Skirv's Journal

Real Steel: 5 (out of 10)

Robots! Punching! Whoo!

I kindof wanted that to be my entire review for Real Steel - three words and a score. But it doesn't quite fit.

Real Steel is a mix of three genres - the up-and-coming-scrappy-fighter boxing/martial-arts movie, the (surprisingly small) robot combat fest, and the father-learns-to-fight-for-his-estranged-son tear jerker. It mixes these genres surprisingly well, and while all of them are a little thin, all receive adequate attention from the director and actors. I came for the second genre, and was worried that the other two would annoy me; but no, my annoyance came from other quarters.

My first gripe came before the movie - why was this not titled Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots? Yes, this would have focused more heavily on the robot fighting; but that's clearly what I was there for, anyway. But I suppose that this had to be left out so that the other two genres could be alluded to in the title. Aah, well.

While the fight scenes were, for the most part, well-done and fun to watch, I had some major problems with the combat itself. Part of what makes martial-arts movies work is the knowledge that we are watching a sport, and these sports have rules. Early on, the fights were underground affairs, unsanctioned fights to the death, and the relative lack of consistent rules made some sense; weapons may vary, weight classes don't really exist, and if one side cheats a little bit, hey, them's the breaks! But later, when we we're in the Big Leagues, we see the bad-guy bot hitting the good-guy bot as he's getting up from a knock-down - and that's okay? Then why wasn't that happening all the time? And why does Zeus get pistons, anyway? It just felt inconsistent, and that took away from the up-and-coming-fighter storyline.

(Along these same lines - what exactly makes one robot dramatically better than another? I wish that this had been explained in some way other than "heart". The concept of weight classes would have helped here.)

Finally, while my biggest gripe might be considered a bit esoteric, hear me out: the user interfaces for the robots were inconsistent and, for the most part, outright bad. There are four families of controls shown:

1. Large sit-down control pods with multiple controlling individuals. These are used by the Rich Bad Guys, and we don't really learn much about them. Still, they seem potentially useful.

2. Keyboard/Wii-U controller - a large touchscreen with extra buttons/control sticks on the side, used by a single individual. This was used early in the movie by the Good Guys, and seemed plausible to me.

3. Voice-based technology - the operator yells out commands into a microphone, mostly involving combat macros (left-right-uppercut). This works very poorly, but it's the primary combat system for most of the movie.

4. Mimic technology - the bot mirrors the actions of its controller. This is apparently obsolete technology, probably because it's absurdly dangerous. It's also the key to the movie.

The movie shows that combat effectiveness improves as we move along this chart. There may be a place for all of these technologies in the overall setup, sure; but for a primary interface for one-on-one combat, I'd rather use a controller than a Kinect or a microphone. Me, I see the technologies as growing more and more imprecise, at least if the robots are human-controlled. (This changes if the fights are primarily controlled by AIs, in which case we're really getting into robot dog fighting instead... but I digress.)

A few shorter notes:

• As a near-future science fiction movie, not much had really changed except the introduction of combat robots, the loss of other martial arts as public spectacles, more wind farms, and the introduction of large junkyards with big pits. This was disconcertingly boring.

• $50k buys you a combat robot? That's really cheap - or at least it seems to be until you realize that money is never really discussed outside of robot fighting circles.

• I wouldn't want to be standing next to several tons of fighting robot. Apparently, this doesn't bother anybody in the Near Future.

• Why didn't Wolverine use his claws? That would have shown 'em!

• While I was happy with Hugh Jackman's acting overall, I really think that his character started out as too stupid. I suppose it was good for the character arc, but his intensity was foolish.

• The movie was really aimed at younger kids - 8-12 year-old boys, I'd say - but the language skewed it up into PG-13 territory. (No, the violence probably didn't, because the MPAA is silly.) I found this odd.

• The product placement made me laugh, but none more so than the HP ads throughout. Oh, HP, you're so doomed!

Anyway - it was fine. I had a good time. But it was not a great movie.

Rating: 5/10 (** 1/4 out of 4)

Trailer Watch - the Coming Attractions were pretty much terrible. We got a Steven Spielberg wartime tear-jerker with War Horse, which comes out at Christmas-time and I haven't heard of before. They showed the John Carter of Mars trailer again, which is growing on me (but not enough for me to suspect it'll be a watchable movie in the end). Arthur Christmas continues to look completely uninteresting, even if it is from Aardman. And Johnny English 2 was possibly the worst trailer I've seen since The Country Bear Jamboree - 80s kid comedy sensibilities don't play well with this decade nor with Rowan Atkinson. They were definitely skewing young.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon: 6 (out of 10)

The most important thing you have to know about Transformers 3 is that it's significantly better than Transformers 2. No, this was not a high bar; but honestly, if it had been worse, I would have recommended that you run screaming. Instead, I suggest to you that this is a good action movie that plays nicely to Michael Bay's strengths, and is perhaps his best work since The Rock.

