Tag Archives: Reviews

Movie Review: The Artist

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I was afraid The Artist would be a pretentious piece of crud, partly because it had won so many awards, and partly because it was both in black-and-white and almost without sound.

After all, using black and white now can seem gimmicky or simply too precious and cutesy. It’s not used a lot for full movies anymore, but it is used quite frequently for portions of movies — Schindler’s List, Dead Again and Oz the Great and Powerful all used black and white for various purposes and scenes, each in a slightly different way.

I’m happy to say that I didn’t think The Artist was pretentious. It was actually a pretty simple movie about a man’s downward career trajectory while he watches a woman’s upward career trajectory, and how the two interrelate. I’d hesitate to call it a romance, though it is billed that way, and there are a few moments where it almost becomes romantic, but misses the mark.

I learned something important from The Artist: most of the time, you don’t really need to hear the words to understand what’s going on in a scene. The acting is enough, and knowing the specific words doesn’t make a huge amount of difference.

I also learned that by minimizing the sound in a movie, you can make the sounds you do use especially meaningful. During the few scenes in The Artist that feature sound, that sound is always meaningful. In one it is momentous and terrifying, disturbing and upsetting. In the other scene, the sound is a triumph. This movie used sound in a different way than any other movie I’ve ever seen.

I’m not saying the movie was perfect. It dragged a bit in some places, and could have benefited by another run-through with the editorial scissors.

I didn’t much care for the lead actress, Berenice Bejo, but mostly on the grounds that she looked nothing like the movie stars of that era. Perhaps more could have been done with her makeup to give her that look–the lead actor, Jean Dujardin looked perfect for his era, so why worry about giving the woman the chalk-white-face and makeup of her time period as well? Why does the woman have to be contemporary-pretty when the man can have that old-fashioned mustache and slicked-back hair?

Finally, the music could have used a bit more variety. When the music is all your audience will hear for most of the film, you need to change the music more often. The music was very good, but some of it was quite repetitive.

All in all, I enjoyed The Artist, but if you see it, be sure to watch it when you’re in a patient mood and want to see a character-driven dramedy. It’s really a simple little movie, but you’ll need to keep your eyes on the screen and avoid multitasking while you watch it.

Real Klingons Wear Pink in Star Trek: The Animated Series

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Star Trek: The Animated Series

Star Trek: The Animated Series

Giant pink tribbles. Spock casting magic spells. The crew turning into babies, growing gills, or shrinking. Is there no weirdness that failed to occur on Star Trek: The Animated Series?

No. No, there isn’t. And that’s why the show, which ran from 1973-74, is pure, unadulterated awesome.

Though it occupies a dubious position in Trekkie canon, The Animated Series is a must-see for fans, who will be treated to a succession of wacky events involving the almost the entire cast of The Original Series.

Inexplicably, Chekov is gone. Equally inexplicably, every single alien being sounds suspiciPink Tribbles?ously like Scotty, Nurse Chapel or Uhura. Actually, the explanation was saving money by not hiring extra voice actors or Chekov’s actor, Walter Koenig.

But this enabled them to do something the Original Series could never do, by crewing the Enterprise with more aliens. Foremost among them are the six-limbed Arex, who occupies Chekov’s seat most of the time, and M’Ress, a cat-woman communications officer.

At the time of the Original Series, I don’t think it would have been possible to have shown a guy with an extra arm and leg, like Arex had, and M’Ress would have had a somewhat wooden expression if she’d been a real person with a face covered with fur.

And then there’s the fact that one of the people working on the show was colorblind.

As a result, Klingons wear pink and purple, and Klingons in Orchid?the Kzinti, who are supposed to be terrifying telepathic cat-wolverine-people, do too.

Plus there are pink tribbles. Giant pink tribbles. If there were a way to market these to 12-year-old girls Earth would be drowned in tribbles in a matter of hours. Talk about weapons of mass destruction!

Then there’s the elevator-music theme song, which definitely is worse than the theme song from Star Trek: Enterprise, no matter what anybody says, although the animated Enterprise is so darn cute it’s easy to forgive the tune.

If you have Netflix and loved Original Series Star Trek, or just want to kill a few hours watching pure, undiluted insanity in the form of the loopiest plots ever seen in any flavor of Star Trek, check out Star Trek: The Animated Series.

