December 23, 2009

TATONKAAAAAA--oops, I mean, "Avatar."

If being impressed with the fantastically visualized grandeur of a CGI landscape is the same as liking a movie, then I liked "Avatar."

Except it isn't, and I didn't.

This? Groundbreaking?! The ever-popular Puerile Savages Who Are Wiser Than Us, ravaged ruthlessly by uni-faceted frat-boy soldiers fond of pugilistic statements ending in "bitch!" who just wanna "getter done!"and be "home by dinner"? Seriously?

Don't the writers ever have any karmic backlash from regurgitating cliches which fatigue even the very WORD "tired'–and may in fact be clinically dead?

I like to think there's some penalty, like an outbreak of back acne or something.

And for those reviewers who say, "Well, at least the kids will like it," I should let you know that my 9-year-old, the first of us to comment as we left the theater, pronounced it "The most predictable movie I have ever seen in my life." Later, at home, he said that even "iCarly" has better stories...and in any event it's shorter. If you knew my kid, you would appreciate the utter damnation issued with that comment.

I should no longer be surprised, but I can't help being (always!) disappointed. So many talented writers in the world...there's just no excuse. Why trouble to perfect a human-seeming wince or pained smile on a rendered character, and leave its REAL humanity at the pancake-flat, J. Jonah Jameson cartoon level? I'd rather see claymation, or people's hands moving plastic soldiers around, or yanked about with visible strings...set to dialog that makes me actually give a damn. Since we got to the theater late, we had to sit on the floor in order to all sit together, and I felt every murderous second of its 2.5 hour running time.

I should note that I do think 2D caricatures (rather than complex characters) work sometimes, in some movies, such as parodies, like the zombie movie "Fido," or, well, comic book movies, like the recent Spider-Man franchise. But in this tsunamic belch of self-importance–complete with flying dragons and jazz hands!–it is not working within the rules of its own atmosphere to have crap dialogue and flushable characters.

I did, however, have to love the scene where Neytiri embraces his "real" non-avatar form (much smaller than the avatar body); it brought back all that I so loved (!) about Titanic--Cameron does seem to have a weakness for diminutive men being enveloped by larger women :D Cast opposite Kate Winslet, L though at least in this movie he did not look like a teenaged lesbian, which was all I could think when Kate Winslet smothered Leonardo de Caprio on the prow of the Titanic.

This movie has nothing, NOTHING on The Matrix, nothing on good television sci-fi (BBC and the new Battlestar Galactica); it was infinitely less fun than the new Star Trek movie, and I am amazed it's won so many people over. Maybe, as in the movie "They Live," (a B-movie I actually find more original than this one), we should look to those dark glasses...they seem to have made us all forget that we already saw Dances With Wolves once before. Which was actually more than enough.

TATONKAAAAA!

December 8, 2009

Movie Reviews in Various Shades of Usefulness

Body Heat

Before Kathleen Turner transitioned into a male cross dresser and William Hurt styled his hair into the lateral "sweep," there was Body Heat. I had to rent it again, just because I was craving one or two particular exchanges of good/bad dialogue. What is "good/bad" dialogue? Why, I'm glad you asked. It's this:

HIM: Maybe you shouldn't dress like that.

HER: I'm wearing a blouse and a skirt. Give me a break.

HIM: Maybe you shouldn't wear that body.

Fantastic! Abyssmal! Perfect! This is a solid contemporary noir film and the setup, while not surprising, certainly rather involved. The heat of a preternaturally hot summer becomes an actual character in the film, and you'll get the chance to see Ted Danson with hair so black and coarse looking it looks like a shoe shiner's most indispensable go-to tool.

This movie caught Turner before she'd calcified into a bad parody of Lauren Bacall (whom she seems to have made a cottage industry out of imitating) and before ardent round-tables of smoking looked actually absurd on film (the constant smoking of the characters is awesome...at one point even the script calls it out, Ted Danson's character declining a cigarette with the line, "No thanks, I'll just breathe in the air.") The cast is good all around, and it was just the ticket for a night in drinkin' wine from the bottle.

Possession

Do not watch this movie if you are hoping it will a) kindle or reinforce any existent passions or cravings for the well-turned English word b) kindle or reinforce an untrammeled belief, or desire to believe, in the voracious capacities of the human heart c) provide any vicarious pleasures or thrills at beholding characters meeting at that precipitous place where art, love, and great risk commingle, fanning dangerous barnfires of desire and poetry, actualizing brutal artistic truths and galvanizing character virtues and flaws at a time of great consequence. No. Instead, watch it only if your insomnia is of the least penetrable variety, or if you would like yet another reason to marvel at why anyone would cast Gwyneth Paltrow for anything requiring either passion or personality beyond being a smooth platinum surface untroubled by even the merest furrows of thought or complexity. Top that off with having her wildly miscast as an English Women's Studies professor (albeit a very well turned out one!) opposite the roguish Aaron Eckhart who is (supposedly?) emotionally unavailable (yes, he's a man who has--wait for it!--sworn off having sex with women, even women who look like Gwyneth Paltrow? Um. Okay?) If this is already sounding retarded, we agree on something.

