DVD Review: The Imposter

It's one of those stories that almost too insane to be true, and yet it is. The Imposter is a documentary about a young Frenchman (Fredric Bourdin), who in 1997, at the age of 23, posed as the missing teenage son of a family in Texas...and they believed it.

Using modern day interviews with the family, Bourdin and government officials involved, plus reenactments of the events (very little archive footage was available), The Imposter spins a masterful web of mystery of how someone could achieve such deception, why they would do it, and the devastating aftermath once everything unravels. Though the audience knows the eventual outcome of the events, it's the journey of how it all came together and fell apart that keeps one watching.

Even for documentary non-lovers, like myself, The Imposter works not only for the story, but it manages to have a balanced perspective of the sad situation, never becomes judgmental or preachy, and even leaves a little intrigue on which to think, as the whereabouts of the still-missing son are called into question. If only all based-on-true-events stories were told this well, fiction or not.

DVD Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

There are a lot of movies that try to capture what it feels like to be in high school - both good and bad.  For me, one of the films that comes closest to capturing the overall experience of high school is The Perks of Being a Wallflower.  I would hardly say I was a wallflower, but I was in turn shy and bitchy, was friends mostly with people outside of my own grade (both older and younger), and definitely wasn't part of the popular crowd.  Thankfully, I went to a small school where I'd been with the same 80 people since kindergarten, so I still really enjoyed high school.

Our hero, Charlie (Logan Lerman), is introduced with quite a back story that we don't learn about until he's baked at a party one night.  He's about to start high school and doesn't have any friends and is having trouble fitting in.  Thankfully, he meets Patrick (Ezra Miller), an off-the-wall senior in Charlie's freshmen shop class.  One day at a football game, Charlie actually says hi to Patrick and meets his step-sister Sam (Emma Watson) and she brings Charlie into their social group of "misfit toys".  He gets to date, make friends, learn about all kinds of things, and  begin to heal from all the baggage he brought with him.  He definitely falls a little in love with Sam, but of course that can't work out right away.

I was amazed at how much I liked Ezra Miller and Emma Watson in this - it speaks well of their acting ability that very quickly I'd completely forgotten about Kevin and Hermione, respectively.
From this description, it might be hard to see why this movie is amazing, but you'll have to just believe that to me, it was.  I can see if you have a different kind of background or your high school experience was particularly good or bad, this movie might not make much sense to you or you might not like it much, but for me this was really able to grab some of the best and truest pieces of high school - how it feels, all day every day, and is never the same and everything feels larger than life and you have an ability to live through it, and at the same time you're really sure that everyone will figure out you're a fraud.  The ability of film to capture a feeling that complicated is rare.

New Release Double Header: Les Misérables

Jess' Review

I saw this on the day after Christmas.  I have seen Les Miserables on stage 4 times - twice on Broadway, including the first time when I was 9.  This is to explain that I was seriously predisposed to like this movie.  And I really, really did.  I liked hearing the songs I love put to music with, mostly, such amazing acting. Hugh Jackman brought some pretty great skill to recreating Jean Valjean, a man who got out of prison and managed to change his life and the life of a young girl.  Anne Hathaway is going to completely deserve her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for playing Fantine, a young woman with a child who gets turned out of her job on moral grounds and ends up a prostitute.  Fantine's daughter, Cosette (an amazing Isabelle Allen), is raised by Valjean after Fantine's death.  However, this means bringing her into his life of hiding from Javert (Russell Crowe), a policeman who was there when Valjean was initially released, and has continued to hunt him.  I really, really liked Eddie Redmayne who played Marius, a young man who is fighting for equal rights, but falls in love with Cosette. And finally, the last thing I loved was Samantha Barks as Eponine, Marius' friend who helps him find Cosette.  I really liked each of these things individually, including Russell Crowe's interpretation of Javert (and yes, his voice too).

