Final Summer 2011 Movie Thoughts

Posted on 31 August 2011 by House

It has been a while since my last post on account of finishing up the course I was teaching, marking the final exam, making a significant amount of progress on my thesis research, and having the girlfriend visit for ten days that overlapped with a five-day visit from my brother’s family.  So I’ve been, you know, busy.

But fear not!  I did manage to see a number of movies in that time, about which I am about to expound.  (I also read a number of books, which is delightfully unusual, and about which I will elaborate at a future date.)

I will first discuss two less-fantastical films, then move into the science fiction and fantasy backbone of my usual movie-going.  Note that there will be a few minor spoilers in my discussion of Conan.

Crazy, Stupid, Love

Crazy, Stupid, Love is a bit outside my normal fare, I’ll admit, but I do enjoy some mainstream comedies/dramas, and Steve Carrell has a good track record of doing stuff I enjoy.  Plus, it had Emma Stone (though not nearly enough of her) who totally won me over with Zombieland and Easy A.  And Julianne Moore, who won me over with Evolution of all films.  Basically, it has a great cast in a well-written ensemble comedy.

I really enjoyed Crazy, Stupid, Love.  It balanced itself nicely between over-the-top comedy and genuine emotional moments, and while there were a few things I wish it had done a bit differently, it did manage to surprise me with some of the plot twists throughout.  Admittedly, it had its moments of predictability, too, but overall it was a really well-done movie—one that I would easily recommend, if you’re in to that sort of thing.

The Change-Up

I cannot be quite so effusive about The Change-Up, which the girlfriend and I saw because we decided to see a movie late Saturday night and it was the only one playing quite so late that hadn’t already started.  Despite having two strong comic actors as leads, the premise of them switching bodies is an old one that has been done many, many, many times before.

(Aside: I actually find the body-swap comedy most interesting when done in a TV series rather than a movie, since in a movie you typically don’t see much character establishment before the switch so you don’t get a strong sense of the different characters in each others bodies.  In a TV series, however, where you have had many episodes—or even seasons—to get to know the characters, seeing the actors pull off each others mannerisms and delivery is really enjoyable.  Stargate SG-1 did this well, for example.)

Thankfully, The Change-Up at least executes the concept fairly well by loading it up with raunchy,  low-brow humour right from the start.  It eventually becomes fairly predictable, and while at times it strives toward trying to incorporate genuine emotional moments, it never really gets there.  It does remain funny throughout—assuming you’re okay with toilet humour—so it is watchable and enjoyable, but it didn’t really offer anything beyond laughs.  So, not a bad movie to watch for a few laughs or to pass the time, but not really something you need to go out of your way to see.

Captain America: The First Avenger

Marvel has been doing a good job with the movies it has released under its own auspices, the latest of which is Captain America: The First Avenger.  This was a well-done WWII-era superhero action movie that established Steve Rogers—Captain America, as he is better known—as something of a tragic figure in his modern reincarnation.  While it does not match the original Iron Man in terms of depth of characterization, it does a better job than Marvel’s subsequent movies (The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, and Thor), which—while enjoyable and generally well-done—failed to deliver quite the same mix of character development and exciting action achieved by Iron Man.  I feel Captain America: The First Avenger comes close to meeting that lofty goal.

That said, I know a lot of people have complained about this movie.  I do wonder if they knew anything at all about it going in, however, since it stayed quite close to the traditional Captain America origin.  The Super Soldier Serum, the Red Skull, Hydra… they are all part of Marvel lore, and rewriting Cap’s origin completely would be gauche, to say the least.  The special effects were good, and while one man’s action choreography trash is another’s treasure, I enjoyed the action sequences.

So, if you don’t mind a bit of inherent cheesiness in the plot, the Americana and patriotism, and the character development, I think you’ll find Captain America: The First Avenger an enjoyable movie and a great lead-in to next year’s The Avengers, which the whole world is hoping will be awesome.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

I rather suspect I don’t need to say much about this one, so I’ll keep it brief.  I liked Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 much better than the first part, though it still struck me as a bit too loose and jumbled to overtake Azkaban, Order of the Phoenix, or Half-Blood Prince as one of the best films of the series.  I do think it provided a suitably epic climax to the series overall, with most of the characters—especially side characters—getting their chance to shine, even if that shining moment wasn’t staged particularly well for everyone.

