Category: Humour

Personal Update and Thoughts on A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

Though I’ve been maintaining my at-least-once-a-month posting schedule, I have fallen behind in a few areas.  Worry not, however—more Pizza Quest updates will be coming soon.

I haven’t been getting out too much, lately, which has been pretty good for my thesis research.  I have been also bashing my head at working on a draft for a journal article that is due in a month.  A month seems like a long time, but this is turning out to be a long article and I can only hope that I have enough actual results to finish it off by then.

I have also been applying and interviewing for jobs, and have recently accepted an offer!  (I do not wish to go into any greater detail until I actually start, as I am pessimistic enough to believe it is not impossible that something could still go wrong.)  Among the many benefits this that this job offers—interesting experience, pay bills, etc.—I am perhaps most looking forward to having a bit of spending money so I can make a triumphant return to Timemasters and catch up on my comics.

Anyway, since my last post, I’ve only seen one movie, though several more should be coming in the next few weeks.

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

When I saw trailers for the first Harold & Kumar movie many years ago, I was of the mind that it was not really my sort of thing. Thankfully, during the first year of my PhD I wanted to procrastinate more than I wanted to avoid the movie, and so I finally saw—and quite enjoyed—Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle.  The subsequent Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay was a little bit of a letdown, but I think the latest one is an excellent synthesis of the best parts of its predecessors.

It recaptures the zany, ridiculous spirit of the first and combines it with the higher production values of the second, all wrapped in a surprisingly touching—and lewd, vulgar, and hilarious—Christmas story.  That’s right, they haven’t just made a Harold & Kumar movie set at Christmas—it’s a bona fide Christmas movie.  Hell, they even filmed with 3D cameras rather than using that bullshit conversion process used by so many of the summer “blockbusters”, and I’m happy to say I did not get a headache or feel nauseous at all.

John Cho and Kal Penn reprised their titular roles with ease, and thankfully the vast supporting cast of familiar faces was still there.  Especially excellent was Neil Patrick Harris, but really, this should not be surprising to fans of NPH.  The new characters introduced in this story were okay, but they certainly provided fodder for an amusing B-story.

I don’t think I really need to go in to the plot in this review.  If you liked previous Harold & Kumar movies—either of them—then you’ll enjoy this one.  If you haven’t seen any, you’ll possibly be horrified by this one, but if you’re interested you should start with White Castle, anyway.  I left quite happy with the movie and thought it was well worth my money.  (Okay, so I used a free pass and thus paid only for the 3Dness, but still.  Well worth it even at full price.)  I may need a repeat viewing next year to confirm, but this could have the makings of another traditional Christmas movie for me.

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.

Entertaining Exam Question

I came across this link to a rather entertaining exam question about Return of the Jedi.  Now, I have no idea if this is real or not, but I am entertained nonetheless.

Of course, if I had written this question, the correct answer would be F.  Return of the Jedi is my favourite Star Wars movie, despite Empire Strikes Back being the better film overall.  This may be partly attributable to seeing Jedi in the theatre when I was very little, or to most of the toys I had being tie-ins with that movie, or to something else entirely.  It is my favourite, despite not being the best.

Neat Idea: Gotham High

While perusing SF Signal as I am wont to do, I found a link to this post by Jeff Thomas and Celeste Green, showcasing some development work they did for DC called Gotham High—essentially Batman in high school.  The project didn’t go anywhere, but they have a number of drawings that are vastly amusing.

(I know this would violate Batman canon—inasmuch as one exists—but I would assume that it was intended to be a non-canonical offshoot.)

Check it out, just to look at the pictures!

Megamind / RED / Skyline / Morning Glory

Once again, I strive to squeak in an update under the wire and leave no gap in the monthly archives.  I have actually quite a lot to talk about, but I’ll limit myself to movie thoughts for now.  That, in itself, is still quite an undertaking, as I managed to visit the girlfriend and we saw 4 movies in theatre in 8 days.

Megamind

I had low expectations for this movie.  When the trailer first debuted forever ago, I was immediately dismayed at the similarities with Despicable Me.  (Note that this was before either movie was released—I was dismayed at the seemingly-similar premises.)  I was also dismayed at Will Ferrell’s involvement, as I have tended to be irritated by his movies, though I may need to reconsider that assessment as I have quite enjoyed several of his more recent movies.

Anyway, point is I had low expectations.  However, a few people I knew saw it and said it was good, so off the girlfriend and I went, and I was really pleasantly surprised.  Apart from both being about the villains, Megamind and Despicable Me are quite different films, and while I enjoyed the latter, I think Megamind was the better of the two.  Indeed, Megamind was one of the better movies I’ve seen this year.

It doesn’t quite reach Pixar quality, but the writing and jokes were clever, and there were some delightful visuals.  And, most pleasantly, the movie actually surprised me in a couple of places.  As a result, I’d probably put it above all the other non-Pixar CGI movies I’ve seen, with the sole exception of How to Train Your Dragon, which was also really good.  Anyway, Megamind is a good movie, and I highly recommend it.

RED

No, not the colour.  Acronym.  For “Retired, Extremely Dangerous”.  Based on a comic by Warren Ellis.  Most of what you know can be summed up with the following: action movie starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, and John Malkovich.  If you can’t tell whether RED is something you might enjoy based on that, I’m not sure anything else I can say will help.

