Category: Movies

I recently saw the movie Juno; I’d heard nothing about it before it came out, but some friends saw it and highly recommended it. And then it suddenly seemed that everybody I knew had already seen it. Thankfully, I eventually managed to find a few friends who had not yet had the Juno experience, and finally managed to go see it.

See, the thing is, it doesn’t sound like it’d be my kind of movie. I tend to go for spectacle in movies, or over-the-top comedy — not movies about “issues”.  So when people explained to me that Juno was about a pregnant teenager, I kind of just rolled my eyes, because those kinds of movies tend to be on the serious side — not my kind of movie.  Nobody described it as a comedy about a pregnant teenager — but that’s exactly what it is.

Juno is an over-the-top comedy that manages to be sweet at the same time.  Juno is the aforementioned pregnant teenager, and she’s a total spaz, which makes her utterly charming.  Her friends are goofy and awkward, her family is surprisingly (and hilariously) supportive, and the perfect couple she finds to adopt her baby are alarmingly normal in comparison.  I don’t want to go into the plot in any greater detail, simply because that is the fun of the movie.  There is still a lot for me to talk about though.

I think Juno is one of the few movies I’ve seen that I consider perfectly crafted.  The story as it arises from the characters is interesting, the actors perfectly suit their roles, the pacing is tight, the soundtrack fits closely, and the arc of the characters matches the arc of the plot events.  It even manages to be really funny and offer over-the-top comedy without resorting to dick and fart jokes.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that — I loves me some Kevin Smith, after all.)  It’s the sort of movie that’s so well put-together that it makes me wish other movies that I like were crafted just as well, even if I liked them more than I liked Juno.

So, to summarize my thoughts on Juno: fantastic movie.  Given that the movie has been out for more than a month and the theatre was still quite full when I saw it on a weeknight — and given the award nominations — it seems that the word has gotten out, and most everyone agrees with me.  If you haven’t seen it, you should.

I saw Sweeney Todd last Tuesday, but forgot to write about it then. While writing up my thoughts on Cloverfield, I remembered that talking about movies was one of the reasons I started this site, so here I am again.  Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is the Tim Burton-directed adaptation of the stage musical, and stars (surprise surprise) Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. It is a bleak, bleak musical with a very dark ending. (Again with the surprise….) It is also surprisingly good.

I don’t see all that many musicals — especially not on film — but my most general complaint about them is that they start to get tedious after a while. Too often, the music simply delays the advancement of the story, and is rarely good enough to be of primary interest itself. I did not find that to be the case with Sweeney Todd at all, though — the pacing was good, and the story advanced quickly enough to maintain my interest.

It is essentially the story of a serial killer. We feel some sympathy for Todd (originally Benjamin Barker) at first, as we learn of his wrongful imprisonment and how his family was destroyed, and can empathize with his desire for revenge. But that desire for revenge against a specific man is eventually warped into a desire for revenge against everyone, and encouraged by his partner Mrs. Lovett. It progresses down a bloody and bleak path full of dismal characters, with only a few having any good qualities whatsoever. You might be able to argue, however, that it has a happy ending.

The music — and performances by Depp and Bonham Carter — was also surprisingly good: unobtrusive, understandable, on-key, and funny. Burton carefully crafted the flow of the movie so it all came together effortlessly, with no jarring transitions to knock you out of the story. Of course, much of it is classic Burton — the sets, the setting, even the staging of some of the musical numbers — but it is not even remotely out of place in this show.

I went to see this movie with some friends — I’d had no plans to see it of my own accord. I was delighted to find that I liked the movie. Even though I really enjoyed it, it was a really dark movie, so I’m not sure how quickly I’d jump at the chance to see it again. But I’m awfully glad I saw it that first time.

You might be forgiven if you can’t parse the precise meaning of my title; is is a trifle ambiguous.  I could be suggesting that the movie was so awesome that my brain just couldn’t comprehend or contain it — or I could be suggesting that it actually physically broke my brain.  Given how I teetered and stumbled while leaving the theatre, and the dizziness and headache that persisted after I got home and forced me to bed early (well, early for me, anyway), I believe the second interpretation is more accurate.

That is not to say that Cloverfield was bad — just that the overriding element that stayed with me was that the shaky, hand-held camera work that I found so nauseating that I spent the second half of the movie with my eyes half closed, or looking at the ceiling, or the walls, or anything but the screen.  I can’t even blame proximity to the screen — I was in the very back row of the theatre.  I know that I’m more sensitive to motion sickness than most people (I find first-person video games nauseating as well), but I’m also not the only one to complain about this, either.

So, my basic thought here is whoever first decided to film a professional movie like this should be drug out into the street and shot.  (Disclaimer: I don’t actually think this, and I have no liability or responsibility should that persona actually but drug out into the street at shot.  It’s a joke, people.)  I couldn’t watch most of this movie, just like I couldn’t watch most of The Bourne Ultimatum, or any other movie filmed with this shaky camera syndrome.

Directors apparently like this because it adds to the “gritty realism” of the film.  I am rather inclined to disagree — there is no adding of realism to a third person viewing experience, and all it adds is motion sickness.  That said, it can be used effectively in limited quantities, adding a lot more mobility and fluidity, and to provide contrast with different parts of the film.  But using hand-held camera work for a whole movie is too much of a bad thing.

Anyway, that’s enough of the ranting about how it was filmed.  I should probably talk about the actual movie.

The basic idea behind the movie can be summed up as “street-level view of a giant monster attack on Manhattan”.  Where most giant monster movies focus on the monsters and the people fighting them, this movie is about the regular people who get caught in the middle.  As a premise, it’s pretty neat.  Unfortunately, there is a conceit behind the movie, too: the movie is supposedly what one of these people filmed on a camcorder during the attack.  Thus, we are treated to old material on the tape comes through as flashbacks, as well as a disjointed and disoriented storyline, and really, really bad camera work.  It starts with a going-away party being recorded, and during the party, the monster attacks, and the guy keeps the camera rolling as they try to get away, and then turn around and stupidly go back to save another friend.

I was not terribly enamoured of this conceit, as you may have gathered, but the story it was putting across wasn’t all that bad — except for the irritating romance element.  However, even though the movie was short, I still felt it was a little slow in places, and on its own, the movie provides no answers.  The extensive online promotional efforts apparently revealed quite a bit more back story, though there are no concrete answers.  The acting was passable — if a little forced, in places — and the special effects seemed pretty good, but my overall reaction (intellectual reaction, anyway — I’ve already detailed the physiological) to the movie is…. meh.  It was okay.

This was very much a “concept” movie, and it clung to that concept for dear life, even though it doesn’t quite work everywhere.  It’s the sort of movie that I would normally never bother to see, except they made it a monster movie and so that grabbed me.  For me, the “concept” — monster attack as filmed by a person caught up in it — doesn’t work.  The content, however, largely does.  And so I’m left with really mixed feelings, and that’s all that I can really say.