45 Years (2015)

20 Wednesday Dec 2017

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A tree that grows as decades fly
Has proved its will to live.
And most may think a tree so high
Will yield all it can give.

Indeed it may, as many do,
Its strength confirmed by age,
But age can also rot it through,
A cancer hard to gauge.

We cannot know its fortitude
Until the tempest blows,
And if its weakened roots protrude,
Then everybody knows.
_______________

MPAA rating: R (for language and a bedroom scene)

I can usually admire what I call Triple A movies, those that are All About the Acting, but even the best actors need a worthwhile story to tell. I had hoped 45 Years would have the right combination, but not so. This golden-years pairing of Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling has a pretty simple concept and doesn’t expand too much on it, filling the performances with subtlety but leaving the plot an unsatisfying bore.

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Norfolk retirees Kate (Rampling) and Geoff Mercer (Courtenay) are approaching their 45th anniversary, only to have their bucolic married bliss disturbed by a letter informing Geoff that the body of his former sweetheart in the ‘60s has been found frozen in a Swiss glacier. Geoff had told Kate about how he had lost his girlfriend Katya in an accident, so this isn’t too much of a surprise, but the flood of memories from this news overcomes Geoff and makes him obsess over his days with Katya. This sets off a chain of false fronts and hidden distress as Geoff says he’s all right but won’t let Katya and Switzerland go, while Kate insists it doesn’t bother her even though she’s clearly troubled.

The two stars carry off this slow escalation of emotion with expert nuance, and I can see why they were both nominated for several awards, with Rampling winning far more than Courtenay. Yet, as Kate’s irritation comes to a head, her deep-seated insecurity seems rather overblown considering that the whole film takes place over the course of a single week. If Geoff were to continue his preoccupation with Katya for weeks or months, I could better understand Kate’s objections, but shouldn’t she give him a chance to grieve when his buried sorrow is unearthed? I realize she loses some trust at his half-truths, but she takes it all much too personally. I mean, does she really expect to lose her husband of 45 years to a dead woman? By the end, it doesn’t matter how sincere Geoff’s professions of love seem; she’s let her unquieted doubts ruin her 45th anniversary, probably for nothing.

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Perhaps that’s the point (or should be) of this well-made and melancholy film, the danger of letting little troubles eat away at your inner peace, as when Kate sloughs off a potential source of agitation but adds on the word “Still….” That’s a worthwhile moral, but the film doesn’t pull it off as well as it could have. Looking back at it, the news Geoff got was only a big deal because their lives were so boring and uneventful. With 97% approval, Rotten Tomatoes describes 45 Years as a gem “for fans of adult cinema,” so perhaps I’m not adult enough to overlook the flimsy reason for this story to even be worth telling.

Best line: (Geoff) “What? You really believe you haven’t been enough for me?”   (Kate) “No. I think I was enough for you, I’m just not sure you do.”

 

Rank:  Dishonorable Mention

 

© 2017 S.G. Liput
520 Followers and Counting

 

Creed (2015)

19 Tuesday Dec 2017

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When all the world is calling you
A mere mistake, appalling you
And casting cruel and galling new
Abuse upon your back,

Perhaps you want to rage and hit
Or simply disengage and quit
Or seek out wars to wage a bit
Till no one’s left to smack,

But if you see through all the slights
And find the wherewithal that writes
A bigger man for taller fights,
You’ll scoff at their attack.
________________

MPAA rating: PG-13

The Rocky franchise has certainly had its ups and downs over the years, and despite some positive aspects, 2006’s Rocky Balboa was a downer for me, which is why it took me this long to give its 2015 follow-up Creed a chance. Here, Sylvester Stallone’s iconic character is now a secondary player in the story of Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan), the illegitimate son of his old friend and rival Apollo. Adonis chooses the family business of boxing, much to the chagrin of his adopted mother/Apollo’s wife (Phylicia Rashad), and Rocky grudgingly becomes the trainer of this hotheaded rising star as he seeks to make a name for himself separate from that of his famous father.

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I’ll say up front that Creed is probably the best directed of all the Rocky movies, with Ryan Coogler proving himself as a highly proficient talent behind the camera, giving me high expectations for the upcoming Black Panther. He changes the aesthetic of the series a bit to reflect his black protagonist, but also adds impressive tracking shots and an elegance to the camera movements and shot composition, which I suppose are also credited to cinematographer Maryse Alberti. The actual boxing scenes are just a fraction of the film’s rather long runtime, but they pack a “punch.” I’d say they’re some of the finest boxing scenes on film, particularly Adonis’s first official fight, which is marvelously captured as one continuous shot from start to finish.

