Category Archives: Movies

The Sorcerer and the White Snake (2011)

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Link: The Sorcerer and The White Snake

Summary: Based on an ancient Chinese legend.  A man’s love is doomed when he falls in love with and marries a demon (who, in her true form, appears as a giant white snake).  Meanwhile, a demon hunter tries to save the man by capturing the demon.

Thoughts: The premise was interesting (explaining why it survived as a legend for hundreds of years).  There’s a lot a good writer can do with a man who unknowingly falls in love with a demon.  You know the relationship will not work out, but you know neither party will give it up willingly.  So the foundational story is a strong and timeless one.  Unfortunately this particular interpretation of the story was rather boring.  Everybody overacted as if they were in a cartoon, and the dialog was far too straightforward; hardly ever any subtext or style.  I can forgive cheap CGI when the story is compelling enough, but the story was not compelling here, so the effects just made me feel a bit sad.  The fighting scenes were choppy and bland, and the cartoony film score just made everything worse.  Felt like I was watching something made for five-year-olds.  Maybe I was?

West Side Story (1961)

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Link: West Side Story

Summary: The classic forbidden love story of Romeo and Juliette retold as a dance and song musical on the 1950’s New York streets.

Thoughts: Though I’d already heard pretty much all the songs and music from this popular musical, I’d never actually seen the movie.  And, eh, it was OK.  A bit too wannabe-hip for my tastes, and the dancing was blegh, except for when they did flips, because flips are always cool.  But it’s like, “Hey, we’re hip, ‘cause we’re snappin’ our fingers to the groove, and now watch us gracefully kick our legs really high!”  What?  Stop it.  What do you think you’re doing?  If you’re going to dance, then you should dance like they did in Singin’ in the Rain.  And I’ve never found Romeo and Juliette to be a very compelling story; it’s such baseless shallow love.  “I see you, and now I love you!”  “Me too!”  “Why do we love each other?  Just because!”  Blegh, I say!  Bah humbug!

Anyway, it’s hard not to love Leonard Bernstein’s beautiful music.  Sondheim’s lyrics are OK, but not nearly as intricate or interesting or witty as they’d become in his later work.

Life of Pi (2012)

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Link: Life of Pi

Summary: A young man survives a shipwreck with a tiger.

Thoughts: What a boring movie.  Long stretches of nothing interesting happening.  Might’ve been interesting to see in 3D in theaters for the special effects, but the story was thin and meaningless, save for the meaning you can make up for yourself with the character’s occasional mention of something vaguely religious.  Aside from the long stretches of no story, the role of religion really bothered me.  The  main character is interested in religion, but doesn’t show an understanding of it (“I am Christian and Muslim and Hindu!”), nor does religion play any interesting role in his decision making, save for a few prayers.  Though when he says something like, “God, I give myself to you!” and then continues to act completely the same, one has to wonder whether his prayer meant anything.  The attempt at making this film have a religious undertone completely fails, as it plays no role in the actual story or in the characters’ decision making; it is merely something mentioned in dialog every now and then, as if that’s all religion really is, something to argue about.  His father’s words about the role of religion versus science is about as deep as a ten year old reflecting on the subject for the first time.  “Science explains things, religion doesn’t!”  Oh, wow, there’s a deep philosophical thought I never considered before, thanks!  Similarly, the main character’s decision to take on a mathematical name played no role in the story, apparently chosen only for an interesting title of the original book.  I mean, there could’ve at least been a circle metaphor somewhere.  As it is, the title could just’ve easily been Life of Logarithm.  Finally, the ending of the film hints that the entire story may be a complete lie, leaving it up for the viewer to decide what to believe, because that’s really poetic and artistic.  Yes, there’s nothing like a boring adventure that ends with the narrator hinting that maybe it’s not even true.

Horrible stupid boring movie.

Dragon (2011)

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Link: Dragon

Summary: After a man fights and kills a notorious convict, an investigator believes he’s a notorious criminal himself.

Thoughts: I really enjoyed this film.  The action sequences were a lot of fun.  The fights played with their settings and were well shot, without all the annoying rapid editing you get in American action films these days.  (As Donnie Yen says in the bonus features, “Shooting the action is a lot more important than choreographing the action.”)  I enjoyed how the investigator would stroll around slow-motion replays of the action or how we’d get to see diagrams of what he’s thinking about; it was very visually imaginative.  The overall plot was a bit cliché; it’s a classic sort of story with no surprises.  But I think they did manage to breathe a unique life into it.  Fun movie.

Sleuth (1972)

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Link: There is no link.  Unfortunately this film does not seem to be currently available on DVD; I caught it on Turner Classic Movies.

