My second day at the New York Asian Film Festival was rainy, although I can't say I really noticed once I got in the theater; the folks at Lincoln Center were willing to allow camping out, and with something like twenty minutes between most shows, it didn't make sense to wander very far from my seat once I'd gotten in place for A Boy and His Samurai. It's a weirdly isolated feeling, after a while, but the periodic thanks braving the weather at entreaties to those who hadn't already bought tickets for the entire day's slate to spend the rest of the day there at least assured me that I wasn't completely wasting the day inside.
One thing worth noting for future reference: The Lincoln Center area is not exactly brimming with quick, cheap food. I spent a fair amount of time looking for some before A Boy and His Samurai started, only burn up time that could have been spent actually eating if I'd just gone back to Lansky's and tried the brunch. Sure, it's a bit of a missed opportunity when you go to a new city and wind up eating in the same place multiple times, but "popcorn for breakfast" is not the best alternative. Especially when the very first movie taunts you with delicious-looking sweets for the second half of its running time.
On a side note, I need to get more Twitter followers (@JaySeaver, folks). By the time Karate-Robo Zaborgar was starting, I was hungry again, and I offered the last admission on my ten-movie ticket for a box of Raisinets. Sadly, it didn't appear any of the 150-odd people and robots that follow me were in a position to take me up on that offer, so I tore into a slice of pizza once I got back to the hotel.
(The less said about the hotel, the better - I suppose you shouldn't expect much when you sort by ascending price on Expedia, but it was a narrow room with a sink but only one bathroom for the floor, and you bring the toilet paper that they supplied in the room. Not ideal. I also wound up toting my laptop around all day, partly so I could write, but more for not really wanting to leave it in that room out of my sight. And aside from that, a lot of people must walk their dogs on this street, because even though most people I saw cleaned up after their pets, the scent lingered.)
Monday morning, I would return home to Boston to watch the Red Sox and pyrotechnics. It wound up being a pretty good weekend of movie gluttony, the perfect warm-up for Fantasia (which starts tonight!).
Chonmage Purin (A Boy and His Samurai)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 3 July 2011 at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater (New York Asian Film Festival 2011)
A Boy and His Samurai has a well-worn fantasy premise that could have very easily proceded in a very predictable fashion. However, even if the original novel it was based on did not have its time-lost samurai discovering the joys of baking, audiences still might have expected a clever, even surprising film from the director of Fish Story and Golden Slumber, and that's what Yoshihiro Nakamura delivers: An off-beat and unusually mature fantasy that should still play well for a young audience.
One day, Tomoya Yusa (Fuku Suzuki) and his mother Hiroko (Rie Tomosaka) spot a handsome young samurai outside a supermarket, looking very confused. Hiroko is sure that it's just an actor doing some sort of promotion, but when they encounter him again a few days later, the man - one Kijima Yasube (Ryo Nishikido) is a mess and seems very confused by the modern world. They take him in, and he eventually proves willing to adapt, helping Hiroko around the house and eventually taking an interest in making custards and pastries. Hiroko still suspects he is a confused modern man, but Kijima insists he comes from the Edo period, 180 years earlier.
Though the film's title evokes a certain genre of kid-oriented dramas and places Kijima in the position of a pet (at least according to its English-language title), the focus of A Boy and His Samurai is often less on Tomoya than Hiroko. Indeed, one might argue with a bit of a wink that the movie is as much a single mother's fantasy as it is a young boy's - what woman in Hiroko's position wouldn't want a handsome younger man whose gratitude compels him to help with the housework around? Nakamura doesn't take the movie too far in that direction, in large part because Rie Tomosaka is given that rarest sort of character to play: A single mother who, while harried and busy, is not defined by her lack of a man or guilt over not being at home more often. Even if it weren't in the script, one perhaps wouldn't be able to fault Tomosaka for playing Hiroko that way; instead, she always shows us a woman who takes pride in her achievements and enjoys both her work and home life.
Full review at EFC.
Xian Si Jue (Duel to the Death)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 3 July 2011 at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater (New York Asian Film Festival 2011)
Like the title suggests, Duel to the Death is the martial arts film distilled down to its purest form - noble warriors walking a dangerous road so that they can square off to fight for treacherous leaders. Fortunately, director "Tony" Ching Siu-tung opted to pour his ninja-related nightmares into it, so it's a trip in more ways than one.
The plot is simplicity itself: Every ten years, Chinese and Japanese martial arts masters meet to determine whose style of combat is superior. This year, the task falls to Ching Wan (Damian Lau) for China and Hashimoto (Norman Chu) for Japan. As they make their way to the ancient battlegrounds, their paths cross, both with each other and with Sheng Nan (Flora Cheung), the daughter of the nobleman on whose grounds the contest will take place and whose family has traditionally produced China's champion. But there is skullduggery afoot - Hashimoto's handler Kenji (Eddy Ko) is in contact with the ninjas who are attacking not just Ching Wan, but many of the land's senior masters.
It's easy to dismiss the plots of movies like this as nothing but frameworks on which to hang fights, and in many ways, Ching Siu-tung doesn't even hide that here: The story more or less spells out that there will be a duel and that there are nefarious forces looking to interfere, and when ten or fifteen minutes passes without some sort of fight, you can expect some sort of crazy ninja thing to happen. And yet, dismissing it as just connective tissue would be unfair; Ching and his co-writers do manage to build up stories of intrigue and betrayal on the one side that contrasts nicely with how the various counterparts could easily be friends in other circumstances.
Full review at EFC.
Denjin Zaborga (Karate-Robo Zaborgar)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 3 July 2011 at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater (New York Asian Film Festival 2011)
Western otaku likely would have to be deeply committed to an obsession to Japanese pop culture to be familiar with the original Denjin Zaborgar, a long-forgotten sentai television series most notable for featuring one of the first robots that also had a vehicle mode, years before the toys that became Transformers when imported to the United States - after all, it's not exactly well-known on the other side of the Pacific, either. This is, perhaps, all to the good - since it's not beloved, Noboru Iguchi can take this bit of J-pop ephemera and make it his own (a simultaneously exciting and frightening prospect, depending on one's tastes).
As in the original, Yutaka Daimon (Yasuhisa Furuhara) is a young police special agent, barely out of his teens, with an unusual partner - Zaborgar, a robot that can transform into a motorcycle. Most of their missions are against the Sigma organization, a group of cyborgs led by Dr. Akunomiya (Akira Emoto) looking to wipe humans off the face of the Earth! In the meantime, though, they need human DNA to construct their mega-cyborg, and have Akunomiya's top agent, Miss Borg (Mami Yamasaki) collecting it. Others in Sigma disdain Miss Borg, so they turn on her, leading to her and Daimon briefly on the same side. Things get weird, then intimate, Zaborgar feels betrayed, and-- Well, cut to twenty-five years later. Daimon (now played by Itsuji Itao) is an unemployed, newly homeless loser who still wears the helmet once used to interface with Zaborgar, and Akunomiya is finally ready to unleash his giant robot on the world. Small problem - new-model schoolgirl cyborg Akiko (Aimi Satsukawa) doesn't particularly want to be the CPU for an engine of destruction, and escapes to find Daimon, with Sigma's new top agent, Gen Akizuki (Yuya Miyashita) hot on her trail.
That is a lot of plot for a goofy exploitation comedy, and it doesn't include all of the really bizarre tangents Iguchi goes off on. Indeed, the need to cram in so much exposition makes the movie feel lopsided: Though the promotion on the festival circuit emphasizes the "25 years later" angle and Itao gets first billing (with Furuhara credited as "The Younger Daimon"), the two periods are actually rather evenly split, to the point that more time seemed to be spent in the past than the present. That's not necessarily a weakness, but it does make the second half feel kind of rushed at points, as it introduces Akiko and Akizuki quickly and pushes the plot forward at high speed, with little time for the sort of free-form oddness that would occasionally turn up toward the start. It's more than a little strange to say this about a Noboru Iguchi/Sushi Typhoon production, but between the exposition-filled opening and revelation-filled second half, Karate-Robo Zaborgar might be too focused on having a coherent story, causing the high-concept insanity to suffer.
Full review at EFC.
Nintama Rantarô (Ninja Kids!!!)
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 3 July 2011 at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater (New York Asian Film Festival 2011)
For the last few years, I've had this recurring joke about how hiring Takashi Miike to direct family movies is the Japanese equivalent of Warner Brothers getting the rights to Harry Potter and deciding that the right man for the job is David Cronenberg. Now, though, it's just a thing that happens every year or two, not a cause for shock as much as an indication that this particular kiddie flick, even if otherwise average, will at least have a few memorably bizarre moments.
An adaptation of the long-running comic and cartoon Nintama Rantaro, the movie follows title character Rantaro (Seishiro Kato) as he goes off to start first grade at Ninja Academy, where his parents (Shido Nakamura and Rei Dan) hope that he will learn to become a great ninja not have to work as a farmer as he does. He soon makes friends, particularly Shinbei (Fuuta Kimura), a sleepy, roly-poly fellow, and Kirimaru (Roi Hayashi), a poor but hardworking boy who takes babysitting jobs to make tuition. They get into mischief, but pull together when a nice kid in the fourth grade, "gangsta hairstylist" Takamaru Saito, finds his family attacked by members of their old clan.
I've never encountered any of the franchise's previous iterations, but I am not surprised at all the hear that Nintama Rantaro started life as a four-panel gag strip with more of a focus on punchlines than continuing (mis)adventures. That's how the movie often plays, like a stream of skits about just how goofy it would be to have grade-school kids learning ninja skills in the classroom, with even the climactic race broken up into distinct comedy bits that last a few minutes at most. It's not necessarily a bad way to put a movie aimed at young children with short attention spans together, although it feels very stitched-up at times - Takamaru is introduced just when the filmmakers seem to realize that the movie needs a bit of a plot for its finale, and Rantaro being a particularly fast runner wasn't brought up before the race starts.
Full review at EFC.
Guan Yin Shan (Buddha Mountain)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 3 July 2011 at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater (New York Asian Film Festival 2011)
It doesn't always work out this way, but ending the trip to New York City for the Asian Film Festival with Buddha Mountain turned out to be a nice way to decompress. After a non-stop barrage of movies where even the relatively sedate family picture featured a time-traveling samurai, this picture from China about a group of struggling Chinese friends would have been a fine palate cleanser even if it wasn't genuinely good on its own.
Three young people in Chengdu need a new place to live. Nan Feng (Fan Bingbing) is an aspiring singer who gets in financial trouble when a man who claims he was injured at one of her shows starts shaking the bar where she plays down; Ding Bo (Berlin Chen) dropped out of college and uses his motorcycle to work as an unlicensed courier; Fei "Fatso" Zao (Wang Helong) does odd jobs and gets teased for being overweight. Tossed out of their current apartment, they wind up renting a room from Master Chang Yun-qin (Sylvia Chang), a one-time Peking Opera singer with her own issues whose fastidiousness inevitably leads to clashes with her boarders.
Buddha Mountain is the sort of movie western audiences don't see from China very often - it's contemporary, small in scale, and tells a tale of ordinary people; it's also written and directed by a woman. That last bit is apparently quite rare in China, and with at least one of writer/director Li Yu's previous films (Lost in Beijing) banned, it wouldn't be surprising if this film was a truly independent production. It certainly feels like one, with its ground-level photography of what feel like found locations and appealing but not glamorous cast of characters. It's also refreshingly free of the nationalism that has been omnipresent in recent Chinese cinema - there are no reminders of the glorious history, propagandic praise for the government, or pointed displays of prosperity.
Full review at EFC.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
New York Asian Film Festival Day 02: Punished, 13 Assassins (Original Japanese Cut), Shaolin, and Raw Force
Though I had been planning to go to NYAFF this year anyway, the how and when turned out to be a little different than expected. My original plan had been to ride up to Maine with my brother Matt on the 2nd/3rd of July, spend some time visiting family from grandparents who are seldom seen since their move to Florida to my very newborn nieces, get back in time for 4th of July fireworks in Boston, and then head to New York on the 9th, see a full day of movies, and then head back for the Somerville Silents on the 10th.
Fortunately, my brother's availability was different, so my trip south got pushed up a week and north pushed back, which meant I got two days in New York instead of one, and since I'd already seen Machete Maidens Unleashed!, five shows a day would just fit one of their $99 ten-show. Unfortunately, getting there took a bit longer than expected - bus left a little late, driver took a pit-stop in Connecticut, #1 line took a bit longer than I'd hoped, had to find my way around Lincoln Center... By the time that was done, it was fifteen minutes too late for Bangkok Knockout - which, ironically, would have been my midnight movie the next week, but it's also playing Fantasia, so it's all good.
That did give me time for lunch, which I had at Lansky's. Great big pastrami sandwich and a white chocolate/raspberry shake. And you know how most places will give you a roll of some sort before the meal? Lansky's put a whole warm mini loaf of banana bread on the table. I approve of that, and wound up eating it through the next two movies.
And there's the one guest who was in town - Takayuki Yamada - who was mostly there to talk about Milocrorze: A Love Story - but was good enough to come talk to us about 13 Assassins as well. As you might expect, Miike is like a lot of people who create anarchic, seemingly made-up-as-they-went-along movies - a guy who puts a lot of thought into every small detail and expects them to be executed exactly. He's a very demanding, pushy guy from the sounds of it, which makes me wonder how well that adapted to something like Ninja Kids!!!, which had a lot of very young children in the cast.
But Ninja Kids!!! is the next day's movies. For now, the four I saw on Saturday:
Bou Ying (Punished)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 2 July 2011 at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater (New York Asian Film Festival 2011)
Punished levels with the audience pretty quickly, opening with two scenes that don't say everything but make it clear that this movie is less about resolutions than the process of getting there. Later on, it spells out just what the English-language title is really referring to. It can afford to tip its hand, though, because it's made by guys who know their crime and holds a couple of key bits in reserve.
The two flash-forwards that open the film are the aftermath of a kidnapping - Hong Kong property developer Wong Ho-Chin (Anthony Wong Chau-sang) and his driver/bodyguard Yao Kai-chor (Richie Ren) have caught up with the people who kidnapped Wong's daughter Daisy (Janice Man) and the results are ugly. From there we jump back, getting a look at the events that bring Wong and "Chor" to this point and following them afterward, and that's going to go some dark places: Chor was once a criminal himself before Wong took him in, and still has contacts he can call on. Wong, meanwhile, got to the top of the heap by being ruthless and uncompromising, and while he is far from the world's warmest parent, nobody attacks his family without paying a steep price.