I do have to admit, most of the actual components of the movie are pretty questionable. The live-acting ranged from "adequate" (Shia LaBeouf, John Turturro) to "slumming it" (John Malkovich, Frances McDormand), with just a touch of "incompetent" (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley). The characters were weak, even by the standards of summer action movies. The plot holes were profound, both internal to the movie and in terms of basic physics. It was padded, and could have easily lost 30-45 minutes of footage through responsible editing (perhaps leaving out the entire prologue). The dialogue was forgettable. The "extraneous" characters of old movies were more annoying than ever. It was still difficult to tell the 'bots apart. The story was still more about the humans than about the 'bots. And so forth.

But that said, the movie did a whole lot right. The plot may have been weak, but it was epic, relevant, grounded in the style of Transformers episodes of years past (specifically The Ultimate Doom), and it mostly held together. The relationship between humanity and the Cybertronians (both sides) was actually fairly interesting and finally felt established. The movie didn't spend much time in the "wacky" humor genre, unlike its predecessors, and was much better for it. The robots seemed like characters this time, and (slightly) less like plot contrivances. Overall, most of the "garbage" from the last movie was taken out, and replaced with more action scenes.

And oh, what action scenes they were! The special effects were more self-assured than the previous movies, even as their scale increased. Transformers would change forms regularly and without undue focus; this made for less jarring and more interesting action scenes, and allowed for the robots themselves to seem more like characters than simple plot contrivances. Beyond the technical marvel, the fight scenes mostly to hold together, and some of them even evoked scenes from the original Animated Movie. And the entire last 40 minutes in Chicago, even if didn't hold up to much scrutiny - that is why we watch Michael Bay movies! Sure, it may not have made a lick of sense; but the action was good enough to make up for that.

Given my fascination with these characters, perhaps I should talk a little bit about the individual 'bots. Optimus actually had a personality this time, which was interesting. Bumblebee was important but under-utilized, a bit surprisingly. The Wreckers didn't irritate me, nor did the two mini-bots. I admit to geeking out a little bit about Leonard Nimoy as Sentinel Prime. Shockwave was less well-utilized than Darth Maul, but just as cool. Soundwave turned out to matter as a character, hooray! I'm shockingly okay that Laserbeak spoke. And the Nameless Decepticon Hordes... well, I'm okay with them, I suppose, but it'd be nice if the Autobots got some too.

In short: this was the best of the trilogy by any standards. In terms of a summer blockbuster, it was fun; in terms of real cinema, it wasn't so great. And if, like me, you're a Transformers fan, this is as good of a movie as we're likely to get.

Some other points:

• While I didn't really care for the "it's so hard to get a job" element of the plot, it didn't actually ruin the movie.

• I really can't get over how awful Carly was. She was a bad character, her actress was horrible, and the repeated reminders of "haha, you don't get Megan Fox anymore!" were blatant and annoying. Yes, she has quite a body, and Bay did a good job of showing it off. That's not enough.

• What happened to the Twins from the second movie, anyway? I'm happy they're gone, yes; but given how important it was that the Autobots were few in number, you'd think that having ~20% of your numbers just "missing" would be worth noting somewhere.

• A note on expectations: I have found that surviving movies like this is really dependent upon keeping your expectations in check. The first movie initially looked promising but worthless; it turned out to be acceptable and stupid. Score! The seco!
  nd movie looked to be terrible out of the gate, and it turned out to be even worse that; but I had gone in with such low expectations that it at least didn't hurt too much (at the time). So when it came to this third movie, my expectations were simple: "it's got to be better than number two, yes?".
  This modest goal was easily met.

• Since I mentioned Michael Bay's earlier work in that first paragraph, I should note that his best movie is still Bad Boys, and that the rest of his body of work falls far below that early effort.

• I saw this movie in IMAX 3-D. The IMAX part was worth the trouble; the special effects were worth the screen real estate. The 3-D, though, didn't add anything to the movie, though it didn't seem to take anything away either.

