Monday, October 26, 2015

The Thing (2011)

While visiting some friends this weekend we thought we were going to see the classic 1982 John Carpenter version of The Thing, which I understand is really good, but instead we ended up watching the 2011 remake, which turns out is not very good. Both heretofore mentioned versions of The Thing are remakes of Howard Hawks 1951 movie The Thing from Another World, though hold on, in reading up on the 2011 The Thing it is apparently a prequel to the 1982 version of The Thing, I did not pick up on that. Anyway The Thing under discussion now is not very good, independent of the goodness or badness of other Things. This Thing is just kind of there. I didn't bond with any of the characters, I didn't have any emotional connection that would make any of their deaths, of which there are many, mean anything to me. I had no stakes in the game, even lead Mary Elizabeth Winstead, whom I usually like, is here pretty boring. I also didn't like the effects,  I found the CGI a little off putting, its like the movie makers thought they could make up some for all the bland characters with interesting visuals, and some of them were interesting, but on the whole even though I hadn't seen anything quite like these effects before, I still felt like I'd seen it before. Also said effects were just far too illusory, they didn't have any substance or heft, it didn't feel like it was really there because it wasn't. I think Thing movies would benefit from the presence of a physical Thing, I'll bet The Thing in 1982's The Thing is a physical Thing and that's likely part of why that Thing is probably a better Thing. So in short the only Thing this Thing did well was get me to add the 80's Thing to my Netflix Thing, I mean queue.*1/2

Friday, October 23, 2015

Crimson Peak (2015)

A Guillermo del Toro directed gothic horror, romance film with Jessica Chastain in it, yes I'm interested. A wonderful piece of mood and design, Crimson Peak invokes for me the old 'Hammer Horror' films of the middle of last century, with a distinct color pallet, an unrushed pace, and an odd sense of subtlety, even when its being completely over the top. I personally liked the story, but it's kind of slight and needed the scene chewing of the actors and strong visual sense of the film to work. The ghosts are distinctive and very del Torro, and this has got to be my favorite cinematic haunted house of all time, that set, its massive and intricate, you can almost feel the rot and dampness through the screen, and speaking of the screen I recommend seeing this on a big one, I saw it in IMAX which I am convinced is this films proper format. Mia Wasikowska is a fine young actress who anchored the film, and can really pull of those period customs quite fetchingly. Tom Hiddleston will always be Loki, but that kind of works for him in this part. As for Jessica Chastain, nice change of pace for her. Really I didn't find the film that scary, but I did find it quite fun to watch. ***

Ordet (1955)

This is the first film I saw as part of BYU's International Cinema program, it is free and open to the public and shows a large variety of films at the Kimball Tower Tuesdays through Saturdays during Fall and Winter Semesters. Ordet is a 1955 Danish language film directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, who is best known for his 1928 silent masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc, but who continued to work as a director into the mid 1960's. The film is an adaption of the 1932 play of the same title by Kaj Munk, a playwright and pastor whose martyrdom by the Nazi's during the occupation of Denmark has lead to his inclusion in the Calendar of Saints for the Lutheran Church. This is background I did not have when I saw the film, but it certainly adds context to it now that I have. Ordet apparently is Danish for "The Word" as in "The Word of God", this is a very religious film, but not in a shallow or off-putting way.

The film centers around the Borgan family, well off farmers of influence in their rural Danish community. Morton Borgan is the patriarch, elderly now he has three sons, the oldest Mikkle an atheist married to a devout and kind hearted wife named Inger, middle child Johannes, a former seminary student who went insane studying Søren Kierkegaard and believes himself to be Jesus Christ, and youngest child Anders, who is lovesick for the daughter of the leader of a local Christian religious sect with whom the devout Morton is at theological odds.The film is about faith and doubt, and has interesting things to say about the subject.

There are various crises of faith throughout and in watching the film, without much background, I didn't really know where it was going to come down on these, so for me the ending was a surprise. This could have ended more ambiguously, which is what I was anticipating as the film neared its conclusion, so its taking the stand that it ultimately did take provides a sense of religious aw that could have come off downright hokey in lesser hands. Really an impressive and moving work of art. Some strong performances and excellent cinematography.****

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Captain America (1979), Captian America II: Death Too Soon (1979)

