weird when her character listens to Rihanna music for large segments of the movie. To be fair, the soundtrack does have some interesting selections.
Home is silly fun. It's a mid-level Dreamworks movie, and that's good enough. It's funny, it's well-animated, and it engages just the right amount of slapstick and cartoon craziness without becoming incomprehensible. I don't know that I'd call it a quality movie, but it's easy to enjoy.
For those of you who haven't been following anything I've posted on Facebook in the last few months, I was recently in a production of Miss Saigon and was recommended to watch a few movies about the Vietnam War. Anyway, here they are.
Heaven and Earth (*** and a half)
This could easily be titled, “Miss Saigon, if she actually made it to America.” Following up on Platoon and Born on the 4th of July, Oliver Stone finishes his Vietnam trilogy by telling the true story of a Vietnamese woman who escaped the war by marrying an American. Her story covers a lot more ground than that; the movie starts in a rural village right before the First IndoChina War, and shows the conflict from the point of view of simple people who know little to nothing about the broader political issues. It's a curious situation, as the main character ends up supporting both the government of South Vietnam (notoriously corrupt) and the VC resistance fighters (notoriously brutal and murderous). I felt terrible for the main character, but also a bit frustrated with her. Throughout the entire story she never fully grasps the concept of “consequence” and thus gets helplessly victimized throughout the entire movie.
After a series of unfortunate events, Miss Ly eventually romances Tommy Lee Jones, and here the movie completely shifts gears. Rather than being the tragic story of a peasant girl caught in the middle of a war, it shows the immigrant experience. Oliver Stone brilliantly films the scenes in America with a skewed perspective to make everything look huge and brightly-colored. Refrigerators are colossal monoliths, supermarkets have enough rice to feed entire districts, and all the fat Americans could easily outweigh several skinny Vietnamese villagers.
The movie is beautiful and poignant. So... why is it not held in the same high regard as other Oliver Stone movies like Platoon? Maybe Hollywood was simply tired of Vietnam by 1993, but I also think that Heaven and Earth is a flawed movie. All of its individual pieces are spectacular, but the film has a very loose structure. The first 45 minutes provides backstory and context for the rest of the movie, but doesn't connect on a plot level. Meanwhile poor Tommy Lee Jones is stuck with a character who doesn't make sense because he's representing two radically different real-life men: one elderly and kind, and another alcoholic and abusive. Ly married twice in real life, and stories from both marriages are compressed into a single fictional character.
That said, I feel that the good parts of Heaven and Earth overwhelm its over-arching structural problems. It could have been woven together a bit more cohesively, but it's still and beautiful and heartbreaking story.
The Quiet American (***)
Americans understand what one means by “The Vietnam War,” but to the Vietnamese such a phrase should prompt the question: “Which one?” The Quiet American is set during the French Indo-China War, which could be seen as the prequel to our Vietnam War. The story is told from the point of view of a British journalist (Michael Caine) and a curious love/hate relationship he develops with an American aid worker. The men are friends and romantic rivals all in one, and are strangely cordial about fighting over the same woman.
Michael Caine's performance is interesting, in that he does his usual old-man-with-a-sharp-tongue shtick, which might trick you into believing the character is wise and benevolent. But he's not. He's a selfish bastard with few redeeming qualities, a man who gets away with everything because he's old and well-spoken. Brendan Frasier is a sharp contrast: a more brash, idealistic American who actually wants to help. Even when his more sinister secrets are revealed, Frasier seems to be fighting for a larger cause then just himself. If he was as selfish as Caine, he would have no reason to be in Vietnam at all, or do any of the stuff he does in the movie.
The historical context is interesting because the book was written in the 50's, so the author has very a
very limited perspective on legacy of Vietnam. The movie came out in 2002, so it is able to add a post-script about American involvement in the war. Even so, the movie refuses to engage a larger view, and I think this might be a deliberate choice. The main character is actually criticized for ignoring the big picture, and at least 2/3rds of the movie's run time hides the plot behind a fairly standard love-triangle drama. To be honest, the actual plot of the movie kind of snuck up on me.
The Quiet American is a pretty good movie. It didn't quite thrill me, and there really aren't any characters besides the two main men who are worth talking about, but I enjoyed the setting and the lead performances. The main plot reveal is handled well, and the moral ambiguity of the whole movie is interesting.
We Were Soldiers (*** and a half)
Based on the memoirs of journalist Joseph Galloway, We Were Soldiers portrays the Battle of La Drang, one of first major battles of the Vietnam war. It's a battle with a complicated legacy, one in which both sides claim victory. If we believe the “North Vietnamese estimates” posted on Wikipedia, the Americans did so badly that they lost all ~1000 men involved... plus a few hundred more guys who weren't even there.
