Elysium
Pretty much the defining standard of a badly written movie, this clunker is a mess of bad, unsubtle writing that drove me to distraction. You can see the script-writers behind every scene and every line of dialogue: "Here we need a scene that needs a female and a vulnerable child. Act vulnerable!" "Here we need a scene with tough guys in a poor neighborhood. Act tough!" And so they do, unimpressively and unmemorably.
A guy on Earth (all of whom are poor and live on a planet with no vegetation (where do they get oxygen?) is critically injured and so, like many others, makes a daring attempt to get to Elysium, a floating ring-world where all the rich people live in style and comfort with universal healing machines. Lots of punching, snarling, meanness, and crashes follow.
Like Skyfall and dozens of other bad movies that inexcusably didn't spend a teeny fraction of their production budget on someone who knows anything about technology, I was once again laughing out loud at the future of computer technology. I love when mankind's highest and most secure technology can be brought low by a couple of twisted wires (why are they still using wires, and why is every wire a universal access port to "the entire system", and why do all access ports universally use the same communication standard as every ad-hoc laptop brought to hack it?).
The basic plot points, while obviously supposed to have political metaphor, don't really make any sense; one example: healing technology is free, limitless, and consumes no resources; why keep it away from the poor people?
Skip.
Before Midnight
This is a sparkling achievement that demonstrates that there is endless possibility for great movies, and they don't need a single special effect or action sequence.
This is the third movie in a trilogy from director Robert Linklater and actors/writers Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. I don't recognize Ethan from anything else, but I remember Julie from her equally fine performances in Kieslowski's great Trois Couleurs trilogy. All three of the movies in this trilogy (both trilogies, actually) are can't-miss movies, and they should ideally be seen in order.
The movies are sequences of long conversations, some of which take place in real time without a camera cut over the course of 15 or 20 or more minutes. They are daring conversations that present real conversations about universal issues while avoiding anything cliche. They succeed by bringing the individual and his or her perspective into the mix, so that the conversations don't use the exact words that we might use but they sure seem to cover the same ground.
They are insightful and thought-provoking, fascinating, captivating, and at times highly charged and emotional. One of these movies is worth the rest of the summer's multi-million dollar special effect comic book adaptations and Pixar sequels combined.
Must-see. Be warned that this movie contains an extended topless scene, but it's not very sexual.
The Lone Ranger
Speaking of overproduced multi-million dollar special effect movies, this one, like John Carter, was not bad, certainly not as bad as the critics and box office results would lead you to believe. This movie is mis-titled, since it's about Tonto (johnny Depp), with The Lone Ranger (Armie Hammer) thrown in as his straight-man sidekick. Depp is fetching and he has some good lines; a lot of it was fun. The plot is ok: something about railway companies and money; it's about un-trust-able companions really, since the plot is not important.
It tries a little too hard, perhaps. But it's still better than Elysium.
Meh. If you must go out and there is nothing else to see.
Monsters University
An entirely unnecessary prequel that is wholly unoriginal and just not that captivating. This may have worked as a Pixar short. It's a straightforward story about a band of misfits and the same type of moral lessons driven home by Monsters Inc, which was a much better movie. Mike and Sully meet; they are not natural friends, but circumstances require them to team together with a bunch of other misfits in order to graduate. Cue the unlikely victories over the more deserving but arrogant foils.
It's not a bad movie. At least the ending is not bad.
Meh. Skip.
The Great Gatsby
Watching this solidified for me the problem with a whole bunch of recent movies: a director with an over-inflated ego. In this movie, as in Anna Karenina and most famously (and, paradoxically, least problematically) in Moulin Rouge, the director is so in love with himself that he treats the actors like scenery on which to hang the score and visuals. Instead of the movie being about the characters and the dialog, it is whiz, flash, sparkle, moving cameras, mirrors, paintings, and basically anything to avoid a single real moment of human interaction. The characters, when they appear on film, drop lines like they are part of the sound effects.
The result is all style and no substance, and I hate it. It's tiring, obnoxious, and the exact opposite of what a movie is capable of delivering. Like Anna Karenina, I abandoned this about a third of the way through.
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Sunday, August 4, 2013
23 Films in 2015 that Signify the Death of Cinema
Writers at Hitfix listed what they considered 23 films that may make 2015 the greatest movie year ever:
- Avengers: Age of Ultron (sequel, comic adaptation)
- Fantastic Four (reboot, comic adaptation)
- Pirates of the Caribbean 5 (sequel)
- Warcraft (video game adaptation)
- Inside Out (Pixar)
- Adventures of Tintin 2 (sequel, comic adaptation)
- Pitch Perfect 2 (sequel, formula adaptation)
- Assassin's Creed (video game adaptation)
- Peanuts (comic adaptation after death of the cartoonist)
- Inferno (sequel, Dan Brown adaptation)
- Cinderella (remake, fairy tale adaptation)
- Ant-Man (comic adaptation)
- Star Wars episode VII (sequel)
- Kung Fu Panda 3 (sequel)
- The Hunger Games Mockingjay part 2 (sequel)
- Mission Impossible 5 (sequel)
- Avatar 2 (sequel)
- Terminator 5 (reboot or sequel)
- Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children
- Bond 24 (sequel)
- Finding Dory (sequel to Finding Nemo)
- Independence Day 2 (sequel)
- Superman vs Batman (comic adaptation)
14 sequels, 3 remakes/reboots, 2 video game adaptations, 5 comic adaptations. The only items that (may be) remotely original are Inside Out and Miss Peregine's, both of which are movies for children. Come to think of it, all of these movies are for children. Maybe the title of this post should be Films that Signify the Death of the Moviegoer's Brain.
I'm not saying that some of the above won't be passably entertaining. But I have to ask: is there anything here that might be remotely in the same category as The Seventh Seal? Gone With the Wind? Citizen Kane? To Kill a Mockingbird? Raging Bull? Wings of Desire? Will any of these movies make you think differently, challenge you, push the boundaries of art, or inspire a conversation beyond the size of an explosion, the sting of a sarcastic comment, or the pain of a fistfight?
I hear, all the time, "I don't want to have to think, I just want to have fun" about movies, games, and books. Is that really good enough for your life, for your achievements, for your world? If so, fine. You are in lock-step with what Hollywood wants to give you. Enjoy your $200 million+ cookie-cutter candy entertainments. I'm tired of them. If the Hollywood movie industry died right now, I wouldn't miss it.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
20 More Movie Reviews
I watch too many movies, which is why I'm having trouble making progress on my book. All of the following movies are from 2012 or 2013.
42
The story of Jackie Robinson, the first black person to play major league baseball since the color line was enacted i.e. for about 60 years. The film is nearly as much about the white team executive who puts him there, Branch Rickley. Unlike the biopic A League of Their Own, there are no side character stories to add color to the main narrative. Jackie's teammates don't display much personality. Jackie (Chadwick Boseman) is told to not react to the hate that will be thrown at him, and he doesn't (for the most part). Mostly he frets. Harrison Ford shines as Branch, as does Ben Chapman in his small role as the Philadelphia Phillies manager who hurls a steady stream of racist epithets at Jackie during a game.
42
The story of Jackie Robinson, the first black person to play major league baseball since the color line was enacted i.e. for about 60 years. The film is nearly as much about the white team executive who puts him there, Branch Rickley. Unlike the biopic A League of Their Own, there are no side character stories to add color to the main narrative. Jackie's teammates don't display much personality. Jackie (Chadwick Boseman) is told to not react to the hate that will be thrown at him, and he doesn't (for the most part). Mostly he frets. Harrison Ford shines as Branch, as does Ben Chapman in his small role as the Philadelphia Phillies manager who hurls a steady stream of racist epithets at Jackie during a game.
The story runs pretty smoothly, which robs a lot of the tension from it: he plays, people insult him, he succeeds. The story also focuses on the baseball games, which is pretty standard movie material.
Bottom line: An ok movie, not a must see.
Bottom line: An ok movie, not a must see.
Anna Karenina
This exercise in cinematic self-indulgence is supposed to be clever, but it was over-produced, gaudy, and distracting - maybe that was its intention, considering the gaudiness of the Russian aristocracy. The movie is filmed mostly on a single stage in an old theater - like a fanciful play - where the sets are swung back and forth and characters from one scene bustle around in front of or behind another scene. Shots are often framed like garish pictures. The music is loud, the whole thing looks like a carnival (think Moulin Rouge), and the camera focuses more on the way sets and props move than on the plot. Keira Knightly and the others do their scenes, but the overall effect serves to distance you from them, rather than to engage our sympathy.
None of the richness of Tolstoy made it into the movie. From about mid-way I skimmed the rest of the movie. In case you don't know, it's a shame piece about a woman who has an affair and is then shunned by society.
Bottom line: Skip.
Argo
The story of six American citizens who escaped from the American embassy in Iran when it was taken over by fundamentalists in 1979. They hid out in the Canadian embassy's residence waiting for the baddies to find them. The CIA and some ballsy Hollywood producers decide to get them out by pretending that the Americans are actually Canadians on location for a movie in Iran doing a scene scope; one of them goes their and hopes to leave with them back to Canada using fake passports.
This was all supposed to be a true story, or close enough to the truth (who did the lion's share of the work in the actual historical event is not necessarily accurately depicted). I kept looking at one of the women characters, trying to place the actress, until it finally hit me that it's Helen Santos from West Wing (played by Teri Polo). Turns out I was wrong; it's Kerry Bishé.
It's dramatic and tense, rife with surprises, and excellently acted. The narration at the beginning puts the story into perspective (explaining - if not justifying - the embassy takeover). Something about it still felt a little small. Maybe it's seeing John Goodman pop up again (he's everywhere, now, isn't he?).
Bottom line: Worth seeing. but just as good on the small screen.
Flight
The story of an airplane pilot (Denzel Washington) who saved most of the lives on his malfunctioning plane with a daring landing maneuver, but did it while high on cocaine and alcohol . The story is about his substance abuses; the fact that he is a hero is just an excuse he uses to not deal with his problem.
Beautifully acted and interestingly plotted. It makes drinking look bad, but it seemed to glorify the cocaine. And oh look, it's John Goodman as the drug dealer friend.
Bottom line: Worth seeing, but probably just as good on the small screen.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Part 1 of 3 of what everyone originally assumed would be a single movie. Rather than the children's tale that was the book, Peter Jackson refocuses for a more serious movie based on the same plot, with a global sweep and a whole lot of other scenes from other Tolkein side-notes thrown in for good measure. It all works, except Sarumon is still so ... difficult, it's a wonder that Gandalf ever trusted him.
This is a grand movie that measures up to the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, or nearly enough. Maybe a little slower at the start.
Bottom line: Watch it on the big screen.
Iron Man 3
Part 4 of the Iron Man series (I'm counting The Avengers, which was mostly an Iron Man movie IMHO). A whole lot of people are unhappy with the portrayal of The Mandarin bad guy in this movie compared to how he is portrayed in the comic books. Having not read the comic books, and (even if I had I would still be) not giving a damn about a character's faithfulness to the source, I had no problem with the character in the movie.
What I had a problem with is the plot, in which the god-like powers of Iron Man fail conveniently and specifically when necessary to provide a story. The home of Tony Stark, the world's number one weapon manufacturer, should not be able to be taken out by a few helicopters with missiles. Even if the dozen Iron Men suits that fly around at Stark's beck and call weren't available for some reason (and they are, conveniently, later when the movie draws near its end), the house surely should have a few other defenses that could have been brought to bear.
The Iron Man armor now flies off and on in pieces despite having no visible flying mechanism, and in response to a neck flick from an unarmored Stark who may be thousands of miles away. And the suit, which can withstand a hit from Thor's hammer, falls into pieces when hit by a truck for comic effect.
The entire plot depends on Iron Man being vulnerable so they make him vulnerable so that they can have a plot, and then they resolve the plot by making him not vulnerable again: suddenly remembering all of the weapons and features that are available to him.
Along the way, Tony Stark meets a cute kid who helps him out, and Pepper Potts gets her chance to shine. They give her a tempting love interest in order to create some tension, but I didn't find that part believable.
Bottom line: Skip, believe it or not. It has its moments, but it was nothing like either of the other movies.
Les Misérables
If you like the play, book, or whatever, then you'll like this adaptation. If you have an affinity for musicals where all of the dialog is sung, even when it should just be spoken because it's not really sung with any particular melody, then you'll like this.
I never thought I would ally myself with Philistines, but I am not a Les Mis fan. I like some musicals, but I am not thrilled with plays or movies where every sentence is sung. It's wearying, affecting, and frankly boring. The play itself is rather dreary with miserable and mean characters and situations. The initial songs, in between the singing dialog, were not all that interesting. I quit about half way; some of the more memorable tunes had yet to appear.
Bottom line: you already know if you have to see it; you'll probably buy it, too. If you don't know, you're better off with a lot of other movies.
Life of Pi
I haven't read the book. The story of an Indian boy whose father owns a circus. They pack off to move from India to Canada, but the boat sinks, leaving him with no parents but an assortment of animals on a small raft. The animals die until it is just him and a ferocious tiger. Most of the movie is a disaster/survival movie at sea, where the boy has to stay alive while dealing with the sea, sharks, hunger, thirst, boredom, and a tiger.
This is as well done as it could possibly be. The tiger and other animals are perfectly integrated, and so many shots of the seas, sky, water creatures, glowing lichen in the ocean, etc are stunning. The visuals never interfere with the story, and the story manages to convey the length of the difficulty without actually becoming boring. The scenes where they come across a floating island at sea are particularly beautiful.
Like other stories in this genre, all of his encounters means something metaphorically; in this story, some, but not all, of the metaphors are given a possible interpretation at the end, but not definitively.
Bottom line: A must see, and worth it on the big screen. The film is available in 3D, and it's probably worth it.
Oblivion
Watch Tom Cruise smile, flex, grunt, and cavort around a dystopian landscape destroyed by aliens. That's about all you'll watch, since every other character in the movie - even Morgan Freeman - is a cutout prop for Tom to interact with. Morgan has the same personality you've seen before in every other movie with Morgan Freeman. The two main women characters are hollow shells. The rebel leader could have had a personality, but I suspect it got lost on the cutting room floor (or maybe the floor of the room in which Tom signed his contract).