Rating: 6/10

Sucker Punch: 2/10

It would be easy to dismiss Sucker Punch as simply pandering to its audience. Yes, the movie aims at geek culture in general, teenage males in particular; and as such it certainly offers as much skin and anime-style action as it can provide within the confines of a PG-13 rating. But Punch does not want to just pander to its audience; instead, it aims to be something more than just your average Summer Action Movie, hoping perhaps to reach the lofty heights of "art". Unfortunately, this ambition turns out to be the movie's undoing.

The movie's story is simple but purposefully convoluted. A girl's wicked stepfather sends her to a mental institution, where she will be lobotomized in five days. To escape this horror, she withdraws into a dream world; in this world, she lives as a slave in a high-class brothel. Within this still-nightmarish dream world, she retreats yet further into a series of yet-more-nightmarish worlds, where she learns to fight for her own survival and for the freedom of her friends.

The heart of the movie lies in these "shell" worlds. The "third shell" contains the action set pieces and self-esteem boosters; the "second shell" provides the drama, dialogue, and characters; and the "first shell" provides a shell and framing device for the rest of the movie. Specifically, the ambition of the movie lies in the interaction of the second and third shells, with the use of dream violence in the third world working to impact real events in the first world - basically, an odd combination of Brazil and Shutter Island.

Unfortunately, this just plain doesn't work. The interaction between the second and first layers is grossly underdeveloped - for instance, most of the characters only have dialogue in the second shell! This ruined any potential connection between the first and third layers and, frustratingly, any potential from the overall story. While some exposition at the end of the film tries to paper over this gaping hole, this only draws notice to the flaw.

Still, to be fair, the trailers did not lie. The action scenes in the third shell are plentiful and packed with special-effects; the action itself is well choreographed, within the sensibilities of Zack Snyder; and the stars of the film are scantily-clad females with large guns and swords fighting robotic samurai, zombie Nazis, martial-arts robots, and the occasional dragon. But these action scenes begin and end by roughly explaining the subtext within, making the metaphors as much a part of the action as the special effects themselves. This makes the metaphors as "real" as the special effects, which is rarely a good sign.

I'm not sure what it would have taken to make this into a good movie. It would have taken more than improving any single element of the film; the whole thing was simply under-engineered for the job, from the vision and script to the acting and musical selection. While perhaps it wasn't a total loss - it should at least provide interesting cosplay opportunities for years to come - it was a significant disappointment over already low expectations. Avoid.

Rating: 2/10 (* 1/2 out of 4)

The Green Hornet: 3 (out of 10)

Much as it surprises me to say it, the biggest failing in The Green Hornet is not Seth Rogen. Oh, sure, Rogen doesn't help matters any; not only is he miscast in the role, but his standard on-screen-character is miscast just as badly, and his co-authorship of the script didn't do him any favors. No, the fundamental problem was that the script is too specific in its subject matter: a classic radio serial drama, long-forgotten and remade for a modern comic-book audience after. It turns out that nobody knows how to make such a beast, and what we're left with is a bit of an uneven mess.

One example of this unevenness was the film's treatment of "heroic" violence. Kato is generally unarmed, and the Green Hornet carries a gas gun, ostensibly because such a weapon is non-lethal. But their car (the Black Beauty, as much of a character as the two protagonists), is equipped with machine guns, rocket launchers, and a flame thrower, and the pair uses these weapons indiscriminately. Often this is played as simple "cartoon" violence - the baddies are not even scratched by the rocket fire - but every now and then, somebody is killed messily. But every now and then, the pair of them kill somebody messily - and there's no difference in tone, no acknowledgement of difference on the pair's part. Most worrisomely, this feels both intentional and un-considered, almost accidental. The script is attempting to merge the sensibilities of the serials, the old films, the current comic audiences, and the modern need for pretty special effects; and the combination just d
oesn't work.

The characters are similarly confused. Headlining the film, Seth Rogen's character of Britt Reid plays a wide variety of roles - not just a millionaire playboy by day and a hero by night, but the unfortunate buffoon upstaged by his assistant; a man-child; a loveable buffoon; a moral crusader; and, most irritatingly, a sex-crazed CEO. This might have worked if presented over a number of iterations, but as it stands this confusion just made the character irritating and unlikeable.

The acting itself is, for the most part, uninspired. Christoph Waltz does an acceptable turn as the Big Baddie, but isn't given enough of a character to be anything more than a caricature. Jay Chou shows flashes of depth as Kato, but the script doesn't really allow it to go anywhere. Cameron Diaz is, well, Cameron Diaz. And Rogen, well, I don't generally dislike him as an actor, but I don't feel like I had much of a choice with this character. The only character I can say that I liked was Axford, the editor of the paper, but that's just because he was played by Edward James Olmos and he stayed out of the way.

