REVIEWS Forgetting Sarah Marshall Friday, May 02, 2008 | Zeroplate I've been a fan of the Apatow-Industrial complex since the days of the sublime Freaks and Geeks, so I'll admit to being predisposed to liking something that comes out of that world. I don't think that everything the guy touches is necessarily a slam dunk, but he's built up enough good faith by directing or writing films like Superbad, and Knocked Up that I'm willing to give his team a shot on just about anything (except maybe Drillbit Taylor.) Still, the trailers for Sarah Marshall weren't doing much for me and of all of the Freaks and Geeks alumns to anchor a movie, Jason Segel would probably be near the bottom with James Franco in terms of arousing my interest, so I gave this flick a couple of weeks before I took the plunge. Though Forgetting Sarah Marshall is not a Judd Apatow film, it has so much of the same aesthetic that it's hard to see how fans of The 40 Year Old Virgin won't enjoy the same kind of antics that are on display here. Once again there's a likeable but kind of dumpy guy, a hot girl (or two--who knew Mila Kunis could be appealing when she isn't playing a snotty bitch?), a cast of memorable and goofy sidekicks and supporting characters, and a well-worn premise that's written with just enough depth to keep it from being a Kate Hudson vehicle. Critics of that formula will likely have the same complaints about this film as they have all of the others: that the women seem unrealistically drawn to boneheads and losers, that the humor is sometimes sophmoric and that the film is not a lot more than a romcom for guys. I can't really argue with any of that, and the film is by no means something as brilliant and spot-on as Freaks but it made me laugh and it had a handful of memorable moments that I'd like to see again, so I can't fault it for that. Back to Top {0} Comments Iron Man Friday, May 02, 2008 | Zeroplate My one word impression of this film would be "Cool." In fact, the movie is probably best reviewed by a character in the film. When Jim Rhodes sees the Iron Man armor for the first time he says with just the right amount of awe "that is the coolest thing I have ever seen," and the feeling is mutual. I've always thought that the only thing holding an Iron Man movie back was a budget. Iron Man seems to me like the easiest Marvel character to adapt to a feature film because his 'powers' are just his mind and the technology he wraps himself up in. Still, it took four successful mutli-film franchises (Blade, X-Men, Spider-Man, and Fantastic Four) before Marvel took a chance with the more obvious Iron Man. Iron Man has a film-ready costume and a rogues gallery of technology-based villains that make him an easy fit for the new world of superhero realism that we're seeing in movies. Tony Stark's alter-ego has never been Marvel's most marquee name, but he's arguably as well-known to non-comics fans as the X-Men were when their first film hit, and he's clearly a bigger draw than Blade. I can only assume that the thing that held Iron Man back was the budget to pull off a guy in armor who flies around and blows things up. Now, thankfully the budget has been sorted and Marvel Studios has put together the perfect team to tackle a movie about Iron Man. I wouldn't have thought that a Jon Favreau directed action film starring Robert Downey Jr. and Terrance Howard would work necessarily, but it's obvious from the first couple of minutes that Downey is the perfect actor to pull off Marvel Comics' most notorious billionare playboy lush. Howard is amazingly likeable as Rhodes and he sets up the War Machine storyline perfectly when he glances at the Mark II armor and says "next time, baby." There was a lot I loved about Iron Man. Gweneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts was endowed with a lot of heart, even when the script wanted her to play the helpless damsel a few times too many. Stark's robotic helpers had a surprising amount of character which can be attributed not only to the design team who brought them to life, but to Robert Downey Jr. who interacts with them genuinely. Finally seeing the modern Iron Man armor in action was fantastic, and it blew away the reveal of the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and Spider-Man in all their costumed glory (though I still think the Silver Surfer is the most jaw-dropping Marvel character to hit the screen yet.) There were a few things I would have liked to have seen that the movie didn't offer up, and a few things that seemed a little tedious and perfunctory because this is yet another origin story. The film's choice of villain seemed a little too convenient and Hulk-like, and it will be nice when Iron Man can face off against other characters like the Living Laser or Whiplash or something. I was also a little underwhelmed by the final fight which was staged at night--you just don't get the 'gee whiz' awe of two guys in armor battling it out when you can't see the detail. But in the end, the movie is just cool and that's about all I really wanted. I've been a fan of Iron Man since the early 80's, but the comic was never my favorite, (it ranked third after X-Men and Thor.) I've collected Iron Man Toys and written a song (Fashion Victim's "Tonystark") about him, but that has always been because the design of the character and his story have just been cool. Now, bring on the sequel with War Machine, Titanium Man, Tony's alcoholism, a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier and the beginnings of the Avengers and I'm there! I want to see Dum Dum Dugan, Nick Fury, some more hints about the Mandarin, and God help me, I want to see Fin Fang Foom! We need the hall of armor, the Crimson Dynamo, maybe something lifted from the Extremis storyline... now that the film is out and going to do well, I feel like it's time to breathe and start dreaming about all the cool stuff that can follow. Iron Man is probably my second favorite Marvel film after X2, and it's definitely the best start to a franchise that the Marvel folks have put together yet. If you haven't seen the film yet, be sure to stay through the end credits. Back to Top {0} Comments Vantage Point Saturday, March 22, 2008 | Zeroplate I should know better than to go see big name, big studio, high concept thrillers like this. I knew that there was little chance that Vantage Point would be a great film, but it had an interesting premise and I hoped that the multiple viewpoint construction would elevate it a bit above the typical Hollywood political thriller. Wrong. Even with people like Sigourney Weaver and Forrest Whitaker as parts of the ensemble, there was ultimately nothing that could save Vantage Point's dreadful screenplay. I almost get the sense that the film-makers knew that they were going out on a ledge with the idea that they'd tell the same story from multiple perspectives so they dumbed everything else down to compensate. Movies like this are intolerable because they rely on cheap, worn-out dialog and on character types that are based more on people's ideas of roles than on real characters with real stories. The screenplay does just enough to give a few characters a hint of a backstory, but all of that comes through obligatory exposition. The movie is populated by an utterly unbelievable news correspondent, some terrorists with a vague agenda, a presidential security team that's more inept than the ushers at a Hawks game, and some characters with twisted hidden agendas that we don't get to know long enough to feel betrayed by. The one good sequence involved a guy with special forces training (something we're told in an unsubtle line from another character,) ripping through a hotel and picking off secret service men. If our Presidents were really this poorly guarded, I'd imagine that we'd lose them every 9 or 10 months. The real tragedy here is that the multiple viewpoint gimmick doesn't even factor in to the underlying story. It's just a dumb way to split up a typical, by-the-numbers narrative. Had the film tried to play out the different points of view in any meaningful way rather than just having the omniscient camera follow a different person every 15 minutes, the film might have had a chance at some meaning. Instead, we got a suspicious middle-eastern musical cue the first time we saw the terrorist and we got to see Forrest Whitaker run down a bunch of secret service men while capturing the action on a dv camera. Really, do the film-makers think we are that stupid? Back to Top {0} Comments Doomsday Saturday, March 15, 2008 | Zeroplate A film like Doomsday is a tough thing to sell to today's movie audience, so I have little faith that it will find an audience on the big screen this weekend. If Doomsday had been released in 1987 or if it had been sent straight to video or the Sci-Fi network, people would probably have an easier time dealing with the fact that it's blatantly stupid and in-your-face about being so. When Grindhouse bombed last year, US audiences sent the clear message that they don't have an interest in self-aware homage to exploitative, over-the-top filmmaking. Doomsday is every bit the same kind of film that Planet Terror was with the notable exception that it never winks at the audience. Because of that, I think a lot of the audience will walk out of the film debating the film's many plot holes and ridiculous turns and coincidences without realizing that the joke is on them. This isn't a movie you are meant to understand. It doesn't exist in any version of reality that we know. It's a pure balls to the wall opera of retarded action that winds up reviving the genre of seedy, gratuitously violent sci-fi action films that have really vanished from the big screen since the heyday of Cannon! To appropriately summarize the film's plot, I feel that I have to take on the voice of the inner 12-year old who sat dumbfounded watching this. To wit (SPOILERS): Holy Shit! Ok, so there's this flesh-eating virus that wipes out Scotland and the British have to put up a wall around the whole thing and let people kill each other off and puke up guts until they are all dead and Malcolm McDowell narrates the whole thing like it's Shakespere! As people are trying to escape Scotland as the wall gets sealed, a little girl gets shot in the eye by a British trooper and then gets rescued and she flies off in a helicopter and we know she's going to be our hero. She turns out to be this badass Kate Beckinsale but tougher kind of cop with a fucking robotic eye that she can pop out and record shit with and she has an Aeon Flux haircut and she only wears black. She tries to take down some drug dealers and there's a huge-breasted woman in a tub with a shotgun that she kills and the blood comes pouring out of the bullet holes in the tub and then her partner's head gets shot at close range with a shotgun and exploded on the wall and she kills some more guys and then picks up her eye and pops it back in her fucking head! Blah Blah "you're the best man for the job" kind of shit and she takes the suicide mission to find the crazy doctor in Scotland who might know how to cure this virus and she always keeps an envelope with her dead mom's address on it so that we know her motivation. She takes a team of dudes and one woman in armored tanks into Scotland where they meet up with a Mad Max style gang who kills most of their crew with pickaxes and shovels and shit, but only after lots of them get gunned down. There's a torture scene, then some go-go dancers and a huge punk rock stage show lead by the leader of the rejects and they roast one of the cops over a huge spit then cut him up and serve pieces of his flesh to the crowd for dinner! She escapes by cutting off some chick's head and killing a bunch of other punk nancys and she happens to run into the daughter of the evil scientist guy she's trying to find (JACKPOT!) and they escape on a steam-powered train since there's no more