Fistful of Reviews

I said a long time ago that I wanted this blog to be much more autobiographical/philosophical than my last one - ie, not just reviews/opinions - and for the most part I feel like I've failed. On the one hand, I've written these massive entries detailing my thoughts and ideas on issues of politics and religion, but the vast majority are critiques of specific movies, or if not, then they are generally media-based... So while the last few entries have been extremely autobiographical, there have still been quite a few movies, books, and CDs I've consumed, so they need their fair treatment. For brevity, I've limited reviews to a paragraph, so we'll see how it goes...

MOVIES

Breaking Dawn: Part I - 0.5/5
(dir. Bill Condon)
I've written about Twilight before, and I hoped that would be the one/only time that dreadful series would be mentioned on this blog, but alas - while on our Disney cruise, one of the many, many movies we watched was this miserable dreck. I commend Stephenie Meyer for defrauding people out of millions of dollars and years of their lives, but that does not elevate the level of the material. This is garbage - and not even entertaining garbage, a la True Blood. We could pick apart the script, or the effects, or the cinematography, or really anything, but where the series really goes wrong is simply the casting. These actors are the definition of wooden - not an ounce of personality found anywhere in the cast - and thus no matter what happens, the film is dreadfully, terribly boring. (Save one sequence, which actually manages to elevate awful to hilariously awful - found here... if the rest of the film were so ridiculously bad, it would be at least entertaining.)

The Adventures of Tintin - 3.5/5
(dir. Steven Spielberg)
What a delightful (albeit hollow) experience. Spielberg's animated film utilizes every bit of animation wizardry possible to, essentially, create a world even more cartoonish, over-the-top, and absurd than Indiana Jones (which already pushed those traits to the max). The film never reaches greatness - far too content to explore empty avenues for the sake of visual showiness than to ever really focus on a central story - but it nevertheless remains incredibly fun, fast-paced, and entertaining. I'd love to see another one.



The Vow - 1.5/5
(dir. Michael Sucsy)
Another vacuous "true story" that probably could have been good if it actually followed the true story. Instead of something elegiac, which would really capture the pain of such confusion, we instead have this rote melancholy surrounded by plot devices. This isn't "I have to win my wife back because she can't remember me," this is "I have to win my wife back because she can't remember me and these things stand in my way" - if you catch my meaning. McAdams and Tatum are fine to watch (though I don't for a moment by Tatum as the soulful artist/hipster he's supposed to be), but the concept is stretched thin and everything feels so mechanical that it all just feels like an exercise.


The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - 3.5/5
(dir. David Fincher)
God help me, this is going to sound shallow... No matter how many plot holes I might spot, or how utterly disgusting and downright nasty some things in this movie are, I just couldn't dislike it. Even during the (multiple) (anal) rape scenes, or the (multiple) drawn out, grisly torture scenes, I couldn't tear my eyes away. And this wasn't attraction by disgust (a la Cannibal Holocaust, which purposely tries to offend every possible sensibility), this was attraction by respect. For all its problems, its shoddy storytelling, its overlong/redundant/non sequitur conclusion, and its weak characterizations/motivations, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo remains engaging, interesting, and (yes) entertaining because it is such a great example of filmmaking. Every single shot is perfectly composed, adding layers of depth and intrigue to a story which (frankly) seems more built on shock than suspense; the music ebbs and flows with the moods of its protagonists; and actors do such a great job that you forget that you basically know nothing about them - they're plot devices, travelling around gathering red herrings and MacGuffins, but you really don't care because they're so interesting to watch. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is full of such devices and problems, but it's so exquisitely crafted and finessed that you just don't care. You want to watch these horrible things. David Fincher may be Hollywood's most skilled filmmaker - too bad Hollywood doesn't seem to care.

Prometheus - 2.5/5
(dir. Ridley Scott)
What a paradox... Like Fincher's aforementioned The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Prometheus is a visual marvel. Beautiful to watch, the film is awash with wonderful imagery... but unlike that film, Prometheus is undercut by inadequate (even inappropriate) material. Specifically, the film is too smart for the script. The story starts off well, with ambitions no less lofty than the very origin of species and the relationship of man, god, and creation... but then quickly devolves into standard horror fare, constantly bringing these questions up again only to sidestep them and kill off some side characters. Prometheus is, in short, a disappointment. I was expecting great things, instead I got only mediocrity. I commend the film and its makers for bringing up such Big Questions, but if you're never going to address them (really address them, that is - a few characters constantly raise the questions, no matter what is happening in the scene or the rest of the film, but these rumblings seem to be more reminders than actual discussions), then it's all for naught. There are likewise some massive mistakes in the basic science of the film (I know, I know - it's science-fiction, but I'm talking about fact-checking, not conceptual items)... It all adds up to a film which is profoundly shallow, and I get the feeling that if this existed on its own rather than as part of the Alien series, it would have been much, much better. Unfortunately, we have to take the movie as it is, not as it should be, and Prometheus is simply not good enough.


