2017: The Movies

Hello, old blog friend.

It’s been far, far too long since I’ve visited you. Life got in the way, sad to say. There was a stretch of time there where I wasn’t watching movies at all, and there was another stretch of time where I was watching a lot of television instead. How’ve you been? I moved across the country, got and quit jobs, had highs and lows, and now, here we are: at the beginning of 2018, and it’s award season.

I’ve been lucky enough, by circumstance, to see nearly every movie that’s in heavy awards consideration this year. One or two have fallen by the wayside: I’m not a huge fan of horror movies, so I didn’t see certain big releases, and some films, even in Burbank, California on January 14th, are still not in my local theaters.

Now, there’s a lot I could talk about about this year’s award season. I could talk about feminism in the industry, and the Times Up movement. I could talk about feminism in the films themselves, and how representation changed so much in such a short stretch of time. I could even talk about last year’s Oscars, which I still have yet to really do, in any kind of organized fashion- but instead, I’m going to do the one thing I feel like I, a twenty five year old underemployed mess with a master’s degree and way too much self doubt feels qualified to do:

Let’s talk about the movies.

Ladybird

Ladybird made a hell of a lot of headlines for being the highest rated film in Rotten Tomatoes history this year, but for some reason, I still put off seeing it by a couple days. I had absolutely no doubt I’d like the movie; of course I liked the movie. This movie is my story. It’s also my best friend’s story, director Greta Gerwig’s story, Juno‘s story, and most people who have been a middle class white teenager in America’s story.

This movie was never going to set the bar for original storytelling: it’s a story that’s been told a million times told well, again. The acting’s fantastic, it’s fun to watch, and I loved the screenplay, but I didn’t learn anything from it I didn’t already know, and which other movies hadn’t already tried to teach me.

Should you watch Ladybird? Of course you should. Will you feel like you’ve already seen it? If you’re like me, you will.

Get Out

Get Out is a movie I feel like a lot of people didn’t know they were waiting for. It’s very rare you see a piece of deep satire, brutal satire, and see it executed this savagely. It’s a movie that makes you bury your head in your hands and mutter “oh my god”, and which also makes you scream with laughter. It is damn good at being exactly what a lot of people needed to see, and what some other people needed to feel uncomfortable about, in 2017.

Because I am not a person who watches horror movies, really ever, I have a hard time categorizing this as a horror movie, rather than as heavily satirical sci-fi, in the vein of something like Black Mirror or The Twilight Zone, which I think is why I see it as a smaller film. I’m used to seeing these stories as smaller parts of a larger framework, which is why I’m not placing my bet on this for Best Picture, even though I thought it was really good. It is, however, why I am looking forward to Jordan Peele’s next movie, and his next one, until he grows even further and eventually, makes the one he’s going to win Best Picture for.

Call Me By Your Name

Oh boy, the things I could say about Call Me By Your Name

That was it, I haven’t see it.

The Post

Take the two greatest actors of our time, our most beloved director, an iconic composer, a spec script written by a hot new screenwriter and polished by the writer of the Best Picture winner from two years ago, and turn it all into a movie that ends with a big speech about how the role of the press is to take the risks necessary to keep democracy alive under a corrupt president, and, for bonus points, release it in 2017. Were you seriously expecting this movie to be bad?

The Post: Not worth more than the sum of its parts, but when these are the parts, that’s by no means an insult.

The Disaster Artist

It’s hard for me to talk about The Disaster Artist because the book it’s based on is one of my favorite books. In the same way I was never going to be satisfied with any Harry Potter movie, as excited as I was for this adaptation, it was going to be hard for it to live up to my expectations. So, instead of comparing The Disaster Artist to the book The Disaster Artist, I’m going to compare it to something I also adore, but which is perhaps more useful: Ed Wood, the 1994 film by Tim Burton.

I’m just going to mention really quickly that Ed Wood has much better directing on basically every level than The Disaster Artist. It gets more out of its actors, it’s more interesting visually, it uses the elements of storytelling better- okay now we can be useful.

Ed Wood and The Disaster Artist are both stories about quirky people who are very passionate about making bad movies, and have a male friendship as the centerpiece. Ed Wood uses this central friendship to humanize it’s protagonist, and through that and his other relationships, we understand the magnetism of this man and gain a new appreciation for the true spirit of creation he represents. The Disaster Artist uses this relationship to show us how the main character is a jackass, and then at the end he becomes successful and we’re supposed to take from this appreciation for the true spirit of creation he represents.

This movie could have been so much more, but for what it is, it’s entertaining. Watch the movie, then go read the book for a story with actual meaning you can take from it.

I, Tonya

Everyone has their weak spot. Mine is female driven dark comedies. And extremely subjective movies with different points of view where you’re not sure what the real truth is. And mockumentaries.