Now, the things I would have rather they'd done differently.  This movie is an EPIC story.  The book it's based on is nearly 1000 pages.  The opening scene set me up to think that the movie makers knew this too.  A huge ship being dragged into a hanger by prisoners (Valjean).  That's the last time this movie felt epic.  Almost every other major shot is a close-up of the person singing, until the last moment that still doesn't live up to the epic concept.  That's not to say many of the shots aren't great, Fantine's singing close-up is perfect. When we get to the barricades (student's rioting for freedom in Paris), it only looks about 15 feet wide in a tiny corner of the streets.  It didn't look as big as the version that appeared on stage.  It didn't live up to what this kind of story required.  If they were trying to show that it was a smaller and more futile struggle than we knew, it worked, but it was a let down.  Also, the performance of Amanda Seyfried was not up to the strength required to sing the part of Cosette, grown up falling in love with Marius.  While that part is particularly difficult to sing, it's very high and often on a single note, she was not the person to sing it.  The other big thing that failed was the staging and performances of the lighter moments with the Thendariers (Sasha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter) - they were very difficult to hear or understand and really didn't bring any of the humor or light-heartedness that every version I've ever seen on stage.

Overall, I still really enjoyed it.  I did notice another beef when I bought the soundtrack that I should mention.  I didn't notice this during the film, but there is a really bad mixing of the sound - the voices really often do not line up with the beat of the orchestra.  They sang the songs live (as opposed to lip syncing later) and I think it did improve the performance and emotion, but the next step was to carefully match the entire orchestra to the voices instead of the other way around, and I think this was a bigger problem than I realized.




Rachel's Review

I am on the complete opposite end of the spectrum from Jess. I have never seen the stage production of Les Miserables, I haven't read the book nor (yet) seen the non-musical film staring Liam Neeson. I only know about the story in a pop culture context, and of course every girl who's ever thought she was God's gift to music has at one time attempted (and likely butchered) "I Dreamed a Dream" or "On My Own," or both if she's particularly delusional. What does all this amount to? I had zero expectations going into the theater. And overall, I liked it.

The winning factor of the film is the performances and how well the "live-singing" benefited the actors. No the singing wasn't perfectly polished, but it felt more in tune with the gritty surroundings and darkness of the story.

Unfortunately, that's the only really good choice Tom Hooper made, because his directing was atrocious. It's all a bit too much when you have virtually 2.5 hours of straight singing and 90% (I didn't really keep track) of the shots are tight close-ups on the actors' faces. In the end, I left theater with a whopper of headache that lasted for the rest of my weekend thanks to the visual attack I suffered. Can you imagine the suffering if the film had been offered in IMAX? Blindness most likely.

And then there's the story. I know it can't be easy chopping a million-page book down to a passable time in the theater (stage or film), but somethings just felt rushed and a bit silly. I like Valjean's story, his hardships and attempts at redemption. I loved poor Fantine's heartbreaking demise. However, her eager willingness to hand over her daughter to a man she did not know, and little Cosette's eagerness to go with a strange man she met in the woods, was disturbing at best. And of course Marius "falling in love" with older Cosette (on the brink of revolution no less) after seeing her for 30 seconds on the street was plain silly. It wouldn't be a big deal if their love story didn't help drive the second act of the film, but thankfully there was a large body count to balance it out, because the revolution was excellent.

As a Les Miserables first-timer, I mostly enjoyed the film, but it wasn't quite as sweeping as I had hoped, given its reputation. Alas, I walked away with a feeling that it could grow on me with time, and that rarely happens.

New Release: Life of Pi

Maybe with the "end of days" approaching in roughly three weeks, the big name filmmakers thought 2012 would be a good year to put religion under the microscope. Ridley Scott went big and bold by having scientists search the universe for mankind's creators, while P.T. Anderson kept it grounded between two exceptionally flawed men. But for me, the only one that has worked is Ang Lee's adaptation of Life of Pi.

During a terrible storm at sea, a teenage boy, Pi (Suraj Sharma), is the sole human survivor of a shipwreck. After losing his entire family, he finds himself helpless in the middle of the ocean on a life boat with nothing but a grown Bengal tiger as his only companion.

Prior to the tragedy, we're given a good deal of backstory on Pi's childhood, particularly his fascination with religion. But not just one religion, three. Raised Hindu by his mother (a choice frowned upon by his atheist father), Pi eventually finds God in a Catholic church, before becoming a Muslim. However, he never rejects one religion for another, but welcomes the teachings of all three. So when he finds himself dying in the ocean, his multiple faiths are equally tested. The film also explores the human spirit and the will to survive in the worst circumstances. And by the end, it's revealed that the struggle to live with one's own actions for that survival are the biggest challenge.