Anthony Wong is a familiar face from a huge number of supporting roles - I've seen the hard-working actor in three films this year alone, and that's just what what has made it to theaters in the United States. He takes the lead here, and it's a terrifically forceful performance. Wong Ho-chin is a demanding man, the sort whose more benevolent emotions seem to have been burned away over the years, and there is a certain amount of this personality that suggests there's not much left to Ho-chin but residual ambition, but it's finely observed: There is a difference in the way a petty tyrant carries himself and the manner of a man who loves his daughter but can't think of any way to handle her self-destruction other than to be an autocrat. Wong dives into the worst case scenario of "father knows best"and emerges fascinatingly broken and confused on the other side, aware of his faults and struggling to understand why he commands such loyalty.
Full review at EFC.
Jûsan-nin no shikaku (13 Assassins) (original Japanese cut)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 2 July 2011 at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater (New York Asian Film Festival 2011)
Director Takashi Miike's career has often been defined by the bizarre; even his recent run of PG-rated blockbusters for the whole family have frequently been weird. Watching his last movie to make a little noise in North America (Sukiyaki Western Django), I was struck by how the strange elements masked a guy who could deliver some excellent straight-up action and adventure, and found myself wondering if his skill would be appreciated as much as his vision if he played it straight for once. 13 Assassins answers that question with a resounding "yes", although it's still got its odd moments, especially in its original Japanese cut.
Lord Naritsugu (Goro Inagaki) is a monster, the sociopath half-brother of a shogun who rapes, kills, and mutilates as he pleases, and to make matters worse, he's about to be appointed to the council. After a retainer uses his hara-kiri to deliver attention to this problem, samurai lord Doi (Mikijiro Hira) is given a vague directive to make the problem go away. To this end, Sir Doi retains Shinzaemon Shimada (Koji Yakusho), a righteous samurai who has had little reason to spill blood in this time of peace. Shimada, knowing that Naritsugu has an army at his disposal - commanded, naturally, by Shimada's old classmate Habei (Masachika Ichimura) - gathers a force of his own: There will be a dozen of them, from old friends to ronin swordsman Hirayama (Tsuyoshi Ihara) to Shimada's untested nephew Shinrouko (Takayuki Yamada), with the number climbing to thirteen when Koyata (Yusuke Iseya), the lowly bandit who guides them through the woods, opts to join their party.
It all builds, of course, to a spectacular final confrontation, where the 13 would-be assassins must confront not the fifty soldiers they were expecting, but over two hundred, and while the righteousness of their cause doesn't count for much, the ability to choose and prepare the battlefield will prove crucial. That makes for an amazingly balanced battle, even if it does give Koyata reason to actually state a variation of the Inverse Ninja Rule out loud ("you samurai are useless, and even more useless in great numbers!"). Still, it's the kind of set piece whose individual pieces could each be the climax of an impressive movie, effortlessly moving between large-scale action with surprises around every corner and one-on-one sword fights, with plenty of room to sneak character bits in.
Full review at EFC.
Xin Shao Lin S (Shaolin)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 2 July 2011 at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater (New York Asian Film Festival 2011)
Benny Chan's Shaolin is not a remake of any of the Shaw Brothers films that focused on that legendary temple and its monks (though only fifty-odd years gone at the time, Gordon Liu-starring movies like The 36th Chamber of Shaolin helped to cement its myth). It touches on the same sort of themes - finding inner peace through martial prowess and ultimately standing up against a vicious warlord - but is its own sort of epic.
In this one, the Shaolin temple does not stand aloof from the needs of the nearby people, but opens its doors to aid the refugees left homeless and injured by the war constantly waging around them. As one battle ends, they are confronted by General Hou Chieh (Andy Lau) and his second-in-command Tsau Man (Nicholas Tse), and Hou, shall we say, does not acquit himself admirably. Hou's scheming will soon find itself repaid in kind, though, as he and his wife (Fan Bingbing) find themselves targets at a dinner where he'd planned to eliminate a fellow general. Injured and broken, he is forced to seek sanctuary in the temple, where only Wudao (Jackie Chan), the cook, will have anything to do with him. Meanwhile, a group of younger monks sneak out of the temple to steal food and medicine, and Tsau starts conducting business with western arms dealers.
Benny Chan has been a prolific director in Hong Kong for a long time, although he never gained the same fame outside the area as John Woo, Tsui Hark, or even Corey Yuen. Here, though, he presides over a grand spectacle with elaborate action sequences and an operatic plot. and in some ways he seems a curious choice: Many of the big-budget historical action epics that make their way to the US from China are made by respected directors like Zhang Yimou taking a stab at making a blockbuster, rather than genre workhorses like Chan being given a chance to "elevate" their work. This, perhaps, gives Shaolin a slightly different feel from many of its brethren; an unabashedly pulpy atmosphere amid the theatrics. Chan's characters harness or plow through their suffering rather than relish it, and fights are exciting rather than beautiful.
Full review at EFC.
Raw Force (aka Kung Fu Cannibals)
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 2 July 2011 at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater (New York Asian Film Festival 2011)
Though Machete Maidens Unleashed! is not a great documentary, I support it playing as many festivals and repatory theaters as possible, because it gives the programmers an opportunity to pull something nutty out of the archives to play afterward. The nutty thing they pull out likely also won't be any good, but it will be made with an infectuous enthusiasm. Thus, a 35mm print of Raw Force is pulled out from some archive, and it's not well-made at all, but it's a lot of fun at midnight in a crowded theater.
There's an island somewhere in the Pacific where, legend has it, old martial-arts experts would go to live out their life in exile. A group of martial-arts enthusiasts from California aims to explore it, booking passage on a cruise ship that will also stop in the Philippines. This proves to be a doubly bad idea - a group of expatriate crooks regularly bring nubile young girls there in exchange for their weight in jade, because the monks living on the island believe that consuming human flesh will allow them to live forever and raise the dead.
The movie has a little bit of everything from the major exploitation-flick food groups: Kung fu, zombies, gratuitous nudity, weird comedy... The basics. The execution often varies as widely as the genre does at times - within a single fight scene, the audience will see some good choreography and several cast members (most notably, Jillian Kesner as a bikini-clad beauty on vacation from the LAPD SWAT team) selling the action extremely well alongside bits where people go down from blows that whiffed by a good six inches or so. An action scene where pirates attack the ship is actually fairly well-done (happily interrupting some fitfully amusing comedy), until the fire starts, at which point the low-budget effects work rears its ugly head. It's a weird but not unpleasant mix - the sort of B-movie where the audience can laugh at the low production values but which does several things just well enough for a good deal to be enjoyed without irony.
Full review at EFC.
Fortunately, my brother's availability was different, so my trip south got pushed up a week and north pushed back, which meant I got two days in New York instead of one, and since I'd already seen Machete Maidens Unleashed!, five shows a day would just fit one of their $99 ten-show. Unfortunately, getting there took a bit longer than expected - bus left a little late, driver took a pit-stop in Connecticut, #1 line took a bit longer than I'd hoped, had to find my way around Lincoln Center... By the time that was done, it was fifteen minutes too late for Bangkok Knockout - which, ironically, would have been my midnight movie the next week, but it's also playing Fantasia, so it's all good.
That did give me time for lunch, which I had at Lansky's. Great big pastrami sandwich and a white chocolate/raspberry shake. And you know how most places will give you a roll of some sort before the meal? Lansky's put a whole warm mini loaf of banana bread on the table. I approve of that, and wound up eating it through the next two movies.
And there's the one guest who was in town - Takayuki Yamada - who was mostly there to talk about Milocrorze: A Love Story - but was good enough to come talk to us about 13 Assassins as well. As you might expect, Miike is like a lot of people who create anarchic, seemingly made-up-as-they-went-along movies - a guy who puts a lot of thought into every small detail and expects them to be executed exactly. He's a very demanding, pushy guy from the sounds of it, which makes me wonder how well that adapted to something like Ninja Kids!!!, which had a lot of very young children in the cast.
But Ninja Kids!!! is the next day's movies. For now, the four I saw on Saturday:
Bou Ying (Punished)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 2 July 2011 at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater (New York Asian Film Festival 2011)
Punished levels with the audience pretty quickly, opening with two scenes that don't say everything but make it clear that this movie is less about resolutions than the process of getting there. Later on, it spells out just what the English-language title is really referring to. It can afford to tip its hand, though, because it's made by guys who know their crime and holds a couple of key bits in reserve.
The two flash-forwards that open the film are the aftermath of a kidnapping - Hong Kong property developer Wong Ho-Chin (Anthony Wong Chau-sang) and his driver/bodyguard Yao Kai-chor (Richie Ren) have caught up with the people who kidnapped Wong's daughter Daisy (Janice Man) and the results are ugly. From there we jump back, getting a look at the events that bring Wong and "Chor" to this point and following them afterward, and that's going to go some dark places: Chor was once a criminal himself before Wong took him in, and still has contacts he can call on. Wong, meanwhile, got to the top of the heap by being ruthless and uncompromising, and while he is far from the world's warmest parent, nobody attacks his family without paying a steep price.
Anthony Wong is a familiar face from a huge number of supporting roles - I've seen the hard-working actor in three films this year alone, and that's just what what has made it to theaters in the United States. He takes the lead here, and it's a terrifically forceful performance. Wong Ho-chin is a demanding man, the sort whose more benevolent emotions seem to have been burned away over the years, and there is a certain amount of this personality that suggests there's not much left to Ho-chin but residual ambition, but it's finely observed: There is a difference in the way a petty tyrant carries himself and the manner of a man who loves his daughter but can't think of any way to handle her self-destruction other than to be an autocrat. Wong dives into the worst case scenario of "father knows best"and emerges fascinatingly broken and confused on the other side, aware of his faults and struggling to understand why he commands such loyalty.
Full review at EFC.
Jûsan-nin no shikaku (13 Assassins) (original Japanese cut)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 2 July 2011 at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater (New York Asian Film Festival 2011)
Director Takashi Miike's career has often been defined by the bizarre; even his recent run of PG-rated blockbusters for the whole family have frequently been weird. Watching his last movie to make a little noise in North America (Sukiyaki Western Django), I was struck by how the strange elements masked a guy who could deliver some excellent straight-up action and adventure, and found myself wondering if his skill would be appreciated as much as his vision if he played it straight for once. 13 Assassins answers that question with a resounding "yes", although it's still got its odd moments, especially in its original Japanese cut.
Lord Naritsugu (Goro Inagaki) is a monster, the sociopath half-brother of a shogun who rapes, kills, and mutilates as he pleases, and to make matters worse, he's about to be appointed to the council. After a retainer uses his hara-kiri to deliver attention to this problem, samurai lord Doi (Mikijiro Hira) is given a vague directive to make the problem go away. To this end, Sir Doi retains Shinzaemon Shimada (Koji Yakusho), a righteous samurai who has had little reason to spill blood in this time of peace. Shimada, knowing that Naritsugu has an army at his disposal - commanded, naturally, by Shimada's old classmate Habei (Masachika Ichimura) - gathers a force of his own: There will be a dozen of them, from old friends to ronin swordsman Hirayama (Tsuyoshi Ihara) to Shimada's untested nephew Shinrouko (Takayuki Yamada), with the number climbing to thirteen when Koyata (Yusuke Iseya), the lowly bandit who guides them through the woods, opts to join their party.
It all builds, of course, to a spectacular final confrontation, where the 13 would-be assassins must confront not the fifty soldiers they were expecting, but over two hundred, and while the righteousness of their cause doesn't count for much, the ability to choose and prepare the battlefield will prove crucial. That makes for an amazingly balanced battle, even if it does give Koyata reason to actually state a variation of the Inverse Ninja Rule out loud ("you samurai are useless, and even more useless in great numbers!"). Still, it's the kind of set piece whose individual pieces could each be the climax of an impressive movie, effortlessly moving between large-scale action with surprises around every corner and one-on-one sword fights, with plenty of room to sneak character bits in.
Full review at EFC.
Xin Shao Lin S (Shaolin)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 2 July 2011 at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater (New York Asian Film Festival 2011)
Benny Chan's Shaolin is not a remake of any of the Shaw Brothers films that focused on that legendary temple and its monks (though only fifty-odd years gone at the time, Gordon Liu-starring movies like The 36th Chamber of Shaolin helped to cement its myth). It touches on the same sort of themes - finding inner peace through martial prowess and ultimately standing up against a vicious warlord - but is its own sort of epic.
In this one, the Shaolin temple does not stand aloof from the needs of the nearby people, but opens its doors to aid the refugees left homeless and injured by the war constantly waging around them. As one battle ends, they are confronted by General Hou Chieh (Andy Lau) and his second-in-command Tsau Man (Nicholas Tse), and Hou, shall we say, does not acquit himself admirably. Hou's scheming will soon find itself repaid in kind, though, as he and his wife (Fan Bingbing) find themselves targets at a dinner where he'd planned to eliminate a fellow general. Injured and broken, he is forced to seek sanctuary in the temple, where only Wudao (Jackie Chan), the cook, will have anything to do with him. Meanwhile, a group of younger monks sneak out of the temple to steal food and medicine, and Tsau starts conducting business with western arms dealers.
Benny Chan has been a prolific director in Hong Kong for a long time, although he never gained the same fame outside the area as John Woo, Tsui Hark, or even Corey Yuen. Here, though, he presides over a grand spectacle with elaborate action sequences and an operatic plot. and in some ways he seems a curious choice: Many of the big-budget historical action epics that make their way to the US from China are made by respected directors like Zhang Yimou taking a stab at making a blockbuster, rather than genre workhorses like Chan being given a chance to "elevate" their work. This, perhaps, gives Shaolin a slightly different feel from many of its brethren; an unabashedly pulpy atmosphere amid the theatrics. Chan's characters harness or plow through their suffering rather than relish it, and fights are exciting rather than beautiful.
Full review at EFC.
Raw Force (aka Kung Fu Cannibals)
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 2 July 2011 at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater (New York Asian Film Festival 2011)
Though Machete Maidens Unleashed! is not a great documentary, I support it playing as many festivals and repatory theaters as possible, because it gives the programmers an opportunity to pull something nutty out of the archives to play afterward. The nutty thing they pull out likely also won't be any good, but it will be made with an infectuous enthusiasm. Thus, a 35mm print of Raw Force is pulled out from some archive, and it's not well-made at all, but it's a lot of fun at midnight in a crowded theater.
There's an island somewhere in the Pacific where, legend has it, old martial-arts experts would go to live out their life in exile. A group of martial-arts enthusiasts from California aims to explore it, booking passage on a cruise ship that will also stop in the Philippines. This proves to be a doubly bad idea - a group of expatriate crooks regularly bring nubile young girls there in exchange for their weight in jade, because the monks living on the island believe that consuming human flesh will allow them to live forever and raise the dead.