Nancy Kerrigan’s, I assume, is her knee.

(Terrible joke, I’m so sorry)

Even though I obviously love this movie to pieces, for the reasons mentioned above, I’m going to be very disappointed if it gets glossed over this award season. It makes bold choices, when it comes to the subjects its willing to tackle, and the style it uses to deal with these subjects and raise questions about them. Nearly all of the risks this movie took paid off.

Unlike the risks Tonya Harding took, you know, with Nancy Kerrigan’s knee.

(Okay I’ll stop)

 

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

I am baffled, utterly, by what people see in this movie, besides the fact that Frances McDormand is good in it.

Besides the utterly terrible dialogue, the utter lack of self awareness at its inability to examine its own prejudices, the screenwriting shortcuts that seem like an eighteen year old wrote it (the childish character reads comic books to show he’s childish. Actual, printed, comic books), the sheer delight it seems to take in using slurs against people of color, sexual minorities, and the disabled, and the terrible logical flaws, this film utterly fails at the task people try to celebrate it for accomplishing.

You can make movies about flawed people, or morally grey people. You can redeem your bad characters, and you can have bad people do bad things. You can make movies that make the audience feel uncomfortable for feeling sympathetic for a morally repulsive character.

What you cannot do is tell me a character who tortures black men, in your movie about white people, is someone I should cheer for ten minutes after he’s tried to murder an innocent man for literally no reason.

My issue with this film wasn’t that it made me question my own morals; it actually completely failed at that, because of the intense amount of inconsistencies in its characters actions that left me more baffled than upset by their decisions. It made me question the screenwriter’s.

The Shape of Water

The Shape of Water is a beautiful fairy tale romance between a meek, mute woman who works in an underground lab in the 1950’s, and a fishman. Does that sound like a movie you want to see? Because that is the movie this is.

Is this movie breathtakingly gorgeously directed? Yes! Is this movie, while having deeper themes, still just basically a conventional romance between a woman and a fishman? Yes!

Am I also confused by how a romance can be both conventional and between a woman and a fishman? Yes! And I have been confused about it for two weeks now!

Dunkirk

I don’t believe in perfect movies; I do believe in masterful ones.

Masterful films, in my mind, do everything they can with the art of filmmaking, and then push it just a little bit further. Moonlight, last year’s winner for Best Picture at the Oscars, was a masterful film. Not only was it a story not told enough, with incredible acting, and script, and a beautiful structure, the moment by moment emotionality of it made me feel like I was seeing something I’d never seen before, that a seismic shift was happening in the way stories could be told and I was feeling it shake my seat as I was sitting in the theater, looking at two men stare at each other across a table.

Dunkirk is the only movie in 2017 that made me feel the same way.

I actually put off seeing this movie very far into its theatrical run because of my general dislike for war movies, and my general eye-rolling at fans of director Christopher Nolan (not that I don’t think he’s great- I do, but if I have to get mansplained at one more time about how good The Dark Knight is, I’m going to puncture my eardrums).

Stories have been told with the same non-linear structure as Dunkirk before, but never has it so completely transformed the way I personally experienced a story. My mind was engaged by the structure, my heart was engaged by the characters, and my soul was attempting to find a footing on the constantly shifting balance between the two.

Everything technical in this film is superb, beyond the gold standard, but it’s the way the story is woven that makes it masterful. I don’t know if cinema as a whole will change, but I, as a viewer, was changed by this film. I felt the shift, and that’s why it’s my favorite of the year.

Men in Dresses: Thoughts on Crossdressing Comedies

People wearing clothes that aren’t their normal clothes! Hilarious!

For as long as we’ve had visual storytelling, we’ve had crossdressing narratives. Among them, probably the most famous in the English speaking world is Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which has been adapted into film and done on stage dozens of times in dozens of ways. In the world of film, some of the most highly thought of comedies of our time, Some Like it Hot, Tootsie, and Victor/Victoria all take on this story to hilarious ends. More recently, comedies like White Chicks and She’s the Man (an adaptation of Twelfth Night) update the story for a modern audience. Even media from other countries, like Coffee Prince from Korea and Ouran High School Host Club from Japan, get in on the crossdressing game.

So, why is it that the crossdressing comedy is such a widespread, and often beloved, trope?

First of all, the crossdressing comedy inherently offers up a few classic hallmarks of good comedy. Normally, these films involve one person pretending to be another, which leads to a lot of potential for mistaken identity and wacky hijinks. It also puts our comedy protagonist out of their element, letting them run into a lot of blunders and slip ups that they have the rectify to hilarious consequences. Simply put, comedy needs conflict, and a lot of comedy is possible when a person is taken far outside of their comfort zone.

