[Read the whole thing]]]> A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook that Alien is his “favorite movie of all time”. This was coincidental, since during our lunch conversation the other day about Stanley Kubrick, someone asked me what I thought of Blade Runner, which of course wasn’t directed by Kubrick, but by Ridley Scott, who also directed Alien.

(Brief aside: Other than those two films, the only other film I’ve seen by Scott is Gladiator. While none of those films set my world on fire, I like them better than anything by Kubrick.)

I’m not a fan of horror; I don’t really like gore, or sequences calculated to make you jump out of your seat, or squirm, or worry about the worst that’s about to happen, knowing that it almost certainly is. I much prefer Alfred Hitchcockian suspense.

Still, despite not liking the genre, I do think Alien is a fine film, maybe the best horror film ever. It has a lot going for it:

1. Setting: The universe of the spaceship Nostromo feels real, with details like the alien ship the crew discovers, and the sinister corporate masters of the ship. Those bits suggest that here’s more to the universe beyond what we actually see, and in particular the alien ship stimulates our imagination to wonder where it came from. (I understand director Ridley Scott’s upcoming film Prometheus was originally going to explore the alien from the derelict ship, but I guess it’s now turned into a different film.) Even the fact that the Nostromo is a commercial ship, not a military or other government ship, makes it feel a little more real.
2. Characters: The characters are pretty well-drawn, and also feel real. They’re not supermen, they’re not even soldiers, and they all have opinions and agendas (and flaws). The fine cast helps here a lot, too.
3. Story: The story is smart. Presented with the killer alien creature hiding in their ship, the crew is smart about trying to deal with the problem: They come up with plans, and execute them. Since they’re not supermen, and since the alien turns out to be even more powerful than they’d thought, their plans fail. But they don’t march to their deaths through sheer stupidity.
4. Threat: The alien is of course one of the most memorable movie monsters ever. Beyond its appearance, it’s creepy (acid blood!), hard to find, hard to kill, and hard to survive. It certainly feels more alien than any other monster.

I appreciate craft in films, especially when it comes to plotting and world-building, and Alien excels on both points. I would have enjoyed it more if it hadn’t been a horror film (much as I was sad that the great dinosaur animations in Jurassic Park were squandered on a horror film), but few films succeed so well at what they set out to do.

Whenever I think of Kubrick, I recall my high school film class teacher (who introduced me

[Read the whole thing]]]> At lunch the other day we somehow went from talking about Pixar films to talking about those of director Stanley Kubrick. Some people love Kubrick’s films, but I don’t, having seen five and not enjoyed any of them.

Whenever I think of Kubrick, I recall my high school film class teacher (who introduced me to my favorite film, North by Northwest) who said something to the effect that Kubrick was more concerned with where his electrical wires were going than with the script or acting.

Yes, Kubrick’s films do look great, but I realized over lunch that my basic problem with them is that they feel emotionless, even downright soulless.

2001: A Space Odyssey is a great example of this: The characters are flat and colorless. Dave Bowman is memorable only because Keir Dullea is an interesting-looking guy, and the orange spacesuits are distinctive. But the most human-seeming of the character is HAL, the computer. The film looks great, but it also feels lifeless, the direction and editing carefully constructed to make the whole film seem alien. It’s not about humanity’s encounter with the alien, it’s some weird zombie form of humanity encountering the alien, and evolving into something even more alien. The sequel film 2010 is a much warmer and more human film, and is more fun to boot. Not to say it doesn’t have plenty of flaws, but I’d much rather watch it again than its predecessor.

Full Metal Jacket, which certainly deals with powerful subject matter (the Vietnam War), felt decidedly bland when I saw it. Ironically, the IMDb summary of the film starts with the phrase “A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the Vietnam War…”, where it seems to me that Kubrick does a pretty good job of dehumanizing the characters in his films anyway.

Of the Kubrick films I’ve seen, I’d say I liked The Shining the best (and I don’t really care for horror films). The sense in Kubrick’s films that we’re seeing all this happen from a distance, that the people are just little chess pieces being moved around by the plot, perhaps plays better in a horror film, where the humans are often not the ones in control. I don’t think it’s a great film, I have no desire to see it again, but I thought it worked well enough for what it is.

(The other two films of his that I’ve seen are Dr. Strangelove, which I found neither insightful nor funny, and A Clockwork Orange, which I detest more than any other film I can think of.)

Overall my most charitable description of Kubrick’s films would be “well crafted”. But then, there are lots of directors who craft films well, and many who imbue their films with more humanity than Kubrick was able to. Usually I place a high value on craft in storytelling, but Kubrick’s films deploy his craft in the most superficial manner, completely failing to evoke any feeling in me as a viewer other than being impressed with the polish he brings to his settings. And that’s not nearly enough to make a great – or even good – film for me.

[Read the whole thing]]]> Captain America: The First Avenger might be the perfect superhero movie (so far, anyway): It’s exciting, fun, has a hero who’s heroic but not perfect, and makes you feel for the characters. And it honors its source material rather than belittling it as many superhero films these days seem to (taking the source material seriously is a big reason why Christopher Nolan’s Batman films are the best superhero films of the new century so far).

I get tired of movies always showing the character’s origin (previews in the theater showed the trailer for the upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man, which looks like it will show Spidey’s origin again; really?), but Cap’s story is very well done here, and showing Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) – the prototypical 90-pound comic book weakling – and his determination to join the army to fight in World War II, his friendship with the much more physically-able James “Bucky” Barnes Sebastian Stan), and his recruitment by Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci) to be the test subject for the super-soldier program are an essential part of humanizing Cap. Despite his frail physique, Steve never backs down from a fight, but when Erskine asks him whether he wants to go kill some Nazis, Steve’s character is summed up when he responds, “I don’t want to kill anyone. I just hate bullies.”

One could do all sorts of between-the-lines reading about the jingoistic heroism of the film, but that would miss the point that it’s a World War II film named Captain America, and bringing 21st-century cynicism into it would miss the point of the film (I’m sure we’ll get plenty of that in next year’s Avengers movie). Instead, this is about a good, flawed man fighting the good fight for his friends and his country. Even the somewhat-painful scene of Cap being used as a showman to sell war bonds ultimately pays off when he has the opportunity to show his stuff and becomes the army’s secret weapon against Hitler’s mysticism-loving scientist, Johann Schmidt, the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving).

While it won’t win any awards, the acting is surprisingly good for a superhero film. Chris Evans played the fun-loving Human Torch in the two unremarkable Fantastic Four films, but he’s a completely different character here. (If anything, I wish they’d processed his voice early in the film since its deepness and richness seems incongruous coming from his body when it’s been CGI’ed into Steve’s pre-treatment physique.) Weaving chews the necessary scenery as the Skull (though Toby Jones as his lead scientist, Arnim Zola, overshadows him at times with his Peter Lorre-esque performance), as does Tommy Lee Jones as the general overseeing Cap’s special forces unit. Hayley Atwell as Steve’s love interest Peggy Carter isn’t exactly the weak link, but she’s not given a lot to do – Dominic Cooper’s role as Howard Stark (father of the future Iron Man, I presume) is smaller, but he frequently upstages her.

The film looks good, too, a little grimy in the European war scenes, with flat colors in many of the New York street scenes, and bright colors at the World’s Fair and during Cap’s tour selling war bonds. The CGI in the action scenes looks fluid, although it still underscores how unnatural superhero fighting is, and what an accomplishment it was for Jack Kirby, et. al., to make it look natural in those old comic books. And the film neatly sidesteps one of my big gripes about superhero films, that they’re always contriving ways for the heroes to lose their masks so the stars can show off their real faces; the extensive focus on Steve makes it feel natural for Evans to appear as himself, but there are plenty of scenes with Cap as Cap.