electricity or gas! They go marching through the woods and through a bunker that has lots of crates of useful stuff (JACKPOT!) and they wind up getting caught BY A FUCKING KNIGHT IN ARMOR ON A HORSE! They are taken to a medieval castle and there's more torturing and dead bodies and oh yeah, earlier there was a cow that got run over and a there was a robotic sentry machine gun that shot a BUNNY RABBIT because it was moving too close to the wall around Scotland! Anyway, Malcolm McDowell explains himself, there's some sword fighting, and arena death match between Aeon Flux and the Knight and they all escape and go back to that bunker where they find a Bently (JACKPOT!) and a GPS Cell Phone (JACKPOT!) that both work after being locked in this bunker for 25 years. They escape but of course lose more of their crew and as they are racing back to England they run into the Mad Max gang again with the leader driving a car covered in human skin with his headless girlfriend riding shotgun and some guy in a gimp outfit strapped to a dune buggy! There's a big fight and showdown and of course the Bently is made to turbo boost through school buses of heavily armed punk rockers so the heros get away and the leader of the punk gang's head flies off and hits the camera (no shit!) The end is kind of lame and it wraps up all the story lines and blah blah, but the movie had in this order: Puking Up Guts Tits and a Shotgun in a bathtub A super-hot hero with a Robot Eye A Bunny killed by a machine gun A Tank running over a Cow A Post-Apocalyptic gang of Cannibals A Gimp on a leash Two Go-Go Dancers in thongs dancing around Severed Heads on poles A Human Buffet A Knight on a Horse A Castle An Arena Death Match Some Bows and Arrows A Car Chase with a Bently and a bunch of tricked out, Flesh-Covered Buggies A Car jumping through a bus causing it to Explode Our super-hot Hero saves the day and has one final thing to say to the punks! So yeah, if that sounds like a good time to you, then go see this movie right now. I gotta think that anyone who liked Planet Terror would love this as it's basically the same kind of movie only without a director telling you that it's all a joke the whole time. We get so many high concept movies like Underworld that try to be modern versions of this kind of lunatic cinema but they are always tempered by some annoying tether to reality. They never go completely off the rails into crazyworld and they never deliver on the promise of eviscerated bodies, wanton destruction, human sacrifice, animal murder, and gratuitous sexyness the way this film does. Fucking brilliant. We don't see movies like this every day! Back to Top {0} Comments Godzilla Madness Part 6 : Godzilla vs. Hedorah Tuesday, March 11, 2008 | Zeroplate This installment from the classic Godzilla era is easily the most gleefully ridiculous Godzilla film that I've yet seen. It was released in 1971, which goes part of the way towards explaining the hippies, go-go dancers, acid rock band and environmental theme, but this movie has to be more than just a product of its time. In the same way that Super Mario Bros. gave many westerners their first glimpse of the zany, dayglow side of Japanese culture, Godzilla vs. Hedorah is a great example of the Japanese penchant for non-sequiter humor and blissful disregard for coherent storytelling. The movie follows a young boy who is himself a Godzilla fan as the Japanese countryside is attacked by a giant smog monster made up of toxic pollution (with eyes!) Clearly the morality play has shifted in this installment from a warning about mankind's technological hubris to a warning about our destructive impact on the environment, but that shift actually feels pretty natural after years of monsters who exist for no other reason than to remind us of the dangers of splitting the atom. Hedorah does an amazingly good job of serving as the symbol of environmental devastation, and while the movie is never subtle it its tale, the monster is for once at least considerably disgusting and threatening. Unlike Gigan, Ghidorah, or Mothra, Hedorah is a beast that it's really just about impossible to root for. Also unlike those other monsters, Hedorah is seen not only flying over and wrecking cities but affecting flowers, plants, and individual people who are running around trying to escape. Usually the devastation has a grander scale, but some of this film's most shocking scenes involved individuals being scarred or melted to the bone by Hedorah's sulfuric acid exhaust. While the battle scenes make up a large part of the running time (and they do drag,) the rest of the movie is stitched together from relatively little narrative. What holds it all together are these weird cartoon interludes, scenes in a swinging nightclub, and inexplicably stylized shots of pollution and of people reacting to Hedorah. This was the first Godzilla film that made me laugh out loud several times and I had to stop often just to make sure that the film was really going in the places that it seemed to be going. It would be easy to chock all of this up to the era in which the film was made, but in fact, there were movies made just before and just after this one that weren't quite this weird. Just when I thought I had seen all that this series in its classic incarnation had to offer, I picked up Godzilla vs. Hedorah and I realized that while some of these films (ok, most of them) were derivative to a fault, the series continued to be fertile creative ground for people who wanted to entertain audiences. I only wish that this film was part of the Godzilla Classics collection, as I'm now going to have to buy this DVD separately to hold on to all of this crazy. Back to Top {0} Comments The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford Monday, March 03, 2008 | Zeroplate Here is the perfect movie to make the case for seeing films in a theater. I'm not so sure that the communal cinema experience would have added all that much to the film, but I clearly missed out on something by not seeing this splayed out on a giant screen. I'm someone who's quick to make the argument that almost any movie worth seeing is worth seeing in a theater, but for The Assassination of Jesse James, it's an argument that makes itself. The advance word on this film was mixed, which is one of the reasons I didn't jump out to see it. It also didn't play for very long, and it came out at a time when there were a number of other serious movies at the multiplexes and arthouses that all commanded a certain amount of attention. Still, having now seen most of the prestige movies of 2007's crop, I can definitely say that I'm sad that I missed this one writ large in a theater because it's a beautifully shot movie that has the power to be overwhelming if you can let it wrap around you. I was a little afraid that Brad Pitt was going to go into full on Jeffrey Goines mode and channel his 12 Monkeys performance to play the cavalier, dashing, but somewhat unhinged Jess James, but Pitt pulls out a pretty great performance in the end. He's nuanced, as is everyone in this film, which makes trying to pick sides as from the audience perspective tricky at best. At worst, I found myself rooting for a character one minute only to be repulsed by him the next. In no place is that more evident than in the story of Robert Ford. To say much about the story is a disservice to the film because like most great cinema, the film is more than its story--more than the sum of its parts. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' wonderful score plays a pivotal role and it underlines the film's fantastic script and mind-blowing cinematography. I can understand how the film failed to find a really hearty audience, but I'm no less disappointed by that fact. The movie was inspiring and touching and thoughtful and it reminded me that I need to heed my own advice more often and pony up the cash to see movies like this the way they were meant to be seen. Back to Top {0} Comments The Signal Saturday, February 23, 2008 | Zeroplate If I was looking forward to Be Kind Rewind and In Bruges, then I was positively salivating at the chance to see the Atlana-made horror film, The Signal. I read about this early last year when it screened at Sundance and then again when it showed at SxSW and with all of the positive word of mouth, it seemed like this little film that could would make it to theaters by summer of 2007 and we'd all get to see what some local talent was able to do. I saw a trailer for the movie sometime in the middle of last year and figured that it would certainly hit by at least October. There was a secret screening of it at the Atlanta Film Festival and then it showed at Dragon-Con (something I didn't know was happening) and then... nothing. I was afraid that I'd never get to see it, at least not in a theater, and then finally, a release date. 2/22/2008. I guess it's better late than never. For folks in Atlanta, this is a no-brainer. Seeing local buildings, roads, Dad's Garage alums, and locales up on the big screen is fun in itself. Outside of that though, the movie is a great twist on the apocalyptic zombie horror platform. It turns out that a signal that's transmitted on every television, radio, and phone starts making people crazy. Wrong becomes right, nice becomes mean, order becomes chaos (to paraphrase the explanation in the film,) and people just start killing each other. So far that sounds a lot like a J-Horror twist on Romero, but what makes this a lot different is that the murderous neighbors in The Signal seem to be completely rational. They aren't running around like maniacs (okay, a few are) but they are rationally deciding to murder their friends and loved ones and they seem to be able to justify all of this. That's a simple twist, but one that makes all of the killing and violence a little more chilling. These aren't mindless undead killers; they are thinking, rational beings who just think that they need to chop people's throats out with hedge clippers or bash in skulls with hammers. What makes it even freakier is that to both the characters on screen and eventually to the audience as well, it becomes more and more difficult to tell who has the crazy and who is killing out of reasonable self defense. You could break that down into a legitimate social commentary I guess, but I just tucked that thought away and had fun with the movie. For a locally-produced, ultra-low budget horror film with no stars and no big names behind the camera, The Signal has a hell of a lot going for it. It starts with a red herring that's hilarious and then cuts into the story proper. The film is split into three chapters called "Transmissions" that each have a different tone and focus. These were fun and since they all tell one story, it was never too jarring. The music is fantastic and the use of a cover version of a Joy Division song is spot on in creating a mood early on that resonates througout the film. The acting was just fine and the blood and gore, while obviously done on the cheap, was at times pretty convincing and cringe-worthy. While it's not a perfect film (there are a few places where the pace slows down a little too much to tell us things we already know,) The Signal is right up there with the best indie genre films I've seen over the last coupe of years, and it may be the kind of film that kicks off a wave of low-budget but quality genre prodcutions that are smart, funny, and still payoff for genre fans. I'll be looking forward to whatever the folks behind The Signal do next, because if this movie is any indication, with a bigger budget and broader canvas, I'd expect they could do some pretty awesome stuff. Back to Top {0} Comments Be Kind Rewind Saturday, February 23, 2008 | Zeroplate February has been an odd month for movies. Somehow, a lot of the movies I've been most looking forward to have all hit with a February release. Since February is usually a time when studios