Tag: Sci-Fi and Fantasy

Thoughts on The Lego Movie

First things first:

That pretty much sums up my feelings about The Lego Movie.  It basically did everything I hoped a Lego movie would do, and it did it well.

The basic premise of the movie is that the evil Lord Business has found an ultimate weapon and plans to freeze the entire universe to ensure that it stays well-ordered like he designed it.  Emmet is the “Special”, the chosen one who can save the universe.  That universe is an amalgamation of all the different Lego sets and properties, and thus full of references to older Lego lines, sly in-joke character cameos, and a whole lot of craziness.  Anyway, Emmet turns out to be a less-than-suitable savioiur, and wackiness ensues.

The animation for this movie is rather beautiful—it almost seems like stop-motion at times.  For the most part, everything on screen is made of Lego, from the clouds to smoke puff to the waves in the ocean.  It gives it a really interesting look.  Several of the other visual effects also have a sort of home-built look as well, though I don’t want to ruin those gags for you if you haven’t seen it yet.  But overall, it managed to differentiate itself in an increasing crowded market of computer-animated movies, while at the same time staying absolutely true to the notion of being a Lego movie.

The voice cast was also perfectly done, including big names like Morgan Freeman and Will Ferrell and slightly-less-big-but-no-less-awesome actors such as Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Alison Brie, and Chris Pratt.  (There were a host of famous guest star cameos, as well—again, don’t want to ruin any surprises.)  Everyone stepped up to deliver a hilarious performance.

In many ways, The Lego Movie is a culmination of years of work bringing Lego to life in video games and on TV.  I think the irreverent, not-too-serious feel of this movie had its beginnings in video games like Lego Star Wars and Lego Indiana Jones.  The directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller rightly recognized that the Lego universe would have to be wacky and infused with humour, and they mined the toy’s rich history to extract every bit they could find.

I only really have one minor criticism.  Late in the movie, there is a… twist… that is a bit inconsistent with the feel of the movie up to that point.  Thankfully, it doesn’t undermine what came before as can sometimes happen in movies, and it is not completely devoid of the humour that pervades the rest of the film, but I found it a little jarring.  Oddly enough, I feel that the twist may make the movie more appealing to viewers who are not inherently fans of the toys, the ridiculous humour, or the fantastical plot.

Anyway, I wholeheartedly recommend this movie.  It was awesome.  I just need to get more Lego now….

Catching Fire / The Desolation of Smaug

January turned out to be a month of movie sequels.  At the tail end of my stay in Philadelphia, the wife and I saw The Hunger Games: Catching Fire with a friend of hers, and then after returning to Canada a friend and I took in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

Thoughts on The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Yay! The producers used the money they made from the massive success of the first movie to buy a tripod for the cameraman!  No more shakey-cam!

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire lived up to the quality of its predecessor, but it does have the distinct feel of being the middle movie of a series—the ending is kind of abrupt, and just sets you up for more.  Quality performances all around, as well as more tantalizing glimpses into the world of Panem.  Not much else to say—if you liked the first one, see this one, because you’ll like it too.

Thoughts on The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, however, does provoke me to say more.  Though in a largely good way!

It has been so long since I read the book that I can’t really pick out much in the way of differences, apart from the introduction of Legolas and a newly-created Elf woman, Tauriel, into the mix.  While I don’t think their presence is strictly necessary, neither is it particularly jarring, either.  It’s just another part of the transformation of what is a relatively straightforward children’s book that just happened to be set in the same world and predate the events of The Lord of the Rings into a full prequel to Lord of the Rings—they go out of their way to lay the groundwork for much that is seen in the more epic trilogy.

In general, I liked this movie a lot better than the first one.  I enjoyed the first one, but felt it was kind of slow, and it certainly didn’t grab me the way The Fellowship of the Ring did when it first came out all those years ago.  This one did retain the physics-defying action sequences that I found kind of jarring in the first one, but on the whole it was a better-paced movie.  It does end with a rather large cliffhanger, but I knew that going in.