The weakest part of the film is the Red Skull’s plot. He finds the Cosmic Cube (which in the comics allows a person’s wishes to become reality, but here is simply an über-energy source) and plans to use it to rule the world. He harnesses the power to create energy weapons, and plans to destroy yhe capitals of the major world powers, but since his men are unable to take on the U.S. Army even with their weapons, it’s not really clear how he plans to actually take control of the world, much less maintain control. The story would have made more sense if he were simply causing mayhem to further the conquests of Nazi Germany (in the comics, the Skull is an ardent Nazi and had the utmost respect for Hitler), but oh well. At least it’s a pretext for some lively action scenes.

Cap’s story is, ultimately, a tragedy, but the film ends without really exploring the depths of that tragedy. Presumably the plan is for the Avengers film to work through some of that, but I doubt they’ll really do it justice given the larger cast and the (presumed) need to fit some adventure story in there. (I think Avengers could be a fun film, too, but I think it’ll be easy for the story to get away from the writers and director if they’re not careful.) However, what we do see here is pretty effective.

Overall, Captain America is a really fun ride, only dragging in a few places, but otherwise engaging, action-packed, and even touching. Why can’t they all be like this?

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, the film adaptation of the graphic novel series by Brian Lee O’Malley (first volume here), lived up to my hopes, being a good adaptation of the key parts of the series, while also being a hilarious and at-times touching

[Read the whole thing]]]> It had me at “An epic tale of epic epicness.”

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, the film adaptation of the graphic novel series by Brian Lee O’Malley (first volume here), lived up to my hopes, being a good adaptation of the key parts of the series, while also being a hilarious and at-times touching film in its own right.

It’s not exactly an examination of slacker culture, or hipster culture, or any other culture, so much as the story of slacker Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera), bassist in a small-time band, who is recovering from a bad relationship by dating high school student Knives Chau (Ellen Wong), but who meets the girl of his dreams, Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). As if that wasn’t enough, in order to date Ramona, Scott has to fight and defeat her seven evil exes.

Considering it condenses 6 graphic novels into a just-under-2-hour movie, Scott Pilgrim does a good job of staying faithful to the source material, especially the first (and best) volume, which takes up the first half-hour of the film. But whereas in the first book Scott seems almost heroic, albeit basically clueless, and then descends into being hapless and pathetic, the film is consistent as portraying him as a loser, a likable but hardly admirable protagonist.

None of that really matters, though, because what makes Scott Pilgrim worth seeing is that it’s frickin’ hilarious, and full of exciting and over-the-top fight scenes based on martial arts video games. Whereas in the comics the fights never quite seem fully-realized, in the film they have the extra impact that came in the fight scenes in Watchmen, while being at the polar opposite end of the ridiculousness spectrum from that film. It works much better here, since it’s all thrilling rather than troubling.

And the film is loaded with quotable lines, which have kept me giggling for two days since I saw the film.

The cast is superb, too. Okay, no one’s going to win an Oscar here, but Michael Cera is excellent as the earnest-yet-pathetic hero, Jason Schwartzman is appropriately creepy and smarmy as the ultimate evil ex in the film’s climax, seeming like an evil version of Austin Powers. Then there’s Brandon Routh (yes, from Superman Returns), made up almost unrecognizably as another evil ex. Chris Evans, the Human Torch from Fantastic Four, also does a turn as an ex. Ellen Wong steals a few scenes as Knives, especially when she’s dealing with being dumped by Scott. But special mention has to go to Kieran Culkin as Scott’s gay roommate Wallace Wells, who practically steals every scene he appears in. If nothing else, I hope this film gets him some choice roles, because he’s earned them with his turn here. May Elizabeth Winstead is perhaps a little disappointing as Ramona, but her character seemed rather underwritten and passive, so she wasn’t given as much to work with (unfortunate since Ramona is a pretty string character at the beginning).

Really, between the script and the delivery, there’s just a lot of fun to be had in Scott Pilgrim. It doesn’t seem to have been doing well at the box office, so go see it soon if you’re interested, because it benefits from being seen on the big screen. Not that it really matters whether we get a sequel, because it’s complete unto itself. Check it out.

Some spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen it:

The toys’ owner, Andy, is

[Read the whole thing]]]> 11 years after the second film, Pixar gives us Toy Story 3. Although, as my Dad commented, the premise wears a little thin the third time around, it’s still quite a good film, thoughtful and clever, and also exciting and touching.

Some spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen it:

The toys’ owner, Andy, is now 17 and about to head to college. Most of his toys have been given away or thrown out over the years, and he hasn’t played with the remainder in quite some time. Woody (voice of Tom Hanks) is trying to encourage everyone to deal with the eventuality of being stored in the attic, hopefully to someday be brought back to play with Andy’s own kids. But a series of mishaps result in the gang being donated to Sunnyvale Day Care. Encouraged by the warm welcome by the leader of the day care’s toys, Lots-o-Huggin Bear (Ned Beatty), the toys elect to remain, while Woody heads back to go to college with Andy.

But all is not well at the day care, as Lotso is a tyrant who puts the new toys in the preschoolers’ room, where they endure rough play from kids not old enough to appreciate them. Lotso and his people neutralize Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and imprison the others. Woody, meanwhile, gets lost and ends up in the home of a little girl, where he learns from her toys of the horrors of the day care, and resolves to rescue his friends and get back to Andy.

In hindsight it’s easy to see that the film’s writers had a starting point (“What happens to the toys when their owner grows up?”) and a happy ending point in mind for the film, but bridging the gap between the two is where the adventure comes in: What are some other fates that may befall the toys? We see plenty of possibilities along the way.

This film belongs almost entirely to Woody, even more than the first two: Woody is a little more mature than he was before, and he bears the weight of his collapsing world on his shoulders, but he’s still naive and not-too-bright, so although he always tries to do the right thing and “will never give up on you”, it can take him a while to see what the right thing really is. In a sense, the whole story is a mechanism to show Woody that there are better options for himself and his friends, and that although the road is hard, the journey is worthwhile.

It’s a much darker film than the first two, as from the outset it’s tinged with nostalgia and a sense of loss: If the first two films were about throwing our heroes out of their comfort zone, here their comfort zone is years behind them and they’re adrift, trying to grasp any sense of hope they can find. The story reaches its emotional bottom shortly before the big climax, and it’s as grim a scene as in any Pixar film I can recall, as the toys think they’ve reached the end of the line at a garbage dump. But when they get out of it, I laughed out loud at the audacity of it.

It’s an artfully-constructed film, with various details strewn around, Hitchcock-style, which are used later as plot devices. And for some of the supporting characters it’s a story of redemption – or lack thereof – as always revolving around the theme of sticking with your friends through good times a bad. Turning your back on your friends always leads to bad things. (On the one hand you’d think the toys wouldn’t have to keep learning this. On the other hand, it’s not like humans take these keep these lessons close to their hearts when faced with differences of opinion, either.) But for the toys who remember this lesson (sooner or later), it’s happy endings all around.

The ending is a true tear-jerker, but it should touch the heart of anyone who’s closed the book on a period of their life and looked back on it sadly.

The animation is, as always, stellar. They’ve especially got the movements of the humans down pat (I wonder how much of it is rotoscoped and how much is modeled from whole cloth).

Though not quite on the level of Up, it’s still a strong an satisfying film. Yes, it suffers a bit from being repetitive of the earlier films (the same lessons learned, the same get-back-to-Andy storyline), but the Pixar crew manage to make another interesting variation on the theme, and it’s all just so darned heartwarming that how can you really object to it?