For all of that, I can't say that I hated the movie. This would have made a good comic; in fact, it felt like the conversion from script to storyboard to screen was extremely solid, showing a pretty decent understanding of the source material at all of its levels. The action scenes were generally fun (if, again, cartoon-y), and might well have been well suited for 3-D. The gadgets were nifty. The story held together acceptably. And there were parts where I laughed, mostly surrounding the actual connection between comic and film.

Maybe it would have helped if the movie had chosen whether it was a comedy or an action movie. Maybe it would have helped if the film had been more focused on a single component of the entire concept of Green Hornet. Or maybe all it would have taken would have been to cast somebody that didn't co-write the movie in the lead role. But whatever it would have taken to make this an acceptable movie, this wasn't it.

Rating: 3/10 (* 3/4 out of 4)

Tron: Legacy: 4 (out of 10)

In short: Tron: Legacy looks and sounds good, but I was not impressed.

I should state up front that I am a huge fan of the original Tron. It's not just that the movie was visually distinctive and imaginative, as most people remember - though believe me, it sure was memorable. No, what I've been impressed with is the quality and quantity of insightful metaphors into the state of computing. The movie and its world were at heart based on the technology of 1982 (specifically the VMS operating system); and while the world of computing has certainly changed dramatically over the last three decades, the influence of those old technologies is still strong. Every time I watch the movie, I see the parallels between the ideas presented and the movie and modern computing technologies and ideas - and that's 28 years later! The plot may have been thin, the characters shallow, and the whole thing may be a half hour too long, but it never ceases to amaze me as the film-makers of my childhood muse on the ideas of modern technology. The metaphors made
the movie.

Given this bias, I must also admit that I didn't exactly come into Tron: Legacy with high hopes. After all, how could a sequel today even try to work with the same material?

Still, there were definitely good parts mixed into the movie. First of all, there's Daft Punk's soundtrack. The original film's score was nearly as iconic as the movie's visuals; the sequel's score is at least as good, remaining faithful to its predecessor while also taking significant advantage of the band's distinct electronic sound (with just a touch of Vangelis for good measure). In retrospect, Daft Punk's entire body of work was leading up to scoring this movie, and they knocked it out of the park. Hiring them was the most brilliantly inspired moment in the film's creation.

The visual effects were also suitably spectacular. I liked the decision to make the Real World mostly 2D and the Grid mostly 3D; the mix came off fairly subtly and actually made the 3D augment the visuals rather than replacing them, most impressively by offering a feeling of semi-transparency to the buildings and vehicles throughout the movie. As the visual design itself - well, yes, they copied that pretty nicely from the first movie, and updated it effectively. The orange-with-some-blue landscapes were always beautiful, and the action scenes within them were clear and spectacular. All-in-all, the VFX were what I was hoping for (though, admittedly, not as far "advanced for their time" as the original Tron's effects were back in its day).

One last truly positive part probably fits into the above category: the Light-Cycle Arena sequence. The scene may not have been all that well integrated into the movie, but it was nevertheless an impressive spectacle. This time, the action was less reminiscent of 'Snake' and 'SNAFU', and more reminiscent of squad-combat version of Mario Kart's Battle Mode. I could watch a whole movie about this Team Light-Cycle Battle, and I certainly hope that another sub-genre gets developed.

So those are the good bits. They were honestly strong enough that the movie would probably be worth watching for those parts alone. But those elements don't exist in a vacuum, and the poor implementation of the rest of the film drags the whole work back down below average.

The number one issue dragging everything else down was the story. To be fair, I think there is a story in there, and a potentially interesting one at that; the problem is in how that story was told. Unfortunately, the story is too complicated for its own good, necessitating far too many expository info-dumps to explain the background, the motivations, and the parties involved. This not only violated the "show, don't tell" principle, but it didn't even convey enough information to understand the issues in depth, and certainly not to care about them.

For example: over the course of the movie we learn a fair amount about the background of Quorra (Olivia Wilde) - her powers, her history, and her relevance to the world. But, oddly, she is not compelling - she's in the way more than anything, and even her acts of badass-ery feel tacked on. There were two problems: we simply don't have enough context to care about that background, and we also don't have any understanding of how her actions and personality compare to other natives of the Grid. All we know is that she's supposed to be important; that's not enough to sustain her character.

My other major gripe is that, well, the metaphors just don't hold up. Sure, the movie was clearly aiming at some metaphors for modern computing - primarily "complex systems evolve in unpredictable ways" - but we are once again told rather than shown, much to the viewer's chagrin. Instead, we're left with standard Hollywood plot stories - there is power in danger in evolution, we choose our own families, you must stand up for what you believe in instead of watching from the sidelines, etc. I can't see anybody being interested in watching this movie in 25 years (5? 1?) to learn anything about their own world. And that's a shame.