Tom acts well enough. The effects are ok. The tension works and it moves along. As for the plot and script, it has a certain grandeur, but not quite enough. Moon was a small movie and just the right size for its plot. Oblivion has about the same depth, but more fluff. and the confrontational finale is reminiscent of Star Treks 1 and 5, which is not good.
Bottom line: Entertaining but shallow. Skip unless there's nothing better around and you can stomach a whole lot of Tom Cruise.
On the Road
I read and loved this book. The movie captures some of the book, and what it captures it captures well, although it emphasizes the sexual. Kristen Stewart is quite good (I actually like her: she is not so wooden when she lets an emotion hit her face, like a smile, a naughty glance, or a tear). Sam Riley and Garret Hedlund work as the dynamic duo, and the supporting characters all do fine jobs.
The story is about the road trips and the search for freedom and insight. You get a lot of the free spirit, free love, and road travel, as well as the poverty - monetary and moral - that the main characters inhabit. The ending is a bit of letdown on the one hand, though suitable on the other.
Bottom line: Worth seeing, but probably just as good on the small screen.
Oz: The Great and Powerful
James Franco is Oz and a bevy of talented (and pretty) women play the other characters in this prequel to the classic movie The Wizard of Oz. The story tells how Oz arrived over the rainbow and how the witches came to be who they are. This one started out a little slowly and I was happily surprised when it picked up. It switches between targeting a younger audience and a general audience, but didn't quite succeed as well as the original movie did at being broadly appealing to both at the same time.
Again, I wasn't expecting much, but it was a rich and satisfying experience with some memorable characters, like the China doll girl. The ending "transformation" by the main character to reform himself was a bit unsubtle; a lot of modern movies fumble this. But you can go with it. Mila Kunis as the formerly neutral witch who turns into the wicked witch is still too pretty when she's wicked. But she cackles well enough.
Bottom line: Though there are a few frightening moments, I recommend this primarily for kids or as a wholesome movie experience.
Pitch Perfect
The 30 second shot of Anna Kendrick doing the cup song was the best part. Otherwise, this movie inhabits the space between Glee and Bring It On. It's about a high school a capella group: its girls, leadership, and quest to become champions. You have sassy girl, sweet girl, sexy girl, and lots of other stereotypes. It's shallow but funny (with the light snarky insults we've come to know modern comedy) and quotable, and you look forward to every time they prefix a word with "a ca-". It's "a ca-ridiculous".
The performance commentators are particularly funny.
Bottom line: Dumb as designed, and worth seeing if you like Glee and Bring It On, on the small screen.
Safety Not Guaranteed
A deliberately quirky movie about a couple of small-time reporters writing a story about a guy who advertises for a companion to go time-traveling with him and that he has only done it once before. The movie plays it straight, so you know that the final scene of the movie is either going to show that he is, in fact, a lunatic, or that he is, in fact, a time traveler. I wasn't really looking forward to either ending, both of which seemed to be rather cliche. I was hoping for something unexpected.
Getting to one of those endings is kind of fun. Aubrey Plaza (channeling Kristen Stewart) plays the main junior reporter who gets to know the guy. Everyone has his or her quirks, which makes it a nice character-driven movie.
Bottom line: Worth seeing on the small screen, or even the big screen since the characters are involving and the scenes mostly take place outdoors.
Silver Lining Playbook
The whole world loves Jennifer Lawrence, and for good reason: she's a sparkling good actress without pretensions and she is good-humored and funny in real life. In this movie, she and Bradley Cooper play Tiffany and Pat, two borderline mental-cases in a blue-collar world who find and eventually need each other (though Pat continued to obsess about reuniting with his ex-wife). Along the way is a lot of small-town neighborhood, football betting, and preparations for, and performance in, a ballroom dance competition.
The movie is borderline quirky and borderline mainstream, with Robert DeNiro playing a major role as Pat's father. Everybody faces down their demons, and none of it is (entirely) formulaic, other than who will end up with whom by the end.
Bottom line: Worth watching.
Skyfall
This acclaimed movie is supposed to be the return of the Bond franchise. And, to its credit, it is sharply shot and packed with action and some humor. However, I almost got ejected from the movie theater after the third or fourth time I burst out laughing at the sheer idiocy of some of the plot.
Perhaps the most egregious plot problem is mid-movie: The bad guy has already been shown to be a master hacker in ways that defy any kind of sanity (by hacking into the MI5 network he can physically BLOWS UP the entire block of offices). MI5 security guru takes the bad guy's laptop and PHYSICALLY PLUGS IT IN to the MI5 unprotected local area network, a network on which, apparently, lies every control to everything in MI5: every piece of information (no encryption), every screen, the controls to every door and light, even doors about which MI5 didn't know existed (and therefore could not have hooked up to the network). He does not plug the laptop into, say, a physically separated network that can be used to crack possibly dangerous laptops, or even to one separated by some kind of hardware barrier. When they plugged that Ethernet cable into the laptop, I couldn't stop laughing for a minute. For goodness sake, I'm not even allowed to connect my smartphone at work, and I work for company that makes mobile phone software.
Surprise, surprise, a few minutes later the evil guy's laptop has compromised the entire MI5 network. How does the intrepid security expert at MI5 react to this? By pulling out the Ethernet cable, of course! And then saying "Oops".
This type of nonsense happens again and again in this movie. The plot makes no sense, especially the parts that have to do with computers. For a nice overview, see the YouTube takedown video.
Bottom line: If you aren't bothered by the inconvenience of really stupid plot holes and dumb actions from supposedly intelligent professional people, the movie is very entertaining and worth the big screen. Otherwise, skip it.
Snow White and the Huntsman
Kristen Stewart again, in a rousing romp through the Snow White fairy tale, but with a much spunkier Snow White and a dashing Chris Hemsworth (Thor) as the Hunstman turned protector/love interest. You get a little Terminator 2 (the magic mirror morphs into a humanoid), The Hobbit (dwarves), and some Lord of the Rings (battle sequences). Everyone plays their part well and the story works.
This movie is part of the same trend that brought you the TV series Once Upon a Time. On the one hand, Hollywood is obviously low on fresh new stories to bring to us. On the other hand, starting with a famous short story and creating an entirely new one using the same characters is not altogether bad, when done right.
Bottom line: Worth seeing on a big screen (too late for that, though).
The Company You Keep
Robert Redford is Jim/Nick, a former members of the Weather Underground, radical American anti-war and anti-business activist/militant wanted for a killing in the early 70s. Owing to the capture of one of the other members, Jim/Nick wants to find yet another one of the members and convince her to turn herself in and confess to the killing for which he has been erroneously implicated; they won't believe that he wasn't involved unless someone else confesses.
Some of the critics complained that the actors are at least ten years older than they are supposed to be; this didn't bother me. It's acted well, shot well, but paced rather unevenly and I didn't connect with any of the characters to really care what happened to them. A few arguments are made for and against their radical activism, but none are totally convincing and the focus is more on Nick/Jim as a fugitive than it is on anything else.
Bottom line: Ho hum. Skip. If you want to see a great film on roughly the same subject, watch Running on Empty, one of the best films ever made.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
A fantastic movie about a troubled teenage boy Charlie (Logan Lerman) who has had a mysterious problem over the summer, and who has a hard time fitting in to social groups until he meets sympathetic outsiders Sam (Emma Watson) and Patrick (Ezra Miller). They all shine, particularly Emma in her post-Hermione roll. The only thing that really bothered me was that outsiders generally don't have secret reserves of power to face down bullies at just the right moment; Charlie does. Although the movie tried to make it look like it was scary that he could get so violent, it's much less scary than being a helpless victim of bullies; that threw me off for a minute. Otherwise, I was enchanted the whole way through.
Charlie is obviously named after the protagonist of Flowers for Algernon. Very few movies make me want to run out and read the book right away; this one did. The Hunger Games, Scott Pilgrim, The Hours were some others.
Bottom line: Must see movie.
The Sessions
A movie about a paralyzed man Mark (John Hawkes) who lives most of his day in an iron lung who solicits a "sex therapist" Cheryl (Helen Hunt) because he wants to experience sex once before he dies. Inspired by a true story. I didn't realize that sex therapists actually have sex with their patients as therapy; I thought it was all verbal and diagrams.
I love Helen Hunt, and we get to see all of her here (ahem). The story is about as sweet and straightforward as you might imagine. Cheryl has done this many times before, but for some reason this particular time disturbs her husband; if any couple needed open communication, this couple would be the one, but we don't get to see a conversation like that; the movie could have used it. They wanted to portray Cheryl as maybe possibly falling in love with Mark , but we don't get that sense - only that she cares for him. She also doesn't tell Mark that falling in love with your sex therapist is common, and that he should look out for it and deal with it for what it is, but we don't get to see that conversation either.
So the interpersonal tension that is shown in the movie is all due to a lack of communication. The main tension is whether Mark can actually succeed with the act and feel ok about it afterwards, but we already know the answer to that.
Bottom line: Meh. Skip I guess.
Wanderlust
Yet another Jennifer Aniston comedy, this one about a couple from the big city who land on a hippie commune for a while. It's a trite fish out of water story, with a side-plot about the commune about to lose its land lease ... so the couple comes to the rescue. Alan Alda plays the old hippie patriarch of the group.
A cliche bunch of misfits and a forgettable lot of comedy. Has Jennifer done anything that was actually good since Friends? I think The Good Girl is pretty much it, and it's not coincidental that TGG is not a comedy (it's about a lot of unlikable, desperate people).
Bottom line: It's got some laughs, but skip.
This exercise in cinematic self-indulgence is supposed to be clever, but it was over-produced, gaudy, and distracting - maybe that was its intention, considering the gaudiness of the Russian aristocracy. The movie is filmed mostly on a single stage in an old theater - like a fanciful play - where the sets are swung back and forth and characters from one scene bustle around in front of or behind another scene. Shots are often framed like garish pictures. The music is loud, the whole thing looks like a carnival (think Moulin Rouge), and the camera focuses more on the way sets and props move than on the plot. Keira Knightly and the others do their scenes, but the overall effect serves to distance you from them, rather than to engage our sympathy.
None of the richness of Tolstoy made it into the movie. From about mid-way I skimmed the rest of the movie. In case you don't know, it's a shame piece about a woman who has an affair and is then shunned by society.
Bottom line: Skip.
Argo
The story of six American citizens who escaped from the American embassy in Iran when it was taken over by fundamentalists in 1979. They hid out in the Canadian embassy's residence waiting for the baddies to find them. The CIA and some ballsy Hollywood producers decide to get them out by pretending that the Americans are actually Canadians on location for a movie in Iran doing a scene scope; one of them goes their and hopes to leave with them back to Canada using fake passports.
This was all supposed to be a true story, or close enough to the truth (who did the lion's share of the work in the actual historical event is not necessarily accurately depicted). I kept looking at one of the women characters, trying to place the actress, until it finally hit me that it's Helen Santos from West Wing (played by Teri Polo). Turns out I was wrong; it's Kerry Bishé.
It's dramatic and tense, rife with surprises, and excellently acted. The narration at the beginning puts the story into perspective (explaining - if not justifying - the embassy takeover). Something about it still felt a little small. Maybe it's seeing John Goodman pop up again (he's everywhere, now, isn't he?).
Bottom line: Worth seeing. but just as good on the small screen.
Flight
The story of an airplane pilot (Denzel Washington) who saved most of the lives on his malfunctioning plane with a daring landing maneuver, but did it while high on cocaine and alcohol . The story is about his substance abuses; the fact that he is a hero is just an excuse he uses to not deal with his problem.
Beautifully acted and interestingly plotted. It makes drinking look bad, but it seemed to glorify the cocaine. And oh look, it's John Goodman as the drug dealer friend.
Bottom line: Worth seeing, but probably just as good on the small screen.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Part 1 of 3 of what everyone originally assumed would be a single movie. Rather than the children's tale that was the book, Peter Jackson refocuses for a more serious movie based on the same plot, with a global sweep and a whole lot of other scenes from other Tolkein side-notes thrown in for good measure. It all works, except Sarumon is still so ... difficult, it's a wonder that Gandalf ever trusted him.
This is a grand movie that measures up to the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, or nearly enough. Maybe a little slower at the start.
Bottom line: Watch it on the big screen.
Iron Man 3
Part 4 of the Iron Man series (I'm counting The Avengers, which was mostly an Iron Man movie IMHO). A whole lot of people are unhappy with the portrayal of The Mandarin bad guy in this movie compared to how he is portrayed in the comic books. Having not read the comic books, and (even if I had I would still be) not giving a damn about a character's faithfulness to the source, I had no problem with the character in the movie.
What I had a problem with is the plot, in which the god-like powers of Iron Man fail conveniently and specifically when necessary to provide a story. The home of Tony Stark, the world's number one weapon manufacturer, should not be able to be taken out by a few helicopters with missiles. Even if the dozen Iron Men suits that fly around at Stark's beck and call weren't available for some reason (and they are, conveniently, later when the movie draws near its end), the house surely should have a few other defenses that could have been brought to bear.
The Iron Man armor now flies off and on in pieces despite having no visible flying mechanism, and in response to a neck flick from an unarmored Stark who may be thousands of miles away. And the suit, which can withstand a hit from Thor's hammer, falls into pieces when hit by a truck for comic effect.
The entire plot depends on Iron Man being vulnerable so they make him vulnerable so that they can have a plot, and then they resolve the plot by making him not vulnerable again: suddenly remembering all of the weapons and features that are available to him.
Along the way, Tony Stark meets a cute kid who helps him out, and Pepper Potts gets her chance to shine. They give her a tempting love interest in order to create some tension, but I didn't find that part believable.
Bottom line: Skip, believe it or not. It has its moments, but it was nothing like either of the other movies.
Les Misérables
If you like the play, book, or whatever, then you'll like this adaptation. If you have an affinity for musicals where all of the dialog is sung, even when it should just be spoken because it's not really sung with any particular melody, then you'll like this.
