This wasn’t a very long marathon. Most good marathons are around four or five movies that go late into the night. I use to be better at them, but this one was just a practice marathon for longer ones in the future. I’m going to watch loads of movies all in a row on a Friday and give you my immediate impression. This one took a while just because I wanted to fix a few site things before publishing it. Enjoy!
Megamind is a pretty damn good movie about an evil villain, Megamind, who needs a “good guy” to fill the void in his life. Will Ferrell is great as the voice of Megamind and there are many gags in the movie that are extra funny just because of Ferrell’s delivery.
The movie starts out a bit sluggish for a hundred million dollar animated film, but picks up big time about a half an hour in. I especially recommend this movie for fans of Ferrell and people who are closely familiar with the Superman films.
Lastly, Jonah Hill plays Tighten well, but the character wasn’t as funny as I would have liked him to be. His deliveries and gags just pale in comparison to Megamind’s…but maybe that it is better that way. I give Megamind a solid B and hope we get more like it out of Dreamworks. It is no Incredibles, but was pretty damn good.
Marathon part 2 - Conviction
Conviction is a movie that could have been great but is down graded to very good because of tacky moments and poor writing. The film follows Betty Waters who, with only GED, enters school, College, and law school, all to free her brother she claims is innocent. Her brother Kenny, a light-hearted trouble maker, rots in jail as she spends nearly two decades trying to get him out. It is a incredible story and deserved pitch-perfect storytelling. It didn’t get that, but the story is good enough to stay compelling throughout.
Moreover, what makes the movie so watchable are the two stars who really take the movie to a different level, Sam Rockwell and Hillary Swank. Both talents can play trash in the most believable way. Rockwell has a swagger and defiance that doesn’t look like acting, it just seems to come so naturally to him. Swank is in almost every scene and, even in some of the cheesier moments, has nuance to her performance. With a perfect script and a great director, say David Fincher, this movie could have been a great film. All-in-all I give this one a B as well.
Marathon part 3 - Faster (2010)
Faster had a lot of potential to be really good but just made a lot of casting mistakes. Dwayne Johnson was the wrong choice for Driver. He’s too big, menacing, and emotionally impentrable to carry the movie. This is usually not the case with him, but it was in this movie and that has a lot to do with a the role.
The rest of the movie was just a revenge film where Driver goes around finding the people who killed his partner and betrayed him. It works, but the movie just tries to hard to be cool and ends up being too cheesy. You know the phrase, “The movie doesn’t take itself too seriously”? This movie did. It worked against it.
-Collin
By Collin, on March 30th, 2011
The Greatest Films #8: The Exorcist
Background:
This isn’t so much a background but a “since then”. Since The Exorcist I can count on my fingers how many American movies that actually can be classified as scary. Silence of the Lambs and some Lynch movies come to mind. But other than that American movies are products of fanboy gore and misogyny. Now let me be honest, for the most part I love gore flicks…it is how I got into movies, but I’d never take the position that I was actually scared by them.
Movies that are celebratory of gore can’t really be scary at the same time. Just like my argument that movies which are celebratory of violent war can’t be sad at the same time…but that’s another article all together.
The Exorcist stands firmly as one of the scariest movies of all time. It came right on the cusp of the slasher-genre boom and America has had a lot of trouble actually making a scary movie since. While the rest of the world is having a horror film renaissance of sorts, America’s major horror hit is a PG-13, low-budget, ghost movie shot on video.
Hmm.
What it is about:
If you don’t know, here’s a quick crash course: An actress (Ellen Burstyn) begins to notice bizarre behavior from her daughter, which quickly turns into paranormal behavior. At the same time a priest in the area is having faith issues but is called upon to investigate the bizarre behavior in case she is possessed.
Why it is a great film:
First off, it starts with Linda Blair as Regan. Most directors offered a project like this would say that its impossible because it’s based around a child performer. Sure, there a lot of special effects and voice manipulation, but at the end of the day Regan is the villain.
I forget that. One of the most effective monster/villians of all time was played by a thirteen year old girl. This is the most important thing to take away from the movie.
Next is Ellen Burstyn. The movie would never have worked without her giving weight to a performance that could have shlocky. Her screams and emotional devastation seem genuine. She has little to do with the outcome of the film besides hunting down a priest to do the exorcism, but she is the weight that holds down the movie as it slowly makes it way toward the final scene. Lastly, the final scene might be one of my favorite of all time, but what makes the film work is everything leading up to it. A lot of people my age consider The Exorcist a slow film – they might have a point. Director William Friedkin’s career never again reached the influence he had in the very early seventies. His two films French Connection and The Exorcist transformed their respective genres. However, in the final scene of Exorcist he created one of the great set pieces of all time. This is not to take away from the rest of the movie. He placed much of the action of the film in the last few minutes, he had to lean on things like film technique, music, performance, and great writing, to carry the film in an effective way. If the movie was just stale for an hour and half and then he pulled out the last scene, the movie would be unwatchable.
-Collin
By Collin, on March 29th, 2011
#35 We just watched this on Netflix streaming: Gojira
The Film: Gojira
Of all the movies Gojira reminds me of one just sticks in my mind and won’t leave: The movie First Blood. The two films have nothing to do with each other in terms of plot, but both are tragic warnings about the dangers of war and both were turned into franchises of shameless destruction and violence. Don’t get me wrong, Godzilla flicks and Rambo flicks are awesome. It is just funny Godzilla was such a powerful statement against weapons of mass destruction, but you could watch a more modern Godzilla flick and never know.
The actual movie is what you expect: Godzilla shows up and starts fucking up Tokyo. However, what you might not expect is the moral dilemma introduced toward the end of the movie. Do you save the cities of Japan or introduce a new weapon of mass destruction to the world? The film takes a position on the use of the Atom bombs only a decade earlier.
Why to watch it: It is the first fucking Godzilla movie!
Aside from all the morality jargon, it is just plain cool to see the first Godzilla movie. You might not like it, but I did. The special effects are cheesy at times, especially when you can clearly tell that Godzilla is a dude in a suit. The special effects though, overall, are pretty decent. They’re dated, but still effective. I was engaged in the story, but the characters are never fleshed out and you never care about them, but that really isn’t the point of the movie.
Pay attention to this: The film’s arguments against weapons of mass destruction.
Gojira is a not so subtle in regards to its criticisms of weapons of mass destruction. Particularly America’s use of the Atom bomb on many cities. It is easy to draw parallels between Godzilla’s destruction on Tokyo and the destruction that America did when they dropped two Atom bombs on heavily populated cities. These scenes with Godzilla are way too long and are often way too silly and fake, but I think they work.
Moreover, the discussions whether or not to use the new weapon to kill Godzilla seem like real fears that stemmed from the use of these weapons. They are intriguing ideas during a time of global uncertainty in regards to what America did. It’s cool. And man, hearing that Godzilla scream for the first time is so cool.
-Collin.
By Collin, on March 29th, 2011
Sucker Punch – Movie Review
This movie is bad. I wanted it to be good. I really did. But it is on the level of The Last Airbender. A disaster. The only thing that separates it from that shit sandwich is it isn’t taking a dump all over sacred source material.
I dare someone to try to like this movie. I dare them. I understand people who will try to defend it, but they’re just plain wrong. It isn’t just annoyingly pointless, stylistic to a fault, and boring, it is a broken movie. It just doesn’t work. I was sticking with it for the first hour, but grew angry and almost walked out as the movie became progressively more dumb.
This movie went really wrong and just got worse, these are the reasons why:
1. Zack Snyder’s style has made him famous, this time it was his worst enemy
Synder’s style is very much his own. Always entertaining us with action, slow motion shots, insanely cinematic visual compositions. This is fantastic when Synder’s style is anchored with someone else’s source material – something this movie lacked. In Sucker Punch Snyder was allowed to let his imagintation run wild, as well as let the story run wild. I’m not saying he’s a bad writer, but the visuals of the movie needed a lot better story to supplement them.
2. There are way too many music video segments
This was actually a complaint of mine regarding Watchman. I figured these songs would be removed for the DVD version and different, original music would be included. Boy, was I wrong. This is the problem with Sucker Punch. A huge portion of the film has no dialogand is just famous rock or pop songs put to slow motion visuals. It is literally a nightmare for me.
What Snyder is attempting to do is similar to what Kubrick did in 2001: Space Odyssey. By playing music familiar to the audience, we zone out and tend to focus on the visuals. Instead, what happens to me was I realized what I was listening to was a famous song, with very specific lyrics, and the immersion factor is totally gone for me. Not to mention when everything is set so perfectly to music I can’t help but get annoyed if the entire movie is so painfully redundant.
3. The story is obnoxiously bad to the point of broken
What do I mean broken? I mean broken. As in, the movie is almost unwatchable. The film opens with a girl Baby Doll who is sent to a mental hospital and only has five days to break out before being lobotomized. A great premise, but everything goes wrong quickly. The movie’s entire opening is told in a slow motion sequence with a pop song playing in the background, by the way.
Moreover, the entire story falls down when Baby Doll begins slipping into fantasies. The story is told by one of the girls staying with her in the institution. There exists three worlds in the narrative : Reality, sub-reality, and fantasy. The film attempts to justify this by having an unreliable narrator, as did 300, therefore these realities could be justified. But they can’t be. Not within the logic of the film. Because what the fantasy-reality contains are actual pop culture and fanboy icons that the narrator of the story wouldn’t, and couldn’t, know. Unless she was ninety when telling the story.
This is all irrelevant because the story is not about interpretation, but tolerance. How long can you tolerate it. This is not a pun, but a truth. This movie is intolerable. Even if it was possible, every time the movie switched a fake world I just wanted to walk out. It was just boring. To ever say these segments were video games brought to live-action as a gross insult to video games. Video games contain emotional impact, plot devices, tension. These segments were just slow motion guns firing and women posing.
Snyder stated on Filmschoolrejects.com that an interpretation of the film is difficult because the cutting of important narrative material for a R-rating. I believe it.
4. This is Synder’s “The Fountain“, but The Fountain is infinitely better
The one shining light in Sucker Punch is it seems to be a very personal project. Synder was trying to do something interesting, but he got his R-rated material cut and didn’t give the audience enough to work with. Like Aronofsky’s film, Synder needed to have someone step in and tell him to make the movie more enjoyable for the audience he was making it for.
It wasn’t subversive enough for an arthouse community and wasn’t visually entertaining enough to keep the fanboys around. It was a huge mistake. Synder has also stated the film it is a statement against fanboy sexism. A worthy theme. But when you make a movie for fanboys, how does one expect to critique that culture with a film stylistically made for fanboys?
5. Synder never gave women a reason to watch the “300” film for women
Sucker Punch was obviously the alternative film to 300. As in, a movie with all female action stars, not all men. However, what made Sucker Punch so shockingly bad is that it fails to ever be about women. If Synder’s themes of objectification are indeed real, which they might be, then the film shouldn’t be packaged as a science-fiction, action film.
The themes are just not clear enough. Most importantly, by making a female action film about men, Synder has sold out any intention he might have had for progressive ideas. In doing this, he has been sexist, when he could have been progressive. A great movie about women who kick butt is an infinitely better statement than nerdy guys having trouble with sexy women.
Especially considering 300 lined its pockets with money from women drooling over Gerald Butler’s body. The objectification of men was obvious in 300 and it was part of the fun wasn’t it?
300 tapped into something deep in men. What exactly that was is hard to say. Sucker Punch attempts, and fails, to tape into a sisterhood experience that was so crucial to the film succeeding.
But even discussing movie’s themes that much gives it way too much credit…I’m literally shocked the movie was this bad. I can’t wait for the DVD release. Hopefully that will contain Synder’s intended vision, but even then there is just way too much slow motion and rock music. Really.
Leave a comment or E-mail me if you liked it. I don’t want to flame you or anything I’m just curious why people liked it.
-Collin
By Collin, on March 28th, 2011
#34 We just watched this on Netflix streaming: Talk to her
The Film: Talk to her
One of the youtube comments under Talk to her‘s trailer says, “No one does it like Pedro Almodóvar”. A funny comment if you ask me because I’m not sure I know what “it” is. I also don’t know exactly if the comment was describing greatness or difference. Maybe both?
Talk to her is a defining film for Almodóvar. Not in his career, but in what kind of filmmaker he is. Almodovar’s films revolve around plots that are, frankly speaking, totally ridiculous. So much so they’d seem unlikely on Days of our lives.
Talk to her follows two men’s lives as each man becomes obsessed with a woman in a coma. One woman was a matador who received a traumatic injury from a bull. The other a ballerina, I can’t remember how she got hurt.
Regardless, the movie is somewhat of a masterpiece and I’ll try my best to explain why: It is a successful attempt at exploring the more feminine emotions of men and how men deal with loneliness and self-identity.
Why to watch it: Pedro Almodóvar’s audacity.
There is a segment in this movie so audacious I thought it could only come from the dreams of Charles Bukowski. I won’t ruin it here, but it is the most surreal sexual fantasy I’ve ever seen. I mention the segment not because of its sexual absurdity, but to highlight that despite its absurdity, it manages to be an evocative statement about male sexuality. What that statement is I’m not positive about, but it isn’t just a John Waters anarchistic moment. It sums up Almodovar to me because his great talent is making emotional statements about human beings through material that is seemingly impenetrable.
Pay attention to this: Themes of gender and identity.
I’m not suggesting that Almodóvar’s movies are thematically stale, but many, if not all of them, are wrapped together in style, themes, and emotions. They should be watched together and in marathons. Independently, they’ll seem like beautifully sh0t, absurdist odes to traditional Hollywood which contain evocative statements about identity, sexual gender, and family.
All that sounds shamefully academic, but Almodóvar is the type of filmmaker you need a film theory brain trust for. He is a filmmaker whose goal is pay homage to the films he loves, but also discuss ideas and emotions that he is obsessed with. If Quentin Tarantino, John Waters, and Ingmar Bergman all meshed into one person, their films might be something similar to Almodovar’s.
Openly gay much of his life, Almodovoar probably found solice in women. Many of his films obsess about women supporting each other in times of need, bonding together, caring for each other, and being emotionally intimate. This is not Sex in the City either. His characters face real tragedy and real life. Men watching his films might discover that these behaviors can, and are, had by men as well. That is kind of what Talk to her is about…I think.
Of all the movies Gojira reminds me of one just sticks in my mind and won’t leave: The movie First Blood. The two films have nothing to do with each other in terms of plot, but both are tragic warnings about the dangers of war and both were turned into franchises of shameless destruction and violence. Don’t get me wrong, Godzilla flicks and Rambo flicks are awesome. It is just funny Godzilla was such a powerful statement against weapons of mass destruction, but you could watch a more modern Godzilla flick and never know.
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