[Read the whole thing]]]> It’s been a lo-o-ong time since we’d been to see anything at the Stanford Theatre, but when I saw they were doing an Akira Kurosawa film festival, I persuaded Debbi to go with me to see the classic Japanese film The Seven Samurai (1954). I’ve actually never seen any Kurosawa films, and I’ve always figured I should see at least this one. (No, I’ve never seen The Magnificent Seven, either.)

Set in 16th-century Japan, a peasant village is under threat of a large band of mounted bandits. One of the peasants refuses to just give in, and after consulting with the village elder they go to a larger town to recruit samurai to come defend them. After some initial difficulties, they find an older rōnin, Kanbê, who is willing to help, and he is able to find six others to assist him in the defense, including a young appentice, Katsushirô, and a wild reckless samurai, Kikochiyo. Returning to the village, the samurai find the peasants are suspicious of them, but they earn their trust and start building defenses and training the peasants in basic military skills. After the barley is harvested, the bandits attack, and the samurai lead the villagers in defending their town, even though the samurai receive no payment other than the food the peasants have to eat. (You can read the full synopsis in the Wikipedia entry.)

The Seven Samurai is a long film – nearly 3-1/2 hours – and it often drags. One of the joys of watching films from other eras or cultures is in seeing how conventions in filmmaking differ from what we see today, and yet there are only so many meaningful glances you can take before the film bogs down (I have the same problem with The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, although I enjoy the film overall quite a bit). The first 45 minutes are quite difficult to get through, as it mainly concerns the peasants and their plight. Once Kanbê appears, the film becomes more exciting and more amusing, especially the sequence of recruiting the other samurai. Indeed, the humor is by far the best facet of the film.

Dramatically, the film is very uneven. The acting ranges from strong to poor; the an playing the apprentice, Katsushirô, is quite stiff, and he has a relationship with Shino, the daughter of one of the peasants, who’s played by a woman whose style could best be described as hysterical. Their scenes together were often painful to watch. The other samurai are generally very well acted, especially Kanbê (who Debbi observed resembles Morgan Freeman in his appearance and mannerisms) and Kikochiyo, the latter of whom is over-the-top in all the right ways, his best scene being the one in which we learn something of his background, although he has several other good scenes.

Although the battle sequences appear very well done for their day they sometimes feel a little too contrived and implausible. It’s easy to see how the film influenced later films involving a few going up against many (of which the TV show The A-Team has to be the reductio ad absurdum). And it’s not a cheerful film, with a rather downbeat ending for the samurai, although a satisfying one in terms of the characters. Kurosawa clearly demonstrates many of the skills of great screenwriters and directors, but I don’t think he pulls them all together as well as, say, Alfred Hitchcock was himself doing in the 50s.

I would say The Seven Samurai is mainly of interest to people fascinated by film history, or historical films for that matter. It has much to recommend it, but I think it falls short of being truly great, not least because of its length and pacing. I’m glad I saw it, but I doubt I’ll feel the need to see it again anytime soon.

[Read the whole thing]]]> I was interesting in seeing Changeling when it hit the theaters last fall, but somehow ended up missing it. Thanks to the wonder of On Demand television (which I imagine will put video rental places out of business even faster than NetFlix is) we were able to watch it last night. I recall writer J. Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5) talking about it in the lead-up to its release, and as he always does he made it sounds really interesting. And sure, while he’s promoting his own work, Straczynski does tend to play fair when talking about it.

The actual film in fact exceeded my expectations, considering I was originally disappointed that it didn’t have any fantastic elements despite the premise: In 1928 Los Angeles, Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) is a single mother to Walter (Gattlin Griffith). When Christine one day has to go in to work unexpectedly, she comes home to find that Walter has disappeared. The LA police – famously corrupt in that era – are at first uninterested in the case, but five months later bring Christine’s son back to her. Except that as soon as she sees him, she realized the boy isn’t Walter, but someone prentending to be Walter. Railroaded by Police Captain Jones (Jeffrey Donovan, who plays the lead in the series Burn Notice) into accepting him anyway, she soon collects objective evidence supporting her position.

So you can see why I might think such a story written by a science fiction author, and titled after a creature from folklore might have a fantastic premise underlying its story, but in fact the film is based on a real incident involving abducted children and their apparent murder, and is played absolutely straight. The film’s Wikipedia entry has several statements that the story was considered too fantastic by some despite its being largely true.

The story has an interesting episodic structure in which each episode seems to belong to a different genre. Walter’s disappearance is worked for pure suspense, while the abducted children starts as the tail end of a detective story before turning into a slice of a horror story. Police corruption and indifference is a major theme, and Christine also does a turn in a mental institution (and it sure seems like 1920s mental institutions were good places to stay well away from). There’s also the reverend Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), who has been crusading against LA police corruption and who becomes Christine’s strongest ally.

The acting in the film is its strongest asset, ranging from good to excellent. Jolie’s performance as Christine is quite good, wavering between personal strength and seeming well out of her depth, her voice becoming tremulous at many moments. But the outstanding performance is by Jason Butler Hamner as Gordon Northcott, the man accused of the abductions, who seems convincingly psychopathic while also being a huge coward. He has perhaps the most demanding role in the film, and he does a fantastic job.

As a period piece, the behavior of the LAPD feels very odd and scary compared to what we see in modern crime dramas, and yet still similar in many ways. (This may be an indication that I watch too many police procedurals on television.) The story feels like part of a bygone era without feeling stale.

At 2 hours and 20 minutes running time, the film has plenty of time to go into its various subjects in depth, and director Clint Eastwood approaches the story in a very matter-of-fact, low-key manner, which works quite well. There are a few dangling elements, some of which can be resolved by reading the historical record of the incident, and other of which are ambiguous because, well, they were never fully cleared up, but which leave the viewer with some things to think about afterwards, which is fine for a film based on a real and complicated incident.

In summary I recommend this film if you’re into any of the elements described, especially if you enjoy a story about improbable circumstances portrayed without sensationalism.

[Read the whole thing]]]> Last Sunday we went to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the new film in the series. My expectations for the films at this point are moderate at best: The book series bottomed out with the awful Order of the Phoenix and never really recovered. The original of this one was padded and poorly plotted, although it had some good character bits in the middle.

The story basically survives intact in the film, although with many of its warts still showing: Many sequences are slow, especially the beginning (in which Dumbledore and Harry persuade Horace Slughorn to return to Hogwarts) and the end (the retrieval of the Horcrux is tense, yet tedious). But the stuff in the middle is still quite entertaining: Harry, Ron and Hermione falling for various other students, Harry awkwardly captaining the Quidditch team (I rather wish the series had more consciously explored the theme of Harry being thrust into a leader’s role while being anything but a natural leader), and Harry learning potions with the help of the textbook of the Half-Blood Prince. The flashbacks to Voldemort’s past are interesting and not as overdone as they are in the book.

The film has been getting strong reviews, and overall I enjoyed it despite its flaws, but it’s not nearly as good as the best in the film series, The Prisoner of Azkaban, although with stronger source material it might have been its equal.

It’s interesting to see all the actors growing up. Daniel Radcliffe looks less buff than he did in Phoenix where his appearance seemed a little odd. Rupert Grint seemed to grow into his body awkwardly, especially in Goblet of Fire, but he seems to be past that; he’s the actor who’s changed the most in appearance as he’s grown up. Emma Watson has changed the least, looking much the same at 18 as she did at 11. Tom Felton’s features have become much more defined as he’s grown up, and he doesn’t have the smooth, dark-elfin look he had when he first played Draco Malfoy.

