<Spoiler Review>
I'm definitely a fan of Terry Gilliam. Time Bandits, Brazil, Münchausen, Fisher King... all classics. For some reason, however, I never got around to watching Twelve Monkeys until now. I think part of it was the pitch: Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt in a mental institution. Just didn't excite me. Even when it arrived from Netflix, it sat for about two months before I signed and loaded it up.
So, now that I've seen it? I liked it, but didn't love it. I thought the performances were excellent, the visuals Gilliamesque, the plotting tight, and the treatment of a time loop unusually smart. So why aren't I raving about this film?
As is so often the case, a big problem lies in the pacing of the film. It felt like it was about 15-20 minutes longer than it needed to be. It dragged where it should have been pulse quickening... and ironically, it lacked mystery.
Much was made about the film's ambiguity. Was he really a time traveler from a post-apocalyptic wasteland or was he a schizophrenic with delusions? This could have made for some real tension, and the uncertainty could have made the film incredibly compelling... but Gilliam starts of the film with a long sequence set in 2035, firmly establishing the reality of it before we jump to 1990. For the audience, or at least for me, there was never a doubt as to what was real and what wasn't. Even down to the prison bar code tattoos on his scalp, the details were there to make it very clear to the audience that James Cole's (Bruce Willis) reality was exactly as it was portrayed on the screen. When Cole begins to doubt that reality, it doesn't shake our faith in our perception of the character or the situation, but it becomes a somewhat sad plot device allowing us to chuckle at the reversal of positions between the two protagonists.
The thing is, it could have been easily fixed by never showing 2035. If our only experience was of 1990 and then 1996, we would have been in the position of Dr. Railly (Madeline Stowe). As the audience, we would have had more of an open mind about things, but we would have had doubt... which is a thing I never had while watching the movie.
Granted, if Gilliam had done that then we would have had K-Pax, only eight years early. It wouldn't have looked like a Gilliam feel or had any of his trademark visual panache. It would have been a more interesting film though.
Even the reveal of Cole's dreams was something that I felt certain of the second that Cole recognized Railly as the woman in his recurring nightmare. It was merely a question of when and why would she change her hair color.
What did work was the misdirection over how the viral outbreak got started. This was excellently done and I didn't even begin to suspect until the airport sequence. Even when the Army of the Twelve Monkeys released the zoo animals, I thought it was the source of the outbreak. After all, we were repeatedly told that the virus had mutated, and we know that viruses can, and do, make the jump from birds to humans.
What also worked was the unflinching acceptance of the time loop. Cole never tries to change the course of history until the end, and only then because he is pushed to do it from all sides. The hero does not save the day, but he accomplishes his mission. The film ends with the doom of humankind and the beginnings of a future of bleak desolation. Cole will grow up in a world of savagery and desperation, become a violent criminal, and in an attempt to provide answers for the future, become the catalyst for the viral outbreak itself.
After all, if Cole hadn't been sent back, then he wouldn't have met Jeffrey (Brad Pitt), Jeffrey wouldn't have formed the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, Dr. Reilly wouldn't have become convinced of the dangers and reached Dr. Goines (Christopher Plummer), who wouldn't have removed himself from security protocols, and Dr. Peters would have never had unrestricted access to the virus. Cole ensures his own future and dooms the human race.
Other directors might have changed the ending. Allowed Cole to stop the virus... maybe dying in the process, but saving humankind. I deeply respect Gilliam for not taking that route.
All that said, I really do like the film. I just don't love it. It's too self-indulgent, and that self-indulgence lessens the film. It's not a bad film, not at all. It's just not as great as it could have been... and that's a shame.
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Everything is Illuminated
I couldn't remember why I put this movie in my Netflix queue. I looked at the disc and read the summary, and it sounded depressing as hell. So, it sat there for a couple of weeks, languishing. Finally, I decided to bite the bullet and check it out.
I was utterly charmed by it.
Everything is Illuminated starts out as yet another quirky indie film that throws together gently amusing eccentrics and lets us reflect on the absurdity of the human condition and identify with the misfits that we all secretly are. As the film progresses, however, we start to get hints that these lives are connected in some deep and profound way. Of course, I start to assume the worst, most direct, and most over the top connections.... and I was wrong.
By the time the film gets heavy, it's earned the right. The comedy becomes poignant and meaningful, and if reality is heightened (if not magical) then so be it.
What makes the film work as well as it does is its restraint. If you watch the extra scenes, you'll find that things were cut that went way over the top in terms of eccentricity and wackiness. The tone of these clips is so at odds with the rest of the film that it's no wonder they got cut. More surprising is that they got fully filmed and edited in the first place.
