Shoot shoot out your mouth
Friday night was the most thematic summer movie night so far, with dinner at Maison following Ratatouille at the Ziegfeld with Jen & Nick (and Aisha of Blackout, but she had to bolt after the movie). In my personal Pixar hierarchy, Ratatouille is right in the middle. It's not as hilarious as Toy Story 2 or as exciting as The Incredibles, but it's more inventive and less draggy than Cars or Finding Nemo. The Pixar movie it most reminds me of is Monsters, Inc. because it's not extraordinarily funny (though several sight gags are priceless), but it is emotionally resonant and gorgeous to look at. The scenes where we get a rat's-eye-view of a trip through a bustling kitchen are eye-popping, the relationship between Remy the wannabe-cook rat and Linguini the bumbling human is sweet without getting into over-familiar Pixar "buddy" formula, and any kind of stigma about rats in the kitchen will be a breeze for anyone who's seen The Muppets Take Manhattan (at age four, the part where the rats cook in the diner by pedaling mixers and skating on butter was my favorite part of any movie ever). If you think about all of the plot threads in Ratatouille and how they're juggled with such efficiency and intelligence, it may hurt your ability to watch non-Pixar computer-animated movies. There are so many points in this movie that DreamWorks, Sony, whoever, would belabor past the point of tolerance, and Brad Bird just makes it flow as naturally and energetically as possible. I have no idea if kids will care about any of this even on an unconscious level, or if they'll wish they were watching Shrek burp or whatever. But I don't care. This is a wonderful movie.
It seems churlish to complain about the handful of less-than-exultant reviews of one of the most acclaimed films of the year, but check out some of the objections a couple of NYC-area critics have come up with: Joshua Rothkopf's weirdly humorless primary response in Time Out New York is basically "um, no, real rats are gross" -- and frames this literal reading of the movie as a sophisticated New Yorky reaction. Meanwhile, a somewhat more postiive Owen Gleiberman nonetheless wishes there were more celebrity voices. Gleiberman, you deserve Shreks four through twelve.
Maison is a bit odd in that it looks like it belongs downtown or at least across town but is actually right in/around Times Square, but the restaurant itself is pretty neat, and open 24 hours, and they let us hang out there for awhile, so my first real experience with French food was pretty fun. I actually was a dork and ordered the ratatouille (with goat cheese in a crepe).
Marisa and I found no such thematic food connection for Live Free or Die Hard, and indeed only found out that our favorite Mexican restaurant (at 1st Ave and 13th; I could never remember the damn name) is closed for good. It's not surprising, given that there were never more than a few other people in there, but still disappointing. So we defaulted back to Mayrose and went to this new Die Hard picture.
Die Hard 4 is also conducive to ranking as means of basic evaluation, and I would put it before the first one (obviously) and also below Die Hard with a Vengeance. Vengeance seems to have a rep as kind of embarassingly bad or something (judging from some of the approving reviews of the new one), but I like it a lot. It sort of breaks from the Die Hard set-up by not taking place in a limited space of some sort, but so does Live Free or Die Hard, even moreso; Vengeance is at least Die Hard in New York and Live Free is basically Die Hard in various second-tier east-coast cities. The movie is about on par with what I remember of Die Hard 2: Die Harder; a lot of fun but not quite as snappy as it could be. The fights and stunts are impressive, but the wisecracks aren't quite up to par and the movie keeps cutting back to the government command centers for unexciting interludes I imagine the filmmakers thought would build tension. Also, it's hard to built momentum when McClane and his sidekick (Justin Long) keep having to pick themselves up and drive somewhere else for the next battle.
The PG-13 thing isn't a big deal, but it's still kind of lame; McClane can no longer say "fuck" (including, most importantly, in his signature tag line, which they must fudge in a trailer-like fashion; the circumstances are actually pretty cool, but it still made me sad) so that the -- to my mind -- slim demographic of "12-to-18-year-olds who are fond of the Die Hard series" don't have to sneak in. (Actually, I remember Rob and I bought tickets to Die Hard with a Vengeance ourselves, and I was 14 at the time. But later that summer, the theater started cracking down on that stuff.) Also, McClane still gets roughed up, but when he and Long pack up and move on to another location, he somehow gets relatively cleaned up in the interim -- blood that's been on him and drying for several scenes disappears, like they stopped at a rest area to wash up (actually, if they included a scene where this happened, I would be delighted). I don't know if that's playing it safe for the PG-13 or just weak continuity, but it makes the movie seem cartoonier than it needs to be. Note that I have no problems with the part where McClane finds himself on the wing of a military jet.
Another problem: I love Timothy Olyphant, but somehow he winds up a generic villain. I didn't expect this at all, because Olyphant manages to be menacing in relatively unsuspenseful movies like Go and The Girl Next Door. In Live Free or Die Hard, he only really starts to seem scary (and funny) in his last few scenes. It's too bad, because he could still play a great variation on the typical over-the-top head villain. Just not here.
All this said, it's a pretty decent action movie; all of the Die Hard sequels are imperfect pretty much by design, and even the first one has its share of dumb eighties action movie conventions. This one is about par for the course and a damn sight better than other action/thriller stuff Willis has been doing lately (16 Blocks, Perfect Stranger, Hostage -- that's some kind of a crummy B-movie trilogy, though his performance in 16 Blocks is pretty decent).
