Category Archives: Movies

Fury should be called Trauma

Posted on by Henry

Brad-Pitt-Fury-Tank-Like a clown car, but with less comedy and more violent death.

War movies, in my mind, must tread a very fine line in order for me to consider them good.  I prefer for them to leave out bombast and propaganda, and I dislike seeing filmmakers pretty up what I regard as a fundamentally brutal and painful exercise in destroying human life.  To quote Robert E. Lee, “It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.”  I don’t feel comfortable with anything that purports to show real life also showing war as a ‘good’ thing.  At the very least, it should be problematic and leave you feeling conflicted.  The problem, of course, is that if the film doesn’t also tell an engaging story few will go and see it.

I also recognize that I have very different expectations and desires for what I’ll call “action movies,” and I’m somehow more ok with an action film showing combat and war in a more glamorous or unrealistic light.  The recent A-Team movie, for example, totally ignores many of the realities of war and combat (and physics), and I was ok with that.  Some old WWII movies (like Where Eagles Dare) fall into the same category, though they seem to do a far worse job of overtly signaling their lack of contact with reality.

When I saw it, I wasn’t entirely sure where Fury stood with regards to this distinction between ‘war’ and ‘action,’ and that left me uncertain of how I should feel.  As you might guess by the title of this post, much of the movie delivers an intensely traumatic view of the war… no, that’s not quite it: the movie follows a group of men who have been as traumatized by the war as seems possible, without having them break.  Even that may be pushing it, since the men certainly seem broken when you look at them more closely.  They’re just still able to do their job, which is killing others before others can kill them.  This, in my mind, is part of what makes it such a good war movie.  But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Fury does have an odd change in tone at one point.  It’s almost as though it consciously tries to straddle the divide between ‘war’ and ‘action,’ and suffers for it.  This doesn’t make it a bad movie, but like I said above, it does leave me less certain of how I should feel.  I’ll give you more about this (and some other non-spoilery things) after the break.

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The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

Posted on by Henry

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I finally watched the “new” Tintin movie.  I’m obviously biased, given that I grew up reading the Tintin books and loved them uncritically for many years, but… I thought the movie was magnificent.  There’s something spectacularly fun about the pulp adventures of Tintin, and the movie delivers the essence of that in spades.  The story is still problematic when it comes to representation, as there’re no main characters who aren’t white males, but the movie also manages to remain faithful to its source material without engaging the more racist undertones which can be found in some of the original works.

And when I say faithful to the source material, I really do mean that it’s basically all there.  The movie is a composite (plus a little something new to serve as glue) of several Tintin stories, and there are scenes which have been pulled frame for frame from the originals.  There are even references to prominent features of unused story lines, often featured as props (like the red jeep from Land of Black Gold).  The only thing that I really missed was Snowy’s constant private cynical narration, though his stunning and dogged competence was in fine form.

As I’d expected it to be, the movie was action-packed and full of nonstop excitement, accurately recreating my memories of the stories that I’d so loved as a child.  But it was able to do things which had been impossible for the original comics, with gorgeous transitions that reinforced the hallucinatory exposition of my favorite drunk, Captain Haddock.  I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a better realized set of scene shifts, and they were made all the more possible through the excellent CGI used for the film.  There’s just something about watching the world ripple and change, transforming a landscape of sand dunes into monstrously high seas; Haddock’s impossible descriptions of his ancestor’s exploits become all the more wonderful as they are shown through his imaginatively drunken state.

Speaking of the CGI, I have to say that they really hit the nail on the head.  They managed to keep things cartoonish enough that they felt palpably unreal, while still being realistic enough to feel believable, relatable in much the same way that the comics themselves felt when I was young.  I’m really happy with how the movie felt, and I’m glad that there’s talk of making another.

So, I liked this movie a great deal and I would happily watch it again.  It doesn’t solve all the problems of the source material, but it does a good job of avoiding the source material’s larger blunders while capitalizing on its strengths.  The characterizations felt true to form, and the alterations made to the original material never felt like they were unfaithful or detracted in any way from the originals.  If you ever liked reading Tintin, my guess is that you’d like watching this movie.  If you didn’t like reading Tintin, I really can’t help you with that (and you may or may not like this movie, who knows).

p.s. Sorry to cut this one short, I have to go facilitate a hero’s journey by pretending to be an evil dean intent on shutting down Simmons’ MA in Children’s Lit and MFA in Writing for Children.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Pilferers of Pocketbooks

Posted on by Henry

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I made two trips to the theater this weekend, two nights in a row, to see Guardians of the Galaxy.  At least I watched it in Burlington instead of Boston, and thus offered my wallet some protection from the box office’s depredations.  To be perfectly honest, I want to watch the movie again; the Guardians of the Galaxy’s punchlines are a delight, and I consistently missed the followup lines in the audience’s waves of laughter.