Owing to the success of The Incredible Hulk TV series CBS tried its hand at Captain America with a couple of TV movies in 1979. These films seem to have been intended to pave the way for a Captain America TV show but that series never happened, which is likely a good thing because they weren't very good. The first film of course centered on Captain America's origin story, only its not the one you know, rather its kind of the bastard son of that one. Former College football player Reb Brown plays Steve Rogers, here a former Marine whose a talented painter and sketch artist (I guess as an attempt by the screen writers to convince you this lug of a character has some depth and a soul). Rogers father was a government scientist who unbeknownst to Steve developed a formula that heightened his strength, hearing, agility etc and allowed him to moonlight as a 'super hero' derisively dubbed by his enemies as 'Captain America'. With Steve's dad now dead his good friend and fellow scientist Simon Mills (Len Birman) tries to convince Steve take his dad's serum and become the new Captain America, as said formula is apparently, and conveniently, fatal to none Rogereses. At first Steve's all like 'no', but then when an Oil millionaire with a rather stupid plan kills one of Steve's friends and threatens the life of said friends daughter, Steve's all like 'yes I guess so'. What follows are some pretty unremarkable "action sequences" and visual effects that go a good way towards supporting the thesis that doing super hero's right was beyond the technical abilities of 1970's American television. Still the network persisted and later that same year released Captain America II: Death Too Soon, which while quite a bit better then the original film, is still pretty poor and was not a death too soon for this network attempt at adapting Captain America for television.

As I said this second Captain America TV movie was better then the original, owing in large part to not being burdened by a clunky origin story. Rogers, yet again bumbing around the west coast and painting out of his van, and with a pet cat no less, is called in by Doc Mills to help when notorious terrorist General Miguel  (played by Christopher Lee, who automatically ups the watchablity factor of anything he is in) has snuck into the U.S. and kidnaped yet another government scientist. Rogers eventually tracks some of Miguel's men to a small Oregon town which they are using to test the rapid ageing chemical Miguel got from the government scientist and intends to use on the city of Portland should he not be given a billion dollars by the U.S. government. Rogers of course eventually foils Miguel with the help of a pretty widow and her young son, as well as Mills associate Dr. Wendy Day, who was played in the first film by Heather Menzies (Jessica 6 from the Logan's Run TV series as well as Mrs. Robert Urich) but in this film by Connie Sellecca two years away from playing another super hero's love interest in the ABC television series The Greatest American Hero, which by the way is so much better then these movies.

CBS's Captain America TV movies are a little interesting as artifacts of their time but not as much else, certainly not as entertainment, I was going to show these to my niece and nephews but there would be no point, they would be bored, much as I was. Unable to do Captain America right they simply tried to get a rip off version of The Six Million Dollar Man out of him, even down to having Len Birman basically play Richard Anderson. Star Reb Brown can not count acting among his talents, though his kind of reluctant, not fully engaged rendering of Steve Rogers in a way makes him the perfect Captain America for the Carter era. Still probably best to keep these two oddities down in the nostalgia hole where they belong.

Captain America *
Captain America II: Death Too Soon *1/2

Vacation (2015)

When I first heard they were going to make a kind of sequel film to the 'National Lampoons Vacation' series I was excited, but when I started hearing the early buzz and reviews I was disappointed. Still I decided that I was going to see the film because my dad loved those movies so much, especially the original and Christmas Vacation. What I got was a film that split the difference between my original high hopes and my later small expectations. Vacation takes the character of Rusty from the original films (here played by Ed Helms, whose about as good an heir to Chevy Chase as you could expect) whose now grown up and decides, against all apparent logic, to take his family on a road trip to Walley World. The movie basically takes the original Vacation film as its template, only makes it less funny and more crude, not that the original movie was without crudity. Still this movie did a really good job of capturing the essence of what the original film was about, had a (mostly) good heart and a few genuinely funny moments (one of which was so unexpected it was awesome), though there were quite a few misfires as well. In short its a mediocrity with some heart, but I was expecting much worse so I kind of liked it. **

Sunday, October 11, 2015

Fantastic Four (2015)

When it comes to film adaptations the Fantastic Four really seems to be a cursed property. The first Fantastic Four film was never released, the second two Fantastic Four films, the ones with Jessica Alba and a pre-Captain America Chris Evans were surprisingly successful but also just awful, while this newest Fantastic Four movie, yet another reboot, manages to suck all the hope and life out of what are potentially some of the funniest of comic book characters. This newest Fantastic Four film is co-produced by Constantin Film, the German company responsible for all the other Fantastic Four films, including the un-released one so maybe they are the problem. Though the Marvel Studios logo appears before the film they seem to be hedging their bets as to whether this movie can truly be considered part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or not, if you search the MCU page on Wikipedia this movie is not listed as part of the continuity or master plan of that ambitious studio project.

