Review: The Age of Stupid (RATING: 5/10)

I wish I could say I liked this movie. I really wish. It heralded itself as the new Inconvenient Truth, shepherding in a new generation of caring environmentalists. I heard that it was bringing those concerns to a wider audience by fictionalizing the narrative, rather than the fact after fact that Mr. Gore gave us. And that part, at least, was true.

A little background. The Age of Stupid is a movie that was primarily crowd funded (and this shows at points), with a main character played by Pete Postlethwaite looking back at the recent history of the earth from 2055. The climate has been destroyed, and so has the human race. He is an archivist who is trying to figure out why we didn’t save ourselves when we had the chance. Although it is fictional, it primarily follows, as a documentary, five stories from real life—an oil scientist from New Orleans, a doctor-to-be in Nigeria, an old mountain guide in Switzerland, a cheap flight start-up in India, and a wind farm planner in Britain. (I think I didn’t forget any.) These people, as you can probably tell, at least for most of them, directly affect or are affected by climate change. And so this movie shows the true effects of climate change, and what is causing that change. It intersperses this with some fairly obnoxious animations about consumerism, the future, etc., etc. It succeeds pretty well at telling these stories in a moving fashion, and, if it weren’t preaching to the converted (myself included), which is one of the largest criticisms of the movie, would incite people to act.

And that’s where this movie fails. However great it is at gaining attention, gaining funding, showing the world as it is, it does not tell us what to do. There’s a brief mention that everyone can do their part to help, but not once—or at least not once in a clearly set out way—does it suggest a course of action. And that’s what this kind of movie needs to do. Whatever it shows, it needs to tell the world how they can help. Whether they have just accepted climate change as a product of man (through this movie or otherwise) or if they’ve been a strong proponent of change from Day 1, for something like this to be useful it has to give people something to do. And this doesn’t. For the few stories that are about champions of climate change, it shows what they do, but clearly not everyone can put up windfarms. There’s a general hint towards demonstration, activism, to show the government that we care, but it’s not clear. And it has to be clear for it to do any good.

I went to the premiere of this movie. I didn’t see it then, but I saw the stars. And so today, a week after, I went to its test opening weekend, the one that decides the real distribution of the film. There were about 15 people in the theatre of 300. And I wish I could do a better job of promoting this film. I wish I could help it out by saying “Go see this movie now!” But, honestly, I can’t. If you want to see a movie about climate change that will move you, both emotionally and to action, then see An Inconvenient Truth. It didn’t win an Oscar for no reason. Or maybe The 11th Hour (which I haven’t seen.) Leave this one alone. Keep thinking about its impact, its goals, but in this case, the means are not worth the end (if you’re “the converted,” going for the end already).

So as a final thought, I’ll plug its website, its movement. Make sure the Copenhagen conference is useful (and listen to a fun little speech by the President of the Maldives). Notstupid.org (It truly launches April 1st, but you can sign up now.)And you don’t have to see the film.

Review: THX 1138 (RATING 5/10)

Let me preface this by saying that only its reputation allowed me to give this film a higher rating than Next. [EDIT: After actually finishing this review, I have decided to take away that extra point.] I watched them one day after the other, both on Netflix Instant Viewing (which is, by the way, amazing), and had roughly the same opinion of each’s quality. Which I feel are not the opinions I should have.

I think George Lucas has some problems that he has to deal with, in terms of his filmmaking. The first, which is as relevant to THX 1138 as it is to the original Star Wars is, well, STOP CHANGING THINGS ONCE YOU’VE MADE THEM!!! NO ONE CARES WHETHER THE GRAPHICS ARE QUITE AS REALISTIC AS THEY COULD BE. NO CGI IN MOVIES MADE IN THE 70S! SERIOUSLY! I didn’t realise when I started watching this that it had been George Lucasized. That is to say, when it was rereleased, he changed it both (I assume) content-wise (which is acceptable, in terms of editing scenes, adding in new ones, etc—as long as you make the original still available) but also by taking out what I presume were fairly low-budget special effects, and replacing them with CGI. Which really stands out, and does NOT help the movie in any way, shape or form. It even distracts from it, because you look at the new effects, realise that they’re new, and start thinking about that rather than what is going on in the story.