The girlfriend says she actually prefers the Deathly Hallows movies to the book, since the movies give a wider picture of what is going on for everyone whereas the books are a little too concentrated on Harry, Hermione, and Ron.  I’ll be curious to see if I agree with her once I get around to finishing off the book series.

So, pretty good, overall.  But I imagine if you’ve watched the previous 7 movies, you’ll watch this one no matter what, and if you haven’t seen the previous movie, why would you ever watch just this one?  I don’t even know what the purpose of a proper review would even be.

Cowboys and Aliens

I’ve noticed a bit of a trend while reading online movie reviews over the last few years, in which there seem to be only two kinds of movies: great and bad.  If a movie is not great, then it is bad, terrible, awful, a crime against humanity.  To me, this is obviously stupid.  Greatness, by its very nature, must be rare and hard to achieve.  To cast down anything that fails to achieve greatness as awful means there’s going to be an awful lot of misery and disappointment in the world.

This opinion of mine is why I perhaps come across as a bit more favourable that most online critics in that I rather like quite a few movies that have been righteously panned.  There are lots of movies out there that are flawed in some way, but still pretty good, and I like to recognize that.  There are also some movies that are in fact perfect but misunderstood, like Speed Racer, about which I can feel smug that I see their true awesomeness.  Similarly, there are movies that are successful but truly awful, like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, about which I can despair for the future of humanity.

This is all a roundabout way of me justifying the fact that I quite liked Cowboys & Aliens when it has gotten generally poor reviews and even worse box office success.  It delivers exactly what the title promises: cowboys and aliens.  The visual effects are good.  The action is good.  The cast is good.  (Come on!  Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, and Sam Rockwell in the Old West! It’s a match made in heaven!)  The plot is a little straightforward and trite, and there’s no hugely deep character development or anything, but at least there is some.

Thus, as a movie, Cowboys & Aliens is, at the very least, okay.  But since I found it more enjoyable than just okay, I’d nudge it up to good, but not great.  I think it lacked enough depth to aspire to greatness; it was just too predictable and too reliant on stock characters.  But it was absolutely enjoyable and fun.  And if you are expecting more than that from a movie titled Cowboys & Aliens, then perhaps the problem is with you and not the movie.

Conan the Barbarian (2011)

The new Conan the Barbarian movie is one I am more conflicted about.  I saw it (thankfully) in 2D, fully expecting it to be awful—and IT WAS NOT.  It was okay.  There were lots of things that could have been better, but for fans of sword and sorcery… well, pickings are slim, and this stands above the last Conan movie.

What could have been better?  Well, the fight choreography, for one.  Jason Momoa, who played Conan, spent 4 years on Stargate: Atlantis in the role of Ronon Dex where he had plenty of hand-to-hand action sequences that were pretty good.  We don’t really see any of that on screen in this movie, however, since apparently they hired some dude with a camcorder to film the fight sequences and had them choreographed by a toddler on a sugar-high.  So while there was plenty of bloody action, not a lot of it jumped out as particularly memorable.

Also: final battle in collapsing lair?  Seriously?  That ancient temple wasn’t even collapsing for a reason!  And, for that matter, how did Conan win in the end, exactly?  When he fought the big bad before, he had his ass handed to him, and yet in the final battle he won the day without even a training montage in between!

Ahem!  So yes, the movie is rather heavily steeped in tropes of the genre, which are a bit tedious though tolerable.  My biggest complaint is actually that the movie didn’t feel enough like CONAN.

Allow me to elaborate.

In recent years I have been reading the original Robert E. Howard Conan stories (and the Dark Horse comic series relaunch that heavily drew on them).  In them, Conan is strong, to be sure, but also smart, clever, and almost entirely self-interested.  He steals, then spends his take on food, wine, and women, and when he runs out of money, he goes stealing again.  He is honourable in his own way, but not particularly heroic.

This movie, on the other hand, struck me as a generic fantasy movie simply reskinned with the Conan license.  The plot was of the epic save-the-world variety, and Conan was freeing slaves just because he didn’t believe people should be slaves.  That, well, it didn’t feel like Conan.  (I could see Conan free slaves while robbing the slavers, say, but not as the main point of his attack.)

