OKAY TIME FOR MASSIVE MOVIEPOST, GUYS
Juno
Yesterday I went to go see Juno, after hearing a lot of good buzz about it. I also knew it had actors I liked: Michael Cera, Jason Bateman, Allison Janney, J. K. Simmons, and I even liked Jennifer Garner before she became Sydney Bristow and Elektra. (She was good in her Felicity days!) However, I'd also heard that it was smugly, self-consciously indie to the point of being twee and annoying. So I went in with a bit of trepidation.
The criticism was totally spot-on, but nevertheless I did really like the movie. My major problem was with Diablo Cody's attempts at witty teen slang - I prefer my witty dialogue to sound like actual people might use it (a la Joss Whedon), rather than a strange argot halfway between Clueless and A Clockwork Orange. The first five minutes is the worst; when poor Dwight from The Office (there's a phrase I never thought I'd say) has to deliver lines like "Well, Fertile Myrtle, looks like your Eggo is preggo," or "This ain't an Etch-a-Sketch; that's one doodle that can't be un-did, homeskillet," I wept a little inside.
Fortunately, after that, things get much better, and the dialogue approaches some sort of semi-normal, though it's still a bit precious; Juno's conversation with her friend Leah over the hamburger phone is somewhat painful, and there's occasional wince-inducing terms scattered here and there like "pork swords" (for penises). But once the slang subsides, it actually ends up being a really touching, sweet story that doesn't quite go where you expect it to.
Ellen Page really is just pretty amazing as Juno, and never fails to sell the character as a real person even through scenes that you would think would have the opposite effect (her ostensible breezy indifference to the pregnancy). Michael Cera is also great, though I really wish he'd get some roles that would give him a chance to spread his wings a bit more; much as I love his spazzy, doe-eyed niceguys, I'd like to see him play someone normal (by which I mean Hollywood normal; his current types of roles are much closer to real-people normal, I think), since it seems like he's been playing essentially the same type of character since Arrested Development. Jason Bateman is good as the older married guy Juno sort-of-but-sort-of-isn't flirting with, and finally and most surprisingly, Jennifer Garner holds the emotional core of the movie as much as Juno herself; the bits I found most emotionally affecting and real were her scenes, as the wife who wants to be a mother more than anything in the world.
This is not to say I didn't still have problems with it; Juno's reason for not going through with the abortion is frankly ridiculous, even in a movie that seems to prize the ridiculous, and the cutesy indie-folk soundtrack WORE MY ASS OUT (though I did like the duet between Page and Cera that ends the movie). YES WE GET IT YOU'RE INDIE, LET'S MOVE ON. I've seen the same criticism applied to Juno, but honestly I thought it worked in her case; she IS sixteen, and so not only thinks that everything she discovers is completely new and awesome (like the song she plays for Mark, which you can't turn on a classic-rock station without hearing), but also feels the need to define herself in large part by her musical tastes (just 'cause there isn't a whole lot else there in terms of self-identity besides "outcast who didn't want to be in your stupid popular group anyway," which I think she recognizes at the points throughout the movie where she says that she doesn't know what she is yet).
And yet, after all that about its self-conscious indieness, I'm slightly ashamed to admit that I do kind of want a hamburger phone. D:
And shorter reviews of the other movies I saw in the theater over the break (except for Enchanted, which I dragged my parents to and which they liked, but which I have mentioned in my journal that I adored. It was just as good the second time around though):
Charlie Wilson's War
This movie was also overall quite good, if playing fast and loose with what I know of history, and Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffmann just BECOME their roles, as they so often do. Julia Roberts, not so much, but she does a decent job given that, y'know, she's always Julia Roberts. (Though kudos to her for doing the eyelash thing in the mirror, that made me wince in the theater.) Also, Amy Adams is apparently the go-to It girl now, playing Charlie's right-hand-woman. It's Aaron Sorkin, so of course the dialogue is fast-paced and snappy; I was never really a West Wing fan, but I think his style worked really well here, especially because I didn't know it was Sorkin before going to see it (I saw it with my stepbrother Nicholas and my older brother Bubby Niles, who was the one who suggested it) and so was bracing myself for a dour war movie along the lines of the 3000000 Iraq soldier movies they showed trailers for before this. And it's also nicely non-partisan, which is good given that Niles is Republican, Nicholas is mildly liberal, and I'm...well, somewhat more than mildly liberal. XD
The Golden CompassI also saw The Golden Compass with my older brother and my parents. We try to do a movie with all the family on that side who are in town each year at the holidas, and usually go for some big fantasy set-piece since it's the one thing pretty much all of us will agree on. And iIt's always a crapshoot: we've seen Return of the King and Narnia, but we've also seen Eragon (which was notable mainly for its lead actor's prettiness, John Malkovich hamming it up like a cut-rate Christopher Lee, and a lot of LotR-wannabe "epic" battles). So we were pleased to discover that the movie was actually pretty good.
I haven't read the book, so I don't know how true it is to Pullman's series, but I thought the movie made sense and the acting was quite good (the kid playing Lyra and Nicole Kidman especially, though I also loved hearing Ian McKellen's ever-so-slightly camp voice coming out of an armored polar bear). I hope they do the rest in the series - I know it hasn't done that well, but it would suck if they just left it there. Now, this is not to say that it didn't have problems (SO MANY TRAVEL SCENES, WHY SO MANY FREAKING TRAVEL SCENES), but overall it was good enough that I think it should have done better than it did.