I can’t believe I’m going to sit through two films to see all of the final book, Deathly Hallows, which was another padded book; that means a lot of the padding is surely going to make it into the films (which already run long at over 2-1/2 hours apiece). But no doubt I’ll do it.

The opening montage of the film in which we see how the disappointment’s in Carl’s life shaping him into a cranky old man really resonated with me. My thought while watching it was that its message is not

[Read the whole thing]]]> One last, more personal, note about Up. Spoilers ahead in case you haven’t seen the film.

The opening montage of the film in which we see how the disappointment’s in Carl’s life shaping him into a cranky old man really resonated with me. My thought while watching it was that its message is not to put off following your dreams, not to let the little day-to-day things get in the way. My temperament is that of a steady, day-to-day guy, and from time to time I worry that I’m spending all my time just going through the motions and not doing anything truly memorable, the sort of thing I’ll look back on when I’m old and think, “That’s something I’m glad I did.” I also haven’t had any great ambitious goals in life like Carl and Ellie did to go to Paradise Falls.

The later montage shows Carl reading through Ellie’s adventure scrapbook, filled with pictures of their life together. In contrast to the first montage, this one shows how all of the little things, in aggregation, makes up a fulfilling and memorable life. Rather than resonating deeply with me like the first sequence, this one gave me something to think about. I’m still thinking.

The evening of the day we saw the film, I asked Debbi if she’s happy with me even though I don’t go on any adventures with her. She said that we do go on adventures: We went to Hawaii, to Las Vegas, and to Portland, and Disneyland. And I know I’ll remember that Hawaii trip for years to come.

It still seems like it falls short of fulfilling some lifelong dream, though.

The journey of retiree and widower Carl Fredrickson (voice of Ed Asner) to South America in a house lifted by thousands of balloons is an utterly ridiculous premise, and it gets sillier as it goes on, with a nonogenarian explorer, dragging the floating house several miles atop a

[Read the whole thing]]]> Pixar’s new film Up is terrific.

The journey of retiree and widower Carl Fredrickson (voice of Ed Asner) to South America in a house lifted by thousands of balloons is an utterly ridiculous premise, and it gets sillier as it goes on, with a nonogenarian explorer, dragging the floating house several miles atop a butte, talking dogs and fantastic animals. And yet the whole thing works on its own terms, as it’s really about Carl’s personal journey to find a way to keep going after the death of his wife.

There are two tear-jerker montages which certainly do their jobs: The much-heralded opening sequence in which we see how Carl became the grumpy old man he is, and a later sequence in which he reminisces on his life from a different perspective. In a way they show how two views of a person’s life can say very different things about that person: In Carl’s case, either that he should have seized the day before it was too late, or that he had a wonderful life that he shouldn’t regret. But the story is about Carl making his way from here to there in his head.

But it’s the exuberant characters that carry the day: Russell, the young wilderness explorer (Jordan Nagai) who stows away on Carl’s house, and Dug (Bob Peterson), the talking dog who tags along when he meets the pair, eventually turning on his master, the adventurer Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer). Dug is especially hilarious, and quotable (“Hi there!”).

If the film has a weak spot, it’s the obsessive villainy of Muntz, who makes an effective heavy, but not a terribly convincing one: While his motivation (chasing after a fantastic animal for decades and not letting anything get in his way) makes a certain gut-level sense, I wondered why he didn’t try to “catch more flies with honey”, as they say. But given how much suspension of disbelief the story asks for just by its nature, a little bit of character motivation is easy enough to overlook.

I think Up is the film that The Incredibles wanted to be: This film’s epiphany works better than that one does, and it feels more true to itself, not tied up in trying to be a superhero film (with a poor understanding of superheroes), a family drama, and a spy adventure all in one. Up is is much more focused on its main character and story, and the whole thing works much better.

Is it Pixar’s best film? It’s hard to pick just one, since they’ve made so many good ones. WALL-E may have been more inventive, but it stumbled in the premise of its second half. Up is more consistent and overall works better. I’ve watched WALL-E, Cars and Finding Nemo many times now; I hope Up holds up as well in repeat viewings.

Squirrel!

Myself, I’m an unreconstructed original series

[Read the whole thing]]]> J.J. Abrams’ new Star Trek film is sort of the anti-Battlestar Galactica. BSG took a fairly goofy old TV series and turned it into a serious adventure drama. Star Trek takes what was a serious adventure drama (well, for its time) and turns it into a goofy movie.

Myself, I’m an unreconstructed original series fan, and I happily enjoy those old episodes and the early movies while ignoring almost everything that followed. So I was just hoping for a good movie. Well, it’s got lots of action and plenty of humor, but it also self-consciously compares itself to the original series at every turn, and the story makes basically no sense, while blazing no new ground. So it was a rollicking ride, but ultimately it’s just another action film.

Spoilers ahoy!

In the late 24th century, Ambassador Spock (Leonard Nimoy) fails to stop a supernova from destroying the Romulan homeworld. As a result of his actions, Spock and a Romulan mining ship are thrown back in time to the 23rd century. The Romulan ship arrives right at the birth of James T. Kirk; its captain, Nero (Eric Bana), blames Spock and the Federation for failing to save his homeworld, and vows to destroy them all. He starts with the he encounters upon arrival, and Kirk’s father George sacrifices himself to delay Nero.

22 years later, Kirk (Chris Pine) has grown up to be a rebellious ne’er-do-well who gets into fights with Starfleet cadets. Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood) goads Kirk into joining Starfleet to make something of himself, and the trick works. Three years later, Kirk is near graduation, when his antics in facing the Kobiyashi Maru test throw his career into doubt when Spock (Zachary Quinto) accuses him of cheating. Fortunately for Kirk, Nero chooses that moment to put his plan into action, attacking Vulcan. Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) sneaks Kirk on board the U.S.S. Enterprise which sets out with a fleet heading to Vulcan. Nero’s ship is too powerful and destroys the fleet, then captures Captain Pike and destroys the planet Vulcan. Left in command of the ship, Spock elects to regroup with the fleet, and exiles Kirk to an ice planet when he tries to stop him.

On the planet, Kirk meets Ambassador Spock, who tells him that Nero’s actions have changed history, by killing Kirk’s father and destroying Vulcan. With the help of Spock and Montgomery Scott (Simon Pegg), Kirk returns to the Enterprise, is able to force Spock to surrender command, and heads off to face Nero before he can destroy the Earth, too.

Star Trek has basically the same plot as its predecessor, Nemesis, with a time travel twist: Grumpy bald Romulan in a powerful ship vows to destroy the Federation. Nemesis plays its story absolutely straight, while this film is a laugh-fest.

The biggest problem with this film is that the story makes no sense. It’s actually the same basic story as its predecessor, Nemesis, with a time travel twist: Grumpy bald Romulan in a powerful ship vows to destroy the Federation, and only the Enterprise can stop him. But in its details the plot is one of the shakiest of any Star Trek film:

• A supernova that threatens to destroy the whole Romulan empire? Riiight.
• Nero’s motivation is thin: How are Spock and the Federation to blame for the destruction of Romulus, exactly? Didn’t Spock try, yet just not succeed? What did Nero do to help stop the supernova?
• A mining ship that can easily dispatch a warship, even if it was 150 years earlier? Okay, the Romulans are a warlike race, so maaaaybe… but it seems like a stretch.
• Why would Spock’s ship be carrying so much black-hole-creating red matter? Isn’t that just stupid?
• Kirk sneaks aboard the Enterprise against orders, and for this Captain Pike names him first officer?
• Kirk is promoted from cadet to captain for his role in one successful mission?

