by ·Comments Off on Prometheus (2012, Ridley Scott)

A frustrating movie, because even while watching the two-hour theatrical version opening week, we knew that Ridley Scott has been talking up his extended director’s cut for blu-ray. But Ridley learned nothing from the Lord of the Rings model, cutting out really important stuff instead of fun but unnecessary scenes of hobbits singing, leaving the two-hour version full of plot holes, confusing explanations and out-of-character behavior. At least that’s what I generously assume to be the case, that the movie made perfect sense before the cuts, because otherwise how would a mega-expensive-looking star-studded major film arrive in theaters full of massive story problems that nobody noticed?

I admit the story problems and look forward to watching Ridley’s second (and third, and fourth) edit on my little laptop screen. But I still loved the theatrical version, unlike every single person I’ve heard mention it, because it’s simply the most amazing looking and sounding movie I’ve seen in theaters for a year or more. The picture (2D) is clear, with seamless effects, and I must’ve lucked out and got the only screen in Atlanta with properly calibrated surround sound. I’ve thought I was past the point of being impressed by massive explosions and outer-space action scenes, but I guess everyone else (looking at you, Michael Bay) has just been doing ’em wrong.

Two archaeologists (Noomi Rapace of the Swedish Dragon Tattoo trilogy and Logan Marshall-Green of Devil) discover star maps in prehistoric cave paintings, so a mega-rich old man (played by Guy Pearce in distracting old-age makeup) sends a space exhibition led by a sleek, evil Charlize Theron to check it out. Logan is given black-oil sickness by android Michael Fassbender, impregnates Noomi with an alien. Also on board are pilot Idris Elba, punk miner Sean Harris (Ian Curtis in 24 Hour Party People) and other guys who will be killed in interesting ways.

There’s some religious mumbo, with secret (but easily predicted) stowaway Pearce wanting to confront our creators, the giant, pale muscular men, and ask why they created us. But I could’ve sworn the scientists said at least twice that they’re an “exact genetic match” with us – so they didn’t create us, they are us. Right? And if I got this straight, the planet to which the map led the Earth explorers isn’t the home planet of any race, but an outpost where they were creating biological alien weapons. And when the one living pale guy awakens from cryo-sleep, he sets to destroying Earth, as if that was his plan all along. Anyway, lot of questions, but ultimately I enjoyed the spectacle and think the movie is interesting enough to find the unanswered questions tantalizing, looking forward to sequels or deleted scenes, not blowing off the movie as badly written.

dissenting opinion from R. Brody in the New Yorker:

Scott is the perfect former TV commercial director: he doesn’t invent images but decorates them and lights them to set a consistent mood, which he then maintains, without surprises. He tells you what to feel, or not even—he tells you to admire his ability to get you to feel one thing, whether it’s worth feeling or, in this case, not. As in a TV commercial, the amount of money spent on production design is a part of the movie’s import; the sets and the effects might as well have their price tags dangling from them … he took the same laborious pompier style as fell flat in Robin Hood and attempted to justify it with a ponderous subject. The movie lacks any joyful sense of discovery, such as emerges (intermittently) through the vainglorious bombast of Alien.

But then instead Brody praises the “exuberance” and lack of self-important seriousness of Benjamin Buttons. If he had more fun at The Ben Buttons than at Prometheus, we can learn nothing from each other.

June 2015:
Now that I’ve watched this again on 2D blu-ray, I don’t mind the plot problems as much – in fact, Lindelof convincingly explains in the commentary that character motivations are purposely unknowable – and the visuals hold up beautifully (though scenes like the spaceship crash don’t have the power they held in theaters). The writer commentary implies that it’s all overlit because of demands from the 3D process, but a sci-fi horror flick with great lighting and strong color is a nice change of pace.

The deleted scenes actually weren’t so interesting, especially after playing half the writers’ commentary, but the blu extra called The Weyland Files was nice – strange character bits, training and prep for the mission, research, unexplained anthropological stuff, an infomercial for android David, and a Ted Talk by Guy Pearce without his age makeup.

by ·Comments Off on We Have a Pope (2011, Nanni Moretti)

I only know Moretti from a couple of cute shorts in different anthology projects. This could’ve been another cute short – I expected something weightier, but it had little to say about the Pope, Vatican, religion, just an occasionally funny little story about an elected pope who disappears, spends some time on his own, and returns to proclaim that he can’t accept the job.