Lee's film is visually delicious as it dishes difficult situations and themes many of us will never have to face or could ever fully understand. It is larger than life, yet still stays on an intimate scale, and it all comes together in the end as a sad, hopeful and beautiful journey.

New Release: Wreck-It Ralph

What is a hero? What does it take to be happy with what we have? Simple questions, with hard answers, but Wreck-It Ralph meets the challenge.

In an old 8-bit video game, Wreck-It Ralph (John C. Reilly) is the nemesis to the game's hero Fix-It Felix, Jr. (Jack McBrayer). The game has survived at the local arcade for over three decades, but within in the world of the game, Ralph is tired of being the bad guy because he finds himself extremely lonely. Ralph decides to "game jump" to Hero's Duty to win (i.e. steal) a hero's medal so the other characters of his game will finally show him some respect, but an accident throws him into the new racing game Sugar Rush, where he meets Vanellope (Sarah Silverman), an outcast in her own world, whom Ralph decides to help gain acceptance.

In a society where heroes are shown as Avengers, Batman and Spider-Man in less than a three-month span at the theater, Wreck-It Ralph takes a more intimate approach of what it means to be a hero for its younger audience. Ralph sets out to become the hero to many, but what really matters to him is being the hero to just one little girl. It's an excellent lesson to a younger generation that has been bombarded with endless superhero films for the past few years. Our children need to know that helping just one person, especially when extreme bullying is involved and for which you may never receive any massive recognition, can be just as meaningful as saving the entire world. It's a lesson our children need to learn as they grow up and realize that the notion of superheroes is just fun and games, but real heroes exist in everyday life, just not as celebrated.

But Wreck-It Ralph holds just as much for the older, more cynical crowd, besides a nostalgic wink to the days at the arcade. In Ralph's gaming world becoming "unplugged" is a harsh reality for the characters at every turn. Characters whose games have gone out of commission are left to wander "Game Central Station" begging for scraps, no doubt a reflection on our own world's recession and rise in unemployment. Ralph's disgust with his "job" and his search for greener pastures, despite the threat to his own game should he not return, reminds the rest of us to be thankful for what we have and be the best at what we do, even if we have to take t one day at a time. We may not have ended up in the glamorous lives we dreamed of a kids, but that doesn't mean we're wasting the lives we do have.

With lovable characters, great animation, and a touch of genuine cleverness, Wreck-It Ralph imparts very important lessons to the entire family while making us laugh out loud.

New Release: The Sessions

Every now and then, a movie opens your mind to a different kind of life.  It makes you think about how another person must have lived their life without you ever knowing there were people who lived lives like that.  Sometimes we identify with characters because they are just like us, but sometimes you identify with a character because they are better and stronger than we know we might be in that situation.  Mark O'Brien (John Hawkes) is one such character - he has lived almost his entire life as a survivor of polio, which means he spends 20 hours a day in an iron lung to help him breathe.  He's in his thirties and despite his efforts, he's never been able to maintain a relationship (I imagine the logistics eventually get in the way), and has decided that he'd really like to lose his virginity.  But Mark was raised well by his Catholic parents who refused to put him in a home, and his upbringing forces him to ask Father Brendan (William H. Macy) for permission.  Father Brendan assures him that God will give him a pass.  Mark is also an author for the local newspaper (typing with a pencil in his mouth) and gets in touch with a few disabled people who were part of a story about sexuality, and gets in touch with Cheryl Cohen-Green (Helen Hunt), a sexual surrogate who helps people will problems (physical or emotional) related to sex.  Mark and Cheryl work together for a few sessions (thus, the title), and a stronger bond forms between them, but a lot of what Cheryl hoped to help him with, Mark does actually learn.