That’s just what comes to mind off the top of my head. The whole story is ridiculous even by Star Trek standards.

The way the film is constantly measuring itself against the original series and its cast is just plain weird. And distracting, considering I was entirely willing to take the film on its own terms and forget about everything that came before, but it wouldn’t let me. Whether it’s recycling gags from previous films (Chekov’s accent), the attention paid to rewriting continuity, or the efforts of many of the actors (especially Quinto and Urban) to recreate the vocal and body language quirks of the original cast, it was a reboot that just couldn’t let its source material go.

That said, there are several fine performances. Quinto does capture the mannerisms of Leonard Nimoy well, yet it seemed like he never quite grasped Spock’s character fully. Far more impressive was Pine’s Kirk, which captured the essence of the character – despite the different environment in which he grew up – while not reproducing William Shatner’s superficial characteristics (indeed, he reminds me strongly of Matt Damon, who I’ve heard was briefly considered for the role, and whom I also heard Pine partly modeled his performance after). If Pine hadn’t come through, the whole film would have fallen flat; instead, he credibly portrays Kirk as a dead-end kid in the first half of the film, and then one who’s grown up considerably in the second half.

(Also of note is Bruce Greenwell as Captain Pike, who seems tailor-made for the role of mentor and elder statesman, a hero figure who shows the kids how it’s done by his self-sacrificing example, as well as displaying the deepest empathy for Kirk. Given that his role wasn’t very large, they really hit a home run when they cast him.)

Other than that: Special effects, fine. Music, weak (though not as weak as Jerry Goldsmith’s music on earlier films). Costumes, fine. Cinematography, your typical action-film work.

Overall, I guess George R. R. Martin put it a lot more succinctly than I have, although he hated the film. I thought it was okay for what it was, but what it was was completely devoid of ambition or freshness. It’s an evening’s diversion, but ultimately I was disappointed, and my expectations weren’t very high to start with.

Briefly, Coraline Jones (voice of Dakota Fanning) and her parents move into an old, pink house with three apartments.

[Read the whole thing]]]> This afternoon we went to see Coraline. I was lukewarm towards the book by Neil Gaiman (especially since I don’t care for Dave McKean’s artwork), but I’m happy to say that the film is terrific.

Briefly, Coraline Jones (voice of Dakota Fanning) and her parents move into an old, pink house with three apartments. Her parents (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman) are too busy working on their gardening catalog to spend time with her, and she’s not too impressed with the overeager neighbor boy Wybie (Robert Bailey Jr.), especially when he gives her a doll he found which looks just like her.

Coraline discovers a passage to another world – a world that looks exactly like hers, except that it’s bright and colorful, and has parallels of all the people she knows. Her Other Mother and Other Father shower her with affection and she becomes disaffected with her real world, even though everyone in the other world have buttons instead of eyes. But of course the other world has a sinister secret and Coraline has to be both smart and quick to keep herself and her loved ones from being trapped in it.

Where to start with this film? The stop-motion animation (in 3D!) is terrific, even if it was aided by computer smoothing (I don’t know that it was, but who cares?). Bruno Coulais’ music is atmospheric and memorable, and the film would be rather different without it. The designs are wonderful, full of color and detail and creativity.

I remember the book as being inventive but drab and dreary. The film is anything but: Coraline is a vibrant character frustrated with her parents and with Wybie (but for different reasons), but enthusiastic and inventive when the opportunity (or necessity) presents itself. While her parents are perhaps a little too over-the-top in their inattentiveness, Wybie – a new character not from the book – is funny and quirky enough to fit into the world perfectly, while also being a bit of an anchor to the world outside the house. Other Mother and Other Father are both presented quite effectively, as is The Cat (Keith David), a sort of guide who pops up from time to time.

While the film still has a bit of the feeling that it was a trial just for the sake of a story, the addition of Wybie and his grandmother and their history with the house does give the story a sense of closure that I recall seemed to be missing from the book.

Coraline is the second film of a Neil Gaiman book that I liked better than the book (Stardust was the first). It makes me wonder what someone might be able to do with a film of one of the Gaiman books I really liked – like American Gods.

In any event, I highly recommend Coraline the film. It’s stylish, funny, suspenseful, and great to look at. Go see it.

I read the comic book

[Read the whole thing]]]> Yesterday we went up to the city to see Watchmen on the IMAX screen at the Metreon. This was actually the first film I’ve seen on an IMAX screen, although other than being really quite big, it didn’t feel very different from watching a movie on a regular screen.

I read the comic book by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons when it came out back in 1986-87. It was a big deal then, as Moore was probably the hottest – and arguably the best – pure writer in comics at the time, and Gibbons was a highly-regarded artist. Moore has said that the series was intended to be experimental and rule-breaking in many ways, and as far as how to use the form of sequential art to tell a story, it was. Few comics before or since have taken such a, well, cinematic approach to storytelling, while also mixing in the things which make the form unique. Gibbons eschewed the traditional approach of using visual effects to convey movement or emotion and instead the series depicted the progress of time in a simple panel-by-panel approach. At the same time scenes blended into one another, linked by dialogue from different scenes. While individual elements of Watchmen was been mimicked or used elsewhere, I don’t think anyone else has managed to quite capture the unique feel and nature of the book.

(The story, by the way, concerns a world in which superheroes emerged, changed the world – especially the big one who had actual powers – and were then forced into retirement. A decade later, one of them is killed, setting into motion a chain of events to learn why he was killed, which brings many of the surviving heroes back to solve the mystery and come to terms with their pasts and present.)

That said, the book is certainly not without its flaws. Steven Grant wrote an interesting critical account of the book which I recommend reading. I agree that the story by-and-large isn’t terribly novel, it’s how it’s told that’s fascinating. The story is also rather let down by a very hard-to-swallow ending, which Moore tries his level best (which is extremely good) to sell, trying to cajole and trick the reader into buying it, but it doesn’t quite work. (He manages to paper over most of the unbelievability with a compelling final page, but it’s just a papering-over, as if he doesn’t quite buy it himself.) But in sum its complexity, nuance, and believable characters make it one of the better graphic novels out there.

Making a movie of it: Hoo-boy.

The comic is strictly episodic in nature – using the periodical nature of the original comics for its own purposes as a chapter structure – with each issue featuring its own encapsulated segment of the story, its own tone and characters, and often its own resolution of a sort. It’s also a very low-key story, with only the occasional moment of action. Much of this is at odds with how superhero movies – or heck, any blockbuster movie – is constructed today.

Director Zack Snyder and screenplay writers David Hayter and Alex Tse give it a good try. With a running time of 163 minutes, that gives them about 13 minutes per issue (plus 7 minutes for credits), but of course it doesn’t work out that way. Naturally they cut the stuff that absolutely had to be cut (the “Black Freighter” sequences, which are not without their interesting elements but are ultimately the least essential part of the book), and pare down the issues that can be pared down. That still left them with some difficult decisions, and I think they cut some important material, but I went in knowing that Watchmen is probably impossible to film faithfully in a mere movie-length film.

The expected problems with the adaptation aside, the film starts going wrong in its focus on the violence of the story. Where the comic doesn’t exactly flinch from showing the horrible things that happen, it also rarely does so directly unless necessary, leaving some of the worst moments to the reader’s imagination – usually a good choice. The film emphasizes every punch with an extra-loud sound of impact. The heroes – most of whom have no true powers – get the living daylights beaten out of them and come back for more, quite different from how they’re portrayed in the book. There are some extremely gory scenes, some in which the camera lingers lovingly on the blood. The violence is mostly gratuitous, and only truly provides value in one scene, when two of the heroes are fighting their way through a gauntlet in a prison.