Likewise, the performances measure up to the production quality, with Jordan and Stallone making the most of their conflicted characters. Jordan isn’t as luggishly lovable as Stallone was in his first outing, but his connection with the Italian Stallion, whom he fittingly calls “Unc,” is still engaging, as is his journey of finding a balance between distancing himself from and embracing the name of the father he never knew. Oscar-nominated again, Stallone steps easily into the trainer role Burgess Meredith played so well in the original, amusingly old-fashioned in the modern world but preserving some of the classic training methods that served him well. The script’s best parallel between the two comes when Rocky’s health takes an inevitable downturn, and Adonis encourages Rock to fight just like the young boxer he’s training. Because of that theme and despite Rocky’s being older and wearier here than in Rocky Balboa, Creed manages to be somehow far less depressing than that movie.

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(I don’t know if it’s worth a spoiler warning for films that came out thirty-plus years ago, but spoilers in this paragraph.) The Rocky sequels can easily be accused of just killing off characters for the sake of some drama, starting with Mickey in Rocky III and followed by Apollo in Rocky IV, but Creed successfully deepens the tragedy of Apollo’s death in the fourth film. It meant he wasn’t there for his kids and that, even if he died a legend, he could have lived as a father. His shadow hangs over Adonis’s budding career, and the way it shapes him in the end makes for an inspiring conclusion to rival any of the previous Rocky films.

All that said, Creed doesn’t measure up in one big way, the music. For a series that gave us iconic montages to outstanding theme songs like “Eye of the Tiger” and “No Easy Way Out,” there’s nothing even remotely that good in the musical department. Adonis’s girlfriend (Tessa Thompson from Thor: Ragnarok) is even a musician, but the hip hop and rap are pale modern shadows of those good ole ‘80s tunes.

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Thus, Creed isn’t my favorite of the Rocky series, but its superior quality tells me it should be high. Despite some differences in tone and style, it has all the familiar underdog elements of a Rocky movie and even ends pretty comparably to the first. You know what? I’m done trying to separate these in my Top 365 List, which I usually only do for series where the quality varies widely between installments. Rocky IV may not be on the same technical level as this or the Oscar-winning original, but I still enjoy it. Therefore, I’m just going to group Creed with the other “good” Rocky movies, which I consider to be Rocky through Rocky IV. Creed succeeds where Rocky V and Rocky Balboa failed, and I personally hope the saga ends here. Stallone had planned to direct another sequel, but after his being caught up in the recent Hollywood accusation scandals, that may not happen, which I think is for the best. Leave both the new and the old Rocky on a high note.

Best line: (Rocky, pointing to Adonis’s reflection in the mirror) “That’s the toughest opponent you’re ever going to have to face.”

 

Rank: List-Worthy

 

© 2017 S.G. Liput
520 Followers and Counting

 

The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (2010)

18 Monday Dec 2017

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The world can vex,
Annoy, perplex,
Explicitly and in subtext,
Till one objects
“Life’s too complex!
Just pain in our collective necks.”

Yet when life’s skewed
And comes unglued
And changes unforeseen intrude,
One’s sour mood
And attitude
Can be renewed by gratitude.
___________________

MPAA rating: Not Rated (should be PG-13)

Setting aside the multitude of stand-alone anime films, like those from Studio Ghibli, there are just as many movies based on anime series, which tend to fall into certain categories. There are those that essentially provide a recap for the series, such as the first two films based on Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Then there are those that tie into a series but can stand apart and be enjoyed with or without prior knowledge of the franchise, such as Cowboy Bebop: The Movie. But more often than not, a film designed to follow up the events of a TV series relies on previous knowledge of said series, which is hard to get just right. Sometimes it’s difficult to capture the same magic the show had or the spin-off just falls flat; as much as I loved the time travel story of Steins;Gate, for example, its reasonably good film continuation didn’t feel necessary. (By the way, I highly recommend all these shows I’m namedropping.) Yet if any movie proves that it’s possible to revive a series and deepen everything that came before, it’s The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.

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For those who don’t know, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is a 2006 anime adaptation of a light novel series, which quickly grew in popularity, and its title character is one of the more recognizable anime icons. The main character, though, is Kyon (in the middle above), a high school student who falls into the orbit of the lovely, pushy, and highly capricious Haruhi (with the headband), involuntarily becoming a member of her new fun-seeking club dubbed the SOS Brigade. The other three club members Haruhi recruits turn out to be less-than-normal students and inform Kyon that Haruhi has godlike powers to reshape reality, which she doesn’t and mustn’t know about. Thus, the 2-season series follows their everyday adventures with the robot-like alien observer Yuki Nagato (the girl with purple hair), the time-traveling pushover Mikuru Asahina (girl with orange hair), and the good-natured but mysterious esper/psychic and king of exposition Itsuki Koizumi (the boy on the far left).

All of that information is much easier to digest in the series, which is light-hearted and charming for the most part. Haruhi tends to be obnoxiously bossy, such as exploiting poor Miss Asahina for sex appeal, but her craziness is nicely contrasted by Kyon’s straight man, who always complains and offers some perfectly amusing deadpan commentary. It’s a series that periodically incorporates science fiction into its prosaic high school setting and can be both fantastically complex and aggressively mundane, such as one episode with a four-minute stretch of nothing but Nagato silently reading or the infamous Endless Eight, in which eight consecutive episodes replayed the same events because the characters were stuck in a time loop. (The show gets a lot of heat and accusations of laziness for the Endless Eight, but it’s actually pretty impressive that the animators found eight different ways to present the same events and redrew each one.)