Hanna - 3/5
(dir. Joe Wright)
A friend of mine summarized Hanna as "Run Lola Run, but with a plot." While I find his comment too dismissive of Tykwer's wonderful little film, he's not entirely off the mark. Hanna is almost entirely about itself: how it looks, how it sounds, how it feels. There is very little character development; in fact, many times the only thing which distinguishes one character from another (really) is a particular accent or costume color scheme. Like Run Lola Run, the music and editing drive Hanna more than any identifiable story, which can be summarized thus: Hanna has been genetically modified and trained to be a super soldier, and when the government finds out about her, they want to kill her before word gets out that she is an experiment gone awry. Tykwer's influence is clear, but I also detected a pretty sizeable influence from Wayne Kramer's fantastic Running Scared, especially with all the fairy tale/fantasy elements. Hanna only exists in a filmic sense, which both emboldens the film and hinders it. A hesitant recommendation.


Brave - 3/5
(dir. Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman, & Steve Purcell)
For Pixar, this is slumming... Not that Brave is a bad movie or anything, it's just so... typical. There is not one moment within Brave's entire running time that you wonder what is going to happen, or if the princess will succeed. So what, you say - the same is true of virtually all kids' movies. Too true, but Pixar has branded themselves by being surprising. We knew Wall-E and Eva would succeed, but there was a sense of desperation in the villains and characters that actually set your heart racing and made you wonder if they would... likewise, we knew the Incredibles would be victorious and the family would be all the stronger, but I don't think anyone expecting the villain to be so cunning and threatening... It's these little things that set great family films apart from something like Brave, which never has the guts to take a chance with its characters or its material. The film speaks on themes like fate, destiny, and changing your fate by following your destiny... Perhaps if Brave wasn't so fated in virtually every scene, it would fit in with Pixar's destiny.


MUSIC

Clockwork Angels - 4/5
by Rush
I'd venture to say that despite their near-four-decade career, it's probably never been a better time to be a Rush fan... or maybe even an actual member of the band. Just a couple years ago, the band had a highly-acclaimed documentary hits movie theaters; they've been on the Colbert Report; their latest tour was so successful they actually put off finishing this very album... Everything's coming up roses for the Canadian power trio, and it's actually a kind of vindication for them and their fans. Any Rush fan worth his salt has been a fan for years (these are not "fair weather" fans interested in the latest single - they stick around), and it really does provide some comfort when an obscure band of gifted musicians finally gets their due... That said, though, how's the album? Clockwork Angels is, thankfully, really damned good. Fast-paced, hard-hitting, endlessly listenable and entertaining - everything a good album should be. And it's a concept album! So if you really want to, you can delve into the lyrics and examine a fully fledged narrative about oppression, suppression, and the triumph of free will (pet topics of lyricist/master drummer Neil Peart) - but each track also manages to stand on its own, drawing comparisons to The Who's Tommy. Long cast to the sidelines as a "second-tier" guitarist, Alex Lifeson shows that he's still got some fire to those fingers - all the more impressive when most men half his age couldn't manage these licks. Tracks like "Headlong Flight," "Caravan," and "BU2B" highlight the band's legendary musical skills, but "Wish Them Well" and "The Garden" also manage to show a soft side the band has mostly ignored. It goes without saying that the album plays better if you're a fan, but I'd be willing to venture that Clockwork Angels packs enough punch to win some converts. Welcome back, boys.


BOOKS

Cloud Atlas - 3.5/5
by David Mitchell
English author David Mitchell has earned himself quite a reputation over the past thirteen years. Of a scant five novels, two have been short-listed for the esteemed Man Booker Prize (and two others were long-listed). Cloud Atlas is one of these. One of the major problems with Cloud Atlas is that it's kind of a gimmick... okay, not kind of a gimmick - it is a gimmick. Six individual stories are told such that they interrupt each other about halfway through, until you get to the sixth story, which is told all the way through; and then you work your way back through the conclusions of the remaining five. So you start with one character, read his tale, which is then interrupted (sometimes mid-sentence) by another tale, which is likewise interrupted by another tale, and so on, like a series of nesting dolls. And on top of that, each story takes place in a different timeframe, a different part of the globe, and is written in a distinct style. For example, the opener is set in the nineteenth century and is written as a diary; jump ahead to an epistolary written by an arrogant orchestral composer; then to a seedy crime novel set in the 60s; then a dystopia full of clones and product placement, a la Philip K Dick... you get the idea. The novel forces you to recognize Mitchell's talent, and at times his prose can be so clever it borders on inane... And yet, it remains something special, unique, at times extraordinary. You get caught up in the gimmick. Each story is absorbing, engaging, funny, shocking - you could resent Mitchell for his skill and intelligence, or you could just give in and admire him. Besides just keeping track of what is going on, there are a number of major themes here which beg to be examined further... Some of these are made pretty obvious (toward the end, for instance, a number of passages deal explicitly with the permanence of war and man's violent nature), but others remain much more intriguing and subtle (for example, the cyclic nature of the novel underlies the unstated theme of reincarnation; or the abrupt shifts in time/space can be indicative of our own memories or perceptions of time and location). I'm very intrigued to see how on Earth a movie can be made out of this, but it will also be nice to see such a challenging yet rewarding book get the inevitable boost from that adaptation.