Michel Piccoli (in two of the movies I anxiously want to see from this year’s Cannes festival) is the confused pope and Jerzy Stuhr (star of Kieslowski’s Camera Buff) is a large-faced official spokeman who tries to take care of the situation. Moretti himself plays a psychiatrist hired to visit the vatican and help the new pope, but when the pope escapes (covered up by Stuhr by having a guard hide in the pope’s quarters, eating expensive food and rattling the curtains to indicate his presence) Moretti has nothing to do and isn’t allowed to leave, so organizes a volleyball tournament, dividing the cardinals by home country – my favorite part of the movie. Piccoli meanwhile visits Moretti’s estranged wife Margherita Buy. You’d expect something to come of this, soon-to-be-divorced psychiatrists each treating the same troubled pope, but no. The movie really amounted to a pleasurable afternoon watching the great Piccoli, nothing more.

The Guardian points out that the movie got mixed reviews from Vatican reviewers, then proceed to give it a mixed review themselves. In competition at Cannes the year Tree of Life won.

Moretti quoted in Indiewire: “People may have wanted me to do something different, but I wanted to surprise them actually. Some people thought I’d denounce some areas of the Vatican but that is why I chose not to do that… I wanted the story to be a surprise.”

by ·Comments Off on What To Expect When You’re Expecting (2012, Kirk Jones)

A happy movie full of good smiling people, including J-Lo, Up in the Air‘s Anna Kendrick and The State‘s Thomas Lennon. Based on a self-help book, which AV Club points out makes it a similar adaptation to Fast Food Nation, building stories from a non-fiction book to convey its general idea. Mostly I looked past the actors and focused on the Atlanta locations (lots of Piedmont Park, the Woodruff Arts center, someplace on/near Highland, and a whole scene at Smith’s Olde Bar). Katy says it makes adoption seem preferable.

At least it was written by women, even if it was directed, produced, shot, edited, scored and designed by men – bland men, if you ask me. One of the writers did Whip It, the other the Jamie Lee Curtis Freaky Friday.

by ·Comments Off on This is Not a Film (2011, Jafar Panahi & Mojtaba Mirtahmasb)

Set up to be a doc of house-arrested filmmaker Panahi by his documentarian friend Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, with Panahi explaining and roughly staging the next film he would have made if the authorities had let him (coincidentally[?] to be filmed inside a house, concerning a girl who is not allowed to leave). But Panahi cuts off the play-acting and gets philosophical, showing scenes from his work and telling us that if films could be explained, they wouldn’t have to be made. He then takes over the not-film, finally picking up the camera, following a maintenance man outside to a small-scale replay of Offside‘s finale. Throughout, there are definite signs that either this movie was much more cleverly planned than it’s meant to appear, or that Panahi’s life is full of happy coincidences and unplanned art. Either way, I’d been afraid that this would be a movie solely acclaimed because of its subversion, its very existence as political protest, which would’ve been enough, but was delighted than the entire work justifies its Cannes-acclaimed reputation.

Panahi’s daughter’s pet iguana provides the special effects, an unseen neighbor who needs a dog-sitter so she can participate in the celebratory new-year fireworks provides humor, and Jafar’s phone conversations with his attorney provide context on the project.

Panahi attempts to use the internet inside Iran. “Wherever you go, it’s blocked. Most websites are filtered. The rest don’t say anything.”

Mirtahmasb: “Take a shot of me, so in case I’m arrested there will be some images left.”

Panahi’s next film was going to be made with Mohammad Rasoulof, who now suffers the same political fate as Panahi and filmed his own response while out on appeal, Goodbye, which hasn’t made it to video yet.

M. Peranson in Cinema Scope:

Of special note… is Panahi’s bootleg DVD collection, which features the Ryan Reynolds-in-a-coffin film Buried facing us, clearly placed there to make a point.