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If you’re not sure if all this sounds worth watching, it is, and not just because there’s a murder mystery and a talking cat and a giant alien cricket. It’s not because Melancholy itself is particularly amazing or great, though it is pretty entertaining. It’s because the show allows you to fully enjoy The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, the 2010 movie that supposedly drew plot from season 2 and forced the showrunners to fill time with the Endless Eight. It’s quite a feat that the movie makes the show worth watching, rather than the other way around. I honestly can’t think of another series-based movie that can say the same.

I’ve heard all kinds of praise for Disappearance, with fans naming it their favorite anime movie or claiming it ought to place in iMDB’s Top 250 (it’s currently #42 on iMDB’s animation list). And now that I’ve seen it, I can’t say I disagree. It’s an outstanding piece of animation that surpassed my expectations in every way. As the title indicates, Haruhi suddenly vanishes on December 18 (yes, I waited till today to post this review), the world apparently rewritten so that no one remembers her, except for Kyon, who is understandably perplexed at this inexplicable change. All the supernatural characters seem to be ordinary people now, and Kyon must figure out how to return the world to “normal” and perhaps even question which world is better.

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One of the more notable aspects of Disappearance is that it’s 163 minutes long, making it the second longest animated film of all time. It’s basically the equivalent of eight episodes of the series, yet despite its length, I was never bored. It’s hard to explain how unusual that is because the film is by no means action-packed. In contrast to the humor of the series, its tone is slow, serious, and melancholy. Unlike most anime films, there are no sweeping vistas or high-flying adventure; instead, it’s mostly winter cityscapes and interior scenes. How is it then that it held my attention from start to finish?

Well, aside from the fact that I’ve grown very fond of these characters, the plot manages to maintain interest in both the story and characters with some truly incredible pacing. Even with such a long runtime, there’s a lot of plot to cover, and the increased time allows characters’ motivations and the significance of their actions to sink in and add so much to their development. I don’t usually like to watch long movies, but this is one case where its length is carried largely by narrative and dialogue alone, and I’m glad nothing was cut, though I suppose Kyon’s awkward disorientation over his changed life could have been shortened.

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Whenever the pace threatens to lag, something significant is revealed and the moving orchestral score kicks in, making for some memorable scenes that feel like momentous turning points (the kind of scenes that would probably end an episode if this were broken up as part of the series). For example, the reappearance of one murderous character who should be dead is filled with the same looming menace as the coming of Jaws. In addition, despite the restraint compared with more fantastical anime, the animation is exceptional and quite detailed, with special attention paid to very expressive faces and the clouds of smoke that are breathed out in the cold Christmastime weather.

As much as I wish I could say to everyone “go watch this movie” with no strings attached, I must admit that the series is a prerequisite for understanding who everyone is. Even though seventeen minutes are spent establishing the status quo before Haruhi’s disappearance, almost every episode of the show is referenced at some point, which is great for those who’ve seen it, less so for those who haven’t. To cut some corners, I’d say you’d only really have to watch the first six episodes of season 1, the first episode of season 2, and the last entry in the Endless Eight. The rest aren’t as necessary, though you may not understand little things like Kyon trying to talk to a cat. I especially loved when time travel entered the equation of the film, and we got to revisit past scenes with a Back to the Future-style altered perspective, again something new viewers could just roll with but nostalgic viewers will understand better.

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Despite its potentially burdensome length, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya is a brilliant conclusion to a good series, transforming the show’s bright charm into subtle emotion and atmosphere. Hyperactive Haruhi herself can be irritating in large doses, so her absence for part of the film actually helps it and allows for some strong development for Kyon and especially Nagato, whose typically robotic face and voice finally get to reveal emotion in this alternate world. I also must point out, as others have before, that the English dub is one of the best out there. As the most significant voice actor, Crispin Freeman as Kyon provides some extensive and superb dialogue, such as an 8-minute soliloquy justifying a fateful decision, one which manages to engender both sympathy for him and regret for how it impacts another character. I’ve seen people refer to this speech as one of the greatest interior monologues of all time and with good reason, as it’s a key validation of his character.

I can usually tell how I feel about an animated film by whether I want to immediately watch it again after it’s over, and yes, all 163 minutes of Disappearance did just that. No, it’s not my new favorite anime film, but to those hesitant to watch a series just to see an overlong movie, I’ll just say you’re missing out.

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Best line: (Haruhi, to Kyon about Christmas) “You have to believe in a dream if you want to have one in the first place. If you don’t believe, even the dreams that can come true won’t.”

