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Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Poor by comparison, but still fun to look at.
Messy movie. The first wasn't perfect, but it seemed polished and on-point, with a clear creative vision and a sensible story-arc. This one seemed very disjointed in its writing and even in its editing, particularly surrounding Scarlet Witch scenes and the various dream-sequences she inspires. It was oddly difficult to track the characters during fight-scenes, them seemingly warping all over the place with minimal continuity, especially toward the end. Ultron was a weak villain, his nonchalant attitude and all-too-human foibles/quirks seeming distinctly at odds with his motive. Also, obligatory 9/11 reference was obligatory, not to mention offencive and in extremely poor taste. Every superhero movie these days seems disturbingly obliged to include scenes in which terrified citizens run from advancing clouds of concrete-dust as seen on 9/11, but this one went one step further by actually collapsing a skyscraper in the 'pancake' method to get that result.
Hoi-sa-won (2012)
Corporate family is no family at all
An impressive movie. More than just a crime-thriller/action flick, this film takes a hard look at the Korean/Asian work-ethic, underlining the dangerously soulless nature of 'Corporate Family'. That's what The Company featured in this film is, beyond it's cover as metal-traders and its hidden, darker nature. The young field employees all see their Boss as a father-figure, "I love you, boss." the literal mantra of their interactions with him, something they say with such casual ease as to suggest this is, in fact, a relatively common way to greet your boss in South Korea. The lieutenant of the Boss, who doles out and reviews 'assignments', is like the jealous older brother; his position assured by the hierarchy, but his self-worth frequently challenged by the skills of his underlings, for which he punishes them frequently, and for which they desperately apologize. The protagonist is immersed in this family, seeing it as his life entire. He truly does love his boss, and his devotion to The Company borders on the absolute. As he leaves youth behind however, crisis of conscience begin to afflict him. He begins to question the worth of his own assignments, the value of the lives he's taking, and more and more he comes to feel that living should mean something more, and his love and devotion to a Company so callous and cruel has been gravely, woefully misplaced.
It's rare to find this kind of social commentary hovering over an action/thriller film, and I found it to be treat. It gives one a window into a way of living that one otherwise might only hear about, and explores the emotional anxieties surrounding that way of living in a gripping, often very heartfelt way. There's plenty of blood, violence and gun-play to keep the viewer entertained, but the deeper themes running through it provoke real sympathy and hard thought in those receptive to such things. The catharsis of the film, the 'redemption' of the protagonist, comes in the simple form of a conscious decision to smile; to seek happiness over professionalism. It's an odd moment, hard to place in time and setting, but a potent and highly uplifting one.
Godzilla (2014)
More Godzilla in Godzilla, please!
I liked this movie. It gave me everything I wanted out of a Godzilla movie, if not nearly enough of it. Godzilla was every bit the badass he should be, not some 'little lizard in the big city' ala the horrible 98 picture, but the Earth's bull-in-a-china-shop Sheriff that he's supposed to be. While certainly not a dude in a suit, his design is highly reminiscent of the original, and having grown up loving Godzilla movies, it was fantastic nostalgia to watch him bust out old favourite moves in high-budget 3-D.
That all said, there were some things about the movie which grated. First off, while Brian Cranston does a great job, the story which the movie follows becomes rather redundant, and really actually kind of irritating, after about the first half-hour to forty-five minutes.
In the build-up it's a solid story, nothing 'Oscar for screenplay' worthy certainly, but the sort of decent drama and character establishment which the closest modern comparison, Pacific Rim, completely failed to muster. It got you emotionally invested in Cranston's character, and by extension the characters around him.
The problem is that long after the build-up, those characters remain the irksomely central focus of the movie, quite literally obstructing our view of the action. Several times the movie has these "Oh..! Oh...! AWWW, Come onn..!" moments, where some really cool monster-battling is -just- getting started, only to cut away abruptly to one of the characters answering a phone/riding a train, with perhaps brief and tiny flashes of the awesome battle you wish you were watching on a TV in the background.
There comes a point in the movie where the story of the supporting characters should really move out of centre-stage for the main character, the titular Godzilla... but it never happens. Instead, the story finds ways of carrying the supporting characters through each situation to the end, even getting one personally involved with the monsters in a really weird, goofy way.
All in all though, my review boils down to this: NEEDS MORE MONSTER BRAWLS!
Falling Skies (2011)
The most wholesome apocalypse ever will bore you to tears.