Summary: Based on a play.  A mystery writer invites his wife’s lover to his house in hopes of getting him to help with a ridiculous insurance fraud scheme.  But that itself turns out to be a scheme, as ulterior motives surface.  The story itself is not a mystery, but it’s about mysteries, about the creation and solving of mysteries (hence the title).

Thoughts: I loved this film, thought it was fantastic.  The writing was hilarious, the editing to creepy-faced automatons was hilarious, and the twists and turns of the plot were exciting.  I enjoyed the mysterious Clue-ish feel to the whole thing; it all takes place in one mansion.  The cast is very conservative; there are only two characters in the entire film.  Being based on a play, it does kind of have stage feel to it, how most of the story is in the dialog between the two characters.  But it’s fantastic dialog, clever and engaging, with each character believably transitioning to various emotions in turn, from happy to devastated to enraged to calm.  I loved the idea of mysteries being games, and the exploration of how far is too far when it comes to game playing.  Really wish this was on DVD or Blu-ray.

The film stars Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine.  Interestingly, the film was remade (or re-imagined, I should say) in 2007, with Caine switching to Olivier’s role.  I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s in my queue.

The Man with the Iron Fists (2012)

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Link: The Man with the Iron Fists

Summary: In this martial arts film written, directed, and starring rapper RZA, a blacksmiff makes himself arms of iron to face villains who are fighting over gold or something.

Thoughts: I honestly enjoyed some elements of the film, mostly the over-the-top fantastical wildness of its setting, its characters, and the unique style of weaponry.  Many fun elements to play with.  Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be a story.  Too many characters seemed to be fighting for no reason, and the dialog was as inane as it gets.  It’s all the more annoying because the fantastical elements could’ve easily inspired a much more interesting story in the hands of better writers.  Very disappointing film.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

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Link: Zero Dark Thirty

Summary: The story behind the search for and killing of Osama bin Laden.

Thoughts: A boring film.  The lead actress overacted a bit much, but I blame the director for that.  I didn’t understand why her character should be so obsessed with killing bin Laden, but I guess it’s one of those artifacts of trying to turn actual events into a dramatic film, finding the right balance between facts and dramatization.  Overall, I wasn’t impressed.

Hitchcock (2012)

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Link: Hitchcock

Summary: Hitchcock sets out to make Psycho, but is burdened with a suffering marriage.

Thoughts: I’m not sure what was up with the makeup in this film; everyone had yellow faces, and Hitchcock’s ears kept moving strangely.  Anyway, even if Anthony Hopkins didn’t look very much like Hitchcock, he did a great job of capturing his speech pattern and the way he seemed to carry himself.  And the guy who played Anthony Perkins also did a great job.

I don’t know anything about Hitchcock’s personal life, or what sort of things he and his wife might have struggled with, or whether or not this story is based on people’s hearsay.  (If they never confessed anything themselves, I would take it all with a grain of salt.)  Of course, my favorite film being Amadeus, I am more than willing to accept wildly fictional portrayals of historic artists, granted the story is compelling.  This story, unfortunately, was not compelling.  It was extremely shallow.  It is basically a shallow romantic drama between Hitchcock and his wife as they try to rediscover their love for each other as the production of Psycho stresses them.  Hitchcock wants to make Psycho to revitalize his career and reputation, but there’s really nothing at stake for him, so what the heck do we care?  If the production of Psycho related more to his marital problems, it might have been more interesting.  (See the interplay between the theatrical production of Peter Pan and Barrie’s relationship problems in the fantastic film Finding Neverland.)  Overall, I wasn’t impressed with this film.

A few points for Danny Elfman’s compelling musical score.

A Man Escaped (1956)

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Link: A Man Escaped

Summary: A man escapes from a prison.  It’s as simple as it gets.

Thoughts: This is the second film by French director Robert Bresson that I’ve watched, and I enjoyed it more than Pickpocket.  Bresson’s otherwise annoying directing style serves the focused nature of this particular story very well.  The film title itself establishes the character’s goal, and the story remains focused entirely on the main character achieving his goal.  We don’t even care why he’s in prison (it’s Nazi occupied France, so I suppose we assume the reason is unjust).  No backstory, no big subplot.  We are given every detail of how he escapes; nothing is left conveniently unexplained.  Though the pace may be slow at times, I found myself captivated watching as the main character scraped the end of a spoon into the crevices of his door to loosen its boards.  Given the title and the past-tense narration, we know the character is going to escape at the end, it’s just a matter of discovering what exactly he will do to escape.  I also enjoyed the use of Mozart.  Fun movie.