For more information, check out Memory Alpha, the go-to place for online information on Star Trek, and also the source of every picture above.

Review: The Dark Knight Rises

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Every generation gets its own Batman, and perhaps each generation gets the Batman it deserves.

When movies are part of a set, like this one is, it’s hard to judge each one on its own merits, and there were a lot of high expectations from “The Dark Knight Rises,” the third movie in the most recent Batman trilogy.

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure why. “The Dark Knight” was indeed a great movie, with a virtuoso performance from the late Heath Ledger, but it lagged a bit in portions and featured an indifferent-to-just-bad performance from Maggie Gyllenhaal. Its aspirations toward an intellectual understanding of Batman and the nature of good and evil were worthy, though, and for the most part they were successful.

That’s not easy to do, and I’m not sure why anyone would think it could easily happen twice in a row. A great movie, yes. But not OMG AWESOME THE BEST MOVIE EVAR.

“The Dark Knight Rises” doesn’t quite ascend to that level, partly because it gets bogged down rather quickly with an enjoyably complex plot involving a full-scale war led by Bane, an intelligent, politically-astute warlord with great leadership skills.

It was an inspired choice to make Bane (Tom Hardy) the villain, but the film made one critical, critical mistake it only partially recovered from partway through the movie. That mistake was the design of Bane’s mask.

Poor Tom Hardy. Not only did he have to live up to the inevitable comparisons with Heath Ledger’s Joker from Dark Knight, but they expected him to do it with nearly the entire bottom half of his face covered up. That’s a pretty significant handicap for an actor.

And Bane is no Joker. He’s meant to be a more serious character. Saddling him with a still-slightly-cartoonish mask made it hard for the audience to find him even slightly credible. Hardy’s bizarre accent (which reminded me of Sean Connery’s in “The Untouchables”) did not help, although it might’ve been all right if it hadn’t been filtered through that stupid mask.

Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman fared a bit better, though I wished there had been more for her to do in the film. I kept getting the feeling there was more there, but the plot called for focus to stay on Bane, so we didn’t get to see it.

To be fair, the movie was extremely long, and like its predecessor it did drag a bit sometimes. Director Christopher Nolan seems to have become a victim of his own success in some measure–people seem to have been over-reluctant to cut away some of the fluff. Writers must sometimes edit out their favorite sentences and kill their darlings; filmmakers must do the same, and not enough of it was done in “Dark Knight Rises.”

There was much to like about the movie, however. The film’s ties to “A Tale of Two Cities” were interesting, and the depiction of a full-scale war of sorts in Gotham City was fascinating.

The supporting cast was stellar, as it was in “The Dark Knight.”

Gary Oldman is the best of all as Commissioner Gordon, who has to make tough choices throughout the movie, and bears the consequences as an adult conscious of the moral weight of his actions.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays a thoughtful young cop, willing to take risks to do what’s right. He has a great character arc.

Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, Batman’s Q.We don’t get to see a lot of him in this movie, and perhaps that’s because we don’t need to. When he’s there, he’s key, of course.

Michael Caine’s Cockney-accented Alfred classes up the whole dang movie. This is no Jeeves, ladies and gentlemen. This is a man who takes his obligations seriously, and tries to give the best advice he can, given his awkward position as father figure and servant.

Marion Cotillard was totally wasted on this film, but really, when you had so many other characters who were marvellous, that seems like a minor quibble.

Oh, and Christian Bale turned in another credible performance as Batman and the ever-tortured Bruce Wayne, who has become a sort of mini-Howard Hughes in between the two movies. Dark, yes, but still sarcastic and happily for the audience, surprisingly non-angsty.

It was well-written and well-acted. The action scenes popped, and while the editing job was somewhat indulgent, arguably that indulgence was earned over the course of three very good Batman movies.

It was not OMG THE BEST MOVIE EVAR!!11!!!!11! Poor Tom Hardy’s mask and permissive editing didn’t allow for that.

But it was a good one, maybe a great one, and definitely worth seeing.

Review: The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw…

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Fiona Apple may produce albums with ridiculously long titles, but I wish she would also make longer albums.

Don’t get me wrong. Her latest effort, which came out earlier this year, is wonderful. I just wish there were more than 10 songs.