I've watched far too much of this show. I really don't know why I've done it to myself. Some masochistic urge I think, perhaps self-inflicted punishment for that candy-bar I stole when I was a kid.
I really wanted to like this show. High production value sci-fi, post-apocalyptica, alien invasions, sign me up! Alas what I thought was going to be an exciting and action-packed drama, a gritty and realistic look at Humanity attempting to survive and stay human in the face of totally overwhelming odds, turned out to be something very, very different... a sort of pseudo-metaphor for the economy that espouses American exceptionalism wholeheartedly, and simply cant stop waxing patriotic every five bloody minutes.
First off, the odds aren't overwhelming. At all. At some point in the back-story of the show they apparently were, with the world's united military force near utterly crushed in a matter of days, but apparently all it takes to turn the tide a stark 180 is a Lincolnesque history teacher with a lot of platitudes. Without any specific spoilers, the heroes of the show, and heroes they certainly are, consistently prove that advanced alien technologies are no match whatsoever for Americana.
Second, the characters are weakly composed, make totally uninteresting choices, and are often introduced solely for the purpose of being killed dramatically an episode or two later. Every opportunity for an interesting drama, a tense love triangle, a burning jealousy is passed up, the only source of conflict between the characters themselves typically being alien-induced suspicions, mind control, or the uninteresting male rivalry/bro-mance between our lead hero Abe and the resident 'bad-boy' character, ironically named Pope. Pope, get it? Because he's a bad guy, but... oh, never mind.
Pretty sure I've seen the entirety of this show, and it's really quite bad. Wholesome and G rated characters, wholesome and G rated dialogue, wholesome and G rated romances... this show would be appropriate for toddlers were it not for the infrequent brutal murder of a character the writers have tired of.
Far North (2007)
Gorgeous and haunting exploration of isolation's toll.
I started watching this movie on a lark, really; I saw what looked like Sean Bean on the poster but without his name listed on the display, and was simply curious to see if it was actually him. I'm terribly glad that I did.
The movie is simply beautiful; fantastically shot and with very effective use of sound, long swaths of icy water creaking and crackling in transition from scene to scene in perfect marriage with the mood of the film. The performances are stellar all around, and the arc and the pace of the story are such that the ending will catch you entirely off-guard, thinking there must be at least another half-hour or so of resolution prior to the lead's brutal decision.
The criticisms I see of this film are odd ones. First off that the time-period, which is intentionally left quite ambiguous but is also clearly relatively modern, doesn't lend itself to the nature of the story. That couldn't be more wrong to my mind, as it was important to convey that these two women are living 'out of time', made into things of myth by the cruel label of their culture and their self-imposed isolation... people who don't really 'belong' in any age, past or future.
The other criticism I see is that the character's final actions are unbelievable, as Saiva seemed too good a person, and 'her only possible motivation could be sexual jealousy', which is inadequate. This, too, is just plain wrong, and rooted in two assumptions: the first being that we got to know Saiva well, which we most certainly didn't. We know she was banished, we know she had a husband who was brutally murdered, we know she was raped, we know she found a baby, we know she killed several men. That is -all- we know about her. What we infer about who she is/how she feels from that is just supposition, clearly incorrect in most cases. The second assumption is that sexual jealousy was the only motivation. This is hugely incorrect. Loneliness was the motivation; the crushing isolation she had faced before and faced again now that her 'daughter' and Loki were leaving. She was jealous yes, supremely so, but it wasn't just sexual jealousy. Her envy was of a loving life; a life in which she could love and be loved, something she only got the very briefest taste of when she married, only for her new family to be slaughtered before it could bear fruit. She wanted to be Anja, young and uncursed, with a future and a man and children of her own. She could have accepted being a third wheel, the older 'concubine', and was trying once Anja and Loki started making love unabashedly to squeeze her way into that role. When it turned out to be in vain, and Anja and Loki decided to abandon her, it clearly pushed her over the edge she'd probably been walking all of her life. She didn't make that grisly disguise for the sake of simple lust and brutal womanly rivalry, it was psychotic episode; the straw that broke the camel's back in a long life of horror and crushing loneliness, and tossed her to the teeth of a madness that had probably been circling her all of her days.
Fringe (2008)
Another show that has no idea where it's going/why it's going there from the folks who brought you Lost.