In somewhat more offensive versions of the crossdressing comedy, the humor comes from gay panic humor. If you’re having a character pretend to be a different gender, it’s almost required that you have someone of their own gender attracted to their alter ego. If a man being attracted to another man is inherently funny to you, then this is a guaranteed laugh riot. Luckily, most versions of this story avoid this route, and let the character’s relationships be more complicated, and therefore funnier, than simple gay panic humor.

The biggest source of comedy that the crossdressing narrative offers is in its unique ability to parody gender roles, which can be played for simultaneous comedy and drama. In Tootsie, the audience laughs at Dustin Hoffman’s initial insane scheme to dress as a woman, but the plot quickly shifts its focus to the sexism and discrimination he faces as Tootsie. In Victor/Victoria, Victoria’s mobster love interest is terrified of his attraction to the presumed male Victor, but also struggles with what his relationship with the sensitive, emotional man means for his masculinity.

Men and women aren’t necessarily from Mars and Venus, but they do experience society differently, and the crossdressing film allows one character to be put into another gender’s experience of the world. Even at its wackiest, it can challenge our notions of what the natures of men and women are, and of how gender roles in society affect each of us. Unlike some movies that attempt to pull off the “Man vs. Woman” storyline, like What Women Want, the humor of a crossdressing comedy is usually derived from the artifice of genders, rather than the differences between them. It’s not that a man is different once he puts on heels, it’s that society sees him differently right away, and the difference is ripe for humor.

Of course, one complication in the future of this genre is the continued efforts to break down the gender binary, and the existence of real gender non-conforming persons in the world. If it’s okay to laugh at a man in a dress, then is it equally acceptable to laugh at a person assigned male at birth who now dresses as a woman, even if they identify as a woman? It definitely is not, which makes the question of whether or not crossdressing comedies can still be deemed acceptable a real one to consider.

Luckily, though they are still rare, this issue can be someone rectified with more comedies, outside the crossdressing genre, that feature real transgender and gender nonconforming characters in lead roles. A comedy like Some Like It Hot, about two men who identify as men who are forced to pretend to be women to run away from the mob, is clearly a separate genre from something like Kinky Boots, a comedy where the humor derives not from the fact that one of the main characters is in a dress, but from that character’s relationship with those around her.

As we continue to complicate gender, there’s always the chance the classic crossdressing comedy might go out of style, but I highly doubt it’ll ever go away completely. Mistaken identities and taking people out of their comfort zones are two fundamental elements of the classic farce, and the crossdressing comedy pairs those situations with the potential for some satirical humor about gender as well. As the mainstream audience’s understanding of gender evolves, so too can the crossdressing comedy, and hopefully future gender satires can address the broad range of gender experiences in the world.

It might take us some time to get there, but hey, nobody’s perfect.

Movie Review: Jupiter Ascending

For a person who doesn’t specifically love The Matrix, I have a weird love of Lana and Andy Wachowski. Two of their movies (Cloud Atlas and V for Vendetta) are, despite their many flaws, pretty firmly in my top 10 favorite films, and I’ve never not at least had fun while watching one of their post-Matrix Revolutions films, even Ninja Assassin, which I’m still not entirely sure I didn’t just hallucinate. So, when I recently got a chance to go to the Chicago premiere of Jupiter Ascending, at which they were in attendance, I was not only excited to see them in person, but also to see what emotional highs, philosophical speeches, crazy action, and possibly total nonsense I was getting myself into.

Jupiter Ascending follows Jupiter Jones, a Russian-American maid who discovers she is the heir to the planet Earth, and becomes a chess piece in a interstellar political game between the three members of a powerful royal family. That is an impossibly simplified overview of the whole story, but since it is a large, original sci-fi universe, some of the finer points I’ll leave for the movie to reveal to you. The movie does fall occasionally into the trap of having to provide a lot of exposition about the universe in dialogue heavy exposition scenes, but since the protagonist is new to the universe it doesn’t feel as heavy handed as it could have, and manages to get through most of those scenes before the halfway mark.

The world of Jupiter Ascending is less “science fiction” than it is “science fantasy” or “space opera”. There are overly dramatic kings and queens, the science never even attempts to seem real, and it feels as much like a fun fantasy world as it can while being set on mostly spaceships. The tone of the world and the story is pretty silly; this is not a movie for quiet, nuanced scenes, and a lot of depth. This is not a movie where characters come in many different shades of grey. This is a movie where a villain shouts his evil plan at a man before throwing him out of an airlock, and Sean Bean plays a Bee-Man Space Cop. You have to come for the camp, and you stay with it or you don’t. I’d especially like to point out what I like to call “Whatever Eddie Redmayne Was Doing” as what is likely to be the most delightfully ridiculous performance of the year. The movie is filled with ham, but it was never trying to be kosher in the first place.

