Movie review: Jupiter Ascending

Every once and a while a film comes along and makes you sit up and say "wow!"  For a lot of people in the 90's, that movie was "The Matrix"  Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the film, but it has never been the be all to end all to me that many people make it out to be.

Since then, I've seen a pretty predictable trend with the Wachowski's:  Their movies are visually interesting and the story somewhat mirror's a Jackson Pollock painting.  Jupiter Ascending is no different.

It should be noted that Jupiter Ascending was originally targeted for a July or August 2014 release and was abruptly pulled three weeks from release. I now know why.  There are a lot of similarities story and thematic wise between JA and Guardians of the Galaxy and GotG is the far superior movie. If I had to guess I think a studio exec got to see Guardians early and realized it would be the blockbuster that it turned out to be and wanted JA to have some chance of making its money back.

I've already posted on Facebook that the story was an unholy mess and I mean it.  It's not that this is a "bad" story but rather one that that clearly had a ton of backstory ripped out in favor of a short running time.  I don't think that's a bad thing either.  But it makes for a linear adventure that really called for a mini-series worth of material wrapped in a movie that was 20 minutes too long.

I personally think the Wachowski's are in the wrong business.  Their world building is interesting enough to fill a larger canvas than the theater screen and combined with their visual sense of style they really would be better off creating a persistent world video game universe that evolved with different episodes or expansions.

With that said, the story was not particularly original.  I saw elements of Flash Gordon, the second Riddick film (reinforced by visuals) Harry Potter, the Incredibles and any number of battle veteran cliché's.

 

So with the story as piecemeal as it was, did the acting hold up? 

Once again, I go back to the Wachowski's and their tendencies.  Look, Keanu Reeves may never win an academy award, but if you've ever seen Sam Raimi's "The Gift" you know he's got more range than the wooden faced emotionlessness of his character in "The Matrix."  And that's been one of my big problems with the Wachowski's direction of actors; every character interacts within the film with a dispassion that borders on emotionally numb.  

Jupiter Ascending is no different. Mila Kunis is playing her role without a sense of wonder or passion that it called for.  Channing Tatum could have been great in this role.  His character is a genetic splicing of human and lupine but damned if I ever saw the wolf in him. As someone who has written a short story in second person about a man turning into a wolf I'm almost ashamed that my story has more passion in the character than what's on the screen from Tatum.  

So you can argue that this is just the choice of actors, but really, every Wachowski film I've seen has the same dispassion from every character which is why I lay the actor's performance not in a limitation in their range but rather the direction they were given.

Another issue I had with the direction is the visuals and the pacing on the film.  This was definitely a "visual overload" film that was broken up almost into the pacing of slow exposition, overwhelming action in a cycle that pushed you into an almost numb state at times.  I didn't see this in 3D and am incredibly happy I didn't as I suspect the extra layer might have been enough for me to leave the theater. 

Now, that's not to say I did not enjoy the visuals.  The CGI was for the most part absolutely stunning and the color pallet that the Wachowski's chose for the film was very appropriate for the film, but there were times as if it felt as if I were watching the Chronicles of Riddick for the artistic choices in the film. 

So was there a standout in the film?  Absolutely, the sound on the film was spectacular.  The audio (ADR) within the film, from the background sounds to the "big battle" sounds all had the appropriate impact.  The score was also grandiose and operatic in places where it needed to convey a grand sense of scale.

With all that said, where do I stand on Jupiter Ascending?  I was certainly entertained for a $5.00 matinee, but really I probably would have been just as happy to wait for cable.

Movie Review - Chastity Bites

In the name of full disclosure, before I get into my review of Chastity Bites, let me first say that I'm a friend of the writer of this movie, Lotti Pharris Knowles and the director is her husband.  

With that in mind I was already pre-disposed to like the film, or, at the very least be willing to forgive a fair amount, if need be.  Fortunately, my willingness to forgive was not needed.

I'll be the first to admit, the horror genre is not my forte.  While I've seen a lot of horror films, they do not call to me.  There's enough screwed up shit in life that pushing your comfort level by scaring yourself is not something that interests me.  

Chastity Bites is billed as a horror comedy, but really falls more into the black comedy basket in my opinion.  Yes, there are horror elements, but it's not meant to scare.  Like the Joss Whedon written Cabin in the Woods, Chastity Bites specifically calls out horror tropes and flips them on their head. 