“The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do” is the title of the album. Yes, all of that.

That’s actually pretty short for Apple, considering her second album was entitled “When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He’ll Win the Whole Thing ‘Fore He Enters the Ring There’s No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won’t Matter, Cuz You’ll Know That You’re Right.”

I pasted that in from Wikipedia. Most people shorthand the title as “When the Pawn,” because by the time you finish saying the whole title you’ve forgotten what you were going to say anyway.

But I digress. “Idler Wheel” is a great album, with plenty of that raw-sounding vocal work Apple has become famous for.

What I love about it is, of course, the percussion. There’s plenty of fantastic marimba work, a rumbly timpani and then there’s the celeste, which most people wouldn’t even recognize by name. Apple plays the piano and a lot of the percussion herself.

My liner notes for “Idler Wheel” came in a notebook-looking thing that includes the whimsical credit “Thighs,” for the song “Daredevil,” which I’m pretty sure means they’re using their thighs as percussion. It’s pretty awesome, and you have to admit it adds a certain meaty texture to the thing.

The standout tune, though, is “Hot Knife,” an incredibly simple song featuring just two verses and a bridge in a sort of round. It’s a little like Beck’s “Nicotine and Gravy,” with the two separate, very simple verses, each catchy in its own right, layering on top of each other over and over and cascading into a single complex song. It’s wonderful.

Review: What Does It Mean to Be “Brave”?

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Brave

Brave

In every child’s life comes a moment in which he or she realizes parents are human beings too–neither infallible nor invulnerable, nor unreasoning. And whatever their actions, they might well have our best interests at heart.

And in middle-class America, every woman must decide how to balance the traditional demands of womanhood (for many, husband, home, family) with the demands of her own life (for many, career, goals, freedom).

At the crossroads of these ideas stands Pixar’s “Brave,” its first movie with a female heroine, and one of the only movies I have ever seen, of any kind, that is focused on a woman’s relationship with another woman without much reference to any man.

I didn’t know the plot of the movie before I saw it, for once, because the previews don’t really give you any idea of what the plot is. I can tell you with no spoilers that although the movie does indeed focus on Merida, a wild-red-headed Scottish princess with a bow, it mainly concerns her conflict-filled relationship with her mother, Elinor.

Had the movie not been a Pixar film, Queen Elinor could easily have ended up a flat character, a paper-thin semblance of motherhood: Don’t do this, don’t do that, be a perfect lady. Oh, how smug and perfect she could have been!

As it is, there are enough tantalizing glimpses of Elinor’s own struggles to be the perfect woman–a yamato nadeshiko, Scotland style–to let us know that she has her own doubts about ladyhood. Pixar doesn’t belabor the point, though–there’s just a throwaway line here and there and a bit of a hint from the first scene of the film that only seems clear in retrospect.

And Merida’s stubbornness and Elinor’s stubbornness turn into the classic parental clash.

When her parents want Merida to marry a son of one of the three local lords in order to cement the alliance between them, Merida rebels and seeks a magical solution to get Elinor to change her mind about the marriage. The spell, offered by a helpful witch, does indeed change Elinor’s mind, but not in the way Merida intended, and the princess has to find a way to reverse the spell before it becomes permanent, as the concerns about arranged marriage fade into the background a bit.

It sounds like your standard fairy tale, and had Merida been a boy, or had the movie focused on the suitors or proffered a SOP, perfunctory romance, it might have been. But it doesn’t. It would have been so easy to slip into the cliches of the genre (which plenty of still-great movies do–Aladdin, the Little Mermaid, etc. etc.).

“Brave,” much like its heroine, paves its own path and finds its own balance.

Where Do You Keep Your Socks in a Video Game?

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Nice Barrels.

Nice Barrels. Mind If I Rob You Blind?

My friend walked into somebody’s house, saw two beer barrels, and opened them up. Inside one, he found a pair of pants. In the other, there was a paint brush. I believe the homeowner was probably keeping his beer in his sock drawer, or maybe the mailbox.

Video games don’t make a whole lot of sense, do they? In real life, even if you could just wander into people’s homes and take all their stuff without any kind of protest, what you’d find in a beer barrel would probably be, well… beer.