dump movies that they don't have awards hope for, and that they don't think will light up the box office, it says something that a lot of the films I've seen lately have been good and yet somehow dumped. I'm a huge Michel Gondry fan, from his music video work to his first two fantastic features Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep, to his goofy YouTube videos where he has fun with Rubik's Cubes. In my mind, he hasn't done much wrong, and every new film his puts out is immediately high on my list of hopefuls. The strange disconnect with Be Kind Rewind is that it pits one of my favorite working directors with one of my least favorite leading men: Jack Black. I see Jack Black as a typical Hollywood comedy lead. Like Will Farrell or Adam Sandler, Jack Black tends to have one speed that he works at, and I think that if you don't like that narrow space in which he works, he just isn't going to do a whole lot to win you over in anything. While he was more subdued in King Kong than Orange County, it was still nearly impossible for me to separate Jack Black the actor from the characters because he uses some of the same gags no matter what role he's playing. My biggest fear going into this film was that Jack Black would sink an otherwise wonderful story. Instead, I found that I enjoyed the movie but that what kept it from being really amazing was Gondry's restraint and the film's script which seemed like such a shell of an idea that it almost would have worked better as a series of YouTube clips. The sci-fi premise that Black's character gets magnetized and in turn erases all of the tapes at the local (VHS Only) video store is the brilliant and kooky part that should be propelling the story forward. Instead, that bit of plot only works to justify the movie's best scenes while a cookie-cutter story of the big bad developer buying up and kicking out ragtag local residents wound up driving things. If you've seen The Brady Bunch Movie or Batteries Not Included or Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, then you know the set up and you know essentially where the whole thing is going. Gondry uses Be Kind Rewind to talk about the expeience of movies, about how cinema brings people together, and how creativity is our most important currency--and I think the movie gets all of that right, even in its own ham-fisted way. What it sort of misses the boat on are the details of the plot that give the film's characters a journey that we should care about. Still, though I didn't love the movie, I enjoyed it and I loved parts of it, especially any time Gondry let the creative juices flow and left the real world of saving Danny Glover's video store tenament behind. Back to Top {0} Comments In Bruges Sunday, February 17, 2008 | Zeroplate With the positive press out of some festival screenings, a brief feature on NPR, and the cracking trailer, In Bruges wound up being one of my most anticipated films of early 2008. The funny thing about that is that of the dozen or so people I told about this movie, not one of them knew anything at all about it and I'll be lucky if one out of those 12 eventually ever see it. That's OK. It just reminds me that my movie tastes are generally miles away from the weekend box office gold rush. It makes those times when the movies I'm anxious to see (like Juno) are met with wide-release commercially success that much sweeter. In Bruges is a special kind of movie that winds up balancing humor and drama terrifically, but that's a dance that I imagine a lot of movie-goers aren't going to know what to do with. It's a film that lets Colin Farrell display his charisma without being something that the tabloid media will rake for shallow sound bytes. I generally like Colin Farrell in things; he was the best thing about Daredevil and he had a good turn in Miami Vice. He's an interesting actor who seems to be far more notorious for his looks and his off-screen antics than for his work. (Pop Quiz: Name four other movies he's been in that I haven't already mentioned... without opening up IMDB.) In Bruges is also a film that lets Ralph Fiennes shine as a foul-mouthed hitman boss, a roll that's a nice contrast to his picture book villain roll as Voldemort in the Harry Potter series. In Bruges has a lot of the things I like in a movie: the funny use of swear words, unexpected violence, a dashing protagonist with some real troubles, a gleefully ambiguous ending, and a leading lady who is cute (but not pretty in a movie-star kind of way) who also has a European accent! As I list those characteristics out, I realize that these are the exact things that keep most audiences away from a movie like this. There's no Julia Roberts or Kate Beckinsale, there's too much cussing, there's no nifty conclusion and happy ending for everyone... it's just not something that will play well with a broad American audience, and that's even accepting that a lot of folks would probably walk out of the theater saying they didn't understand half of the dialog (which is all in English!) I think that people I work with or who know me casually probably consider me a movie snob because the thought of Shrek the Third turns my stomach, and because a movie like In Bruges is my idea of a good time at the theater. Hell, one woman told me that she could tell that I was a snob because I used the word 'film' instead of 'movie'. I'm going to cop to some of that, and this is an ongoing debate that I've had with friends for years. We're not really sure that being selective and looking down on things is necessarily a bad thing--as long as you aren't making judgments about people who make different choices than you. I mean, I understand why audiences flock to crappy movies sometimes, and I've made peace with that. I don't think that everyone who owns a copy of Miss Congeniality 2 on DVD should be required to go through a film appreciation course, or that the millions of people who will inevitably rush out to see this new Larry the Cable Guy movie should be euthanized. I get it that people want to sometimes be mindlessly entertained and I'm right there with them (in a different theater.) In Bruges didn't send me out of the theater re-thinking my life or waxing poetically about the power of cinema--I just found it to be a hell of an entertaining two hours, and I guess I wish I had more people to share that with. Back to Top {0} Comments Persepolis Sunday, February 03, 2008 | Zeroplate I had a chance to see Persepolis at last year's Fantastic Fest, but we decided not to wait in line for the AICN Secrect Screening that turned out to be this wonderful film because there were just too many other things to see. While I don't think the Fantastic Fest took to the autobiographical black and white French cartoon about a girl from Iran quite as well as they would have to a film about mutant zombie squids, Persepolis was probably one of the best films that screened at last year's festival. I'm glad that I finally saw it. I probably know as much about Iran as any typical American, which is to say, not much at all. It's not a place I'm likely to ever visit. I don't have many friends from that part of the world. I prefer not to follow a lot of the political banter about that region because it all gets quite frustrating without being insightful. But that's why I love a movie like Persepolis. Since Persepolis is the story of one precocious but otherwise pretty ordinary young girl, watching the film feels a lot like getting to know someone. In some ways, it's probably better than getting to know someone because through the magic of cinema and animation, the story and characters can have a charm and magic that real people talking in a restaurant might miss. Of course I'd never replace real experience with a movie, but I found that Persepolis gave me a wonderful look into a culture that I knew relatively little about. Last year, I went to see Offside, a movie about women trying to get in to see a World Cup qualifying match in Tehran where women are forbidden to attend sporting events for fear that they will be corrupted by foul language and displays of aggression. That movie was frustrating at times, but it ultimately turned out to be a thoughtful and poignant look into gender roles in Iran. It worked because it was honest, but it took a while to make its fairly simple and straightforward point. Persepolis deals with gender too, but it winds up being about so much more as it follows the adventures of its undeniably charming narrator. It may seem paradoxical that a black and white animated feature based on a comic book would present a truer, more honest look at the world than most more traditional movies I've seen lately, but that's the truth. I imagine that a lot of folks won't have the patience for a film like Persepolis, and that's a shame. Having seen this movie, I now think (maybe naively) that I've edged myself above the average American understanding of life in Iran. At the very least, I understand a lot about the film's author and that's not something I can always say when I walk out of the theater. Back to Top {0} Comments Rambo Saturday, February 02, 2008 | Zeroplate If John Rambo says more than 100 words in this film, I'd be surprised. A lot of talk from a grizzled Sylvester Stallone is not what anyone is looking for in a Rambo flick, but it would have been nice if there had been a plot of some significance to hold this series of killshots together. The beauty of the plot is that it can be summed up IN DEPTH in a single sentence: Against his better judgement, Rambo ferrys a group of missionaries up into war-ravaged Burma and then has to go rescue them from a camp of monsterous Burmese military men with the help of a pack of mercenaries. That is literally it. There's a girl named Sarah who convinces Rambo to make the trip and inspires him to mount the rescue operation, but it's not really clear what in Sarah's plea gets Rambo to agree to get involved. Rambo gives the missionaries a speech about how they won't change anything by tripping off to a village to offer aid, and I expected this to be a central theme of the movie--that Rambo was wrong. Instead, in a nihilistic turn that makes the movie a lot darker that I had expected, Rambo's right. The missionaries don't do anything useful other than lead Rambo and the mercs to a camp of Burmese soldiers who are summariliy slaughtered (meaning there are now less of them which I guess is a good thing.) I was waiting for the moment when the good guys would stop the angry mob of soldiers from gang-raping four dancers, but nope. I was hoping to see the shot of the freed prisoners who at least escaped thanks to Rambo and were on an evac flight to a better place, but nope. Instead, the whole movie is one long "I told you so" that has Rambo revert from a peaceful, unengaged guy hiding in the jungle to a gut-ripping, brain-popping, throat-snatching killing machine. It's almost cruel to watch the film fuck with so many characters who become fodder only to give the audience justification for cheering for Rambo's death squad. I don't remember all that much from the old Rambo films, but I kind of remember there being more of a point to them. I think the producers could have taken the footage from Rambo and bypassed the theater altogether and they could have just released the killshots on YouTube and the whole thing would have been more successful. Oh well, at least Stallone is saying that there won't be another Rambo film. Back to Top {0} Comments Godzilla Madness Part 5 : All Monsters Attack Monday, January 28, 2008 | Zeroplate All Monsters Attack (also known as Godzilla's Revenge) is undoubtedly the strangest kaiju film I've watched as part of my Godzilla Madness program, as well as the most deceptively advertised. Rather than focus on a giant monster melee or Godzilla actually raining down revenge on anyone, the film is centered on a little boy named Ichiro, and it tells the tale