I never thought I would ally myself with Philistines, but I am not a Les Mis fan. I like some musicals, but I am not thrilled with plays or movies where every sentence is sung. It's wearying, affecting, and frankly boring. The play itself is rather dreary with miserable and mean characters and situations. The initial songs, in between the singing dialog, were not all that interesting. I quit about half way; some of the more memorable tunes had yet to appear.
Bottom line: you already know if you have to see it; you'll probably buy it, too. If you don't know, you're better off with a lot of other movies.
Life of Pi
I haven't read the book. The story of an Indian boy whose father owns a circus. They pack off to move from India to Canada, but the boat sinks, leaving him with no parents but an assortment of animals on a small raft. The animals die until it is just him and a ferocious tiger. Most of the movie is a disaster/survival movie at sea, where the boy has to stay alive while dealing with the sea, sharks, hunger, thirst, boredom, and a tiger.
This is as well done as it could possibly be. The tiger and other animals are perfectly integrated, and so many shots of the seas, sky, water creatures, glowing lichen in the ocean, etc are stunning. The visuals never interfere with the story, and the story manages to convey the length of the difficulty without actually becoming boring. The scenes where they come across a floating island at sea are particularly beautiful.
Like other stories in this genre, all of his encounters means something metaphorically; in this story, some, but not all, of the metaphors are given a possible interpretation at the end, but not definitively.
Bottom line: A must see, and worth it on the big screen. The film is available in 3D, and it's probably worth it.
Oblivion
Watch Tom Cruise smile, flex, grunt, and cavort around a dystopian landscape destroyed by aliens. That's about all you'll watch, since every other character in the movie - even Morgan Freeman - is a cutout prop for Tom to interact with. Morgan has the same personality you've seen before in every other movie with Morgan Freeman. The two main women characters are hollow shells. The rebel leader could have had a personality, but I suspect it got lost on the cutting room floor (or maybe the floor of the room in which Tom signed his contract).
Tom acts well enough. The effects are ok. The tension works and it moves along. As for the plot and script, it has a certain grandeur, but not quite enough. Moon was a small movie and just the right size for its plot. Oblivion has about the same depth, but more fluff. and the confrontational finale is reminiscent of Star Treks 1 and 5, which is not good.
Bottom line: Entertaining but shallow. Skip unless there's nothing better around and you can stomach a whole lot of Tom Cruise.
On the Road
I read and loved this book. The movie captures some of the book, and what it captures it captures well, although it emphasizes the sexual. Kristen Stewart is quite good (I actually like her: she is not so wooden when she lets an emotion hit her face, like a smile, a naughty glance, or a tear). Sam Riley and Garret Hedlund work as the dynamic duo, and the supporting characters all do fine jobs.
The story is about the road trips and the search for freedom and insight. You get a lot of the free spirit, free love, and road travel, as well as the poverty - monetary and moral - that the main characters inhabit. The ending is a bit of letdown on the one hand, though suitable on the other.
Bottom line: Worth seeing, but probably just as good on the small screen.
Oz: The Great and Powerful
James Franco is Oz and a bevy of talented (and pretty) women play the other characters in this prequel to the classic movie The Wizard of Oz. The story tells how Oz arrived over the rainbow and how the witches came to be who they are. This one started out a little slowly and I was happily surprised when it picked up. It switches between targeting a younger audience and a general audience, but didn't quite succeed as well as the original movie did at being broadly appealing to both at the same time.
Again, I wasn't expecting much, but it was a rich and satisfying experience with some memorable characters, like the China doll girl. The ending "transformation" by the main character to reform himself was a bit unsubtle; a lot of modern movies fumble this. But you can go with it. Mila Kunis as the formerly neutral witch who turns into the wicked witch is still too pretty when she's wicked. But she cackles well enough.
Bottom line: Though there are a few frightening moments, I recommend this primarily for kids or as a wholesome movie experience.
Pitch Perfect
The 30 second shot of Anna Kendrick doing the cup song was the best part. Otherwise, this movie inhabits the space between Glee and Bring It On. It's about a high school a capella group: its girls, leadership, and quest to become champions. You have sassy girl, sweet girl, sexy girl, and lots of other stereotypes. It's shallow but funny (with the light snarky insults we've come to know modern comedy) and quotable, and you look forward to every time they prefix a word with "a ca-". It's "a ca-ridiculous".
The performance commentators are particularly funny.
Bottom line: Dumb as designed, and worth seeing if you like Glee and Bring It On, on the small screen.
Safety Not Guaranteed
A deliberately quirky movie about a couple of small-time reporters writing a story about a guy who advertises for a companion to go time-traveling with him and that he has only done it once before. The movie plays it straight, so you know that the final scene of the movie is either going to show that he is, in fact, a lunatic, or that he is, in fact, a time traveler. I wasn't really looking forward to either ending, both of which seemed to be rather cliche. I was hoping for something unexpected.
Getting to one of those endings is kind of fun. Aubrey Plaza (channeling Kristen Stewart) plays the main junior reporter who gets to know the guy. Everyone has his or her quirks, which makes it a nice character-driven movie.
Bottom line: Worth seeing on the small screen, or even the big screen since the characters are involving and the scenes mostly take place outdoors.
Silver Lining Playbook
The whole world loves Jennifer Lawrence, and for good reason: she's a sparkling good actress without pretensions and she is good-humored and funny in real life. In this movie, she and Bradley Cooper play Tiffany and Pat, two borderline mental-cases in a blue-collar world who find and eventually need each other (though Pat continued to obsess about reuniting with his ex-wife). Along the way is a lot of small-town neighborhood, football betting, and preparations for, and performance in, a ballroom dance competition.
The movie is borderline quirky and borderline mainstream, with Robert DeNiro playing a major role as Pat's father. Everybody faces down their demons, and none of it is (entirely) formulaic, other than who will end up with whom by the end.
Bottom line: Worth watching.
Skyfall
This acclaimed movie is supposed to be the return of the Bond franchise. And, to its credit, it is sharply shot and packed with action and some humor. However, I almost got ejected from the movie theater after the third or fourth time I burst out laughing at the sheer idiocy of some of the plot.
Perhaps the most egregious plot problem is mid-movie: The bad guy has already been shown to be a master hacker in ways that defy any kind of sanity (by hacking into the MI5 network he can physically BLOWS UP the entire block of offices). MI5 security guru takes the bad guy's laptop and PHYSICALLY PLUGS IT IN to the MI5 unprotected local area network, a network on which, apparently, lies every control to everything in MI5: every piece of information (no encryption), every screen, the controls to every door and light, even doors about which MI5 didn't know existed (and therefore could not have hooked up to the network). He does not plug the laptop into, say, a physically separated network that can be used to crack possibly dangerous laptops, or even to one separated by some kind of hardware barrier. When they plugged that Ethernet cable into the laptop, I couldn't stop laughing for a minute. For goodness sake, I'm not even allowed to connect my smartphone at work, and I work for company that makes mobile phone software.
Surprise, surprise, a few minutes later the evil guy's laptop has compromised the entire MI5 network. How does the intrepid security expert at MI5 react to this? By pulling out the Ethernet cable, of course! And then saying "Oops".
This type of nonsense happens again and again in this movie. The plot makes no sense, especially the parts that have to do with computers. For a nice overview, see the YouTube takedown video.
Bottom line: If you aren't bothered by the inconvenience of really stupid plot holes and dumb actions from supposedly intelligent professional people, the movie is very entertaining and worth the big screen. Otherwise, skip it.
Snow White and the Huntsman
Kristen Stewart again, in a rousing romp through the Snow White fairy tale, but with a much spunkier Snow White and a dashing Chris Hemsworth (Thor) as the Hunstman turned protector/love interest. You get a little Terminator 2 (the magic mirror morphs into a humanoid), The Hobbit (dwarves), and some Lord of the Rings (battle sequences). Everyone plays their part well and the story works.
This movie is part of the same trend that brought you the TV series Once Upon a Time. On the one hand, Hollywood is obviously low on fresh new stories to bring to us. On the other hand, starting with a famous short story and creating an entirely new one using the same characters is not altogether bad, when done right.
Bottom line: Worth seeing on a big screen (too late for that, though).
The Company You Keep
Robert Redford is Jim/Nick, a former members of the Weather Underground, radical American anti-war and anti-business activist/militant wanted for a killing in the early 70s. Owing to the capture of one of the other members, Jim/Nick wants to find yet another one of the members and convince her to turn herself in and confess to the killing for which he has been erroneously implicated; they won't believe that he wasn't involved unless someone else confesses.
Some of the critics complained that the actors are at least ten years older than they are supposed to be; this didn't bother me. It's acted well, shot well, but paced rather unevenly and I didn't connect with any of the characters to really care what happened to them. A few arguments are made for and against their radical activism, but none are totally convincing and the focus is more on Nick/Jim as a fugitive than it is on anything else.
Bottom line: Ho hum. Skip. If you want to see a great film on roughly the same subject, watch Running on Empty, one of the best films ever made.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
A fantastic movie about a troubled teenage boy Charlie (Logan Lerman) who has had a mysterious problem over the summer, and who has a hard time fitting in to social groups until he meets sympathetic outsiders Sam (Emma Watson) and Patrick (Ezra Miller). They all shine, particularly Emma in her post-Hermione roll. The only thing that really bothered me was that outsiders generally don't have secret reserves of power to face down bullies at just the right moment; Charlie does. Although the movie tried to make it look like it was scary that he could get so violent, it's much less scary than being a helpless victim of bullies; that threw me off for a minute. Otherwise, I was enchanted the whole way through.
Charlie is obviously named after the protagonist of Flowers for Algernon. Very few movies make me want to run out and read the book right away; this one did. The Hunger Games, Scott Pilgrim, The Hours were some others.
Bottom line: Must see movie.
The Sessions
A movie about a paralyzed man Mark (John Hawkes) who lives most of his day in an iron lung who solicits a "sex therapist" Cheryl (Helen Hunt) because he wants to experience sex once before he dies. Inspired by a true story. I didn't realize that sex therapists actually have sex with their patients as therapy; I thought it was all verbal and diagrams.
I love Helen Hunt, and we get to see all of her here (ahem). The story is about as sweet and straightforward as you might imagine. Cheryl has done this many times before, but for some reason this particular time disturbs her husband; if any couple needed open communication, this couple would be the one, but we don't get to see a conversation like that; the movie could have used it. They wanted to portray Cheryl as maybe possibly falling in love with Mark , but we don't get that sense - only that she cares for him. She also doesn't tell Mark that falling in love with your sex therapist is common, and that he should look out for it and deal with it for what it is, but we don't get to see that conversation either.
So the interpersonal tension that is shown in the movie is all due to a lack of communication. The main tension is whether Mark can actually succeed with the act and feel ok about it afterwards, but we already know the answer to that.
Bottom line: Meh. Skip I guess.
Wanderlust
Yet another Jennifer Aniston comedy, this one about a couple from the big city who land on a hippie commune for a while. It's a trite fish out of water story, with a side-plot about the commune about to lose its land lease ... so the couple comes to the rescue. Alan Alda plays the old hippie patriarch of the group.
A cliche bunch of misfits and a forgettable lot of comedy. Has Jennifer done anything that was actually good since Friends? I think The Good Girl is pretty much it, and it's not coincidental that TGG is not a comedy (it's about a lot of unlikable, desperate people).
Bottom line: It's got some laughs, but skip.
Movies I still really have to see this year (unfortunately):
Before Midnight
Cloud Atlas
Ender's Game
Frances Ha
The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Star Trek XII (Into Darkness): Review
Star Trek: Into Darkness is the twelfth Star Trek movie, and the second in the modern reboot of the franchise. This reboot, as you may recall, reintroduced the characters from The Original Series, with different actors, and then branched the canon off into an alternate reality. Which is odd, when you think about it, since previous ST reboots always stayed in the same reality but with a different cast of characters (in a different time period, perhaps).
Previous reviews: : 1-3, 4-6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.
Plot: The Enterprise is engaged in a James Bond like mission on some planet where Kirk breaks the "prime directive" by revealing their presence to a primitive planet's population while swooping in to rescue Spock from immanent death. Spock doesn't understand why he did it, and his report to Star Fleet command gets Kirk kicked out of his captaincy. Major subplot of the movie: Spock tries to figure out what instinct and gratitude are. Uhura continues to pine over Spock in the meantime.
Back to the main plot: Some dude attacks Star Fleet command, stealing some weapon information or something and then heading out to Klingon-ville. Kirk gets the order from Admiral Marcus to go find the dude and assassinate him with a bunch of long range missiles, thus a) receiving an unethical order to meet out drone justice rather than bring the dude in to stand trial (*cough* politics *cough*), and b) fooling around with some unknown highly volatile missiles, which is dangerous, and c) being highly likely to start a Vulcan-Federation war. Maybe that's the intent? Spock, Scotty, and a bunch of other people tell him not to do this, to the point where their harping on it means something is afoot. And of course, something is.
The identity of the dude becomes significant. The motivation of the admiral becomes significant. Kirk, Spock, et al get into lots and lots of fist fights and once again basically destroy the entire Enterprise and hundreds of other expensive space stations and buildings, probably killing thousands upon thousands of people (conveniently ignored, because the effects are cool). Kirk must learn the meaning of discipline and responsibility. Uhuru must learn that Spock isn't a bad guy because he represses his feelings (but he still doesn't want to hanky panky with her). Bones must learn that he's not a torpedo technician; he is, in fact, a tribble gene splicer. Scotty must learn that running around a big dark empty spaceship takes fitness training. Sulu must learn that he wants to be a captain one day. Chekhov must learn that he's a pretty good engineer. And Carol Marcus must learn to wear short skirts and flirt.
Reactions: This movie consciously tried to be Wrath of Khan II, lifting a number of situations from the second movie, either directly or with some kind of twist. I was bored with it for a while, and then it got interesting when Kirk finally learned to rein in his impulsiveness. But then he went right back to being impulsive again, which kind of ruined the lesson. Still, I remained interested for the rest of the movie. Why? Because the acting was good and the characters and some of the funny quips they made were also good.