Complaints aside, I was sufficiently entertained by this movie to not regret seeing it.  It also had one of the most intense action sequences I’ve seen in any movie, in a bit from Conan’s childhood, that was just awesome.  But then it got my hopes up that the whole movie would be that good, and sadly, it wasn’t.

So, while I liked the movie well enough overall, it didn’t deliver to my satisfaction the same way that Cowboys & Aliens did.  With that movie, you got exactly what the title promised; with Conan the Barbarian, you got a reasonably well-done generic fantasy with hints of and the trappings of Conan.  So while it wasn’t as terrible as I had feared it might be, neither did it satisfy my craving for a Conan movie.

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Thoughts on Super 8

Posted on 11 July 2011 by House

I finally got to see the movie Super 8 this past weekend.  It had been subject to a subdued viral marketing campaign, something akin to when Cloverfield came out a few years ago, but thankfully the payoff for Super 8 was much, much better.  I thought Super 8 was a fantastic movie.

Super 8 is a deliberately nostalgic movie, throwing back to the era of summer films with ensemble child casts (think Goonies or E.T.) and set in 1979, right smack in the middle of that era of summer movies.  It captures the awkwardness of childhood while showing the kids dealing with it and having an awesome, incredible adventure that you wish you too could have during your summer break.

The basic setup is that a group of kids filming a Super 8 movie during summer break witness the derailment of an Air Force train under mysterious circumstances.  After, strange things start happening around town which they end up getting caught up in.  Of course, this is just the basic premise of the plot, and ignores the character arcs that are the main driving force of this movie.

The young cast carries the movie, with the two leads (Joel Courtney and Elle Fanning) displaying a good degree of nuance, and the supporting actors hitting their notes just right.  The adult characters have an arc that parallels the kids, and while the handling of this is not particularly subtle, neither is it heavy-handed or overbearing.  I would consider this to be a very classically-structured film, and that’s entirely okay.  It totally works.

The reviews for Super 8 were mostly positive, with a few complaining about the ending.  While the ending was not particularly surprising or clever, I do think it worked, and I’m not sure how it could have been different without compromising the feel of the film.  Super 8 is a movie that doesn’t try to pull any tricks on the viewer; it is exactly what it appears to be.  And that’s great, because it is done so well.  Super 8 is easily one of the best movies I’ve seen this year.

 

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Summer Movie Mania!

Posted on 30 June 2011 by House

I felt the need to break from my recent movie-posting naming scheme since the titles of the four movies I plan to talk about would make a rather long title when concatenated.  It is, perhaps, an indication that this post is long overdue.

In my defense, however, the past month has seen me actually making some progress on my research, plus teaching, plus actually (*GASP*) reading some books.  For fun.  In the past few weeks I have read three or four books, in fact.  I should probably blog about those at some point.

But not now.  Now, I have some summer movies to talk about.  I had meant to give Thor its own post, but alas, the God of Thunder shall receive short shrift from me tonight.

Please note, there may be spoilery comments, but nothing major.

Thor

Marvel Comics has brought another of its lesser-known heroes to the big screen with Thor, in a film that introduces a character that will be part of next year’s The Avengers.  The Marvel version of Thor is a loose adaptation of actual Norse myth, and this film is a loose adaptation of the Marvel comics.

However, it is an adaptation with a famous director (Kenneth Branagh!), Oscar-winning actors (Natalie Portman and Anthony Hopkins!), a suitably godlike Thor (Chris Hemsworth), and a strong supporting cast, and it totally worked for me.  That is not to say there weren’t some things I wish had been handled different, but it was a satisfying movie overall.  I especially enjoyed the creative designs for the gods’ city of Asgard and their magic and technology.

My major complaints are primarily about pacing.  Without giving too much away, I feel that Thor learned his lesson in humility awfully quickly, almost as fast as he and human Jane Foster fell for each other.  (Though, to be fair, since Foster was played by Natalie Portman, I could hardly blame him.)  What was there was done well, but it felt like the movie played out over a handful of days, and I think the character development might have been better served with a “living like a regular dude” montage in there somewhere.

In terms of Marvel-produced movies, I would put this up there after Iron Man, but above Iron Man 2 and The Incredible Hulk, both of which were good movies, but I think I liked Thor just a little bit better.  I felt happy coming out of this movie.