While I’m sure the Hobbit would have been best as, say, a single 3-hour movie, this installment improves my opinion of the trilogy.  While there were some questionable elements (the obligatory sort-of introduction of a love triangle with the one named female character they have introduced), the acting is by and large quite good, many iconic scenes are portrayed in a visually exciting way, and the exchange between Bilbo and Smaug in this one parallels quality of the meeting of Bilbo and Gollum in the first.

So, my verdict: If you are a Tolkien purist, you are probably going to be very unhappy with this movie.  If you were kind of wishwashy on the first Hobbit movie, this one is, I think, better, so go see it.  And if you hate all these kind of movies, well, you don’t need me to tell you not to see it.

Thoughts on Jack the Giant Slayer

I recently managed to convince a somewhat reluctant friend to go see Jack the Giant Slayer with me.  Though that friend enjoyed herself and offered praise such as “actually an okay movie” amongst other contortions to avoid actually saying she liked it, I hold no such reservations.  It was a good movie and I liked it.

I mean, the script was rather corny in parts, but it tied together a lot of the different aspects of various Jack and the Beanstalk legends in an enjoyable story.  The cast was solid and suitably over-the-top when called for, and it was refreshing to see a fantasy story where the king (Ian McShane) was not corrupt or evil and the captain of the guard (Ewan McGregor) was actually competent at his job.  The chemistry between Jack (Nicholas Hoult) and the Princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson) was believable, and I liked that neither of them was played as stupid.  While the plot was set into motion by some unfortunate coincidences, it did not rely on the main characters acting like idiots to keep it going.

All of which is to say this was not a brilliant piece of filmmaking, but simply a well-done movie.  It didn’t blow my mind or anything, but it didn’t disappoint or dissatisfy, either, and in this day and age I consider that a major accomplishment.

On the Road

I am travelling in Americaland for the next week, so my last-minute panic posting to get something blogged before the end of the month will be shorter than usual.

I write this post from the depths of New Jersey.  Well, not really the depths, since a 5 minute drive puts me within sight of New York, but from what I understand of American culture, it is generally acceptable to consider any part of New Jersey as its depths.

I will be attending a wedding in Washington DC over the weekend, which should be fun.  However, it won’t leave me a lot of free time, so I figured I should let my faithful readers—no doubt waiting with bated breath as the end of the month neared—know that I was alive and well.

That said, on the plane I did manage to watch…

Wrath of the Titans

This was the sequel to the recent Clash of the Titans and, though it may just be the sleep deprivation talking, I think it was better.  It certainly helped that I saw it on a tiny airplane screen and thus wasn’t subjected to terrible afterthought 3D.  It didn’t have much of a plot, but still felt more focussed, and the smaller main cast was a boon—no need to beat us over the head with terrible comic relief when you can just bring along some nameless soldiers to be killed in the mayhem.

The contrived plot really only seemed to exist to propel Perseus and his companions from action set-piece to action set-piece.  While some of the sequences were a bit confusing to follow, they were nicely intense and epic overall.  Perhaps that’s why I liked this one while sleep-deprived; after all, it’s just a series of battle sequences against cool and/or giant monsters.  And as anyone who knows me can tell, that’s all I really need to be satisfied.

Hunger Games / The Avengers

While I still have a massive post about movies I saw earlier in the year (or late last year) in the works, I figured I’d actually comment about The Avengers while it was still out, and throw in a little Hunger Games love while I’m at it.

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games movie has been a hugely successful start to a franchise that—unlike a certain other book-turned-movie series *cough*TWILIGHT*cough*—also has the distinction of actually being a good movie.  I have not personally read the books by  Suzanne Collins, so I can’t comment on the quality of the adaptation, but the movie worked.

The movie is all about tension and pacing, and it handled both deftly with a largely excellent cast.  My only complaint at all comes from the heavy use of handheld camera work for basically everything, which (for me, at least) made static scenes somewhat nausea-inducing and reduced action sequences to blurry messes.  This is, of course, always the effect of handheld shaky-cam, and it sucks every single time that it is used.  Never once has it heightened my sense of being in the action; all it does is make me think about their lame camera work and hope I don’t get sick.

