Poor, obscure, plain, and little.
So, I want to write about a couple things--namely looking back at my old yearbooks--but I've been doing a lot of writing recently. Work has been busy, as have out-of-work writing commitments. These are good, mostly, but I'll be happy when the unpaid ones are over. (I wrote a poem: "Oh why oh why oh why/Did I volunteer to review A.I.?")
So, until that's over, all I really have time to do is write about the movies I saw in March.
Take Me Home Tonight: B+
It wasn't the best Topher Grace movie I could possibly hope for, but that's okay because now I still have a reason to keep seeing Topher Grace movies. But it wasn't really a solo vehicle for him, either-almost everybody in the cast is charming and is given a moment to shine (Chris Pratt, Anna Faris, and Demetri Martin especially). It doesn't get you in the gut the way a movie like Say Anything does, but it's not a bad party to attend for an evening.
Rango: A-
How incredibly strange. I mean it in the best way possible. I've read articles that say this movie doesn't even bother aiming at children, it aims straight at adults-but, really, as an adult, I think they were really aiming for the outer reaches of outer space. Sure, there were lots of fun and bizarre references to adult movies like Chinatown and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but there are other, weirder touches, like having a cast of animals so odd-looking that I couldn't really tell what kind of animals they were. (Seriously, this is supposed to be a mole. Do you know of any moles with elephant noses like that?) But I love the movie for its utter strangeness, because it kept me scratching my head and wondering where all these ideas could possibly come from. I think Gore Verbinski has got a warped mind in a way I can totally appreciate.
Battle Los Angeles: C
Once it got going, parts of it kept my interest. But, man, was it a slow start. They throw pretty much every war-movie cliché in there: a man on the verge of retirement, a young officer butting heads with someone who is older and has more experience, the guys with young wives at home, a dude wearing glasses that they call "specs," for crissake. I just want to see some alien-fighting! Those parts were okay, but every once in a while these awful character moments would bubble up again, as if that’s what the real story was, but they went on totally unaware of how clunky and unoriginal they were. (Aaron Eckhart delivers the worst monologue of 2011 so far.) And I know I'm a crank about the shaky cam, but, seriously, directors, cut it out. It makes sense in action scenes, I guess, but there's no reason why a camera would be that shaky when it's just two guys in an office talking about military retirement. You're not aping the look and feel of reality shows anymore, because reality shows have image stabilization now. Kids making YouTube videos with their iPhones have steadier hands.
Red Riding Hood: B
I think this was pretty much the best I could hope for when it came to a teen-targeted movie based on the Little Red Riding Hood story. There was a suitable amount of some Gary Oldman scenery-chewing, some nice gruesome deaths, a few gothic touches, and a lot of heaving bosoms. (Clothed. This is for teens.) Sure, I would have liked it more if the two male leads weren't so bland, but it's better than that other Catherine Hardwicke movie because at least one of these guys acknowledges how bland he is. Plus, they didn't have to spend money on an awful sparkle effect, so they had enough money in the special-effects budget to really make that coat a very saturated shade of red.
Jane Eyre: B+
I haven't read the book. (Bad English major! Bad! Really, though, I'm not into 19th-century novels about "handsome" women and who, if, and when they marry, so I haven't read most of them.) I could tell watching the movie that I was only getting the major bullet points of the story. But, mostly, I'm okay with that. Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender are awesome whenever they're talking to each other-I especially like the part where she tells him that she's "poor, obscure, plain, and little" because I am too!-I just wish that there were more of those kinds of scenes. Also, not having read the book made me lean over and tell Jesse that St. John Rivers doesn't seem so bad for wanting to marry Jane Eyre-he is, after all, played by Jamie Bell-and Jesse had to tell me that, "in the book, this conversation goes on for 100 pages…and he's her cousin." Wah wah.
Paul: B
It wasn't as funny as the other Simon Pegg/Nick Frost movies, or as hilarious and heartwarming as any of Gret Mottola's other films. There's not much of a plot at all, really-it's almost Tron like in its singularity of purpose in getting from point A to point B-and the characters don't seem to change in any meaningful way (except for maybe Kristin Wiig's, kind of, but she still always seems like she's playing sketch-comedy characters in her movies). But, in the end, who cares? It was funny. I loved all of the geeky sci-fi movie references, and I know I didn't catch all of them, so they weren't just the easy jokes. Though Seth Rogen's voice is so distinctive it could take me out of the movie at times, he also as an easy way of delivering lines that makes things sound funny even if they're not hard jokes. Bill Heder and Jason Bateman were great antagonists that also got to be funny at times. And most of all I loved hearing the titles they came up with to explain who Adam Shadowchild was. Jenny Starpepper and the Great Brass Hen, anyone?