There have been several black comedies based in a high school setting over the years; the two most notable that I've seen being Heathers from the 80's and Jennifer's Body from 2009.  In many ways, I see Chastity Bites in much closer kinship to Heathers.  Then again, until someone pointed out to me several days after I saw Jennifer's Body that it was supposed to be horror comedy, I thought it was somewhat of a waste of my time.  Once I went back over the movie in my mind with an eye toward horror comedy the movie jumped from a horridly bad movie to one I could kind of get behind.  

But I had to be told it was horror comedy, which is a huge negative.

Chastity Bites makes no pretensions about what you are in store for. The opening scene pulls you both directly into the theme as well as being pretty damn amusing. I'm not one for spoilers but I will say this: there is a death in the opening scene and my wife commented about the character who was killed off that she could have stood maybe a minute more of their sanctimonious speech has they not been killed off.  That they were killed off in mid speech had all three of us laughing, my 19 year old son the loudest.

So, about the plot.  The movie is set in a small conservative Southern California town where it seems one of the few sole voices of liberal dissent is our heroine, Leah (Allison Scagliotti) a writer for the high school newspaper determined to swim against the current of popularity and let you know she's doing it in both in her writing and her sarcastic biting comments. Leah has one true friend, another outlier, Katharine (Francia Raisa), a shy lesbian who is clearly a romantic, but also self-conscious because of her acne, which she covers up with painted flowers on her face.

Enter the evil.  

We are introduced to the villain of the movie at a cocktail party of "concerned" parents who throw out catch phrases from Fox news with a bitterness only matched by some of the single mothers at the party as they examine the relationships of their exes who have left them for younger women.  The lights dim and a gothic opera ensues as Liz Batho (Louise Griffiths) enters the room looking like a regal porcelain doll with a devilish glint in her eye. Liz has come to town to promote her Virginity Action Group that has Chastity Leaders In Training. 

Liz proceeds to recruit the popular girls in school for her "Leaders," the same girls who's single mothers she also entices with her "illegal" beauty product.  Naturally, our heroine is suspicious, especially after Liz enthralls Katharine into the group.  Research ensues and our journalist in training makes the connection that Liz Batho is none other than the real historical figure of Elizabeth Bathory, the "Countess of Blood," a Hungarian serial killer from the 1600's who believed she would remain young by bathing in the blood of virgins.

You can guess where the plot is going to take you next.

The funny thing is, despite some of the beat-you-in-the-head-with-a-lemon-wrapped-around-a-large-gold-brick humor such as the obvious acronyms and some of the horror movie trope characters Chastity Bites has a lot of subtlety, especially with its social commentary.  I was actually left thinking about several of the themes of the movie well after it was over.  And it's in some of these themes that the real horror of the movie comes from.

First and foremost this movie really is about America's obsession with physical beauty and the lengths some people will go to obtain it.  A second, more subtle theme explores how people can be manipulated, especially by those with a stronger mind (in the movie's case there is some supernatural help).  There is also an undercurrent of longing throughout the movie that motivates several of the characters.  Finally there is the theme of alienation and what people will deny themselves because they see themselves as outliers in society and don't deserve to fit in.  

Of course I could be full of shit here, having taken one too many film study courses in college, and Lotti, when she reads this review, will be laughing her ass off.

Let's jump to the characters both from an acting standpoint as well as writing.

Lotti not only creates believable characters that say things you might expect to come from teenagers and adults, that are full of current social relevance, but their actions are also ones I've seen in the course of my own children's teenage years and the other young adults they interacted with.  While I found the single mothers to be fairly one dimensional, that was intentional as a plot device.  

As a villain, Liz was well handled. Her motive is unfolded at a good pace and you can tell after centuries that she's got some world class manipulation skills even without supernatural help.  While she is a person of what America places as stunning physical beauty, you can tell there is a lot of ugly roiling beneath the surface and it comes out.

Leah's character is an interesting study.  She's strong willed and deliberately places herself outside of society in such a manner that she is an unlikely hero.  But she is a hero nonetheless because her best friend is in danger and she will move heaven and earth to fight for the people she knows as family.