Everything is Illuminated has some really lovely things to say about our relationship with the past. Jonathan grew up in a family where it is implied that people didn't really talk about the past, and he feels compelled to collect tokens of important moments with his family. As he says in the trailer, he is afraid that he will forget... so he collects these anchors for the memories he is afraid of losing. By the end of the film, he's ready to let go of these fetishes, because the past is all around him now. He will not forget, because he has not hidden from the past. He will not forget, because he has let the past touch him, and move him, and change him and thus can let go of the trinkets that he once hoarded.
This is a lovely, charming, deeply moving film that is bolstered by Eugene Hutz, Boris Leskin, and Elijah Wood. I'm putting Wood at the end of that list, because while he's the author's stand in, he's not the standout in this cast. Hutz and Leskin are marvels to behold, playing off of one another as if they truly had spent the last twenty odd years together.
Only one thing bothered me, which is that Alex, Hutz's character, says that he can't drive the American because he has other commitments at a nightclub... but he goes along as a translator. I feel like there is a scene missing somewhere, and it's not in the extra scenes. It's a minor plot hole, but one that could have probably been fixed in the editing of that one scene.
I was utterly charmed by it.
Everything is Illuminated starts out as yet another quirky indie film that throws together gently amusing eccentrics and lets us reflect on the absurdity of the human condition and identify with the misfits that we all secretly are. As the film progresses, however, we start to get hints that these lives are connected in some deep and profound way. Of course, I start to assume the worst, most direct, and most over the top connections.... and I was wrong.
By the time the film gets heavy, it's earned the right. The comedy becomes poignant and meaningful, and if reality is heightened (if not magical) then so be it.
What makes the film work as well as it does is its restraint. If you watch the extra scenes, you'll find that things were cut that went way over the top in terms of eccentricity and wackiness. The tone of these clips is so at odds with the rest of the film that it's no wonder they got cut. More surprising is that they got fully filmed and edited in the first place.
Everything is Illuminated has some really lovely things to say about our relationship with the past. Jonathan grew up in a family where it is implied that people didn't really talk about the past, and he feels compelled to collect tokens of important moments with his family. As he says in the trailer, he is afraid that he will forget... so he collects these anchors for the memories he is afraid of losing. By the end of the film, he's ready to let go of these fetishes, because the past is all around him now. He will not forget, because he has not hidden from the past. He will not forget, because he has let the past touch him, and move him, and change him and thus can let go of the trinkets that he once hoarded.
This is a lovely, charming, deeply moving film that is bolstered by Eugene Hutz, Boris Leskin, and Elijah Wood. I'm putting Wood at the end of that list, because while he's the author's stand in, he's not the standout in this cast. Hutz and Leskin are marvels to behold, playing off of one another as if they truly had spent the last twenty odd years together.
Only one thing bothered me, which is that Alex, Hutz's character, says that he can't drive the American because he has other commitments at a nightclub... but he goes along as a translator. I feel like there is a scene missing somewhere, and it's not in the extra scenes. It's a minor plot hole, but one that could have probably been fixed in the editing of that one scene.
One Week
An acquaintance lent me this movie and was quite insistent that I watch it. It clearly means a lot to him. I think I understand why, but I can't say I share his enthusiasm. The movie is ostensibly about the importance of living every day as if it was your last, to live in the moment and not to be afraid of life. It's a message that can be very powerful.
Unfortunately, this film goes off the rails at numerous junctures and as a result the film actually seems to say that it's OK to be a total dick to people who care about you as long as you have the excuse of having terminal cancer.
The protagonist, Ben, is meticulously laid out as someone who has routinely abandoned any pursuit the second he meets resistance. If one person tells him that his first attempt at something is less than successful, he just gives up. Over the course of the film, our omnipotent narrator who (spoiler alert) turns out to be Ben himself, or rather the narrator of Ben's book about this experience, and he gets to let us know how his generally self-absorbed behavior is actually OK because it circumstantially happens to make people's lives better and in one case even saves some one's life. Also, it's totally OK that he cheats on his fiancee the night before she comes to join him on his journey of self discovery because he never loved her anyway. Oh, and also, clearly one night stands with cute girls in the woods are the secret to the meaning of life, and fuck personal responsibility.
You may think I'm being a bit harsh, but this is quite seriously how things play out in this film, and the constant narration makes it pretty clear how Ben feels about all this.