of his blossoming from a wimpy crybaby to an obnoxious jerk like the rest of the bullies. I knew that this was going to be a different kind of monster movie from the funky mod song that played over the title sequence, but I wasn't prepared for the film to be a morality play about how you should give in to peer pressure to become a nuisance. Ichiro is a latch key kid who is smaller than the other kids from school, who's best friend is a girl (icky), and who dreams of escaping away to Monster Island. The only way that I can explain the way that last bit works is to rationalize that All Monsters Attack does not take place in the same universe where the events of Godzilla really happened. Since the only time monsters appear in this film are in Ichiro's dreams and imagination, I can only conclude that Ichiro lives in OUR world, where Godzilla is a cult hero, action figure, and movie icon. How else could anyone ever make sense out of a film series where the central character goes from being a manifestation of our fears and guilt about the atomic bomb to a corny father figure showing young Ichiro how to fight off bullies? All Monsters Attack illustrates a funny point about popular movie villains that seems to be true over and over again. Any villain that's significantly well-designed and represented in a series of films eventually goes from being someone that the audience is terrified of to someone that the audience roots for and and wants to see on a t-shirt. Darth Vader. Jason. Freddy. Hannibal Lecter. These characters epitomize the villain, they are often embodiments of evil, and yet they usually become the main selling point of pop cultural empires that appear on the surface to be about good triumphing over evil. While Godzilla always had the potential to be cheesy, I have to admit that I never thought I'd see him training his son Minilla to breathe fire as a way to teach a sissy kid how to stand up for himself. The bully storyline is interesting too, because it reflects a theme from one of my favorite Japanese movies, Tampopo where another undersized kid has to learn to stand up for himself with the help of a surrogate father figure. I find the way that these two films handle the bully story to be opposed to the way that classic set up is usually handled in American narratives. Over here, the moral is almost always that fighting and violence won't solve anything, and that there are other ways to stand up to a bully or that fitting in with the bully and his crowd aren't important in the long run. Often the American version of this story ends with a kid having to beat the bully despite his best effort to avoid confrontation--the same way that a villain in an American movie often gets his comeuppance in a final desperate act of self-defense on the hero's part rather than as a natural consequence of the climactic confrontation itself. I was surprised that Ichiro's journey was scripted to end with his beating up of the bully, but I was even more surprised that he then skipped off and joined the bully's gang! If that wasn't bad enough, I moved from being surprised to being shocked when the adult antagonists in the film repeatedly admonished one another with shouts of 'God Damn!' I thought this was a family film? This 1969 entry to the classic kaiju era was supposed to be a film for kids that capitalized on Godzilla's growing popularlity among younger audiences. I shudder at the thought that those audiences were leaving the theater thinking that the best way to deal with a bully or a gang of prankster kids was to become one. I'm not sure that the same morality play would have ever floated in the US, but I guess this film WAS released for American audiences, and in fact it's one that I think I've probably seen parts of on television more than any other. After the sublime monster goodness of Invasion of Astro-Monster, it seems like the Toho clan was running out of viable ideas for Godzilla, and as a result this film winds up falling between the cracks as being too juvenile for older audiences, but oddly inappropriate for kids. Back to Top {0} Comments Godzilla Madess Part 4 : Invasion of Astro-Monster Sunday, January 27, 2008 | Zeroplate For my money, Invasion of Astro-Monster is the high water mark for this classic era of man-in-suit kaiju films. While the team up of Godzilla and Rodan against King Ghidorah is a complete rehash of the monster conflict from King Ghidorah, the rest of this film offers something funky and new to Toho's formula. The film starts off by announcing a complete disregard for logic and rules of the real world by stating that the action is taking place in 196X. We quickly see a manned rocket mission from Earth on its way to Planet X (actually a moon of Jupiter,) where the duo of an American and Japanese astronaut are sent to explore a newly discovered world. It's about here, five minutes into the film, where things stop making any real sense. The scientists explain that they are only now able to see Planet X because their telescope technology wasn't advanced enough before which speaks a little bit to the idea that humans in this world have to deal with realistic limitations. Then we see the two astronauts landing their rocket ship and venturing out onto Planet X and we're supposed to buy that mankind lacked the technology to even see Planet X a few years ago, but that we're perfectly capable of sending a couple of guys there in a matter of hours. Of course, Planet X looks a lot like the moon, but it turns out to be inhabited by a race of odd and stiff humanoid aliens who have been forced underground by the destruction of Monster Zero. We soon come to learn that Monster Zero is the same beast that folks back home know as King Ghidorah, and the astronauts get to watch Ghidorah going to town on the Planet X terrain via a video screen. As the Planet X leader explains in his mechanical monotone, Godzilla and Rodan go by different names on Planet X, specifically Monster Zero One and Monster Zero Two. Okay, really? Not just Monster One and Monster Two but Monster Zero One and Zero Two? Is there any way that makes sense? The plot is kicked into gear when the astronauts are sent back to Earth to ask Earth's leaders if it's okay for Godzilla and Rodan to somehow travel to Planet X to fight off Ghidorah. Nevermind that no one has really ever come up with a good way to find or talk to these monsters, the astronauts figure it's worth a shot since the Planet X guys are offering a tape with data about how to cure cancer in return! Invasion of Astro-Monster is just willfully silly as it mashes up the kaiju tropes with American 1950's Sci-Fi imagery straight out of Plan 9 From Outer-Space (although in this world, maybe it would have been Plan Zero Nine.) The aliens fly in iridescent saucers and they shoot ray guns, while Earth's mightiest model Jeeps, tanks, and rocket launchers are typically useless when aimed at giant monsters. I love it. It's as if the world forgets what works against these monsters after each encounter, and they are always mobilized to come up with a new strategy for thwarting or fighting off Godzilla and his pals. At least this time they ask the Association of Housewives for advice (and I'm not making that up!) This film epitomizes all of the cartoonish fun that that these films can be by throwing so many ridiculous plot elements at the screen that the audience has to just laugh through it. On the human side, there's another brother/sister dynamic, a romance between the American astronaut and a Planet X spy, and a nerdy inventor of a device called the Lady Guard that looks like a compact but winds up being a kind of personal alarm device. On the monster end of things, Rodan and Godzilla get to square off against King Ghidorah, and Godzilla breaks out into a bizarre kind of kung-fu leprechaun dance when they defeat their foe. During the film's climax (and honestly, the last 30 minutes all feel like one big climax,) the monsters fight each other and the humans fight off the aliens (whose intentions, it turns out, were to use the monsters to conquer Earth to get some water) with what can only be described as a precursor to the Minmei defense! And yet in all of this, and maybe I'm reaching here, is the return of the symbolism that made early Godzilla films so resonant. While the film isn't concerned with milking the atomic bomb/nuclear threat story much more, the role that technology plays here is key, especially the idea of the computer. The Planet X aliens get all of their instructions from some unseen computer that has essentially turned them all into carbon copy automatons. It's the classic fear of losing the self to the cold world of machines that underpins the human drama in Astro-Monster, and that's a theme that not only picks up where the atomic bomb left off, but winds up being fairly prescient of a large swath of future Sci-Fi films. Ultimately, it's a man-made piece of technology that saves the day, so the film doesn't stick to a hard line about technology the way something like Terminator wants to, but the underlying premise is there and it reminds me that these movies, as silly as they are, can still work on multiple levels. Back to Top {0} Comments Godzilla Madness 3 : King Ghidorah The Three Headed Monster Sunday, January 27, 2008 | Zeroplate By late 1964, Toho had already established Godzilla, Mothra, and Rodan in their own movies, so to keep the series going they came up with a new monster that was enough of a badass as to necessitate a giant monster team up. King Ghidorah, the three headed dragon kaiju who is born out of a strange meteorite that has crashed to Earth is indeed the fiercest and biggest of the monsters, and Toho did something pretty remarkable in bringing him to life. For Ghidorah, the typical rubber suit is augmented by pupeteers who work the three heads, wings, and twin tails so that the monster is always moving. Since all of the monsters have a signature lok and sound, it must have been a challenge at this point to create a new beast that was significantly different as to be instantly recognized in posters and trailers and huge battle royale scenes, but Ghidorah is a real triumph in monster design. The story follows a brother and sister team (a common theme in these films, which is antithetical to the American notion that every leading adult couple in a film has to share a love story,) who get wrapped up in the mysterious disappearance of a princess who reappears claiming to be from Venus. The Venusian's predictions about bad things happening and monsters appearing start to come true very quickly and the film is off, with a carload of gangsters out to kill the princess, the brother who's taken on the assignment to protect her, the sister who wants the princess' story, and of course the pixies from Infant Island who will eventually be called on to ask Mothra for help. There's franky not much new in the story of King Ghidorah, and most of the film feels like little more than the necessary machinations to introduce a new monster and a giant battle. As a fan of the genre, I don't really mind that, but I can see how this particular entry in the Godzilla series might not excite a lot of people. The film spends almost no time on any of the allegorical themes that made the genre interesting, and it instead seems to use nondiscript characters to fill the perfunctory roles of scientists, reporters, and military men. If King Ghidorah himself wasn't such a cool character design, I don't know that there'd be much in this film to warrant repeated viewings. The battles get a little tedious and the human story lacks an emotional core that might otherwise keep it interesting. Maybe the producers knew that they had a good thing but not necessarily a great movie in King Ghidorah, since nearly the same cast of characters would show up just a year later in Invasion of Astro-Monster, a film that put a new spin on all of this and wound up as one of