And okay, now that I have reviewed the recent theater movies I've seen, it's time for me to go into some rants.
After reading some
Pajiba reviews, I've been reminded of a practice that I just don't get: assigning someone who doesn't like a particular actor/type of movie to review that type of movie/a movie starring that actor. I mean, I realize movie review sites have limited staff, and certainly in those sites/columns that are just one or two reviews you can't avoid that soimetimes; but with a site like this, where they have quite a few reviewers, I don't understand it.
And then people always cry "so what, you mean we can't give a movie a bad review because we're not 'qualified'?" And no, I don't mean that at all. But, for example, if someone doesn't like musicals, why assign them to review a musical? Sure, there's the minute possibility of an "I hate musicals but nevertheless I loved this" review, which is always nice; but more probably it's going to be "I didn't like this musical, there were people SINGING like silly retards, WTF is up with that?" I've noticed this quite a bit lately on Pajiba: assigning people who don't like musicals to do musicals, or people who don't like anything with a certain actor to review a film by that actor. Then, even if they do end up liking it, it means we have to sit through 6 paragraphs about how they don't like msuicals/John Travolta before we get to "oh yeah and I guess the movie was pretty good anyway."
It just strikes me as not giving the movie a proper chance and being pointless since you can probably predict the conclusion. I mean, it's like asking someone who believes premarital sex is a mortal sin to go see Knocked Up and give you their opinion: you already kind of know what it's going to be. If you hate Ben Stiller movies and think everything the man has done is a steaming pile of shit, then you're probably not the best choice to review the new Ben Stiller movie, since the audience for a Ben Stiller movie is - surprise - people who like Ben Stiller movies. By the same token, the person who goes to Sweeney Todd and is all "what is this speak-singing crap, all musicals should be like Oklahoma! with very defined musical numbers!" either pretty clearly does not get what the film is trying to do (and from what I hear, and remember of the Angela-Lansbury-as-Mrs.-Lovett filmed-stage-play version, you'd have to have an IQ of 80 to not figure that out pretty fast) or has pretty clearly not seen a musical SINCE Oklahoma! and probably didn't like that one either. So why assign Sweeney Todd to that person and not, say, the reviewer who liked Dreamgirls and Chicago but thought Hairspray was kinda meh? Not only are they closer to the target audience - so if they don't like it, it's much more likely to tell you something meaningful about the movie's quality than the same opinion by someone who likes Dario Argento more than Stephen Sondheim - but they're also probably working from a vantage point that's much more conversant with the genre (and hence can make credible statements about something's originality or lack thereof).
And another thing! In reading about Seeker: The Dark is Rising (what, from all accounts, is a truly EXECRABLE adaptation of Susan Cooper's amazing
The Dark is Rising series), I've come to codify my position on adaptations. Previously I've wavered, managing to like adaptations that other people I know HATED (V for Vendetta, Beowulf) while also being unable to watch all the way through (or alternately, running screaming from) things that other people I know didn't balk at (Elizabeth, or the new Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightley). Often people will talk to me saying things like "what, they have to change things so it works as a movie/for the market/etc."
I realize this! However, I can only really see two reasons for doing an adaptation of a book/comic/whatever:
1) someone involved with the production truly loves and believes in the source material;
or
2) someone involved thinks that fans of the source material will go to see a movie based on it.
Either way, you'd think some fidelity to the source material - in spirit, if not in letter - would be pretty much an integral part of either of those. If you love the book, why fuck it up by changing the very things that made you love it? And if you want fans of the movie to go see it and you want it to generate great buzz, then why not offer your fans a movie that is recognizably a version of what theyfell in love with? If all you want is a movie to hit a few market niches and give you an excuse to have a trailer full of explosions, there are plenty of original screenplays out there where no one (except maybe the writer) will care if you want to replace the dreamily waify British boy with an American whose main preoccupation is being "cool." So why not do that kind of shit to those screenplays, and leave the ones based on beloved source material with some resemblance to said source beside the title and a few character names!
And for all those people saying "chill out, it's not like the book still won't be there"...I beg to differ. I've already seen reviews of the Dark is Rising where reviewers, who obviously haven't read the books, go on to airily dismiss Cooper as a "second-rate J. K. Rowling" (this is taken verbatim). I mean, if a kid sees this movie, there's probably no way he or she is gonna wanna go read the books! That's the problem with books, especially older kids' books: word-of-mouth is pretty much the only thing keeping them from going out of print. If this is something that makes it harder to pimp the books to new kids, who knows whether they'll still be around in another generation or so?
And that, I think, is the shit filling to the mud pie that is Seeker: The Dark is Rising, and the reason that movie adaptations need to be better. And it's not like a good adaptation - which generally means something true to its source in spirit if not in letter - doesn't seem much more likely to do well, statistically; even if we discount the Tolkien and Rowling franchises, The Golden Compass, hobbled by its opening weekend of "only" $20 million or whatever, did way better than the cinematic abortion that is Seeker.
Just my two cents.