Even technically, the film disappoints. It's celebrated as a great Canadian film, but it's primarily a road trip... a love letter to the Canadian countryside and it's quirky population. However, a quick look at IMDB reveals that the geographical order to the locations he visits is completely jacked up. Now, this normally wouldn't bother me, but if you're making a big deal about going from one place to another, and celebrating the journey, you should at least get the order of landmarks right. It would be like an American Journey in which we go from New York to Disney World to Chicago to San Francisco to the Grand Canyon and end up in New Orleans.
I can't think of the last time a film has annoyed me as much as this one did. I normally don't mind unlikable protagonists, but we are so clearly supposed to not only identify with Ben, but approve of him. The only acknowledgement we have of Ben's utter dickishness comes from his fiancee right before he dumps her, and her biggest crime in the film is wanting him to face up to his situation and take steps that will at least give him a fighting chance to survive.
I would feel differently if the film didn't bed over backwards trying to get us to root for Ben, but it does.
I'm going to be giving the DVD back to my acquaintance this week. He's going to ask me what I thought about it, and I'm going to have to be very tactful in what I tell him. I'll have to tell him that I can see how the film's theme of being true to yourself and living each day as if it was your last really hit home for him. I will avoid discussing anything else about the film.
Unfortunately, this film goes off the rails at numerous junctures and as a result the film actually seems to say that it's OK to be a total dick to people who care about you as long as you have the excuse of having terminal cancer.
The protagonist, Ben, is meticulously laid out as someone who has routinely abandoned any pursuit the second he meets resistance. If one person tells him that his first attempt at something is less than successful, he just gives up. Over the course of the film, our omnipotent narrator who (spoiler alert) turns out to be Ben himself, or rather the narrator of Ben's book about this experience, and he gets to let us know how his generally self-absorbed behavior is actually OK because it circumstantially happens to make people's lives better and in one case even saves some one's life. Also, it's totally OK that he cheats on his fiancee the night before she comes to join him on his journey of self discovery because he never loved her anyway. Oh, and also, clearly one night stands with cute girls in the woods are the secret to the meaning of life, and fuck personal responsibility.
You may think I'm being a bit harsh, but this is quite seriously how things play out in this film, and the constant narration makes it pretty clear how Ben feels about all this.
Even technically, the film disappoints. It's celebrated as a great Canadian film, but it's primarily a road trip... a love letter to the Canadian countryside and it's quirky population. However, a quick look at IMDB reveals that the geographical order to the locations he visits is completely jacked up. Now, this normally wouldn't bother me, but if you're making a big deal about going from one place to another, and celebrating the journey, you should at least get the order of landmarks right. It would be like an American Journey in which we go from New York to Disney World to Chicago to San Francisco to the Grand Canyon and end up in New Orleans.
I can't think of the last time a film has annoyed me as much as this one did. I normally don't mind unlikable protagonists, but we are so clearly supposed to not only identify with Ben, but approve of him. The only acknowledgement we have of Ben's utter dickishness comes from his fiancee right before he dumps her, and her biggest crime in the film is wanting him to face up to his situation and take steps that will at least give him a fighting chance to survive.
I would feel differently if the film didn't bed over backwards trying to get us to root for Ben, but it does.
I'm going to be giving the DVD back to my acquaintance this week. He's going to ask me what I thought about it, and I'm going to have to be very tactful in what I tell him. I'll have to tell him that I can see how the film's theme of being true to yourself and living each day as if it was your last really hit home for him. I will avoid discussing anything else about the film.
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Bernie
Bernie
I quite honestly didn't know that this was based on a true story until the very end of the film.
Ok, now that that's out of the way, I want to talk about this film from a few different angles.
1.) Performances.
I don't know if I can adequately express how nice it was to see Jack Black actually acting. As in doing honest-to-God character work. Like Robin Williams and Jim Carrey before him, Mr. Black seems to have realized that he can only push his particular brand of schitck so far and the time has come to grow as a performer or get out.
We see in the end credits a brief mute clip of Black meeting with the real Bernie in prison and it's pretty clear that the characterization we see on screen is rooted in the real life energy and mannerisms of Mr. Tiede.
This isn't Mr. Black's first attempt to stretch his range, but the less said about Peter Jackson's wank-fest "King Kong" the better. Put Black into a role where he has to be conniving or rebellious, and all the old patterns and tricks come to play. By embodying someone the opposite of his regular persona, someone who up until the turning point of the film is accommodating, giving, meek, and quietly gifted, the actor was forced to truly do the work of an actor instead of being a Personality.
Shirley MacLaine's role is actually much smaller than I expected, but she manages to be much fairer to Marjorie Nugent than even her own nephew was in his story for the New York Times Magazine. MacLaine shows Nugent to be, yes, bitter, cruel, controlling, and harsh... but she also lets us see the fear, the gratitude, and the self-awareness of exactly how unlovable she is.