The work feels completely effortless but my money says it’s an elaborate sound and image construction: though it claims to be a day in the life of Panahi, Mirtahmasb explained in interviews that the film was shot over four days.

by ·Comments Off on The Avengers (2012, Joss Whedon)

Almost as good as the other Joss Whedon movie I watched this month. The action scenes are fun, but the movie gets too loud and ‘splosioney at times. Better is the comic bickering between Thor, Iron Man, Sam Jackson, Captain America, Black Widow and Loki. But best of all is watching Hulk smash. For all the perceived failure of the last two Hulk movies, he seems like an excellent character and it is undeniably fun to watch him smash.

Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye isn’t listed amongst the banterers above because he spends most of the movie as a villain under Loki’s spell, as does a mostly-offscreen Stellan Skarsgard (whose friend Natalie Portman gets quickly explained out of the movie). The extraterrestrial villain who puts Loki up to his mischief doesn’t matter, nor does the additional post-credits sequel-setup extraterrestrial villain. Essential Killing director Jerzy Skolimowski appears as the evil Russian whose ass Black Widow kicks at the beginning. And everyone is sad that Nick Fury’s bland MIB assistant Coulson gets (potentially) killed, but there’s a pretty girl MIB to take his place.

by ·Comments Off on Carnage (2011, Roman Polanski)

The opening and closing shots of children conspiring at a great distance from the camera remind me of the final shot of Cache – this could be its comedy sequel. Besides those shots, it’s set in a single apartment. Based on a play (duh) by Yasmina Reza, which won the Tony a couple years ago. Amusing little real-time drama where world-class actors portray friendly, enlightened parents whose behavior soon degrades until they seem worse than the kids. If that piece of minor irony wasn’t the point of the film, then I’m afraid I missed it.

Set in “New York” in the home of Jodie Foster (whom I haven’t seen since Inside Man) and John C. Reilly (haven’t seen since Walk Hard), whose son was nailed in the face by the son of Kate Winslet (last seen in Contagion) and Christoph Waltz (Water for Elephants). Waltz is a terribly important lawyer always on his cell phone, Winslet can’t hold her liquor (there’s a lot more throw-up in this movie than I expected), Foster is insufferably liberal and Reilly the opposite. Or something – there’s not much to it, and the trailer gave away too much, but watching the actors is total fun.

A. Nayman in Cinema Scope:

The only thing more pretentious and transparent than the behaviour of Reza’s straw men and women is the playwright’s own notion that she’s revealing something about human nature. The simplest way to point out what’s wrong with this material is to say that Carnage is exactly the sort of acclaimed easy-bake drama that its own characters would probably hustle to see: a hot ticket for patrons eager to be reduced to social stereotypes and howl like hyenas at the “keen-edged” observations of their own foibles and frailties. … Where a director like Sidney Lumet or, God forbid, Sam Mendes might have felt this high-end horror-show in their bones, Polanski seems triply unimpressed: with the characters’ regressive lunacy, with Reza’s pride in hoisting them on their own petards, and with his own easy grace in crafting a watchable welterweight prestige picture.”

by ·Comments Off on The Catechism Cataclysm (2011, Todd Rohal)

Father William (Steve Little, a writer on Camp Lazlo and Flapjack), introduced using his bible as a mousepad, calls up his old buddy Robbie for a canoeing trip. It turns out Robbie isn’t even his old buddy – he’s William’s sister’s ex-boyfriend whom William has long idolized. Robbie doesn’t even remember William, and just barely remembers the sister. And William is a terrible canoer and a terrible priest.

A Sundancey character drama could’ve been made from this material, but Rohal is more interested in being unpredictable. He has the couple meet two Japanese girls calling themselves Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, who carry a musical device that makes Robbie’s head explode. Robbie briefly comes back to life with a huge rock for a head, the silent “Jim” riding with the Japanese girls confesses his crimes (offscreen) to William, and it closes with a pleasant folk song about how “God will fuck you up.”

I can’t say all this wasn’t amusing, but I’m not sure what it all leads to – a combination of the strained friendship vacation in Old Joy, the deluded social disfunction of Lars and the Real Girl and the straight-up indie wackiness of Little Dizzle, without having enough of either – using the recent trend of movies with elliptical endings, but with an unclear motive. Maybe I give it too much credit, and it was really just Rohal and Little making each other laugh, and assuming (correctly) that we’d sometimes laugh along.