The movie goes over the origin story again, though its a little different from previous renderings, less cosmic rays and more inter-dimensional weirdness. The lead characters are generally not that fun, seem kind of constipated, and the actors are playing too young, these characters should not be twenty years old and these actors certainly are not. Dr. Doom is not a great villain, though I suppose he could be, and the gray palate, both in tone and color becomes oppressive. The Fantastic Four should be bright, hopeful, and fun, and though at least this film makes them seem smart (the other didn't) it gets most everything else wrong. I could sit through it once, but I don't really desire too again. *1/2

Sholay (1975)

Sholay is one of the most famous and successful examples of the 'curry western', the Indian counterpart to Italy's more famous 'spaghetti western'. Though set in then contemporary India Sholay borrows a number of prominent tropes from American westerns including a lot of horse ridding, a train robbery, and a small frontier community beset by a band of merciless marauders. Sanjeev Kumar is Baldev Singh the Thakur or leader of his small high desert community, Baldev is also a former officer with the national police who, when his family and community are menaced by Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan) a character that was such a good villain that in 2013 Hindi language Filmfare magazine named him the most iconic villain in the history of Indian cinema, Baldev brings in two skilled yet lite hearted bandits with whom he'd had previous dealings (as portrayed in flashback) to help him protect the community.

These two fun loving bandits, who are in many ways reminiscent of Disney's Chip and Dale chipmunk characters, are Jai (Amitabh Bachchan) the straight man, and Veeru (Dharmendra) the funny one. We get a fair bit of backstory on these two, including a roughly ten minute sequence, of very little story importance for the rest of the film, in which the pair are in a prison together under the command of a warden played by the multi-talented Govardhan Asrani who looks suspiciously like Hitler and acts suspiciously like Charlie Chaplin's spoof of Hitler in The Great Dictator. After their release from prison the two, after some convincing, agree to help Baldev defend his community, at first for money, and later out of respect for Baldev, hatred for Gabbar, and love of their respective love interests, Jaya Bachchan for Jai and Hema Malini for Veeru, Malini (who is super winning in the film) in fact later became the real life wife of Dharmendra and is today a member of India's parliament.

The film has some really interesting tonal shifts, its very lite at places but also gets rather gruesome, particularly towards the end. Being an Indian film it has a number of musical numbers in it, and they are all pretty good, with "Yeh Dosti" and "Holi Ke Din" being the most memorable, in fact you should really watch "Holi Ke Din" its like what you would imagine every Indian musical number would be like. Sholay is a fun movie and there is a reason that it is one of relative few Indian films to be fairly well known outside of the subcontinent. ***

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Max (2015)

Max is a boy and his dog movie, that great staple of family entertainment. The title dog Max is a Belgian Malinois (vaguely German Shepard looking) raised since a pup, principally by its trainer Kyle Wincott (Robbie Amell) to serve the U.S. Marines in ferreting (or rather dogging) out hidden weapons caches. Max bonded so closely with his trainer that when Kyle is killed in a combat mission in Afghanistan the dog suffers sever PTSD and won't work with anyone else, this is how Max comes into the care of Kyle's teenage brother Justin (Josh Wiggins) and comes to stay with him and his parents (Lauren Graham, and Thomas Haden Church) in small town Texas. This set up, as conveyed in the films trailer, is such expert emotional manipulation that is caused me to tear up and decide to see the movie, the kind I would typically not see in a theater (even a dollar one) or pretty much ever.

The film is solid for what it is. The plot gets its further and necessary complication in the form of Kyle's childhood friend and war buddy Tyler Harne (Luke Kleintank) who is (to a certain not particularly clear degree) responsible for Kyle's death and Max knows it. Now on extended leave from military service Tyler is trying to sell weapons that he somehow managed to sneak halfway around the world from Afghanistan to a group of Mexican drug runners, Justin and Max end up finding out about this and with the help of friends Chuy (Dejon LaQuake) and Carmen (Mia Xitlali) try to stop it, chiefly by ridding through the woods on their bikes a lot. A perfect formula movie for its target demographic Max is a likable but none to challenging film. The performances are fine, the dramatic execution competent, the emotional arc is workable, and there is a good early teenage sense of adventure to the proceedings. In short Max is doing something right, because its managed to stay in the local dollar theater the entire 2 1/2 months I've been in Utah so far. **1/2