I knew someone like this many years ago. She was convinced that she could not be loved, and she worked diligently to prove that she was right. This isn't my opinion, but her own confession. The real life Bernie saw that pain and thought he could help, but no one person can meet such a savage and cruel inner darkness. I tried, and eventually got out with a shattered sense of self-worth and several years of depression. Bernie didn't, and utterly snapped.
Ok, I've moved afield from talking about performances and have moved to the meat of the film. This is a movie about someone who murdered an 81 year old woman. That sentence should tell you who the villain is, right? But the story of Bernie Tiede is not so simple. This is the story of a model citizen who tried to help someone who everyone else in the town has written off as being purely evil, and eventually snapped under the pressure.
But even that betrays. Not everyone in the town though that Bernie should get off, or get a reduced sentence, despite how the film portrays the town's mood. Nugent was not utterly unloved, as can be attested by her surviving friends (although she was estranged from her family to the point of lawsuits). Tiede has admitted that the lure of the first class lifestyle was a factor in him staying in the abusive relationship, but also said that fears of her retaliatory vengeance also kept him from leaving. Tiede himself was a victim of sexual abuse and continual bullying as a child.
Ultimately, Bernie the movie tips the already heavily weighted scales towards sympathy for the killer and away from the victim. A slightly more balanced approach might have served it better. Having even two or three people other than the D.A. expressing a desire to see Bernie rot in prison for what he did would have made for a more compelling and interesting film. As it is, the total absence of that perspective throws a pall of suspicion on the film's veracity. In was only in digging further into the case did I discover that the film was actually extremely accurate, if slightly imbalanced. It's such a minor thing, but given how rightfully suspicious audiences have learned to be about "ripped from the headlines" films, this small adjustment could have done wonders to boost the film's credibility.
All that said, is it a good film? Yes, I think so. It got my wife and I extremely curious about the real life case of Bernie Tiede and Marjorie Nugent, curious enough to look up news articles and essays by her family. It got us talking about the legal system, and the appropriateness of punishment. (We both agreed that Tiede should have gone to prison, but that the sentence, Life with no chance for parole for 30 years (50 in the film), was excessive)
It's not an edge of your seat film, it's not a shocking expose. It's a quiet film about complicated morality that hopefully gets the audience thinking about the many shades of grey involved when action/circumstance/and motivation collide. It's a "comedy" mostly in that the director chose to keep things brightly lit, and to let the small town residents speak their own often flippant minds on the subject. It's a comedy because the situation has marks of the absurd about it. It's a comedy because the director didn't work hard to fill it with threatening music and dramatic lighting. It's not a comedy because it's particularly funny.
And nor should it be.
I quite honestly didn't know that this was based on a true story until the very end of the film.
Ok, now that that's out of the way, I want to talk about this film from a few different angles.
1.) Performances.
I don't know if I can adequately express how nice it was to see Jack Black actually acting. As in doing honest-to-God character work. Like Robin Williams and Jim Carrey before him, Mr. Black seems to have realized that he can only push his particular brand of schitck so far and the time has come to grow as a performer or get out.
We see in the end credits a brief mute clip of Black meeting with the real Bernie in prison and it's pretty clear that the characterization we see on screen is rooted in the real life energy and mannerisms of Mr. Tiede.
This isn't Mr. Black's first attempt to stretch his range, but the less said about Peter Jackson's wank-fest "King Kong" the better. Put Black into a role where he has to be conniving or rebellious, and all the old patterns and tricks come to play. By embodying someone the opposite of his regular persona, someone who up until the turning point of the film is accommodating, giving, meek, and quietly gifted, the actor was forced to truly do the work of an actor instead of being a Personality.
Shirley MacLaine's role is actually much smaller than I expected, but she manages to be much fairer to Marjorie Nugent than even her own nephew was in his story for the New York Times Magazine. MacLaine shows Nugent to be, yes, bitter, cruel, controlling, and harsh... but she also lets us see the fear, the gratitude, and the self-awareness of exactly how unlovable she is.
I knew someone like this many years ago. She was convinced that she could not be loved, and she worked diligently to prove that she was right. This isn't my opinion, but her own confession. The real life Bernie saw that pain and thought he could help, but no one person can meet such a savage and cruel inner darkness. I tried, and eventually got out with a shattered sense of self-worth and several years of depression. Bernie didn't, and utterly snapped.
Ok, I've moved afield from talking about performances and have moved to the meat of the film. This is a movie about someone who murdered an 81 year old woman. That sentence should tell you who the villain is, right? But the story of Bernie Tiede is not so simple. This is the story of a model citizen who tried to help someone who everyone else in the town has written off as being purely evil, and eventually snapped under the pressure.