What is going on in the story. Ah, yes. Well, there, George, you have your second problem. You managed to surpass it with Star Wars, but ultimately you failed with this (a growth curve, perhaps, since this was made in your earlier days). And yes, this is apparently now an open letter to George Lucas. You are really good at creating worlds. You think of lots of cool things, and you make them fit together really nicely, and they seem like they have backstory. But then, when it comes to writing, you know, plots, those little tiny insignificant parts of films, you break down. Let’s see… Well, everyone is surpressed by drugs in this society. So let’s have… ummm… a romance! Yes, that’s it! A romance! Where they don’t take drugs and realise their feelings for each other! And then, well, let’s have them get caught! Haha! That will show the Man! And then… uh… I guess they’ll escape? But no, let’s just forget about the woman and focus on the man. Where did she go? Well, I guess she must have… died. Somewhere. And let’s have him escape with a crazy guy! Who is annoying and then goes somewhere else, while the man escapes into the wild. Which will surely kill him. But we don’t have to think about that part, because the movie will end right when he gets out. And done.

Because really, nothing happens in this movie. I mean, things happen, but not within people. Movies are, for the most part, supposed to be about character development. But not once in this movie do we ever get a sense of why someone is doing what they’re doing. Maybe with the crazy guy. But he’s crazy, so he doesn’t count. Neither of the main characters (one of whom, as I mentioned, disappears about 1/3 of the way into the movie) ever gives reasoning, and we never get a sense of how they actually feel. For a movie that’s about people rebelling against the non-feeling mainstream (because they all take sedatives, other pills), they don’t really feel at all. Or, rather, they feel for no reason, which again is not really a good rebellion. They just suddenyl have emotions, that aren’t necessarily related to things around them, or anything at all.

I had been looking forward to seeing this movie for a long time now. I felt that it was part of my cinematic education. But, just like, say, a bad math class, it was a part of my education that I should have enjoyed, but didn’t. It is, though, supposedly one of the films you should see. So, don’t take my word for it, see it yourself! (Thank you, Levar Burton.)

Review: Next (RATING: 5/10)

“Here’s the thing about the future. Every time you look at it, it changes, because you looked at it, and that changes everything else.” —The divine sage that is Nicholas Cage

I’ve found out that this is true, from personal experience. Every time I looked at my own future, sitting down to write this review, I thought more about the movie. And that changed what I was going to write in my review. And that changed… Well, everything else stayed basically the same. But yes. Had I written this review the day I saw this, without thinking too much, I would have given it 7/10. And then, yesterday, after I thought about it some more, the rating was going to be 6/10. And now, after too much thought, it’s settled at a nice round 5/10.

This movie was stupid. And it’s rare that I say that. Well, not exactly. It’s rare that I say that as an insult. I tend to like schlocky action movies with some kind of gimmick (such as Underworld, one of the best movies I’ve ever seen… because it’s terrible), and in fact that’s the reason I saw this in the first place. But come on, the gimmick is that Nic Cage can see two minutes, no more, into his own future, no one else’s, and saves the world.

Kinda. You do have to give the director points for trying. He doesn’t actually save the world; there’s a huge nuclear explosion at the end and everybody dies. Again, kinda. Roughly a third of this movie doesn’t actually happen. It turns out that Cagey can see further into the future as long as it has something to do with Jessica Biel. I mean, Liz Cooper. Now, I would go out of my way to see Jessica Biel, too (in fact it’s pretty much the only reason I saw Blade III), but it doesn’t seem to give me any special powers.

So basically, he’s recruited against his will to help the FBI find a nuclear bomb before it explodes (because for some reason they think that two minutes would be enough to stop it? That’s never really explained). Biel gets kidnapped, and one thing leads to another, they save her, and stop the terrorists, but the bomb goes off still. And then we discover this was just him seeing the future from an earlier point in the movie (see, it was more than two minutes because Biel was involved! CRAZY!), and the movie really ends with him going peacefully with the FBI to presumably fail again at finding the bomb.

Plotwise, this is entertaining. But, as I said, the more I thought about it, the more I disliked it. For example, one of the key twists of the movie is that Cage sees Biel explode on the roof of a parking lot (because the terrorists rigged her with explosives) and rushes out to that lot. This of course hadn’t happened yet. Mulder—I mean Julianne Moore—races after him, and catches up with him. She tells him—you know they only were going to do that so that you would be lured out onto this roof so they could kill you. As long as you’re not paying attention, this is fine. But then I noticed. The terrorists did something in the future so that they could kill Nick Cage. But, they haven’t done it. And if they only did it to lure him out, then they had no real intention to do it. Which would mean that they didn’t. So, that’s a paradox in its own right. But, more importantly, no one except Cage himself knows that he can see more than two minutes into the future when the chick is involved. So… it just doesn’t work.