my favorites of this era. Back to Top {0} Comments Godzilla Madness part 2 : Mothra vs. Godzilla Monday, January 21, 2008 | Zeroplate I feel like I must have seen this movie a dozen times or more, but in fact I'm sure that I've never sat through the whole thing. Some of the imagery is remarkably close to footage from Mothra, and some of it wound up in a black and white Super 8 reel that I have, so it has a kind of familiarity but watching it now made the whole thing seem very new. Mothra Vs. Godzilla builds on the template set out by Godzilla Raids Again by pitting the king of the monsters against another giant foe, but this time, Godzilla is clearly the villain. Carried over from Mothra's origin story in her own film, the giant moth monster is once again represented as a benevolent and naturally peaceful creature tied to the peaceful natives on Infant Island. While the natives and the little pixies that sing to Mothra aren't quite as psychadelic and out there in this film as they are in the original Mothra, it's interesting to see how their look derives from a blend of Polynesian and Ainu motifs. Also interesting was the theme that this film built off of. While it threw in enough jabs at nuclear experimentation to keep that idea running, the major plot and conflict for the human characters in Mothra Vs. Godzilla is one about trust. From the fishermen and businessmen who initially find Mothra's egg at sea and screw each other over trying to make a buck from it, to the modern Japanese asking the tribal natives of Infant Island for help in spite of their comrades' obvious attempt to cash in at Mothra's expense, the whole film winds up being about people trusting other people. It's a relatively thin and obvious morality play, but these weren't movies made for adult audiences to deeply analyze. The fact that the series tackles an idea outside of the danger of atomic/nuclear experimentation is proof enough that the films aren't simply throw-away cheese. While the theme music used in this film is probably my favorite of any of the kaiju films I've seen, it defintiely felt like there wasn't enough time to write a full score, as the same theme plays over and over and over again. This movie also employed a more obvious use of sped-up monster footage to keep the lumbering beasts from looking like people and pupeteers struggling to fight on a soundstage. In one respect, I love that the sets and models and scale version of everything are very easy to detect because those elements lend these movies some charm. However, much of the battle between Godzilla and the Mothra larvae takes place on a desolate island where there's not much to give the monsters a sense of scale. While the set and repeating theme render the battle scene a little tedious, it's still fun to watch Godzilla fail to deal with two worms that are much smaller than he is that have really only one power. Mothra Vs. Godzilla was an obvious attempt to cash in on the power of two monsters who'd each had their own features, battling to the death in a single film. I think that the analog today might be something along the lines of Alien vs. Predator, and when I look at this film in that light, I see how easy it is to dismiss it. Still, it's hard to be so cynical about these movies because they seem to always know what they are, and who they are for. The series may never attempt to get back to its more serious origin in Gojira, but this installment makes for an entertaining and at least partly thoughtful romp that works well with both the Mothra and Godzilla mythos. It explains how Mothra can live forever through a cycle of death and rebirth, and it begins to give us unexplained Godzilla returns to set up the idea that Toho isn't going to worry about HOW Godzilla keeps coming back--they just want you to know that he will. Color. A Vs. Title! theme on repeat greed and human on human violence the death and rebirth of mothra Back to Top {0} Comments Godzilla Madness part 1 : Godzilla Raids Again Sunday, January 20, 2008 | Zeroplate Inspired by Cloverfield and by a Christmas where I wound up with no fewer than 4 Godzilla-themed gifts, I've decided to watch my way through the Godzilla Box Set that I got for Christmas, and to write a bit about each film. The box includes a bunch of old Godzilla films made between 1954 and 1975, each presented with the original Japanese cut and the english-dubbed, Americanized cut. I say Americanized because these movies weren't simply dubbed in some cases, but they were re-cut for the American audience for reasons that are sometimes hard to understand. This series of posts will not start with the original 1954 Gojira, simply because I've already written about it HERE. Instead, we begin with the first Godzilla sequel, Godzilla Raids Again. I'd never seen this particular chapter in the green guy's history, as I think the films that played most often on TV when I was a kid were the color kaiju movies from the 60s and 70s. This entry from 1955 seems to have served as a bridge between the mostly somber and straight-faced atomic bomb allegory of Gojira and the more psychadelic, pure entertainment of Godzilla films that came later. Raids Again introduces Godzilla's first kaiju nemesis in the form of Anguirus, a kind of big spiky turtle-like creature that looks a bit like a cross between Gamera and an Ankylosaurus. As a first giant monster opponent, Anguirus is an odd choice because he's not bipedal like Godzilla, which would have presented the production crew with a whole new set of challenges on the set. Since giant monster-on-monster fight action is what propelled the kaiju genre, Godzilla Raids Again seems to have a pretty important role in kaiju history by way of its introduction of monsters battling other monsters. This is an interesting film in that it tries to remain somewhat grounded in reality and it still focuses on the human characters, while it obviously begins to open up a world where Godzilla himself becomes a hero. It maintains some continuity as characters discuss the way Godzilla was dispatched with the Oxygen Destroyer, but it also opens the revolving door for an endless stream of Godzillas that can be destroyed and then reborn or replaced. I'm still on the fence about this. Godzilla wouldn't have nearly the pop icon appeal if he was always just a destructive manifestation of mankind's hubris, but there's something about rooting for the giant beast that is stepping on people that seems wrong when you consider the creature's origin. There's a wonderful depth to Godzilla as the metaphorical doom brought about by the atomic age, but that kind of depth only works if the monster remains threatening. In later films, Godzilla is clearly the hero, and he's more or less protecting the earth from other monsters, or at least fighting them off in a way that benefits humans. Cloverfield played a bit with the idea of a monster stomping on New York as a symbolic reminder of September 11th, and while it didn't do as much with that connection as it could have, the idea was clearly there. These giant monsters are flat out silly in a lot of ways, but they give us a good chance to see the effects of large scale destruction and devastation through an easy-to-stomach allegory. A kaiju film that served as an allegoy for ethnic clensing, violence in places like Darfur, the repression in Tibet, or even the US government's pathetic response to events like Katrina could all work. We need these movies sometimes to remind us of the human toll; to show us that when a monster's tail takes out a whole building, there are dozens or hundreds of lives crushed and irrevokably changed in an instant. Godzilla Raids Again might be seen as the point at which the kaiju films began to lose some of their allegorical power, but it also reminded me that these films used to try to balance the entertainment with a conscience. For old, slow-moving, black and white Godzilla, I still prefer the original but this one had a nice expansion of scope and never strayed too far into farce. Back to Top {0} Comments Cloverfield Saturday, January 19, 2008 | Zeroplate Thanks to my near obsessive keeping up with movies at CHUD and Ain't It Cool News, I was on the Cloverfield bandwagon way early. The very first time I saw anything about the film I extrapolated from the image and thought "wouldn't it be cool if someone made a kaiju film told from the point of view of the crazed, scared-shitless people running around the city as it is being smashed?" Well, that's exactly what Cloverfield turned out to be, no more and no less. I have to say that I absolutely loved the thing from the moment the first building went down in the distance. While I didn't care at all about who lived or died, it was great fun to watch people reacting to a giant monster destroying the city from ground level. It's a fantastic idea and it was executed well, so that adds up to a good time at the movies. Devin from CHUD mentioned that he didn't want to see a sequel or prequel or anything else like that, as such add-ons might diminish the mystery of the film that we already have. I completely disagree. I'd run out to see another version of Cloverfield told from the typical omniscient blockbuster point of view. There was a theme song that played over the end credits that was like a modern riff on old Godzilla scores that was just awesome and it reminded me how much I miss those kinds of movies and how no one does them well anymore. I'd love to see all kinds of other Cloverfield stuff actually--other cameras (the one thing I wished the movie had added) or a fake documentary, or a movie about rebuilding a city in the wake of a kaiju attack... it all fascinates me and I think this was a great launching off point for a new kaiju mythos that can be wholly American. Last year brought The Host which I loved, and this year we've got Cloverfield. Could we be at the beginning of a new giant monster movie movement a la the zombie revival of the last 6 years? I think it's entirely possible, and I'll be there on opening night for all of it. Back to Top {0} Comments John Carpenter's The Thing Saturday, January 12, 2008 | Zeroplate The Plaza is doing a great job of turning itself into a legitimate Reperatory House here in Atlanta. Since the new owners took over, I've been able to catch Mothra, Jason and the Argonauts, LA Confidential, Evil Dead II, Inframan, and now The Thing, which were all movies I'd never seen on a big screen. If you notice a common thread there between most of the films, it's because most of these screenigs were hosted by Atlanta's Silver Scream Spookshow or by Splatter Cinema, both of which specialize in finding prints of Horror and Sci-Fi classics. I'm happy to have so many genre films to see, and I hope that the success of those events leads to more screenings of films like LA Confidential. If you've never gone to a theater to see an old movie you might have missed a decade or three ago, you should really give it a try. These have been some of the most fun times I've had at the movies, and they almost always beat whatever crap is playing at the 24 screen multiplex on a given night. I'd never seen The Thing at all, because it was rumored to be the scariest movie ever made when I was a kid. Just the sight of the poster or VHS box was enough to get me moving in the other direction. Somehow it never seemed like the kind of thing I NEEDED to see, but then in college I took a Sci Fi Film class where we watched The Thing From Another World which I liked a lot and I figured I owed it to myself to see the better-received John Carpenter remake. I'm glad I waited for a chance to see it on a big screen, though. Wow, it was pretty fantastic and the Splatter folks found a nice, clean print of it. I went to see Raiders of the Lost Ark at the Fox a couple of years ago and that print looked like you would expect a 25 year old piece of film that had been played hundreds of times to look, but