And of course there's the standard problem with Hollywood blockbusters: dedication to the short-term demographics, looking at what "tests well" rather than what makes a good movie. For example, the light cycles were simply over-played. The story moves from light-cycles, to a light-SUV with light-missiles, and eventually to to light-fighter jets with light-turrets - and all the while, we didn't explore the updated Recognizers or Tanks at all, let alone the Solar Sailer. This made the "updated technology" feel of the movie seem too narrow to be real or interesting.

(Connected to this, the "super powers" of the Users (humans) seemed to be de-emphasized. Flynn seemed in the first movie to have the equivalent of "super-user" powers on the system - he could fix things that others couldn't fix, influence things that others couldn't influence, and generally was able to "hack" his way through the system where other programs could not. At first, I thought this had just been taken out entirely, or and that Flynn's powers were unique to the Grid of the first movie; but every now and again, there was some indication that the Users still had these powers, usually manifested by changing the background colors around them when they are present. But this was under-played, and didn't affect the plot in a meaningful way; I think I would rather have seen it left out entirely.)

At any rate - this was not a good movie, but nor was it terrible. It did, at least, surpass my expectations; but it was a long way from reaching anything that I was hoping. I'll still see the third movie, when it inevitably comes out, but my hopes have been appropriately calibrated.

If you're on the fence about this movie, go watch the original first (or again). If you're still interested afterwards, go ahead and see this. Otherwise, go see one of the many legitimately good movies currently in theatres.

Rating: 4/10 (** out of 4)

My Theory About The Metaphor

Software is meant to be free, and big corporations that try to sell their software are bad. But when the software is free, it runs roughshod over the world, working as a virus to infect all other programs (especially works more creative than itself), and waiting for its chance to break out into the wider network. And eventually, this freedom will destroy the programmers that built it into the system.

I guess that means that Tron: Legacy is about the GNU Public License.
If so, then yes, that means that Clu represents Richard Stallman.

Side Notes

• So, what could they have done differently with the plot? I see two paths that would have worked: they could have tightened the movie up substantially by cutting out a half hour or so, simplifying the plot and cutting sub-plots in the process, or they could have lengthened it dramatically. The former path would have required them to leave out most of the exposition entirely, and focus on a more concrete series of set-pieces; the latter path would change the story to a mini-series or short series of movies. But in either direction, we would have been offered more depth to the story, instead of a simple story stretched so tight over a basic skeleton.

• I liked that Daft Punk themselves appeared in the movie, working as DJs in the virtual club (chat room?) with Michae
  l Sheen. It still would have been better to drop the scene, mind, but at least there was something to laugh at.

• For being the titular character, we only see Tron in a small handful of scenes, and in almost all of those we don't see his face. A lot of effort was put into de-aging Jeff Bridges; why didn't we do some de-ageing of Bruce Boxleitner?

• Along these lines, the de-ageing effect for Jeff Bridges was, well, "off-putting" is the closest word I can think of. Mind, for much of the movie this was okay; off-putting may well have been the desired effect. But in the early scenes, taking place in 1989, the plastic expressions really detracted from the overall effort, and the clear attempts to film the character from behind was even worse. I don't know that there was a better option yet, but, regardless, effect detracted from the film.

• Why, oh why, was there no Bit? Yes, there were the allusions, but come on, he was fun!

  <
  /li>

• Special recognition for awfulness has to go to !
  Castor, Michael Sheen's character that is most similar to those albinos from The Matrix Reloaded with a little bit of a carnival barker tossed in. The character was terrible, his scenes pointless, and the whole thing added nothing to the movie that couldn't have been accomplished with a line or two of dialogue.

• I don't want to talk about the opening real-world plot. It was just pointless.

• There were some Unix-y bits, and those amused me. Flynn's old workstation is running on an 'i386 sum4m' system running 'SolarOS' - and that's almost plausible. The OS running on his terminal is clearly a Unix derivative, and the commands run on there look almost good. But I don't remember a separate, stand-alone 'history' program separate from the shell... Aah, well. It was at least close.

• Midnight shows are growing less-and-less worth the trouble. It was at least interesting to see that the first movie is stil
  l gaining friends, decades later. Most of that audience hadn't been born when the first movie came out.