Katharine's character is another standout.  She's a lesbian and has fully realized it, something that is difficult at most times, especially so in high school.  She endures her share of grief for her sexual orientation, but because of the self-consciousness her acne has brought upon her, I don’t think she's yet fully realized she's beautiful in her own right. While it was necessary for her character, I would have loved to have seen some seriously snappy comebacks at the sniping the popular girls dish out to her at the beginning of the movie.

The final character that really shone is Amy Okuda's portrayal of Ashley, the head of the popular girls.  Like the other strong willed characters in the movie, she rules with a force of conviction that overruns (for the most part) the other young women in her clique.  She's on her way to being another world class manipulator out of her intelligence on which way the waters are flowing.

You might notice I've said little about the men in the cast or as they pertain to the plot.

There's a reason for this.  As she's done with many of the horror tropes, Lotti turns them upside down and the males in the cast are there for plot devices.  Even Leah's romantic interest, Paul, another outlier, is left without a lot of depth and, I suspect, deliberately so.  This movie is ultimately a battle between two strong women and, like other horror movies, the opposite sex are casual throwaways.

So, is the movie perfect?

No, but there is nothing that screamed out for condemnation, though I will point out some of my sore spots.  

The direction is handled well, though there where a few quibbles I had with lighting in a night scene and there were aspects of the final battle action that felt a little unpolished, more so than intended.

The makeup effects of the film are very good, especially in some transformative scenes, but I did take issue with the lack of arterial spray in the ritualized neck cutting scenes (only one actually had some spray,) which was especially noticeable in a flashback scene where there is plenty of spray evidence from previous rituals on the walls, but not in the actual action that takes place.

There is a trope in the writing that I felt could have been handled better; a "big reveal" that didn’t have as much impact as it could have and sort of came out of left field, though it was seeded earlier in the film. 

But these are nitpicks rather than complete detriments. 

Overall I enjoyed Chastity Bites and have re-watched twice it since my first viewing.

Movie Review - Pacific Rim

Every now and again, a movie comes along that has "truth in advertising."  A lot of action movies are this way: What you see in the trailer is what you get. 

Pacific Rim is one of those movies.

I'll be the first to admit, much as I had trepidation over Cloverfield, Pacific Rim was another movie that I saw the trailers and thought "this is either going to be great or really suck."

I know some of my concerns had to do with having high hopes for the Joe Haldeman (one of my favorite authors) written and Stuart Gordon (ReAnimator, From Beyond) directed "Robot Jox" from 1990.  While the movie is not hideous, it never lived up to the movie I felt it could be.  If you haven't seen it, it is Cold War politics meets the Transformers with stop motion animation.  As the movie has aged it has become an interesting social commentary on both the cold war as well as the action movie "apprentice" sub-genre and the "style over substance" that heavily influenced the cyberpunk movement.

I've read a lot of reviews of Pacific Rim after seeing the film and many of them tend to be along the lines of "this is either the greatest shitty movie ever made or the shittiest great movie ever made."

For me, I enjoyed the film thoroughly.

With a lot of action films the biggest issue is pacing.  Either the director goes all in and you're subjected to a constant barrage of fights, chases and explosions all wrapped around a thin shell of story, or you're given an earnest attempt at a plot that just so happens to have a lot of action interspersed.  

The problem with the first type of film is any break in the action tends to throw the user out of their suspension of disbelief and they really start to question why they are watching this.  For those in this category you come across a problem with fatigue brought on by sensory overstimulation.  The second can work but it's a careful balance that most directors/editors get wrong and once again I, as the viewer, am left, usually after an over the top action scene looking around the theater/room as suspension of disbelief is lost.

Pacific Rim is one of the most perfectly paced films that I've seen.  

Guillermo Del Toro made a movie that made visual sense, had exposition that moved fast enough, especially after actions sequences that, as a viewer, I never lost the flow of the movie.

Speaking of visual, there are many reason I never watch the Academy Awards, and this year is no different.  I get it, awards ceremonies are political popularity contests.  However, as with Cloverfield and sound editing, that Pacific Rim was not nominated for any of the visual/technical awards is just insulting.  With most CG heavy movies the user is left with scenes that don't make visual sense or have such glaring spots where you are thrown out of the suspension of disbelief because the CG is just so unrealistic.