this print of The Thing was damn near immaculate. Watching an old horror movie reminded me how much I miss practical effects in modern movies. I caught a little bit of Shaun of the Dead today on TV and as much as I love that movie, both it and Hot Fuzz had a couple of distracting CG blood shots. It's just a lot more fun to watch puppets and rubbery monsters inflating, I think. That said, I'll be first in line to see Cloverfield and I'm sure it's going to be very heavy on the CG. Back to Top {0} Comments Stardust (DVD) Sunday, January 06, 2008 | Zeroplate I wanted to see Stardust when it was in theaters but I never had the right opportunity. I regret that now because this would have been a blast to see on a big screen with a receptive audience. If this film is even a part of the reason that Matthew Vaughan dropped out of X-Men 3, then I'm happy that he did (this coming from a guy with 100+ X-Men toys staring at him right now!) Stardust reminded me that we're all a lot better off rewarding filmmakers who set out to tell new stories than we are flocking to endless episodes of the same thing. Sequelitis is probably keeping dozens of enchanting movies like this one from being made, and that's sad. I've somehow missed Neil Gaiman's career almost entirely, despite my pretty regular comic book habit. I think that Gaiman really hit it big around the exact time that I had given comics up, and when I got back into things, it just seemed too hard to catch up with Sandman and all that. What little I've read of Gaiman's I have liked, but I've certainly not followed him from comics into novels and original screenplays. With Stardust, I'm now regretting that, too. There is no shortage of childish fantasy films where the impish kid discovers the magical key, book, cupboard, jacket, or trinket and manages to discover a fantastic world that is just outside his front door. While the setup for Stardust plays with some fantasy story conventions, it's the way that this film works around those cliches and turns those conventions on their ear that makes it fun to watch. You know the kid is going to grow up and become a hero, but you just aren't sure how it's going to work and who else is going to survive along the way. Rather than a helpless damsel or an ultra-modern Riot Prrrincess, Claire Danes' character is strong without seeming like she stepped out of a self-aware, revisionist fairy tale. The great irony to all of this is that as I could feel the film ending, I really wanted for a sequel--for some way to follow up with these characters again. Maybe the best thing I can look forward to is the next effort from Matthew Vaughan and to Neil Gaiman's own directorial adaptation of his Death comic. Back to Top {0} Comments Charlie Wilson's War Thursday, January 03, 2008 | Zeroplate I'm no fan of Tom Hanks. Through no fault of his own, he's just become too big of a celebrity and done too many movies for me to see characters instead of the actor a lot of the time. I've liked a lot of his films and I think he's a surprisingly versatile guy considering his meager TV and movie origins, but I almost always see him in a movie and think "wow, TOM HANKS is really having to deal with some shit this time" or "TOM HANKS is a funny dude" instead of applying those thoughts to his characters. It's the same problem I have with Tom Cruise, so maybe this is a problem for Toms. Despite all of that, I enjoyed Charlie Wilson's War. Of the Phillip Seymore Hoffman films I saw last week (this and The Savages) this was the one I enjoyed more and it was the one that gave Hoffman a better chance to steal scenes. I've watched Aaron Sorkin's The American President more times than most movies that I really like because it's just effortlessly entertaining and watchable. Some of that must be Michael Douglas because I feel exactly the same about The Game which is a much different movie. But some of it is Aaron Sorkin's ability to write smart and funny dialogue. I was a huge fan of The West Wing up until they went and did the September 11th episode that played out like a lecture from Rob Lowe looking down on the audience for being so unengaged. I also lost a lot of respect for the program when I saw a dead on parody on Mad TV that exposed the show as a lot of people walking briskly through the white house squeezing as much attitude and armchair political analysis into a few seconds as possible. It got tedious, and I don't know if I can lay all of that at Sorkin's feet but it definitely put me off of his work for a while. The abysmal show he did next for NBC played out exactly like the pitch "it's the West Wing set on a fictionalized version of Saturday Night Live" sounds like it would. I tried to get into that but really saw it as such a rehash that I couldn't stomach it. I could hear Rob Lowe and Alison Janney's lines coming out of other people's mouths and it just seemed lazy. I think a lot of other viewers agreed. Then there was the whole Bill Maher thing that added a layer of completely undeserved but somehow palpable resentment for Sorkin on top of my West Wing ire. Maher commented on Sorkin being found with some drugs and he got incredibly indignant about it to the point that he essentially said that Aaron Sorkin was a genius above reproach and that we should let him do whatever he wants to do because he's better than all of us. This was certainly not Sorkin's fault, but I disliked him for it anyway and I'm more than willing to admit that was a stupid reason to turn off from his writing. I was glad, then, to see that I enjoyed the writing in Charlie Wilson's War and that I didn't find it preachy or condescending. It was often funny and sharp and it dealt smartly with issues without beating me over the head with a message or point of view. I actually don't mind point of view movies, but I think I would have been less receptive to one from Sorkin based on past experience. So, I'm happy to say that I'm over my Aaron Sorkin bump and I'm ready to look forward to his next project. Back to Top {0} Comments The Savages Thursday, January 03, 2008 | Zeroplate I guess that films like this become award-bait and that they please critics because they focus on characters in real and unpleasant circumstances. At the same time, films like this tend not to wow audiences because not many people want to see lives as ordinary and troubled as their own splashed out on a giant screen. I go back and forth on movies like this myself, sometimes finding a lot of value in them and sometimes wondering why I'm paying to see something that is little more than an awful reminder of what my life is or could be like. I found myself really in love with The Squid and The Whale a couple of years ago, but less taken with The Savages which mines some of the same fertile ground of inter-family strife. While the two are different movies and different stories, there was a similarity in the dark humor that I think rightfully puts them in the same basic category. These are movies that are made so that we can laugh at those terrible and yet unavoidable situations in life, but we aren't supposed to laugh so hard that we forget how painful these experiences can be. The Savages was well written and acted and it was just charming enough to get over some of the more painful scenes, but it wasn't a movie with enough light to entice me to seek it out again. Thankfully, The Savages sticks the landing in a way many movies like this do not. It ends on an up note which really helps put most of the film's darkness into perspective, and it gives adequate closure to the stories of the two leads. I was happy to have seen it once, but I don't think it's something I'll probably ever watch again and that's not such a bad thing. Back to Top {0} Comments 2007 In Review Sunday, December 23, 2007 | Zeroplate A Few of My Favorite Things This has been a good movie year. People often like to hold each new year up against some banner year in film (especially geek film) like 1999 (Fight Club, The Matrix, etc) or 1982 (Blade Runner, E.T., etc..) 2006 gave those years a good run with films like Children of Men, The Fountain, and Pan's Labyrinth, but 2007 has been no slouch. It has been a great year for funny movies, in fact, and I think that's almost always harder to find than a great year for serious films. My top list isn't an award prognostication or my attempt to list the best of anything; it's just a list of my personal faves. If you see one or two things on this list that you like, chances are good that you should give the rest a try. 1. Juno - This may be sitting on top only because it is so recent in my mind, but it's the one movie I've seen this year that I wanted to see again imediately. Ellen Page is so good in this, and her character is so likeable that I wish that we'd get a series of sequels to this instead of an endless stream of Saw or Spider-Man flicks. The movie is cute and warm without ever falling into sentimental schlock. The teen dialogue is a little stylized so it sometimes sounds like the film is taking place in a hightened alternate universe, but just slightly. I can't recommend this one enough. 2. The King of Kong - I love it when a documentary can end up on my favorites list. I try to see a couple documentaries in the theater each year and this year brought the best one I've seen in a long time. This is the perfectly constructed sports underdog film but it happens to be about guys playing competitive Donkey Kong, and it happens to be real. I took a group of friends to this one and It was one of the best times I had at the movies all year. 3. The Boss of it All - I didn't catch this during its seven day theatrucal run in Atlanta, but I rented it just as soon as I could and it was great. I never know what to expect from Lars von Trier, and even then, an office comedy was completely out of left field. This film was so dryly funny that I was always surprised at how much genuine laughter it was eliciting. The experimental camera techniques lend the film a strange "wrongness" that takes pretty ordinary conversations and renders them hilarious. I loved this one and I hope von Trier has more of this kind of stuff in him. 4. There Will Be Blood - seeing the premier of this one with PT Anderson in attendance probably hightened the experience, but I still expect this to hold up over time. It's such a simple story with a small cast, but it's incredibly well shot, acted, directed, and scored. People who want a not-so-pleasant but riveting and sophisticated film to watch this winter probably won't find a better film than this one. 5. No Country For Old Men - The Coens are back and this film was so solid that I'm willing to forget that the last two they directed even happened. I love the silence in this, and the way that the film plays with the same kind of dread-building that drives THERE WILL BE BLOOD. The two films are really different but they both share some tonal qualities and they both feature some ruthless human monsters that are just plain fun to watch if you are a fan of movies. 6. The Cold Hour - It's probably not going to show up at your local theater (ever) but this was a smart, well-designed, wonderful sci-fi flick that kept me completely engaged through a string of pretty familiar concepts. There's maybe nothing completely new about this film other than the refreshing care with which it was made and the point of view of its protagonist, but it's wonderful to be able to see a fully realized and well-executed sci-fi film in these days of easy CGI shitfests. I saw a handful of Spanish films this year and this one edged out the rest. Movies from Spain are suddenly on my radar in a big way. 7. Grindhouse - I liked Planet Terror and loved Death Proof, and with the trailers and everything thrown in, this managed to be greater than the sum of its parts. I'm not a blind Tarantino or Rodriguez follower, but they both scored big points with this one. The double feature format was fantastic and I wish it had done well enough to warrant a series of similar events. Maybe one day we'll get a double bill of Machete and Don't... a guy can dream. 