In future-movie news: our IMAX showing of Potter 5 on 7/13 is now sold out. But I think there are still tickets to the Tuesday showing of Transformers available, woo! When I called the Regal E-Walk and started to explain what I wanted to know, the woman knew exactly what I meant about wanting to find which screenings are on the biggest screens. She told me 10PM was one of them, so I got tickets. Unfortunately, if the information Fandango gave me post-purchase was correct, she was wrong. So I'm hoping Fandango, not the nice lady, is the one who screwed up which auditorium has the 10PM. I want the room where I saw Star Trek: Nemesis, dammit!
It seems churlish to complain about the handful of less-than-exultant reviews of one of the most acclaimed films of the year, but check out some of the objections a couple of NYC-area critics have come up with: Joshua Rothkopf's weirdly humorless primary response in Time Out New York is basically "um, no, real rats are gross" -- and frames this literal reading of the movie as a sophisticated New Yorky reaction. Meanwhile, a somewhat more postiive Owen Gleiberman nonetheless wishes there were more celebrity voices. Gleiberman, you deserve Shreks four through twelve.
Maison is a bit odd in that it looks like it belongs downtown or at least across town but is actually right in/around Times Square, but the restaurant itself is pretty neat, and open 24 hours, and they let us hang out there for awhile, so my first real experience with French food was pretty fun. I actually was a dork and ordered the ratatouille (with goat cheese in a crepe).
Marisa and I found no such thematic food connection for Live Free or Die Hard, and indeed only found out that our favorite Mexican restaurant (at 1st Ave and 13th; I could never remember the damn name) is closed for good. It's not surprising, given that there were never more than a few other people in there, but still disappointing. So we defaulted back to Mayrose and went to this new Die Hard picture.
Die Hard 4 is also conducive to ranking as means of basic evaluation, and I would put it before the first one (obviously) and also below Die Hard with a Vengeance. Vengeance seems to have a rep as kind of embarassingly bad or something (judging from some of the approving reviews of the new one), but I like it a lot. It sort of breaks from the Die Hard set-up by not taking place in a limited space of some sort, but so does Live Free or Die Hard, even moreso; Vengeance is at least Die Hard in New York and Live Free is basically Die Hard in various second-tier east-coast cities. The movie is about on par with what I remember of Die Hard 2: Die Harder; a lot of fun but not quite as snappy as it could be. The fights and stunts are impressive, but the wisecracks aren't quite up to par and the movie keeps cutting back to the government command centers for unexciting interludes I imagine the filmmakers thought would build tension. Also, it's hard to built momentum when McClane and his sidekick (Justin Long) keep having to pick themselves up and drive somewhere else for the next battle.
The PG-13 thing isn't a big deal, but it's still kind of lame; McClane can no longer say "fuck" (including, most importantly, in his signature tag line, which they must fudge in a trailer-like fashion; the circumstances are actually pretty cool, but it still made me sad) so that the -- to my mind -- slim demographic of "12-to-18-year-olds who are fond of the Die Hard series" don't have to sneak in. (Actually, I remember Rob and I bought tickets to Die Hard with a Vengeance ourselves, and I was 14 at the time. But later that summer, the theater started cracking down on that stuff.) Also, McClane still gets roughed up, but when he and Long pack up and move on to another location, he somehow gets relatively cleaned up in the interim -- blood that's been on him and drying for several scenes disappears, like they stopped at a rest area to wash up (actually, if they included a scene where this happened, I would be delighted). I don't know if that's playing it safe for the PG-13 or just weak continuity, but it makes the movie seem cartoonier than it needs to be. Note that I have no problems with the part where McClane finds himself on the wing of a military jet.
Another problem: I love Timothy Olyphant, but somehow he winds up a generic villain. I didn't expect this at all, because Olyphant manages to be menacing in relatively unsuspenseful movies like Go and The Girl Next Door. In Live Free or Die Hard, he only really starts to seem scary (and funny) in his last few scenes. It's too bad, because he could still play a great variation on the typical over-the-top head villain. Just not here.
All this said, it's a pretty decent action movie; all of the Die Hard sequels are imperfect pretty much by design, and even the first one has its share of dumb eighties action movie conventions. This one is about par for the course and a damn sight better than other action/thriller stuff Willis has been doing lately (16 Blocks, Perfect Stranger, Hostage -- that's some kind of a crummy B-movie trilogy, though his performance in 16 Blocks is pretty decent).
In future-movie news: our IMAX showing of Potter 5 on 7/13 is now sold out. But I think there are still tickets to the Tuesday showing of Transformers available, woo! When I called the Regal E-Walk and started to explain what I wanted to know, the woman knew exactly what I meant about wanting to find which screenings are on the biggest screens. She told me 10PM was one of them, so I got tickets. Unfortunately, if the information Fandango gave me post-purchase was correct, she was wrong. So I'm hoping Fandango, not the nice lady, is the one who screwed up which auditorium has the 10PM. I want the room where I saw Star Trek: Nemesis, dammit!