Anyway, the movie is mostly from the American side. The Americans are brave and heroic and the NVA sometimes seem to forget how guns work (most notably in one brief scene where Sam Elliot takes down several soldiers who just charge him without even firing their rifles). However, the film has a bit of nuance. It briefly engages the enemy side of the war, which is a nice touch, especially when questioning what was really accomplished by the entire conflict. The US spun the battle as a victory due to the kill ratio, but the movie shows what that really amounts to: a grotesque pile of dead bodies, and grieving family members. Meanwhile, a subplot of the movie shows the wives of the US soldiers delivering an ever-growing pile of death notification letters.
The movie is structured a bit like Black Hawk Down, in that the later 2/3rds of the movie is mostly fighting, fighting, and more fighting. The battle scenes are filmed and edited extremely well, and are a major reason to watch the movie. I feel that Saving Private Ryan set a new standard for war movies, one which films in the early 2000's often struggled to reproduce. While We Were Soldiers may not be the greatest movie in terms of character development, it's definitely hits high notes on technical production, with amazingly detailed, brutal, and huge battle scenes. Most notable is the “Broken Arrow” scene, in which the Americans are barely saved by last-second air support. This section also heavily features enemies wearing costumes identical to one I wore in Miss Saigon, which was pretty surreal to see.
I don't consider We Were Soldiers to be one of the greatest war movies, but it's a good war movie. It's solid, technically flawless, and moves at a good pace.
The Queen (**)
Oh boy oh boy! I now have another perfect illustration of perfectly fine-tuned “Oscar Bait” that would never be made otherwise. See, all the individual aspects of The Queen are actually good. The filming is good, the art direction is good, the dialogue is good, and all the actors are good. Everyone involved with the film did a great job, with one notable exception: whoever decided to make the movie in the first place.
And therein lies the problem: despite an exquisite production, The Queen has a god-awful premise and boring plot. The entire conflict is that people want Elizabeth II to give a speech about Princess Di, and the queen would rather not, because she is too busy doing whatever the Queen does (i.e. nothing). I realize that Oscar Bait movies are usually not “high-concept” (in other words, their appeal is more in writing and performance, rather than having some cool story idea), but this is a whole new level. Throughout the entire story, all I could think is “WHO CARES?! WHY DOES ANY OF THIS MATTER?!” I'm not trying to be disrespectful towards the sudden death of Princess Di; that might have made for a decent movie. The Queen isn't about Diana's death, or the subsequent thought-provoking issues (celebrity worship, gossip culture, responsibility of paparazzi, etc.). It's not even about the royal family's grief. It's just Elizabeth II reacting to other people reacting to news stories with the relevance of modern-day “click-bait” articles. The whole plot reminds me of discussions on social media, where two groups of people with way too much free time get so involved with accusing each other that they quickly lose sight of the original issue. Seriously, why pay attention to such nonsense?
I haven't even gotten to the irrelevance of the British monarchy, but it's a specter that looms over the movie. The movie focuses a lot of Tony Blair (a great performance by Michael Sheen), and shows him being won over by the Queen's quiet dignity. His advisers and wife argue that the monarchy is just a silly tradition, but he ultimately sides against them. Whether Blair really felt that way or not, the movie seems to be preaching a moral that rings completely false.
Perhaps a fair comparison is The King's Speech, another classy Oscar-Bait movie about a mostly irrelevant monarch dealing with personal issues. I was trying to figure out why I liked The King's Speech, and not The Queen, and I think it comes down to 2 basic issues: stakes (The King must inspire people during WWII whereas the Queen merely says some nice things at a funeral), and conflict (The King must overcome a physical difficulty; the Queen just has to make a rather painless decision). Solid writing and acting can go a long way, but without identifying a solid dramatic center, it's all for naught.
Swingers (*** and a half)
OK, now THIS is a much better example of a low-concept movie...
The premise of Swingers is that Jon Favreau is sad about a breakup he had, so his other friends try to cheer him up and get him to date again. That's it. There's not much of a plot, but the character dynamics actually carry the movie. I've avoided this movie for awhile because it seemed to glorify the kinds of guys I completely despise (cocky pick-up artists), but it's a lot more complex and nuanced. The self-proclaimed pickup artist (Vince Vaughn) actually ends up being “cock-blocked” in a rather hilarious way, while the center of the story is a more likable and timid man.