I saw this at TIFF in September, and this summary barely describes how much fun and how much heart this movie has.  John Hawkes is really amazing playing a man paralyzed, but hardly disabled.  He has to act with only his face, and voice and he makes you care without being a sad-sack character that just makes you feel bad.  He's really terrific.  One of  the big parts of this movie that made me nervous going in was Helen Hunt - I wasn't sure this was a role I would care about with her playing it.  But she's perfect - she's strong about her sexuality (even while completely naked), and conflicted about what happens after her sessions with Mark and returning to her real family.  She's really great making Mark think through his bigger issues.  And the supporting cast is really great - William H. Macy, as well as Mark's nurse, Rod (W. Earl Brown), and Mark's friend Carmen (Jennifer Kumiyama) who loans him a bedroom (why would someone who sleeps in an iron lung need a bed or a couch?).  Macy, in particular, is really great as Mark tell him the stories about his upbringing and how the sessions are going, we all get to hear more about Mark.  And Macy's ability to play a supportive, interested, helpful priest, without the smallest hint of negative issue is really amazing.

This is one of those movies that it's hard to describe, and is so much greater than the sum of its parts.  It's hard to explain how funny a movie like this can be.  Imagine all of the sex jokes from American Pie, but in a realistic, adult situation that also has a lot of heart.  Definitely go see it.

New Release Double Header: Looper

Jess' Review - I don't think Looper is the kind of movie you need to go in blind, but knowing very little about the details might keep you from waiting for things. There were some distracting details I won't spoil in case you don't know them, but I really didn't like them. There, that's all I didn't like. Looper tells the story of Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt AND Bruce Willis), who makes money as a Looper, an assassin for the mob of future baddies. How does he do that you might ask? It doesn't matter. That's one of the absolute best things about this movie - the almost lack of need to explain all of the time travel and origins. However, the story also rests upon the details - whether you can harm the future by changing the present and what that means. We see an almost lethal example right near the beginning of the consequences of messing with the present when Paul Dano screws up on the job and lets the person he was supposed to kill leave. After Joe makes the same mistake, he tries really hard to fix it. However, he's smarter than he knows and starts to figure out that knowing something of the future can let you actually do something about it.

Joseph Gorden-Levitt and Bruce Willis are both fantastic. Smart bad-asses make for pretty terrific movies. Emily Blunt, as the mother of a telekinetic little boy, is amazing. Oh, yeah, the TK factor is only a red herring/MacGuffin, but it fills its purpose just fine. I gotta say I loved Emily Blunt with an unexplained Southern accent. The best thing about this movie is its total originality. There is very, very little in the film that relies on sci-fi cliche or time travel genre-bending rules or anything particularly expected. When I left the movie more than two hours after I sat down, it felt like I'd JUST arrived.




Rachel's Review

It turns out Looper's trailer didn't show us all its cards in two minutes, a real rarity these days. I went into the film under the impression the plot was merely Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) tracking down an older version of himself (Bruce Willis) sent back in time to be killed. Yet there is so much more. Old Joe actually has a purpose, a goal to change his and Young Joe's future/present. And therein lies a wonderful mystery wrapped around a morality tale.

Looper asks some really tough questions of its audiences without patronizing them with an overabundance of silly sci-fi elements. Time travel is possible and there is no need to harp on the details. There are a handful of futuristic elements, but we're not given a completely alien world. It's one that our own could believably become someday. And without all the smoke and mirrors of a grand sci-fi epic (*cough*Prometheus*cough*), Looper focuses more on a simple, well-structured plot and organic character development to challenge the audience, asking "What would you do?"

Just ignore the poorly chosen tagline, because in the end it's past Joe who does the hunting and future Joe who does the haunting. (Nitpicking at its finest.)

DVD Review: Albert Nobbs

I liked this movie much more than I thought I would.  Glenn Close got a much deserved Oscar nomination for playing a woman who has dressed like a man since she was a teenager because it was easier to find a job.  So now she's just Albert.  She's trying to save enough money to run a shop instead of working in a hotel, and guards her money carefully.  Her world is upset when a Mr. Page (Janet McTeer) comes to paint the downstairs and is told to bunk with Albert.  Sometime during the night Albert feels an insect under his shirt and has to open it up and Mr. Page sees her breasts and the jig is up.  Albert is scared Mr. Page will give away the secret, but then we see Mr. Page's breasts too.  All this happens so fast you start thinking every man is going to show you boobs, but that's it.  Mr. Page actually has a wife, Cathleen, that fascinates Albert.  He thinks he might be able to find a wife too to help keep the appearance of his life as a man.  Eventually, typhoid runs through the city (London turn of the century) disrupting everything.