The movie tried to hammer a message home: good guys don't just strike blindly for revenge. But they do punch and kick a lot, and the prime directive and most other directives are still a constraining waste of time, and if you try to follow them you'll get killed. So don't. But do. Got that?
Me neither. There are too many pieces of debris and fists flying around, Everything is constantly exploding; complex things that look like they take decades to build blow up every few seconds. I'm guessing that it will take the Federation half a century to fix all of it, even supposing that they have the raw materials.
But wait! What am I talking about? Apparently complex electronics the size of many buildings that gets blown to smithereens with guns, lasers, and explosions can be fixed in twenty minutes - and if you're in a hurry, about thirty seconds, but only through the careful and accurate appliance of knowledge from experienced professionals. I'm just kidding! You can fix anything by slamming your fist into a big fat button that says "manual override" or by jumping up and down on it and kicking it repeatedly until it's pointing back the way it was originally.
The upshot is that engineering and sense takes a back seat to humor, stubbornness, fights, explosions, one political lesson, and lots of references to past ST, such as bars of the TOS score thrown in at just the right time. It wasn't my favorite Trek, but it didn't embarrass the series, either.
Previous reviews: : 1-3, 4-6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.
Plot: The Enterprise is engaged in a James Bond like mission on some planet where Kirk breaks the "prime directive" by revealing their presence to a primitive planet's population while swooping in to rescue Spock from immanent death. Spock doesn't understand why he did it, and his report to Star Fleet command gets Kirk kicked out of his captaincy. Major subplot of the movie: Spock tries to figure out what instinct and gratitude are. Uhura continues to pine over Spock in the meantime.
Back to the main plot: Some dude attacks Star Fleet command, stealing some weapon information or something and then heading out to Klingon-ville. Kirk gets the order from Admiral Marcus to go find the dude and assassinate him with a bunch of long range missiles, thus a) receiving an unethical order to meet out drone justice rather than bring the dude in to stand trial (*cough* politics *cough*), and b) fooling around with some unknown highly volatile missiles, which is dangerous, and c) being highly likely to start a Vulcan-Federation war. Maybe that's the intent? Spock, Scotty, and a bunch of other people tell him not to do this, to the point where their harping on it means something is afoot. And of course, something is.
The identity of the dude becomes significant. The motivation of the admiral becomes significant. Kirk, Spock, et al get into lots and lots of fist fights and once again basically destroy the entire Enterprise and hundreds of other expensive space stations and buildings, probably killing thousands upon thousands of people (conveniently ignored, because the effects are cool). Kirk must learn the meaning of discipline and responsibility. Uhuru must learn that Spock isn't a bad guy because he represses his feelings (but he still doesn't want to hanky panky with her). Bones must learn that he's not a torpedo technician; he is, in fact, a tribble gene splicer. Scotty must learn that running around a big dark empty spaceship takes fitness training. Sulu must learn that he wants to be a captain one day. Chekhov must learn that he's a pretty good engineer. And Carol Marcus must learn to wear short skirts and flirt.
Reactions: This movie consciously tried to be Wrath of Khan II, lifting a number of situations from the second movie, either directly or with some kind of twist. I was bored with it for a while, and then it got interesting when Kirk finally learned to rein in his impulsiveness. But then he went right back to being impulsive again, which kind of ruined the lesson. Still, I remained interested for the rest of the movie. Why? Because the acting was good and the characters and some of the funny quips they made were also good.
The movie tried to hammer a message home: good guys don't just strike blindly for revenge. But they do punch and kick a lot, and the prime directive and most other directives are still a constraining waste of time, and if you try to follow them you'll get killed. So don't. But do. Got that?
Me neither. There are too many pieces of debris and fists flying around, Everything is constantly exploding; complex things that look like they take decades to build blow up every few seconds. I'm guessing that it will take the Federation half a century to fix all of it, even supposing that they have the raw materials.
But wait! What am I talking about? Apparently complex electronics the size of many buildings that gets blown to smithereens with guns, lasers, and explosions can be fixed in twenty minutes - and if you're in a hurry, about thirty seconds, but only through the careful and accurate appliance of knowledge from experienced professionals. I'm just kidding! You can fix anything by slamming your fist into a big fat button that says "manual override" or by jumping up and down on it and kicking it repeatedly until it's pointing back the way it was originally.
The upshot is that engineering and sense takes a back seat to humor, stubbornness, fights, explosions, one political lesson, and lots of references to past ST, such as bars of the TOS score thrown in at just the right time. It wasn't my favorite Trek, but it didn't embarrass the series, either.
But I REALLY had no idea why alternate reality Spock made an on-screen visit.
Ranking: 4, 11, 9, 8, 2, 3, 12, 10, 7, 6, (5 and 1 which are both the same and horrid).
Sunday, June 10, 2012
10 recent things about me, movies
"The sale of MP3 Downloads is currently available only to US customers located in the United States." -Amazon.com, on my attempt to "purchase" a free MP3 download.
When I did nothing else, I wrote a lot of good content on this blog. When I devoted my time to Purple Pawn, this blog suffered. Now that I'm devoting my time to writing a book, I can't seem to blog at all. Priorities, priorities.
10 recent things about me:
- I am no longer writing for Purple Pawn, although I may still contribute something now and then. David Miller is now head honcho of the site.
- I had a harder time than I would have anticipated meeting my ex-wife and her boyfriend, here from the US together for the first time. I was snarky to her and I also took it out on someone else at shabbat lunch the next day (this someone adamantly insisted that Obama was a Muslim, so she deserved it, but still). I've apologized to both of them.
- I have backed two projects on Kickstarter, one on 09/05/2010 and one on 08/22/2011. I haven't received any of my backer rewards yet, though I get occasional updates from the project owners.
- You should read The Hunger Games trilogy. Seriously.
- I've been posting session reports on the Raanana game group blog.
- I'm actively looking for dates on Frumster.com and SawYouAtSinai.com. I thought my profile was pretty boring, so I changed it, and I changed my criteria for a match to be: "Able to intelligently discuss Joni Mitchell, George Elliot, and James Kugel." My first date question is generally: "What books have transformed your life?"
- My first cousin visited Israel for the first time in her life. Actually, she left America for the first time in her life. Her trip has had ups (in Israel and Italy so far) and downs (in Ukraine), but she has had her eyes opened and her mind blown a number of times over. Which is good. And she now loves felafel.
- I played Reef Encounter with Abraham and Sara on a shabbat. It may be that I'm just too unfamiliar with the game, but it seems so chaotic and random until two thirds of the way through the game; it's probably even worse with more than three players.
- I'm officially staying in Raanana for at least another year.
- Movies I watched:
- The Avengers: Basically Iron Man III with support from the other super hero guys. It's great fun and destruction, as I'm sure you've heard. It's still kind of odd that Thor and Loki, supposedly gods, are so piddling compared to humans; last I heard, Thor's hammer would break the heck out of anything it hit. Apparently not.
- John Carter: Actually pretty fun, too. But the existence of a breathable atmosphere, as well as life on Mars in more than one sentient race, and that one of these races is able to cross-breed with humans, is hard to hold in one's head. Still, I think this one will have a long underground life, not unlike Tron and (to a lesser extent) Dune.
- Girl with a Pearl Earring: A beautiful movie that I watched right after reading the book. The book lingers on some rich scenes in a way that the movie doesn't, but the movie hits all the right parts. About a poor woman who works for a painter and ends up helping with the paintings to her (and the painter's) surprise (and not in any salacious way).
- A Dangerous Method: The story of Freud, Jung, and their patient/protege Sabrina who must first acknowledge her penchant for masochism and then her attraction (eventually returned) for Jung. It was interesting here and there, but the proper and dull reserve of the two male leads made for a boring movie that I abandoned about two thirds of the way through.
- My Dinner with Andre: Always thought I would be interested in seeing this. It's not really a great movie, but it's nice enough if you like listening to a decent storyteller for two hours. The other guy - Wally - gets to say "Really?" and "So what happened next?" a lot, except for a little bit in the middle. Other than its audacity for a setting, I can't see why it's so famous; other heavy talking movies, like Before Sunrise and After the Rehearsal, are better.
- 12 Angry Men: Still an absolute classic and a powerful movie. I think its only misstep is in showing us the accused at the beginning; it works better when you don't know his race or looks, except from the descriptions in the dialog.
(Bassie, you should stop reading here.)
- The Reader: Half a torrid sexual affair between a 15/16 year old boy and a 30 year old woman (who thinks he's 18), and half a trial of several Nazi guards.
You get to see as much as you want of both Kate Winslet and newcomer David Kross, from every angle. (They waited to shoot the heavy stuff until his 18th birthday; Kate supposedly had to help talk David through the scenes and put his mind at ease. I find that difficult to believe; I would think that shooting explicit sex and nude scenes with Kate Winslet would be an 18th birthday present dream for most boys.) It was way more explicit than it had to be. A little flesh and some tasteful shots of them lying in bed together would have conveyed what was required.
More powerful and striking was the trial and the seeming lack of comprehension on the part of the guards as to what they did wrong and then how they try to find someone else on which to pin the blame. And then the odd friendship that follows the sentencing. It was interesting.
- Hysteria: The story of the invention of the vibrator, as well as the genesis of the idea that women could, in fact, have orgasms - and not simply hysterical paroxysm as a temporary cure for the fictitious female hysteria. It's a comedy, which was unnecessary, since the actual history is comedic enough. Maggie Gyllenhaal provides anachronistic spunk as a woman who already knows that women have orgasms and that the doctors are too stupid to recognize it (and has no inhibitions in discussing it with these doctors).
It's light predictable fluff. It's funnier if you think watching women (with only their faces exposed) have sitcom-style orgasms next to a working bored and tired doctor is funny, which I didn't really.
When I did nothing else, I wrote a lot of good content on this blog. When I devoted my time to Purple Pawn, this blog suffered. Now that I'm devoting my time to writing a book, I can't seem to blog at all. Priorities, priorities.
10 recent things about me:
- I am no longer writing for Purple Pawn, although I may still contribute something now and then. David Miller is now head honcho of the site.
- I had a harder time than I would have anticipated meeting my ex-wife and her boyfriend, here from the US together for the first time. I was snarky to her and I also took it out on someone else at shabbat lunch the next day (this someone adamantly insisted that Obama was a Muslim, so she deserved it, but still). I've apologized to both of them.
- I have backed two projects on Kickstarter, one on 09/05/2010 and one on 08/22/2011. I haven't received any of my backer rewards yet, though I get occasional updates from the project owners.
- You should read The Hunger Games trilogy. Seriously.
- I've been posting session reports on the Raanana game group blog.
- I'm actively looking for dates on Frumster.com and SawYouAtSinai.com. I thought my profile was pretty boring, so I changed it, and I changed my criteria for a match to be: "Able to intelligently discuss Joni Mitchell, George Elliot, and James Kugel." My first date question is generally: "What books have transformed your life?"
- My first cousin visited Israel for the first time in her life. Actually, she left America for the first time in her life. Her trip has had ups (in Israel and Italy so far) and downs (in Ukraine), but she has had her eyes opened and her mind blown a number of times over. Which is good. And she now loves felafel.
- I played Reef Encounter with Abraham and Sara on a shabbat. It may be that I'm just too unfamiliar with the game, but it seems so chaotic and random until two thirds of the way through the game; it's probably even worse with more than three players.
- I'm officially staying in Raanana for at least another year.
- Movies I watched:
- The Avengers: Basically Iron Man III with support from the other super hero guys. It's great fun and destruction, as I'm sure you've heard. It's still kind of odd that Thor and Loki, supposedly gods, are so piddling compared to humans; last I heard, Thor's hammer would break the heck out of anything it hit. Apparently not.
- John Carter: Actually pretty fun, too. But the existence of a breathable atmosphere, as well as life on Mars in more than one sentient race, and that one of these races is able to cross-breed with humans, is hard to hold in one's head. Still, I think this one will have a long underground life, not unlike Tron and (to a lesser extent) Dune.
- Girl with a Pearl Earring: A beautiful movie that I watched right after reading the book. The book lingers on some rich scenes in a way that the movie doesn't, but the movie hits all the right parts. About a poor woman who works for a painter and ends up helping with the paintings to her (and the painter's) surprise (and not in any salacious way).
- A Dangerous Method: The story of Freud, Jung, and their patient/protege Sabrina who must first acknowledge her penchant for masochism and then her attraction (eventually returned) for Jung. It was interesting here and there, but the proper and dull reserve of the two male leads made for a boring movie that I abandoned about two thirds of the way through.
- My Dinner with Andre: Always thought I would be interested in seeing this. It's not really a great movie, but it's nice enough if you like listening to a decent storyteller for two hours. The other guy - Wally - gets to say "Really?" and "So what happened next?" a lot, except for a little bit in the middle. Other than its audacity for a setting, I can't see why it's so famous; other heavy talking movies, like Before Sunrise and After the Rehearsal, are better.
- 12 Angry Men: Still an absolute classic and a powerful movie. I think its only misstep is in showing us the accused at the beginning; it works better when you don't know his race or looks, except from the descriptions in the dialog.
(Bassie, you should stop reading here.)
- The Reader: Half a torrid sexual affair between a 15/16 year old boy and a 30 year old woman (who thinks he's 18), and half a trial of several Nazi guards.
You get to see as much as you want of both Kate Winslet and newcomer David Kross, from every angle. (They waited to shoot the heavy stuff until his 18th birthday; Kate supposedly had to help talk David through the scenes and put his mind at ease. I find that difficult to believe; I would think that shooting explicit sex and nude scenes with Kate Winslet would be an 18th birthday present dream for most boys.) It was way more explicit than it had to be. A little flesh and some tasteful shots of them lying in bed together would have conveyed what was required.
More powerful and striking was the trial and the seeming lack of comprehension on the part of the guards as to what they did wrong and then how they try to find someone else on which to pin the blame. And then the odd friendship that follows the sentencing. It was interesting.