The movie has a little bit of everything from the major exploitation-flick food groups: Kung fu, zombies, gratuitous nudity, weird comedy... The basics. The execution often varies as widely as the genre does at times - within a single fight scene, the audience will see some good choreography and several cast members (most notably, Jillian Kesner as a bikini-clad beauty on vacation from the LAPD SWAT team) selling the action extremely well alongside bits where people go down from blows that whiffed by a good six inches or so. An action scene where pirates attack the ship is actually fairly well-done (happily interrupting some fitfully amusing comedy), until the fire starts, at which point the low-budget effects work rears its ugly head. It's a weird but not unpleasant mix - the sort of B-movie where the audience can laugh at the low production values but which does several things just well enough for a good deal to be enjoyed without irony.
Full review at EFC.
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 8 July 2011 - 14 July 2011
Recent readers may forget this, but this regular feature (calling something that only appears on one's own blog a "column" would be the height of pretension, no?) was originally spun off from one called "This Week in Tickets", which I got sort-of caught up earlier this week. Read it, as I think I actually had a few good things to say within that beast.
But enough about the past, extending back to late April! What opens in Boston this weekend?
Why am I missing them? Because this weekend I'll be going north to see my grandparents and nieces for real - hey, when you don't have a car, you rely on when it works for other people, and not making it last weekend had the great side effect of being able to head to New York for a weekend at the New York Asian Film Festival (first batch of reviews coming soon). Hitting 9 films at NYAFF means I'll be a little more ahead of the game when going to Montreal for Fantasia starting on Thursday; between what I've seen at NYAFF, BUFF, and elsewhere, this could be a fairly relaxed festival.
So while I may catch something Friday night - possible We Are the Night, I'll be elsewhere for the rest of the weekend, hopefully arriving back here in time to catch Seven Chances. Who knows what I'll have time for between then and Thursday, when (with any luck) I'll be catching Red State and Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame.
But enough about the past, extending back to late April! What opens in Boston this weekend?
- Basically, all comedy counter-programming at the multiplexes as nobody wants to put a big tentpole in between Transformers and Harry Potter. The R-rated option is Horrible Bosses, which looks like a comedy version of Strangers on the Train (an even broader one than Throw Momma from the Train), with some amusing sitcom guys plotting to kill their movie-star crazy bosses. Hey, the world's funniest man is in it, although since the IMDB credits are probably in order of appearance, he probably doesn't show up until almost the end.
For the kids, there's Zookeeper, in which animals reveal they can talk to a schlubby zookeeper to try and help him connect with his girlfriend. I'm not saying it can't be good - I look at a cast list that includes Rosario Dawson, Leslie Bibb, and Donnie Wahlberg and can't help but hope for the best - but when the trailer has to dig for the lame product-placement gags, that's not what you'd call a positive indicator. Considering how ubiquitous that sort of thing is, I strongly suspected that the Franklin Park Zoo logos we see in the trailer was just an attempt at localization, but it appears Boston's stuck with this one. - Those two get the mainstream multiplexes; two others open at the Kendall. Viva Riva! comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and from the trailer looks to be an energetic crime flick, Guy Ritchie by way of Africa. The one-week booking is Ahmed Ahmed's Just Like Us, a documentary that the Egyptian-American comedian made while touring the Middle East with other comedians from the region, attempting to break down barriers with their comedy.
- One of the movies being displaced to make room for them is Trollhunter, which moves over to the screening room at the Coolidge to play late-night shows: 9:45pm all week, and 11:59 on Friday and Saturday. Indeed, midnights will be packed this weekend, with Jaws 3-D playing in the big house downstairs and Rolling Thunder in the slightly less big house upstairs. Jaws 3-D will be shown in three dimensions (probably anaglyph), and Rolling Thunder co-writer Heywood Gould will be on hand Friday night to introduce the film. Also opening up in the screening room (but not playing the late shows) is Page One: Inside The New York Times, which also continues in Kendall Square.
- The Brattle starts the summer vertical calendar this week, although they're sort of easing into it. Friday through Sunday, they have a pair of special engagements: Afternoons and evenings, they will be playing a restored 35mm print of Luchino Visconti's The Leopard, much beloved in part for its sumptuous design and photography, with the restoration overseen by original director of photography Giuseppe Rotunno. The same days at 11pm, We Are the Night plays, following a cop as he tracks a group of female vampires though Berlin underworld. It's projected digitally, so sit a couple rows further back.
The "Music for Movies: Bernard Herrmann Centennial" series starts Monday and Tuesday afternoons with screenings of the 1956 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much. Future weeks will have evening shows, but there's a number of other special shows this week: Monday night, the DocYard presents High Rise, in which the filmmakers interview nine residents of the high-rises in Brazil; director Gabriel Mascaro and producer Rachel Ellis will be answering questions via Skype. Tuesday's special screening is another documentary, Agadez, the Music and the Rebellion, which looks at the Tuaregs of the Sahara Desert and one of their most celebrated musicians, Omara Moctar. On Thursday, Bastille Day is celebrated with French classic The Rules of the Game.
And, on Wednesday, they have their annual Trailer Treats party and fundraiser. Pay $12 ($10 for students, seniors, and Brattle members) and come at 8pm for the live music, cold beer, and trailers both great and terrible from the Brattle's extensive collection; and extra $8 gets you in at 6:30pm and barbecue from SoulFire BBQ (which is delicious). - The Somerville Theatre has all three of their programs running on the main screen this weekend. The midnight show on Friday and Saturday is The Goonies, with live comedy, music, and dance numbers on Saturday night. The Classic Film Series entry on Sunday (10 July) morning at 11am and Monday (11 July) evening at 5pm & 8pm is Singin' in the Rain, with two Technicolor short subjects. And, Sunday night, Jeff Rapsis returns to accompany Buster Keaton in Seven Chances, in which he plays a man who must marry or lose a large inheritance (it was remade as The Bachelor with Chris O'Donnell a few years back, but let's overlook that). Also playing are two Keaton shorts, "Neighbors" and "The Goat", and if last month's presentation of Our Hospitality is any guide, the print will be amazing and the music will be quite good as well.
- Yellowbrickroad has its last show as part of the Night Terrors series at AMC Boston Common this Friday (8 July) at midnight, but its incoming replacement, Phase 7, is also worth a look - it's a nifty thriller set inside an Argentine apartment building as its inhabitants seal themselves away from a presumed outbreak. It opens on Wednesday (13 July) at 10pm, and will have the same Wednesday/Friday schedule for the next month.
- If you're into Bollywood, the schedule at Fresh Pond stays more or less the same - Delhi Belly plays nights (8pm & 10pm) Friday through Monday and evenings (5:30pm & 7:45pm) Tuesday through Thursday; Buddha Hoga Tera Baap plays matinees (12:30pm, 3:00pm, and 5:30pm) through Monday and the extremes (3pm & 10pm) for the rest of the week.
- The MFA is all about the Boston French Film Festival this week, to the point of showing films much later than usual on Friday and Saturday to fit them all in. No screenings Monday through Wednesday, but things pick back up on Thursday with three more films. Click the link to check out what's playing; I find myself most wishing I could catch A Cat in Paris, a gorgeous-looking animated film about a cat who lives a double life as a house pet and the companion to a rakish cat burglar.
Why am I missing them? Because this weekend I'll be going north to see my grandparents and nieces for real - hey, when you don't have a car, you rely on when it works for other people, and not making it last weekend had the great side effect of being able to head to New York for a weekend at the New York Asian Film Festival (first batch of reviews coming soon). Hitting 9 films at NYAFF means I'll be a little more ahead of the game when going to Montreal for Fantasia starting on Thursday; between what I've seen at NYAFF, BUFF, and elsewhere, this could be a fairly relaxed festival.
So while I may catch something Friday night - possible We Are the Night, I'll be elsewhere for the rest of the weekend, hopefully arriving back here in time to catch Seven Chances. Who knows what I'll have time for between then and Thursday, when (with any luck) I'll be catching Red State and Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame.
Monday, July 04, 2011
This Week Month Long Friggin Time In Tickets: 25 April 2011 to 26 June 2011
So here I was, not intending to let a film festival get me ridiculously far behind like it did for BUFF, but somehow this took even longer, as the graphs in this post show, the longer the festival, the wider the distance between finishing the movie and writing the review, and the gap got up to 31 days at points. Then came Noir Nights and the questionable decision not to post this until I was caught up. Which took forever.
And then I found myself Wi-Fi-less upon reaching NYC for the Asian Film Festival, but I'm not pushing this finished thing off until Fantasia to get that done.
So, here's a table of contents of sorts:
25 April 2011 - 1 May 2011
2 May 2011 - 8 May 2011
9 May 2011 - 15 May 2011
16 May 2011 - 22 May 2011
23 May 2011 - 29 May 2011
30 May 2011 - 5 June 2011
6 June 2011 - 12 June 2011
13 June 2011 - 19 June 2011
20 June 2011 - 26 June 2011
So, let's see what I've been up to...
Whoa... I saw Limitless. Huh, that was a while ago.
Limitless
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 25 April 2011 in Somerville Theatre #3 (second-run)
Super-intelligence is a tricky thing to pull off; it requires the writer to try and figure out what someone smarter than himself would do in a given situation. You can fake that in a couple ways: The first spending a long time thinking through actions that the character must run through in seconds, and the second is to give the characters blind spots. The trouble with that is, you notice the latter much more than the former, despite a number of scenes meant to show off how clever Bradley Cooper's character has become.
One thing I wish the movie had done is to make Robert De Niro's industrialist the main antagonist rather than spending so much time on Andrew Howard's gangster. Since they establish early on that the miracle drug helps a lot more if you're already smart, all Gennady has on Eddie is ruthlessness, while Van Loon would be able to counter the raw, expanded intellect with life experience, which would be an interesting battle.
The last time I did this, I said I wanted something of a breather after BUFF; well, I sort of knew that wasn't going to happen with IFFBoston. I wound up taking the day after after the festival off from work because the "TBD" on the ticket wound up being for a day game. Good chance to rest up from a long week of wrangling SQL by day and seeing back-to-back movies by night (and weekend afternoon), right? You'd think, except that the previous night's game was delayed by rain and went into extra innings. I flipped it on thinking "cool, even after Conan O'Brien Can't Stop, I can watch some baseball", and wound up loopy by the end. The afternoon game wound up being not great, to say the least - John Lackey and the bullpen (which could really have used the rest) got obliterated.
The Sunday game was a lot more fun; my brother Dan, his wife Lara, and their awesome little girls came, the Red Sox won, and we got to walk around the warning track afterward. One thing I missed the last time I did this was that you can not only see dents where balls hit the scoreboard in left field, but they're often going fast enough that you can even see imprints from the stitches.
In between, we have an illustration of how expensive going to the movies in Boston can be. Clearly, I've got to start hitting the Capitol and Somerville Theatres more often; notice how the Capitol's evening 3D price is the same as the Common's evening flat price (and, honestly, there should have been a discount on Rammbock; that was about an hour of movie). Then you look at what Cave of Forgotten Dreams runs for a 3D evening show... I paid that under the "support good movies, go cheap on filler" edict, but that's some expensive support.
Incidentally, Cave is (as of this writing) still playing at Boston Common (it's also opened in 2D at Coolidge Corner), and I think it's a pretty strong example of how people do appreciate 3D, when it's used well. That's a pricey ticket for a documentary, which isn't exactly the megaplex's bread and butter, but it's been doing well enough to stick around for at least a five-week run, which a lot of fictional features considered modest successes don't get.
Thor
* * * (out of four)
Seen 6 May 2011 in Arlington Capitol #1 (first-run, RealD 3-D projection)
Thor is the Marvel movie I figured would be the toughest sell when these things were first announced; it's a weird combination of Norse mythology and superheroics to begin with and the Iron Man flicks had announced both that Marvel's movies were going to be tied together in a similar way to their comics and that they were taking place in a predominately science-fictional universe. That the movie works is a great tribute to director Kenneth Branagh and the other filmmakers, who dive right into a Kirby/Simonson vision of Asgard, arguably more "sufficiently advanced technology" than Viking-influenced.
A nice cast doesn't hurt; Chris Hemsworth does a really kind of wonderful job as the title character - cocky and brash can be easy, sure, but having Thor still be recognizably himself after learning some humility and perhaps how to think as opposed to just being a blunt object (having a hammer as a weapon rather suits him) takes skill. Tom Hiddleston is also impressive as Loki, managing the trick of crafting a frequently sympathetic villain despite the fact that his actions are those of a sociopath. Neat trick. Branagh knows when to rein Anthony Hopkins in and when to let him go as Odin, the banter between Natalie Portman and Kat Dennings as the scientist and student who find Thor is a lot of fun, and Stellan Skarsgard is a real asset as Portman's mentor, a middle-aged Scandinavian guy not quite able to grasp the idea that he's drinking with the god of thunder he'd heard stories of as a child.
As to the story - it's good enough. It's an origin story on one hand and an introduction on the other. Branagh manages grandeur and fun, but something about it stops just shy of bowling the audience over. It's the expected story, and while the details are fun, an extra surprise or two would be very cool.
Fast Five
* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 May 2011 in Regal Fenway #8 (first-run)
I haven't seen a The Fast & the Furious movie since the first one - I think I've got an HD-DVD of Tokyo Drift somewhere, but knowledgeable people tell me that it's a side-story that actually occurs after #4 & #5 in continuity - though let's face it, this is not a series where knowing the minutia matters: There are fast cars, a heist will probably be involved somewhere or other, and guys on opposite sides of the law will find some common ground.
It's a template that works here, as writer Chris Morgan and director Justin Lin pull together pretty much every surviving character from previous installments, throw in Joaquim de Almeida and Dwayne Johnson as adversaries pursuing them in different directions, and keep things moving well enough that the audience isn't too fidgety by the time the movie gets around to the big car chase through Rio that was teased in the previews.
The film isn't all that it can be - wouldn't it have been awesome if Vin Diesel and the Rock had had a screen fight for the ages? - but it's a surprisingly enjoyable entry in a series that by rights should have gone direct to video two sequels ago.
Not to make broad generalizations, but look at the size of that ticket to Yankee Stadium. They just don't do restrained, do they?
Anyway, since I've already done entries for Queen to Play and True Legend & the game, there's not a whole lot to say. I enjoyed the movies quite a bit, although the trip to New York wound up being a punishing schedule - I got there at around 1pm, saw the movie, got turned around on the subway a bit, and then had a decent burger at a diner before catching the 1:30am bus back to Boston, at which point my brother Matt picked me up to travel north for a baby shower being thrown for my brother Travis and his wife. I thought I did reasonably well staying alert on Sunday, but it turns out that this really isn't the case at all.
Anyway, seeing a game in enemy territory was a nifty experience; I heartily recommend it to sports fans everywhere. But, wow, things are expensive in NYC - my eyes bugged just a little at that $13.50 movie ticket for a 2pm show, and I've gotten much too used to the $2 programs outside Fenway to believe the $10 the Yankees wanted.