The film’s other big problem is the climax, in which everything is revealed, though it’s somewhat different from the book, but not really any more effective or believable. The book is full of moral ambiguity and goes to great lengths to try to portray every character as having both admirable and ignoble motivations and actions. The film mostly casts the characters as either “more good guys” or “more bad guys”, which sucks a lot of power out of the ending.

To the extent that the film works, it relies on the portrayal of the psychopathic Rorschach and his portrayal by Jackie Earle Haley. The acting is unexceptional throughout the film (none of the major actors are familiar to me), but Haley carries the day with an intense and spot-on performance, growling his way through the film in a full face-mask (whose constantly-shifting pattern is the film’s greatest visual triumph). With a lesser performance in this pivotal role, the film would have been limp indeed, violence or not.

The picture also looks impressive, although perhaps a little too art-deco and artificial in its appearance no matter the era being shown (it takes place in 1985 and has scenes dating back to the 1940s). This works well in the opening sequence, a series of nearly-still images (a neat effect in itself) about the history leading up to the main story, but gets a little wearing towards the end. But the characters and many of the settings and scenes look like they were lifted directly from the book; smartly, many of the iconic images are closely replicated in the film, sometimes to an uncanny degree. Considering how often films deviate across the board from their source material, this in itself is quite impressive.

Overall, I’d say Watchmen is a “pretty good” film – certainly not in the same league as the book. I do think it could have been a better film, by toning down the violence and sticking closer to the book in some key areas, but I appreciate that it’s a very challenging book to adapt. Perhaps I’m being too demanding, but I think the film’s greatest flaws were entirely correctable, yet they seemed to be conscious deviations to make the film more “exciting”.

Watchmen the movie is worth seeing once (if you’re not too squeamish about gore in movies), especially if you’ve already read the book. And if you’ve seen the film, though, then you definitely owe it to yourself to read the original. But I don’t think it’s going to hold up under repeated viewings.

[Read the whole thing]]]> I quite liked the first Hellboy film, which came out back in 2004. Despite a plot which didn’t make a lot of sense, it was stylish and funny and basically a satisfying action-adventure film. So I was enthusiastic about the sequel, Hellboy II: The Golden Army. I’d hoped that director Guillermo del Toro had learned through doing Pan’s Labyrinth to tell a better story and that Hellboy II would be a more serious, dramatic and sensical film than its predecessor.

My hope was completely misplaced, and I was quite disappointed in the film.

The film opens with a scene in the 1950s in which Hellboy’s father, Trevor Bruttenholm (John Hurt), tells the story of the Golden Army, an indestructible, unbeatable mechanical army created by goblins and controlled by elves to fight mankind, until the king of the elves was saddened by the bloodshed and came to a truce with humanity and agreed to put the Golden Army away forever. Unfortunately his son, Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), feels this has doomed the elves to eventual extinction, and embarks on a plan to gain the three pieces of the crown which can control the army, and awaken them and conquer the world.

In the present day, Hellboy (Ron Perlman) is living with Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), but their relationship is rocky at best. During a mission to clean up after an attack by Prince Nuada, Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) learns that Liz is pregnant, and Hellboy reveals his existence to the world, to the frustration of his boss, Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor). This causes the government to send the ectoplasmic Johann Krauss (voiced by Seth Macfarlane) to take control of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense. The team goes to seek the mythical Troll Market, where they meet and rescue Prince Nuada’s twin sister Nuala (Anna Walton), who has the third piece of the crown, and whom Abe falls in love with. But Nuada tracks them down and critically wounds Hellboy, forcing the team to decide whether to deal with him or try to defeat him, even though they haven’t had much success so far. They end up going to confront him in Ireland at the resting place of the Golden Army.

It’s difficult to know where to begin with how badly this film goes wrong. Fundamentally, Hellboy is about two things: Modern unearthing and explorations of ancient mythical beings, and big monsters hitting each other. So while the myth of the Golden Army is a fine starting point, the sequence in which the team tries to fight off a horde of ravenous tooth fairies is just disgusting and no fun at all. Seeing people eaten alive is just gross, and I wish we could declare a moratorium on it in films like this. Yuck.

The romance between Hellboy and Liz, and also between Abe and Nuala, both are handled so heavy-handedly that they’re pretty painful to watch. There’s a scene in which Hellboy and Abe get drunk talking about women, and although it has a couple of funny lines, it really feels wrongheaded. Not to mention rather insulting to Liz, who’s mostly treated as a fifth wheel, even if she is one who can blow up a building with her mind.

Hellboy isn’t a very subtle character, but he acts so stupidly here from time to time that it’s hard to be sympathetic to him, and seeing Johann teach him a lesson seems well-deserved, but also quite a departure from the comic books, in which he has both brawn and brains. Del Toro tries awfully hard to show that Hellboy is more like the monsters he fights than the people he protects and that they’ll eventually turn on him, but again he beats us over the head with it – and then just sort of drops it in the latter part of the film – that it’s completely unconvincing. Johann experiences a sudden and unexplained change in attitude late in the film as well, which really makes no sense at all.

The best part of the film is the final sequence, which starts with them meeting a goblin who agrees to take them to the army and also find someone who can heal Hellboy – which turns out to be the Angel of Death. And then we have the confrontation with Nuada and the Army itself, and the Army is indeed very cool and badass, and the final fate of Nuada is also quite well done. Even before they got to the Angel I was thinking, “Gee, I want a lot more of this and a lot less of what we’ve been watching for the first 90 minutes.”

I think Del Toro really lost sight of what makes Hellboy interesting and fun, and tried way too hard to make some points about Hellboy’s unique situation and his relationship with Liz, and it all sunk quickly under the weight of its heavy-handedness. So rather than being an improvement on the first film, Hellboy II feels like a bit of an embarrassment. And a huge disappointment.

First up was The Spirit, written and directed by Frank Miller, based on Will Eisner’s characters. The trailer looks downright awful, all noirish and with a cutesy sort of sex appeal combined with

[Read the whole thing]]]> When we saw The Dark Knight the other day, we also saw trailers for some upcoming films based on comic books.

First up was The Spirit, written and directed by Frank Miller, based on Will Eisner’s characters. The trailer looks downright awful, all noirish and with a cutesy sort of sex appeal combined with menace which seems utterly unlike the comics. I’m not a big fan of the source material, but it seems like Frank Miller is exactly the wrong person to adapt Eisner’s characters, which sprang from the tradition of newspaper adventure strips of the 30s and 40s. Miller over the last decade or so tends to take things to the extreme, which is entertaining when he’s working with his own characters (Sin City), but a disaster when working with others’ characters (The Dark Knight Strikes Again).

Anyway, based on this trailer, I can’t see myself going to see this film. (This trailer is slightly better, but extremely generic.)

By contrast, the trailer for Watchmen has been all the buzz on teh intarwebs this week, and it looks really good; many shots look like they were lifted directly from the graphic novel. My enthusiasm is somewhat tempered because adapting this story to a 2-3 hour film is extremely ambitious and I imaging they’ll either leave a lot out, or shorten many scenes, so I don’t expect it to have the same impact.

Still, based on this trailer, I can’t imagine myself not going to see this film.

(My copy of the graphic novel has been on loan to my friend Lee for a while. He reports that his cow-orkers have been coming into his office and thumbing through it since the trailer came out. So people are definitely interested in this film.)