Sucker Punch: B
You can read the long version of what I thought of this movie here. The short version is that it's better than all of its reviews suggest without actually being great. The action/fantasy sequences-in kung fu temples, steampunk trenches, dragon-guarded castles, and on space trains-are pretty great. I don't care if there girls were in short skirts and impossible shoes during those parts, that was part of their charm. It's the rest of it-the not-well-drawn characters and the bad dialogue and insanely clunky voiceover-that make the whole thing shallow and stupid. But you don't have to really pay attention to those parts if you don't want to.
The Lincoln Lawyer: B-
MoCon has sleazed his way back up to the top here. He looks pretty comfortable wheeling and dealing with the underclass here, and it's pretty fun to watch. But his proficiency made me kind of wish that there was a better movie for him to smarm his way through. This one isn't bad in any one particular respect, but it feels like the movie equivalent of an airplane novel-which it basically is.
Insidious: B
This is your standard haunted-house movie, completely with a descent into silliness at the end, but I actually had a really good time with it. Sure, it's by-the-book jump scares exacerbated by loud music stings, but they were effective on me. In other words: I jumped.
Side note: Because it's from the same distributor as Insidious, I saw a trailer for Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. (It's better in the theater.) The trailer is a microcosm of the Insidious experience. It starts off by creating atmosphere mostly through sound. Then it sets events into motion so that you know there's going to be a big scare at the end, but there's nothing you can do about it. Then it delivers the big scare.
I see a lot of horror movies, but I have a hard time keeping my eyes open during that trailer.
Source Code: B+
I love Duncan Jones because he's unapologetic about being a hard-sci-fi guy. Source Code has action, but it's not really an action movie, and there's really the merest hints of romance. Instead, it's mostly about ideas. I don't think that the ideas in this movie were as strong as the ones in Moon. There was a lot of time spent after Source Code going over what happened to figure out the loose ends, and some of those didn't have satisfying conclusions. (I can give details to people who have seen it, but, you know, they're full of spoilers.) I think that broadening the scope of his movie from Moon also made it murkier. But I'm definitely on board to see what he has cooking up next.
So, until that's over, all I really have time to do is write about the movies I saw in March.
Take Me Home Tonight: B+
It wasn't the best Topher Grace movie I could possibly hope for, but that's okay because now I still have a reason to keep seeing Topher Grace movies. But it wasn't really a solo vehicle for him, either-almost everybody in the cast is charming and is given a moment to shine (Chris Pratt, Anna Faris, and Demetri Martin especially). It doesn't get you in the gut the way a movie like Say Anything does, but it's not a bad party to attend for an evening.
Rango: A-
How incredibly strange. I mean it in the best way possible. I've read articles that say this movie doesn't even bother aiming at children, it aims straight at adults-but, really, as an adult, I think they were really aiming for the outer reaches of outer space. Sure, there were lots of fun and bizarre references to adult movies like Chinatown and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but there are other, weirder touches, like having a cast of animals so odd-looking that I couldn't really tell what kind of animals they were. (Seriously, this is supposed to be a mole. Do you know of any moles with elephant noses like that?) But I love the movie for its utter strangeness, because it kept me scratching my head and wondering where all these ideas could possibly come from. I think Gore Verbinski has got a warped mind in a way I can totally appreciate.
Battle Los Angeles: C
Once it got going, parts of it kept my interest. But, man, was it a slow start. They throw pretty much every war-movie cliché in there: a man on the verge of retirement, a young officer butting heads with someone who is older and has more experience, the guys with young wives at home, a dude wearing glasses that they call "specs," for crissake. I just want to see some alien-fighting! Those parts were okay, but every once in a while these awful character moments would bubble up again, as if that’s what the real story was, but they went on totally unaware of how clunky and unoriginal they were. (Aaron Eckhart delivers the worst monologue of 2011 so far.) And I know I'm a crank about the shaky cam, but, seriously, directors, cut it out. It makes sense in action scenes, I guess, but there's no reason why a camera would be that shaky when it's just two guys in an office talking about military retirement. You're not aping the look and feel of reality shows anymore, because reality shows have image stabilization now. Kids making YouTube videos with their iPhones have steadier hands.