I liked the death-metal theme, and the closing credits were pretty awesome. Twitch reveals that the ending has “a major homage to a film that almost nobody has seen,” Funky Forest: The First Contact. Rohal’s earlier The Guatamalan Handshake got better reviews, and his next one features rival scoutmasters Patton Oswalt and Johnny Knoxville.

by ·Comments Off on Never Let Me Go (2010, Mark Romanek)

A wacky new alternate-history sci-fi film from the writer of Saddest Music in the World. No, not really – it’s a new lovingly-crafted drama about repressed love from the writer of Remains of the Day. I was surprised to see Kazuo Ishiguro credited for Saddest Music – his original screenplay is unpublished, but I found a Maddin quote, calling the source a political satire, “a story about how Third World countries can survive only by losing all their dignity, or keep their dignity by panhandling in a very clever way.”

Mark One Hour Photo Romanek directs with sunlit fatalism. The kids at boarding school come to realize that they’ve been bred for organ-harvesting a la Parts: The Clonus Horror, but instead of public exposure and revolution, the most they hope to attain is a couple extra years with the clone they love before their fatal surgeries. Politically (because all sci-fi is political) it seems like an “every life has a soul” message, examining the consequence of creating life in a lab to help current humanity without considering that new life’s own worth.

Keira Knightley mostly plays the cool and collected one, but gets to try on some of the histrionics she’d perfect in A Dangerous Method. Carey Mulligan (less deadly-cute than in Drive) is so in love with Andrew Garfield (least interesting cast member of both Social Network and Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus) that for a while it seems like they’ll find a way out. Charlotte Rampling (the awful, awful mother in Melancholia) keeps the kids in place, and Sally Hawkins (same year as Submarine) fails to bring enlightenment and rip the system.

by ·Comments Off on The Cabin in the Woods (2012, Drew Goddard)

This is one of my favorite things – I went back and watched it again, to be positive. Goddard (wrote Cloverfield, worked on Lost and Buffy) and producer Whedon (who is having a big month) manage to make it seem easy, blending horror and comedy, movie and meta-movie more excitingly than Scream did, forming a sort of horror-movie construction-kit. It gradually reveals its scheme while telling us why this is all necessary, and when the stock characters realize that they’re stock characters and break out of the model, they knowingly and misanthropically unleash Lovecraftian armageddon.

The Virgin: Kristen Connolly

L-R:
The Scholar: Jesse Williams of Grey’s Anatomy
The Athlete: Chris “Thor” Hemsworth
The Slut: yellow power ranger Anna Hutchison
The Fool: Fran Kranz of Whedon’s Dollhouse

Not pictured: Richard Jenkins and West Wing star Bradley Whitford push the buttons manipulating our stock characters to their doom. Brian White (IMDB specifies that he’s their 34th Brian White) is the new guy, Amy Acker (also Dollhouse) runs the chem department, and an uncredited Sigourney Weaver runs the whole show.

Writer/director Goddard:

The truth is, this movie does comment on a horror movie, but that wasn’t our goal. We wanted to comment more on who we are and what part horror plays in us as a people. If you keep that in your sights the whole time, it’s easier to find the balance, because then your movie is just becoming about commenting on the human condition and not worrying too much about, “What is this saying about the genre or the films?” It’s much more just, “What are we saying in general?” That’s the sort of thing you have to hold firm to.

July 2024: Watched again. Catching up with the cast… Final Girl Kristen Connolly was in Ben Affleck cuck drama Deep Water. Chris “Dementus” Hemsworth didn’t get any major roles until recently. Since Much Ado, Fran(z) was in Bloodsucking Bastards and The Dark Tower. Wolf girl Anna Hutchison was in an alien invasion thing with a lesser Hemsworth and a Nick Cage vengeance movie just called Vengeance. The Scholar is a Grey’s Anatomy lifer who played a ghost in the Jacob’s Ladder remake Goddard made Bad Times at the El Royale, and cowriter Joss Whedon was cancelled for being toxic then his final film was erased by Snyderverse fans