The weakest link in the fairly cut and dry space opera plot is the inevitable romance that attempts to be the center of the story, but never quite manages to be developed or convincing enough to serve as a strong emotional storyline to carry us through the film. Jupiter’s love interest (played by Channing Tatum, as a Former Wolf Man Space Cop Antihero) doesn’t feel connected enough to the rest of the story for his presence to feel justified. He’s her entry into the story and the one who takes her out of it, but I wish he had been a more interesting element of the story itself.

Even when the emotional core of the movie falls flat, the visuals do pick up some of the slack. The costume design is gorgeous, and the design of the different kinds of blended-humans is an interesting visual. Before my screening of the film, the directors drew attention to the chase scene through Chicago in the beginning of the movie, which was both exciting and a beautiful take on the city’s skyline. You don’t have to watch this movie in 3D, but I enjoyed the use of it, and it did enhance a few of the action scenes.

Jupiter Ascending is crazy science fantasy nonsense, and executes the hell out of being exactly that. I wish that the emotional center of the movie, which is usually a hit or miss area for the Wachowskis, has been better developed to keep me attached to the characters, but that doesn’t completely distract from the fun the rest of the movie provides. It may not be something I want to watch fifty times, but I had a great time watching it.

Movie Review: Selma

It’s not Martin Luther King Jr.’s actual birthday, but it is the Monday that the country is off work to celebrate his birthday! What could be a better day to publish my review of Selma, a movie that tells the story of King’s 1955 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama? Well, probably his actual birthday would have been a better day. But anyway:

Selma is a film about Martin Luther King Jr. that recounts his movement to organize a march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama to put pressure on LBJ to create the Voting Rights Act of 1955. It’s not one of the stories I remember most about MLK from high school history class, but both because of recent events and recent politics surrounding immigration it is extremely relevant to our times. Though, for a second, I’d like to put aside the historical context of the film, the modern relevance, and that it’s a film about one of the US’s most important historical figures. What Selma is, really, is a really damn great movie.

MLK must be a difficult character to adapt, but Selma presents him as flawed, imperfect, and still as the great man who led a movement. He’s a great man who does a lot of good, but the film doesn’t shy away from allowing him to be a real person. He argues with his wife, he mourns, and most interestingly, he schemes. MLK was a civil rights leader, not a politician, but he still had tactics and PR savvy and frustrations with other civil rights groups. Selma isn’t just about one man who has a dream and is the underdog- it’s also about a community organizer who knew how to get a movement working. It’s not a view I’ve ever seen in a movie, where they generally try to romanticize characters like this too much, but it’s a fascinating one.

All of the acting in this movie is fantastic. David Oyelowo’s performance as King is subdued, but manages to carry both the great ideas and passion of King, as well as the man that existed before and after all of the speeches. Tom Wilkinson plays Lyndon Johnson as a pure politician who is a perfect foil for King- where King uses visuals to push his ideals, Johnson weighs all his own ideals based on how they look to the public. The actress who plays Coretta Scott King, Carmen Ejogo, hasn’t gotten much notice in other reviews I’ve read, but after seeing her performance in this I can’t wait to see her in many more films to come.

A lot of people have called Ava DuVernay’s lack of a Best Director nomination at the Academy Awards a snub, and after seeing the film I can completely understand why. The way the acts of violence that occurred during this story are directed is absolutely amazing. People were gasping in the theater I was in, and I cannot imagine a film better showing the effect these events had on King and the rest of the civil rights movement. It uses the language of cinema so well to shock, horrify, and make you grieve along with the characters, and it’s some of the best directing of violence I’ve ever seen. Along with actual hate crimes and police brutality, I’d also like to point out the scene where an older black woman attempts to register to vote, and is denied. Few films have shown injustice this starkly in the past, and it makes the story into a truly great film.

Selma is not a great movie because it tells a great story, even though it does, or because it’s about one of the biggest figures of US history, even though it does, or because it is about a still relevant and important movement, even though it is. Selma is a great movie because it is done with beautiful nuance, stunning affect, and fantastic characterization. I’m not sure if it’s the best film of 2014, but it’s the one that will stick with me the longest.

Let’s Talk About Biopics: The Theory of Everything and Big Eyes

Now that we’re in January, I’ve entered my annual frantic scrambling to see movies so I can understand award season. It’s not that I don’t see a lot of big, important films over the course of the year, but I do tend towards ones I, you know, actually want to see. Around January, with the announcement of the Golden Globes, it starts to become clear which movies, regardless of quality, are the ones I have to see to understand the jokes at the Oscars. So, while I was back in Georgia visiting my parents, I took the opportunity to see two biopics that are in the “award show bait” genre: Big Eyes, a biopic about the paintings of Margaret Keane, and how her husband claimed her work as his own,  and The Theory of Everything, which documents Stephen Hawking’s first marriage, and the progression of his ALS.