X-Men: First Class

I’m not entirely certain whether X-Men: First Class is a reboot or a prequel.  I am certain that it was very well done.  Set in the 1960s during the Cuban Missile Crisis, it shows how Charles Xavier first formed the X-Men with the help of Erik Lensherr (who becomes the villain Magneto), and centres around the tragedy of their parting of ways.

The movie looks great, with groovy ’60s fashion and a solid cast of lead and supporting actors.  There are a few familiar characters first seen in previous X-Men movies, but not too many, and so we get introduced to a number of new characters and special powers.  (Some of the characters would be familiar to readers of the comics, but in many ways this is a hindrance, as their origins are nothing like the comic book versions.)

As I suggested above, I really enjoyed this movie, and thought it was well done.  But, as with Thor, I think there were some minor issues with the pacing of the story.  Not in terms of action versus character moments, but rather in the friendship between Charles and Erik.  The key thrust of this movie is that it is a tragedy, that these two great friends eventually became bitter enemies.  But they don’t really give a lot of time on screen to the development of that friendship.

While I haven’t put together a detailed timeline or anything, I got the feeling that their friendship played out over months (if not weeks).  While I can see that they became good friends in that timeframe, it lacks a certain gravitas.  Had they been working together for years, it would have made more sense to me.

(This also reminds me of another irritation: the close relationship between Charles and Mystique.  If this is a prequel, nothing of the sort was alluded to in the earlier movies.  In the context of this film, however, they grew up together from a young ago.  Their parting was in many ways more tragic that Charles and Erik’s.)

Overall, however, this was a very well-done movie.  Certainly a million times better than X-Men: The Last Stand.  I was happy with this one.

The Hangover Part 2

This movie does not really fall within my usual sci-fi/fantasy purview, but I saw it and feel obligated to say a few words.  Those words are this: if you liked the first one, you’ll probably like this one, because it is the exact same movie.  As such, it was quite funny, but lacked the element of pleasant surprise and discovery that accompanied the first one.  I enjoyed it, but it is not a movie you need to go out of your way to see.

Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides

I saw On Stranger Tides in 3D unfortunately, which was entirely a waste of money.  But then, 3D always is.  Apart from the pointless 3D conversion, this movie was okay.  It wasn’t great, like the first one, and while it was less stupid in many respects than the 2nd and 3rd ones, it had its problems.

In this movie, Captain Jack Sparrow becomes our main character, and that, perhaps, is the first problem.  He is fantastic as a supporting character when you can’t wait to see what he’ll pop up and do next, but as a main character—especially when all the other lead characters are also scenery-chewing pirates—he lacks anyone to be outrageous in comparison to.

The plot also seems unnecessarily complicated.  There were several times during the movie when I was bored waiting for two characters on screen to explain what they were doing and why.  From what I understand, this movie was very loosely adapted from a novel by Tim Powers.  I wonder if shoehorning Sparrow and Barbossa into an existing plot led to its overlarge cast and sometimes languid pacing and unnecessary subplots.

But the characters were fun, and the action sequences good, and so overall the movie was okay.  There was some stuff that was definitely big-screen worthy, and there were some cools bits, so I don’t feel disappointed that I saw it.  But it wasn’t awesome or anything; it was just okay.

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Paul / Sucker Punch / Hanna / Your Highness

Posted on 22 May 2011 by House

In the last 7 weeks I have finished teaching one course, travelled to Toronto, gave and marked an exam, travelled to Salt Lake City, and started teaching another course.  Around all of that, I even managed to make some progress on my thesis research.

But fear not! I have also managed to squeeze in a surprising number of movies.  I shall discuss four of them here; the fifth (Thor) will get its own entry soon.

Paul

This latest movie from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost kind of does for science fiction film what Shaun of the Dead did for zombie movies and Hot Fuzz did for cop/action movies: poke fun at the genre while firmly entrenching itself as part of it.  However, I think Paul has a level of meta-parody that overshadows its homage to SF movies in that it also rejoices in the fan culture of science fiction, comics, and other nerdly pursuits.