If you’ve enjoyed the previous high points of the Marvel movie franchise and are looking for more of the same with a good dose of silly, Guardians of the Galaxy is the movie for you.  It hits its timing wonderfully well, with a great comedy-action plot well-leavened by stupid and/or greedy and selfish characters, without leaving me feeling that anyone had the idiot ball for too long (or even at the wrong time).  On my first watch-through, I enjoyed myself but was almost disoriented by the movie’s pacing as I came time and again to totally new material (well, new to me).  The second time, it felt like the film fairly well flew along, flowing seamlessly from scene to scene in a rush of drama, action, and excellent comedic timing.  Like I said before, I’m interested in seeing it a third time, though next time I’d like to be able to hear the lines I missed the first two times around.

I liked the actors, I liked their interactions and side comments, and I thought that even the completely wooden Groot was wonderfully expressive.  More tidbits after the break, including a few complaints.

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The Expendables 2: How Did They Count That High?

Posted on by Henry

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Watching them is a guilty pleasure, but it’s mostly guilt.

Have you ever spent two hours wondering why you’re staring at an overstuffed sausage?  Watching Stallone in The Expendables 2 feels a little bit like that, especially when they give you closeups of his veiny, muscular arms.  Or maybe the experience is more like watching a slightly stiff bulldog trying to be more athletic than its bulky frame will allow.  It charges about at decent speed, its jowls swinging back and forth determinedly as it tries its best to be fierce and intimidating… yet from the safe distance of my screen, it looks more funny than frightening.

That failed delivery might be the real take away message here.  I never watched the first movie, so I don’t know whether this is true for both of them, but The Expendables 2 feels like someone has distilled the essence of the overblown action movie and made an occasionally palatable bounce liquor* instead of something really worth drinking.  There were moments when its ridiculousness so exceeded my expectations that I couldn’t help but marvel at it, but for the most part it wasn’t as good as the vintage it was attempting to refine.  I say ‘for the most part’ because there are some truly terrible action movies out there, and I don’t want to go to the effort of deciding how this compares.  I’m pretty sure it’s better than some of them, if only because The Expendables 2 clearly had more budget for stuntmen and action scenes.

Speaking of “more”…

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Pain & Gain: Avarice at its best / worst

Posted on by Henry

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Muscles, money, melanoma. What more could you want?

For some reason, Michael Bay decided to make a Fargo-esque movie about a real story; Pain & Gain is the “true crime” tale of three mid-90s Miami weightlifters who are too set on absolute success to realize that they’ve fucked up beyond their worst nightmares.

Unlike his film’s narrators, Bay seems to have succeeded.

Maybe he succeeded because there aren’t any giant robots, or maybe it’s because truth is stranger than fiction and this story is already good enough.  Or maybe it was because he got Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and Anthony Mackie to play his barely clued-in protago-villains (“Don’t worry, I’ve watched a lot of movies,” says Walhberg’s character on the topic of kidnapping, “I know what I’m doing.”), and then convinced Ed Harris and Tony Shalhoub to round out his cast.

I’m not saying that this movie is exceptionally good or a critical success.  I’m saying that it wildly exceeded my (admittedly low) expectations.  The movie flunks the Bechdel test, sidelining the few female characters involved in favor of focusing on a plethora of detestable assholes who feel like they came straight out of a game of Fiasco.  Their fluctuating connection to reality coupled with the greedy entitlement of Wahlberg’s character pulls the movie along like a freight train, complete with ensuing train wreck.  Their musclebound, idiotically-genius antics exemplify the phrase “hot mess.”

More specifics after the break.

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Godzilla, King of the (Summer) Movies

Posted on by Henry

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This is a wonderful summer movie.  It’s not good, it’s awesome.

It has its ups and downs: it starts on a high note with the opening credits sequence, briefly shows off Bryan Cranston, and then gives us a front row seat to people making inadvisable military choices.  After that, of course, we get to watch Godzilla, and once again everything is right with the world.  In short, it’s pretty much exactly what a Godzilla movie should be, as far as I can tell.

You’ll want to yell, you’ll want to cheer, and you may very well want to swear in awe.  You will obviously benefit from a huge screen, and I would also suggest a large group of enthusiastic people.  A little bit of alcohol probably wouldn’t hurt either.

Please enjoy your giant lizards responsibly.  More in-depth thoughts (with carefully segregated spoilers) after the break.

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2 Bad 2 Guns isn’t 2 Better

Posted on by Henry

The short and sweet version is as follows: 2 Guns delivers everything that I’d expect from light and entertaining action-movie fare, and even does some of it decently well.  It does not, however, exceed expectations, and even dips below them at a point or two.  This comes despite the presence of fairly good actors and a potentially highly interesting premise, hence the title of my review.  Maybe seeing Denzel Washington across from Mark Wahlberg got me too excited?