Red Riding Hood: B
I think this was pretty much the best I could hope for when it came to a teen-targeted movie based on the Little Red Riding Hood story. There was a suitable amount of some Gary Oldman scenery-chewing, some nice gruesome deaths, a few gothic touches, and a lot of heaving bosoms. (Clothed. This is for teens.) Sure, I would have liked it more if the two male leads weren't so bland, but it's better than that other Catherine Hardwicke movie because at least one of these guys acknowledges how bland he is. Plus, they didn't have to spend money on an awful sparkle effect, so they had enough money in the special-effects budget to really make that coat a very saturated shade of red.
Jane Eyre: B+
I haven't read the book. (Bad English major! Bad! Really, though, I'm not into 19th-century novels about "handsome" women and who, if, and when they marry, so I haven't read most of them.) I could tell watching the movie that I was only getting the major bullet points of the story. But, mostly, I'm okay with that. Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender are awesome whenever they're talking to each other-I especially like the part where she tells him that she's "poor, obscure, plain, and little" because I am too!-I just wish that there were more of those kinds of scenes. Also, not having read the book made me lean over and tell Jesse that St. John Rivers doesn't seem so bad for wanting to marry Jane Eyre-he is, after all, played by Jamie Bell-and Jesse had to tell me that, "in the book, this conversation goes on for 100 pages…and he's her cousin." Wah wah.
Paul: B
It wasn't as funny as the other Simon Pegg/Nick Frost movies, or as hilarious and heartwarming as any of Gret Mottola's other films. There's not much of a plot at all, really-it's almost Tron like in its singularity of purpose in getting from point A to point B-and the characters don't seem to change in any meaningful way (except for maybe Kristin Wiig's, kind of, but she still always seems like she's playing sketch-comedy characters in her movies). But, in the end, who cares? It was funny. I loved all of the geeky sci-fi movie references, and I know I didn't catch all of them, so they weren't just the easy jokes. Though Seth Rogen's voice is so distinctive it could take me out of the movie at times, he also as an easy way of delivering lines that makes things sound funny even if they're not hard jokes. Bill Heder and Jason Bateman were great antagonists that also got to be funny at times. And most of all I loved hearing the titles they came up with to explain who Adam Shadowchild was. Jenny Starpepper and the Great Brass Hen, anyone?
Sucker Punch: B
You can read the long version of what I thought of this movie here. The short version is that it's better than all of its reviews suggest without actually being great. The action/fantasy sequences-in kung fu temples, steampunk trenches, dragon-guarded castles, and on space trains-are pretty great. I don't care if there girls were in short skirts and impossible shoes during those parts, that was part of their charm. It's the rest of it-the not-well-drawn characters and the bad dialogue and insanely clunky voiceover-that make the whole thing shallow and stupid. But you don't have to really pay attention to those parts if you don't want to.
The Lincoln Lawyer: B-
MoCon has sleazed his way back up to the top here. He looks pretty comfortable wheeling and dealing with the underclass here, and it's pretty fun to watch. But his proficiency made me kind of wish that there was a better movie for him to smarm his way through. This one isn't bad in any one particular respect, but it feels like the movie equivalent of an airplane novel-which it basically is.
Insidious: B
This is your standard haunted-house movie, completely with a descent into silliness at the end, but I actually had a really good time with it. Sure, it's by-the-book jump scares exacerbated by loud music stings, but they were effective on me. In other words: I jumped.
Side note: Because it's from the same distributor as Insidious, I saw a trailer for Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. (It's better in the theater.) The trailer is a microcosm of the Insidious experience. It starts off by creating atmosphere mostly through sound. Then it sets events into motion so that you know there's going to be a big scare at the end, but there's nothing you can do about it. Then it delivers the big scare.
I see a lot of horror movies, but I have a hard time keeping my eyes open during that trailer.
Source Code: B+
I love Duncan Jones because he's unapologetic about being a hard-sci-fi guy. Source Code has action, but it's not really an action movie, and there's really the merest hints of romance. Instead, it's mostly about ideas. I don't think that the ideas in this movie were as strong as the ones in Moon. There was a lot of time spent after Source Code going over what happened to figure out the loose ends, and some of those didn't have satisfying conclusions. (I can give details to people who have seen it, but, you know, they're full of spoilers.) I think that broadening the scope of his movie from Moon also made it murkier. But I'm definitely on board to see what he has cooking up next.