I gave this show a good long chance, having gone through several seasons recently on netflix, and was interested at first. While the episodic nature of the show was an irritant, and the formula of 'strange murders, Walter either remembers something from the past or leaps to a ridiculous conclusion, generally turns out he's right' got old right-fast, the story seemed somewhat intriguing. The longer I watched however, the more I came to realize that that's all the story is: intriguing. It lacks all actual substance, and it's increasingly clear it's not the product of a preconceived notion of where things are headed, but a series of writer-panel decisions that frequently overlook or disregard the efforts of previous panels. Point after point in the broader plot they've supposedly been building has been abandoned when a narrative whim took them in another direction, what was vitally important to characters in one episode utterly forgotten for the rest of the series, never to be recalled. Much like Lost, it begins with a compelling mystery, but rather than try to resolve that mystery (as a resolution had never actually been though of) a series of newer, 'bigger' mysteries emerge to take the characters on another convoluted journey to no real answers and even bigger mysteries. Just as it was with Lost, I seriously doubt this show will even try to adequately conclude itself. If the story's ever getting to a point where something actually has to be resolved, they'll just toss in more Universes or something, or end it as this all being an institutionalized Olivia's dream.
Also, for a girl with relationship issues who spends the whole series on the verge of but never really dating anyone, agent Dunham sure seems to insist on tossing flirty glances and coy smiles at every single warm male body in the show.
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Batman, Champion of Wall Street.
The Dark Knight Rises was an interesting movie with a very interesting message, but so far as entertainment value goes I can't help but feel it missed the mark. While it had a strong start, the first half entirely enjoyable, the movie breaks down in the wake of Bane's initial triumph and seems to plod on about an hour too long from there. While I'm a big fan of the actor who plays Bane, thinking his work in the movie Bronson was tremendous, the character is too one-dimensional to be an effective follow-up to the Joker, and can only provide some enjoyable fight-scenes.
What I'm wondering is this: how many of you out there picked up on the message of this film? It's not exactly subtle. While in the first movie Gotham was clearly a fantasy-city full of weird monorails and towering, Gothic skyscrapers, it became an every-city in the second movie, largely indistinguishable from any other. In this movie however, it's entirely clear what Gotham resembles and represents: New York City. From the Islands to the bridges, it looks just like it all of a sudden. What they've done here with this film is produce a thinly veiled criticism of the Occupy movement, and similar sentiments that are against rampant capitalism. Think about it. When Batman saves the innocent hostages from Bane's evil clutches, who are they? Stock brokers, from Gotham's Wall Street. When Bane gives his 'we the people' speeches, who does he sound like, talking about rising up against financial oppressors and retaking the streets from corruption? A lot like occupy. The one character in the movie who criticizes wealth itself? Evil betrayer. Alternative and green energy solutions? Turns out they're evil too, and terribly dangerous. If you understand the applications of film as propaganda, this is a pretty blatant example... and, like most superhero movies these days (Avengers, Man of Steel, etc.), it insists on conjuring up images of 9/11, with clouds of dust filling streets and chasing fleeing citizens. The habit of using that image to try and get people emotionally attached to an action sequence is to me an example of Hollywood at it's most crass.
Louie (2010)
Dark, hilarious, and oddly heartwarming.
The subway rattles through its motions, and Louie sits aboard, watching along with several other disturbed passengers a strange brown fluid lapping a precarious tide against the sides of a depressed seat-cushion. No one in the car wants to guess what the fluid is, everyone is grossed out by it, no one acts. Cut to black and white, as an inspiring tune akin to a tender moment from A Beautiful Mind begins to play in the background, and Louie, giving his head a shake, presses up onto his feet. Wide-eyed his fellow occupants of the subway car watch as, in slow and deliberate selflessness, Louie strikes off his long-sleeved sweater, kneels down, and mops up the strange brown substance... soaking the offending fluid up and out of their hearts. As he rises, martyr and saint, the looks on the subway car turn to glowing smiles of adoration and firm, knowing nods.. old ladies rising to embrace him and young men giving him their applauds. He stirs awake. The fluid is still there. Everyone's still watching it. He gets up and leaves the car.
This is Louie. Sometimes it's silly, sometimes it's weird, sometimes it's highly dramatic, but it's richly infused with a dark, grounded, everyman sense of humour... a strange mixture of crushing cynicism and liberating hope. It's so much more than just a sit-com, and is one of the best things on TV today.
Hannibal (2013)
Something too this one, if you can dig through the blood and guts.
