Movie/Comic Book Recs, as of 1/17/14
In Comics:
Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon & Hawkeye: Little Hits: I liked both of these slim trades. The artwork is nicely stylized and punchy, and it seems authentic to its many subjects. Hawkeye as a character becomes more and more well-rounded, although I will confess that some of the other characters (especially the multiple ladies vying for his attention) tended to blur together. But the stakes are high and righteous, and the villains appropriately scary/ruthless/cruel to make the stories have real teeth. My favorite installment of the both volumes shows up at the end of #2, where the story is told entirely from Hawkeye's dog's point of view. This might sound like a cutesy gimmick, but it defies all expectations and leaves almost all the other previous stories gasping in its innovative and touching dust.
At the Movies:
The Monuments Men: OK. So, the internet joke is that when you bring up the Nazi's to win an argument, you automatically lose (or so says Godwin's law.) In the case of this movie... well, I can think of no better way to say this: The Monuments Men Godwins itself. I blame this bizarre phenomenon on the fact that the script relied heavily on telling and not showing, the story often undercut its own suspense, and the characters, although sometimes engaging, were mostly a collection of cyphers and stereotypes. The impetus for the plot is the effort among the Allied forces to recover important works of art and preserve historically important buildings as WWII is winding down in Europe. This plot is intercut with efforts by a Resistance spy in a Paris art museum, who's trying to keep track of what happens to the pictures the Nazis steal so that after the War, they can be returned to their rightful owners. All of these plot elements sound really, really good: WWII! Men (and one woman) with noble goals! Europe! War! Tragedy! Meaning! Sadly, though, these elements didn't work together well at all.
For one thing, the noble goals were treated so reverently that there was no reason given to the audience why we should agree with them. While most people would agree that artistic masterpieces deserve saving, I think a lot of viewers start to hem and hedge when presented with the question, is art worth dying for? This movie made no move to answer this question at all--it asked it once, and then assumed it was answered, when no real answers had actually been provided, other than "Art! Important! Pretty!" I would have liked to see more dialogue between the characters about the artworks they wanted to preserve and what they symbolized as a whole. (I should add that there is a George Clooney monologue about this, but it's too little, too late, as it is intoned over the final few minutes of the movie.) It's one thing for the patrician Brit (played by Hugh Bonneville, as a slightly more sheepish Lord Grantham) to wax poetic over a beautiful Michelangelo statue, but this doesn't give the audience anything to buy into, and cements art as HIGH ART, unattainable to the rest of us.
Speaking of the patrician Brit, the problem of vague characters plagued the whole story as well. We have George Clooney (handsome, self-assured, more than a bit smug), Matt Damon (medieval art expert from the Met who speaks poor French, married), Bill Murray and Bob Balaban (who were probably the best characters in the entire thing, doing what little they could with the dialogue they had), a French guy (historically inaccurate), John Goodman (an architect who did no architecting), a Jewish American who parents had fled from German when he was younger, and the afore-mentioned Brit. The most interesting character in the movie is the one we know the least about: Cate Blanchett plays a French resistance spy (or maybe she's not resistance, but just doing this herself?! Never found out...) who's watching the Germans steal art from Paris collections and tracking where they're sent, at great risk. At one point, Matt Damon's character goes to find her, only to find that she's in jail and trusting no one. And it was at this point in the story where I wondered why wasn't the movie just about her (because what an amazing story) and even if it weren't, would it have killed the scriptwriters to include some line to the effect of, "People thought she was collaborating with the Nazis and so she was thrown in jail." I kept wishing that I knew more about the characters to truly care about them, and not just about their abstract selves who were doing Noble Things with their time and Saving Historical Treasures.
This isn't to say it's a wholly bad film. There were several scenes that were well done, like the first time our heroes stumble into the mine where the Nazis have hidden the stolen artwork, or the moment when Cate Blanchett and Matt Damon open a warehouse of furniture and housewares that the Nazis took from Parisian Jews:
Damon: What is all this?
Blanchett: (after a brief, sharp moment where she clearly can't believe he doesn't understand) People's lives.
But a movie that needs the Nazis to be antithesis of all that is Good, Noble, Pure, and Artistic (does a disservice to its audience, and to art as a whole. Why does anyone care about saving masterpieces in the first place? Rather than telling us the characters are Noble, show them being that way. Show them getting laughed out of town more by military higher-ups who won't even give them rides between sites; show their faces when they find these priceless antiques for the first time. Don't cut away from one of their deaths to the aftermath before the death even happens; show us that this character truly feels that Michelangelo is worth dying for, not just as a prop, but as a piece of meaningful, moving art.
tl;dr version: It's not the worst movie ever, but I think you'd be better off saving your admission costs and buying the book instead.
The LEGO Movie: Everything is awesome! Ha ha, no, not exactly, but as kids' movies go, this was funny and clever, and you could really do a lot worse. Generic Lego Construction Guy Emmett lives his life according to every instruction manual possible, but, through a bizarre series of coincidences, comes to realize this way of living is shallow and meaningless, and it's up to him to be the hero of his own narrative. I liked this story for its overall message that sometimes the best thing you can do with toys is play with them, and that there's no right or wrong way to do this, as long as you're being creative and true to yourself. There's also a certain shade of "Generation Me" to this movie that grated, and I will say that I was disappointed that the female characters didn't have more to do. (Wonder Woman, in particular, was chumped out several times. I suppose that Superman got equal treatment in this respect as he was annoyed by Green Lantern, but it didn't seem comparable.) But I like any movie with a slightly anarchist take on childhood, and the Aristophanes shout-out sealed the deal. It's a lot of fun, and the opening sequence reminds me of the best Japanese music videos that I watched on Space Shower TV years ago, super kawaii and genki, and hard to resist.
Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon & Hawkeye: Little Hits: I liked both of these slim trades. The artwork is nicely stylized and punchy, and it seems authentic to its many subjects. Hawkeye as a character becomes more and more well-rounded, although I will confess that some of the other characters (especially the multiple ladies vying for his attention) tended to blur together. But the stakes are high and righteous, and the villains appropriately scary/ruthless/cruel to make the stories have real teeth. My favorite installment of the both volumes shows up at the end of #2, where the story is told entirely from Hawkeye's dog's point of view. This might sound like a cutesy gimmick, but it defies all expectations and leaves almost all the other previous stories gasping in its innovative and touching dust.
At the Movies:
The Monuments Men: OK. So, the internet joke is that when you bring up the Nazi's to win an argument, you automatically lose (or so says Godwin's law.) In the case of this movie... well, I can think of no better way to say this: The Monuments Men Godwins itself. I blame this bizarre phenomenon on the fact that the script relied heavily on telling and not showing, the story often undercut its own suspense, and the characters, although sometimes engaging, were mostly a collection of cyphers and stereotypes. The impetus for the plot is the effort among the Allied forces to recover important works of art and preserve historically important buildings as WWII is winding down in Europe. This plot is intercut with efforts by a Resistance spy in a Paris art museum, who's trying to keep track of what happens to the pictures the Nazis steal so that after the War, they can be returned to their rightful owners. All of these plot elements sound really, really good: WWII! Men (and one woman) with noble goals! Europe! War! Tragedy! Meaning! Sadly, though, these elements didn't work together well at all.
For one thing, the noble goals were treated so reverently that there was no reason given to the audience why we should agree with them. While most people would agree that artistic masterpieces deserve saving, I think a lot of viewers start to hem and hedge when presented with the question, is art worth dying for? This movie made no move to answer this question at all--it asked it once, and then assumed it was answered, when no real answers had actually been provided, other than "Art! Important! Pretty!" I would have liked to see more dialogue between the characters about the artworks they wanted to preserve and what they symbolized as a whole. (I should add that there is a George Clooney monologue about this, but it's too little, too late, as it is intoned over the final few minutes of the movie.) It's one thing for the patrician Brit (played by Hugh Bonneville, as a slightly more sheepish Lord Grantham) to wax poetic over a beautiful Michelangelo statue, but this doesn't give the audience anything to buy into, and cements art as HIGH ART, unattainable to the rest of us.
Speaking of the patrician Brit, the problem of vague characters plagued the whole story as well. We have George Clooney (handsome, self-assured, more than a bit smug), Matt Damon (medieval art expert from the Met who speaks poor French, married), Bill Murray and Bob Balaban (who were probably the best characters in the entire thing, doing what little they could with the dialogue they had), a French guy (historically inaccurate), John Goodman (an architect who did no architecting), a Jewish American who parents had fled from German when he was younger, and the afore-mentioned Brit. The most interesting character in the movie is the one we know the least about: Cate Blanchett plays a French resistance spy (or maybe she's not resistance, but just doing this herself?! Never found out...) who's watching the Germans steal art from Paris collections and tracking where they're sent, at great risk. At one point, Matt Damon's character goes to find her, only to find that she's in jail and trusting no one. And it was at this point in the story where I wondered why wasn't the movie just about her (because what an amazing story) and even if it weren't, would it have killed the scriptwriters to include some line to the effect of, "People thought she was collaborating with the Nazis and so she was thrown in jail." I kept wishing that I knew more about the characters to truly care about them, and not just about their abstract selves who were doing Noble Things with their time and Saving Historical Treasures.
This isn't to say it's a wholly bad film. There were several scenes that were well done, like the first time our heroes stumble into the mine where the Nazis have hidden the stolen artwork, or the moment when Cate Blanchett and Matt Damon open a warehouse of furniture and housewares that the Nazis took from Parisian Jews:
Damon: What is all this?
Blanchett: (after a brief, sharp moment where she clearly can't believe he doesn't understand) People's lives.
But a movie that needs the Nazis to be antithesis of all that is Good, Noble, Pure, and Artistic (does a disservice to its audience, and to art as a whole. Why does anyone care about saving masterpieces in the first place? Rather than telling us the characters are Noble, show them being that way. Show them getting laughed out of town more by military higher-ups who won't even give them rides between sites; show their faces when they find these priceless antiques for the first time. Don't cut away from one of their deaths to the aftermath before the death even happens; show us that this character truly feels that Michelangelo is worth dying for, not just as a prop, but as a piece of meaningful, moving art.
tl;dr version: It's not the worst movie ever, but I think you'd be better off saving your admission costs and buying the book instead.
The LEGO Movie: Everything is awesome! Ha ha, no, not exactly, but as kids' movies go, this was funny and clever, and you could really do a lot worse. Generic Lego Construction Guy Emmett lives his life according to every instruction manual possible, but, through a bizarre series of coincidences, comes to realize this way of living is shallow and meaningless, and it's up to him to be the hero of his own narrative. I liked this story for its overall message that sometimes the best thing you can do with toys is play with them, and that there's no right or wrong way to do this, as long as you're being creative and true to yourself. There's also a certain shade of "Generation Me" to this movie that grated, and I will say that I was disappointed that the female characters didn't have more to do. (Wonder Woman, in particular, was chumped out several times. I suppose that Superman got equal treatment in this respect as he was annoyed by Green Lantern, but it didn't seem comparable.) But I like any movie with a slightly anarchist take on childhood, and the Aristophanes shout-out sealed the deal. It's a lot of fun, and the opening sequence reminds me of the best Japanese music videos that I watched on Space Shower TV years ago, super kawaii and genki, and hard to resist.