By the way, it looks like grumpy old Alan Moore – the book’s author – has asked to not be associated with the Watchmen film, as the trailer site says the film is “based on the graphic novel illustrated by Dave Gibbons”. Whatever, dude.

[Read the whole thing]]]> The Dark Knight is the sequel to 2005′s Batman Begins, which I enjoyed quite a bit. Remember when Batman came out in 1989 and everyone was wondering whether it would be a campy film like the 60s TV series which had influenced 1978′s Superman to its detriment? Fans lauded Tim Burton’s take on the caped crusader for being dark and serious.

Well, Burton ain’t got nuthin’ on Christopher Nolan, director of the current franchise.

Here, Batman (Christian Bale) and squeaky-clean district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) are on the verge of shutting down Gotham’s crime families, especially after Batman manages to haul in the crime lords’ “accountant” from Hong Kong. The crime lords get into bed with the maniacal Joker (Heath Ledger) to take out Batman, and the Joker sets out to do in all the big names who are maintaining law and order in Gotham, showing himself capable of intricate, seemingly-impossible crimes of murder and mass destruction.

Batman’s alter ego, Bruce Wayne, has high hopes that Dent can be the hero Gotham need and that he can put aside his double identity and marry his childhood sweetheart, Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). But, unable to wait for Bruce forever, Rachel is not only working with Harvey in his office, but dating his publicly. Which, of course, also puts her in the line of fire of the mob and the Joker.

The Dark Knight is a very dark film indeed, even though much of it takes place in the daytime: Harvey, Rachel, Lieutenant Gordon (Gary Oldman), the commissioner, the mayor, all the good guys are constantly under siege by people who vanish in the shadows after striking. The Gotham police department is deeply corrupt, which bothers Dent to no end even though he knows that dirty cops are better than the only alternative, which is no cops at all. It makes the film feel constantly suspenseful, even in the daylight scenes, even in places we expect will be safe for the heroes. Only his secret identity gives Batman himself any safety. (Although one does wonder why Bruce Wayne isn’t a high-profile target for the criminals of Gotham.)

Ledger is quite good as the Joker. Jack Nicholson’s performance in the 1989 film also drew kudos, but I always thought he was just playing ‘nutty old Jack Nicholson’, and I thought his performance was a low point of that film. Ledger is dark and menacing and convincing in being “crazy like a fox”, the sort of crazy where he’s willing to do anything to get what he wants, and where his appearance makes others underestimate him, often for the last time. Is his performance worthy of an Oscar, as has been suggested? I didn’t think so, but he did do a good job.

The film is a fine suspense and action-adventure piece. What makes it really work is that there’s some real characterization behind the cape: Bruce isn’t as meaty a character here as he was in Batman Begins, but Harvey, Rachel and Lt. Gordon all pick up the slack and contribute to giving the film more heft than just a lot of chasing and fighting and lunacy, it gives the characters something to fight for.

Despite that, the film does have its flaws. First, it’s overlong, with perhaps one too many clever plans of the Joker’s that Batman has to stop, and one too many nifty gimmicks that Batman can employ – his little trick with Lucius Fox’s (Morgan Freeman) latest technological innovation was cool, but implausible and unnecessary. Second, while the resolution of the Bruce-Harvey-Rachel triangle works for the film (though it’s not a happy ending), the Batman-Harvey-Joker triangle ends rather anticlimactically, separating the Joker and Harvey into two separate threads when it would have been far more satisfying to have them all merge together in the final fight against the Joker. While the Joker’s character is rife with meaning, I thought Nolan missed a chance to imbue Harvey Dent’s fate with the same degree of meaning – or at least a demonstration that even the Joker should sometimes be careful what he wishes for.

Still, The Dark Knight is quite a good film, stylish and intense. Definitely not a kids’ film, as there are some pretty brutal scenes. But maybe the most serious superhero film ever made. Which shows how far we’ve come in 40 years.

A few more, spoiler-laden comments after the cut:

I appreciated that they brought back the Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy) for this film, in a fairly small supporting role. It gave the film a degree of continuity I hadn’t expected.

My comment about the film’s climax means this: I think the showdown between Batman and the Joker should have had Two-Face show up in the middle of it. Two-Face is an agent of chaos of a different sort than the Joker, grounded in who he once was even as he’s unable to accept what he’s become. His attempt to kill Gordon made no sense to me; focusing his rage on the Joker would have made more sense, and could have set up his return as the main villain in the next film. I think Nolan really missed the boat here.

Doesn’t Michael Caine look like he’s just having a terrific time as Alfred?

I thought Maggie Gyllenhaal did an impressive job replacing Katie Holmes, in that she mimiced Holmes’ mannerisms and expressions almost perfectly. Like Holmes, she didn’t have a lot to do, but she did it well.

I’d expected that the Joker’s trick with the two bombs would result in the convicts blowing themselves up (after all, why should he have been telling the truth? He might have wanted to eliminate the competition) and the civilians pressing the button but finding it was unwired (demontrating how far they’d be willing to sink). Maybe I’m a little too cynical for even this film; I was glad to see the film take a different direction there.

Should we be thinking of Nolan as one of the better directors around today? I think his two Batman films are not as good as the other two films I’ve seen by him, Memento and The Prestige. That’s a pretty strong resumé.

Anyway: Film too long, but still enjoyable. With the change in the status quo at the end of the movie, I’ll be curious to see how the next one works out. And with the big bags of cash this one’s been taking in, I think we can bank on there being one.

It’s a

[Read the whole thing]]]> I never went to see Ratatouille, since the premise didn’t appeal to me and something about Brad Bird’s approach to story construction puts me off (The Incredibles could have been a great film, but it’s rather an unfocused hodge-podge), but tonight we resumed riding the Pixar bandwagon by going to see WALL-E.

It’s a cute film. It does a terrific job of portraying the eponymous character’s unending life as nearly the last living thing on a used-up, abandoned Earth. Without dialogue, but with plenty of body language, WALL-E conveys his begrudging acceptance of his workaday life, with his hopes and dreams behind it. And when the more advanced robot Eve shows up on a mission, his realization that his dreams could come true is quite poignant. From there the film turns into a madcap adventure as we find out what happened to humanity, and WALL-E and Eve try to complete Eve’s mission and figure each other out (not necessarily in that order.

The film is at its best when it’s dealing with the robots – and there are plenty of them – but at its worst when dealing with the humans, and what they’ve become after 700 years. Okay, it’s a cautionary tale about out consumer culture, but it has all the finesse of a sledgehammer to the forehead, with people having become obese and slothful, entirely reliant on stimuli from the computer network. It’s not like it’s particularly new, either; except for the fat angle, it’s pretty much the same premise as that of Adventure Comics #379, which was published around the time I was born. I think if they’d come up with a more nuanced explanation for humanity’s absence it would have been a much better film.

Still, the robots are at the front and center, and that makes it a fun film despite its flaws. WALL-E is a terrific-looking creation, expressive and sympathetic, and Eve isn’t far behind him. And the film is touching and funny and exciting as WALL-E and Eve try to get together. The animation is stunning, of course, and the music is very distinctive compared to earlier Pixar films. Overall, a fun film.

Topping it off – actually leading it off – is the short before the film, “Presto”, which is absolutely hilarious, as good as any old Warner Bros cartoon. Sometimes it seems like the shorts are better than the features!