Anyway, the aforementioned cast star as retired spies.  When a team of commandos tries to kill Frank Moses (Willis), he reunites with old friends to find out why.  Wackiness ensues, where wackiness equals lots of entertaining gun battles with actors not usually found in the action genre.

The plot is a little weak but vastly entertaining, and the action scenes are well done.  While I have seen better movies, RED certainly satisfies.  Recommended if action movies are your thing.

Skyline

We saw this sci-fi movie because it was the next one playing, and because some of the trailers looked kind of cool.  Unfortunately, the coolness did not persist outside of the trailer.  Skyline was quite dissatisfying.

It is like the illegitimate love child of Independence Day and Cloverfield, where we have an alien invasion, but see it from the point of view of regular people trying to survive.  As such, we never really find out what is going on, and our heroes, such as they are, stand little chance.   It’s a pretty dark and depressing movie, and while they almost did something interesting with the ending, they pushed it too far, took it in the wrong direction, and gave it a non-ending instead.

You don’t need to actively avoid this movie.  It had some cool bits and all, but it’s not really enough to command your full attention.  It’s the sort of thing you might watch if it’s on TV while you’re doing something else, or on an airplane.  So I give this one a big, “Meh.”  My viewing companions were not nearly so kind in their opinions, so be warned.

Morning Glory

Morning Glory is a comedy—or possibly a dramedy, though I am loath to use the term—starring Rachel McAdams and Harrison Ford.  It is not a romantic comedy, though there is some romance in it (not between the two leads).  It is just a funny, well-done movie.

McAdams plays an eager young TV producer given a chance to try to revive a failing morning talk show.  She manages to bully Harrison Ford’s character—a legendary news anchor who is a miserable, grumpy bastard—into working on the show, but has little time to wring cooperation out of him and improve the show’s ratings.  Wackiness ensues, where wackiness equals zany news bits, neuroses, Harrison Ford being an ass, and further delights.

The movie has solid writing, is not entirely predictable, and is quite cute to boot.  It is thankfully not rife with cliche and rehashed storylines, and while it’s not ridiculous over-the-top side-splitting funny, there is no shortage of laughs.  A good movie, and recommended if you’re in to general (non-gross-out) comedies.

Salt / The Other Guys / Scott Pilgrim

Aha!  I have finally settled upon a naming scheme for these movie posts.  I shall use the titles of the movies themselves!  Pure genius (so long as I don’t let too many build up)!

Here, then, are my thoughts on the handful of movies I saw since my last movie post.  Sadly, the summer movie season is drawing to an end, so there’s only one more on my list to see (The Expendables).

Salt

Much like when I saw The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the girlfriend and I took in Salt because we wanted to see a movie and had seen everything else of higher interest.  This Angelina Jolie vehicle tried to bill itself as a thriller where nobody knew what was really going on.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t quite the case.

It was entertaining enough, with a number of nice action sequences, but it was largely predictable.  The sort of movie where there’s a binary choice to the truth—the “Is the protagonist actually the villain?” genre—has been done to death.  In older movies, the answer was always, “No!”  Then, to shake it up a bit, a lot of movies had the answer being, “Yes.”  And that really exhausts the possibilities.

So now modern movies try to make you think the answer is no when really it’s yes, or vice versa,  But it always works out to one or the other, so whatever you guess, you have a 50/50 chance of being right.  And if the filmmakers are clumsy about telegraphing their intent, the odds go way up in your favour.  Coupled with casting some actors who always play the bad guys, and there’s not a whole lot of mystery left.

Now, as a plain action movie it was fine, but if you’re relying on the mystery for your enjoyment, Salt may fall short.  Otherwise it was a perfectly adequate movie.

The Other Guys

The girlfriend and I took this one in to stay out of a rainstorm.  It was an extremely pleasant surprise.  Normally I don’t really like Will Ferrell movies, but his buddy cop feature that pairs him with Mark Whalberg worked really well, and is way funnier and different than the trailers would lead you to expect.

The main plot is a somewhat conventional buddy cop storyline that provides a fair amount situational comedy.  What I liked best, though, was the layer of absolutely bizarre and random humour laid over top of it.  There were jokes in this movie that were completely out of left field, that I could never have predicted.  I’m absolutely delighted when that happens.  Consequently, this movie turned out to be a lot of fun.  I’m comfortable giving it a recommendation.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

For me personally, this movie had a lot in its favour: based on a Canadian comic that I enjoy, directed by Edgar Wright of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame, and a pretty solid cast.  I’m thrilled to say it lived up to my expectations.  Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was one of my favourite movies of the summer.

That said, the demographic is really the under-35 crowd, as it is steeped in the world of video games, anime, and indie music.  I suspect that just watching the Universal logo at the beginning is enough for you to tell whether you’ll enjoy the movie or not.  The creator of the comic—Bryan Lee O’Malley—is the same age as me, and thus grew up with all the same cultural touchstones, and that shines through in the comic and the movie.

The movie basically embodied fun, with lighthearted and entertaining fight scenes, an over-the-top cast of odd-but-largely likable characters.  Possibly the weakest character is the eponymous Scott Pilgrim (ably played by Michael Cera), but the whole point of the movie is his growth from useless slacker into a decent guy.  Getting from A to B is where the fun lies.  Highly highly highly recommended.