Anyway, back to my point: The Hunger Games was a well-done movie with an excellent cast and is well worth seeing (despite the unsteady camera).  Thematically, it is rather darker than most Hollywood SF not because of the level of violence, but rather in the grittiness and brutality of how that violence is portrayed.  In some respects, just like the games themselves, you don’t watch The Hunger Games—you endure it.

The Avengers

The Avengers is made of win.  There were so many ways this movie could have sucked, but Joss Whedon avoided them all and put together a movie with an all-star cast that met every high expectation people had for it.

(I feel the need to suggest that I may have been a teensy bit happier after the original Iron Man, since that was so unexpectedly excellent and thus seemed all the better, but even that is a tough call.  About the only other criticism of The Avengers I could assemble would be that I was familiar with many of the general plot points since I have a signficant familiarity with the comics, but that is not a flaw with the movie itself, just my experience of it.)

This movie is the payoff of years of anticipation, and thankfully it worked so well.  Delightful action, an over-the-top science fictional story, and layered throughout with humour—The Avengers hit the mark on all fronts.  There’s not really much else for me to say, except I can’t wait to see it again.

The Secret World of Arrietty / John Carter

It has been a while since I last did a movie post.  I had started one way back in January, but it was too ambitious and still sits somewhat unfinished.  I’ll get to it soon, since those movies are starting to come out on home video now.

I did see a couple of movies a bit more recently, though, and so I offer up my thoughts on those.

The Secret World of Arrietty

This is the latest animated Studio Ghibli film to be released by Disney in North America.  While Ghibli’s legendary director Hayao Miyazaki did not helm this one, he was heavily involved in the script and planning, and it bodes well for the future of Ghibli that this movie turned out awfully good.  The movie is a Japanese transplant of Mary Norton’s classic Borrowers children’s novels about tiny people who beneath the floorboards of our homes and “borrow” things to survive, and focusses on the Borrower girl Arrietty.

In typical Ghibli fashion, the animation is lush, beautiful, and detailed.  The perspectives they use evoke the sense of being a tiny person in a giant world better than anything else I’ve seen.  From duels with cockroaches, using leaves as umbrellas, and the dangers posed by the cat and the hungry bird attacking from above, it really gives you a sense of a whole other world surrounding us in our everyday lives.

The story skews to the family-friendly end of the Ghibli spectrum, but is oddly slow-paced and contemplative.  That is not to say it is boring—I was rapt throughout—but much of its wonder arises from the discovery of the world of the Borrowers rather than artificial external dangers, though those arise in due time.  It succeeds by being genuinely beautiful and interesting, not simply because it keeps throwing cheap gags and explosions in your face.

While I wouldn’t say this is the best example of what Studio Ghibli has to offer, The Secret World of Arrietty can stand quite comfortably alongside it.  Anyone who is a fan of quality animation—or quality film in general—should definitely check this out.

John Carter

John Carter is another Disney release that has already gained notoriety as being declared one of the biggest flops of all time within 2 weeks of opening.  There has been much debate over why that is the case even as the film continues to do okay worldwide, so who knows whether it might eventually earn back its massive production budget.

Had Disney actually cared enough to market the film properly, it might have done better domestically.  As a science fiction reader, I knew that the titular John Carter referred to John Carter of Mars, the hero of Edgar Rice Burroughs‘s (creator of Tarzan) Barsoom novels.  This was not at all apparent from any of the trailers I saw.  The one I sort of vaguely remember made it unclear whether it was a science fiction film at all, or a superhero film, or a dumb fantasy movie.  I’m not sure that there was a single thing done to market this film to people who didn’t already know who John Carter was.