I’m not saying that 2 Guns is bad.  It might even be above average for an action-movie (though where the mean lies is difficult for me to determine, given the prevalence of outliers and misleading clumps in the data).  But I don’t think that it will stick around in our collective memory for any considerable period of time, except perhaps as inspiration for something that could have been done a bit better.

Keep reading, I’m not done yet.

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Tremors: Horrific Comedy Done Right

Posted on by Henry

Kevin Bacon as a rural Nevadan handyman, facing off against subterranean worm-snake monsters alongside a surprisingly entertaining ensemble cast?  Yes please.  Tremors is nutty, ridiculous, and entirely more fun than you’d first think.

Despite being billed as a comedy-horror, in my mind the film is almost entirely comedy.  I’m sure some people will be scared by watching Tremors, but I can’t say that I know any of them.  There are a few good startling moments, and some particularly dreadful scenes in which people die horribly, but I never really felt the same tension or clenching fear that I would expect from a horror film.  It’s laughable to think of this movie as being the same category as something like Aliens; despite having ostensibly similar story arcs and genre expectations, they are not at all like each other.

Case in point: the very first shot sets the tone for the rest of the movie, with Kevin Bacon pissing off a cliff down into the valley below.  Tremors repeatedly leavens its tension with humor, and it nearly always does it with moments that ring true to the characters involved.  Better put, it didn’t feel like any lines were being delivered as jokes.  If something funny happens, it feels like it happens because the characters would do that thing rather than because someone decided that that was the right point for a punchline.  I had no idea that people living in a remote town in Nevada could be so unintentionally entertaining.

I should clarify.  Living in a remote town in rural Nevada is mind-numbingly boring, but the characters are a delight.  Burt and Heather Gummer, the town’s two survivalists, are some of my favorites.  They are so enthusiastically over-prepared and so happy to finally have a chance to be proven right that it very nearly hurts.  And the town’s children are similarly entertaining; it’s their clear boredom that really sells me on the town’s isolation, even though I wouldn’t give them high marks for their acting and even though they don’t play a large part in the film.  It’s fascinating to see what develops when terrible things start to happen in a town where everybody knows everybody, and nobody has all that much to do.

Give it a try.  For more of my thoughts, read on after the break.

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Spidey’s Reboot

Posted on by Henry

There’s a big problem with all the different continuities of comic book stories; it’s a chore to keep track of which version of a given hero you’re talking about.  That’s been less of a problem with the current Marvel superhero movies, because there has only been one series for each hero… but that comes with two notable exceptions.  The Hulk storyline has been rebooted once and had an actor swap twice, and now Spiderman has been rebooted and given an actor swap.  I enjoyed the first Spiderman movie with Tobey Maguire (it was also the only one that I saw) and so I’d ignored the new one.  But with a second new Spiderman movie coming out, I thought I should take a look.

If anything, I think I liked this new Spiderman more.  As my friend pointed out to me, new Peter Parker (played by Andrew Garfield) isn’t as convincingly a picked-on nerd as old Peter Parker was.  But he makes a far more convincing chatty Spiderman, something I always cherished when I first read the comics at the age of seven, and the way that he chokes out his newly picked name when asked who he is is just perfect.  As an added plus, I’m glad that they went back to his original external web projectors rather than having them be a natural element of his transformation.  I also think Garfield makes a much better version of Peter Parker as an outgoing and snarky-ish photographer.  If that’s the direction that they want to take Parker from the very beginning of this reboot I’m willing to see where it goes, even if it means glossing over some of Parker’s original role as a nebbish geek.  It’s not like we saw much of that in the first Spiderman movie anyway, is it?  I’ve mostly forgotten by this point, so I’m not especially worried about it.

More thoughts after the break.

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Posted on by Henry

I just watched Captain America: The Winter Soldier for the second time last night.  I loved it both times.  I liked the first  Cap movie as well, but The Winter Soldier leaves that first one in the dust.  They found an excellent balance between action, comedy, and serious trouble, striking a note that felt remarkably similar to the delivery of the first Iron Man movie, less the odd bit where I felt a little underwhelmed by the final fight between Obadiah and Tony.  Which is to say that it’s pretty frickin’ spectacular.  I’d say that it’s worth watching the first Captain America movie in order to better understand what’s going on in Winter Soldier, but it’s not absolutely necessary.

Almost all of the rest of this article is going to be spoiler-rich, so if you haven’t yet seen the movie I suggest that you stop reading before the break.  Take my word for it and go watch the movie; I’m almost certain you’ll enjoy its pulpy action-intrigue comic book goodness.

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