Albert is a terrific character - she's sad, a little pathetic, unendingly earnest and hopeful.  She's second only to Janet McTeer's Mr. Page.  McTeer definitely should have gotten a nomination for supporting actress, she's terrific.  I buy her as a man much easier than you believe Glenn Close.  She embodied the part - she lives in clothes that make her seem manish, has a wife, smokes, etc.  She's reveling in being a man (though hardly distinguishable from a woman today!).  The movie does try its best to keep actual sexuality out of the discussion.  We do hear some stories that explain how their initial transitions happen, but not much about how they date/love/etc. now that it's been decades since they transitioned.  One way they start to address the issue is when Albert decides he might like to get a wife too and asks Helen (Mia Wasikowska) to "go out walking", but doesn't get to the physical part of courting and is fairly put off when Helen initiates it.  You can't tell if she's shocked, or just doesn't want to reveal her secret.  An original story and a terrific cast made this a movie I can't stop thinking about.

New Release: The Dark Knight Rises

The epic conclusion to Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy finally arrived last Friday, and by the time I saw it on Saturday, I felt left behind. Yet, despite all the hype, my only hope was that Nolan & Co. would finish off the trilogy in a way that was in tune with everything from the first two films, even if that meant Batman dying, which I did prepare myself for, just in case.

The film starts eight years after the events of The Dark Knight, with the crime in Gotham extremely low thanks to the supposed heroics of the deceased Harvey Dent. Batman is a wanted criminal and Bruce Wayne is a recluse in the newly built Wayne Manor. But when the terrorist Bane blows into town with a rather elaborate plan to destroy Gotham, Batman must get back into the groove of vigilante crime fighting, only with less support from the public than before.

And that's all I can really say about the general plot, though there are many more moving parts to The Dark Knight Rises, which was the major downfall for me. At times, actually most of the time, the movie felt too complicated to understand how all those movie parts fit together. And because of that, and the almost three-hour run time, this final chapter often felt bloated. However, I fully admit that this is an initial knee-jerk reaction. Upon another viewing, knowing how everything comes together by the film's end, I'm sure I'll be able to spend more time concentrating on how Bane's plan unfolds. That doesn't mean I'll love and accept it, but I'm willing to try.

With my negativity out of the way, I can definitely say that I enjoyed every other aspect of the film (who needs a plot anyway, right?). For a majority of the film, I almost thought to myself that I was watching the Jo-Go Cop Story, but I'm not complaining, because his young cop, Blake, was a refreshing side of optimism to all the other hardened characters in the film. Though I was initially skeptical of Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, I'm happy to have been proven wrong by her excellent skills of ass-kicking and quip-exchanging. And Tom Hardy's Bane was downright terrifying, and I loved that voice he chose. And of course all the returning actors were excellent too. Here's looking at you Bale, Oldman, Freeman, and Caine!

Everything else The Dark Knight Rises offers keeps within, while expanding upon, the universe Nolan laid out in the first two films: the action, suspense, and realistic nature of the story. But what elevated this from a very good film to a great film for me was how he wraps it all up, leaving no loose ends. Though I may not have been convinced by the entirety of Batman's last adventure, it ended in a way that was perfectly suited for everything that came before.

And that's all I really wanted from the start.

New Release Double Header: Brave

Our "Double Header" reviews, in case you've missed the previous posts, are when we take a movie and both provide reviews.  You get 2 points of view in one post.  Check out our previous Double Headers here and here. BEWARE MINOR SPOILERS!


Rachel's Review:
Of course I had been highly anticipating Brave since I saw the teaser almost a year ago. The film had me at "hello" because it wasn't another Pixar sequel and it sported the first central female character Pixar has dared to draw.

But it turned out to be so much more than the "girl power" plot I expected. Thanks to some rather ambiguous marketing, the film goes beyond the heroine Merida refusing to be thrown into an arranged marriage as advertised. The message of family bonding is explored more than I ever expected out of Disney, a company whose history is rich in killing off parents. So though I was at first taken aback by the film's plot twist, I quickly found myself enjoying a tale that went beyond simplistic one-sided self-discovery and told a beautiful tale on a much more personal level. And beyond that the film excels in fun, humor, suspense, and legend.

Brave is easily one of Pixar's most beautiful films, in terms of both animation and story. I have been saddened by the lack of enthusiasm as a whole, but perhaps seeing the film with my own daughter and mother may have swayed my adoration. But I wouldn't have it any other way.