In the end, it's really Jon Favreau who makes the movie work. Yes, the movie has funny jokes, snappy dialogue, and plenty of scathing satire, but ultimately a story needs something that we really care about. And that's what Favreau provides: a sad-sack comedian who's so pathetic yet so earnest that you want to see him succeed against the odds. I feel like this character is very relateable; if he doesn't remind you of yourself, he should remind you of friends you have. Actually, all of the main characters are relate able to some degree, as they go through different struggles. A sad but funny subplot concerns Ron Livingston as an actor who resorts to playing costumed theme park characters.
“Sad, but funny,” describes a lot of this movie. In one especially memorable scene, Favreau tries to leave an answering machine message for a girl he likes, but keeps getting cut off. You immediately know where the gag is going, but it's stretched to such extreme lengths that it's all the more hilarious. However, the movie does end on a slightly uplifting note. I was pleasantly surprised by the balance the movie found between its different character perspectives. I would have expected the script to insist that one of the characters undergo a drastic change (i.e. Favreau becomes a lady's man, or Vaughn becomes a sensitive guy), but instead it lets them operate on their own terms.
Despite the party atmosphere and frat-boy catchphrases (“Vegas, baby!”), Swingers is a surprisingly sweet movie. In a way, it reminded me of the classic film Marty, another love story about an awkward bachelor struggling to find his way. There are plenty of movies about handsome suave guys... it's nice to see filmmakers acknowledge the rest of us.
Ex Machina (*** and a half)
A low-budget hit from this year, Ex Machina is a minimalist movie about robotics and artificial intelligence. The plot is that a computer programmer is invited by his reclusive boss to interact with an experimental AI. At first, it seems that he's participating in a Turing Test, but then it turns out that the robot is beyond that. She can already imitate human speech, so now the test is to see if people connect to her emotionally even while knowing that she's fake. This is an interesting idea.
All three lead actors give pretty solid performances, but the stand-out is really Oscar Issac as a slightly unhinged genius (this makes me feel better about the cast of The Force Awakens). He successfully conveys the idea of a boy genius, rich in ideas and know-how, but very immature and off-putting at the same time. He waxes on a bit about how is AI is created, both by quantifiable data sets (facial expressions) and intuitive non-rational thinking. The robot embodies this well, at least in the sense that she creates the illusion of intuitive thinking even when her motivations are entirely cold and mechanical.
Ex Machina is certainly much smarter than your average action blockbuster. Yet, considering that the movie is basically just 3 people sitting around discussing AI, it seemed that a lot more could have been done. The movie briefly touches on a lot of interesting ideas, but tends to change the subject before getting too deep. The plot twists are decent, but all way too obvious (almost nothing surprised me). The ending of Ex Machina is also a bit problematic. It makes sense on a plot-logic level, but it fails to reach any form of catharsis, which can be achieved with either a happy or sad ending. Either the ending needed some extra dialogue to wrap things up, or it needed to close much faster.
Ex Machina is interesting, and smarter than your average bear. I ultimately felt that it didn't stick the landing (and is probably a bit over-rated...), but it's a solid film nonetheless. I'd recommend checking it out.
Lethal Weapon 2 (***)
This movie might be most famous for propagating misunderstandings about the concept about “diplomatic immunity” (a fairly complex tradition to ensure that ambassadors are admitted regardless of the diplomatic status between 2 countries) which I'd seen referenced a lot in TV shows like Family Guy and Dilbert. The plot of the movie concerns a South African ambassador who uses his diplomatic status to cover up a drug operation, because it's the 1980's and all foreigners and criminals are involved in drugs. Unfortunately, for Mr. Ambassador, 1980's movie cops can do whatever they want without getting fired or thrown in jail.
The result is a solid if somewhat typical cop movie. The cops are reckless, the bad guys are bad, and big stunts and shootouts are the result. I think the main highlight is the chemistry between Danny Glover and Mel Gibson. They've gotten past their “odd couple” tension in the first movie, so now they have a cordial but still dynamic and interesting relationship. There's also some very effective comic relief delivered by Joe Peschi as a low-level criminal in the witness protection program. While the Lethal Weapon series is mostly drama and action, this installment has some decent humor, including a running gag about Glover's teenage daughter appearing in a risque TV commercial.
On the other hand, the romantic subplot is pretty painful to watch. Basically, Mel Gibson repeatedly harasses and embarrasses a woman until she sleeps with him. I'm not even a feminist and it makes me so sad that movies taught us that this is the way to get a date.
Overall, I'm not quite sure how this series became as famous as it is, but Lethal Weapon 2 is a solid, if unexceptional action movie.