Megamind: * 3/4 (out of 4)

It wasn't that long ago that the fight in the animated industry was all about Pixar versus Dreamworks, with competing movies mining the same material from different angles. It started when Pixar put out A Bug's Life, and Dreamworks put out Antz in response. A little while later, Pixar released Finding Nemo; Dreamworks put out Shark Tale. And now, in response to Despicable Me, Dreamworks has released Megamind, the latest tale of super villains gone good...

...no, wait, that's not right, is it? Dreamworks released both of of these films. Err... then what's going on here? Is Dreamworks stealing from itself this time?

Certainly, the two movies are different beasts. Megamind starred comedians Will Farrell and Tina Fey; Despicable Me just starred Steve Carell. See? That's two actors instead of one! And Megamind has two kinds of wacky sidekicks - the brain dogs and the fish guy named Minion - compared to Despicable Me depending only on those yellow minion guys... oh, right, and that backup-mad-scientist guy. Well, at least Megamind has a love interest in Tina Fey! There, that's different!

Of course, there's always the biggest difference: Despicable Me was at least clever and interesting, while Megamind was really pretty boring, bordering on outright bad.

One thing should be made clear right off the bat: the 3D in this movie was bad. I noticed it more for how it got in the way of the action than how it benefited the story; even the "throw things at the viewer" bits were poorly done. The 3D trailers look even worse. We need to stop this 3D onslaught now.

Tina Fey was awful. She seemed both uninterested and uninteresting, both in terms of her character and her voice acting. Jonah Hill was worse. And while David Cross should be beyond reproach, here... well, I didn't really want to believe that he was in the movie. Flat, across the board.

The town of Metro City was remarkably un-fleshed-out. Would it really have been that hard to inject some personality into the town or its inhabitants? This includes Tina Fey's character, as well as the, err, three "civilians" that I remember from the whole movie. (How expensive were voice actors, anyway?).

The music selection was quite strange. We're going to sing "Highway To Hell" and not be able to use the word 'Hell'? Whose bright idea was that? And I guess we're using Michael Jackson songs in movies now? Okay, I guess.

There were some good points mixed into the movie, mind. I did like the few scenes that directly called back to superhero movies of old (read: Superman, especially with the Jor-El references); and the evil-villain set pieces were suitably large and impressive. Farrell and Pitt were perfectly adequate in their roles. The story itself, though over-extended, was fairly interesting and covered ground that was interesting to cover for comic book movies and general. And, all told, Megamind (the character) actually made for an interesting super-villain, with inoffensive quirks and something resembling common sense most of the time.

But, overall... bleah. It's lost nearly a half a star as I've put off writing the review; that's never a good sign. At any rate, I'd recommend avoiding it.

* 3/4

I should note that I attended this movie with my 10-year old cousin, and he loved the movie. So I suppose it's not a complete flop.

Also worthy of note is that the trailers for this movie were far worse than the movie itself. The trailers made the movie look appallingly bad; but most of the traps hinted at in the trailers were avoided handily. Mind, they found different traps instead.

Missed Reviews to Nov 2010

I clearly have fallen behind on writing my movie reviews, compared to what I actually saw over the last few months. Let's at least churn out a few paragraphs.

Get Him To The Greek: * 3/4 (out of 4) (11 Jun 2010)

In a word: boring. I wanted to like this movie, but there was nothing there worth remembering, let alone writing about. This is what slowed me down on writing my reviews, really.

Sex and the City 2: ** 1/4 (out of 4) (16 Jun 2010)

I can't believe this wasn't garbage! Certainly, the rest of the world's reviews were apocalyptic; but I think this was a better movie than the first one, by a fair amount. That doesn't make it a good movie, or anything even nearly on par with the good parts of the show, but it was still fairly fun. At least it felt like the show occasionally, most like that Paris half-a-season.

Toy Story 3: *** 1/2 (out of 4) (19 Jun 2010)

It's still not my favorite Pixar movie; that would be The Incredibles, followed by Wall-E - but it's probably in third place. This movie was heart-warming, timely, and actively scary; I expected the first, but not so much the other two. Seeing it without 3D was kindof silly; seeing it with a whole pile of kids was a great idea.

Predators: ** 1/2 (out of 4) (14 Jul 2010)

I didn't expect to like this movie, but it turned out to be pretty fun. Yes, it's cheesy sci-fi action, with sketchy characters forced to interact and occasionally turning on each other for not-particularly-good reasons; but sometimes that's what you want out of a movie. It felt like a good successor to the original Predator, so I was happy.