(I also love how, even with the way the Sox devour Yawkey Way on game days, the Fenway area still retains a bit of an independent feel; Yankee Stadium 3 is very corporate, with anything not run by the team pushed well away from the stadium by a concrete moat.)
Those games do wind up clustering, don't they?
The effect of getting older that I find I hate most is how long it takes me to bounce back from things - or, more accurately, the insidious delayed reaction. It was Saturday night that I stayed up until 2am and got about four hours of low-quality sleep on the bus, but I had a quiet day Sunday and most of Monday and Tuesday to recover, and yet, when I hit the theater for Meek's Cutoff on Tuesday, I was dragging. And let me tell you, that is not the condition you want to be in when seeing a movie like Meek's Cutoff.
Meek's Cutoff
* * (out of four)
Seen 17 May 2011 in Landmark Kendall Square #8 (first-run)
Why don't you want fatigue poisons in your system when seeing this movie? Because it is frequently boring, and seeing it in that condition will exacerbate this. Reducing it to simply that one adjective is tremendously unfair - director Kelly Reichardt and her cast take a script dangerously short on events and does beautiful work on the details, but understand - this is a movie that, for better or worse, is not enjoyed but endured.
That is, in many ways, entirely appropriate - crossing the American West to make a fresh start in California or Oregon was a trial more often than it was the exciting series of events that the word "adventure". Reichardt throws us right into this, starting the movie at a point where a three-wagon train of settlers is already lost and rationing food, quietly discussing whether to hang their guide, Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood). When their path intersects that of a native hunter, they must decide whether to trust him or Meek. Meek, seeing his impending obsolescence, preys upon the settlers' fears.
The ethnic politics of Meek's Cutoff are interesting. One of the characters makes casually racist comments early on to establish the attitudes of the time, we're inclined to forget our initial revulsion as the rest of her words and actions within the group tend to be innocuous. The more immediate question, of course, is the relationship with the native (Rod Rondeaux). The dynamic is set up as certain members of the party attempting to put aside their fears and trust his superior knowledge of the terrain while others hold on to frightened prejudices, but it's important to note that even the group that scans as open-minded isn't looking for the sort of co-operation that comes out of friendship, but exploitation. In its quiet way, the movie is a damning indictment of white America's treatment of the people they displaced, where even those attempting to do right by the natives do so in a conditional, self-serving way.
Full review on eFilmCritic
Jûsan-nin no shikaku (13 Assassins)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 May 2011 in Landmark Kendall Square #6 (first-run)
About twenty or thirty minutes into the screening of 13 Assassins that I attended, the second pair of people got up, trudged across the part of the screen where the subtitles were, and left. It happened in the wake of the second scene meant to prove the villain is a menace who must be destroyed, and while I sort of get that this is the sort of thing that can be off-putting... You guys paid money to see a Takashi Miike samurai movie named 13 Assassins; violence is part of the deal.
And while this is certainly not one of the symphonies of the bizarre that is often associated with Miike, to say he is playing it straight undersells it somewhat Sure, the filmmakers stick with conventional costumes and weapons, and has its story driven by traditional codes of honor, it's unconventional in many ways. Many have spilled electrons on how samurai films were traditionally a conservative genre, about noble warriors either protecting the people from outlaws or tragically forced to face off in combat because their sense of duty has placed them on opposite sides, while this film's sympathies are with the rebels. Yes, the leaders are inevitably old friends who must face off, but it's very clear here that tradition and deference are the problem.
But, aside from that, the action that makes up the last act is crazy. Miike and his characters convert an entire town into a mechanized deathtrap to allow the rebel samurai to cut Lord Naritsugu's army down to a more manageable size, and in many ways the end result resembles the way Tokyo transforms from a city to a fortress in Evangelion, albeit in a completely period-appropriate way. It is absolutely blockbuster-scaled action in a genre that seldom works at that scale, going on and on without let-up but also without exhausting the audience. I've noted before, especially after seeing Sukiyaki Samurai Django, that Miike is really a fantastic action director and it might be interesting to see what he can do when not winking at the audience.
The answer: He's really good, but let's not call him conventional just yet.
That Kung Fu Panda ticket is kind of beat up because apparently it (along with my phone) stayed in my pocket while I rented a kayak and rowed on the Charles that afternoon. I liked it a lot more than my previous attempt at rowing - a summer crew class which just wasn't for me, as I was more interested in just enjoying the breeze on the river than getting in sync with seven other people and trying to make good time. The important thing to take away from that, aside from "keep paper items in a waterproof container", was that rowing from a bit upstream of Harvard to MIT is, perhaps, a bit overambitious. It leads to a moment where the thought "oh, crap, I've got to return this boat" races through one's mind, and then, when you turn the boat around to head upstream, the river looks completely different. The placid, glass-like surface suddenly appears not just choppy, but angry.
I hurt the rest of the day. And sometime arond 1am, yikes, that was some pain.
Inventory
* * (out of four)
Seen 27 May 2011 in the Somerville Theatre micro-cinema (four-wallin')
Sometimes I hate meeting filmmakers. It kind of sucks to meet a nice enough guy like Castparty Productions's Justin Fielding, shake his hand, take his business card, give him your own, and sort of promise to write his independent comedy up, only to find that the best thing you can say is "better luck next time".
It's inventory time at the Mattress Warehouse store, so the store is closed but the entire staff is on-hand to count what's in stock - although, being slacker misfits, not a whole lot of work is likely to get done. There's mopey Eleanor (Amanda Hurley) and her ex-boyfriend Chuck (Ken Breese); bible-toting Bess (Irina Peligrad) and Ukranian immigrant Nastasia (Katarina Morhacova); nunchuck-wielding Jackie (Shelly Finnegan) and Tucker (Quentin James), about to start a new job; big-talker Greg (Christian Anthony), timid Percy (Dennis Hurley), and oddball Zoe (Cat Miller); along with manager Barbara (Chris Holliday) and store owner John Panda (Matt Carbo).
The template that Inventory follows isn't a bad one for an independent comedy - basically a single location that's big enough for the large cast not to be tripping over each other, just enough plot to give the movie a logical place to start and finish, and a potential ensemble of interesting characters. Fielding does a good job of jumping from one thread to another, spending enough time in each place to do something but not letting any specific bit drag. He's at his best when there are gags coming at a quick pace. There's potential for a snappy observational comedy here.
Full review at EFC
Kung Fu Panda 2
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 May 2011 in AMC Harvard Square #3 (first-run)
What's there to say about Kung Fu Panda 2? It's a good movie that doesn't quite get over the hump to being a great one, a sequel somewhat doomed to be seen as less than its progenitor because the original idea - take the animal-inspired fighting styles from Shaw Brothers movies and have them done by cartoon animals, including a panda, the symbol of China! - is so perfectly brilliant that even doing the follow-up well can't compete with the sheer inspiration of the first. It's difficult to give this one a fair shake.
It's got its problems - aside from the Angelina Jolie-voiced Tigress, the rest of the Furious Five have very little to do, aside from a couple delightfully morbid jokes about the source of Mantis's daddy issues, and it's kind of surprising that nobody mentioned what was apparently a panda holocaust to Po before now. But it's also quite a lot of fun - director Jennifer Yuh Nelson and company have a funny but not lightweight script to work with and a bunch of new celebrity voices to add to their already nifty returning cast. Visually, they choreograph some exciting fight scenes, and there's nobody who puts more real effort and attention into their 3-D like DreamWorks Animation.
An idea is only revolutionary once, but it's still good after that, and I'd still like to see another Kung Fu Panda movie - which is a good thing, because the end more or less promises one.
I'm not sure where the rest of the week went - well, the holiday on Monday was spent moving very little because of the rowing-related soreness. Then probably a busy week at work, a day best suited to sitting on the deck and reading, then a baseball day with Mom & Bill. It wound up being a good game, and a nice enough day that we wound up walking from North Station to Fenway, getting brunch along the way with Matt & Morgan, and stopping to admire how all the statues in the Public Garden were dressed up in their finest Bruins gear. The game was a pretty good one - we got to see an Adrian Gonzalez home run, but that's sort of free with admission (the guy is good) - and then we had really good fish & chips at a seafood restaurant that probably expected us to order something more sophistimacated/expensive.
I got them to their train and then headed to Somerville just in time to catch the silent movies. Read about it here; it was a great show, with excellent prints and a fine soundtrack performed live by Jeff Rapsis. The next one is on 11 July and I'm certainly hoping to fit it into the crazy mess of moving parts that is my July.
No, I didn't pay full-price for a movie even when I didn't have to; I had a coupon code for two tickets on Fandango that expired on or around the 6th but never a chance to use it for a pair. The sad thing is that I think it was for $9, which means I still would have wound up saving money even if I used it for one matinee ticket. Movie tickets, they are expensive in Boston.
The "Noir Nights" program swallowed a big chunk of the weekend, but I have no complaints about that; most was quite good, and seeing them on the biggish screen was a treat, both because most aren't available on video and the prints themselves are high-quality. It made for kind of a crazy weekend. I had to catch a ride from work in the middle of a thunderstorm on Thursday - the bus stop at the end of Corporate Drive in Burlington is basically a telephone pole with a loose wire dangling from it right next to a manhole cover; if the wind catches the cable just right, you can complete a circuit of certain death! I then had a bunch of time to kill between Alias Nick Beal and Yellowbrickroad on Friday night, which was used to verify that Sal's makes a decent pizza and that the Stuart Street Playhouse was more or less closed.
It was close to 2am by the time I got out of the theater after that one, which means that the T was good and shut down. So 3am by the time I hit the sack. Thus, no other movies besides the noir seen the rest of the weekend; that sort of thing tends to mess me up.
X-Men: First Class
* * * (out of four)
Seen 6 June 2011 in AMC Boston Common #17 (first-run)
X-Men: First Class flew under the radar a little bit, because as good as it is, I can see nobody involved knowing quite what to do with it. It's a weird superhero period piece, in that it uses Marvel characters but not in any way that matches with anybody's image of them and proposes an alternate history, always an iffy thing with audiences. It's pretty good, though; I rather suspect that even without the superheroics, a great deal of it could work as a period/retro adventure movie. It's impressive just how good a job Matthew Vaughn does in really saturating the film with 1960s imagery without the movie becoming self-parody.
Michael Fassbender is really good here, too. As magnificent as Ian McKellan often was as the same character in his three X-movies, seeing Magneto in his prime is fantastic: The anger is still raw as opposed to having been forged into a precise weapon, and when this younger version gets into a climactic fight, it never feels like beating up on the old, frail guy. James McAvoy is a co-lead here, but whenever Fassbender is around, McAvoy finds himself assuming his usual position - the pleasantly bland (or, in this case, dickishly bland) guy meant to be a viewpoint character who seems to be a distraction from all the really interesting people in the movie.
The big flaw - not a crippling one, but one that is hard to avoid - winds up coming from a surprising place. It's not the way Vaughn & company find themselves checking things off a list toward the finale, but how what is probably the most important action in the movie seems muted. That is (spoilers for 45 years of comics and three previous movies) Raven/Mystique opting to side with Magneto. Jennifer Lawrence's character is the true heart of the movie, and the way Xavier's arrogance and misplaced priorities pushes her away is the film's true tragedy, but the moment when it happens seems off-kilter and minimized in every conceivable way.
Maybe that's deliberate, and Matthew Vaughn (or whoever producer Bryan Singer and Fox get to direct a potential sequel) are saving Raven's true, irrevocable fall - the one where she stops being a sweet, confused kid and becomes a cold-blooded killer - for later. If that's the case, I hope we get to see that second film, because without out that story, this prequel seems a little incomplete.
Summer movie season gets into something closer to full swing, but I'm still trying to fit oddball things into my schedule. I'm also making a bit more of an attempt to see stuff at Somerville and the Capitol - they're local and cool! - and it's a lot easier when their websites say "playing in our main auditorium" next to a movie. $8 for an evening show in one of the area's best screens (with, depending on your preference, milkshakes or beers available) is pretty darn good. It also may give you an opportunity to have a "King" burger at Boston Burger Company beforehand, which is always delicious.
And, remember a few pages ago when I talked about the pain that comes from rowing too far downstream and then rowing upstream? Doing it the other way around (as I did on Sunday, after arriving at Charles River Canoe & Kayak's Kendall location just in time for a thunderstorm nixed my plans on Saturday) gets you just as tired, but the recovery seems less painful. Or perhaps even semi-regular exercise like rowing on the river and walking a couple miles daily between the T stop and where I need to be eventually builds a certain amount of strength. Crazy notion, but possible.
Super 8
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 13 June 2011 in Somerville Theatre #1 (first-run)
When looking at this movie critically, I get a little bit annoyed at writer/director J.J. Abrams, because while this is perhaps his most technically polished movie - he no longer seems to be shaking the camera to cover up awkwardness at staging an action scene well, for instance - it's tough to deny that he uses a lot of shortcuts. Even the climax does this, and it may be the moment that most offends in that regard: Joe (Joel Courtney) gives something up, beautiful effects scene, everybody in the audience and film knows what that means and gets a little misty. Except... The effect is almost purely pavlovian. We know this beat by heart, and we react to it the way we're meant to, but in retrospect, we may realize that Joe having to let go has not been a theme of the movie at all.
And yet, we also realize that it sort of doesn't matter. Does that sort of thing take away from the nostalgic joy of watching these kids try and make their movie as things start to get crazy all around them, or the beautifully sad romance that develops between Joe and Alice (Elle Fanning)? Not really. The absolutely terrific action sequences as a train jumps the rails, or the kids race through a nightmarish transformation of their town? Still pretty darn amazing. And Abrams pulls off a bunch of moments that just make me smile, like when the sign outside a gas station rotates just so, blocking off the view of the monster just when it seems we might get a peek.
Because, let's face it, we know we're not going to see the creature until the characters' super 8 film is developed; like so much else in the movie, it really can't happen any other way in a movie. Abrams takes it for granted that these beats will work, and he's got the skills to make them go down well. It's slick, and a very good time; just imagine what it would be like if Abrams didn't occasionally take the chance to slide.
Green Lantern
* * (out of four)
Seen 19 June 2011 in AMC Boston Common #1 (first-run, RealD 3-D)
While entering my star rating into Flixster, I saw a comment along the lines of "this is why CGI ruins movies", and I had to sigh. An overabundance of CGI is not why Green Lantern is a bad movie. It is, after all, a movie with a significant chunk that takes place in outer space, on a world where all manner of aliens congregate because they are space cops equipped with a sufficiently-advanced-science ring that creates solid energy constructs out of pure willpower. Let's face it, while many movies, it can be argued, could benefit from less in the way of visual effects, there is no "too much CGI" for a Green Lantern movie. It's perhaps the perfect project for Stephen Sommers; he'd be completely free to indulge his "more effects! More!!!" compulsion and would bring a giddy sense of fun to it.