 

Rank: List-worthy

 

© 2017 S.G. Liput
519 Followers and Counting

 

 

Congo (1995)

16 Saturday Dec 2017

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The boldest and most daring men
Have braved the jungle’s many threats:
Conquerors with no regrets,
Explorers seeking new assets,
Missionaries and cadets,
Who often stormed the devil’s den
And rarely came back out again.
Ha! What chance do you have then?
__________________

MPAA rating: PG-13

Sometimes you can just tell how hard a film is trying to be good, desperately striving to exceed its own mediocrity, and usually it doesn’t get there. I wouldn’t say Congo does either, but it sort of works its way around to so-bad-it’s-good status, which is more than some movies can say.

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As an adaptation of a Michael Crichton novel, I admire what Congo tries to be, an adventure story in the classic mold of King Solomon’s Mines or the Indiana Jones movies.  A research team for communications corporation Travicom goes missing in the jungles of Africa, and a collection of colorful characters converge to investigate the dangerous area for different reasons. Laura Linney’s Karen goes in search of the team; Tim Curry’s brilliantly smarmy Herkermer Homolka has shady designs on an ancient diamond legend; and Dylan Walsh’s Dr. Peter Elliot wants to return to the wild a gorilla he taught to speak with sign language and a robotic translator. Best of all is Ernie Hudson as their mercenary guide, whose cultured expertise proves invaluable, giving Hudson a role he clearly enjoyed.

There’s some great potential for this adventure as the team deal with unfriendly militias and a mystery jungle creature. To be honest, recalling it so soon after Kong: Skull Island, I couldn’t help but see a few similarities as the unsuspecting explorers are picked off in the jungle, though the killers are far smaller here. One scene with automatic sentry guns also brought to mind Aliens and Predator as the trespassers are besieged by simian beasts. By the time we get a lost city, a random volcano explosion, and an anti-ape laser, it’s obvious that this is more escapist silliness than anything.See the source imageWhile its adventure elements keep trying to spice up the absurd clichés, the growing daftness of the plot is hard to escape. It wouldn’t be so bad if one of the key characters wasn’t an animatronic gorilla with a hand-controlled robotic voice. I can’t say no movie can get away with signing apes since Rise of the Planet of the Apes did, but at least Caesar didn’t have a computerized translator. The rest almost works, but it’s hard to get past the talking, martini-drinking gorilla. Thus, despite its multiple Razzie nominations, Congo may not be an objectively “good” movie, but it’s not altogether bad either. Roger Ebert liked it; it’s a favorite of one of my coworkers; and I too found its cheesiness strangely watchable and entertaining.

Best line (or at least the most ridiculous): (Dr. Elliot) “Oh, no! The bad apes have the crystal lasers!”

 

Rank: Honorable Mention

 

© 2017 S.G. Liput
519 Followers and Counting

 

 

Déjà Vu (2006)

15 Friday Dec 2017

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It’s hard to run from déjà vu.
It always straggles up on you,
And when you least expect to feel
This creeping sense of the surreal,
It seems you’ve done this all before,
Now back for some half-known encore.

You tell yourself it’s nothing, but
Deep down you have to wonder what
This inkling is: mere happenstance
Or time’s stab at a second chance?
It’s hard to run from déjà vu.
Didn’t I just say that too?
_______________________

MPAA rating: PG-13

Now that I’m finally done with this semester’s finals, I can now get back into review mode. Last year, I did a review a day throughout December, and while that may not be feasible, I’m planning to post a little more often through the end of the year.

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I guess all I need to do to discover a new favorite is to find a sci-fi movie that received middling reviews, and chances are that I’ll enjoy it far more than the critics did. I’ve noticed that trend with the likes of Surrogates, In Time, and Cloud Atlas, and now Déjà Vu joins the list. I’ve always been partial to time travel stories, and this one played to everything I love about the genre—intricate plotting, cool gadgetry, twists both expected and unexpected—making me wonder why the critics found it so lackluster.

Denzel Washington is good as always as ATF agent Douglas Carlin (pronounced car-LIN), who proves his experience and investigative talent after a crowded New Orleans ferry is destroyed by a terrorist’s bomb. Recruited by an FBI agent (Val Kilmer), Carlin is pulled into a secret government program with access to a temporal window into the past, allowing investigators a comprehensive look at the scene four days prior. However, time flows at the same speed through this window, so they have one go-round to figure out the bomber’s identity and his connection to a separate murder victim (Paula Patton). But let’s just say things are less than transparent, and there’s more to this technology than meets the eye, as Carlin discovers firsthand.

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I wasn’t sure how much I’d like Déjà Vu based on Tony Scott’s directing style: bright, kinetic, and reminiscent of his later film Unstoppable, though with less zooming of the camera. Yet it kind of works in the film’s favor, particularly for the time window that allows the FBI to buzz around from any angle in the past. The fast pacing also adds to the thrill of the action scenes, like a just plain cool car chase in which Carlin pursues the killer (Jim Caviezel) in the past, trying to drive through past and present-day traffic.  There’s plenty of technobabble from the FBI scientists, including that pencil-through-paper wormhole explanation also used in Event Horizon and Interstellar, but Carlin’s grounded approach keeps the device’s practical uses from getting too confusing.