But even that betrays. Not everyone in the town though that Bernie should get off, or get a reduced sentence, despite how the film portrays the town's mood. Nugent was not utterly unloved, as can be attested by her surviving friends (although she was estranged from her family to the point of lawsuits). Tiede has admitted that the lure of the first class lifestyle was a factor in him staying in the abusive relationship, but also said that fears of her retaliatory vengeance also kept him from leaving. Tiede himself was a victim of sexual abuse and continual bullying as a child.
Ultimately, Bernie the movie tips the already heavily weighted scales towards sympathy for the killer and away from the victim. A slightly more balanced approach might have served it better. Having even two or three people other than the D.A. expressing a desire to see Bernie rot in prison for what he did would have made for a more compelling and interesting film. As it is, the total absence of that perspective throws a pall of suspicion on the film's veracity. In was only in digging further into the case did I discover that the film was actually extremely accurate, if slightly imbalanced. It's such a minor thing, but given how rightfully suspicious audiences have learned to be about "ripped from the headlines" films, this small adjustment could have done wonders to boost the film's credibility.
All that said, is it a good film? Yes, I think so. It got my wife and I extremely curious about the real life case of Bernie Tiede and Marjorie Nugent, curious enough to look up news articles and essays by her family. It got us talking about the legal system, and the appropriateness of punishment. (We both agreed that Tiede should have gone to prison, but that the sentence, Life with no chance for parole for 30 years (50 in the film), was excessive)
It's not an edge of your seat film, it's not a shocking expose. It's a quiet film about complicated morality that hopefully gets the audience thinking about the many shades of grey involved when action/circumstance/and motivation collide. It's a "comedy" mostly in that the director chose to keep things brightly lit, and to let the small town residents speak their own often flippant minds on the subject. It's a comedy because the situation has marks of the absurd about it. It's a comedy because the director didn't work hard to fill it with threatening music and dramatic lighting. It's not a comedy because it's particularly funny.
And nor should it be.
Sunday, December 1, 2013
(The Mystery of) Rampo
I don't think I am this film's target audience. I've never read any of the works of the real Rampo, so I am sure I am missing some fanboy joy over references, characters, scenarios and themes. That said, I found Rampo to be interesting, but not entirely engaging, and ultimately not super enjoyable.
The film is visually sumptuous, but also rather incoherent. It's as if someone gave a first year film student and a huge budget. There's some anime, some newsreel footage, some pseudo-30's pulp adventure, some erotic thriller, some 60's adventure with mediocre green screen, and some highly questionable negative and color work. It's all very evocative and moody, but I couldn't stop wondering if I was missing some cultural information that gave it meaning.
Story-wise... well, this isn't really a film with a story. Famous author discovers that his stories are coming true is the elevator pitch, but the film doesn't seem terribly interested in exploring the existential issues that concept raises. It's actually handled rather clumsily, with Rampo's assistant out and out telling him "hey, your stories are so powerful, they are coming true. You should deal with that."
The redeeming aspect of this is that there is a periodic narrator, clearly intended to be that or Rampo, commenting on the actions and experiences of the film version of Rampo and the doubly fictional Rampo stand in. Thus, the entire film excuses itself from any attempt to restrict it to things like logic or realism. The film is not about a real author discovering that his fictional works are becoming real, but a film about an invisible author and his own obsession with his work and his fictional world. Of course, the fact that Rampo died in the mid 60's makes this a bit less poignant. So, really it's about a fan of Rampo's pretending to be an his literary idol and role playing that idol's presumed obsession with ... well, you get the idea.
This gets me back to my initial impression. This is the work of a fan-boy, first-year film student with a large budget... and as a cursory online check indicates, it is the directoral debut of an established producer.
This doesn't change the fact that this was a smash hit in Japan when it came out. Not a mild success... a HUGE hit.
I think that ultimately, American audiences (such as myself) are lacking some important cultural context. Audiences that grew up reading Rampo's stories and watching Japanese television and film are seeing something here that I'm simply not.
The film is visually sumptuous, but also rather incoherent. It's as if someone gave a first year film student and a huge budget. There's some anime, some newsreel footage, some pseudo-30's pulp adventure, some erotic thriller, some 60's adventure with mediocre green screen, and some highly questionable negative and color work. It's all very evocative and moody, but I couldn't stop wondering if I was missing some cultural information that gave it meaning.
Story-wise... well, this isn't really a film with a story. Famous author discovers that his stories are coming true is the elevator pitch, but the film doesn't seem terribly interested in exploring the existential issues that concept raises. It's actually handled rather clumsily, with Rampo's assistant out and out telling him "hey, your stories are so powerful, they are coming true. You should deal with that."