But we don't get Stephen Sommers; we get Martin Campbell, four credited writers, bizarrely-popular DC Comics writer and creative officer Geoff Johns on board as a producer, and probably everybody within Warner Brothers Pictures and DC Entertainment who have invested a lot of money in this thing giving notes, sucking any personality the film may have right out and leaving us with a bland movie that just goes through the motions, but without the zing Abrams gives Super 8. Campbell only rarely allows the audience to feel the giddy joy of this absurd but (potentially) hugely fun character and world.
Instead, the movie is terribly serious outside of calculated comic relief (which is generally of the "make the main character look stupid variety, not what this movie needs). It's often as though none of the writers noticed how goofy "the yellow power of fear" sounds, or that the way the characters talk about the opposing forces of will and fear sounds like an even sillier version of Donnie Darko's "fear-love diagram". Then there's the open question of why the ring chooses Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) instead of Carol Ferris (Blake Lively) - both seem brave and intelligent and decent flyers, but Ferris isn't an irresponsible jerk. It's not that I want to see Lively acting in the lead role (ugh!), but it raises the question of just what makes Hal special. And then there's the whole question of just what the deal is with Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard) - it's a crazy coincidence that the xenobiologist the government calls in just happens to be a childhood friend of Hal and Carol, and it's an example of how sloppy the writing is that this just pops up without like it's something the audience should have known all along. Then his envy comes out, and...
Ugh. Let us not even get into the Yellow Fear Monster with its absurd face, or the fanboy-baiting credit cookie that has nothing to do with what came before. It's just too depressing to see what could have been a big, fun movie collapse under its own weight and the weight the studio placed upon it.
The Asphalt Jungle
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 19 June 2011 in the Brattle Theatre (John Huston)
Ideally, this would have been written up as an addendum to "Noir Nights", but i was worn down enough that I missed a few bits. Shame, because this is a really fantastic little crime story. The crooks who are set to take part in the caper are all scrappers trying to obtain modest dreams, the "respectable" cops and money men thoroughly corrupt, and the women are tragically loyal. It's a "crime does not pay" story, sure, but one where we can feel grudging respect for the crooks and especially the people attached to them.
After all, Sam Jaffe's "Doc" Erwin Riedenschneider is a likable sort; he's the sort of master thief who doesn't carry a gun and really wants nothing more than the attention of a pretty girl. Sterling Hayden's Dix Handley really isn't likable, but we get him; he's a country boy displaced to the city by circumstance. Back home, he's a brilliant horseman; here, he's a thug and a brute. Jean Hagen's Doll Conovan loves him anyway, though; maybe she's not so bright herself, or maybe she just wants to escape to Dix's world because her's isn't working out for her, but her loyalty and devotion are as beautiful as they are tragic.
Almost every character in the story has a story to tell, but co-writer/director John Huston doesn't let the story meander. Unlike some who make this sort of ensemble piece, he knows that everything must tie in to the robbery, its planning, and its aftermath. That makes The Asphalt Jungle one of the best combinations of ensemble drama and crime flick ever put together, even sixty years later.
(And, as a bonus? Marilyn Monroe in an early role as the money man's mistress. Even with the Hayes Code in full effect, she's such pure sex that one doesn't really have a problem with the characters stopping to just express their astonishment that such specimens exist.)
And, as we reach the end of this massive post, we see IMAX 3D on the weekend but, before that, two neighborhood theaters with rather opposite fortunes. The Somerville has really been on a roll over the last few years, taking advantage of the closing of the Assembly Square multiplex to upgrade itself from a second-run house to a first-run space, carving a new video screening room out in the basement, upgrading the projection and sound in the main auditorium and keeping the prices low. Knowing they've got a classic theater atmosphere, they've been programming more special events, including this summer's classic, cult, and silent series.
The Stuart Street Playhouse? Well, this sort of says it all:
The folks who own the West Newton CInemas and Belmont Studio still seem to have the lease - the phone number on the website to call for private bookings hasn't changed - but regular programming stopped as April became May, and when I went there for Jig, the concession stand/box office had been removed and the folks tending bar and selling candy at temporary-looking stands were wearing nametags from the Radisson Hotel in the same building.
Jig was the first thing to play there in a month and a half, which was weird, as the place really seemed like a going concern during Independent Film Festival Boston, but it stopped playing films regularly almost immediately afterwards. I really sort of puzzles me that they didn't try to do something a little more creative with their programming before that. Outside of festivals, I've never seen a large crowd there, in large part because they generally charged $10 for second-run boutique pictures. That just doesn't seem sustainable, and while I know it probably pays to be somewhat conservative with a single screen theater - booking a bomb and having the place be dead for a whole week could be disastrous - the place could have done well with some more adventurous programming. Program a cheap Monday martial-arts double feature and advertise it in nearby Chinatown, for instance, or a music-doc series that's plugged on the nearby college campuses, but don't charge first-run prices for second-run material.
Now, they just seem to be renting the theater out, so how often movies run there looks like it will be directly tied to how often distributors are willing to go the "four-wall" route. Here's hoping Indomina, Well Go, and other small distributors take advantage of that.
Captains Courageous
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 June 2011 in Somerville Theatre #1 (summer repatory)
Harvey Cheyne (Freddie Bartholomew) is a brat, and this movie is not going to be the least bit subtle about it: Director Victor Fleming and the writers charged with adapting Rudyard Kipling's novel likely don't spent that much time on establishing what a prize turd this kid is, but it certainly feels like roughly forever. The kid is so thoroughly annoying that the audience grins when he falls over the side of an ocean liner, escaping drowning only when fisherman Manuel Fidello (Spencer Tracy) picks him up, leaving him stuck on Captain Disko Troop's (Lionel Barrymore) sailing vessel until the hold is full and they can return to Gloucester at the end of the season
The boy will, of course, face dangers and adventures and learn the true nature of decency and friendship, and once that gets started, it's quite enjoyable. It is, relative to even a kids' movie today, pretty simple; you don't see a lot of shamelessly mugging child actors any more, and the movie lays its lessons out without much camouflage. There's a certain amount of charm in its sincerity, though, and I suspect that the kids in the audience enjoyed it thoroughly for just saying what it means and serving up some impressive adventure at sea.
Jig
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 21 June 2011 in the Stuart Street Playhouse (four-wallin')
Nothing makes an adult male moviegoer feel quite so much like a creep as going to a movie and finding that the entire rest of the audience is pre-teen girls and their parents. During its single-week booking, this one did a booming business among local kids into Irish Dancing, and why not? It's a charming enough look at that world, one that openly acknowledges some of the things which can make it seem silly (for example, the wigs) but certainly respects the dedication and joy of the participants.
The movie focuses on quite a few - three girls in the 19-21 group who have been competing all their lives; an adopted Sri Lankan teen in Holland who sees this as the one thing at which he can really excel; a pair of boys training under the same instructor in England, one ten years old and looked at as weird by his four soccer-playing brothers and the other a teen prodigy who is quite likely one of the best in the world, maybe the next Michael Flatley; and, perhaps more than any of the others, two young girls: Brogan from Derry, an awesomely outgoing little Irish chatterbox, and Julia from New York City, whose Irish-American father had never heard of this thing but whose Filipina mother dives right in.
It all leads to the big competition - the Worlds in Glasgow - and that's where things start going sort of wrong, and not just in a "why make dance into a competition" way (I spent my high school years doing competitive math, so I'm not one to judge!). The Russian girl we'd met, Ana, is denied a visa, so someone else abruptly becomes the face of that group. The early rounds, especially, are visually confusing, with multiple people on stage doing unsynchronized routines (in one case, actually running into each other), and it becomes evident that as much as we have learned about the activity in the previous hour or so, it's not always enough to distinguish "pretty good" from "very good" (although Joel Bitter does appear to be legitimately great). The scoring is outright bewildering, a bunch of random-seeming numbers announced over a terrible loudspeaker (although this does give a moment of humor as we watch dancers and coaches struggle to do the math in their heads).
The fans in attendance seemed to dig it, which means director Sue Bourne did at least part of her job well. For the laymen in the audience, it's a bit more of a mixed bag - we certainly become fond of some of the participants, but we never really get the tension that similar movies like Spellbound managed.
And then I found myself Wi-Fi-less upon reaching NYC for the Asian Film Festival, but I'm not pushing this finished thing off until Fantasia to get that done.
So, here's a table of contents of sorts:
25 April 2011 - 1 May 2011
2 May 2011 - 8 May 2011
9 May 2011 - 15 May 2011
16 May 2011 - 22 May 2011
23 May 2011 - 29 May 2011
30 May 2011 - 5 June 2011
6 June 2011 - 12 June 2011
13 June 2011 - 19 June 2011
20 June 2011 - 26 June 2011
So, let's see what I've been up to...
Whoa... I saw Limitless. Huh, that was a while ago.
Limitless
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 25 April 2011 in Somerville Theatre #3 (second-run)
Super-intelligence is a tricky thing to pull off; it requires the writer to try and figure out what someone smarter than himself would do in a given situation. You can fake that in a couple ways: The first spending a long time thinking through actions that the character must run through in seconds, and the second is to give the characters blind spots. The trouble with that is, you notice the latter much more than the former, despite a number of scenes meant to show off how clever Bradley Cooper's character has become.
One thing I wish the movie had done is to make Robert De Niro's industrialist the main antagonist rather than spending so much time on Andrew Howard's gangster. Since they establish early on that the miracle drug helps a lot more if you're already smart, all Gennady has on Eddie is ruthlessness, while Van Loon would be able to counter the raw, expanded intellect with life experience, which would be an interesting battle.
The last time I did this, I said I wanted something of a breather after BUFF; well, I sort of knew that wasn't going to happen with IFFBoston. I wound up taking the day after after the festival off from work because the "TBD" on the ticket wound up being for a day game. Good chance to rest up from a long week of wrangling SQL by day and seeing back-to-back movies by night (and weekend afternoon), right? You'd think, except that the previous night's game was delayed by rain and went into extra innings. I flipped it on thinking "cool, even after Conan O'Brien Can't Stop, I can watch some baseball", and wound up loopy by the end. The afternoon game wound up being not great, to say the least - John Lackey and the bullpen (which could really have used the rest) got obliterated.
The Sunday game was a lot more fun; my brother Dan, his wife Lara, and their awesome little girls came, the Red Sox won, and we got to walk around the warning track afterward. One thing I missed the last time I did this was that you can not only see dents where balls hit the scoreboard in left field, but they're often going fast enough that you can even see imprints from the stitches.
In between, we have an illustration of how expensive going to the movies in Boston can be. Clearly, I've got to start hitting the Capitol and Somerville Theatres more often; notice how the Capitol's evening 3D price is the same as the Common's evening flat price (and, honestly, there should have been a discount on Rammbock; that was about an hour of movie). Then you look at what Cave of Forgotten Dreams runs for a 3D evening show... I paid that under the "support good movies, go cheap on filler" edict, but that's some expensive support.
Incidentally, Cave is (as of this writing) still playing at Boston Common (it's also opened in 2D at Coolidge Corner), and I think it's a pretty strong example of how people do appreciate 3D, when it's used well. That's a pricey ticket for a documentary, which isn't exactly the megaplex's bread and butter, but it's been doing well enough to stick around for at least a five-week run, which a lot of fictional features considered modest successes don't get.
Thor
* * * (out of four)
Seen 6 May 2011 in Arlington Capitol #1 (first-run, RealD 3-D projection)
Thor is the Marvel movie I figured would be the toughest sell when these things were first announced; it's a weird combination of Norse mythology and superheroics to begin with and the Iron Man flicks had announced both that Marvel's movies were going to be tied together in a similar way to their comics and that they were taking place in a predominately science-fictional universe. That the movie works is a great tribute to director Kenneth Branagh and the other filmmakers, who dive right into a Kirby/Simonson vision of Asgard, arguably more "sufficiently advanced technology" than Viking-influenced.
A nice cast doesn't hurt; Chris Hemsworth does a really kind of wonderful job as the title character - cocky and brash can be easy, sure, but having Thor still be recognizably himself after learning some humility and perhaps how to think as opposed to just being a blunt object (having a hammer as a weapon rather suits him) takes skill. Tom Hiddleston is also impressive as Loki, managing the trick of crafting a frequently sympathetic villain despite the fact that his actions are those of a sociopath. Neat trick. Branagh knows when to rein Anthony Hopkins in and when to let him go as Odin, the banter between Natalie Portman and Kat Dennings as the scientist and student who find Thor is a lot of fun, and Stellan Skarsgard is a real asset as Portman's mentor, a middle-aged Scandinavian guy not quite able to grasp the idea that he's drinking with the god of thunder he'd heard stories of as a child.
As to the story - it's good enough. It's an origin story on one hand and an introduction on the other. Branagh manages grandeur and fun, but something about it stops just shy of bowling the audience over. It's the expected story, and while the details are fun, an extra surprise or two would be very cool.
Fast Five
* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 May 2011 in Regal Fenway #8 (first-run)
I haven't seen a The Fast & the Furious movie since the first one - I think I've got an HD-DVD of Tokyo Drift somewhere, but knowledgeable people tell me that it's a side-story that actually occurs after #4 & #5 in continuity - though let's face it, this is not a series where knowing the minutia matters: There are fast cars, a heist will probably be involved somewhere or other, and guys on opposite sides of the law will find some common ground.
It's a template that works here, as writer Chris Morgan and director Justin Lin pull together pretty much every surviving character from previous installments, throw in Joaquim de Almeida and Dwayne Johnson as adversaries pursuing them in different directions, and keep things moving well enough that the audience isn't too fidgety by the time the movie gets around to the big car chase through Rio that was teased in the previews.
The film isn't all that it can be - wouldn't it have been awesome if Vin Diesel and the Rock had had a screen fight for the ages? - but it's a surprisingly enjoyable entry in a series that by rights should have gone direct to video two sequels ago.
Not to make broad generalizations, but look at the size of that ticket to Yankee Stadium. They just don't do restrained, do they?
Anyway, since I've already done entries for Queen to Play and True Legend & the game, there's not a whole lot to say. I enjoyed the movies quite a bit, although the trip to New York wound up being a punishing schedule - I got there at around 1pm, saw the movie, got turned around on the subway a bit, and then had a decent burger at a diner before catching the 1:30am bus back to Boston, at which point my brother Matt picked me up to travel north for a baby shower being thrown for my brother Travis and his wife. I thought I did reasonably well staying alert on Sunday, but it turns out that this really isn't the case at all.
Anyway, seeing a game in enemy territory was a nifty experience; I heartily recommend it to sports fans everywhere. But, wow, things are expensive in NYC - my eyes bugged just a little at that $13.50 movie ticket for a 2pm show, and I've gotten much too used to the $2 programs outside Fenway to believe the $10 the Yankees wanted.