Anyway, all of that is beside the point.  John Carter is a good movie.  It has its flaws, to be sure—it starts too slowly, throws in some unnecessary back story, gets a bit muddled in the middle, and has villains with unclear motivations—but it is a fun, enjoyable movie.

It is approximately ONE BILLION TIMES BETTER than any Michael Bay film.  Especially those ones with the transforming robots.

It looked beautiful and the action was fun and well-choreographed.  There was good chemistry between John Carter and Dejah Thoris (the Princess of Mars played by Lynn Collins, who is providing competition to Princess Leia for my Favouritest Space Princess Ever!), and the supporting cast (both human and alien) was strong.  And it did a pretty decent job of evoking a sense of wonder at Burroughs’s vision of Mars Barsoom.

So John Carter was a good (but not great) movie that I enjoyed more than, say, James Cameron’s Avatar (which was well-made and more tightly scripted, but less interesting to me for all its technical superiority) and which did not suck like those bowel movements that Michael Bay keeps excreting onto screens around the world and calling movies.  John Carter is not a deep, mind-blowing, revolutionary movie, but it is a lot of fun, and if a sci-fi action movie is the sort of thing you like, it is well worth seeing.

In Time / Tower Heist

Last week—through no particular planning on my part—I ended up seeing movies two nights in a row!  The excitement there is more from having an opportunity to get out of the house two days in a row more than excitement at the movies specifically; I’ve become something of a hermit, of late.  Anyway, here are my thoughts, in brief, on In Time and Tower Heist.

In Time

In Time is from writer/director Andrew Niccol, who—to me, at least—is best known for Gattaca.  Gattaca was a slightly odd but well-done, thoughtful movie.  Unfortunately, In Time doesn’t hold together quite so well, despite being generally entertaining.

The basic premise is that the key to eternal youth has been unlocked, and so everyone stops aging at age 25.  However, to prevent overcrowding, everyone then has only a year of life left—unless they earn more.  The rich can live for hundreds—or thousands—of years, while the poor live from day to day, struggling to earn enough time at work to keep going until the next day.  Time is the new currency, and everyone is kept strictly isolated in different zones, according to how much time they have.

So, this is an interesting idea, and it certainly allows Niccol to work with a cast of young and beautiful people.  We’re given some heavy-handed tragedy early on, and then Will Salas (played not particularly well by Justin Timberlake, who couldn’t manage the full range of emotion the character demanded) lucks in to a hundred years, and that’s where all his problems start.  And while those problems are interesting, they just don’t hold the story together in a sensible way.

Specifically, there are a number or aspects of the worldbuilding that are necessary to tell the story, but that make NO SENSE AT ALL for a reasonable person.  For example, you can steal a person’s time while they are asleep/unconscious.  WHY WOULD ANYONE BUILD A SYSTEM THAT ALLOWED NON-CONSENSUAL TRANSFER OF TIME?  The answer, of course, it because it is needed for the plot, but that is exactly why this movie just doesn’t hold together well.

I realize this all sounds pretty negative, and I don’t mean to be.  It wasn’t a bad movie, just a flawed one.  It was still quite enjoyable, and while not as clever and thought-provoking as Gattaca, it is still more clever than a lot of movies that pass for science fiction these days.  I certainly don’t regret the time or money spent seeing it.

Tower Heist

Tower Heist was not really on my list to see, but some friends were going, so I figured, “Why not?”  Luckily, it turned out to be an enjoyable comedy.  The trailers play up the presence of Eddie Murphy and Ben Stiller, but Tower Heist is not a “Ben Stiller movie” or an “Eddie Murphy movie”, and was actually more dependent on the ensemble cast and the clever writing for its humour.

So this movie was much better than expected.  The setup for the eponymous tower heist was original (compared to other heist films), and the execution has some genuinely tense and brilliant moments.  This was definitely a comedy with some heist movie more than a heist movie with some comedy, but that’s okay.  It was a lot of fun.

Final Summer 2011 Movie Thoughts

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.

Thoughts on Super 8

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.

 

Paul / Sucker Punch / Hanna / Your Highness

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.