8. Son of Rambow - I imagine that this film will come out sometime around the release of the new RAMBO flick, unless Stallone's people see that as something that will confuse ticket buyers. I wouldn't put anything past your average Rambo fan, honestly. This was a great film though, full of fun and heart and playful energy. I've compared it before to Danny Boyle's Millions and I think that's still probably the best reference point. I am anxious to see how this does when it is finally released because I think it's the kind of film that can connect with a lot of people, but it's a Brit-made comedy and sometimes the accent alone is a death sentence in the USA. 9. Hot Fuzz - I'm officially on the Edgar Wright bandwagon, and I'm okay with that. Despite the fact that this film was mis-sold to the US audience, it did pretty well here and it warranted a quick DVD release and a surprisingly quick double dip with a 3 DVD set a few months later. I think you have to chock this up to the legacy of Shaun of the Dead which seems to have very quickly reached a certain level of cult status. I'm glad this is all working out, because it means Wright and his merry band of players will get to keep brining us movies at a pretty regular interval. I don't know if Wright is always going to be the guy making the comedic riff/homage to a particular style of film, I hope he tries something else (Antman would be cool!) but if I can offer this suggestion: take to the stars. We need an Edgar Wright sci-fi film, there's no question about it. 10. The Host - I had a hard time picking between this film and a few others that I really liked this year. This spot could have easily included the very simple and touching Once or the thoughtful and funny documentary What Would Jesus Buy? or a double feature of Knocked Up and Superbad which were both funny and will warrant repeat viewings. But I had to stick up for the Korean monster movie that had more clever moments and more attention to character detail than probably any other giant monster movie in decades. The creature design is fantastic, the gags alternate between funny and scary, and the story focuses as it should on the people, not the cars, buildings, or streets that the monster tears up. This will probably get sequelized over and over in Korea as it seems a lot of Asian cinema works that way. I guess they learned it from us: take a great idea that makes a few bucks and retread it over and over until it starts losing, then try something else. Maybe a sequel to The Host will be just as great, I hope so, but even if it isn't, I loved this movie and would be proud to own it. Back to Top {0} Comments Juno Wednesday, December 19, 2007 | Zeroplate Good comedies are hard to come by, but Juno is a great one. There were a handful of films that screened at festivals earlier this year that I was anxious to see, and Juno was near the top of that list. I'm so glad that the wait was worth it. X-Men 3 marked my introduction to Ellen Page, but this is the film where she really won me over completely. I've heard nothing but good things about her work in Hard Candy too, and I can completely believe it. In fact, her performance as Kitty Pryde in the X-Men film was one of the only really nuanced turns in that film, and from the look of Juno, she's going to have a really bright future. The rest of the cast is great bordering on insane. Allison Janey manages to steal the show at least three times despite a very limited amount of screen time. Michael Cera doesn't actually have all that much to do, but you love his character anyway. Jason Bateman's revival (Arrested Development, a handful of great roles in okay movies, and now THIS) must be on track to rival John Travolta's... if only Jason Bateman had ever been at the apex before. This is a rare movie where you love almost all of the characters, flaws and everything, and you really want it all to work out for everyone in the end. It doesn't, of course, at least not in the neat way that would feel cheap and wholly untrue. But the film does manage that perfect kind of conclusion that small films can shoot for and I loved it for that. Kimya Dawson's music is the perfect fit for the film, and although there are moments when you want to listen to the lyrics as much as the dialog, I have a feeling that this film is going to sell a lot of soundtrack CDs, because the effervescent feeling that the film imparts is largely connected to and a product of Dawson's songs. When the film closed with characters in the movie playing a Moldy Peaches song, I just about lost it. It's going to be funny to watch the reaction that people have to this movie and to the music in it because I think there will be a whole lot of discovery going on. Oddly, the film's marketing approach has been to take not only a page but the whole playbook from Napoleon Dynamite and I think it must be working well. Everything down to the title graphics kinda reminds of the Napoleon campaign, and the fact that towns have hosted a number of free screenings with t-shirt give aways, a fan club to join and support, and a web-based viral campaign fueled by fan-love for the film all smacks of the exact strategy that propelled Napoleon into the stratosphere. What that means is that in three or four months when this thing is still going strong, building steam, gaining an audience, and opening wider and wider, the backlash will start. It'll start (and has in some respects) by people paying it backhanded compliments like "it's a cute little film." Eventually people will just be sick of feeling like the phenomenon is spreading like the magic Kool-Aid and they'll just hate the thing on principle. I watched this happen with Napoleon Dynamite and I didn't much understand it then, either. Sure, that movie wasn't for everyone: the 60 year old ladies that I saw it with at the first screening in Atlanta just didn't get it. That's fine. But for the target demographic of people basically 30 and younger, I don't know how the film can't strike a chord or provide a laugh. The fact is, that movie got to where it did because the studio kept showing it to mostly young audiences for free over and over and over until people (like me) had seen it three times and had roped others in too. It became a monster with merchandising and catch phrases that were run into the ground and there's no doubt in my mind that people might similarly wear some of Juno's finer points out. But just like I felt Napoleon Dynamite was a funny, honest movie that deserved to be seen despite the backlash, Juno also deserves a chance. Moreso, in fact, because where Napoleon was a funny, quirky movie, this one really works on a deeper level and it does so without any above-the-title names, CGI, or a reliance on hip marketing. It works on the screen, just as it is, and audiences are going to learn that. Honestly, the backlash is probably something the studio is looking forward to with glee because when it arrives, it'll only mean that the film has built up enough critical mass that it has spawned its own haters. Like any film, I'm sure there will be people who honestly just don't enjoy or get or relate to Juno, and that's fine. I don't know how you can leave this movie not totally in love with Ellen Page, but maybe that's just me. Juno is such a rare breed of a movie with heart and character and pathos and lots and lots of laughs that come from clever writing and some great characters rather than farts and prat falls, that I wish the same team could just make another one. I wouldn't at all be surprised if this got some love come awards season, especially in a year when it looks like the awards are probably going to be skewing towards dark, serious movies. This one might follow a similar path to Little Miss Sunshine and be that one indie film that people all seem to know about or see. That can be annoying to watch as a kind of movie snob, but I'm all for anything that gets people to see this and that gets the creative folks a chance to make more movies like this. I wish we could have one of these films every year--lord knows that studios are trying to make 10 of them a year--but I think it's just one of those lightning in a bottle type of situations that can't be manufactured no matter how many executives try to break down how Napoleon or Blair Witch or whatever managed to make 100 million dollars. This movie is pretty special, definitely in my top five of the year and it's been a pretty good year! Back to Top {0} Comments I Am Legend Saturday, December 15, 2007 | Zeroplate Will Smith alone can't kill a movie, I don't think. He can certainly drag one down though, and as I watched I Am Legend I kept waiting for Smith to be the thing that sank it. I was surprised that with the exception of a few Big Willie Style moments (that actually helped give the film SOME levity,) the Fresh Prince was pretty much on point as the last man in New York fighting off infected zombies. The Omega Man is one of the first movies that I have a clear memory of seeing in a theater. In fact, I clearly remember that we left about 20 or 30 minutes in because I was way too young to be watching Charleton Heston shoot at mutants from his apartment. I don't know what I was doing at that movie or how I even came to see it in a theater considering that it was released four years before I was born, but somehow I do remember seeing it in a big theater when I was about four. So with that story behind me, I was at first excited to see a newer version of that story (since watching The Omega Man now is only useful for comedy.) Then I saw that it was a big budget Will Smith vehicle and I got considerably less excited. Then I saw that it was directed by the guy who did Constantine, a film I have a lot of love for despite Keanu Reeves, and I got excited again. A bad review had me thinking I might wait for a rental, then a good review had me pumped to see it again. Such is the nature of being a movie nerd, I guess. In the end, I thought the film worked most of the time, but that it would have been a lot better without any monsters. The zombie people are integral to the plot, so they need to be in the movie in SOME capacity, but I kept getting dragged out of the movie any time a very obviously CGI humanoid was thrown up on the screen. I don't know why the creatures couldn't have been played by skinny actors in make up or ballet dancers or something, and I think I would have liked for the movie not to show them at all, but what we got instead were liberal doses of CGI zombies that seemed weightless when they jumped over cars, but full of energy (or mass, depending on how you look at it) when they ran into things. There was a pretty bad CGI lion in one sequence too, and it got me to wondering (after seeing a Narnia trailer) if we just won't ever see another real wild animal in a movie ever again. Back to Top {0} Comments Fantastic Fest 3 : Day One Sunday, September 23, 2007 | Zeroplate A lot of people might consider my idea to spend the first real vacation I've had in years doing nothing more than watching movies a real waste. I like to travel I guess, and try new things, eat exotic food, see sights--but I've done a lot of that. I've lived on 3 continents and I've been lucky enough to travel around and see the things that everyone likes to take pictures of. What I really crave are specific experiences--things that belong to a time and place and group of people. A film festival is just like that! But it's my vacation time and I decided to fly out to Austin, Texas for the 3rd Annual Fantastic Fest. For those not in the know, here you go: Fantastic Fest Website. Day One We got to the Alamo Drafthouse and watching things kick off with the opening party which featured music-controlled dancing flames, pinata smashing, a Gore Cannon that shot