Pacific Rim balanced computer generated effects with practical beautifully.  This is a visually stunning movie, but the CG is so seamless that I never once stopped to think "hey this is CG."  Both the robots (Jaeger) and the monsters (Kaiju) where rendered with such care and precision that when they are fighting or moving toward a fight I never once considered this was CG.  Del Toro made some very smart choices to keep the movie visually dark; most of the battle scenes take place at night, but even when there are daylight shots the CG is not apparent.  

As this movie drew closer to release I did start watching the "making of" featurettes which Del Toro released.  To me one of the greatest achievements of this film is the practical effects.  The inside of the Jaegers are, for the most part practical.  They built multi-ton hydraulic platforms that the actors interacted with, including moving the arm and leg armatures.  It has always been a pet peeve of mine that both movies and TV shows seem to get very lazy, especially with coffee cups and don't fill them with liquid.  It is flat out obvious that there is no weight to these items and the actors aren't moving a muscle.  Not so with Pacific Rim.  You can tell the actors were seriously working out when inside the Jaegers. 

The sets on this film are also incredibly well done. From the wall in Alaska, to the Shatterdome where the Jaegers are housed to the downtown Hong Kong scenes everything makes visual sense.  Plus, as a cyberpunk writer/fan, I enjoyed the visual nod to Blade Runner in the Hong Kong scenes.  Granted, since I've never been to Hong Kong it's possible that is what it looks like, but since I have no experience, I'm going with an homage to Blade Runner.

So, is the movie perfect? 

No.

I had some nitpicks with both the casting of the movie as well as the acting. 

The main casting issue I had was the hero and his foil.  It's a time honored tradition, especially in action films with a war theme to have two strong male characters that butt heads.  And Pacific Rim is no different.  The issue I have is that the actors they cast where too physically similar so when they do get in a scuffle you lose their identity.

But maybe that was the point.  There is a lot of subtlety to this movie so it's possible that he was making a "two sides of the same coin" type of statement. 

A secondary casting problem I had was Charlie Day.  And this is personal.  I just don't like him as an actor and I know it is mostly his vocal inflections that grate against something within my head.  From an acting perspective his character was delivered very well, but when he opens his mouth I just want him to close it.

As I mentioned, my other issue was the acting and this could, once again, be a statement by Del Toro that just didn't resonate with me at times. 

Pacific Rim makes no bones that it is a movie of cinematic iconography.  The problem is that some of the actors delivered their iconic lines with Shakespearian fury while others, especially the foil seemed to think that these lines where to be delivered a la Sylvester Stallone.  It's a small criticism since the pacing of the movie generally pushed past some of the awkward acting moments such that it wasn't until after the film was over that I started to dissect the performances.

Finally I'd like to touch back on something I alluded to earlier, the subtlety of the film. 

While the movie is a grandiose spectacular, there are a lot of small touches that really enhance the film either in the immediacy or in thinking about it later.  The obvious homage is the pinup decal on Gipsy Danger, a nod to US bomber sin WW2. I noticed some of the color usage myself, but it really resonated with my wife.  If you want to read a great detailed analysis of it, please check out this link which is much more eloquent on the subject than I could ever be: http://stormingtheivorytower.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-visual-intelligence-of-pacific-rim.html

Overall I loved Pacific Rim and on subsequent viewings of it I keep picking out little details I missed in previous sittings.

Star Wars

Once upon a time, the man ripped off a classic samurai film and thus created an Empire. Ever since then, he's been under the delusion that his vision is paramount and that no ones opinion but his own matters.

My understanding is he rejected Frank Darabont's Indy 4 script because it wasn't the movie he wanted to make. One problem, George; you're not making it, Spielberg is.

As for miticlorians, I'm honestly not sure where he got the beta version of Crack 2.0, but somehow he didn't read the Terms of Service which says it might be buggy.

In either case, while I admire the original Star Wars trilogy, and while I appreciate some of the additions he did to them when he released the special editions, I think he needs to understand that the same people that lined up for weeks to see the Phantom Menace are the ones clamoring to not see the movies he wanted to make bit was limited by technology. These are the people who want to recapture the feelings they had when they first waited hours in line for a movie that had been out more than 52 weeks (remember when they used to announce "now in it's xx week" in the newspaper ads for films?) not only because it helps them recapture their youth, but more importantly, it helps them recapture the sense of Wonder they had when first watching them.