I didn’t love or hate either film, and since I had similar problems with both of them, I figured I’d tackle them both in the same blog post.

Big Eyes

I can’t really talk about Big Eyes, the period piece biopic directed by Tim Burton and written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, without talking about the other biopic period piece directed by Tim Burton and written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, Ed Wood. To say I might have had a slight obsession with Mr. Burton’s work as a teenager is… a bit of an understatement, but even now I’m past my fanaticism (partly due to the film Alice in Wonderland, because wow) I’m still fond of his style of film making, and Ed Wood uses it amazingly. The main character, the worst filmmaker of all time, is manic and wacky and somewhat unashamed of his angora fetish. The slightly more realistic version of Burton’s usual style balances out the insanity of the character to make the film feel like we’re inside his mind, and fantastically reflects the possibilities Ed sees in film making, no matter how misguided he is.

The story Big Eyes tells is more interesting than the one Ed Wood tells, but the script doesn’t quite know how to show it’s characters. Margaret (Amy Adams) ais the center of the story, but the story is about her entrapment and her inability to show her true self as her husband Walter (Christoph Waltz, bouncing off the walls) overwhelms her and becomes famous taking credit for her paintings. As a necessity of the story, Walter is louder, more manic, and larger than Margaret, which unfortunately leaves her in the background, even in her own story. Christoph Waltz’s performance is broad, and almost overwhelms the entire movie.

The story also suffers from a strong stance on the character and personality of Margaret that she is having to suppress, which may simply be due to trying to create an accurate and respectful portrayal of a still living figure. For a story that focused so strongly on the effects Walter’s actions took on her, I didn’t feel like I knew her character well enough to know why she stayed with him past the halfway point of the movie. There are hints of the motives of her character, but they are never explored deeply enough to hold up the story.

I will say that I really enjoyed the style and the tone of the movie, and the real story it’s telling is basically worth watching it on its own, because it’s completely insane, but the movie tried to put together the elements of a strong story, and never quite managed it. There is a series of scenes in the film where Walter, passing off Margaret’s paintings as his own, tries to come up with a convincing lie about “why he paints.” The implication is that, since he does not paint, he can never understand the reasons why I painter would have created the Big Eyes paintings. Unfortunately, after watching this film, I’m not sure I could tell you why she painted them either.

The Theory of Everything

The Theory of Everything is a movie that people really want to like. The acting is strong, especially the physical performance by Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking. The story is intensely dramatic- a brilliant scientist is diagnosed with ALS, and instead of dying after two years, goes on to become one of the best known scientists in the world, as his wife struggles with caring for him. The problem? I can’t actually think of another thing it has going for it.

I can’t say that The Theory of Everything is a bad movie, because it isn’t. It tells the story of Stephen Hawking’s wife, and the struggles she faced during their marriage, which both sounds like a good film, and still manages to not be one. Most of the issues I had with the story are caused by the huge amount of time the movie covers. Shortly after we meet our two main characters, Stephen is diagnosed with ALS, they get married, and have a baby together. If the story depends on the audience’s understanding of the central marriage, the way it endures, struggles, and eventually fails, we’re simply not given enough time to understand the characters as they exist together.

The film also has a bit of a gaping hole, in that it barely focuses on Stephen Hawking’s work whatsoever. I normally wouldn’t care from a movie like this, that’s so obviously focused on his personal life primarily, but because we aren’t given much time to get to know him at the beginning, and only see him through his wife’s eyes later, I really didn’t feel like I got to know him much as a character. Similarly, I only got to see the wife through the context of her marriage, which made it seem less like I was watching a story about two real people, and more like I was reading a really bland biography based on newspaper articles.

The Theory of Everything is well made, and there’s nothing to really hate about it, but I didn’t feel like I gained much by watching it. The characters aren’t well defined enough, and the large time jumps between scenes make it hard to even follow the emotional build of the storyline. Watch the movie if you’re interested in biographies in general, but it’s not something I’d tell people to rush out to see.

Movies I Didn’t Review in 2014

As I previously mentioned in my Ticket Stub Archaeology posts, I save the ticket stub from every movie I see. As much as I try to shame myself into getting my act together every time I see a movie in theaters to sut down and write a review of it, even just for my own reference, some movies, for various reasons, slip through the cracks. So, at the end of the year, here, very very briefly, are some of the films I forgot to review:

Boyhood

How could I not review the movie everyone was talking about this year? The answer: laziness. Boyhood: It’s as good as everyone says, and surprisingly actually a little bit better. It’s a story about growing up, but what you don’t expect is the detail to character that’s put into the protagonist. He’s not just a boy, he’s a unique boy, and by the end of the film you really feel like you know him as a real person. Certainly worth watching, even if it does feel really long.