Inception: *** 1/4 (out of 4) (23 Jul 2010)

The big non-sequel-but-still-an-"event" movie of the summer held up to its hype quite nicely. The plot was a bit convoluted, but easy to follow and didn't rely on cheats. If the characters were under-explored, they were at lest well-acted. The music did as much towards setting the tension of the movie as the plot itself did. And it was certainly an improvement over The Dark Knight.

Salt: ** (out of 4) (24 Jul 2010)

I'm not sure what I was expecting going into this movie, but I sure didn't find it. Angelina Jolie does a fairly convincing job playing a sleeper agent, but the storyline is convoluted in all of the wrong ways, and doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. I came out of the movie annoyed that I was eventually going to have to see sequels. Not terrible, but not worth the trouble.

The Kids Are All Right: *** 1/4 (out of 4) (22 Aug 2010)

This reminded me of why I like art movies. The acting was wonderful, the story was secondary to the characters and setting, and it did indeed warm my heart (even as it was kindof depressing). I really liked it; my girlfriend loved it; and I look forward to spending more time at the art theatre over the next few weeks, as the good movies start coming out in earnest.

Easy A: ** 3/4 (out of 4) (19 Sep 2010)

I didn't expect much of this movie going in, but it turned out to be a light-but-fun high school comedy that reminded me of Mean Girls more than anything. It also portrayed an overall more-reasonable high school experience than just about anything that's come out over the last few decades - a school with apathetic kids, cliques that are important but not all-powerful, and overall a less intense experience than most movies like to throw out. Also, Emma Stone was wonderful and her parents were better.

Red: ** 1/4 (out of 4) (17 Oct 2010)

And now we're back to a disappointment. It's not that it was a bad movie, overall; it was just kindof shallow, and the end didn't live up to either its opening or premise. Overall, I blame this on one thing: this was supposed to be a Warren Ellis movie, and it started out that way, but it was quickly watered down into something typical and low-key. The story worked well when it was fast-paced, over three issues; but the script would have been better-suited for a 6-8 issue series, and there just wasn't that much material. I'm glad it made money, but I wish it had also been good.

I just reached a point in Fallout: New Vegas where I can no longer continue on the plot. One of the quests didn't complete properly, and so there's nowhere to go... I was at Level 28, and didn't have that much more straight-up advancing to go anyway, so I'm not sure it was a huge loss.

I really did like the game. I'd like it more if it was less buggy, but hey, Fallout 3 was buggy too and I enjoyed that until I stopped!

The Social Network: **** (out of 4)

They had me at 'wget'.

From the time I heard that the movie was in production, my expectations for The Social Network were on the floor. A movie about Facebook? Really? The subject was so inherently flawed, to my mind, that there was essentially nothing that could get through to me and make me interested. Aaron Sorkin dialogue and script? David Fincher directing? Trent Reznor soundtrack? It takes place a few miles down the street? An artsy-and-interesting trailer? Nope; nothing got through. Even when I started hearing good - nay, superlative! - things over the last few weeks, "it's about Facebook" kept me from even wanting to see the movie. And when I decided to see the movie last night, it was with the thought that "I really should see this, if just so I can write the review".

The first few minutes of the movie allowed me to reinforce my prejudices, as I was introduced to an irritating Harvard sophomore - Mark Zuckerberg, played by the guy from Zombieland - being extra-jerky and getting dumped for it. But soon the opening credits started - under-stated, subtle, clearly setting the tone for a movie about that subject near and dear to my heart, academia. And that was followed by some fairly-realistic LiveJournal ranting and the start of a sure-to-be-stupid hacking scene...

...but then Zuckerberg started explaining what he was coding, and where and how he was getting his data. And I was sold, because it made sense, from both a technical and social perspective. The web site he put together was not amazing because it was a technical marvel; it was amazing because it was completely plausible, from the 'wget -r' to get the images to the database work required to put the site together. And as this scene continued, with cuts back to what the rest of the campus was doing, I suddenly that I was watching something amazing: a movie about the idealized college life of my time.

The Social Network is a movie about undergraduate entrepreneurship, with a little bit of technology thrown in for good measure. This is not new to me; I've watched from the side-lines as several of these ventures grew (and some even succeeded), and I even participated in one of those (doomed) ventures. Facebook may have started at Harvard, but it may as well have started from the mind of one of the motivated, genius programmers I knew so well down the hall or across campus at UIUC. And the trick, here and there and everywhere else where this kind of thing comes up, is less the genius itself and more on follow-through (and just a touch of business sense).

I was shocked to see the movie understand this - not just on an academic level, and not just on a personal level, but on every level in between.