Time travel movies are often judged on how well they avoid the pitfalls of the genre.  Plot holes can often spoil such films for some people, from Kate and Leopold to The Lake House to About Time (though I still loved that one), while careful attention to the paradoxes involved can elevate a story to classic status. Déjà Vu falls somewhere in between. I believe it does follow the proper mechanics of time travel but simply doesn’t explain it as clearly as it could, mainly at the end. There’s a lot of careful setup, as when Carlin investigates crime scenes only for us to later see how everything got that way, and watching such attention to continuity always gives me an odd satisfaction as the full story is revealed. One idea mentioned is parallel timelines being created by significant enough changes to the past, a concept that reminded me a lot of the anime Steins;Gate, and this is the key to explaining what appears to be the most glaring plot hole of the climax. Now that I think about it, though, there’s one character who shouldn’t remember…. Oh, I don’t care; the rest of the movie is good enough that a little plot hole at the end can be easily forgiven.

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Déjà Vu has all the right ingredients for a great time travel thriller, and while I can recognize what others would consider drawbacks (minor plot holes, slightly disappointing villain, a victim who can’t seem to stay fully clothed in her own apartment), the whole package was still splendidly entertaining. I like my mind teased every now and then, so finding this unexplored member of the time travel genre made my day.

Best line: (Carlin) “For all of my career, I’ve been trying to catch people after they do something horrible. For once in my life, I’d like to catch somebody before they do something horrible, all right? Can you understand that?”

 

Rank: List-Worthy

 

© 2017 S.G. Liput
519 Followers and Counting

 

Kong: Skull Island (2017)

10 Sunday Dec 2017

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We laud and admire explorers who dare
To venture to regions unknown,
Who journey to jungles with risk in the air
Where most men would heed all the signs to beware,
But not they who roam to the eye of nowhere
And cherish each uncharted zone.

Yet one thing to note of these men who beseech
The thrill of what’s hidden ahead:
Although they may find every mountain and beach
And give all the teachers more titles to teach
And seek out the truths that lie just out of reach,
Most of them do end up dead.
______________________

MPAA rating: PG-13 (some of the violence is rather strong, though)

If you thought the world didn’t need another remake of King Kong, you’d be right, but that’s not about to stop Hollywood. Following 2014’s Godzilla and paving the way for 2020’s Godzilla vs. Kong prize fight of the so-called MonsterVerse, Kong: Skull Island isn’t the same story in past films featuring the giant ape. There’s no film crew, no screaming damsel in distress, no Empire State Building, so it might seem that Kong: Skull Island simply features a different (and much larger) version of the character and isn’t an actual remake. But it is, just a remake of the first half of the original King Kong tale, that being the story of ill-fated visitors to Kong’s home of giant critters. As much as the film tries to make a whole out of this half-story, it doesn’t quite work.

Those ill-fated visitors include a team of surveyors, a military escort fresh from Vietnam, and a few scientists from Monarch (the secret monster-studying organization from Godzilla), all led by the shady desire of Bill Randa (John Goodman) to explore the newly discovered Skull Island. There are plenty of big names here, from Goodman to Tom Hiddleston’s manly tracker to Brie Larson’s intrepid photojournalist to Samuel L. Jackson’s overly devoted army commander, boasting plenty of Jacksonian intensity. In addition, the Vietnam War-era setting warrants a great soundtrack of 1970s rock staples that make the team assembly of the first half quite enjoyable and promising. And when we actually see Kong himself, skyscraper-sized and none too happy about the unwanted guests and their explosives, it’s an action-packed debut that reminds us how frightening a giant gorilla can be.

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Yet as the film wears on, and the dangers of Skull Island make themselves known, it becomes clear that this is less of an adventure movie and more of a CGI-laden horror film. Oversized creatures take out redshirt after redshirt, often in gruesome ways, until the only source of mystery is who’s going to be on the menu next. By the time one unsuspecting fellow was carried off by lizard birds and torn apart in silhouette, my VC had had enough of the carnage and didn’t want to keep watching. It might help if the characters had some meat to them (literal or otherwise), but they’re really only there as potential beast fodder, even Hiddleston and Larson whose roles are clearly main character material yet don’t really go anywhere. It was also annoying that the military immediately makes the stupid decision in these films of “shoot the giant monster” instead of retreating, like any sensible person would in that situation.

There are bright spots. John C. Reilly livens up the cast significantly as a castaway stranded on the island since World War II, offering some good heart and humor and exposition for the island’s inhabitants, including a tribe of natives much more sympathetically depicted than in past versions. The big battles with Kong are also CGI wonders, perhaps not on par with Peter Jackson’s triple T. Rex fight but still marvelous to watch.