- Hysteria: The story of the invention of the vibrator, as well as the genesis of the idea that women could, in fact, have orgasms - and not simply hysterical paroxysm as a temporary cure for the fictitious female hysteria. It's a comedy, which was unnecessary, since the actual history is comedic enough. Maggie Gyllenhaal provides anachronistic spunk as a woman who already knows that women have orgasms and that the doctors are too stupid to recognize it (and has no inhibitions in discussing it with these doctors).
It's light predictable fluff. It's funnier if you think watching women (with only their faces exposed) have sitcom-style orgasms next to a working bored and tired doctor is funny, which I didn't really.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Movie Reviews: Battleship, The Hunger Games, The Iron Lady
Battleship:So far, this is the only Hasbro property originally licensed to Universal that has seen the light of day. It cost $250 million to make. Was it worth it?
Battleship is like a bowl full of vanilla ice cream when you're wanting dinner. I can only imagine the director giving his instructions: "Walk here!" "Swim here" "Jump here!" "Say this line!" It doesn't much matter who the actors are or what they do, so long as they do it passably, which they do. Not one of them has a personality of any consequence.
All that seems to matter is the Armageddon love setup and the mcguffin plot around which to hang lots of CGI transformer space ships, cybermen, guns, missiles, explosions, hokey technical jargon shouting, and beams of light. It's all put together ok, I suppose. In fact, the movie depicts the aliens as never firing until they are fired upon; they are always assessing threats and not instigating violence unless a threat is detected and immanent. Despite the opportunity to give the movie a moral edge based on this (like in District 9 or Super8), no such edge is given. Instead we get to blow up the aliens, yay us.
The little elements of the board game - the grid firing and the peg shaped artillery - are kind of funny, but not as funny as the constant and forumlaic deux ex machina.
So it's not a colossal disaster, but neither is it a shining success. It is what it is. E5.
The Hunger Games:In contrast, this is a shining success of a movie, undoubtedly the best adaptation of the books that could have been hoped for. It's the story of a girl who volunteers in place of her sister to fight in a game to the death with other children as spectator sport for the ruling Capitol oppressors.
The book series is an odd one: the first book The Hunger Games is an oddly set up thrilling adventure: the games are depicted as horrible enslavement, yet the great majority of the book revels in the adventure of the games. True, it also covers senselessness, starvation, hopelessness, sacrifice, and so on. But it doesn't give any sense of rebellion or real world change until the very end. Only in the second and third book does the rebellion start, and even a lot of the second book spends an awful lot of time in the thrall of a game. By the third book, the rebellion, casualties, cruelty, and loss pile up so high I was in shock. I couldn't believe anyone would write a story like it for entertainment; I think that's part of its brilliance.
Meanwhile, the movie stays fairly close to the book, but also includes very briefly a little bit of the world reactions, politics, and rebellion that is beginning outside of the game that forms the center story (these elements are taken from the second book). Interestingly, Roger Ebert complained about the lack of rebellion and politics in the movie, which is ironic since the movie actually has slightly more than the book does.
The movie is fantastically acted and directed, beautifully sequenced and shot, and thrilling entertainment. The little bits of rebellion and politics are very important additions and expand the scope of the movie just enough to bait you for the sequels.
The Iron Lady: This is a Meryl Streep set piece, and she is brilliant, as usual. The movie, however, is rather odd. It focuses on Margaret Thatcher looking back at parts of her life, which is all well and good, but it spends nearly half of the screen time in the present for no apparent reason other than to watch Meryl act old. The historical parts are much more worth the screen time and they suffer for being the lack of focus. Instead we get only bits and pieces of the historical story, which feels like only part of a movie.
Battleship is like a bowl full of vanilla ice cream when you're wanting dinner. I can only imagine the director giving his instructions: "Walk here!" "Swim here" "Jump here!" "Say this line!" It doesn't much matter who the actors are or what they do, so long as they do it passably, which they do. Not one of them has a personality of any consequence.
All that seems to matter is the Armageddon love setup and the mcguffin plot around which to hang lots of CGI transformer space ships, cybermen, guns, missiles, explosions, hokey technical jargon shouting, and beams of light. It's all put together ok, I suppose. In fact, the movie depicts the aliens as never firing until they are fired upon; they are always assessing threats and not instigating violence unless a threat is detected and immanent. Despite the opportunity to give the movie a moral edge based on this (like in District 9 or Super8), no such edge is given. Instead we get to blow up the aliens, yay us.
The little elements of the board game - the grid firing and the peg shaped artillery - are kind of funny, but not as funny as the constant and forumlaic deux ex machina.
So it's not a colossal disaster, but neither is it a shining success. It is what it is. E5.
The Hunger Games:In contrast, this is a shining success of a movie, undoubtedly the best adaptation of the books that could have been hoped for. It's the story of a girl who volunteers in place of her sister to fight in a game to the death with other children as spectator sport for the ruling Capitol oppressors.
The book series is an odd one: the first book The Hunger Games is an oddly set up thrilling adventure: the games are depicted as horrible enslavement, yet the great majority of the book revels in the adventure of the games. True, it also covers senselessness, starvation, hopelessness, sacrifice, and so on. But it doesn't give any sense of rebellion or real world change until the very end. Only in the second and third book does the rebellion start, and even a lot of the second book spends an awful lot of time in the thrall of a game. By the third book, the rebellion, casualties, cruelty, and loss pile up so high I was in shock. I couldn't believe anyone would write a story like it for entertainment; I think that's part of its brilliance.
Meanwhile, the movie stays fairly close to the book, but also includes very briefly a little bit of the world reactions, politics, and rebellion that is beginning outside of the game that forms the center story (these elements are taken from the second book). Interestingly, Roger Ebert complained about the lack of rebellion and politics in the movie, which is ironic since the movie actually has slightly more than the book does.
The movie is fantastically acted and directed, beautifully sequenced and shot, and thrilling entertainment. The little bits of rebellion and politics are very important additions and expand the scope of the movie just enough to bait you for the sequels.
The Iron Lady: This is a Meryl Streep set piece, and she is brilliant, as usual. The movie, however, is rather odd. It focuses on Margaret Thatcher looking back at parts of her life, which is all well and good, but it spends nearly half of the screen time in the present for no apparent reason other than to watch Meryl act old. The historical parts are much more worth the screen time and they suffer for being the lack of focus. Instead we get only bits and pieces of the historical story, which feels like only part of a movie.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Session Reports; Movie Reviews: Hugo, The Tree of Life
Raanana session report (me, Ellis): Ticket to Ride Card Game, Steam
Jerusalem session report (Nadine): Endeavor, It's Alive
Movie reviews:
Hugo: A sweet movie about a French orphan boy that intersects lightly with the vaguely true early twentieth century story of the filmmaker Georges Méliès. Hugo is left to wander the crawl spaces of a French train station, passing his time winding the clocks (a job supposed to be done by his neglectful uncle who has disappeared) and trying to complete the automaton his father salvaged from a museum and was trying to fix before he died. Hugo is missing a heart shaped key for the automaton, and, wouldn't you know, it turns up around the neck of a cute girl his age who takes an interest in him. The girl is the granddaughter of a grouchy but sad watch and toy seller who takes Hugo's sketchbook on the automaton after catching Hugo stealing parts from his shop. There's more to this grouchy man than meets the eye. Meanwhile, a wily buffoon of a French station inspector parody is out to nab wandering orphans (to send them to the orphanage) in between shyly courting a pretty flower girl in the station.
Somehow everyone and everything magically fits together in the exact way that things don't in real life. But this is the magic of movies, eh?
The story is sweet, as I said, and lovers of cinema and steam-punk especially will love the movie. The automaton in the movie is actually based on three real automata that were built in the 1700s, which were actually incredible. The only thing I really didn't like was the score: the entire first half of the movie and much of the second is scored with that light French accordion music that is supposed to evoke period and romance, but which I find grating.
The Tree of Life: A movie that everyone either loves or hates with a passion. This is an art film, rather similar to the art films of the 60s or 70s, where there is little in the way of plot, the main flow (such as it is) is inter-cut with shots of the universe, nature, or life, and whispered voice-overs pound home existential questions or sharp emotions. The first part of the film is impressions of a happy 50s childhood - loving mom and some children - followed by the news that one of the kids died at age 19, followed by one of the other kids - now a man in his 50s - reflecting back on his childhood. The second part, the largest of the inter-cut segments, is about 25 minutes of evocative astronomical and biological film that roughly traces the origin of the universe, the Earth, and life. The third and largest part is more scenes from childhood, this time giving you the love-hate relationship that the boy had with his father and some other family dynamics. The last part is a surreal walk through the sand with various characters past and present affecting some kind of relationship, or not. At the end we flash back to the present and the man in his office.
Is it good? Obviously this depends on what kind of movie you want to see, how familiar you are with the art movies of the 60s and 70s, and how much you can take of pretension mixed with beautiful visuals and nostalgia. Yes, it's good. If for no other reason that the filmmaker tried to do something a little unusual, which should be applauded. In the case of The Artist, another highly stylized movie from last year, take away the beautiful style and you're left with some great acting but a mediocre rehashed plot. In this film, take away the beautiful style and you're left with some very evocative film-making. The scenes of fifties childhood are poignant and painful. Honestly, the second part (the evolution of the universe) didn't do much for me, and I count myself among those who don't see its point. The rest was captivating.
Jerusalem session report (Nadine): Endeavor, It's Alive
Movie reviews:
Hugo: A sweet movie about a French orphan boy that intersects lightly with the vaguely true early twentieth century story of the filmmaker Georges Méliès. Hugo is left to wander the crawl spaces of a French train station, passing his time winding the clocks (a job supposed to be done by his neglectful uncle who has disappeared) and trying to complete the automaton his father salvaged from a museum and was trying to fix before he died. Hugo is missing a heart shaped key for the automaton, and, wouldn't you know, it turns up around the neck of a cute girl his age who takes an interest in him. The girl is the granddaughter of a grouchy but sad watch and toy seller who takes Hugo's sketchbook on the automaton after catching Hugo stealing parts from his shop. There's more to this grouchy man than meets the eye. Meanwhile, a wily buffoon of a French station inspector parody is out to nab wandering orphans (to send them to the orphanage) in between shyly courting a pretty flower girl in the station.
Somehow everyone and everything magically fits together in the exact way that things don't in real life. But this is the magic of movies, eh?
The story is sweet, as I said, and lovers of cinema and steam-punk especially will love the movie. The automaton in the movie is actually based on three real automata that were built in the 1700s, which were actually incredible. The only thing I really didn't like was the score: the entire first half of the movie and much of the second is scored with that light French accordion music that is supposed to evoke period and romance, but which I find grating.
The Tree of Life: A movie that everyone either loves or hates with a passion. This is an art film, rather similar to the art films of the 60s or 70s, where there is little in the way of plot, the main flow (such as it is) is inter-cut with shots of the universe, nature, or life, and whispered voice-overs pound home existential questions or sharp emotions. The first part of the film is impressions of a happy 50s childhood - loving mom and some children - followed by the news that one of the kids died at age 19, followed by one of the other kids - now a man in his 50s - reflecting back on his childhood. The second part, the largest of the inter-cut segments, is about 25 minutes of evocative astronomical and biological film that roughly traces the origin of the universe, the Earth, and life. The third and largest part is more scenes from childhood, this time giving you the love-hate relationship that the boy had with his father and some other family dynamics. The last part is a surreal walk through the sand with various characters past and present affecting some kind of relationship, or not. At the end we flash back to the present and the man in his office.
Is it good? Obviously this depends on what kind of movie you want to see, how familiar you are with the art movies of the 60s and 70s, and how much you can take of pretension mixed with beautiful visuals and nostalgia. Yes, it's good. If for no other reason that the filmmaker tried to do something a little unusual, which should be applauded. In the case of The Artist, another highly stylized movie from last year, take away the beautiful style and you're left with some great acting but a mediocre rehashed plot. In this film, take away the beautiful style and you're left with some very evocative film-making. The scenes of fifties childhood are poignant and painful. Honestly, the second part (the evolution of the universe) didn't do much for me, and I count myself among those who don't see its point. The rest was captivating.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
10 More Movie Reviews
Game Change: Game Change joins the ranks of unnecessary made-for-TV movies about contemporary political events. Today, every public move and speech by a political figure is already on YouTube, individually or in compilation. We can hope to gain from a movie like this insight or revelation about their private life, behind-the-scenes; Game Change gives us some of this, but it's hard to know how seriously to take it since it's all one person's point of view (it's based on a book about the experience, but based on the experience).
This is the story of Sarah Palin's move from obscure Alaskan governor onto the national stage, the controversy and ridicule that attended her apparent lack of preparation and knowledge, and her eventual shift toward independence. The movie paints Sarah as truly ignorant and incapable, just as the left supposed her to be, while also humanizing her as deeply hurt by the mockery she endures for it. She was apparently well-loved in her home state; it's hard to understand how a governor could be as absurdly ignorant and incapable as this movie portrays; then again, it was just as hard to understand it in real life.
Julianne Moore is very good and very Sarah-like, of course, while Ed Harris is not very McCain-like at all. The rest of the people were unknown to me, so I couldn't say if they were accurately depicted. What I can say is that investigative journalism would have served us much better than this movie, and have been just as interesting and entertaining. Don't go out of your way.
The Descendants: Yet another in a series of George Clooney set pieces (Up in the Air, Michael Clayton, The American) with a simple story and little in the way of anything important to say. These films are entertaining, well-acted, and even artful and thoughtful. But at the end of each one I thought, "That's it?" They're like TV dramas.
George plays a guy returning to his family on Hawaii to deal with his wife who was in a boat accident and is now in a coma and to settle the immanent sale of a piece of family property. There is a little surprise early on, but none by the end. The eldest daughter is a movie-cliche: our first scene with her is "Miss Rebel", drugged up, sexed up, and rebellious, but this first scene is used only as a foil for the main character; for the rest of the movie she's the dutiful tag-along daughter and her rebellion is apparently forgotten. George is in fine form, as usual. Worth watching on an airplane ride. The score will make you fall in love with Hawaiian music.