The other part I had a problem with was the (admittedly cool) concept and effects of him dodging bullets, punches, falling cop cars, etc, because he knew where they were going to be. But just seeing into the future wouldn’t be enough for this. He would still need lightning-fast reflexes. Granted, he is a stage magician, so maybe sleight-of-body is involved somehow. He dodges roughly 12 bullets fired in short succession at a distance of about 10 feet in a big confrontation, with an effect showing all the possible futures of him dying, and so he takes the one path that keeps him alive. Not possible. Even within the confines of the movie. There is also a scene of him splitting into many different versions of himself to check all the decks of a ship. Again, cool, but in theory before every split he would have to consciously decide to go a different way, and not just do it to check a place, but really choose. In order to change the future. I have doubts about this.

Although the movie was bad, I did think about the following: it would be an awesome way to pick up women—or really do anything. Kind of like a mini version of Groundhog Day. Keep doing things until you do it right.

Never see this movie. It’s rare that I close a review with that, but really, don’t. It was entertaining while I watched it, but every time I think about it, it gets worse in my memory. To me now, this was not worth the two hours it took out of my life. So let’s change that quote from the beginning of the review:

“Here is the thing about the past. Every time you look at it, it changes, because you looked at it, and that changes everything else.”

A Concession or Two

Apparently, two of the pretty popular search terms that people look up on google to find this blog are some form of “Top Gun rating,” or “name of guy in stomach Total Recall.” Although it’s great that I’m getting this traffic, I feel kind of bad that I actually answer neither of these questions in my reviews of Top Gun and Total Recall. So, to make everyone happier, here are the answers:

Total Recall stomach mutant dude’s name is Kuato.

Top Gun is rated PG by the MPAA (this was actually surprisingly hard to find…)

So, my random travelers, enjoy!

Review: Iron Man (RATING:10/10)

This was easily the best superhero movie (that I’ve seen, at least) in the past 15 years, and probably more. And this is primarily for two reasons, ones that I would never really think to associate with a comic book movie (and perhaps that’s the problem?): Robert Downey, Jr., and brilliant writing. First off, this movie is absolutely hilarious. And not in an Underworld sort of way. The dialogue is witty, quick, and, well, just great. Even less funny moments are still very well-scripted—the double-entendre “I know what you’re going through,” delivered by Obadiah Stane when Pepper Potts is looking through his secret computer files springs to mind. Tony Stark’s superintelligent asshole character is wonderful to watch, especially his relationship and continual banter with his secretary, Pepper Potts (played by Gwyneth Paltrow, who is also great, and who I had no idea was in this movie). A lot of his character is the writing, but perhaps even more of it is Robert Downey, Jr. He plays the character with just the right mix of snobbery, humor, and sort of actual feelings. Somehow he manages to be sympathetic even when he is not so himself to anyone else.

Jeff Bridges is also kind of hilarious and over the top as Obadiah Stane, the exec-turned-evil, with a bald head and a beard. Incidentally, I just watched Tron the other night, and I prefer his character in this movie… The other stars of this movie are really the background details. There are so many little things that just make it really entertaining and cool to watch. All of the future tech is wonderfully conceived—the suit is great looking, but that’s not all. In the background, whenever anyone is talking to a computer or on the phone, a screen writes up what they’re saying. Or there are just displays in the back of Stark’s lab that are showing strange but wonderful cross-sections of the suit and the technology. Or the heads-up display of the suit is really cool looking. They apparently hired a futurist to help them with these designs, and it was a good choice on their part. Also technical details that some filmmakers might miss. Like the vapor cloud that forms around Iron Man’s body for a fraction of a second as he passes the sound barrier. Or any number of other things.

The only real flaw in this movie comes in the lsat thrid, when it turns from being something very different (but still a kind of hero movie) to being a classic big brawl with evil enemy superhero pic. This is much less interesting, primarily because it’s less funny, but it’s still done very well for what it is. I’m thinking here of the big battle in Spider-man 3 which was incredibly boring to watch. This is animated (yes, I have to use that verb) wonderfully, and is pretty exciting and entertaining.