The redeeming aspect of this is that there is a periodic narrator, clearly intended to be that or Rampo, commenting on the actions and experiences of the film version of Rampo and the doubly fictional Rampo stand in. Thus, the entire film excuses itself from any attempt to restrict it to things like logic or realism. The film is not about a real author discovering that his fictional works are becoming real, but a film about an invisible author and his own obsession with his work and his fictional world. Of course, the fact that Rampo died in the mid 60's makes this a bit less poignant. So, really it's about a fan of Rampo's pretending to be an his literary idol and role playing that idol's presumed obsession with ... well, you get the idea.
This gets me back to my initial impression. This is the work of a fan-boy, first-year film student with a large budget... and as a cursory online check indicates, it is the directoral debut of an established producer.
This doesn't change the fact that this was a smash hit in Japan when it came out. Not a mild success... a HUGE hit.
I think that ultimately, American audiences (such as myself) are lacking some important cultural context. Audiences that grew up reading Rampo's stories and watching Japanese television and film are seeing something here that I'm simply not.
Monday, June 3, 2013
Men in Black 3
Let's go back in time for a moment. Shortly after Men in Black 2 was announced, I knew I had the perfect plot outline. A vicious alien breaks out of prison and comes to Earth to murder the man who put him away: Agent K. Agent J needs to save K, but since K doesn't know that he was ever an Agent, J has to do it without K knowing.
Then Men in Black 2 came out... and it was a tired retread of all the fun moments of the first film, run relentlessly into the ground.
So, when Men in Black 3 came out, I wasn't too excited. I heard it was better than 2 (but then, it'd kind of have to be), but I still wasn't straining at the bit to see it.
Well, I finally did... and it's the movie I was hoping to see all those years ago. A vicious alien breaks out of jail and is after the man who put him there, and K has to save him despite the fact that K doesn't know who he is and has no memory of everything they've done together... because it hasn't happened yet. Ok, I didn't think of the time travel aspect of it.
This film gets everything right. We have just enough connections to the first film for it to feel tied into the franchise. We have the walk through the lobby, the interrogation of the unwilling alien, the worms do something funny, famous people are aliens, and we even get a brief callback to Frank the talking Pug. But the movie isn't about those things, and it doesn't dwell on them. This isn't a retread of MIB greatest hits.
What this movie is about is interconnectedness. Interconnectedness between events, certainly... but mostly about interconnectedness between people. It's really about friendship. This gets a little ham-fisted at moments, such as when J is about to do the time jump and Jeffrey says "You must really love this guy." Yeah, that might be true, but it also might be about the giant fucking alien jellyfish that are eating the city. So, yeah, a little much at times.
But for every time the film tries to club you over the head, there are a dozen wonderful moments. The time jump itself is surprisingly awesome. If he had simply fallen back in time, it would have been cool, but the idea that the works more like a bungie jump... that you go WAY back and then drop off at the designated recoil point... back and then forward to your destination— that's just brilliant. The butterflies released in the Factory as Griffin talks about the near infinite possibilities was a lovely way to bring in chaos theory.
Really, everything involving Griffin made me happy. He could have simply been a plot device, pushing the Agents into making the right decisions, or a theme device to talk about the potential in each moment, but Michael Stuhlbarg's performance made him a character I wanted to see more of. Griffin is the last of his kind, and there is sadness there, but there is also a sweetness and a generousness of spirit to the character that is has been missing from the franchise.
It isn't just Griffin though. Will Smith brings some real love to Agent J, with him seeming close to tears at multiple points near the end of the film. You truly understand what K has meant to him over the last fourteen years, and how desperately he wants to connect with his mentor, partner, and friend. You see how much K's reticence has hurt him.
Throughout the film, the question is asked: What happened to K. We get a little bit of it at the end, but I don't think that the film expects us to tie K's personality change to that one event. Rather, we see the young Agent K begin to make decisions that hurt, to lose people that he likes... in time this will close him off more and more. I appreciate the idea that K had been watching J long before he recruited him. I like the implication that over the next few decades, K would slowly realize who that boy is growing up to be.
Ok, I've expressed my admiration enough. Let's quibble. Time travel stories are troublesome at the best of times, and pretty much every writer trips over their own feet. Really, only two things bothered me with how MIB3 treated time travel. The first is the time travel device only had controls for date, month and year... and even the son of the inventor lacked a sense of how to really fine tune it. So... how did J get it to take him only 30 seconds back in time? Also, how did he remember what just happened but Boris didn't? And why weren't there then 2 Agent Js and 3 Boris'?