(I also love how, even with the way the Sox devour Yawkey Way on game days, the Fenway area still retains a bit of an independent feel; Yankee Stadium 3 is very corporate, with anything not run by the team pushed well away from the stadium by a concrete moat.)
Those games do wind up clustering, don't they?
The effect of getting older that I find I hate most is how long it takes me to bounce back from things - or, more accurately, the insidious delayed reaction. It was Saturday night that I stayed up until 2am and got about four hours of low-quality sleep on the bus, but I had a quiet day Sunday and most of Monday and Tuesday to recover, and yet, when I hit the theater for Meek's Cutoff on Tuesday, I was dragging. And let me tell you, that is not the condition you want to be in when seeing a movie like Meek's Cutoff.
Meek's Cutoff
* * (out of four)
Seen 17 May 2011 in Landmark Kendall Square #8 (first-run)
Why don't you want fatigue poisons in your system when seeing this movie? Because it is frequently boring, and seeing it in that condition will exacerbate this. Reducing it to simply that one adjective is tremendously unfair - director Kelly Reichardt and her cast take a script dangerously short on events and does beautiful work on the details, but understand - this is a movie that, for better or worse, is not enjoyed but endured.
That is, in many ways, entirely appropriate - crossing the American West to make a fresh start in California or Oregon was a trial more often than it was the exciting series of events that the word "adventure". Reichardt throws us right into this, starting the movie at a point where a three-wagon train of settlers is already lost and rationing food, quietly discussing whether to hang their guide, Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood). When their path intersects that of a native hunter, they must decide whether to trust him or Meek. Meek, seeing his impending obsolescence, preys upon the settlers' fears.
The ethnic politics of Meek's Cutoff are interesting. One of the characters makes casually racist comments early on to establish the attitudes of the time, we're inclined to forget our initial revulsion as the rest of her words and actions within the group tend to be innocuous. The more immediate question, of course, is the relationship with the native (Rod Rondeaux). The dynamic is set up as certain members of the party attempting to put aside their fears and trust his superior knowledge of the terrain while others hold on to frightened prejudices, but it's important to note that even the group that scans as open-minded isn't looking for the sort of co-operation that comes out of friendship, but exploitation. In its quiet way, the movie is a damning indictment of white America's treatment of the people they displaced, where even those attempting to do right by the natives do so in a conditional, self-serving way.
Full review on eFilmCritic
Jûsan-nin no shikaku (13 Assassins)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 May 2011 in Landmark Kendall Square #6 (first-run)
About twenty or thirty minutes into the screening of 13 Assassins that I attended, the second pair of people got up, trudged across the part of the screen where the subtitles were, and left. It happened in the wake of the second scene meant to prove the villain is a menace who must be destroyed, and while I sort of get that this is the sort of thing that can be off-putting... You guys paid money to see a Takashi Miike samurai movie named 13 Assassins; violence is part of the deal.
And while this is certainly not one of the symphonies of the bizarre that is often associated with Miike, to say he is playing it straight undersells it somewhat Sure, the filmmakers stick with conventional costumes and weapons, and has its story driven by traditional codes of honor, it's unconventional in many ways. Many have spilled electrons on how samurai films were traditionally a conservative genre, about noble warriors either protecting the people from outlaws or tragically forced to face off in combat because their sense of duty has placed them on opposite sides, while this film's sympathies are with the rebels. Yes, the leaders are inevitably old friends who must face off, but it's very clear here that tradition and deference are the problem.
But, aside from that, the action that makes up the last act is crazy. Miike and his characters convert an entire town into a mechanized deathtrap to allow the rebel samurai to cut Lord Naritsugu's army down to a more manageable size, and in many ways the end result resembles the way Tokyo transforms from a city to a fortress in Evangelion, albeit in a completely period-appropriate way. It is absolutely blockbuster-scaled action in a genre that seldom works at that scale, going on and on without let-up but also without exhausting the audience. I've noted before, especially after seeing Sukiyaki Samurai Django, that Miike is really a fantastic action director and it might be interesting to see what he can do when not winking at the audience.
The answer: He's really good, but let's not call him conventional just yet.
That Kung Fu Panda ticket is kind of beat up because apparently it (along with my phone) stayed in my pocket while I rented a kayak and rowed on the Charles that afternoon. I liked it a lot more than my previous attempt at rowing - a summer crew class which just wasn't for me, as I was more interested in just enjoying the breeze on the river than getting in sync with seven other people and trying to make good time. The important thing to take away from that, aside from "keep paper items in a waterproof container", was that rowing from a bit upstream of Harvard to MIT is, perhaps, a bit overambitious. It leads to a moment where the thought "oh, crap, I've got to return this boat" races through one's mind, and then, when you turn the boat around to head upstream, the river looks completely different. The placid, glass-like surface suddenly appears not just choppy, but angry.
I hurt the rest of the day. And sometime arond 1am, yikes, that was some pain.
Inventory
* * (out of four)
Seen 27 May 2011 in the Somerville Theatre micro-cinema (four-wallin')
Sometimes I hate meeting filmmakers. It kind of sucks to meet a nice enough guy like Castparty Productions's Justin Fielding, shake his hand, take his business card, give him your own, and sort of promise to write his independent comedy up, only to find that the best thing you can say is "better luck next time".
It's inventory time at the Mattress Warehouse store, so the store is closed but the entire staff is on-hand to count what's in stock - although, being slacker misfits, not a whole lot of work is likely to get done. There's mopey Eleanor (Amanda Hurley) and her ex-boyfriend Chuck (Ken Breese); bible-toting Bess (Irina Peligrad) and Ukranian immigrant Nastasia (Katarina Morhacova); nunchuck-wielding Jackie (Shelly Finnegan) and Tucker (Quentin James), about to start a new job; big-talker Greg (Christian Anthony), timid Percy (Dennis Hurley), and oddball Zoe (Cat Miller); along with manager Barbara (Chris Holliday) and store owner John Panda (Matt Carbo).
The template that Inventory follows isn't a bad one for an independent comedy - basically a single location that's big enough for the large cast not to be tripping over each other, just enough plot to give the movie a logical place to start and finish, and a potential ensemble of interesting characters. Fielding does a good job of jumping from one thread to another, spending enough time in each place to do something but not letting any specific bit drag. He's at his best when there are gags coming at a quick pace. There's potential for a snappy observational comedy here.
Full review at EFC
Kung Fu Panda 2
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 May 2011 in AMC Harvard Square #3 (first-run)
What's there to say about Kung Fu Panda 2? It's a good movie that doesn't quite get over the hump to being a great one, a sequel somewhat doomed to be seen as less than its progenitor because the original idea - take the animal-inspired fighting styles from Shaw Brothers movies and have them done by cartoon animals, including a panda, the symbol of China! - is so perfectly brilliant that even doing the follow-up well can't compete with the sheer inspiration of the first. It's difficult to give this one a fair shake.
It's got its problems - aside from the Angelina Jolie-voiced Tigress, the rest of the Furious Five have very little to do, aside from a couple delightfully morbid jokes about the source of Mantis's daddy issues, and it's kind of surprising that nobody mentioned what was apparently a panda holocaust to Po before now. But it's also quite a lot of fun - director Jennifer Yuh Nelson and company have a funny but not lightweight script to work with and a bunch of new celebrity voices to add to their already nifty returning cast. Visually, they choreograph some exciting fight scenes, and there's nobody who puts more real effort and attention into their 3-D like DreamWorks Animation.
An idea is only revolutionary once, but it's still good after that, and I'd still like to see another Kung Fu Panda movie - which is a good thing, because the end more or less promises one.
I'm not sure where the rest of the week went - well, the holiday on Monday was spent moving very little because of the rowing-related soreness. Then probably a busy week at work, a day best suited to sitting on the deck and reading, then a baseball day with Mom & Bill. It wound up being a good game, and a nice enough day that we wound up walking from North Station to Fenway, getting brunch along the way with Matt & Morgan, and stopping to admire how all the statues in the Public Garden were dressed up in their finest Bruins gear. The game was a pretty good one - we got to see an Adrian Gonzalez home run, but that's sort of free with admission (the guy is good) - and then we had really good fish & chips at a seafood restaurant that probably expected us to order something more sophistimacated/expensive.
I got them to their train and then headed to Somerville just in time to catch the silent movies. Read about it here; it was a great show, with excellent prints and a fine soundtrack performed live by Jeff Rapsis. The next one is on 11 July and I'm certainly hoping to fit it into the crazy mess of moving parts that is my July.
No, I didn't pay full-price for a movie even when I didn't have to; I had a coupon code for two tickets on Fandango that expired on or around the 6th but never a chance to use it for a pair. The sad thing is that I think it was for $9, which means I still would have wound up saving money even if I used it for one matinee ticket. Movie tickets, they are expensive in Boston.
The "Noir Nights" program swallowed a big chunk of the weekend, but I have no complaints about that; most was quite good, and seeing them on the biggish screen was a treat, both because most aren't available on video and the prints themselves are high-quality. It made for kind of a crazy weekend. I had to catch a ride from work in the middle of a thunderstorm on Thursday - the bus stop at the end of Corporate Drive in Burlington is basically a telephone pole with a loose wire dangling from it right next to a manhole cover; if the wind catches the cable just right, you can complete a circuit of certain death! I then had a bunch of time to kill between Alias Nick Beal and Yellowbrickroad on Friday night, which was used to verify that Sal's makes a decent pizza and that the Stuart Street Playhouse was more or less closed.
It was close to 2am by the time I got out of the theater after that one, which means that the T was good and shut down. So 3am by the time I hit the sack. Thus, no other movies besides the noir seen the rest of the weekend; that sort of thing tends to mess me up.
X-Men: First Class
* * * (out of four)
Seen 6 June 2011 in AMC Boston Common #17 (first-run)
X-Men: First Class flew under the radar a little bit, because as good as it is, I can see nobody involved knowing quite what to do with it. It's a weird superhero period piece, in that it uses Marvel characters but not in any way that matches with anybody's image of them and proposes an alternate history, always an iffy thing with audiences. It's pretty good, though; I rather suspect that even without the superheroics, a great deal of it could work as a period/retro adventure movie. It's impressive just how good a job Matthew Vaughn does in really saturating the film with 1960s imagery without the movie becoming self-parody.
Michael Fassbender is really good here, too. As magnificent as Ian McKellan often was as the same character in his three X-movies, seeing Magneto in his prime is fantastic: The anger is still raw as opposed to having been forged into a precise weapon, and when this younger version gets into a climactic fight, it never feels like beating up on the old, frail guy. James McAvoy is a co-lead here, but whenever Fassbender is around, McAvoy finds himself assuming his usual position - the pleasantly bland (or, in this case, dickishly bland) guy meant to be a viewpoint character who seems to be a distraction from all the really interesting people in the movie.
The big flaw - not a crippling one, but one that is hard to avoid - winds up coming from a surprising place. It's not the way Vaughn & company find themselves checking things off a list toward the finale, but how what is probably the most important action in the movie seems muted. That is (spoilers for 45 years of comics and three previous movies) Raven/Mystique opting to side with Magneto. Jennifer Lawrence's character is the true heart of the movie, and the way Xavier's arrogance and misplaced priorities pushes her away is the film's true tragedy, but the moment when it happens seems off-kilter and minimized in every conceivable way.
Maybe that's deliberate, and Matthew Vaughn (or whoever producer Bryan Singer and Fox get to direct a potential sequel) are saving Raven's true, irrevocable fall - the one where she stops being a sweet, confused kid and becomes a cold-blooded killer - for later. If that's the case, I hope we get to see that second film, because without out that story, this prequel seems a little incomplete.
Summer movie season gets into something closer to full swing, but I'm still trying to fit oddball things into my schedule. I'm also making a bit more of an attempt to see stuff at Somerville and the Capitol - they're local and cool! - and it's a lot easier when their websites say "playing in our main auditorium" next to a movie. $8 for an evening show in one of the area's best screens (with, depending on your preference, milkshakes or beers available) is pretty darn good. It also may give you an opportunity to have a "King" burger at Boston Burger Company beforehand, which is always delicious.
And, remember a few pages ago when I talked about the pain that comes from rowing too far downstream and then rowing upstream? Doing it the other way around (as I did on Sunday, after arriving at Charles River Canoe & Kayak's Kendall location just in time for a thunderstorm nixed my plans on Saturday) gets you just as tired, but the recovery seems less painful. Or perhaps even semi-regular exercise like rowing on the river and walking a couple miles daily between the T stop and where I need to be eventually builds a certain amount of strength. Crazy notion, but possible.
Super 8
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 13 June 2011 in Somerville Theatre #1 (first-run)
When looking at this movie critically, I get a little bit annoyed at writer/director J.J. Abrams, because while this is perhaps his most technically polished movie - he no longer seems to be shaking the camera to cover up awkwardness at staging an action scene well, for instance - it's tough to deny that he uses a lot of shortcuts. Even the climax does this, and it may be the moment that most offends in that regard: Joe (Joel Courtney) gives something up, beautiful effects scene, everybody in the audience and film knows what that means and gets a little misty. Except... The effect is almost purely pavlovian. We know this beat by heart, and we react to it the way we're meant to, but in retrospect, we may realize that Joe having to let go has not been a theme of the movie at all.
And yet, we also realize that it sort of doesn't matter. Does that sort of thing take away from the nostalgic joy of watching these kids try and make their movie as things start to get crazy all around them, or the beautifully sad romance that develops between Joe and Alice (Elle Fanning)? Not really. The absolutely terrific action sequences as a train jumps the rails, or the kids race through a nightmarish transformation of their town? Still pretty darn amazing. And Abrams pulls off a bunch of moments that just make me smile, like when the sign outside a gas station rotates just so, blocking off the view of the monster just when it seems we might get a peek.
Because, let's face it, we know we're not going to see the creature until the characters' super 8 film is developed; like so much else in the movie, it really can't happen any other way in a movie. Abrams takes it for granted that these beats will work, and he's got the skills to make them go down well. It's slick, and a very good time; just imagine what it would be like if Abrams didn't occasionally take the chance to slide.
Green Lantern
* * (out of four)
Seen 19 June 2011 in AMC Boston Common #1 (first-run, RealD 3-D)
While entering my star rating into Flixster, I saw a comment along the lines of "this is why CGI ruins movies", and I had to sigh. An overabundance of CGI is not why Green Lantern is a bad movie. It is, after all, a movie with a significant chunk that takes place in outer space, on a world where all manner of aliens congregate because they are space cops equipped with a sufficiently-advanced-science ring that creates solid energy constructs out of pure willpower. Let's face it, while many movies, it can be argued, could benefit from less in the way of visual effects, there is no "too much CGI" for a Green Lantern movie. It's perhaps the perfect project for Stephen Sommers; he'd be completely free to indulge his "more effects! More!!!" compulsion and would bring a giddy sense of fun to it.