The comparison was made to Casablanca and how would I feel if Rick goes back for the girl. The answer is that's a different movie than Casablanca. Greedo firing first, a CGI Jabba in the bay where the Falcon is docked, those change the movie as well. Does it make it a better movie? Maybe, but it's not the movie I waited two hours in the Alaska winter to see.

George argues that technology has changed and he wants to update the movies to the vision he had. Good for him. But enhancing the death start going foom is one thing, additions actually detract from the original feeling of the movie. For me, it would be like how would I feel if the updated "mother" in Alien to have a GUI interface and given her the voice of Meryl Streep. Well that's fine and good (not really) but you've just changed the movie.

I guess what it really comes down to is, With the Blu-Ray release George is trying to push the SE editions as if they were Coke Classic. We all known they are different, and we choke it down, but in our hearts we remember how the originals were and we know we're being duped.

Movie Review - The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I will be the first to admit, I love movies, especially ones that tell a good story that I can identify with some part of the narrative or one of characters.  Once in a great while you run across a movie that you really connect with on multiple levels and that is something special. For me, "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" was one of those films.

I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on how it compares, but, given that the author of the book both wrote the screenplay and directed the movie, I imagine that it's as faithful as an adaption can be.

The basic premise of the story is "alienated teen starts high school and finds their niche".  Most films that start with this premise quickly devolve into comedy with some serious overtones. This movie is a serious drama with well-timed comedic moments.

So why did this movie touch me so deeply?

In many ways, I was the protagonist of this film. While I had my own underlying issues that differ from Charlie, my story was not that different.  I started high school very much alone and was lucky enough to find a group of friends, much like Charlie does.  Friends that, to this day, I can arrange to meet, even after not seeing them for twenty plus years and it's as if there is no gap in time. Friends that I can open up to completely without fear of repercussion.  Friends who will not judge me for past transgressions, but for who I am today.

As someone who had to start over in high school, I can completely relate to Charlie.

 

It doesn't hurt that the group of friends he connects with are not dissimilar to the group of friends I connected with.  Nor does the fact that the movie takes place very close to the time I went to high school (a few years after).  I do question the group's commitment to music if they didn't recognize David Bowie's "Heroes," but that's my own viewer 50% kicking in.

 

The story has a lot of depth, character growth and some undertones that are not happy.  But that's high school.  I won't go into details of the story for a few reasons:

1. Spoilers are bad. 
2. As I said, there is a lot going on in this film, and talking about parts of it I believe would lessen the impact of the movie.
3. From my perspective, character driven dramas, especially good ones, draw the viewer in.  This did this very effectively for me and even revealing details about the characters feels like I'd be ruining the experience.

From a narrative standpoint, the movie unfolds very well.  There are some flashback scenes that normally pull me, as a viewer, out of a movie.  In this movie they were both unobtrusive and critical to the story.

The cinematography on this film is critical.  As much as I love "The Breakfast Club," for what becomes an intimate story, the actual technical filming of the movie felt like it distanced you from the characters.  Not so with "Perks."  The filming of the movie is done in an intimate fashion that makes you feel like you're part of the group and not an outsider looking in.

Where the movie really shines is the acting. As both the writer of the novel and director of the film, clearly Stephen Chbosky had control over who would play these characters who were so close to him.  And he chose well.  Logan Lerman, who plays Charlie was perfectly cast.  He has the acting range to pull off the depths in his character.  Emma Watson, as Sam, shows she can act (sorry Potter fans, but Hermione had very few character moments that stretched Emma Watson as an actress,) and act damn well.  Ezra Miller, who plays Patrick, Sam's stepbrother plays his part to perfection as well.

Though this is a movie focused on teenagers, it would not work without the adults in the film.  Dylan McDermott and Kate Walsh play small but very impactful roles as Charlie's parents and they do it in such a manner that I never doubted either their characters or their actions in any way.  Paul Rudd is his usual charming self in a pivotal role as a teacher at the high school.

I have to assume that much of the acting props really have to go to Stephen Chobsky.  This is his work of love and he has the talent as a director to make this come to life in the way he wanted.

Finally, I have to give a shout out to the music.  

As I mentioned, I went to high school a few years before this movie came out and music was a big part of my life.  The soundtrack to this movie is, in many ways, the soundtrack to my high school years and was just another level on which I connected to this film.

Not only was I entertained by "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," it's a movie I can and will re-watch many times.