The second thing is that K kills Boris. Why? By killing Boris, K creates a time paradox. The moon prison now will never be built, and J will never need to go back in time to prevent the failed assassination. K never needed to kill Boris. If he had arrested him again, the plot would still have failed and everything would have still gone back to normal. Not that it matters, because when J gets back... all the recent events in K's life seem to have happened anyway... down to phone calls that were precipitated by Boris' attack.
Thematically, did we need to see that K was going to do things differently from this point? Maybe. But it didn't have to be by having him kill Boris. We don't ALWAYS have to kill the bad guy at the end. We really don't.
Then Men in Black 2 came out... and it was a tired retread of all the fun moments of the first film, run relentlessly into the ground.
So, when Men in Black 3 came out, I wasn't too excited. I heard it was better than 2 (but then, it'd kind of have to be), but I still wasn't straining at the bit to see it.
Well, I finally did... and it's the movie I was hoping to see all those years ago. A vicious alien breaks out of jail and is after the man who put him there, and K has to save him despite the fact that K doesn't know who he is and has no memory of everything they've done together... because it hasn't happened yet. Ok, I didn't think of the time travel aspect of it.
This film gets everything right. We have just enough connections to the first film for it to feel tied into the franchise. We have the walk through the lobby, the interrogation of the unwilling alien, the worms do something funny, famous people are aliens, and we even get a brief callback to Frank the talking Pug. But the movie isn't about those things, and it doesn't dwell on them. This isn't a retread of MIB greatest hits.
What this movie is about is interconnectedness. Interconnectedness between events, certainly... but mostly about interconnectedness between people. It's really about friendship. This gets a little ham-fisted at moments, such as when J is about to do the time jump and Jeffrey says "You must really love this guy." Yeah, that might be true, but it also might be about the giant fucking alien jellyfish that are eating the city. So, yeah, a little much at times.
But for every time the film tries to club you over the head, there are a dozen wonderful moments. The time jump itself is surprisingly awesome. If he had simply fallen back in time, it would have been cool, but the idea that the works more like a bungie jump... that you go WAY back and then drop off at the designated recoil point... back and then forward to your destination— that's just brilliant. The butterflies released in the Factory as Griffin talks about the near infinite possibilities was a lovely way to bring in chaos theory.
Really, everything involving Griffin made me happy. He could have simply been a plot device, pushing the Agents into making the right decisions, or a theme device to talk about the potential in each moment, but Michael Stuhlbarg's performance made him a character I wanted to see more of. Griffin is the last of his kind, and there is sadness there, but there is also a sweetness and a generousness of spirit to the character that is has been missing from the franchise.
It isn't just Griffin though. Will Smith brings some real love to Agent J, with him seeming close to tears at multiple points near the end of the film. You truly understand what K has meant to him over the last fourteen years, and how desperately he wants to connect with his mentor, partner, and friend. You see how much K's reticence has hurt him.
Throughout the film, the question is asked: What happened to K. We get a little bit of it at the end, but I don't think that the film expects us to tie K's personality change to that one event. Rather, we see the young Agent K begin to make decisions that hurt, to lose people that he likes... in time this will close him off more and more. I appreciate the idea that K had been watching J long before he recruited him. I like the implication that over the next few decades, K would slowly realize who that boy is growing up to be.
Ok, I've expressed my admiration enough. Let's quibble. Time travel stories are troublesome at the best of times, and pretty much every writer trips over their own feet. Really, only two things bothered me with how MIB3 treated time travel. The first is the time travel device only had controls for date, month and year... and even the son of the inventor lacked a sense of how to really fine tune it. So... how did J get it to take him only 30 seconds back in time? Also, how did he remember what just happened but Boris didn't? And why weren't there then 2 Agent Js and 3 Boris'?
The second thing is that K kills Boris. Why? By killing Boris, K creates a time paradox. The moon prison now will never be built, and J will never need to go back in time to prevent the failed assassination. K never needed to kill Boris. If he had arrested him again, the plot would still have failed and everything would have still gone back to normal. Not that it matters, because when J gets back... all the recent events in K's life seem to have happened anyway... down to phone calls that were precipitated by Boris' attack.
Thematically, did we need to see that K was going to do things differently from this point? Maybe. But it didn't have to be by having him kill Boris. We don't ALWAYS have to kill the bad guy at the end. We really don't.
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Rango
Rango is a strange film, in that it's too smart to conceal how dumb it is. It's too real looking to allow for suspension of disbelief. It's deeply confused about what it is... which is kind of appropriate.