But we don't get Stephen Sommers; we get Martin Campbell, four credited writers, bizarrely-popular DC Comics writer and creative officer Geoff Johns on board as a producer, and probably everybody within Warner Brothers Pictures and DC Entertainment who have invested a lot of money in this thing giving notes, sucking any personality the film may have right out and leaving us with a bland movie that just goes through the motions, but without the zing Abrams gives Super 8. Campbell only rarely allows the audience to feel the giddy joy of this absurd but (potentially) hugely fun character and world.
Instead, the movie is terribly serious outside of calculated comic relief (which is generally of the "make the main character look stupid variety, not what this movie needs). It's often as though none of the writers noticed how goofy "the yellow power of fear" sounds, or that the way the characters talk about the opposing forces of will and fear sounds like an even sillier version of Donnie Darko's "fear-love diagram". Then there's the open question of why the ring chooses Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) instead of Carol Ferris (Blake Lively) - both seem brave and intelligent and decent flyers, but Ferris isn't an irresponsible jerk. It's not that I want to see Lively acting in the lead role (ugh!), but it raises the question of just what makes Hal special. And then there's the whole question of just what the deal is with Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard) - it's a crazy coincidence that the xenobiologist the government calls in just happens to be a childhood friend of Hal and Carol, and it's an example of how sloppy the writing is that this just pops up without like it's something the audience should have known all along. Then his envy comes out, and...
Ugh. Let us not even get into the Yellow Fear Monster with its absurd face, or the fanboy-baiting credit cookie that has nothing to do with what came before. It's just too depressing to see what could have been a big, fun movie collapse under its own weight and the weight the studio placed upon it.
The Asphalt Jungle
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 19 June 2011 in the Brattle Theatre (John Huston)
Ideally, this would have been written up as an addendum to "Noir Nights", but i was worn down enough that I missed a few bits. Shame, because this is a really fantastic little crime story. The crooks who are set to take part in the caper are all scrappers trying to obtain modest dreams, the "respectable" cops and money men thoroughly corrupt, and the women are tragically loyal. It's a "crime does not pay" story, sure, but one where we can feel grudging respect for the crooks and especially the people attached to them.
After all, Sam Jaffe's "Doc" Erwin Riedenschneider is a likable sort; he's the sort of master thief who doesn't carry a gun and really wants nothing more than the attention of a pretty girl. Sterling Hayden's Dix Handley really isn't likable, but we get him; he's a country boy displaced to the city by circumstance. Back home, he's a brilliant horseman; here, he's a thug and a brute. Jean Hagen's Doll Conovan loves him anyway, though; maybe she's not so bright herself, or maybe she just wants to escape to Dix's world because her's isn't working out for her, but her loyalty and devotion are as beautiful as they are tragic.
Almost every character in the story has a story to tell, but co-writer/director John Huston doesn't let the story meander. Unlike some who make this sort of ensemble piece, he knows that everything must tie in to the robbery, its planning, and its aftermath. That makes The Asphalt Jungle one of the best combinations of ensemble drama and crime flick ever put together, even sixty years later.
(And, as a bonus? Marilyn Monroe in an early role as the money man's mistress. Even with the Hayes Code in full effect, she's such pure sex that one doesn't really have a problem with the characters stopping to just express their astonishment that such specimens exist.)
And, as we reach the end of this massive post, we see IMAX 3D on the weekend but, before that, two neighborhood theaters with rather opposite fortunes. The Somerville has really been on a roll over the last few years, taking advantage of the closing of the Assembly Square multiplex to upgrade itself from a second-run house to a first-run space, carving a new video screening room out in the basement, upgrading the projection and sound in the main auditorium and keeping the prices low. Knowing they've got a classic theater atmosphere, they've been programming more special events, including this summer's classic, cult, and silent series.
The Stuart Street Playhouse? Well, this sort of says it all:
The folks who own the West Newton CInemas and Belmont Studio still seem to have the lease - the phone number on the website to call for private bookings hasn't changed - but regular programming stopped as April became May, and when I went there for Jig, the concession stand/box office had been removed and the folks tending bar and selling candy at temporary-looking stands were wearing nametags from the Radisson Hotel in the same building.
Jig was the first thing to play there in a month and a half, which was weird, as the place really seemed like a going concern during Independent Film Festival Boston, but it stopped playing films regularly almost immediately afterwards. I really sort of puzzles me that they didn't try to do something a little more creative with their programming before that. Outside of festivals, I've never seen a large crowd there, in large part because they generally charged $10 for second-run boutique pictures. That just doesn't seem sustainable, and while I know it probably pays to be somewhat conservative with a single screen theater - booking a bomb and having the place be dead for a whole week could be disastrous - the place could have done well with some more adventurous programming. Program a cheap Monday martial-arts double feature and advertise it in nearby Chinatown, for instance, or a music-doc series that's plugged on the nearby college campuses, but don't charge first-run prices for second-run material.
Now, they just seem to be renting the theater out, so how often movies run there looks like it will be directly tied to how often distributors are willing to go the "four-wall" route. Here's hoping Indomina, Well Go, and other small distributors take advantage of that.
Captains Courageous
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 June 2011 in Somerville Theatre #1 (summer repatory)
Harvey Cheyne (Freddie Bartholomew) is a brat, and this movie is not going to be the least bit subtle about it: Director Victor Fleming and the writers charged with adapting Rudyard Kipling's novel likely don't spent that much time on establishing what a prize turd this kid is, but it certainly feels like roughly forever. The kid is so thoroughly annoying that the audience grins when he falls over the side of an ocean liner, escaping drowning only when fisherman Manuel Fidello (Spencer Tracy) picks him up, leaving him stuck on Captain Disko Troop's (Lionel Barrymore) sailing vessel until the hold is full and they can return to Gloucester at the end of the season
The boy will, of course, face dangers and adventures and learn the true nature of decency and friendship, and once that gets started, it's quite enjoyable. It is, relative to even a kids' movie today, pretty simple; you don't see a lot of shamelessly mugging child actors any more, and the movie lays its lessons out without much camouflage. There's a certain amount of charm in its sincerity, though, and I suspect that the kids in the audience enjoyed it thoroughly for just saying what it means and serving up some impressive adventure at sea.
Jig
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 21 June 2011 in the Stuart Street Playhouse (four-wallin')
Nothing makes an adult male moviegoer feel quite so much like a creep as going to a movie and finding that the entire rest of the audience is pre-teen girls and their parents. During its single-week booking, this one did a booming business among local kids into Irish Dancing, and why not? It's a charming enough look at that world, one that openly acknowledges some of the things which can make it seem silly (for example, the wigs) but certainly respects the dedication and joy of the participants.
The movie focuses on quite a few - three girls in the 19-21 group who have been competing all their lives; an adopted Sri Lankan teen in Holland who sees this as the one thing at which he can really excel; a pair of boys training under the same instructor in England, one ten years old and looked at as weird by his four soccer-playing brothers and the other a teen prodigy who is quite likely one of the best in the world, maybe the next Michael Flatley; and, perhaps more than any of the others, two young girls: Brogan from Derry, an awesomely outgoing little Irish chatterbox, and Julia from New York City, whose Irish-American father had never heard of this thing but whose Filipina mother dives right in.
It all leads to the big competition - the Worlds in Glasgow - and that's where things start going sort of wrong, and not just in a "why make dance into a competition" way (I spent my high school years doing competitive math, so I'm not one to judge!). The Russian girl we'd met, Ana, is denied a visa, so someone else abruptly becomes the face of that group. The early rounds, especially, are visually confusing, with multiple people on stage doing unsynchronized routines (in one case, actually running into each other), and it becomes evident that as much as we have learned about the activity in the previous hour or so, it's not always enough to distinguish "pretty good" from "very good" (although Joel Bitter does appear to be legitimately great). The scoring is outright bewildering, a bunch of random-seeming numbers announced over a terrible loudspeaker (although this does give a moment of humor as we watch dancers and coaches struggle to do the math in their heads).
The fans in attendance seemed to dig it, which means director Sue Bourne did at least part of her job well. For the laymen in the audience, it's a bit more of a mixed bag - we certainly become fond of some of the participants, but we never really get the tension that similar movies like Spellbound managed.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
I like IMAX 3-D: Cars 2, "Under the Sea", and "Born to Be Wild"
For just the second time ever, it seems, the MBTA has adjusted their schedules in a way to make getting to and from Jordan's for a movie relatively painless (the first was when they decided to actually run the 136/137 bus tandem on Sundays). Even cutting things a little close on the Orange Line, the bus dropped me off at 55 Walker's Brook Drive just in time to climb the hill and get my tickets, and it wasn't more than a 15 minute wait on the other end. I was able to just tear through my book that day, too, so that was satisfying all around.
Especially since, despite all the negative reviews I've seen, the movie was darn good. It doesn't transcend the "kid's cartoon" genre the way many of Pixar's other recent films do, but it's an exciting adventure that can bring a smile to an otherwise sour puss if accepted as such. By that I don't mean to lower one's expectations of quality, but to judge it for what it is rather than what one wants it to be (especially if what one wants it to be is "nonexistent, because it's a sell-out sequel to a movie I didn't much like anyway!"). There are bits that put a big, stupid grin on my face - the black humor of Finn McMissile being presented with a crushed cube of metal, the toy airplanes that scatter when cars drive through a park in Rome, and Bruce Campbell showing up in a Pixar flick are just a few - and they don't feel like pandering.
Without walking back how much I enjoyed the movie, one thing that surprises me upon reflection is how my perception of John Lasseter has changed upon looking at the Cars movies. Back when Toy Story popped up, it was easy to place him aside Windsor McKay, Walt Disney, Usama Tezuka, and Hayao Miyazaki as animation pioneers who not only revolutionized animation as a medium but were also brilliant storytellers; now, seeing what sort of brilliant and emotional movies Pixar is making with him in a supervisory role (and how the "main" animation department at Disney has improved ever since he was placed in charge), the perception is a little different - he's still a very good storyteller, but he's arguably an even better mentor and developer of raw talent.
One more amusing thing - with the IMAX theater at Jordan's gaining another new sponsor (this time, Posturepedic), Elliot recorded a new pre-show teaser, this one taking pains to point out that they project using 70mm film. I don't know if that's necessarily a reaction to the recent wave of dissatisfaction at how digital projectors equipped for 3D can create a sub-par experience (with Boston cited at a specific example), but I kind of like to think it is.
The next day wound up being about using my tickets for the IMAX shows at the Aquarium up. I kick myself a little for not using one earlier and seeing Hubble 3-D again, but both movies I did see were solidly enjoyable science documentaries, worth the $5 I paid and probably the $9.95 full price. I may not wind up using the ones for the Museum of Science, depending how this weekend lines up, but if I don't, it will because I'm doing something else that's cool.
Cars 2
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 25 June 2011 at Jordan's Furniture Reading (first-run, IMAX 3-D)
There's no getting around the fact that Cars 2 exists because of Disney's merchandising machine, and unlike the Toy Story sequels, which also exist in large part because the stuff on the shelves could use a refresh and a boost, the original Cars wasn't well-received by critics. As a result, there's less anticipation and more cynicism where this one's concerned, as few are saying "well, I don't like sequels as a rule, but I really love Lightning and Mater" the way they did with Buzz and Woody. For as clear as the mercenary motives behind it's creation are, though, Cars 2 succeeds at being an entertaining adventure.
Somewhere in the South Pacific of the Cars world (where cartoon vehicles live without human drivers), British Intelligence operative Finn McMissile (voice of Michael Caine) has come upon a secret base where a colleague has disappeared, and he barely escapes from the clutches of Professor Z (voice of Thomas Kretschmann) himself. Meanwhile, back in Radiator Springs, stock racer Lightning McQueen (voice of Owen Wilson) was planning on some R&R after another successful season, but the goading of open-wheel racer Francesco Bernoulli (voice of John Turturro) has him sign up for the World Grand Prix, this time with his new friends from the first movie as his pit crew, including his loyal but far-from-worldly best bud Tow Mater (voice of Dan "Larry" Whitney). Things get hairy, though, once they arrive in Tokyo - Mater's cornpone antics are kind of embarrassing to McQueen, while McMissile and his assistant Holley Shiftwell (voice of Emily Mortimer) mistake Mater for the American spy they were sent to meet, sweeping him into a world of intrigue.
Cars 2 is kind of an odd duck compared to other recent Pixar movies, and even its own progenitor. It's the first feature from the studio that really doesn't have an emotional gut-punch since, well, Cars - even the moment where Mater recognizes that others often see him as a buffoon is muted, either not looking or not succeeding in getting the audience to cry like Up and the Toy Story sequels managed. Even without bringing those into the picture, it's in many ways the inverse of director John Lasseter's original Cars. Lasseter and his co-writers move McQueen from lead to supporting and Mater in the other direction, crafting the story around Mater at odds with big international cities rather than McQueen in small town America. The tone is completely different; where Cars was often quiet and pastoral, the sequel is loud and packed with action.
Full review at EFC.
"Under the Sea"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 26 June 2011 at the New England Aquarium (repatory, IMAX 3-D)
I saw this one about a year ago, and wound up giving it somewhat higher marks than I do today. Of course, the movie itself hasn't changed; I just didn't find myself reacting quite so strongly as I did. It could be the audience, it could be that I was using a coupon up before it expires and thus seeing it more out of obligation than enthusiasm, it could be that I was sitting in the second row and that's really too close for this sort of giant-screen presentation. Or because it's a science doc aimed toward young children and while the picture was still dazzling, the information wasn't new.
One thing that often amuses me with some of these things they show at the Aquarium is just how much hot fish lovin' gets into them. I'm half-kidding, of course, but I remember seeing one with my brother and joking afterward that one of the centerpieces of the movie was a squid orgy. This one makes audiences go "aawwww!" at the sight of two cuttlefish kissing (no small feat, because the cuttlefish is a supremely grotesque creature, almost certainly the visual inspiration for many depictions of Lovecraft's Cthulhu, whose very visage is said to be enough to drive men mad), while narrator Jim Carrey jauntily points out that this is all it takes to fertilize the females eggs. The implication is clear enough that when we return to the cuttlefish later, and Carrey talks about how it is trying to avoid the claws that pinch as it stalks its crab dinner, I have a hard time not shouting out that you would too, if nature had decided to place your reproductive organs in your mouth! I mean, avoiding spicy foods would be the least of your concerns.
And with that thoroughly inappropriate detour amid reviews of G-rated movies, let's move on...