Top Five

Meh. I laughed a bit, but even though I’m usually a fan of Chris Rock, this one didn’t really hit the mark for me. The few places where it tries to go deeper than just its jokes are interesting, and I liked the characters, but it needed a bit more of something to really enjoy it. If you’re a Chris Rock fan, or just want to watch a comedy, I say go for it, but I’d wait for it to hit Redbox.

The President

The President is a Georgian (country, not state) film that won the top prize, the Golden Hugo, at the Chicago International Film Festival. It tells the story of a dictator of an unnamed country and his grandson as they attempt to flee the nation they once ruled after it is taken over by revolutionaries. Timely, powerful, and visually amazing. My only problem was that, in the second half, the events of the story lose some of their impact and become rather repetitive, but it ends on a strong note with one of the most striking and affecting final scenes I’ve ever seen. Simply fantastic.

Evolution of a Criminal  

Ten years after being arrested for and serving time in prison for robbing a Bank of America, filmmaker Darius Monroe returns to his hometown to examine the impact of the event on the victims, his accomplices, and his family. It’s completely unique, in that it tells the story of a teenage boy falling into crime, rehabilitation, and the impact it’s had on his life from the perspective of the criminal himself. It’s a great portrait of not only Darius, who I was lucky enough to see speak after the screening, but how criminality is created in our country. Go watch it if you get the chance.

Guardians of the Galaxy

What’s wrong with me? Seriously, am I broken? I think I’m the only person I know who didn’t like this movie. I fully understand that, when it comes to superhero movies, the plot usually is the weakest element, but in this movie the plot was so weak it managed to completely lose me on everything else. Of course I liked the characters, because who wouldn’t like the characters, but the movie didn’t add up to anything more than them, and just left me unable to enjoy it. Maybe the sequel will be better, but until I was going through my ticket stubs I had completely forgotten I even saw this movie.

I Forgot to Review The Hunger Games: Mockingjay: Part 1

My bad guys, I completely forgot to review the latest Hunger Games movie.

I have my reasons. I have my excuses. I saw the movie with a friend who was visiting me and sleeping on an air-mattress on the floor of my tiny studio apartment, and whom I did not want to ignore by writing a review. I saw the movie on opening night, and not at a preview screening like many of the movies I’ve been reviewing lately, which made sitting down to review it feel a lot less urgent. It’s also the third in a series, and so my feelings on the franchise are pretty much set, and with no major changes in style, storytelling, or tone, I didn’t feel like I had much to say.

But really, what it actually comes down to is this: I have no idea how to review half of a movie.

I do not like this trend of cutting movies in half at all. I really do not like it. Movies are not meant to be watched in parts, which I always tell my friends who try to watch half of a movie now and half of a movie later. Movies are a unique art form, unlike books or theater, that demands to be experienced without an intermission or a break. A movie is a self-contained experience: one story, one time, one emotional journey. Even trilogies and film series are structured in such a way that each experience, even if it’s part of a larger one, is it’s own thing. That’s the point of making movies instead of television shows or miniseries. That’s why people go to so much effort to cram a whole story arc and characters and world into two hours.

The half of Mockingjay I saw was really, really good. The casting of all of the characters from the books is perfect, as usual, and the film adaptation does a wonderful job of solidifying and expanding the unfocused themes from the books. The world of Panem feels even more fleshed out, real, and timely than it did in the previous films, and the story of the revolution that this film has begun to tell is told through fantastically accomplished and moving set pieces. It is a really damn good half of a movie.

It is not a movie. It is half of a movie. No matter how excellently the characters are portrayed, how sweeping the emotions of the story, and how engaging the narrative is, when the credits roll it still feels like the projector broke, and you should be getting a voucher from the theater. The film kind of tries to form a climax out of the midpoint of the story, but there’s a reason why the midpoint of the story is the midpoint and not the end- because it’s not a satisfying place to leave an audience.

I enjoyed the Hunger Games books, and I adore the movies so far, but I honestly cannot give an opinion on half of a movie, because I don’t have one beyond “where’s the other half?” A year from now, when Part 2 is released, I will gladly review Mockingjay, and I can’t wait to see how it ends. I’m just unhappy about having to wait the year to do so.

Movie Review: The Imitation Game

This is going to be a relatively straightforward review. A serious, academic, movie-lover’s take on a film that’s already been nominated for a ton of awards. As a serious person who takes writing movie reviews very seriously, I cannot allow anything to compromise the very serious seriousness of this review. So, to get it out of the way, here are some funny alternate names for Benedict Cumberbatch: Britishguy Sillyname, Beetlejuice Captaincrunch, Butterscotch Cabbagepatch, Bandersnatch Cummerbund, Bandicoot Snootchibootchies, Bippitybop Compadoodle, and Bumpersticker Cowboybebop. Or, as my father puts it, simply “Cuthbert.” One word, like Cher.