To that end, the movie is absolutely steeped in subtle (and not-so-subtle) references to other films.  What impressed me most, however, was that they didn’t have to struggle to fit them in or set them up, and if you didn’t get the reference the dialogue still worked and was funny enough it its own right.

That said, if you are not interested in science fiction films in general, I don’t think this one being a comedy is going to help matters much.  Also, the more familiar you are with iconic science fiction film, the more you’ll get out of this movie.  I enjoyed this movie immensely, as did the people I went with, but it is definitely not for everyone.

Sucker Punch

I so wanted to love this movie. After having seen Zack Snyder’s 300 (visually cool, if too in-love with slow motion and adapting some thin source material) and Watchmen (a good—but not great—adaptation that I talked about here), I was curious to see what he would do with his own material.

The trailers for Sucker Punch promised hot chicks kicking ass in a variety of fantastical and science fictional settings.  Unfortunately, in the film itself that turned out to all be in the imagination of a wrongfully-imprisoned young woman.  Thus, as cool as it looked, there were no stakes to the action on screen.  Sure, it was representative of other struggles in the real world, so it made sense in terms of the narrative, but it was just disappointing—I wanted to see hot chicks actually fighting zombie Nazis and giant samurai and robots, not imagining doing those things.

But I could forgive that.  It added a layer of complexity to an otherwise straightforward story.  What I didn’t like was how relentlessly dark and depressing that story was.  Pretty much everything that happens to our main characters in the movie is absolutely awful, most of the characters we encounter are the worst kind of scum, and—while there is some hope of things improving at the end—there’s not really much in the way of justice being served.  It’s just dark.

I wanted awesome and fun, and got dark and depressing.  While I think that dark story has its place in the world, dressing it up with imaginary fantasy action was the wrong way to sell it to me.  And apart from the bleakness of the story preventing me from even enjoying those action scenes, the betrayal of the promise of the trailer is what irked me most about this movie.

Complaints aside, I do think this movie was better than most reviews suggested.  I’ve noticed that movie reviewers tend to get upset by any kind of narrative complexity in a film—especially an action film—and I think that Sucker Punch was not as slight as most reviews suggested.  It was certainly a creatively ambitious film, but ultimately I don’t think it was successful in achieving its goals.

Hanna

The movie Hanna seemed to come out of nowhere, and I was pleasantly surprised by it.  Hanna is an SF-tinged action thriller with a strong cast that blends bloody and brutal action with an almost sweet story of a young girl learning to make friends and live in the wider world.

This is one of those movies that is exceedingly well-executed.  While it is not going to be one of my favourite films or anything, it is one where I didn’t see anything and think, “Oh, I wish they could have done that better,” or, “That was stupid.”  Everything hung together well, the pacing was tight, and the ending was… satisfying.

Overall, it was a good movie.  I would recommend it to anyone who likes action, suspense, or thriller movies (whether science-fictional or not).

Your Highness

I didn’t have much in the way of hope for Your Highness.  Humorous fantasy is tough to pull off in general, and I’m not sure that there is enough iconic fantasy film to successfully parody.  But it was cheap night at the movie theatre, I wanted to get out of the house, and it had both Natalie Portman and Zooey Deschanel, so I was game.

It was okay.  It made me laugh.  And it had a few scenes of a scantily-clad Natalie Portman.  Most of the humour came in the form of anachronism—the modern language and attitudes of the lead character sticking out amidst the more stock supporting cast.  The plot was basically a mishmash of standard fantasy tropes glued together with some foul language and a veneer of gross-out humour.

Basically, this was a dumb but mildly amusing movie.  Unless you have a strong aversion to profanity, ridiculous violence, and some awkward nudity, I would suggest this is the sort of movie you watch if it happens to be on TV and you are looking for something to do, or if it comes up while you are looking for something on Netflix.  It was better than I had expected, though, so for me is was a successful movie outing.

Coming Soon…. My thoughts on Thor.

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The Locus Awards

Posted on 6 April 2011 by House

For those interested in science fiction and fantasy literature but otherwise not “in the know”, Locus is a sort of industry magazine.  It is full of book reviews, author interviews, news, and more about the written speculative fiction field.  Every year, they put out a recommended reading list, and also hold voting for the Locus Awards.  Anyone can vote; subscriber votes count for double.