Jess' Review:
I went into Brave with really mixed expectations because reviews hadn't been stellar and I had no idea what to expect from a Pixar version of a Disney princess. Oh, and in the recent Northeast heat waves I also managed to find the one theater where the A/C was BROKEN. And I only mention this because I think it speaks to how much I did enjoy the film that I stayed for the whole thing.

Merida (voiced by Kelly McDonald) is a strong, young, Scottish lass that has come to the age of getting married. As she has no desire to actually wed and become her mother, she fights for her right and runs away. However, the classic runaway changes here, she doesn't actually want to leave, she just wants her mother to get off her back. She finds a witch to cast a spell to this end, which, as any fairy tale would predict, will have unexpected consequences.

I really loved the originality of this tale. It was fun and unexpected, and it had quirky characters from her over the top father and silly brothers, but had a TON of heart. The relationship between Merida and her mother was fraught with all the classic tensions, lessons, and disappointments. My only problem with the film, which I think kept it from being great, was that the characters of Merida and her mother start off fairly flat. There is no other woman for Merida to complain to or another boy she wants to be like. We know very little of why she doesn't want to marry or why she doesn't seem to like her mother very much. I know these seem like small things, but it is just my basic reasoning for why I didn't think it was great. The originality of the story, the wonderful score and songs, and really, really beautiful animation make it a really good film. Apparently Pixar CAN make a better Disney Princess.

DVD Review: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Parenthood can be scary. You hope you're doing a good job, but sometimes, you're never really sure. However, despite your best efforts, you may still end up with a complete sociopath for offspring. And it wouldn't really be your fault if the kid is just a bad seed...or would it?

We Need to Talk About Kevin is the haunting tale of Eva (Tilda Swinton), a once free spirited yuppie traveler, who decided in a fun drunken moment that maybe a child is the one thing missing from her life. She and her husband Franklin (John C. Reilly) have their first child, Kevin (Ezra Miller), but parenthood isn't quite the fulfilling adventure Eva expected. Kevin cries incessantly, won't talk, expect to say "no," has little interest in anything and doesn't start using the toilet until around age 7, only after Eva accidentally breaks his arm in a moment of frustration. And then when he's just shy of 16, Kevin does something unspeakably horrific.

In the aftermath, Eva, now an absolute outcast because of Kevin's actions, looks back on her parenting and wonders if she really is the one responsible for her monstrous son, or if there was nothing that could have prevented the tragedy. And, as it should, the film leaves it in a very gray area.

Kevin simply does not seem right from day one, but does that mean that there was always something wrong with him? If Eva had tried a little harder to bond with her difficult infant, perhaps he would have had a better chance. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered at all. And if was her fault for not being ideally nurturing, should she still be blamed for his actions? Or maybe Kevin wasn't as bad as we see him as a child, because after all, this is all from Eva's point of view. There's so much to discuss and analyze after seeing We Need to Talk About Kevin, that you could easily spout 10 different hypotheses about why Kevin did what he did, and still never come to a conclusion, because, just like when these things happen in life, there is no definitive answer on how it all went wrong. In the end it's probably a mixed bag anyway.

Not surprisingly Swinton's performance as Eva is stunning. Watching Eva's actions and reactions to Kevin are difficult, as she never seems to be able to connect with him. It could have been so easy to negatively judge her as a parent for lack of bonding or lack of discipline, but as you see Eva's desperate struggle to hang on, judging her so harshly feels wrong. Of course, helping her along is the pitch perfect Miller as Kevin, who sometimes feels too convincing. At the same time he never feels like a stock character. It could have been easy to look at the many similar incidents in the real world over the years to model Kevin after those of his same ilk, but he never does. He brings something even darker and more terrifying to an already evil person.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is quite captivating, and when it was done, I actually wanted there to be more, but due to its intense content was glad there wasn't. It does falter a few instances, especially when trying to logically play out Kevin's heinous crime, since the film lacks details on how he did it, something that's still eating away at me. Nonetheless, the heartbreaking story, the brutal mystery and a bit of reality turn this drama into an outright horror film for any parent.