Jurassic Park 3D (2013)

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Link: Jurassic Park 3D

Summary: 3D rerelease of the 1993 blockbuster.  A theme park featuring resurrected dinosaurs as the main attraction breaks down, and the dinosaurs eat the tourists.

Thoughts: Jurassic Park has been one of my favorite films since I first saw it when I was a young kid and couldn’t understand most of the subplot.  I just loved the dinosaurs.  I watched the VHS quite a few times over the summer at my grandmother’s house, so before we journeyed home, we went to a used bookstore and bought a used copy, which I continued to watch many times.  As far as disaster action thriller movies go, Jurassic Park gets the tone and pacing absolutely perfect, enough to forgive the many continuity errors and moments of cheesy dialog.  (“Woman inherits the earth!”  Lame.)

Anyway, the 3D was fantastic.  I thought it was amazing how well the photography lent itself to the addition of a third dimension, and I’m surprised they had the technology to convert the film so well.  There were a few little things here and there that looked a bit wonky, mostly the flat eyes of actor close-ups, but overall I was extremely impressed.  Most of the 3D is beautiful.

This will definitely be a 3D film I’ll see in theaters more than once.

John Dies at the End (2012)

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Link: John Dies At The End

Summary: After getting injected with a creepy mysterious drug that seems to be sentient, a man struggles to deal with strange and disturbing paranormal powers.

Thoughts: This was a weird film.  While I found some parts to be hilarious, the story was overall just too random for me.  The magic system, if one can call it that in this sort of context, had no clear rules, allowing the storyteller to introduce whatever sort of crazy monsters and random-hallucination-like nonsense he could come up with.  I prefer a stronger story with clearer character goals and conflicts, rather than such an emphasis on the pure craziness of random weirdness.  Still, this did seem like a very unique brand of crazy that I won’t soon forget.  Especially interesting when you philosophize on the nature of thought.  Do thoughts move through us, or do we move through thoughts?  “When you hear a song on the radio, where’s the song?”

Mon Oncle (1958)

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mononcle

Link: Mon Oncle (The Criterion Collection)

Summary: A man does not quite fit in with his sister or nephew’s modern way of living.

Thoughts: Like Tati’s Playtime (which I enjoyed more), this film has no real plot.  Rather, it’s a set of comedy sketches, a bit like Mr. Bean, though with a much different character to it.  In Mon Oncle, the humor does not come from the main character’s inability to do things right; rather, it comes from the eccentric characters that surround him who try too hard to be modern and stylish.  Overall, I enjoyed the film.  But Tati has a way of developing gags on top of one another so that they’re easy to lose track of, and sometimes they’re so subtle or drawn out that they’re just boring.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)

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Link: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Summary: In order to date the girl of his dreams, a young man must defeat her evil ex-boyfriends in this light-hearted ridiculous over-the-top comedy.

Thoughts: While I enjoyed the special effects, the video game references, and some of the humor, the film ultimately tried too hard to be funny at all times, and half-way through I felt like it had already jumped the shark on itself.  It’s the sort of fast-paced gag humor that’s better in small doses.  When you try to fill every scene with gag after gag, they just lose their effectiveness.

Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)

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Link: Oz: The Great and Powerful

Summary: A twister carries a magician to Oz, where he becomes involved in a struggle for power between witches.  The story serves as an origin story for the Wizard of Oz and the witches of Oz.

Thoughts: This film’s major flaw was that the main character’s goals were far too ambiguous, so I found little reason to care about him or his plight.  In the beginning, his goal is the vague cliché “I feel like a nobody!  I wanna be somebody!”  This is too abstract.  I have no way to relate to it, in a story sense.  That is, I have no way to relate the character’s actions to a desire that abstract.  The goal needs to be more concrete.  What physical thing does a character want that will fulfill his desire to be somebody?  And what are the stakes?  What awful terrible thing will happen if he doesn’t fulfill his desire?  The film had no answers for these.  When the main character is transported to Oz, he wanders around with no goal at all, until he’s tempted by the lure of wealth, which is consistent with his abstract goal of act one, and doesn’t even make sense considering he’s stuck in another world.  And, again, there are absolutely no stakes.  If he can’t become wealthy, who cares?  Nothing is at stake until more than half way through the film when the main character finally earns the wrath of a wicked witch who vows to destroy him.  Remember writers: concrete goals.

The visual effects were beautiful.  I loved the imagery of Oz, the epic fantastical landscapes, the cozy palaces.  The world had a wonderful whimsical magical warm and welcoming feel to it, and it looked great in 3D.  It was a shame to see such beauty wasted on such a weak story.