"Born to Be Wild"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 26 June 2011 at the New England Aquarium (first-run, IMAX 3-D)
Even the coldest, meanest of people has a soft place in their hearts that wants to see this movie. After all, it's about orphaned baby animals and people who have made it their life's work to raise these cuties and return them to their habitats; who can argue with that. The filmmakers are banking on an immediate emotional reaction to the lovable animals followed by appreciation for the nobility of the cause, and once you've got those, dissecting it as a film is beside the point.
Director David Lickley presents us with two women doing this good work in parallel: In Kenya, we meet Daphne Sheldrick, who grew up on the grounds of a national park and now rescues baby elephants whose parents have been killed, mostly by poachers for their ivory. On the other side of the Indian Ocean, in Borneo, Dr. Birute Galdikas tends to orangutans, who are seldom hunted as such but have been crowded out of their habitats by expansion and deforestation. Both are intelligent women with dedicated teams, and neither aims to domesticate their charges; these animals will remain in their care only until they are able to fend for themselves in the wild.
Lickley and screenwriter Drew Fellman tell the story in a reasonably straightforward manner; we're given an introduction to each of these women, shown a rescue, some scenes of how the orphans are cared for, and a return to the wild. The details are interesting and informative, whether it be how these elephants require a lot of sunblock for their ears (normally, they would be shaded under the females of the herd or how orangutan "graduates" will often come back to visit Galdikas's camp. Narration (by Morgan Freeman) is used sparingly, mostly to set up a scene which plays out on its own.
Full review at EFC.
Especially since, despite all the negative reviews I've seen, the movie was darn good. It doesn't transcend the "kid's cartoon" genre the way many of Pixar's other recent films do, but it's an exciting adventure that can bring a smile to an otherwise sour puss if accepted as such. By that I don't mean to lower one's expectations of quality, but to judge it for what it is rather than what one wants it to be (especially if what one wants it to be is "nonexistent, because it's a sell-out sequel to a movie I didn't much like anyway!"). There are bits that put a big, stupid grin on my face - the black humor of Finn McMissile being presented with a crushed cube of metal, the toy airplanes that scatter when cars drive through a park in Rome, and Bruce Campbell showing up in a Pixar flick are just a few - and they don't feel like pandering.
Without walking back how much I enjoyed the movie, one thing that surprises me upon reflection is how my perception of John Lasseter has changed upon looking at the Cars movies. Back when Toy Story popped up, it was easy to place him aside Windsor McKay, Walt Disney, Usama Tezuka, and Hayao Miyazaki as animation pioneers who not only revolutionized animation as a medium but were also brilliant storytellers; now, seeing what sort of brilliant and emotional movies Pixar is making with him in a supervisory role (and how the "main" animation department at Disney has improved ever since he was placed in charge), the perception is a little different - he's still a very good storyteller, but he's arguably an even better mentor and developer of raw talent.
One more amusing thing - with the IMAX theater at Jordan's gaining another new sponsor (this time, Posturepedic), Elliot recorded a new pre-show teaser, this one taking pains to point out that they project using 70mm film. I don't know if that's necessarily a reaction to the recent wave of dissatisfaction at how digital projectors equipped for 3D can create a sub-par experience (with Boston cited at a specific example), but I kind of like to think it is.
The next day wound up being about using my tickets for the IMAX shows at the Aquarium up. I kick myself a little for not using one earlier and seeing Hubble 3-D again, but both movies I did see were solidly enjoyable science documentaries, worth the $5 I paid and probably the $9.95 full price. I may not wind up using the ones for the Museum of Science, depending how this weekend lines up, but if I don't, it will because I'm doing something else that's cool.
Cars 2
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 25 June 2011 at Jordan's Furniture Reading (first-run, IMAX 3-D)
There's no getting around the fact that Cars 2 exists because of Disney's merchandising machine, and unlike the Toy Story sequels, which also exist in large part because the stuff on the shelves could use a refresh and a boost, the original Cars wasn't well-received by critics. As a result, there's less anticipation and more cynicism where this one's concerned, as few are saying "well, I don't like sequels as a rule, but I really love Lightning and Mater" the way they did with Buzz and Woody. For as clear as the mercenary motives behind it's creation are, though, Cars 2 succeeds at being an entertaining adventure.
Somewhere in the South Pacific of the Cars world (where cartoon vehicles live without human drivers), British Intelligence operative Finn McMissile (voice of Michael Caine) has come upon a secret base where a colleague has disappeared, and he barely escapes from the clutches of Professor Z (voice of Thomas Kretschmann) himself. Meanwhile, back in Radiator Springs, stock racer Lightning McQueen (voice of Owen Wilson) was planning on some R&R after another successful season, but the goading of open-wheel racer Francesco Bernoulli (voice of John Turturro) has him sign up for the World Grand Prix, this time with his new friends from the first movie as his pit crew, including his loyal but far-from-worldly best bud Tow Mater (voice of Dan "Larry" Whitney). Things get hairy, though, once they arrive in Tokyo - Mater's cornpone antics are kind of embarrassing to McQueen, while McMissile and his assistant Holley Shiftwell (voice of Emily Mortimer) mistake Mater for the American spy they were sent to meet, sweeping him into a world of intrigue.
Cars 2 is kind of an odd duck compared to other recent Pixar movies, and even its own progenitor. It's the first feature from the studio that really doesn't have an emotional gut-punch since, well, Cars - even the moment where Mater recognizes that others often see him as a buffoon is muted, either not looking or not succeeding in getting the audience to cry like Up and the Toy Story sequels managed. Even without bringing those into the picture, it's in many ways the inverse of director John Lasseter's original Cars. Lasseter and his co-writers move McQueen from lead to supporting and Mater in the other direction, crafting the story around Mater at odds with big international cities rather than McQueen in small town America. The tone is completely different; where Cars was often quiet and pastoral, the sequel is loud and packed with action.
Full review at EFC.
"Under the Sea"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 26 June 2011 at the New England Aquarium (repatory, IMAX 3-D)
I saw this one about a year ago, and wound up giving it somewhat higher marks than I do today. Of course, the movie itself hasn't changed; I just didn't find myself reacting quite so strongly as I did. It could be the audience, it could be that I was using a coupon up before it expires and thus seeing it more out of obligation than enthusiasm, it could be that I was sitting in the second row and that's really too close for this sort of giant-screen presentation. Or because it's a science doc aimed toward young children and while the picture was still dazzling, the information wasn't new.
One thing that often amuses me with some of these things they show at the Aquarium is just how much hot fish lovin' gets into them. I'm half-kidding, of course, but I remember seeing one with my brother and joking afterward that one of the centerpieces of the movie was a squid orgy. This one makes audiences go "aawwww!" at the sight of two cuttlefish kissing (no small feat, because the cuttlefish is a supremely grotesque creature, almost certainly the visual inspiration for many depictions of Lovecraft's Cthulhu, whose very visage is said to be enough to drive men mad), while narrator Jim Carrey jauntily points out that this is all it takes to fertilize the females eggs. The implication is clear enough that when we return to the cuttlefish later, and Carrey talks about how it is trying to avoid the claws that pinch as it stalks its crab dinner, I have a hard time not shouting out that you would too, if nature had decided to place your reproductive organs in your mouth! I mean, avoiding spicy foods would be the least of your concerns.
And with that thoroughly inappropriate detour amid reviews of G-rated movies, let's move on...
"Born to Be Wild"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 26 June 2011 at the New England Aquarium (first-run, IMAX 3-D)
Even the coldest, meanest of people has a soft place in their hearts that wants to see this movie. After all, it's about orphaned baby animals and people who have made it their life's work to raise these cuties and return them to their habitats; who can argue with that. The filmmakers are banking on an immediate emotional reaction to the lovable animals followed by appreciation for the nobility of the cause, and once you've got those, dissecting it as a film is beside the point.
Director David Lickley presents us with two women doing this good work in parallel: In Kenya, we meet Daphne Sheldrick, who grew up on the grounds of a national park and now rescues baby elephants whose parents have been killed, mostly by poachers for their ivory. On the other side of the Indian Ocean, in Borneo, Dr. Birute Galdikas tends to orangutans, who are seldom hunted as such but have been crowded out of their habitats by expansion and deforestation. Both are intelligent women with dedicated teams, and neither aims to domesticate their charges; these animals will remain in their care only until they are able to fend for themselves in the wild.
Lickley and screenwriter Drew Fellman tell the story in a reasonably straightforward manner; we're given an introduction to each of these women, shown a rescue, some scenes of how the orphans are cared for, and a return to the wild. The details are interesting and informative, whether it be how these elephants require a lot of sunblock for their ears (normally, they would be shaded under the females of the herd or how orangutan "graduates" will often come back to visit Galdikas's camp. Narration (by Morgan Freeman) is used sparingly, mostly to set up a scene which plays out on its own.
Full review at EFC.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 29 June 2011 - 7 July 2011
Someone at Paramount needs to explain to me why, with two big action/adventure franchises due for release in July, the one that features a man dressing up in the American flag is pushed off until almost the end of the month while the one with the talking robots is opening for the Fourth of July? And don't give me any logic about there already being two superhero movies playing theaters right now (with the outside-but-real possibility at the time that the schedule was made that Thor would still be hanging around) - the summer should have been built around Captain America on the 4th of July!
My plans? Fairly set - I've got three tickets for the Omni Theater at the Museum of Science that must be used by the 3rd, so I'll be seeing a few science docs on Saturday. I'll probably head north to see family on Sunday, especially since my niece count doubled last night (welcome, Naomi Nicole and Makenna Danielle!). Around that... Probably Trollhunter and Larry Crowne. And, lord help me, I'll likely give Transformers a look even though I skipped the second because that teaser is, in fact, really good, and word is that it will at least look amazing.
- Instead, we get Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which actually opened at around 9pm on Tuesday. The teaser trailers that played for a long time would constantly trick me into thinking they were for a different movie, and knowing Michael Bay's history with the previous movies in this series would always be a gut kick when I saw his name come up. But, hey, maybe this one will be different - maybe shooting in 3D will force Bay to hold the camera steady and not edit the movie with a lawnmower. It could happen.
The rest of the openings for this week happen on Friday. The big name is Larry Crowne, which Tom Hanks stars in, co-writes, and directs. He plays a blue-collar guy who goes to college after being laid off, and winds up romancing one of his instructors (who is played by Julia Roberts). This is the sort of thing that is right in Hanks's and Roberts's wheelhouses, and I suspect they'll do just fine. Those guys tend to skew a little toward the older side, though, so Hollywood also offers us Monte Carlo, a teen-oriented comedy in which three friends are whisked off to the titular city after one is mistaken for an heiress. I am too old to recognize any of the three leads (I've seen Katie Cassidy on Supernatural, but Selena Gomez and Leighton Meester are stars of shows for younger people), but Andie MacDowell's in it somewhere. Glad to see her getting work. - Over at Kendall Square, the Friday openings include two graduates of IFFBoston. Page One: Inside the New York Times is a documentary which focuses how the most traditional of traditional media outlets adapts to the new online reality. Trollhunter is a mock-documentary in which a group of students find and follow the man tasked with hunting down trolls for the Norwegian people. Audiences may decide for themselves which is more of a horror movie!
Those have relatively open-ended bookings; the one-week booking is for The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls. This documentary is about New Zealand entertainers Lynda and Jools Topp, a modern day vaudeville act (they sing, yodel, tell jokes and act in skits) notable for being lesbian twin sisters. And though that sounds like a niche act, they apparently have plenty of mainstream fans down under, with this film including a fair amount of footage to show us why. - The Aap Ka Manoranjan calendar shows two movies opening at Fresh Pond on Friday in Hindi with English subtitles. Buddah... Hoga Tera Baap, from what I can glean, is an action comedy that stars Amitabh Bachchan as a man in his sixties who refuses to act his age, with mayhem naturally ensuing. Delhi Belly appears to be a raunchy (at least by Bollywood standards) madcap comedy involving gangsters, chases, and an arranged marriage. For the weekend (Friday-Monday), Delhi Belly will play evenings while Buddah has matinees; on Tuesday, they swap their 5:30pm and 10pm shows and run that way through Thursday.
- The Somerville Theatre continues their summer series - the midnight film on Friday and Saturday night is Rodney Dangerfield comedy Back to School, with a live pre-show "featuring Kristen Ford Trio, Comedian and MC Mehran Khaghani, and a special HOT FOR TEACHER dance number!". It's on the big screen in the main theater, so that means it will likely be paired with Larry Crowne rather than its logical partner Bad Teacher. The weekend's classic, playing Sunday the 3rd at 11am and Monday the 5th at 5pm & 8pm, is The African Queen, so if you missed it at the Brattle this week, you've got another shot to see it on 35mm film, along with "two Technicolor short subjects"
- Meanwhile, the Brattle continues on with the classics, presenting a frighteningly straightforward schedule this week: Taxi Driver. 4:30, 7:00, and 9:30 from Friday through Thursday (the 9:30pm show is skipped Monday because everybody will be at fireworks anyway, and there are 2pm matinees on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday). It's Scorcese, De Niro, a great supporting cast, and a score by Bernard Hermann.
- The Coolidge is pretty much sticking with what's working this week - Midnight in Paris and Tree of Life on film, Conan O'Brien Can't Stop and Cave of Forgotten Dreams on digital video, and Hobo with a Shotgun at midnight on Friday & Saturday. They, like the Brattle, shut down early for fireworks on Monday.
- Things are quiet at the MFA, too, as they wrap up their "Art on Film" series with an 8pm screening of Big Shoes: Walking and Talking the Blues tonight (29 June) and a 4pm screening of Cameraman: The Life and Times of Jack Cardiff tomorrow (30 June). Then their screens are dark for the holiday weekend, but they open the Boston French Film Festival next Thursday (7 July) with The Women on the Sixth Floor; director Philippe Le Guay will be there in person to introduce his movie about a Paris businessman who hires a Spanish maid in 1960 and has his life turned upside down.
- And, finally, I apparently missed this bit of second-run shuffling when it happened, but the New England Aquarium's IMAX theater is now showing Pirates of the Caribean: On Stranger Tides during the evening (7:15pm Sunday-Thursday, 5pm & 7:45pm Friday-Saturday). This fits their mandate perfectly, as mermaids are marine life, after all! It's cheaper and better looking to see it there than at the Boston Common AMC. Speaking of, they're apparently keeping The Beginning of the Great Revival around for matinees this week, and continue to show Yellowbrickroad Wednesdays at 10pm and Fridays at midnight through the 8th.
My plans? Fairly set - I've got three tickets for the Omni Theater at the Museum of Science that must be used by the 3rd, so I'll be seeing a few science docs on Saturday. I'll probably head north to see family on Sunday, especially since my niece count doubled last night (welcome, Naomi Nicole and Makenna Danielle!). Around that... Probably Trollhunter and Larry Crowne. And, lord help me, I'll likely give Transformers a look even though I skipped the second because that teaser is, in fact, really good, and word is that it will at least look amazing.
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