This isn’t true of video games, and hasn’t ever been, as far as I know. In the old SNES Zelda, you could more or less wander around in people’s houses and check all their pots and urns for valuables. If you found any, you could just take them, even if the owner was standing five feet away and watching. That’s not really stealing, is it? I mean, they’d object, surely, if there was a problem.

Now we have the game Oblivion, which came out in 2006. My friend (we’ll call him C.J. for now)  was commenting on how strange people’s habits were in the game.

He found one of the characters annoying.

“… so I stole her urn and threw it in the river.”

If life were like video games, we’d go into people’s houses and find urns full of coins, glass bottles full of faeries and beer barrels full of paintbrushes. Nobody would keep pants in a pants drawer or socks in a sock drawer. They’d keep medicine in their grandfather clocks (Final Fantasy VI) and store gold coins in bricks (Super Mario Brothers).

We’d go to work and burn down bushes to try to find secret passages (The Legend of Zelda) or arrange pills (Dr. Mario). At the end of the day we’d put on our raccoon tails and fly home (Super Mario Brothers 3).

Then again, we might come home to find our urns vandalized and our precious paint brushes (so cunningly hidden in beer barrels) stolen by adventurers.

Given games, though, I doubt we’d care.

(Photo borrowed from a pretty cool review of Final Fantasy VI. Check it out!)

Meat Flavored Potato Chips and Other Horrors

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And now, the reviews of the Horrible Potato Chips from Wales, from the newsroom and the helpful front office gals, with special guest Aaron V. We made him take most of the chips afterward. It was like sneaking over the border of a neighboring state, dumping a barrel of toxic waste and running back home in the dead of night.

"I just don’t know if potato chips should taste like meat." –Justine

"These meat-flavored ones are good!" –Arla

"It’s just me, I’m burping chips now." –Anonymous

You have been warned.

German Bratwurst Sausage

"It’s not awful. It definitely tastes like brats." –Ryan

"It tastes like brat burps!" –Justine

"Oh! It tastes too much like bratwurst for chips!" –Julie, with a look of dawning horror

"Actually, they do taste like a brat." –Sheila

"They’re good! You can taste the meat in these!" –Arla

"I wouldn’t want to eat more than one of ‘em." –Chris

Brazilian Salsa

"The salsa is pretty bland." –Ryan

"He’s right." –Beth

South African Sweet Chutney

"This isn’t bad…" –Ryan

"Damn! Damn! Oh my god! That one’s really strong." –Chris

Australian BBQ Kangaroo

"The kangaroo is good. It’s like a mild barbecue." –Julie

"I like these too." –Arla

Argentinean Flame Grilled Steak

–Indescribable look of total disgust from Chris

Dutch Edam Cheese

"It’s wonderful!" –Beth

"It tastes like movie theater popcorn." –Julie

English Roast Beef & Yorkshire Pudding

"Oooh… it’s a hot beef commercial that’s cold!" –Julie, with a look of disgust.

"I didn’t think the roast beef was bad at all." –Aaron

"These taste like roast beef!" –Arla, with approval

American Cheeseburger

"It’s a flame-broiled burger, but there’s no cheese with it… it just tastes like briquettes smell." –Justine

"Cheeseburger! Oh, this should be good…. mmm." –Arla

Haggis & Cracked Black Pepper

"It tastes like a pepper chip." –Aaron

"That’s my least favorite. I need a drink of water after that!" –Ryan

–Indescribable look of total disgust, this time from Sheila

Review: Iron Man 2

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Iron Man may be the only movie superhero franchise based on the fact that the hero is a lovably obnoxious twerp. Other superheroes battle mutants, bald supergeniuses or guys in makeup, but Iron Man, also known as Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) seems to be battling himself and his own past almost as often as he faces down bad guys.

In Iron Man 2, Tony’s problems pile up remarkably quickly, starting with Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), a scary Russian physicist out to avenge his family for what Tony’s family did to them decades ago. Meanwhile, the device Tony made to power his suit and keep him alive is also killing him, and on top of everything else, the government doesn’t trust Tony with the Iron Man suit, and wants to take it away.

As a superhero action movie, Iron Man 2 holds up well, offering plenty of explosions and action, a great villain and, more unusually, an equally interesting hero, whose dark side does not involve angst or a tragic backstory, but instead manifests itself as arrogance and disregard for other people, even, sometimes, the ones he cares most about.