New Release: Prometheus (No spoilers)

Prometheus isn't one of those movies you should go in blind, but I do feel like overexplaining it could deprive you of the confusion and the thought provocation it gave me.   And I'm sure the thoughts it would provoke will be different for all.  First, Noomi Rapace and her fellow archaeologists discover a connection between various other sites that lead them to explore outerspace, specifically looking for a particular planet.  A really rich businessman funds this endeavor and puts Charlize Theron in charge of the 2-year mission to get there. There are also a few other scientists and the ship's captain Idris Elba.  While they all sleep the 2 years away, David (Michael Fassbender), an android with unclear motivations or intentions, has been keeping an eye on the ship.  Watching David prepare for their arrival by amusing himself with basketball and movies, the tone is set for just about anything to happen.  After everyone else wakes up, we're introduced to lots of characters that have to try to make us care a little bit about as you KNOW that not all of them are going to survive.
Noomi Rapace is an extremely worthy successor to Sigourney Weaver's "Ripley" taking bad-ass to a different place.  Watching her attempt to fulfill one dream while losing another made me actually care about whether or not she survives.  Charlize Theron, on the other hand, she's chewing the scenery and overacting so well that you can't wait to find out how or if she's going to die - the reward on that one is worth waiting for.  But the character that really steals the show is David.  Michael Fassbender is obsequious, sucking up to all the humans, which is a weird trait to see in an android as you'd think he wouldn't care what they think.  But his delivery of the lines agreeing to make a drink for Theron assures you that he's got motivations that no other android should have.

There are a lot of fairly obvious symbolic gestures in the film - from naming it Prometheus (the Titan who stole fire from the Gods and gave it to man who was sentenced to have his liver eaten out daily - symbolizing "be careful what do you pissing off those with more power than you") to Rapace's flashback to her father educating her about religion.  The idea of humans wanting to understand our origins and thinking that those can be sought on another planet was a bit of a stretch for me, but I loved the movie nonetheless.  The action is a bit nail-biting (and curious - I'm not sure I've ever seen a fire-thrower as a weapon chosen over a gun) and there are more than a few jump in your seat moments.  I really liked the complexity of the story - and I've never seen Alien so I have no idea what overlapped (though my movie partner definitely helped with that).  Overall, I would highly recommend this - though if you're looking for a horror movie in space, you'll be disappointed.  If you just want a great movie with a good story, definitely check it out.

DVD Review: Haywire

A few weeks ago I posted a list of Female Avengers that could have helped Black Widow kick ass.  Well, I have found another - Mallory Kane (Gina Carano) from Steven Soderbergh's Haywire.  The movie itself is impressively complicated, but here's the gist.  Kane and Aaron (Channing Tatum) work for Kenneth (Ewan McGregor) who runs a private mercenary company that contracts for governments.   Their new assignment in Barcelona is to rescue a kidnapped man, Jiang, and bring him to Dublin.  That's about the most straightforward explanation.  Beyond that it's a series of switchbacks, double crosses and back stabbings that brings us to the beginning of the movie.  How Mallory got to that point is told to her hostage (and the audience) as she tries to escape all of the things she's done.

Reading about this movie - I couldn't figure out why I hadn't heard of Gina Carano before.  It turns out she's a mixed martial arts star.  This is pretty obvious during some of the incredibly bad-ass fight scenes - particularly with Michael Fassbender.  Soderbergh even went in an altered her voice to get the complete character he envisioned.  And it works great.  The rest of the supporting cast is also terrific - you can't figure out who is good and who's bad; Soderbergh chose really well with his cast.  All of them at some point have played both good and bad characters - Michael Douglas for the CIA, Antonio Bandares as his Spanish counterpart, and Bill Paxton as Mallory's father. At any moment they could switch sides.  So when they do switch sides and many of them do, you're not surprised, but still disappointed in them for being something other than you wanted.

There are moments when the story does get more complicated than you can follow if you're not paying attention, but it's such a great movie, you won't mind watching it 3-4 more times.  Carano totally carries the film - she didn't even need the high powered supporting cast she got, but the whole thing comes together as a pretty amazing flick.