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Despite the relatively positive reviews for both Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island, I’m still not sold on this MonsterVerse franchise. The monsters created are well visualized with properly awesome action, but the human characters are thin as paper. It’s not a good sign when the scene played during the end credits has more human interest than the whole rest of the film. And I have other questions, like “How are Kong and Godzilla supposed to battle when Godzilla is still much bigger?” or “Will it turn out the same as the 1962 Japanese version of King Kong vs. Godzilla?” or “Will none of the surviving characters from Skull Island return, considering they will have aged between the ‘70s and the modern-day time frame of Godzilla?” Basically, Kong: Skull Island is about a bunch of people who go to an island, and a lot of them die. There has to be more than that for me to care.

Best (and most ironic) line: (Randa, as hippies in D.C. protest the war) “Mark my words. There’ll never be a more screwed up time in Washington.”

 

Rank: Honorable Mention

 

© 2017 S.G. Liput
518 Followers and Counting

 

Opinion Battles Round 23 Favourite Post-Apocalypse Film

08 Friday Dec 2017

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Don’t forget to vote for your favorite post-apocalyptic film in Round 23 of Opinion Battles! Ah, the apocalypse…. It never ends well, does it? There are so many different ways the world could go wrong, but I had to pick Pixar’s WALL-E, whose trash-covered future manages to be depressing, charming, and hopeful by the end. What’s your favorite?

Unknown's avatarMovie Reviews 101

Opinion Battles Round 23

Favourite Post-Apocalypse Film

The end of the world is here, well it is at least in these films, we have seen many different ideas of the potential end of the world but just what is the most popular?

If you want to join the next round of Opinion Battles we will be take on What is your Favourite Thanksgiving Film, to enter email your choice to moviereviews101@yahoo.co.ukby Saturday 25th November 2017.

Darren – Movie Reviews 101

Children of Men

The idea that humans can no longer going to be able to have children and people are giving up hope, the population is starting to stave and people are getting desperate, what more could you want from characters who are put in a world like this. We follow the first pregnant woman in 21 odd years needing to become safe to have her child.

 

Milo…

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Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

06 Wednesday Dec 2017

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When terrorized by Ragnarok,
(The end of the world? What a shock!),
Mighty Thor will not shrink.
With a boom and a wink,
He’ll prevail while the rest of us gawk.
_______________________

MPAA rating: PG-13

It’s safe to say that the Thor movies are probably the least loved of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (except maybe The Incredible Hulk, but with Mark Ruffalo’s recast, that one’s barely even connected). Thor and Thor: The Dark World aren’t bad films and are still perfectly entertaining fusions of Shakespearean drama and alien hammer battles, but compared with the rest of the MCU, they’re just not that memorable, despite being the source of Marvel’s best villain thus far, Tom Hiddleston’s Loki. Hiddleston’s trickery and Chris Hemsworth’s muscular appeal helped the Thor movies not drag down their more acclaimed cousins, but it seems that Thor has finally found his hit, not with earth-threatening gravitas but tongue-in-cheek comedy, courtesy of New Zealand director Taika Waititi.

Those paying attention during Captain America: Civil War might have noticed that two of the Avengers were absent from the whole schism. So what were Thor and the Hulk up to in the meantime? Quite a lot actually. The post-credits scene of Doctor Strange hinted that Thor would be looking for his father Odin, but aside from a neat little cameo for the Sorcerer Supreme, the search for Odin isn’t a main plot point. Instead, there’s the arrival of Thor’s long-banished sister Hela (Cate Blanchett), the goddess of death, whose power overwhelms Thor and his hammer and sends him hurtling onto a distant planet of garbage and gladiators. There he encounters both the sadistic Grandmaster (ever-colorful Jeff Goldblum) and the long lost Hulk, whose two-year leave has widened his vocabulary and made the big green guy more of an actual character than merely a secret weapon, borrowing from the Planet Hulk storyline of the comics.

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While most of the buzz for Ragnarok has been positive, there is a minority who find that the lighter tone cheapens the proceedings, especially considering how dark Hela’s takeover gets. I can definitely see that; the body count is high, including characters from past Thor movies, yet only one gets even some brief token grief, while the others are sloughed off without a passing glance. This might seem callous in a film so filled with gags that it clearly doesn’t want you to dwell on anything but the entertainment. But entertaining it is.

Fans of Guardians of the Galaxy should be quite pleased with how Ragnarok emulates its quirky alien diversity, but Waititi adds his own Kiwi sense of humor, in person actually playing a soft-spoken rock-covered gladiator named Korg. He also brings along Rachel House (as the Grandmaster’s assistant) and a briefly seen Sam Neill (as an Odin actor) from his previous film Hunt for the Wilderpeople. I was also shocked to learn that Matt Damon has a cameo I totally missed. The jokes are many, often droll and sometimes at the expense of past Marvel films, stepping back from the expected superheroics to chuckle before doing them anyway. It’s a fun mix, particularly the rivalry/rapport between Thor and Loki, and although Ragnarok also follows Guardians of the Galaxy in thinking it’s funnier than it actually is, there’s enough varied humor here to please anyone, especially when the whole cast seems to have had so much fun making it.