Chocolate (not to be confused with "Chocolat." The latter is French and therefore fancier)

This is precisely what I look for in an escapist chop-socky flick. Since these movies typically vary in formula about as much as your average porn flick, I don't require plausibility; just momentum. There's a sweetness to the plot line of this one--a special needs girl who lives in an internal world...until a can of whoop-a$$ needs some openin.' Because she's drawn into fighting to collect unpaid debts to pay for her mother's cancer treatments, you have about as much pathos as is legally allowed in any movie this side of Lifetime Television for Women, or an Air Supply video (and there is some delightfully cheesy music in this one to cue us when to cry, should that not be obvious somehow). But the girl can fight, and the fighting in some places does feel a bit raw. Outtakes after the movie show the cast icing injuries, being gurneyed to the hospital, and overall just suffering for the entertainment they delivered. I watched this with my 8 and 9 year old boys (who are rather unfazed by violence, it must be said) and they found the story really moving (my older son actually struggled at first with the plot because he was so sad that the mother was ill). It was maybe not the world's most orthodox family film, but it was a good one for OUR family. We thought it was thoroughly fun to watch.

Doctor Who: Season 4 (BBC)

BBC's latest installment in the Dr. Who franchise is utterly campy, and relies heavily upon the quirky affability of its male protagonist (and he does in fact really grow on you) as well as its rather strong and relentlessly fast-paced writing. Whatever would be outrageously difficult to explain scientifically (or, as is more often the case, ridiculous beyond reason) is dismissed with some gobbledy-gook or other, spoken either rapidly or offhandedly, and dismissed so efficiently with transitions and new bolts of action, that you never have to trouble with following too closely, or straining for even the merest wisp of plausibility. I would probably not watch this series if I didn't have two young boys (7 and 9); but it is in fact the very most perfect solution I've found for something that will entertain us all, without being either too "hard" in the sci-fi realm (say, "2001"); too overtly sexual or adult-themed (e.g., the new Battlestar Galactica) or over-the-top scary ("X Files," which I loved). This walks really a fantastic line, with everything young boys love: robots, cyber men, diabolical schemes, time travel, hot babes, spaceships, noxious gases that make people behave reprehensibly, mind control, creepy giant deserted libraries, distorted human hybrids, and even a few moral lessons here and there. Plus I like it as well. I wholly recommend this series, especially for parents of this age group and older. It's got lots of installments, as it's a long-running season, so it'll keep you occupied for quite a while. Good fun.

The Innocents

There's nothing like an exquisite creep factor in a thriller or horror movie; to me it's terrifically more unnerving than cheap scares or carnage. Jacob's Ladder disrupted me more with the extended shot of the crooked wheel of the hospital gurney flipping spastically than the combined serial impalings/unsolicited shrieking cat appearances of any ten other scary movies combined. The Innocents is robustly creepy; tonally minor and uncomfortable. The cinematography is oddly modern and inspired, and Capotes screenplay is, as well. It feels almost contemporary and foreign somehow; distinctly un-Hollywood. Deborah Kerr is a twist of a portrait here; think Julie Andrews governess run through a Sylvia Plath or Edvard Munch filter! Is it that she is imaginative enough to see what everyone's turned a blind eye to, or is she sporting the exuberant imagination of the apesh!t crazy varietal? Possessed children get lots of mileage for me, but of course that hinges entirely on the talent of the child actors. These two are kuh-REEPY, particularly the overly sexualized little boy, who vacillates between infantile need and forlorn helplessness...and smarmy, knowing and even lurid innuendo that is genuinely disturbing to watch, and surprising considering the time in which this movie was made. Its discomfort lies in its consistent lack of clarity and concrete understanding. Reality is warped and inconstant. A really tense–and unexpectedly twisted–little ride.

Appaloosa

Reviewing presents a dilemma for me when there is a thoroughly unlikable character, played by an actor I also happen to find excruciating to endure. Such is the case with Renee Zellwegger's character in Appaloosa. She's a fickle, needy widow played by an actress I just cannot stand to watch--and something very strange has happened to her features, whether it's too much yo-yo dieting and gaining for her Bridget Jones roles, bad plastic surgery, or just an ungainly combination of aging and genetics, I don't know, but man does she bother me. That said, this is a really great Western. Not perfect, but a very strong example of the genre. The writing is undoubtedly very good, but it's debatable whether it would glow quite this much if not borne aloft by subtleties and nuance of the two gifted male leads. They speak so much in their silences, and Ed Harris' awkward phrases-- always decorous despite their painstaking delivery--are issued with such sympathy and sincerity, it's really something to admire. There's a good story here; one of loyalty and love, and it's affirming in a rather unexpected fashion.

You Don't Mess with the Zohan

What an unwatchable turd. And I've made it through Adam Sandler's other dumb movies. I take the occasional dumb movie on its own terms, accepting it in that holistic way because sometimes it scratches a questionable itch...and sometimes other forms of masochism involve too much work. Anyway, this started off awash in vague porn-comedic overtones, which unfortunately was prescient, as despite some slight twinges of tentative humor canted toward other directions (such as Jewish and Muslim stereotyping) it snaps back to the dumb porn 13-year-old masturbatory baseline in about twenty minutes, and it compromises all of its funny wholesale. I should note that I'm not at all opposed to crossing every PC line there is...but such transgressions need to earn their ticket by being really funny. This is not funny. Not shocking. Just unremittingly stupid; unbearably so. A public apology should be issued.