The reason I bring this up is that fantasy site Ranting Dragon issued a reading challenge this year, which I participated in.  I also won a free book in their giveaway: The Sorcerer’s House by Gene Wolfe, which was quite good and on which I shall elaborate when I have a chance.  The whole point was to encourage people to read more good stuff, and participate in the voting.  (To that end, they now have a voting guide available.)

If you’ve read a science fiction or fantasy book (or story) first released in 2010, and you liked it, you should definitely vote in the Locus Awards.  And if you haven’t, well, the recommended reading list might be a good place to start.

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Thoughts on Source Code

Posted on 3 April 2011 by House

One of the most recent releases in this unexpected spring bonanza of science fictional movies is Source Code, starring Jake Gyllenhaal (who I was not fond of in the Prince of Persia movie) and directed by Duncan Jones (whose directing I enjoyed in Moon).  I am happy to report that Jones has maintained his streak of good movies, and Gyllenhaal has earned forgiveness for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

Source Code is a good movie.  It’s a hard one to talk about in a spoiler-free way, but I’ll try—any spoileriffic comments will go at the end behind a cut.  I can comfortably say that that I liked it more than The Adjustment Bureau or Limitless, and I liked both of those movies.

Source Code is tightly plotted and very well-paced.  I never got bored, I never wanted things to hurry up, and I wasn’t able to predict what was going to happen.  In a few cases, I was able to realize some things before the characters did—but not by much.  Frankly, it just made me feel smugly clever.  I think the casting was solid, too—everyone played well together (and apart, for that matter), and I found them all believable.

While the “science” part of this science fiction movie is more than a little hand-wavy, it still came across as plausible in that it worked in the context of the movie, and that’s all that I can really ask.  It even made some nods toward exploring some of the depths inherent in the idea, though that is not the focus of the movie, and yet it still managed to raise interesting questions.  So all in all, this is one of those rare films where I really found nothing worth complaining or criticizing.

Consequently, I would highly recommend Source Code.

Now, on to some spoilery stuff!  Do not read any further if you don’t want spoilers.

Continue reading →

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Pizza Quest 4: Peter’s Pizza

Posted on 26 March 2011 by House

I recently had the chance to return to an old favourite pizza place: Peter’s Pizza on Torbay Road.  At one time it had been our regular pizza place, but when it moved across the street my mother found it harder to get to (as she had to cross traffic), and so we stopped getting it quite so much.  I figured it was time to try it out again.

The pizza we got was a respectable pizza, with extremely abundant cheese.  The crust was nice and thick and doughy around the edges, but on this particular pizza I found it a little thin toward the middle.  This thinness—combined with the heavy load of melted cheese—led to a crucial structural issue: slice floppiness.  The bacon used as a topping was fine, but more the chewy rather than crispy variety.

As a result, this pizza had pros and cons in equal measure, roughly cancelling each other out.  I remember that one of the other reasons we had stopped going there back in the day was a lack of consistency—sometimes it is absolutely fantastic, and other times it is just okay.  I think that was the case here.  It was tasty, and I certainly ate too much of it, but there were a few little things I wished were a bit better.

The last time I had it—last summer, actually—it was much better than this most recent incarnation.  And that lack of consistency is the killer, really.  When I get a pizza from there that is not as good as I know it can be, it’s disappointing by comparison, even though the sub-par pizza is still fine of its own accord.  I think that takes Peter’s Pizza out of contention for being “The One Pizza Place” that becomes my default.

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The Adjustment Bureau / Limitless

Posted on 25 March 2011 by House

It seems that March held an unexpected bonanza of science-fictional films.  I have been making something of an effort to see as many as I can, but as my time is limited I have been concentrating on movies that have a degree of positive buzz.  Thankfully,  the two I’ve seen have not let me down.

The Adjustment Bureau

This Matt Damon vehicle is yet another loose Hollywood adaptation of a Philip K. Dick short story (“Adjustment Team”).  Not having read the original story, I have no idea how accurate this adaptation is, so my impression of The Adjustment Bureau is solely based on the movie itself.

That impression is favourable.  The cast was surprisingly solid, and while there were plenty of chase sequences and big reveals, the pacing of the movie was surprisingly thoughtful and reflective.  The basic premise—which I think is apparent from the trailers—is that political aspirant David Norris (Damon) falls for a girl and mysterious forces try to keep them apart.