The action, though, is where Thor: Ragnarok really ups the ante. From the big Thor vs. Hulk fight to a Guardians-ish spaceship chase, the effects are an epic thrill to behold, augmented by the presence of Hemsworth’s more cheeky Thor and likely fan favorite Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson). Karl Urban also has a nice little character arc as a would-be lackey of Hela’s, along with one of the many awesome scenes of the finale. But there’s no beating Thor’s big battle toward the end, made brilliantly epic by Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.”

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So yes, Thor: Ragnarok is far more memorable than its predecessors, attracting every conceivable synonym of “fun,” “epic,” and “awesome.” While it has its dramatic moments, the constant jokery keeps things so light that the gravity of certain situations only sinks in later. Despite the fact that Ragnarok leaves several lasting impacts on the MCU, it still feels oddly disposable, like really amusing filler meant to set the stage for next year’s Infinity War. (Can’t wait!) It may or may not go down as one of Marvel’s best, but even if it doesn’t, it’s still Thor-oughly entertaining.

Best line: (Bruce Banner, to Loki) “Last time we saw you, you were trying to kill everyone. What are you up to these days?”   (Loki) “It varies from moment to moment.”

 

Rank: List-Worthy

 

© 2017 S.G. Liput
517 Followers and Counting

 

VC Pick: Fletch (1985)

03 Sunday Dec 2017

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Hello, sir, I’m Roland Dough,
I work for someone you don’t know,
And last I checked,
I must inspect
The volume of your stereo.

While I’m here, I thought I’d ask
If you’ve seen any shady stuff,
Like backroom deals
Or big reveals
Or guys like me who just can’t bluff.

Of course, you’ve not seen me before;
I think I’d know if I was seen.
I just stopped by
To satisfy
My need to be in every scene.

No, no, don’t bother getting up.
Your stereo broke; what a shame!
I’m finished, so
I’d better go.
It’s time to pick another name.
__________________

MPAA rating: PG (perhaps PG-13 nowadays)

My VC has a habit of having me rewatch films I saw only once years ago, just to see if my vague memories are reliable. In this case, I recalled Fletch favorably, even if every detail of the plot had long ago been jettisoned from my mind. But now that I’ve seen it again, that’s a crying shame, because I enjoyed Fletch a lot more than I expected. Chevy Chase’s comedy can be hit-and-miss for me, but when he’s good, he’s good.

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Chase plays investigative reporter Irwin Fletcher (one guess what his nickname is), who is in the middle of an undercover drug bust when he is picked up by dying millionaire Alan Stanwyck (Tim Matheson), who promises to pay Fletch to kill him. Since not asking questions isn’t in his DNA, Fletch then sets out doing what he does best, following leads, dressing up, and lying through his teeth in pursuit of the truth.

While it’s based on a book series I didn’t know existed, I felt Fletch might have been intended to mirror the success of Beverly Hills Cop. Both of them cast an SNL alum as an improvisational investigator, backed by similar-sounding Harold Faltermeyer scores. Whereas Axel Foley had a gun to do off-hours police work, Fletch is entirely dependent on his wit and sharp tongue, and it’s great fun watching him scramble to plug the holes in his stories. Throughout the film, he impersonates a doctor, a beach bum, a country club guest, an insurance investigator, and probably some I’m forgetting, all with hilarious fake names, and Chevy Chase sells the verbal gymnastics with aplomb.

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It was also fun recognizing some of the secondary cast, from Geena Davis as his news office buddy, Joe Don Baker as a corrupt police chief, and even The Waltons’ Jim-Bob (David W. Harper) as a young car thief, not to mention small roles for George Wyner, Kenneth Mars, George Wendt, and M. Emmet Walsh. (The “Moon River” scene with Walsh as a doctor was literally the only thing I remembered from last time.) It’s a talented cast and an intriguing, weaving plot, but Chase is the anchor, whose wry narration and slick spontaneity make Fletch possibly his best role, though I still prefer Foul Play overall. Now to remind myself of the sequel I also saw only once called Fletch Lives, though I hear Fletch Dies never got off the ground. Just kidding, though there’s still talk of a re-cast prequel called Fletch Won. This franchise may not be dead yet.

Best line: (Dr. Dolan, speaking of someone Fletch doesn’t know) “You know, it’s a shame about Ed.”
(Fletch) “Oh, it was. Yeah, it was really a shame. To go so suddenly like that.”
(Dr. Dolan) “He was dying for years.”
(Fletch) “Sure, but… the end was very… very sudden.”
(Dr. Dolan) “He was in intensive care for eight weeks.”
(Fletch) “Yeah, but I mean the very end, when he actually died. That was extremely sudden.”