[Read the whole thing]]]> A few weeks ago we caught the last 45 minutes or so of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on television. There was a scene in which Indy is fighting some Nazis in a tank and the tank goes over the edge of a cliff. His father and friends run to the edge and start to mourn his passing. Meanwhile, a few dozen feet away, Indy pulls himself up over the edge of the cliff and limps up behind them and looks over the edge with them. It’s a moment which perfectly illustrates why Last Crusade and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom were basically crappy films: Their sense of humor sucked eggs, exploiting the foibles of the characters for the cheapest sort of laughs. Last Crusade, although with a nominally better plot than Temple, was especially guilty of this sin, using Indy’s father (played by Sean Connery at his most ridiculous) and friends as little more than comic relief. It was like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg wanted to make a couple of bad James Bond films, but didn’t even make it that high.

How the heck did these two manage to take basically the same elements and turn them into the excellent Raiders of the Lost Ark?

Anyway, nearly 20 years later, Harrison Ford is back as Henry Jones Jr., in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Taking place in 1957, the film opens with Indy and his partner Mac McHale (Ray Winstone) having been captured by a team of Soviets, led by Colonel-Doctor Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett with a black bob haircut), who have brought them to Area 51 to find a certain item in a military warehouse. They get what they’re looking for, but Indy escapes, and then manages to survive an atomic bomb test (!) before telling what he knows to some government officials, who are notably suspicious of him for having helped the Russians at all.

Back at the university, Indy finds that he’s being placed on a leave of absence. As he heads out to who-knows-where, he’s contacted by Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf), a young man who’s friends with an old friend of Indy’s, Dr. Henry Oxley (John Hurt). Mutt says that ‘Ox’ is in South America on the trail of Akator, a mythical ‘city of gold’, but that he’s been captured, and that Mutt’s mother followed him and has also been captured. Managing to elude both the Russians and the FBI, Indy and Mutt head to South America where they once again meet both Spalko, and Indy’s old flame Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen, reprising her role from Raiders), and the various parties battle their way towards Akator while trading ownership of a mysterious crystal skull dating back hundreds – maybe thousands – of years.

The film is irrepressibly silly – c’mon, surviving a nuclear explosion? – but I enjoyed it a lot more than I’d expected to. In a sense it completes the “arc” of the four films’ storytelling “feel”: Raiders was an absolutely straight adventure film until the supernatural bit at the very end, but later films get less plausible until in Crystal Skull the film is pretty ludicrous almost from the get-go. But it’s also comfortable in its implausibility; you know there are going to be ancient traps that couldn’t possibly work, and it’s pretty obvious very early on what the Crystal Skull really is and what its Kingdom almost certainly is, and although it ends in a climax that’s maybe even too over-the-top for this movie, it’s still a lot of fun getting there.

Happily, the script crafts just enough of a world around the character to make it feel like Indy’s really been doing things for the 19 years since Last Crusade: Fighting in the war, doing jobs for the government, continuing his archaeological exploits, and seeing old friends pass on. The world hasn’t stood still but neither has he.

The film also takes its characters seriously: Mutt, Marion and Ox aren’t there just for comic relief, nor is Dean Charles Stanforth (Jim Broadbent) at the university, who fills the role Marcus Brody did in the earlier films as Indy’s friend and confidante (without being reduced to the woeful caricature that Brody was in Last Crusade). Mutt is both a little in awe of Indy, and competent and willful in his own right. Marion was I think the weakest character, and Karen Allen mugs her way through most of the film with a maniacal grin on her face, which makes her seem not very much like the character in Raiders. That’s too bad, but the main relationship in the film is between Indy and Mutt, so it doesn’t hurt the film very much. Blanchett as the villain is pretty generic, not given much material to work with, and not really managing to transcend the material; Spalko is just a necessary driving element of the plot.

But it’s the action sequences and Ford himself which holds the film together. Considering Raiders got all the best jokes about how Indy isn’t quite as tough a guy as he sometimes acts, it’s been tough for the later films to plumb that territory. Now that Indy’s pushing 60 he both has to make the action scenes plausible while not making the character seem pathetic through “OMG Indy’s pushing 60!” jokes. To the film’s credit I think it manages to make that narrow passage and ends up being a fun adventure film with many good action scenes and a few nice character bits. Not all the action scenes work – the swordfight is a little too gratuitous, and there’s a really nasty and unnecessary sequence involving carniverous ants – but mostly it’s a really fun ride.

Honestly given George Lucas’ awful track record as a screenwriter – none of the recent Star Wars trilogy were worth much in the story department – I didn’t know what to expect here, but overall I enjoyed it. I’d probably even watch it again, which is more than I can say for Temple or Last Crusade. And in fact I’d even go see a fifth film, if they make one. Sure, I think it would have been a substantially better film if the ending had been toned down to be less ridiculous, but still.

So if you have a healthy tolerance for cheese in your adventure films – and frankly, you’d be something special if you have a lower tolerance for it than I do – then you’ll probably enjoy Crystal Skull. It ain’t Raiders, but it’s fun.

Friday night we finished watching season three of Doctor Who, as I posted a few days back, but that was just the warm-up.

Saturday afternoon we went to a baby shower for Susan and Subrata, who are expecting their

[Read the whole thing]]]> I can’t believe how fast this weekend went by. How fast? Well, it’s already Tuesday!

Friday night we finished watching season three of Doctor Who, as I posted a few days back, but that was just the warm-up.

Saturday afternoon we went to a baby shower for Susan and Subrata, who are expecting their first in a couple of months. It was a lot of fun, with about 30 people there and lots of good food. Our friends Chad and Camille hosted at their house, and everyone ooh’ed and aah’ed over their remodeled kitchen (we’d seen it before, but it was new to a lot of people).

Of course, we also ooh’ed and aah’ed over Susan and Subrata, who had a blast receiving gifts and seeing friends. Subrata’s parents also attended, having flown in for the weekend. They’re very excited about having their first child and have been getting their house ready for the new arrival. So everyone had a great time.

Then Sunday we got together with S&S and Subrata’s parents to go to the double feature at the Stanford Theatre: North by Northwest and The Trouble with Harry. NxNW as I’ve said before is one of my very favorite films, maybe my favorite. I’ve seen it so often that I’m well past the point of getting something new out of it on each viewing. This time around I think I enjoyed the scenes with Martin Landau in them the most, although the airplane scene is always terrific.

I thought I’d never seen The Trouble with Harry, but it soon started to seem very familiar. In fact I saw it back in 2000. It’s what passes for a comedy in Alfred Hitchcock’s oeuvre, and it’s certainly one of his lesser films. Pretty to look at and with snappy dialogue, but it moves too slowly and the ending is just too unbelievable. Shirley Maclaine does a perfectly quirky turn as the female lead, and John Forsythe reminded me strongly of George Peppard for some reason. Not exactly essential viewing, but a nice try.

We went to P.F. Chang’s China Bistro for dinner, which we’d never been to. I guess I’d always suspected it was overpriced mediocre Chinese food, but it’s actually tasty, Maybe slightly expensive (though in the Bay Area who knows what that really means?), but it has just a hint of fusion flavor while still being essentially a Chinese restaurant. We consumed everything in sight and had a good time. And celebrated Subrata’s mother’s birthday, to boot.

All of that explains how the weekend could fly by so quickly. Since then it’s been work, bill-paying, ultimate and preparing for our fantasy baseball draft which has occupied my time. No doubt it will be Sunday before I know it!

Dawkins was even among

[Read the whole thing]]]> Richard Dawkins reviews the creationist film Expelled!, including recounting that he was able to view the premiere while his friend PZ Myers, who was Dawkins’ viewing companion, was, uh, expelled from the line to get into the theater (lots more links on this here, and Myers also wrote a follow-up).

Dawkins was even among the scientists interviewed by the filmmakers before he realized that their agenda was rather different than he’d understood.