Okay, now let’s get to it.

The Imitation Game is a rather straightforward biopic of Alan Turing, the “father of computers”, and focuses the time he spent during World War 2 breaking the Enigma codes used by the Germans. The film also shows some of his early life as an outcast teenager, and his post-war prosecution for “gross indecency” for his homosexuality.

The movie suffers from a bit of “biopic-itus”, in that it sometimes has trouble choosing a focus or an overarching theme on which to focus the story. It gives an interesting and multi-faceted image of the man Alan Turing was, and does so in an engaging way, but the nature of the story makes you wish that the film had chosen a more firm direction to go in. Simply put, Alan Turing’s story has so much meaning in a modern context- the impact of his work on shaping the modern world, and the tragedy of his later life from a gay rights perspective- that it feels like the story could have made a much bigger impact by weaving the context into the storyline, rather than presenting it in a series of titlecards at the end.

Causing much of the above mentioned lack of focus is the slightly strange structure of the story. The film cuts between three different timelines: Turing as a young man, during the war, and towards the end of his life. About halfway through the film, I started to get the impression that this wasn’t the original structure of the screenplay, since a few key, thematically important scenes, especially the explanation of the titular “Imitation Game”, come into the story at really odd times. I have nothing against non-linear storytelling, but the arrangement of the story made it hard to grasp which ideas the film was trying to explore at times.

What the movie does accomplish, as any good bio-pic does, is a fascinating insight into the character it’s centered around. Benedict Cumberbatch is always best when he’s playing characters who teeter on the edge of unlikable, and he does exactly that here. As a viewer, you’re intrigued by Turing, and you empathize with him, but man, if you don’t just dislike him sometimes. It’s a good choice all around, simply because Turing is such an important historical figure, that they managed to portray him as a real, kind of annoying, but ultimately brilliant man.

There was some controversy, both before and after the film’s release, on how the movie was going to handle showing Turing’s homosexuality. Having now seen the film, I can’t say that they glossed over his sexuality, but I will say I didn’t quite like the way it was handled from a storytelling perspective. As I mentioned above, the film presents it’s themes in a slightly garbled way, and it seems like filmmakers were a bit confused in how to incorporate his sexuality into the story they were trying to tell. It’s included a bit, in that Turing’s familiarity with secrets and his position as an outcast as vital parts to the overall narrative, but it seems like it could have been incorporated better. Not more, just differently than the way it was.

The Imitation Game is a strong and accurate biopic of an interesting historical figure, but does stumble a bit when it comes to being a strong story. The elements of the themes the film wants to explore are present, but become muddied by the structure of the story, and the narrative’s difficultly with centering the story around any one particular thread. It’s certainly worth watching for the performances and the insight into a story that, until very recently, was never told, but it isn’t one of the strongest films in its genre.

Movie Review: Into the Woods

Movie musicals are hard.

Into the Woods is movie adaptation of the well known musical by Stephen Sondheim, the composer best known for Sweeney Todd. It’s the story of a Baker and his wife, who, in order to break a spell put on them by a witch, must track down four fairy tale objects: Cinderella’s slipper, Red Riding Hood’s coat, Jack’s (from Jack and the Beanstalk) cow, and Rapunzel’s hair. The musical is known for it’s dark tone and increasingly self-referential plot. The movie is by Disney.

Movie musicals are hard, and adapting a dark, adult musical into a PG rated film for families is even harder. I had not listened to or seen the musical Into the Woods, but according to my friend who I saw it with, the PGifying mainly entailed cutting out a lot of the darkness in the second act. Not knowing what was missing, the second act still felt a bit off, as the darkness of the events taking place and the attempt to lighten these events was rather disconnected. The second half still turns the fairy tale stories on their heads, but it feels distinctly like something darker is being held back.

Movie musicals are so hard, and the problem all movie musicals face is how to adapt the structure of a stageplay, which is written with large musical setpieces and limited locations in mind, to the film medium, which allows for a lot more flexibility. Some films, like Chicago, take advantage of this difference, and completely change the structure of the story to suit the language of film. Some, like last year’s Les Miserables, have no idea what they’re doing, and just put the actors on camera for the entire length of a four minute long musical number, leaving the audience to ponder Hugh Jackman’s pores. Into the Woods leans towards the latter, and most of it looks like you’re just watching a filmed rehearsal of the musical shot in the woods, without much consideration of adapting it into a movie. Characters stand next to each other and face the camera, singing at the audience, but without any nods to the fourth wall that could justify it. My one word review after the film was “lazy.” It’s incredibly lazily shot, and doesn’t use the fact it’s a film to tell the story at all. Hell, even the costumes, which would look amazing onstage, are stage costumes. 