So see this movie. Please.

And stay until the end of the credits.

Review: Total Recall (RATING: 5/10)

First, a little explanation. The little picture at the end of this post, as well as the entire content of the previous post, is a link to StumbleUpon, which is basically a way to get interested traffic to your site. If you click on that, you can review the post, if you want, or otherwise just get it out there, and it helps get people to see my blog. So help me out! Click it, fill out the form (I don’t think there’s any registration or anything), and I should get more people. Which is cool. I’m going to put one at the end of every entry from now on (if I remember), and if there’s something especially cool that I write, click it. Apparently this is something that’s done on real blogs. One more step towards the mainstream. Now to the review:

I had always heard that Total Recall was a really cool movie, and I had seen the first ten or fifteen minutes in a video store quite a long time ago, and thought it seemed interesting. Made in 1990, it’s the story of a man who discovers he’s actually someone else, with his memories replaced. And so he goes to Mars to figure out what happened. The concept is pretty cool, and I wasn’t expecting much from Arnold Schwarzenegger (Douglas Quaid) in terms of acting, but the movie was lacking in many other respects as well. For a movie set in the future, the art design was not very interesting. It seemed very 80′s, which is weird since it was made just out of the 90′s. Some of it was great—a big machine on Mars that’s key to the plot, the JohnnieCab robots on Earth—but most of it just looked like boxy, cliché future.

And there are mutants, which are sort of random and useless to the plot, put in just (I think) for shock value, and to show off special effects. There’s some story about how badly shielded domes on Mars let in cosmic radiation which turned people into mutants (also allowing them to see the future, a skill which is not used at all in the movie). There are some rebels, headed by a little child mutant that comes out of another guy’s stomach (which I saw a SNL skit about a long time ago and never understood until last night), and they further the plot, I guess, but you don’t really care. Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to like looking at sci-fi movies more than I like thinking about what’s actually going on in them. And this doesn’t have enough to look at. There is one cool mutant arm, briefly, but nothing is fantastic enough to be, well, fantastic. It’s also not gritty and down-to-earth enough to be fantastic.

Total Recall really seems to occupy a sort of sci-fi limbo: neither realistic nor fantastical; neither bad nor good; it just is. If you’re looking for sci-fi, see Bladerunner. And if you’re looking for Gubernator action, see The Terminator.

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Based on the…

Well, I haven’t written a post that wasn’t a review or a roundup in a while, so I’m going to try to get back into the swing of things.

Whatever happened to creativity? So many movies nowadays are not original; they’re either a remake, a sequel, or based on a TV show, true story, or book. Sure, there are always the great ones that aren’t, but those usually slip through the cracks, more so now than they have in the past. But whatever happened to wonders like Star Wars, or the Godfather, or… Well, once you think about it, many of the great movies of the past have been based on things too, like Lawrence of Arabia, or Schindler’s List. Ok, that one’s not too old.

Now we’re stretching further than we have. One of the top-grossing movie trilogies recently was Pirates of the Caribbean, which was based on an amusement park ride! How low can we really go, people! (Note: I loved this trilogy. Well, not the second one. But the first and last, so my commentary should really be a bit more tempered.)  So where has everyone gone? My family has a screenwriter friend, and his two most recent works were both rejected, and they were original concepts (well, one was a sequel but he wrote the first one so it doesn’t quite count).

I think many of the screenwriters must have gone to the smaller screen. Television has so many great shows on right now, and perhaps the talent from the film studios has gone to that medium.

But then again, a remake doesn’t have to be bad. One of my favorite shows, something that has been said to be the best drama on television numerous times, as well as winning many awards, is a remake. I’m talking about Battlestar Galactica, which was a hilariously tacky science fiction show from the 1970s and is now completely re-imagined into a new, wonderful, dramatic universe. The plot is essentially the same, but much more nuanced and a lot less of people simply blasting robots into slag. Yes, there is still a lot of it, but, in my opinion, it has a lot more meaning, a lot more depth. And that’s just one of the many remakes or “based on the…”s that I like.

So there’s hope. Even though an idea may not be new, what a writer does with it can be completely innovative and wonderful.  What are your thoughts? Is the writing industry going to hell in a handbasket? Are we running out of ideas? Or is it just harkening back to the past, learning from it, and creating things anew.