Tag: Humour

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.

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!

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.