I'm not entirely sure where I stand on Hannibal, but having managed to catch every episode so far I think I've come to like it. It has incredibly strong cinematography, easily the highlight of the show; the visions, projections, and hallucinations of its lead character, Will Graham, expertly conceived and executed to convey an eerie unease that TV usually fails to produce when attempting. There are clearly skilled artists at work behind the scenes who know their craft, as most of the images and sets work very well to convey emotions.
The story is also a relatively solid one, catching and holding your interest; the relationship between Hannibal and Graham a genuinely interesting one to watch develop.
Where the show loses me, and why I can't give it the much better rating it would otherwise deserve, is its hesitance to abandon the common cop-show 'episodic' formula, and the excessive, sometimes silly levels of gore/disturbing set-pieces. Television is in a state of transition, perhaps even in its death throws, and as such has reached unheard of highs and unheard of lows. While the sea of tripe is wide and daunting, there are many absolute gems surfacing; Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, Walking Dead, The Wire, etc. etc. The common trend among these fantastic new shows is their abandonment of the 'Episodic' formula so common in the 90's/early 2000's. Instead of new situations cropping up and individually dealt with every episode with only vague references to a broader plot (X-files, Law and Order, every version of CSI and most all crime shows since), shows are becoming more trusting of their audiences to pay attention, and are going with running plots which are focused on and developed from each episode to the next. Hannibal is almost there, but is still burdened with a want to introduce a new murderer with a new crazy methodology almost every episode. While it all connects back to the primary story of Hannibal and Will Graham, it often seems like a distraction, a waste of time. There's also an unhealthy obsession with disturbing gore in this show which, while understandable given its nature, goes overboard frequently. I remember I was watching this show with a friend who's critical of it, in a scene where Will Graham stands in an observatory, and looks through the lens of the telescope. "..there's like, some brutally maimed corpse on the moon..." he quickly quipped, and I couldn't help but laugh my ass of, as it almost wouldn't have surprised me. Near every episode there's a grisly, over-creative murder-scene, and while sometimes it's entirely plot appropriate, at others it's just excessive and silly. The 'Totem Pole' killer was particularly nonsensical, his motivations for his wildly gory arts and crafts project bordering on the non-existent, and making his whole story seem like nothing but an excuse to bust out that flesh-pole idea they'd been peddling.
Definitely worth a watch though, just not if you're squeamish.
From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series (2014)
From Dusk till Dawn is better spent in bed.
High hopes as I have for Netflix Original Series, this is most certainly one to skip if the pilot is any indication. The show, much like the movie, follows two unhinged brothers as its central characters, running from the law presumably on their way to the "Titty-Twister", the Vampiric roadhouse featured in the film. The sympathetic brother of course bears a distinct resemblance to George Clooney, while no effort was made, quite understandably, to make the more psychotic of the pair look anything like Tarentino.
The pilot made an effort to start strong; with shoot-outs, sworn vengeance,creepy-erotic snake related rituals, demonic visions and more, all in an effort to try and let you know that, while a remake of a relatively silly movie, this show has it's own story that you're going to want to see unfold.
Problem is, it falls flat as a pancake. The acting, while not bad, struggles around a clunky and often nonsensical script, the reactions characters have to the situations in which they're placed and the choices that they make often so distant from reason as to make you hope the story so far was just a dream sequence, and things will soon get less ridiculous. The absolute low-point however is the utterly unimpressive cinematography/effects which try and fail to make a pair of demonic visions seem frightening, the absolutely terrible costumes accompanying, like throw-aways off the set of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, putting the nail in the coffin of this being a 'horror' show. Some monster costumes, some blurry lens-filters and a red-wash effect do not a scary hallucination make. This show is starting on a major stumble. It needs to rapidly get its act together, or I can't imagine it will last.
Update: Well, several episodes in and rather than improve, this show is in a downward spiral. The characters, rather than gaining depth as the show progresses, are actually bleeding depth off like they're suffering hemophilia. The worst example is the Father/Preacher, played by the exceptional Robert Patrick, who is utterly wasted. While his dialogue was hackneyed from the start, it's degenerated into a series of pastor-related one-liners a thirteen year old might write into a Dusk Till Dawn fanfiction, "Things just got Biblically worse..!" one of the main offenders among many. The Episode meant to emulate the comical, ultra-gory brawl-scene from the original film has aired, and was an exceedingly weak knock-off. The only saving grace, the single moment of relief from the tear-jerkingly dull sequence, was Sex Machine's comment, upon running out of ammo, "Damn, I blew my load..!" I actually kinda half-chuckled there.