Movie Recs: Ain't All About the Money Edition
Recently, I've had the good fortune to see two movies that received little or no press when they were released, but turned out to be (mostly) very well done, interesting pieces of work. Although one of them has what I consider to be a major narrative flaw, both are well worth checking out.
First up, there's Chronicle, a found-footage empowered teenagers story. Three teenaged boys in Washington state are exposed to *something* (it's not clear what, although it looks extraterrestrial in the few brief shots we see it for) that gives them super powers like telekinesis, flight, and natural body armor. Of course, all three of them initially squander these powers on stupid things until they begin to realize the consequences of their actions, and then the temptation of power proves too great for the group's saddest link. Throughout this movie, I kept thinking of Lev Grossman's The Magicians, because of the links between the main characters and outcome of both narratives. This is probably as close to a live-action Magicians (minus the magical land of Fillory) as we're ever going to get, and perhaps that's for the best. I wouldn't want to visit this reality too often. I did appreciate the settings and the casting, which was excellent. Everyone looked like people I'd gone to high school with, and the writing, although a little sluggish towards the end, was appropriately profanity-strewn. There aren't any big name actors in this film, but that's OK; the three main characters are very well played and the story is excellent without having some famous person's reputation overshadowing it.
On the flip side, there's Monsters, which is the weaker of the two movies here. The ending/beginning is a confusing, muddled mess, and the symbolism through the narrative is incredibly heavy-handed (so much so that I thought the rickety shacks and structures in the story would collapse under the weight of THEIR MEANING alone.) But that doesn't mean the rest of the movie isn't good, and this film was a really nice example of character development and compelling scene setting. In the not-too-distance future, aliens have landed in the forests of Mexico, half of which is now an "infected zone" that the U.S. and Mexican governments can barely contain. The hero and heroine are trying to make their ways home, and as they travel together, they start to fall in love against an increasingly alien, menacing backdrop. What I really liked about this movie was how convincingly inhuman the aliens were, and just how many empty spaces and landscapes the locations scouts were able to provide. The most eerie sequence in the whole story comes somewhere near the end and involves a ghost town in Galveston, Texas, and it's just... spectacularly creepy. People usually talk about movies that have "edge of your seat action", but this was "edge of your seat exploration." The whole movie was like this, for the most part, interrupted only by brief bits and pieces of dialogue and character development, and it was quite good--not in your face action, all the time, but a general impression of real tension and drama in the face of dangerous and strange obstacles. As I mentioned before, the beginning and ending are a bit odd, and it's there that things fall apart. Everything else was terrific.
In any case, I wish that movies like these (and the underrated Sleep Dealer, another excellent but little seen sci-fi film) would get more press. I would prefer to see more like these get made and appreciated!
First up, there's Chronicle, a found-footage empowered teenagers story. Three teenaged boys in Washington state are exposed to *something* (it's not clear what, although it looks extraterrestrial in the few brief shots we see it for) that gives them super powers like telekinesis, flight, and natural body armor. Of course, all three of them initially squander these powers on stupid things until they begin to realize the consequences of their actions, and then the temptation of power proves too great for the group's saddest link. Throughout this movie, I kept thinking of Lev Grossman's The Magicians, because of the links between the main characters and outcome of both narratives. This is probably as close to a live-action Magicians (minus the magical land of Fillory) as we're ever going to get, and perhaps that's for the best. I wouldn't want to visit this reality too often. I did appreciate the settings and the casting, which was excellent. Everyone looked like people I'd gone to high school with, and the writing, although a little sluggish towards the end, was appropriately profanity-strewn. There aren't any big name actors in this film, but that's OK; the three main characters are very well played and the story is excellent without having some famous person's reputation overshadowing it.
On the flip side, there's Monsters, which is the weaker of the two movies here. The ending/beginning is a confusing, muddled mess, and the symbolism through the narrative is incredibly heavy-handed (so much so that I thought the rickety shacks and structures in the story would collapse under the weight of THEIR MEANING alone.) But that doesn't mean the rest of the movie isn't good, and this film was a really nice example of character development and compelling scene setting. In the not-too-distance future, aliens have landed in the forests of Mexico, half of which is now an "infected zone" that the U.S. and Mexican governments can barely contain. The hero and heroine are trying to make their ways home, and as they travel together, they start to fall in love against an increasingly alien, menacing backdrop. What I really liked about this movie was how convincingly inhuman the aliens were, and just how many empty spaces and landscapes the locations scouts were able to provide. The most eerie sequence in the whole story comes somewhere near the end and involves a ghost town in Galveston, Texas, and it's just... spectacularly creepy. People usually talk about movies that have "edge of your seat action", but this was "edge of your seat exploration." The whole movie was like this, for the most part, interrupted only by brief bits and pieces of dialogue and character development, and it was quite good--not in your face action, all the time, but a general impression of real tension and drama in the face of dangerous and strange obstacles. As I mentioned before, the beginning and ending are a bit odd, and it's there that things fall apart. Everything else was terrific.
In any case, I wish that movies like these (and the underrated Sleep Dealer, another excellent but little seen sci-fi film) would get more press. I would prefer to see more like these get made and appreciated!