Downey plays the fast-talking, self-involved billionaire playboy genius perfectly, and even though the character saw the error of his warmongering ways in the first movie, he still has a long way to go before his road to redemption is over.

And Downey’s portrayal of Tony Stark would dominate the movie if it weren’t for Rourke, whose focused, vicious Vanko provides a counterpoint to Tony, who sometimes doesn’t seem to be able to focus on a single idea long enough to complete a sentence.

At more than 2 hours long, the movie does drag at times, especially during the parts involving James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), Tony’s friend and military contact, who tries to mediate between Tony and the people who want to take his Iron Man suit away.

It’s not Cheadle’s fault. Rhodes just isn’t as interesting as Tony or Vanko, or even the other villain, sleazy weapons dealer Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell). Even the other supporting characters, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson) have more personality. When Rhodes inevitably gets his hands on an Iron Man suit and dukes it out with Tony, it’s hard to care.

Overall, though, Iron Man 2 was an entertaining movie. Someone in Hollywood seems to have learned that good characters are the key to great movies, even if they’re just fun, fluffy action films.

Tron Is a Strange Old World

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I was struck by the visual strangeness of Tron this week, after I rented it in preparation for seeing its sequel in December.

I have never seen another movie quite like Tron visually. It revels in its computer graphics, instead of trying to make them as realistic as possible (which often doesn’t work anyway) and the strange black and white/illuminated look of the program characters in the electronic world remains eye-catching today.

And the plot is utterly strange. The "ordinary joe sucked into a strange world" is pretty standard in fiction of all kinds, but "programs are people"? I suppose "The Matrix" had to get it from somewhere.

Tron holds up surprisingly well, so long after its 1982 debut, partly because so much of it takes place on the alien electronic landscape, which will no doubt still look strange and exotic in 50 years.

If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s about a computer geek who gets sucked into a computer and has to compete in vicious gladiatorial games in a struggle against the evil, domineering Master Control Program. It’s a fun, action-packed movie, if you’re patient enough to sit through the slowish first 20 minutes or so. There’s even some romance between two computer programs, which is weird, but only if you think about it a lot.

Rental Review: Vampires and Freaks, Oh My

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Facing a dull Sunday afternoon, I went to the rental place and browsed the shelves, winding up with Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant.

I wasn’t expecting anything at all from the Vampire’s Assistant movie, having read a summary of the movie and then a summary of the books. I thought, if anything, it would be an entertaining bubblegum movie with too many special effects, poor characterization and lame vampires.

I was wrong. It was a funny, quirky, macabre and well-made film, and though it certainly had plenty of special effects, what made the movie actually work was the characters and the dark humor.

You probably remember the ads for this movie, which featured a wild-haired John C. Reilly (as vampire Larton Crepsley) being asked by Chris Massoglia (as ordinary high school kid-turned-vampire Darren Shan) whether he could turn into a bat.

Reilly replies "No! That’s bull."

This is pretty representative of the movie. Gone are the pretty-boy angstpires who wear black and whine all day about how awful being a member of the undead is. (With apologies to Angel, which parodied this almost as much as it used the convention; this comment is directed at you, Twilight.)

Instead, you have Crepsley, dressed in a bright red suit, performing in a freak show with a freaky spider and rolling his eyes at Shan’s attempt to scare him away by forming his fingers into a cross. Crepsley is 200 years old, which makes him blunt and eccentric, and not very willing to take crap from anyone, including his young protege Shan.

Oh, and he’s dating a girl with a beard. Because she’s played by Salma Hayek, though, it’s kind of understandable.

The movie is helped immensely by a supporting cast of freaks (literally; they’re in a freak show), including a startlingly normal snake boy (apart from the green skin and all), a gigantically tall man with a huge head and a girl who can regenerate cut-off limbs. They’re portrayed as freaks with bizarre habits, but they’re also portrayed as normal human beings who bicker and fall in love, and who have hopes and dreams just like anyone else. Every single one of these minor characters has ten times the personality of any character in the Twilight movies.

It’s a strange movie, and it’s admittedly not a great movie, but it is a solid, entertaining and very good movie, and who could ask for more than that? I would recommend it to people who don’t mind being creeped out a bit even as they laugh.