New Release Double Header: The Avengers

Jess' Review:
Since Rachel started posting her Movies with Mia segment I've started to be more aware of well-behaved children at the movies.  I used to only notice the terrible kids, but now I see the good ones too.  However, going to see The Avengers, even during a matinee, I was honestly really surprised to see a theater FULL of kids under 8.  Particularly for a PG-13 movie.  There were more than a dozen kids under 5.  I spoke to a grandfather who said his grandkids with him love superhero movies - and the little boys were 3 & 4!!!  So there was A LOT of talking during the film.  While the violence was particularly stylized and not particularly scary, there was much more action and violence and just loud noises that I don't think I'd want to show to my 3 year old.  You may think I'm just underestimating their ages - but there were pacifiers people.  These kids were young.

Now on to the movie. I love the other back stories to The Avengers.  In order, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, The Hulk (Edward Norton), Iron Man 2, The Hulk (Eric Bana).  And other than the Bana Hulk, I've seen them all in theaters, gleefully.  So I was really looking forward to this - and throw in a little Joss Whedon, and I was all set to love it.  The story was pretty great - taking place after each of the origin films it draws pieces of each: there's an explanation of why Natalie Portman isn't there to greet Thor, we know why Bruce Banner has buried himself in India, Captain America has just been thawed, and Iron Man has a triangle on his suit instead of a circle (watch the origins to actually understand these references, I'm just proving they exist).  S.H.I.E.L.D. has been trying to perfect a power source, but our evildoer and Thor's half-brother Loki, has arrived to undo it all and steal the cube.  This brings our Avengers together as the group of human/demigods with the set of skills to defeat Loki (a much much better Tom Hiddleston than in Thor, in my opinion).  Of course Loki unleashes his hell in a creative and difficult to fight kind of way.

However, even with a great story, it was hard to tell if particularly wooden acting or over the top dialogue from a few characters just left me annoyed from time to time.  Some of the dialogue was terrifically funny - the Hulk fighting Loki was priceless and had me shrieking with laughter.  Most of Tony Stark's dialogue went WAY over the kids' heads and was really clever.  However, sometimes there was so much filler dialogue that I started disliking the movie - Nick Fury is asked "What do we do?", and he replies "We get ready".  These three to four word one-liners fell flat over and over.  I do think this was a problem of expectations - with Joss Whedon, I did expect better dialogue.  However, he brought a story worth watching and for a sequel of a sequel of a franchise, that's a seriously impressive feat.  The overall balance between characters was really good, with no one getting too much of the story and no one getting too little.  And thankfully, Black Widow (ScarJo) was MUCH more bad-ass than that scene from the trailers where she has an itty bitty gun implies.  Thankfully.




Rachel's Review:
Over the last four years my anticipation for The Avengers has taken an odd shift. After Iron Man, I was excited at the prospect of this massive superhero undertaking. The Incredible Hulk wasn't terribly impressive, but I mainly blame poor CGI. Then Iron Man 2 was just pathetic, and despite my early acceptance, a recent rewatch has shown me the light. And since that sequel was a big precursor to The Avengers, I started to get uncomfortable with the idea. And I became even more exhausted when I had to face a summer of Thor and Captain America, liking the former, but not as impressed with the latter. So by the end of 2011, when I made my "Most Anticipated for 2012" list, I put The Avengers at the #5 spot because I just wanted all the build up to be over. I was convinced there was very little chance that four superheroes, each from their own origin stories, written and directed by different people could never make one genuinely good film together. However that small chance came through.

I wasn't entirely convinced in the beginning that the film was headed in the right direction. The story felt very scattered, but I'm assuming it's to catch up anyone who didn't bother watching the first five films. But at one point specifically, when Iron Man and Captain America are capturing the villain Loki in Germany, I was entranced by their presence together on screen and I realized this might all just work splendidly. And as Thor, then the Hulk, joined the pack, I relaxed, knowing  it wasn't going to be a power struggle of who gets the most screen time or who really comes out on top as the hero of the conflict, as each one served a particular purpose within the Avengers Initiative, be it brains, strength, bravery or Loki's big brother coming to Earth to lay down the law.

Though it sports some genuinely funny moments and much better than expected cast chemistry, The Avengers isn't perfect. It takes a little while getting started and there is perhaps a little too much "movie science" dialogue than necessary, but the massive climactic battle with the aliens on the streets of Manhattan ends the film on a wonderful note of badassery that kicks off the 2012 summer movie season with a bang. And it dares the other films due in the following months to provide this much fun.