If that plot sounds rather simple, well, it is.  But the movie tries to explore the whole fate-versus-freewill debate, and much of the action develops out of the main characters taking action for themselves.  They actually have clear reasons for acting as they do, and it is an intensely personal story despite all the bigger questions raised by the film.

My only complaint about the film is with the ending, which seemed to arrive rather abruptly and quite possibly undermined the thematic argument of the movie.  While it tied up the plot, it didn’t really answer any questions or give us any sense of what lay in store for the characters. (I will grant that the last point may have been deliberate, given the nature of the movie, but it was still mildly unsatisfying.)

Still, I very much enjoyed this movie.  While it was no Inception in terms of complexity or quality, it was one of the more enjoyable and thoughtful SF movies I’ve seen recently, and I wish more movies were out there like it.  Good stuff.

Limitless

I had some trepidation going in to Limitless, as I hadn’t heard much about it before its release, and I knew its star Bradley Cooper more for his roles in comedies than serious action or SF films.  But it got some decent reviews from SF outlets, and did some solid box-office, so I gave it a shot.

In the movie, Eddie Morra (Cooper) is a struggling writer who takes a drug that enhances his intelligence to stratospheric heights but only lasts for a day.  The plot follows what happens to his accelerated self as he tries to take advantage of his new-found capabilities.

I thought this movie did not explore the notion of enhanced intelligence as well as it could have.  There are threads in that direction, but they get subordinated to the plot-level action and suspense.  However, the narrative style of the film was unconventional for an SF movie, and there were some very interesting visuals used in showing how the drug affected Eddie’s mind and perception of the world around him.

Despite the lack of depth, the movie was entertaining.  While the outcome was somewhat predictable, there were surprises on how we got there, and it made for a satisfying movie.  While I did not personally enjoy it quite so much as The Adjustment Bureau, I can certainly see that other people might like it more.  And, technically speaking, Limitless was the more rigorously science-fictional of the two movies.

Overall, I think my two choices for movies so far this month were good ones.

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Another Delightful Screed from Hal Duncan

Posted on 1 March 2011 by House

I haven’t yet managed to read any of his well-regarded books, but from time to time I drop in on Hal Duncan’s blog.  There, he holds forth quite frankly and eloquently on any number of topics.  What amused me most recently was his response to a mainstream newspaper’s discussion of genre fiction, all of which you can find starting here.

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Pizza Quest 3: Mr. Jim’s Pizza

Posted on 28 February 2011 by House

My decision to even bother trying a pizza place in Mount Pearl was entirely based off a friend of mine—jazz musician Patrick Boyle—writing a song about it: Mr. Jim’s Reels.  I figured song-worthy pizza must be worth a try.  The Superbowl viewing I attended in Mount Pearl gave me the perfect opportunity to try it, and to be a decent guest by bringing some pizza to the party.

Unfortunately, Superbowl Sunday had seen some poor weather, and thus my travel to Mount Pearl was somewhat hindered.  Since I had no idea how long it would take Mr. Jim’s to prep a pizza for pick-up (only about 15 minutes, it seems), I had ordered it far too early, and thus we were about 10 minutes late picking it up.  Coupled with another few minutes of travel time to our final destination, and the pizza may not have been at optimal freshness when consumed.

On the up-side, Mr. Jim’s pizza was good—certainly what I consider a proper sort of pizza.  The crust was thick and crispy, toppings were generous, and it was tasty.  I think this particular pizza had been slightly overdone, as the crust was more brown than golden in places, but it was certainly not drastically so.

The most significant drawback came when the toppings congealed together in a solid mass of cheese, pepperoni, and bacon (delicious, I know) that tended to slide off the top of the slices.  Of course, this made me nostalgic for similar pizzas of my youth, but it had been a while since I had experienced the phenomenon.  I would suggest that it may have been due to the lack of freshness by this point—if the pizza had cooled enough for the cheese to solidify in this matter, it would exacerbate any sliding tendencies.

As such, I think Mr. Jim’s definitely warrants a second tasting, to ensure my already-positive opinion is not of a sub-optimal pizza.  I do not think it is sufficiently stand-out from places closer to home to warrant becoming a regular pizza place, but it is definitely a good pizza.

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