The Decoy Bride: A small, low-budget Scottish-made formulaic sitcom, cute as these local low-budget movies tend to be. Famous bride and groom escape to Scotland to try to hold a wedding away from the press, and a local pretty but down-on-her-luck girl is used as a "decoy" bride to deceive the press. She ends up spending a lot of time with the groom, arguing with him (she thinks he's stuck up, he thinks she's low brow), etc, etc. Works, but barely.
Midnight in Paris: Woody Allen cannot cast anyone but himself as a protagonist in his movies, even when it's not him. Owen Wilson plays ... Woody Allen in Paris, trying to write a book while his rich pretentious fiance, her friends, and his soon-to-be in-laws make plans and go shopping and touring. While wandering Paris late at night, he catches a midnight car that takes him back into the early twenties and into conversation with his favorite famous authors ... not the authors, actually, but people with the names of famous authors who act like the books they wrote: a Hemingway who acts like a Hemingway novel, F Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, etc. This happens every night, while serving as a muse and revelatory process for him.
It's not a grand sweeping movie like some of his major movies, and we're all tired of Woody as protagonist. It's pretty clear where his relationship with his fiance and her pretentious friends is headed. But it's still fun to watch the caricatures on the way. It's best if you know at least something of the people being caricatured.
My Week with Marilyn: The story of Marylin Monroe's shoot in England with Laurence Olivier, which was a disaster from beginning to end - apparently Marylin couldn't act worth a damn, was always late for shooting, and suffered from a severe (and justified) lack of self-confidence, and Olivier was so appalled that he blew up constantly and wouldn't shoot movies again for a long period after. The story actually focuses on one of the minor directors (the "Third") involved with the shoot, who becomes Marylin's plaything and confidant during the shooting, much to his star-struck bemusement.
Michelle Williams doesn't quite look like Marylin, but she plays what seems to be a near enough approximation. It's fun to see a little behind-the-scenes about people you kind of know about, but again, it's hard to know how much is true. It's a fine movie, in particular Kenneth Branagh as the pateince-tested Olivier.
The Vow: A romantic comedy regarding memory loss with Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum. Rachel is fetching as usual. An accident robs Rachel of her memories of her marriage and her flight from her family, returning her brain to the middle of her youth where she was still living with her family and engaged to someone else. And so she is now - again - still in love with this someone else and has no recollection of why she fled her family; her family are overjoyed about this, and the loser is her husband, who struggles between trying to help her get her memories back and having to let her go. Meanwhile, the past may just repeat itself.
This is actually based on a true story. It's well done, nice and romantic, and sweet in the right places. I think this movie continues a pattern of artist wives with hard-working sensitive husbands (c.f. The Time Traveler's Wife also starring McAdams, Ghost, etc)
Young Adult: Charlize Theron plays a formerly popular, now spoiled brat, who graduated high school some time ago and who, when she hears that a formerly popular high-school buddy has had a new baby, decides that what she needs in her life is him. So she goes back to her home town to destroy his marriage and win him over.
Having described the plot, I can't tell you if there's much more to the movie than you can get from the synopsis on IMDB. I read it because I got bored about half-way through the movie, as there was nobody to root for and not very engaging.
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Hugo Morris Lessmore: This short won an Oscar for short animation; the link is to the entire movie on YouTube. Do you remember the opening montage scenes from Up? It's a little like that, but without the woman. It's a silent film, beautifully crafted.
Inception: I resisted watching this for some time because I'm tired of movies that suddenly reveal to you that what you thought was reality was actually a dream (within a dream). Dreamscape said all there was to say about this, or perhaps Waking Life, or any horror movie ever written.
Which is why I thought the beginning of the movie was boring. To my happy surprise, there is none of that nonsense in the rest of the movie, which, assuming you can follow it, let's us know in exactly what level of dreaming we are at all times. I admit that I cheated: I read the excellent synopsis on IMDB first, and thus found it very easy to follow the story. And what a fantastic story and movie it is.
It borrows some elements from other movies: Dreamscape, assembling the team scenes from Ocean's 11, coming to term with your wife's loss from just about any movie dealing with the subject. But most of the movie, and the way it's assembled, breaks new ground. The film is tight, the acting superb, the cinematography perfect. This ranks up with the best sci-fi movies of all time.
Withnail & I: This 1987 black comedy is widely regarded as a cult classic in Britain. It's the story of starving actors waiting for some good calls to come in, disgusted with life, and disgusting in habits, who head out to a vacation home of one an uncle for a change of scenery. Of course, they can't escape themselves, their poverty, nor their flagrantly gay uncle.
It's nearly all pointless and plot-less, and filled with what the British confusingly consider to be funny scenes, such as being disgusted, being disgusting, and being pursued by a pathetic middle-aged gay and portly uncle in the middle of the night. For all that, it's wonderfully acted and contains quotable lines nearly every minute. I didn't consider it entertainment, exactly, but it was interesting. More theater than movie material.
This is the story of Sarah Palin's move from obscure Alaskan governor onto the national stage, the controversy and ridicule that attended her apparent lack of preparation and knowledge, and her eventual shift toward independence. The movie paints Sarah as truly ignorant and incapable, just as the left supposed her to be, while also humanizing her as deeply hurt by the mockery she endures for it. She was apparently well-loved in her home state; it's hard to understand how a governor could be as absurdly ignorant and incapable as this movie portrays; then again, it was just as hard to understand it in real life.
Julianne Moore is very good and very Sarah-like, of course, while Ed Harris is not very McCain-like at all. The rest of the people were unknown to me, so I couldn't say if they were accurately depicted. What I can say is that investigative journalism would have served us much better than this movie, and have been just as interesting and entertaining. Don't go out of your way.
The Descendants: Yet another in a series of George Clooney set pieces (Up in the Air, Michael Clayton, The American) with a simple story and little in the way of anything important to say. These films are entertaining, well-acted, and even artful and thoughtful. But at the end of each one I thought, "That's it?" They're like TV dramas.
George plays a guy returning to his family on Hawaii to deal with his wife who was in a boat accident and is now in a coma and to settle the immanent sale of a piece of family property. There is a little surprise early on, but none by the end. The eldest daughter is a movie-cliche: our first scene with her is "Miss Rebel", drugged up, sexed up, and rebellious, but this first scene is used only as a foil for the main character; for the rest of the movie she's the dutiful tag-along daughter and her rebellion is apparently forgotten. George is in fine form, as usual. Worth watching on an airplane ride. The score will make you fall in love with Hawaiian music.
The Decoy Bride: A small, low-budget Scottish-made formulaic sitcom, cute as these local low-budget movies tend to be. Famous bride and groom escape to Scotland to try to hold a wedding away from the press, and a local pretty but down-on-her-luck girl is used as a "decoy" bride to deceive the press. She ends up spending a lot of time with the groom, arguing with him (she thinks he's stuck up, he thinks she's low brow), etc, etc. Works, but barely.
Midnight in Paris: Woody Allen cannot cast anyone but himself as a protagonist in his movies, even when it's not him. Owen Wilson plays ... Woody Allen in Paris, trying to write a book while his rich pretentious fiance, her friends, and his soon-to-be in-laws make plans and go shopping and touring. While wandering Paris late at night, he catches a midnight car that takes him back into the early twenties and into conversation with his favorite famous authors ... not the authors, actually, but people with the names of famous authors who act like the books they wrote: a Hemingway who acts like a Hemingway novel, F Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, etc. This happens every night, while serving as a muse and revelatory process for him.
It's not a grand sweeping movie like some of his major movies, and we're all tired of Woody as protagonist. It's pretty clear where his relationship with his fiance and her pretentious friends is headed. But it's still fun to watch the caricatures on the way. It's best if you know at least something of the people being caricatured.
My Week with Marilyn: The story of Marylin Monroe's shoot in England with Laurence Olivier, which was a disaster from beginning to end - apparently Marylin couldn't act worth a damn, was always late for shooting, and suffered from a severe (and justified) lack of self-confidence, and Olivier was so appalled that he blew up constantly and wouldn't shoot movies again for a long period after. The story actually focuses on one of the minor directors (the "Third") involved with the shoot, who becomes Marylin's plaything and confidant during the shooting, much to his star-struck bemusement.
Michelle Williams doesn't quite look like Marylin, but she plays what seems to be a near enough approximation. It's fun to see a little behind-the-scenes about people you kind of know about, but again, it's hard to know how much is true. It's a fine movie, in particular Kenneth Branagh as the pateince-tested Olivier.
The Vow: A romantic comedy regarding memory loss with Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum. Rachel is fetching as usual. An accident robs Rachel of her memories of her marriage and her flight from her family, returning her brain to the middle of her youth where she was still living with her family and engaged to someone else. And so she is now - again - still in love with this someone else and has no recollection of why she fled her family; her family are overjoyed about this, and the loser is her husband, who struggles between trying to help her get her memories back and having to let her go. Meanwhile, the past may just repeat itself.
This is actually based on a true story. It's well done, nice and romantic, and sweet in the right places. I think this movie continues a pattern of artist wives with hard-working sensitive husbands (c.f. The Time Traveler's Wife also starring McAdams, Ghost, etc)
Young Adult: Charlize Theron plays a formerly popular, now spoiled brat, who graduated high school some time ago and who, when she hears that a formerly popular high-school buddy has had a new baby, decides that what she needs in her life is him. So she goes back to her home town to destroy his marriage and win him over.
Having described the plot, I can't tell you if there's much more to the movie than you can get from the synopsis on IMDB. I read it because I got bored about half-way through the movie, as there was nobody to root for and not very engaging.
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Hugo Morris Lessmore: This short won an Oscar for short animation; the link is to the entire movie on YouTube. Do you remember the opening montage scenes from Up? It's a little like that, but without the woman. It's a silent film, beautifully crafted.
Inception: I resisted watching this for some time because I'm tired of movies that suddenly reveal to you that what you thought was reality was actually a dream (within a dream). Dreamscape said all there was to say about this, or perhaps Waking Life, or any horror movie ever written.
Which is why I thought the beginning of the movie was boring. To my happy surprise, there is none of that nonsense in the rest of the movie, which, assuming you can follow it, let's us know in exactly what level of dreaming we are at all times. I admit that I cheated: I read the excellent synopsis on IMDB first, and thus found it very easy to follow the story. And what a fantastic story and movie it is.
It borrows some elements from other movies: Dreamscape, assembling the team scenes from Ocean's 11, coming to term with your wife's loss from just about any movie dealing with the subject. But most of the movie, and the way it's assembled, breaks new ground. The film is tight, the acting superb, the cinematography perfect. This ranks up with the best sci-fi movies of all time.
Withnail & I: This 1987 black comedy is widely regarded as a cult classic in Britain. It's the story of starving actors waiting for some good calls to come in, disgusted with life, and disgusting in habits, who head out to a vacation home of one an uncle for a change of scenery. Of course, they can't escape themselves, their poverty, nor their flagrantly gay uncle.
It's nearly all pointless and plot-less, and filled with what the British confusingly consider to be funny scenes, such as being disgusted, being disgusting, and being pursued by a pathetic middle-aged gay and portly uncle in the middle of the night. For all that, it's wonderfully acted and contains quotable lines nearly every minute. I didn't consider it entertainment, exactly, but it was interesting. More theater than movie material.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Movie Reviews
The Artist - An "ode to a bygone era" film. At their worst, films like these, while clever and precise, capture too much of the era to which they ode (often an era is bygone because we have progressed to better things since then) and concentrate too much on the technicalities of the capture and not enough on the soul (i.e. weak story, flat acting).
The Artist manages to escape this by about 70%. It recapitulates the story of an actor left by the wayside when the film industry moves to talking pictures. Unlike most movies with this story, this one is done (almost) entirely as a silent picture. The plot is actually closer to A Star is Born, and might be familiar if you know who Greta Garbo and John Gilbert were.
While the story is not earthshaking, it's entertaining. It doesn't capture the exact feel of silent films in several ways: the leading lady is too forward (I think her era regression stopped at about 1975), the acting not as absurdly stylized as it was in silent films, the pacing too modern and smooth, the camerawork too intelligent and diverse. On the one hand, these are good things; on the other, they are a little unsettling.
The film has a few deliberately jarring moments ala Pleasantville and Silent Movie. A nice film, but not an important one.
Fireflies in the Garden - A quiet family drama about a man mixing with his family after the death of his mother. In particular, the man confronts his tyrannical authoritarian father, who appears not to have learned much since the son has been away, except that his son doesn't like the way he was brought up.
The principal actors - Ryan Reynolds is the son, William DaFoe the father, and Julia Roberts the mother - as well as the rest of the cast do a fine job. If you had a father like this one, it may be a bit hard to watch at certain points, but it never gets too graphic. A "slice of life" film.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Swedish) / The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (American) - Yes, I saw them both. Guess what? They're both good. The American version is not a remake of the Swedish version; it's another movie based on the same book. Certain events and characters are left out of one and not the other, sequences of minor events are shifted, etc. The acting, directing, and photography of both are equally good. There's no need to see both of them, and it doesn't really matter which one you see.
The story is about a reporter who faces jail-time for libel. The story he published was (probably) true, but his sources recanted at the last moment. Before going to jail, an oligarch hires him to find out what happened to his niece who disappeared 40 years earlier; one of his family was probably involved. The oligarch hired a girl to compile a dossier on the reporter before he hired the reporter; this girl has troubles of her own with her state-appointed legal case worker (who controls her money until she is 25). She is eventually hired to help the reporter on the case.
The story is based on a best-selling book, and the movies do a reasonable job of covering its main points.
It's Kind of a Funny Story - Keir Gilchrist stars in another movie adaptation of a book, this one about a boy who feels parental and academic pressure and checks himself into a mental facility for five days. While there, he gains perspective by meeting other people who are sick and he experiences many happy Hollywood moments.
It's a feel-good by-the-book formula movie, which annoyed me. It skips over some of the real disgusting, dirty, and depressing things that you will find day-to-day in a real mental facility. However, for what it is, it works, and even a shallow exposure to a mental facility is probably better than none (most people's understanding ends at One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (which they haven't seen, but they imagine)).
Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol - This was actually better than it had a right to be. The action sequences were thrilling - I expected to be jaded by such things by now. Cruise actually hung from the Burj Khalifa tower to film his stunts; lord knows why. Oh right: it's Tom Cruise.
The movie manages to keep the series in pace with the Bourne series. In this series, characters make elaborate plans that, one at a time like clockwork, go wrong. Just enough goes right each time that the mission can be fulfilled by a series of last-minute chases, falls, bumps, and dumb luck.
Good summer fun.
Moneyball - The kind of movie you would expect Robert Redford to direct, this is a baseball movie about geek gamer statistics and how they changed major league recruitment. Hiring "all around good players" was the old-school way to make a team; the new way is to focus on players who do exactly what is needed to win: get on base, score runss.
It's a clash between old-school and geek, and there's no surprise who wins, though the story (which is true) doesn't follow the usual formula exactly. A good movie.
The Muppets - I was expecting this to suck badly given all the promotion I saw (usually a lot of promotion means a bad movie). Instead it was pretty good. I'm a little hazy on remembering the details, but I think it was suitable for young kids, which is who it's really aimed at. The plot doesn't quite hold together enough for grownups: things turn around too quickly, too often.
The idea is similar to The Blues Brothers: Muppets have to reunite from their disparate locations and vocations to stage a benefit to raise money to save Muppet theater. Meanwhile, the main characters have be true to themselves.
The comedy, singing, and dancing are nice. If there was still a Muppet show on television, this movie would prove that the Muppets are still relevant. Without one, it's hard to see that the movie will revive the franchise. The YouTube videos aimed at grownups are doing a better job of keeping them alive (for grownups, at least).
One Day - Another movie based on a book, this one is the story of a couple told over the course of several years. Each scene focuses on the same day in the next year, wherever, and with whomever, the two leads happen to be. It all goes well until a major plot point which takes us into cliched romance territory, which was both predictable and disappointing.
Forgettable chick-flick.
The Time Traveler's Wife - Yet another movie based on a book. Like most movies based on books, people who love the book love to hate the movie because they think the movie left out this or changed that. Grow up, people. A movie based on a book is a retelling of a story, not "the book in film format". It must be judged on its own merits.
The movie is lovely. Like most time travel stories, parts of it make no sense, and you have to give them a pass for those parts. The story is about a man whose main life stream is constantly interrupted as he travels suddenly back or forward in time - and space - but only to a very specific range of time and space, much of it in close proximity to his own past, the past of the girl he ends up marrying, or his future daughter (only as a young girl).
The sci-fi, like all good sci-fi, is used a metaphor for a man who is not always present, or about the course of a relationship. It's artfully done and romantic, but a bit sentimental for those who don't like that kind of thing (definitely a chick-flick). It inspired me to buy the book, so that I can become one of those people.
The Artist manages to escape this by about 70%. It recapitulates the story of an actor left by the wayside when the film industry moves to talking pictures. Unlike most movies with this story, this one is done (almost) entirely as a silent picture. The plot is actually closer to A Star is Born, and might be familiar if you know who Greta Garbo and John Gilbert were.
While the story is not earthshaking, it's entertaining. It doesn't capture the exact feel of silent films in several ways: the leading lady is too forward (I think her era regression stopped at about 1975), the acting not as absurdly stylized as it was in silent films, the pacing too modern and smooth, the camerawork too intelligent and diverse. On the one hand, these are good things; on the other, they are a little unsettling.
The film has a few deliberately jarring moments ala Pleasantville and Silent Movie. A nice film, but not an important one.
Fireflies in the Garden - A quiet family drama about a man mixing with his family after the death of his mother. In particular, the man confronts his tyrannical authoritarian father, who appears not to have learned much since the son has been away, except that his son doesn't like the way he was brought up.
The principal actors - Ryan Reynolds is the son, William DaFoe the father, and Julia Roberts the mother - as well as the rest of the cast do a fine job. If you had a father like this one, it may be a bit hard to watch at certain points, but it never gets too graphic. A "slice of life" film.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Swedish) / The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (American) - Yes, I saw them both. Guess what? They're both good. The American version is not a remake of the Swedish version; it's another movie based on the same book. Certain events and characters are left out of one and not the other, sequences of minor events are shifted, etc. The acting, directing, and photography of both are equally good. There's no need to see both of them, and it doesn't really matter which one you see.
The story is about a reporter who faces jail-time for libel. The story he published was (probably) true, but his sources recanted at the last moment. Before going to jail, an oligarch hires him to find out what happened to his niece who disappeared 40 years earlier; one of his family was probably involved. The oligarch hired a girl to compile a dossier on the reporter before he hired the reporter; this girl has troubles of her own with her state-appointed legal case worker (who controls her money until she is 25). She is eventually hired to help the reporter on the case.
The story is based on a best-selling book, and the movies do a reasonable job of covering its main points.
It's Kind of a Funny Story - Keir Gilchrist stars in another movie adaptation of a book, this one about a boy who feels parental and academic pressure and checks himself into a mental facility for five days. While there, he gains perspective by meeting other people who are sick and he experiences many happy Hollywood moments.
It's a feel-good by-the-book formula movie, which annoyed me. It skips over some of the real disgusting, dirty, and depressing things that you will find day-to-day in a real mental facility. However, for what it is, it works, and even a shallow exposure to a mental facility is probably better than none (most people's understanding ends at One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (which they haven't seen, but they imagine)).
Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol - This was actually better than it had a right to be. The action sequences were thrilling - I expected to be jaded by such things by now. Cruise actually hung from the Burj Khalifa tower to film his stunts; lord knows why. Oh right: it's Tom Cruise.
The movie manages to keep the series in pace with the Bourne series. In this series, characters make elaborate plans that, one at a time like clockwork, go wrong. Just enough goes right each time that the mission can be fulfilled by a series of last-minute chases, falls, bumps, and dumb luck.
Good summer fun.
Moneyball - The kind of movie you would expect Robert Redford to direct, this is a baseball movie about geek gamer statistics and how they changed major league recruitment. Hiring "all around good players" was the old-school way to make a team; the new way is to focus on players who do exactly what is needed to win: get on base, score runss.
It's a clash between old-school and geek, and there's no surprise who wins, though the story (which is true) doesn't follow the usual formula exactly. A good movie.
The Muppets - I was expecting this to suck badly given all the promotion I saw (usually a lot of promotion means a bad movie). Instead it was pretty good. I'm a little hazy on remembering the details, but I think it was suitable for young kids, which is who it's really aimed at. The plot doesn't quite hold together enough for grownups: things turn around too quickly, too often.
The idea is similar to The Blues Brothers: Muppets have to reunite from their disparate locations and vocations to stage a benefit to raise money to save Muppet theater. Meanwhile, the main characters have be true to themselves.
The comedy, singing, and dancing are nice. If there was still a Muppet show on television, this movie would prove that the Muppets are still relevant. Without one, it's hard to see that the movie will revive the franchise. The YouTube videos aimed at grownups are doing a better job of keeping them alive (for grownups, at least).
One Day - Another movie based on a book, this one is the story of a couple told over the course of several years. Each scene focuses on the same day in the next year, wherever, and with whomever, the two leads happen to be. It all goes well until a major plot point which takes us into cliched romance territory, which was both predictable and disappointing.
Forgettable chick-flick.
The Time Traveler's Wife - Yet another movie based on a book. Like most movies based on books, people who love the book love to hate the movie because they think the movie left out this or changed that. Grow up, people. A movie based on a book is a retelling of a story, not "the book in film format". It must be judged on its own merits.
The movie is lovely. Like most time travel stories, parts of it make no sense, and you have to give them a pass for those parts. The story is about a man whose main life stream is constantly interrupted as he travels suddenly back or forward in time - and space - but only to a very specific range of time and space, much of it in close proximity to his own past, the past of the girl he ends up marrying, or his future daughter (only as a young girl).
The sci-fi, like all good sci-fi, is used a metaphor for a man who is not always present, or about the course of a relationship. It's artfully done and romantic, but a bit sentimental for those who don't like that kind of thing (definitely a chick-flick). It inspired me to buy the book, so that I can become one of those people.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
I Had a Busy Weekend
First off, last week's Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club's session report is up, in which they play Train of Thought too seriously.
Thursday evening was my my only niece's bat-mitzvah. I picked up my kids and we drove out to the boondocks to their little community of Kochav Hashachar. The bat mitzvah was small but nice. Sis-in-law gave a heartfelt speech. Niece read a nice dvar torah (written in part or more by other sis-in-law).
After the bat-mitzvah, I slept in Jerusalem. Friday morning I was supposed to meet someone, but she cancelled. I found myself with some free time in Talipot right next to the wedding of a Facebook friend, a wedding I didn't think I would be around for. I dropped in to say hi and stayed to see the reception.
Friday evening I went to my old Carlebach shul and said hi to half the community that I had left when I moved to Raanana. Nadine joined me at my mom's house for dinner. After dinner, I read the first two chapters of Another Fine Myth to Tal, whereupon she finished the rest of the book. Classic.
Sat I went to the other shul I used to frequent and said hi to the other half of the community. Lunch was at Nadine's with the games gang and sundry: Nadine, me and Tal, Bill and Shirley (visiting from the US), Eitan and Emily, Shani and Shachar, Adam, and some moms. After lunch, a couple played Glen More, a group played Small World Underground, and I taught Shirley, Adam, and Nadine to play Inca Empire.
I hoped IE wouldn't take more than two hours, just like the people playing SWU hoped it would be a short game. Each of them took about 3.5 hours. I won IE with some major road playing at the end (I was forced to do this, since I was low in workers, but I was receiving a number of bonus roads from the played cards). I netted a good 20 or so points from this.
Nadine looked like she was winning for most of the third age, having played the card that let her (and only her) net 7 points a round from one of the temple/cities. But in the end she only ended the third age a few points ahead of me, and my board was stronger.
Adam suffered greatly from the loss of many roads in undiscovered areas (I warned everyone, and most of us (including me) lost a bunch of roads to this card several times). Shirley was pretty close to Nadine's position.
Sat night I went to see a showing of The Golem, the 1920 movie, playing alongside a live trio playing musical accompaniment to the silent film. The Golem is a good movie from a historical perspective, much in the way that a talented five year old can produce something quite enjoyable to look at, but not really be in the caliber of something objectively good.
The acting and direction is beyond bad; it's that stereotype of old silent films that is so weird that you wonder if the actors on film are actually Martians. They exhibit emotions and make movements that I've never seen any humans make in real life. What were they thinking? This was probably the height of good acting and directing in its day, and it looks ridiculous (I will mention in contrast that Charlie Chaplin films hold up quite well, even today). I was trying not to laugh out loud during the smoldering romantic or hysterical wailing scenes.
The story is well formed, though entirely straightforward and unsubtle. The cuts are kind of erratic, and, of course, they knew little about smart camera work or sensible lighting. It's supposed to be a horror movie, but it's not scary in the least. Except for its insulting portrayal of Jews.
And why is everyone, even the romantic leads, so ugly?
The live music was nice, though a few parts were kind of loud. The musicians are brilliant players; I prefer to simply hear them play their music without them having to sync it to a movie.
Thursday evening was my my only niece's bat-mitzvah. I picked up my kids and we drove out to the boondocks to their little community of Kochav Hashachar. The bat mitzvah was small but nice. Sis-in-law gave a heartfelt speech. Niece read a nice dvar torah (written in part or more by other sis-in-law).
 |
| Saarya, Tal, and me; pic by sis-in-law |
Friday evening I went to my old Carlebach shul and said hi to half the community that I had left when I moved to Raanana. Nadine joined me at my mom's house for dinner. After dinner, I read the first two chapters of Another Fine Myth to Tal, whereupon she finished the rest of the book. Classic.
Sat I went to the other shul I used to frequent and said hi to the other half of the community. Lunch was at Nadine's with the games gang and sundry: Nadine, me and Tal, Bill and Shirley (visiting from the US), Eitan and Emily, Shani and Shachar, Adam, and some moms. After lunch, a couple played Glen More, a group played Small World Underground, and I taught Shirley, Adam, and Nadine to play Inca Empire.
I hoped IE wouldn't take more than two hours, just like the people playing SWU hoped it would be a short game. Each of them took about 3.5 hours. I won IE with some major road playing at the end (I was forced to do this, since I was low in workers, but I was receiving a number of bonus roads from the played cards). I netted a good 20 or so points from this.
Nadine looked like she was winning for most of the third age, having played the card that let her (and only her) net 7 points a round from one of the temple/cities. But in the end she only ended the third age a few points ahead of me, and my board was stronger.
Adam suffered greatly from the loss of many roads in undiscovered areas (I warned everyone, and most of us (including me) lost a bunch of roads to this card several times). Shirley was pretty close to Nadine's position.
Sat night I went to see a showing of The Golem, the 1920 movie, playing alongside a live trio playing musical accompaniment to the silent film. The Golem is a good movie from a historical perspective, much in the way that a talented five year old can produce something quite enjoyable to look at, but not really be in the caliber of something objectively good.
The acting and direction is beyond bad; it's that stereotype of old silent films that is so weird that you wonder if the actors on film are actually Martians. They exhibit emotions and make movements that I've never seen any humans make in real life. What were they thinking? This was probably the height of good acting and directing in its day, and it looks ridiculous (I will mention in contrast that Charlie Chaplin films hold up quite well, even today). I was trying not to laugh out loud during the smoldering romantic or hysterical wailing scenes.
The story is well formed, though entirely straightforward and unsubtle. The cuts are kind of erratic, and, of course, they knew little about smart camera work or sensible lighting. It's supposed to be a horror movie, but it's not scary in the least. Except for its insulting portrayal of Jews.
And why is everyone, even the romantic leads, so ugly?
The live music was nice, though a few parts were kind of loud. The musicians are brilliant players; I prefer to simply hear them play their music without them having to sync it to a movie.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Day 19-20: A Round of Applause
Sunday morning my friends dropped me at the Westin and began their trip back to KC.