The one thing I will really praise about the film is the acting, which was pretty delightful to watch. All of the actors, save maybe for a few child actors, are really excellently cast, and seem to be having a lot of fun in the movie. Chris Pine, especially, as Cinderella’s prince, was incredibly funny and entertaining, and I would have gladly spent much more time with him ripping his shirt open for emphasis than the film did. Emily Blunt, who I adore, was great as well, and most of the leading roles were really well cast and acted. The singing is fine for a movie musical, though I’m not normally too picky on that front.

Into the Woods is a good musical, but definitely not a good movie musical. I’d say it’s worth taking a look at just for the actor’s performances, but the movie’s not going to offer you much more than that, and the story feels neutered by the rating. It’s not the laziest movement of a musical to the screen I’ve seen, since I’ve seen the Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane version of The Producers, but if you’re a fan of the original musical, or require more than a camera on a tripod pointed at actors to enjoy a musical onscreen, this movie won’t have much for you.

The Hobbit: The Battle for My Hopes and Dreams

pictured above: nonsense

(For further context, check out my previous reviews of An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug)

Let’s go back to a better time, 2003, to The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Book, not movie.

There’s a scene, which might only be in the extended edition of the film, where Pippin and Gandalf stand on a balcony at Minas Tirith, looking out at Mordor on the verge of war. They talk about their fears, the impending war, and the mad steward of Gondor, before Pippin asks Gandalf, “Is there any hope, Gandalf, for Frodo and Sam?” Gandalf replies, solemnly, “There was never much hope. Just a fool’s hope.” The scene reinforces a major theme of the story: that, even in the darkest and most hopeless of times, the courage to go on remains. It’s a theme that resonates with me and is one of the reasons why I adore The Lord of the Rings so much as a film series.

So believe me when I say that, with the release of The Hobbit, this lesson has BETRAYED ME. I HELD ONTO HOPE PETER JACKSON. I SOLDIERED ON THROUGH THE DARKEST OF TIMES, AND THIS IS WHAT YOU GAVE ME???

My first thought, as the credits rolled on the preview screening of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, was that my soul hurt. The second thought was, “Why does everyone teleport in this movie?” Not a single character in the entire film walks into frame. Another character will be talking, and at a dramatically important time the camera will turn to reveal that shockingly, the person they’re discussing or they want least to overhear them will be right there. I know that’s a really odd point to make early in a review, but it happens every five minutes.

Where to begin? What is it about the Hobbit franchise that makes it so terrible? Is it the unnecessary length? The rapid changes between overly melodramatic drama scenes and cartoonishly goofy action scenes? The fact that Martin Freeman is barely in it, despite being perfect and playing the title character? The fact that the elvish characters are in it at all? The horrendous story structure stemming from the blunt-scissors that dissected two movies into three?

I’ll start with the last one. I’m sorry, you cannot begin a movie with the death of the villain of the previous two movies, and the major character defining moment for a character who was introduced halfway through the last movie. It doesn’t work, even remotely. The scene, which is one of the largest moments in the original novel, takes place entirely before the movie’s title shows up on screen. Take that in. Take that terrible, terrible, fact in.

As a fan of the book The Hobbit, I do have a bit of an inherent problem with turning the last 20 pages of a 200 page book into a 2.5 hour movie, but as a person who studies film, it’s even worse than it has to be. The film has so many subplots to tie up, each of which contains so much melodrama, that it’s less of a story in a film than a big unappetizing soup of people looking at things dramatically. No storyline is given enough time or the proper amount of slow, contemplative moments for their big action scenes to have much meaning to them, and even the ones that do are destroyed by having two thirds to one half of the character’s development entirely contained within another movie.

I suppose now I can give my final feelings on the whole trilogy of Hobbit movies: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On a more eloquent note: As an adaptation of The Hobbit, these films did an an atrocious job. The story of Bilbo, and his journey across Middle Earth with a band of dwarves, is completely loss in weird, unnecessary subplots, overly long overly goofy action scenes, and needlessly overdramatic added conflicts. As three movies on their own, they might actually be even worse. There are too many storylines, and none of the films is structured in a way that offers a satisfying dramatic arc for any of them. The beautifully detailed and real world of Middle Earth Peter Jackson first made in The Lord of the Rings is destroyed by the need for more and more action scenes, and there is barely anything, character or world wise, that feels real enough to emotionally connect to. Instead of a story, we get a series of scenes, which even on their own aren’t that interesting to watch.

Or, to put it simply: “Do not trust to hope. It has forsaken these lands.” -Eomer, The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers.