Category: (by verdict)

(Not District) 9

9 is a short (80 minute) animated film directed by Shane Acker, itself based on an Oscar-nominated ten-minute short by the same guy (producers include Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov and their signatures are all over this film, whether they were involved or not). It takes place in a post-apocalyptic future. How we got to that future is told in flashback, and it is a familiar story: man invents wondrous machine with brain; machine turns on man; devastating war destroys mankind. What survives are tiny burlap-covered robots of some kind, invented by the same scientist who created the original destructive machine. There are nine of them, and the film traces their efforts to band together, discover their purpose, and destroy the machine.

The animation is simply wonderful, with the ruins of a city rendered in fabulous detail, and all manner of metal creatures give chase to the little band of nine robots whose destiny it is to build the future. A lot is packed into the short running time, but almost all of it involves extended chase scenes, occasionally broken by moments of when the main characters have to decide between heroism or cowardice (symbolized by the difference between #1 (voiced by Christopher Plummer) and #9 (voiced by Elijah Wood). The story is too thin to sustain the movie (it really was better as a short), and the mystical ending strikes an odd note, but this is worth watching for the inventiveness of the animation alone.

Fall Movies

Because of something I bought through Amazon, I just got a free movie pass to go see Surrogates at any local movie theater. Does this mean I have to go see Surrogates? The trailer features a freakishly young Bruce Willis (in surrogate mode) with hair similar to that he wore in the Jackal remake.  It looks scary.

The Citizen Kane of bad movies

Is Tommy Wiseau’s The Room (2003). I must admit, I’m way behind on this one (has someone posted on this film already?) as the film has had a sizable cult following–mostly in Los Angeles–for some time now. Let me share my feelings about this extraordinary…thing. Wiseau managed to cobble together 6 million dollars (how? no one quite knows) to realize on the big screen a play/novel he had written about a love triangle between Johnny (played by Wiseau), Lisa (played by…who the fuck knows, some woman he met in L.A. who had just stepped off a bus from Texas), and Mark (Greg Sestero, who had previously worked on “The Days of Our Lives”). Continue reading The Citizen Kane of bad movies

Inglorious Basterds

The scope of Inglorious Basterds makes it too intimidating to try to review in one go. Besides, I want to see it again and have some time to process it. It is magnificent, and one of the most controlled pieces of film-making I can recall watching. But at this point, just a few reactions. The opening scene, Chapter 1, is just breath taking. Evoking Westerns, particularly Once Upon a Time in the West, a dairy farmer chops wood in rural France. A German colonel stops by and asks to be invited inside to talk. What follows is riveting. Every gesture, every word of dialogue, the framing of every shot works to build tension. Then, near the end of the film, in the projection room, there is a shot so heart-achingly beautiful that you desperately want to press rewind and watch it over and over. Continue reading Inglorious Basterds

District 9

An alien mothership appears stranded over Johannesburg. The starving aliens can not leave, so they are located in a sprawling shanty town beneath the mothership. Twenty years on, crime and squalor are rife in the shanty town, and there is rising tension between humans and aliens. A large corporation, simply called “Multi National United” is hired by the UN to shift the aliens to a new camp, further from humanity. The corporation, of course, has weapons and genetic engineering projects that would benefit from the exploitation of the aliens, who come to be called “prawns” by the humans. Continue reading District 9

Kim Ji-Woon’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird

There are moments where you watch a sequence in a film and it’s utterly clear the joy behind the camera: the sense of invention (so this is what the camera can do here!), the delight in gaming the audience (playing familiar cards and then shuffling the deck, then cheating), the willingness to push past any sense of limits into a pure sugar rush of genre filmmaking. I smile every time I think of the Thunderdome, of Cary Grant faceplanting in the dust as the plane roars right overhead, of Jackie Chan grabbing any item in the vicinity for balletic battle, of Indiana Jones holding his hat as he first ran from varied and sundry and crazy dangers with the idol in his hand, of Chow Yun-Fat with toothpick dangling and a calm expression on his face gently wiping the blood spatter from an infant’s brow. It isn’t just that these are action sequences, done well; they’re invigorating exaltations of composition and sequence and outsized wondrous plotting.

The Good, the Bad, the Weird has at least 3 such whizbang setpieces, and it’s a dizzy blast of a film. Continue reading Kim Ji-Woon’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird

Going to have to face it

Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker opens with a quote from Chris Hedges on the way we become addicted to war, an addiction intensely–almost lovingly–scrutinized in both her tightly-wound action film and Armando Iannucci’s tightly-wound satire In the Loop. Both films work pretty well on their own merits, as exemplars of their respective genres, but I was struck by the way each seemed to strive toward something more, toward an indictment of that addiction. Their methods, however tonally distinct, I think lead to the same impasse: both films are caught–and catch us–inside the addiction. Continue reading Going to have to face it

MOON

Zowie Bowie is all grown up and making movies now, under the name “Duncan Jones” (“Duncan, what the hell kind of name is that?? And, you are NOT going out looking like that. Get upstairs and put on your makeup and skintight leotard! We’re a skintight leotard family! Thank you, Kevin Meaney)

Moon is compelling and effective; however, its ambitions to being a major mind-trip space film don’t really measure up to other films you might be reminded of, such as 2001 , Solaris and even Silent Running (where the bee-dee bee-dee robot destroys all the greenhouses in space–though I might be wrong. I haven’t seen it in twenty five years and I get it confused with the Buck Rogers TV show). Sam Rockwell is very good, [vague SPOILERS AHEAD] especially in the long sections where he must interact with himself–a more wound-up and angry version of himself. The voice of Kevin Spacey, coming from “Gerty,” the robotic assistant is perhaps a bit unsettling–Gerty is a twist on HAL, in that he is a rather reasonable machine who really wants to help (or does he?). The premise for the film is rather perfunctory, suggesting an evil corporation, who, unlike the major university, never heard of just exploiting folks at low wages. In fact, there are many loose ends here, but I think you will enjoy the story, if you don’t overthink it, as well as the attempts to duplicate the feel and pace of 1960s/70s science fiction. In fact, I wish it had gone for more extended eerie trips through moonscapes–though that may have endangered too much its “limited run” at my local multiplex. Next up, Space Ossuary where Mick Jagger and David Bowie must join forces with Sally Field to counter osteoporosis.