From that initial hacking scene, I was sold. I spent the movie looking for the details, because the broad strokes were so strong, and I was generally happy with what I saw - the programming "environments" were good, the commands typed were plausible, the terminal windows showed what they were supposed to show. The classroom environments felt legitimate, as did the corporate offices and the startup work environments. The thrill of fighting with the administration, along with the sense that the administration really just wanted everybody to stay out of their way. The sense of awe from everybody involved when they met the guy with the "successful" startup. The "social strata" feel of the campus. These were all correct, and I loved the movie for that, enough to mostly ignore the few screw-ups left in for dramatic tension (pouring rain in Palo Alto in the summer? Ha!).

Also of note was the simple way that the story was told. The Social Network tells Zuckerberg's story through the lens of a pair of contentious court cases about his company. This view of the story allows the movie to simultaneously be a work of fiction and non-fiction, by removing the "narrator" from the equation and into a theoretically-omniscient-but-not-really category. Through this system, Zuckerberg can be made to look like a horrible person, an anti-social visionary, and a few things in between, all without actually forcing us to believe any of it. Somebody involved believed these things; they may all have elements of truth in them; but they do not necessarily mean that they are true. There is great power in that.

The acting was incredible - seriously, I had no idea that either Eisenberg (as Zuckerberg) was that good of an actor, and I was outright gobsmacked by Timberlake's abilities. The soundtrack was atmopheric. The dialogue was perhaps a bit forced at times, but all towards the wonderful, flowing, vibrant manner that Sorkin is so good at. And the direction was fascinating, with the back-and-forth cuts particularly striking.

I suspect I'm going to be rooting for this movie for Best Picture. I'm curious if I'll see it again, though.

****

Sidenote - the movie said that Zuckerberg was an emacs user. But was that actually emacs that I saw on the screen, or that I saw him typing? I didn't see any 'Ctrl-XXX' character presses, which sound subtly different than regular typing; but I also didn't really see any 'Esc' key pinky extensions, so it's hard to argue that he was actually using vim. But... still. Was that flamewar left in there?

Robin Hood: ** (out of 4)

The most striking part about Robin Hood is that it wasn't actually that bad a movie. The movie was marketed as Gladiator 2: Sherwood Forest; this managed to offend me personally on several levels (I have a deep-seated hatred for the movie Gladiator; long story), and was almost as much of a turn-off for the rest of America - or, at least, those that aren't completely obsessed with Russell Crowe. But, while I'm not sure I can argue that this was any good, I can at least say that at least got an interesting movie this time.

Or at least we got part of an interesting movie.

This most recent version of the Robin Hood story is a "gritty" take on the legend, where a nobleman stands up to King John in defense of the people of Nottingham. It starts with 'Robin Longstride' participating in the siege of a French castle, and ends with Robin setting up shop in Sherwood Forest as an outlaw. (Mind, this was originally envisioned as being told from the perspective of the Sheriff of Nottingham; but I supposed that Crowe didn't want to be thought of as a "villain".) But in between, the story takes some fairly interesting paths, starting with the siege warfare itself, including some fairly plausible court politics, and headlined by the heading-towards-realistic portrayal of the horrible life of medieval peasants.

The acting was pretty good, all-told; Cate Blanchett was the movie's stand-out actor, portraying Maid Marion as a much more active person than the legends have generally offered to date (though I must admit, the riding-into-battle bit was a bit over the top). The action was well-done, well-choreographed, and seemed to be pretty true to the time frame. The soundtrack, the costumes, the casting - all were pretty good, as good as you could expect. All-in-all, I was pretty happy...

..or at least I was pretty fairly happy with the first half or two-thirds of the movie. But that all got ruined by a few obvious problems. Some of them were simply a bit ill-advised - a lot of time was spent setting up the "child's army" around Nottingham, for instance, which was barely utilized. But when it comes down to it, there were two things that dragged the movie down from a "pretty good" movie into "really pretty bad":

1. Everything surrounding the Magna Carta. Yes, the timing works out alright; but Robin Hood should not be associated with the nobility asserting their rights over the King.

2. The final battle and everything associated with it, especially the military tactics. It's bad enough that the French decided to invade at all; it was worse that they chose to land at the cliffs of Dover, and land in World War 2-style personnel deployment vehicles. But, frankly, the English shouldn't have had to even try hard to win that ki
   nd of battle. They had longbows and the high ground! Why would they send any of their troops down to do battle in that kind of situation?

Between those two points, the movie moved from being a fairly interesting, better-than-expected movie into something kindof embarrassing. Ridley Scott may have beaten my expectations, but that doesn't make it a good movie.

**