Rango is a chameleon with no name, a dreamer who has spent his entire life in a terrarium with only props for company. Yet somehow he manages to have masterful social skills that allow him to entrance everyone around him. He's a chameleon who doesn't know who he is, but we really only see him try to be one thing, and he's quite successful at it.
We have a mariachi band that acts as a chorus that exists both within the story and outside of it. We have almost frighteningly realized animals, but our female lead is a lizard with long flowing locks and bizarrely brown and white eyes. The world building clearly indicates that this is a world of humans, but most of the accoutrements of the cast are just little versions of human clothing and tools... but every now and then we see something human sized that has been discarded and reinvented. Rattlesnakes are enormous, but Gila monsters are about the size of groundhogs. Also, there are squirrels in the desert. Oh, and armadillos can apparently have their internal organs squashed to paper thinness without any ill effects.
Now, some of these wouldn't bother me if they weren't so beautifully and realistically rendered. The fact that the characters have reached the uncanny valley with their textures, their fur and scales, and their dirt... it makes it extremely jarring when we are thrust into Looney Tunes territory. Give me a cartoon world and cartoon rules and I forgive a lot, but Rango is *too* well done, and utterly and completely uncertain about its own internal rules and logic.
Then there are times when logic just flies out the window. A family of Appalachian groundhogs apparently needs to sneak and scheme and steal and avoid capture by the townsfolk of Dirt, who seem to number about thirty souls total. But the family seems to have fifty to sixty members... who have tamed bats... and have machine guns. Also, the bats blow up if they crash into things.
Now, sure, many things in this film are homages of other classic westerns and war movies and ... well... anything that the director and writers grew up with... but that doesn't mean you're excused from it making sense. If this was Yakko, Wakko, and Dot; then sure. Go for it. Be as random and insane as hell. But that isn't the game that we're playing here.
Also, the bit with the bullet at the end is so stupid that it's insulting. It's just ... I can't even think about it.
Now, you may say, "Hey, it's a kid's movie. Lighten up." No. Sorry. But the second that you have a character with an arrow going in one eye and out its jaw, you've left kiddie territory. The film is too slow paced and occasionally horrifying for a kid's movie, and too insulting of intelligence to be an animated film for adults.
I was looking forward to Rango. I had heard good things about it, and it looked gorgeous. In the end, I found myself just wanting it to be over.
Rango is a chameleon with no name, a dreamer who has spent his entire life in a terrarium with only props for company. Yet somehow he manages to have masterful social skills that allow him to entrance everyone around him. He's a chameleon who doesn't know who he is, but we really only see him try to be one thing, and he's quite successful at it.
We have a mariachi band that acts as a chorus that exists both within the story and outside of it. We have almost frighteningly realized animals, but our female lead is a lizard with long flowing locks and bizarrely brown and white eyes. The world building clearly indicates that this is a world of humans, but most of the accoutrements of the cast are just little versions of human clothing and tools... but every now and then we see something human sized that has been discarded and reinvented. Rattlesnakes are enormous, but Gila monsters are about the size of groundhogs. Also, there are squirrels in the desert. Oh, and armadillos can apparently have their internal organs squashed to paper thinness without any ill effects.
Now, some of these wouldn't bother me if they weren't so beautifully and realistically rendered. The fact that the characters have reached the uncanny valley with their textures, their fur and scales, and their dirt... it makes it extremely jarring when we are thrust into Looney Tunes territory. Give me a cartoon world and cartoon rules and I forgive a lot, but Rango is *too* well done, and utterly and completely uncertain about its own internal rules and logic.
Then there are times when logic just flies out the window. A family of Appalachian groundhogs apparently needs to sneak and scheme and steal and avoid capture by the townsfolk of Dirt, who seem to number about thirty souls total. But the family seems to have fifty to sixty members... who have tamed bats... and have machine guns. Also, the bats blow up if they crash into things.
Now, sure, many things in this film are homages of other classic westerns and war movies and ... well... anything that the director and writers grew up with... but that doesn't mean you're excused from it making sense. If this was Yakko, Wakko, and Dot; then sure. Go for it. Be as random and insane as hell. But that isn't the game that we're playing here.
Also, the bit with the bullet at the end is so stupid that it's insulting. It's just ... I can't even think about it.
Now, you may say, "Hey, it's a kid's movie. Lighten up." No. Sorry. But the second that you have a character with an arrow going in one eye and out its jaw, you've left kiddie territory. The film is too slow paced and occasionally horrifying for a kid's movie, and too insulting of intelligence to be an animated film for adults.
I was looking forward to Rango. I had heard good things about it, and it looked gorgeous. In the end, I found myself just wanting it to be over.
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