 

Rank: List Runner-Up (a very close one)

 

© 2017 S.G. Liput
517 Followers and Counting

 

2017 Blindspot Pick #11: Giovanni’s Island (2014)

01 Friday Dec 2017

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‘Tis futile to wish our lives never to change,
To stay in the bliss of a child’s outlook.
We’re always disturbed by the new and the strange,
Priorities puzzled as they rearrange,
Things hardly confined to the page of a book.

The friends that we make and the loved ones we lose
Accompany us just as far as they can.
And when we have finally paid all our dues
And traveled the path that each person must choose,
Perhaps we will see ‘twas all part of a plan.
____________________

MPAA rating: Not Rated (probably PG)

Boy, just like with Donnie Darko, finding a copy of this film for my Blindspot was harder than I thought, hence why I’m a day late for this November pick. I’m always on the lookout for emotional anime films, and Giovanni’s Island promised to have something of the tragic quality of Grave of the Fireflies, which still makes me cry every time I see it. Giovanni’s Island undoubtedly borrows from the 1988 film and actually reminded me of several others as well, from the Russian exile of Doctor Zhivago to the childish friendship disrupted by war of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. It also draws explicit inspiration from the Japanese novel Night on the Galactic Railroad, which is apparently a great classic in Japan, though it’s not surprising if most are unfamiliar with it. Some knowledge of that story might help one’s understanding of certain scenes in the movie. (It does have an anime adaptation too, which is dream-like, very slow, full of symbolism and Christian references, and might have vaguely influenced The Polar Express.)

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The first parallel to Night on the Galactic Railroad is the names of the two brothers who live in a small fishing village in the far northern Japanese islands toward the close of World War II. Junpei (nicknamed Giovanni) and Kanta (nicknamed Campanella) draw their Italian-sounding names from the main characters of the book, a favorite in their family, which ignites their fascination with both the stars and trains. While the villagers expect the Americans to take control after the war is lost, it’s instead the Soviets, who waste no time in establishing themselves and commandeering the Japanese homes and school building. Despite being driven from their house, young Giovanni and Campanella befriend a Russian girl named Tanya, but the conflict and stresses of the adults around them soon strain their relationship and send the brothers away from their beloved island into the unknown.

Despite being produced by Production I.G., the same studio behind Ghost in the Shell, the animation in Giovanni’s Island is different from their other works. The sketched environments and setting details are masterful, and one scene of a front-lit toy locomotive passing between two rooms showed an amazing attention to light and shadow. The character animation, on the other hand, wasn’t bad, but I found it somewhat distracting at times. Despite all anime sharing similarities of style, character design can vary significantly, and it’s a distinction that can be very subjective with its appeal. It’s not as if it was ugly (like One Piece, in my opinion), but the look of the characters sometimes brought me out of the story, though I did get used to it with time.

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There’s a lot to enjoy about Giovanni’s Island, particularly scenes designed to tug at the heartstrings. In an early scene, the school building is divided between the Russian and Japanese children, and each classroom sings their own national songs to try to drown the other out, while each room later sings the other’s song. Similarly, Giovanni becomes quite close to Tanya, and though the language barrier is barely addressed, it was encouraging to remember that children’s interactions are so much simpler than adults harboring resentment and hate. Another touchstone seemed to be Empire of the Sun, as the two siblings are soon separated from their father and cast into the harsh post-war realities of internment camps, all seen through the eyes of a child. The parallels to Grave of the Fireflies are blatant toward the tearful end, though there are differences, such as the fact that Giovanni and Campanella are never completely abandoned, at least accompanied by their teacher and uncle most of the way. Despite the similarities, it’s not a complete ripoff since the familiarly tragic end also draws from Night on the Galactic Railroad, along with several wondrous dream sequences that recreate scenes from the book.

Giovanni’s Island has plenty of moving drama, some of it probably seen before, but it presents it with warmth and sincerity, as well as grief. It didn’t make me cry like Grave of the Fireflies, but the final scene brought me close. I’m just a sucker for those kinds of poignant death-transcending reunion scenes, so it ended on a high note for me. I also enjoyed a repeated musical cue I recognized as “Those Were the Days,” a Mary Hopkins hit from the ‘60s, which recycled the tune of a traditional Russian folk song, making its use in the film more authentic. A somber tale of loss and survival that never becomes objectionable, Giovanni’s Island may combine elements from better films, but they’re combined beautifully nonetheless.

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Also, you can click here for a somewhat less rosy review from Rachel of Reviewing All 56 Disney Animated Films and More!, who also had this as her November Blindspot.

Best line:  (Giovanni, when asked what Night on the Galactic Railroad is about) “When people die, they rise up into the heavens and become stars in the night sky. Those countless stars fill the sky, shining brightly and eternally, and we live our lives down here, basking in their light. That’s what the story is about.”

 

Rank: List Runner-Up

 

© 2017 S.G. Liput
517 Followers and Counting