entrails at live human targets, crucified goats (that became tacos) and a lot of people wearing horror movie t-shirts. Not knowing anyone at the festival really, we kind of walked around a few times and stared at people and started getting in the mood for a week of genre films. Amber took some swings at a Barbie pinata and we're all very lucky that she didn't bust it open becuase it turned out that the thing contained very real goat entrails and a skinned goat skull. I found this all very funny but it put Amber the vegetarian off dinner for a while. After the opening party it was on to the screenings. The line for the opening night movie Diary of the Dead was already long and I figured we had virtually no chance of getting in so we happily jumped in like for something else. George Romero was literally one of the first people I saw as we got to the theater (man, he's tall) and that was good enough for me. I'll catch the flick at the drive in when it finally hits. Wicked Flowers Described in the festival information as "Lynchian," I was expecting this Japanese import to be a lot weirder than it was. I find a lot of Japanese cinema to be willfully inscrutible but this was actually a pretty straightforward and well-told story about a guy who gets sucked into a game that turns out to be deadly. The film was obviously made on a short budget but it had a lot of clever stuff in it and a lot of heart. One or two of the performances in the film were distractingly over-the-top, but for the most part it was really solid. It was shot on video and looked like it could use a post-production bump (and a better sound mix) but it was actually a pretty inspiring piece. I could imagine making something like that in a couple weeks with minimal equipment and a good story. Of course there was probably a lot more that went into the film than what I'm thinking, but it was still a good example of having an interesting story, a good visual designer, some capable actors, and the will to pull it all together into something enjoyable. I don't imagine this will get distribution in the states and it might even be hard to find on DVD but I would definitely recommend it as a renter. Since this was the first film of the festival for us, I was probably a little too generous in my audience ballot for the film when we walked out, but that was a sign that I did genuinely enjoy it. The Last Winter Our plan after the first flick had been to catch Justin Lin's Finishing the Game since I am an unabashed fan of Bruce Lee. Instead, we wound up talking to Andy who we had met at the Deliverance screening up in Clayton, GA and he made this film seem a lot more interesting. I'm glad that we gave this one a shot, even though I don't think I was particularly thrilled with it. It was billed as Ecological Horror which is not a subgenre I'd ever really considered before but one that makes a hell of a lot of sense. The horror genre is filled with ghost stories and monsters who are manifestations of our fears about technology or sex or the devil or the military but I've not seen many films where the monster is a manifestation of the environment. The film looked fantastic and the performances were all good. Ron Pearlman is a complete asshole in this and he plays that to a T. Still, the movie committed one of the cardinal sins for me and that was laying out out evey detail of the subtext of the film in exposition. Okay, the environment is revolting--the Earth is fighting back against the oil drilling--we get it. I didn't need that explained to me over and over as one character would explain it to another for the audience's benefit. The movie also kind of failed for me in the way that it dealt with the 'monster' as well. Still, it was overally pretty fun and a little thought provoking and certainly well made with a great soundtrack so I can't say that I was sorry that we chose to see it. Aachi and Sspiak This Korean animated feature was high on my list of anticipated films for this festival. I'm not sure that I got as much out of it at midnight on a night when we'd already seen two complete features, but it was definitely a high-energy way to cap out Day One. The plot to this sounds completely batshit insane: In the future the human race has run out of energy so it has turned to recyclying human excrement into energy. As a result, all people are implanted with a sensor in their anus at birth that measures their shit output and those who can crap a lot are rewarded with highly addictive and dangerous popcicles called Juicybars. A gang of Juicybar addicted mutants is out to--oh why bother? At this point, the premise has either won you over or not. And that's about how the whole film worked for me--the gags either worked and were hilarious or they kind of flopped and I waited for something else to happen. The action scenes were spectacular. There's a cyborg cop who is the kind of indestructable badass that you wish would show up in a live action movie. He reminded me a bit of the Jedis in the Clone Wars cartoons in the way he was able to do just about anything he wanted to put a cap in some villains. By the end of this we were completely drained. I don't know that I've ever sat through three features in a single day at a theater before. Thursday was a great introduction to the festival and what we were going to be in for. My only regret was missing Timecrimes which despite the name and a kind of kooky poster was supposed to be a pretty excellent film. Back to Top {0} Comments Munich Tuesday, January 03, 2006 | Zeroplate There are a hundred different angles from which you can see Steven Spielberg's newest film, Munich, but for me the most striking was to see it as a relatively simple indictment of violence and vengence. There's certainly also the Israel/Palestine angle, the parallel to the war on terror angle, the vengence movie angle, the 'violence changes us' angle, and any other number of ways to see what the movie is saying. In the last couple of weeks I've unintentionally embarked on a vengence movie spree, watching the Thai action film Tom Yum Goong, Chan-wook Park's insanely violent and chilling Sympathy for Mr. Vengence, and the old Steve McQueen vengence western Nevada Smith. Munich certainly fits in with that bunch as a portrait of vengence, but it plays much broader because its conflict is global rather than personal. Most of my favorite vengence films (Kill Bill, Old Boy, Unforgiven--off the top of my head) feature an intensely personal motivation for revenge. In Munich, the personal motivation is never so clearly spelled out. Sure, the Israelis are angred by the terrorist act at the olympics, and Eric Bana's character works for Israel's equivalent of the CIA, but we aren't given any background to support why he specifcally would embark on such a dangerous and dementing operation. The mission to assassinate arab targets seems mostly like a job, something prescribed by his sense of duty and loyalty to his country, but not born out of any personal motivation. That makes it interesting, though. What plays out then is a strangely disconnected story where Bana's character is both the real human center of the film, and also a kind of archetypal everyman who lets his anger turn into violence, representing the history of violence in that conflict. There's a great scene in the film where the undercover jews and a group of PLO operatives encounter each other and have to coexist briefly. Bana's character and the leader of the PLO gang have a chat in the stairwell and their argument really sums up the points of view behind the Israel/Palestine issue in a simple and personal way. As a moviegoer, I didn't feel like either character was making a better case for his position than the other, and by the end of the film, it's clear that neither side's violence is A)helping or B)Justified. Spielberg's heavy hand doesn't enter the film until the closing shot, which is just a gratuitous and obvious headsmack, so while the rest of the movie is overly-long, it works. It's cold and calculated in a lot of ways, and I didn't have an overwhelming emotional connection to it, but that may have been the point. The violence dehumanizes both the victims and the aggressors in a film like this, and at some point, though we hope the best for Eric Bana and his family, we can't help but think that anything ill that comes to him is certainly his due. The film shouldn't substitute as a history lesson, and it's not out to solve any problems or fix the Middle East, but it should definitely give anyone who backs the "war on terror" or any other kind of similarly aimless vendetta something to think about. Back to Top {3} Comments King Kong Wednesday, December 28, 2005 | Zeroplate You might guess that as a person who named his band after something from a Godzilla movie, I'd be the first person standing in line for this year's King Kong. It would also be reasonable to assume that as a fan of Peter Jackson going back to Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners, that I'd be thrilled to see Jackson's take on the big ape and that it would be all I could do to keep myself spoiler-free. Oddly, I found that my own expectations for the film were so low that I read a ton about it but wasn't really all that interested in seeing it once I heard that it had a three hour running time. In many ways, King Kong is the victim of success. Jackson made New Line enough money to buy a small nation with the Lord of the Rings franchise, and after winning every conceivable Oscar for a 3+ hour film capping a 12+ hour trilogy, I'm sure that the studios stepped out of his way when he said he wanted to make this movie he'd been dreaming of since childhood. More often than not, the studios and the rules of major blockbuster filmmaking cut off artistic vision and tie creativity back in exchange for a quick turn around in the multi-plex or a product that can sell toys, gumballs, and lunch boxes. With Kong, the franchise is obviously all of that, but Jackson seems to have been given carte blanche to tell the story he felt necessary. For once, it would have not been a bad idea to reign the ideas in. To be fair, I loved King Kong for the most part, and thought the action sequences and character moments were all nicely done. The problem for me was that even as a fan of slow, contemplative character films, the first hour of Kong was such a drag that it felt like a completely different movie. Of course some of that characterization was absolutely necessary, but I can't help but think that a lot of it could have been achieved much more economically. I found myself singling out shots here and there that just weighted the film down like creative ballast. Shots of the inner workings of the coal-powered boat, for instance, did little more to establish the setting than the beautiful opening title sequence. Little character beats between crew members on the Venture felt obligatory so that character deaths later on would mean something, but like Walk the Line was Johnny and June Carter's story, Kong is Ann Darrow and Kong's story, and the rest gets in the way in increasing waves. Of course Jack Black's arc as the charlatan filmmaker was necessary and tied specifically to Kong's story, but did we need to know the ship's first mate or the story of the stowaway who wanted to be a hero? What about the leading man who is briefly characterized but never really as more than a goofy, self-absorbed priss? It all just felt like too much, as if Jackson was stuck in ensemble story mode after working on the Lord of the Rings for so long. He seemed to forget here that a compelling story can be made with two characters alone, or maybe three or four, but that it's hard to shove 8 or 9 distinct stories and motivations into a single film. Some of the action was overblown too. The dinosaur stampede, apart from looking horrifically fake to the point that it must have been intentionally absurd as a throwback to the lim