Pax
I wandered around the gaming area looking for something short to play and finally joined a game of Pax. Pax is a short card game about contesting Rome. It's a set collection game with one of two objects. If, between all players, at least one player beats the board in at least four of the seven categories, then each player scores the points on their board and the player with the most points wins. Otherwise, players score only the points in one category (intrigue) and the player with the most points wins.
They call it semi-cooperative, but it's not really. I didn't understand all the rules until the end of the short game, so I didn't fare too well. It's not a bad filler, from what I could tell. I need to try it again to see if there's anything to the game.
BGG.con was very enjoyable and, as usual, amazingly well run. I and my friends all had a great time. I end up playing less games than it would seem time would allow, but more than it would seem possible. I meet many other gamers, people who know games and aren't puzzled or confused as to why I play them or how to play them. But mostly, I simply meet nice people, people whose work I admire and/or the occasional fan of my own blog or games.
Flights
I caught the 10:00 am shuttle to DFW. People on the shuttle discussed games they played. At the airport waiting for the flight to Toronto they discussed games they played.
I saw a redhead in line, and asked her if she was Jewish, divorced, around 40, and hoping to live in Israel, just to be sure I didn't miss my last opportunity to find one on my trip, but no such luck. While waiting for the flight, I heard a sustained thunder of applause that continued for ten minutes; it was a group of American soldiers returning on some flight, I assume from Iraq.
I watched Unknown, a thrilled about a man in Germany whose life is suddenly co-opted by someone else (even his wife appears not to know him) and his struggle to figure out what's happening. It was ok, well acted, and January Jones is always a pleasure (though she doesn't have much to do). Similar to The Bourne Identity series, but a little less so; doesn't add anything new, anyway.
Bought some Canadian Club in Toronto, used the free wi-fi, and then flew to Israel. I watched Bad Teacher. No one to root for and not funny enough. She supposedly undergoes a little personal growth by the end of the movie, but it was hard to see when that happened. I watched Hannah. It was quite good, with good attention paid to the cinematography, something they sometimes forget about in American made movies. Well acted, it's at or near the top of the pile for assassin movies.
I also watched some Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory. I didn't sleep much. In all, I was awake from Sunday morning 6:00 am Dallas time until Monday evening 8:00 pm Israeli time, with about an hour of dozing on the plane.
All my kosher food was in place on all my flights, and I experienced no delays.
The Haul
Games I hauled back include Navegador and Inca Empire (secret santa gifts sent to my hotel), Troyes (bought with box damage from Z-Man), Innovation, Amun Re, Detroit Cleveland Grand Prix, El Capitain (these four acquired through the virtual flea market), Highland Clans (aka Mac Robber), Train of Thought (these two from registration), some Magic cards, and one other game which I'm forgetting right now.
I return to massive amounts of cleaning, bill sorting, and all the other mundane tasks of life, jetlagged and still a little sick from my chill in Ireland. The trouble with vacations is that they come to an end.
Nadine blogs
Nadine has blogged the trip as well here.
Pax
I wandered around the gaming area looking for something short to play and finally joined a game of Pax. Pax is a short card game about contesting Rome. It's a set collection game with one of two objects. If, between all players, at least one player beats the board in at least four of the seven categories, then each player scores the points on their board and the player with the most points wins. Otherwise, players score only the points in one category (intrigue) and the player with the most points wins.
They call it semi-cooperative, but it's not really. I didn't understand all the rules until the end of the short game, so I didn't fare too well. It's not a bad filler, from what I could tell. I need to try it again to see if there's anything to the game.
BGG.con was very enjoyable and, as usual, amazingly well run. I and my friends all had a great time. I end up playing less games than it would seem time would allow, but more than it would seem possible. I meet many other gamers, people who know games and aren't puzzled or confused as to why I play them or how to play them. But mostly, I simply meet nice people, people whose work I admire and/or the occasional fan of my own blog or games.
Flights
I caught the 10:00 am shuttle to DFW. People on the shuttle discussed games they played. At the airport waiting for the flight to Toronto they discussed games they played.
I saw a redhead in line, and asked her if she was Jewish, divorced, around 40, and hoping to live in Israel, just to be sure I didn't miss my last opportunity to find one on my trip, but no such luck. While waiting for the flight, I heard a sustained thunder of applause that continued for ten minutes; it was a group of American soldiers returning on some flight, I assume from Iraq.
I watched Unknown, a thrilled about a man in Germany whose life is suddenly co-opted by someone else (even his wife appears not to know him) and his struggle to figure out what's happening. It was ok, well acted, and January Jones is always a pleasure (though she doesn't have much to do). Similar to The Bourne Identity series, but a little less so; doesn't add anything new, anyway.
Bought some Canadian Club in Toronto, used the free wi-fi, and then flew to Israel. I watched Bad Teacher. No one to root for and not funny enough. She supposedly undergoes a little personal growth by the end of the movie, but it was hard to see when that happened. I watched Hannah. It was quite good, with good attention paid to the cinematography, something they sometimes forget about in American made movies. Well acted, it's at or near the top of the pile for assassin movies.
I also watched some Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory. I didn't sleep much. In all, I was awake from Sunday morning 6:00 am Dallas time until Monday evening 8:00 pm Israeli time, with about an hour of dozing on the plane.
All my kosher food was in place on all my flights, and I experienced no delays.
The Haul
Games I hauled back include Navegador and Inca Empire (secret santa gifts sent to my hotel), Troyes (bought with box damage from Z-Man), Innovation, Amun Re, Detroit Cleveland Grand Prix, El Capitain (these four acquired through the virtual flea market), Highland Clans (aka Mac Robber), Train of Thought (these two from registration), some Magic cards, and one other game which I'm forgetting right now.
I return to massive amounts of cleaning, bill sorting, and all the other mundane tasks of life, jetlagged and still a little sick from my chill in Ireland. The trouble with vacations is that they come to an end.
Nadine blogs
Nadine has blogged the trip as well here.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Day 2: Rain and Pretty Girls
Flight to Frankfurt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes)
The flight was uneventful, though about forty minutes before landing they announced that there was a medical emergency on board and we should remain in our seats and keep the aisle clear. The movie was Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
I hate to give bad reviews; I give so many of them, you wouldn't know it. I recognize that years of effort and millions of dollars go into these movies, just like the great amounts of effort and money that go into the games I knock. These are somebody's babies. But I also know that there are thousands of movies and games, and people need to hear honest opinions about what's out there. I know I do; I rely on it. So, though it pains me, I can't say that I recommend the movie.
The effects were good and the story was ok. The apes reminded me very much of Jackson's King Kong. Like the Star Wars prequels, the plot of this movie lead to an inevitable conclusion, occasionally at the expense of those who don't know the original.
One of the characters shouts the famous line from the original "Get your filthy hands off me you damn dirty ape!" and that's fine even if you don't know it's a classic line from the original. On the other hand, some background noise about a Mars mission was distracting and meaningless to me while I was watching it; only after the movie was over did I realize that this was supposed to be the lost mission from the original movie.
The human characters are painfully one-dimensional; in the case of the protagonist and his girlfriend, this drags down the movie down into b-movie mediocrity. The story takes a long time to get going; this is not always a bad thing. But here, combined with the predictability of nearly every twist and the one-dimensionality of the characters, I got impatient.
Throw in the usual problematic science effects:
Frankfurt
I had to walk two kilometers through Frankfurt airport to get to my connecting flight. The airport is devoid of local flavor; it's expensive luxury items and newspapers. I wasn't impressed.
The guy checking people in on the Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Dublin had some unusual tattoos on his wrist, the names of his wife and children.
I don't know: a Jew in Germany with a voluntary tattoo on his arm makes me uneasy ... moving on ...
Dublin Daytime
Dublin is surprisingly warm; I don't need my winter coat. This morning I made my way by bus to St Stephens greem, a lovely spot (it's the trees that do it: they make you feel cut off from the city) with a pond and ducks etc.
I sat down for breakfast and was swarmed with pigeons like something out of Hitchcock.
The sky is gray, and I imagine that that's often the case; the sun peeked out in the afternoon. It's easy to see how people in this climate yearn for the sun. It's not the gray or rain that bothers me, however; it's the damp. Everything gets damp, even under my poncho, and it stays damp.
I walked along some unimpressive expensive shopping district.
Perhaps the most distinctive element here is the number of people paid to hold advertising signs. Nothing impressive about the stores during the daytime.
Against all of my beliefs, I ended up taking a city tour bus: 16 EUR and you can hop on and off for two days. It helped me get my bearings. After driving around, I began to make some sense of the geography in my brain. I guess you shouldn't really need it, if you study the city map before coming.
I tried to go to IMMA (Ireland Museum of Modern Art), but it was closed. The cafe and bookshop were open. I passed by the literary and theater district and picked up a ticket for a play next Thursday. I got sneakers.
Dublin Nighttime
I went home to sleep and then went out to find the only kosher restaurant, open only on Thursday evenings and located behind the synagogue. Unfortunately, owing to a conflicting event, it was also closed. Still, I got to meet some Jews at the synagogue, which is always comforting when I'm among strangers.
I went back downtown to find music. And that's what's great about Dublin: music (and Guinness and Jameson's, to those who like that kind of stuff).
It was so easy to find live traditional Irish music. I stopped at one of the first pubs I saw and had a fantastic evening. I drank a ginger beer (alcoholic here, though they were non-alcoholic in Scotland).
I also met two beautiful women. One of them in particular I thought fetching. I sat next to her and told her she was beautiful, and then later I asked her to dance with me to the music, and she was happy to dance with me. Any guesses as to which one?
Too bad they're too young for me, even if they were Jewish. They are from France, also on holiday. The one I didn't choose spoke almost no English; the other one just enough to understand me when I asked her to dance.
The flight was uneventful, though about forty minutes before landing they announced that there was a medical emergency on board and we should remain in our seats and keep the aisle clear. The movie was Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
I hate to give bad reviews; I give so many of them, you wouldn't know it. I recognize that years of effort and millions of dollars go into these movies, just like the great amounts of effort and money that go into the games I knock. These are somebody's babies. But I also know that there are thousands of movies and games, and people need to hear honest opinions about what's out there. I know I do; I rely on it. So, though it pains me, I can't say that I recommend the movie.
The effects were good and the story was ok. The apes reminded me very much of Jackson's King Kong. Like the Star Wars prequels, the plot of this movie lead to an inevitable conclusion, occasionally at the expense of those who don't know the original.
One of the characters shouts the famous line from the original "Get your filthy hands off me you damn dirty ape!" and that's fine even if you don't know it's a classic line from the original. On the other hand, some background noise about a Mars mission was distracting and meaningless to me while I was watching it; only after the movie was over did I realize that this was supposed to be the lost mission from the original movie.
The human characters are painfully one-dimensional; in the case of the protagonist and his girlfriend, this drags down the movie down into b-movie mediocrity. The story takes a long time to get going; this is not always a bad thing. But here, combined with the predictability of nearly every twist and the one-dimensionality of the characters, I got impatient.
Throw in the usual problematic science effects:
- instant medical effects that should take much longer (expose the ape to IQ enhancement drugs during the afternoon and by nighttime they can work complex machinery they haven't seen)
- a misrepresentation of how those effects should manifest
- unbelievably perfect communication and memory among apes who were animals just hours before (and forgetting that all those other apes, that they freed from the zoo/lab, etc, never had exposure to the drugs and should still be acting like apes)
- storm-trooper like behavior and aim of the police, etc
- and other oddities (what were all those apes eating this whole time? who designs cages like that?)
Frankfurt
I had to walk two kilometers through Frankfurt airport to get to my connecting flight. The airport is devoid of local flavor; it's expensive luxury items and newspapers. I wasn't impressed.
The guy checking people in on the Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Dublin had some unusual tattoos on his wrist, the names of his wife and children.
I don't know: a Jew in Germany with a voluntary tattoo on his arm makes me uneasy ... moving on ...
Dublin Daytime
Dublin is surprisingly warm; I don't need my winter coat. This morning I made my way by bus to St Stephens greem, a lovely spot (it's the trees that do it: they make you feel cut off from the city) with a pond and ducks etc.
I sat down for breakfast and was swarmed with pigeons like something out of Hitchcock.
The sky is gray, and I imagine that that's often the case; the sun peeked out in the afternoon. It's easy to see how people in this climate yearn for the sun. It's not the gray or rain that bothers me, however; it's the damp. Everything gets damp, even under my poncho, and it stays damp.
I walked along some unimpressive expensive shopping district.
Perhaps the most distinctive element here is the number of people paid to hold advertising signs. Nothing impressive about the stores during the daytime.
Against all of my beliefs, I ended up taking a city tour bus: 16 EUR and you can hop on and off for two days. It helped me get my bearings. After driving around, I began to make some sense of the geography in my brain. I guess you shouldn't really need it, if you study the city map before coming.
I tried to go to IMMA (Ireland Museum of Modern Art), but it was closed. The cafe and bookshop were open. I passed by the literary and theater district and picked up a ticket for a play next Thursday. I got sneakers.
Dublin Nighttime
I went home to sleep and then went out to find the only kosher restaurant, open only on Thursday evenings and located behind the synagogue. Unfortunately, owing to a conflicting event, it was also closed. Still, I got to meet some Jews at the synagogue, which is always comforting when I'm among strangers.
I went back downtown to find music. And that's what's great about Dublin: music (and Guinness and Jameson's, to those who like that kind of stuff).
It was so easy to find live traditional Irish music. I stopped at one of the first pubs I saw and had a fantastic evening. I drank a ginger beer (alcoholic here, though they were non-alcoholic in Scotland).
I also met two beautiful women. One of them in particular I thought fetching. I sat next to her and told her she was beautiful, and then later I asked her to dance with me to the music, and she was happy to dance with me. Any guesses as to which one?
Too bad they're too young for me, even if they were Jewish. They are from France, also on holiday. The one I didn't choose spoke almost no English; the other one just enough to understand me when I asked her to dance.
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