Jennifer’s Body deserves more attention. You should definitely watch Jennifer’s Body. I give up: there’s almost no way that I can talk about this movie without sounding like a creeper. Watching Jennifer’s Body is a refreshing experience, as the movie takes a jaunty and semi-upbeat stroll through the teenage monster movie genre. Though the movies are quite different, I wasn’t that surprised to learn that Jennifer’s Body was made by the same crew that made Juno. Rather than dealing with teenage pregnancy, this movie tells the story of two best friends, and the bloody end of their friendship; we’re given a front row seat to the narrator’s transformation from a sweet, self-assured, but largely unassuming young woman into someone driven to extremes by violence, danger, necessity, and isolation, certain of the importance of her actions despite knowing that no one will believe her. Contrary to the claims of most critics (and even some audiences, since the movie was panned by Rottentomatoes and IMDb), I think the film is quite good. Perhaps you’d care to find out why?
Category Archives: Movies
Thor 2 Brings The Thunder(ous Laughter)
HEIMDALL!
Right. Now that I’ve gotten my oddly compulsive enthusiasm for Heimdall out of the way, I can get on with reviewing this movie.
Thor 2 may be one of those cases of too much of a good thing; I love it so much that I’m really not sure where to start talking about it. All I can tell you is that I cackled repeatedly in the theatre despite being surrounded by strangers, and that I would happily see it again soon (though preferably without paying through the nose for my tickets, thank you very much Loews Boston Common).
I haven’t had this much fun in a movie theatre since I went to see The Avengers. Heck, I think Thor 2 might be even more fun than The Avengers, though they’re competing in different categories. See, The Avengers is one of the serious episodes of the superhero series, while the Thor movies are the comedic relief. They have their serious moments of course, but it seems like everyone involved recognized the first movie’s comedic potential and decided to run with it for Thor 2. And holy shit did they ever succeed.
On that note, I, um, have to have another shout out:
Darcy sizes you up for her next laser-guided comedic strike.
Darcy is hilarious. I don’t want to spoil anything, but do you recall how she totally stole the spotlight in the first movie? I hardly paid any attention to poor Natalie Portman in the first Thor, despite the fact that I usually love her characters. I think Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster got far more attention this time through, which was good, but you should still keep your eyes on Kat Denning’s Darcy. Every scene that she was in became funnier, just by virtue her presence. She was flat-out one of my favorite characters, and her simultaneously accepting and no-nonsense reactions to all of the truly ridiculous things going on around her only made her scenes better.
I’m a little worried to be talking too much about this movie. I seriously don’t want to give anything away. It’s everything that I had hoped for from a superhero movie, and it does it all with a particular attention to dramatic comedy that will leave you with a grin plastered to your face. It is an unapologetic superhero flick in high form, and (as I’ve come to expect from Marvel’s tightly woven movie universe) sets up perfectly for more fun and excitement in the future.
Now, before I go on to talk about things that might be considered spoilers, I just have to say: stay for both of the post-credit sequences. As with Avengers, there are two of them. Oh, and if you want to read someone else’s excellent take on why Darcy is so cool, check this out.
Right, so here there be *SPOILERS*.
I’m not actually going to say very much. What I really wanted to talk about was the fact that they managed to find an excuse that let them have a climactic set piece battle with callbacks to other previous challenges faced by Thor. I thought that that was very cleverly done, and I was glowing with admiration from one storyteller to another for how they had managed it. Could they have done more with it? Probably. Did they need to? Not at all. It was wonderfully done as it was.
Oh, also, my overweening enthusiasm for Heimdall was well and truly paid off in this film. I liked him in the first film because I thought he was simply cool. His actions in the the second movie cemented my impression of him, given his careful maneuvering of his obligations to simultaneously do what he saw as necessary and right while still maintaining his loyalty to Asgard. Who would have thought that I would like someone so stoic and terse? Oh, right, everyone who’s seen me watch a Spaghetti Western.
Watch this movie. If you’ve ever been at all tempted by a superhero story, it’s truly a treat.
The Lone Ranger: Better Than Expected
Another plane ride, another unexpected movie review. I seriously hadn’t planned on watching The Lone Ranger, but boredom plus free makes for some powerful incentives.
I didn’t watch the film in theaters because it just didn’t seem worth $10 – $12. I’m still not sure whether it’s worth that much, but the movie passed the “acceptably fun” test for being stuck without other entertainment on a plane, and it didn’t explode with the offensiveness I had expected. That’s not to say that others won’t find it offensive, since some clearly already have (Hanay Geiogamah, for example). In fact, coming around to it, I had such low expectations for the movie that it can’t help but have exceeded them. Please bear this in mind. I’ll do my best not to spoil anything too much, and I’ll warn you before the spoilers get hot and heavy… but some are inevitable. Read on as you see fit.
Ladycops bring The Heat
Have any of you seen The Heat? I more or less ignored it until I was stuck on an airplane last week with nothing to do. I won’t claim to be glad that I was on an airplane for so long, but I am glad that I had the chance to watch the movie. The Heat combines stupidity, comedy, entertainingly awkward social interactions and a dash of action in the very familiar buddy-cop formula, and comes out just ahead of the grade. We’re not talking about a new classic, but it’s a fun and funny movie that will happily scratch your comedy-action itch. Better yet, it delivers the tried-and-true buddy-cop comedy with all-female leads.
While there are vast swathes of buddy-cop movies, hordes of films in which we can watch men being silly with and at each other while they fight crime, The Heat is the first that I know of in the genre which stars two women in the leading roles. While this point may feel overplayed, it’s still a big frickin’ deal as far as women’s movie roles are concerned, especially because The Heat has been so successful. I’m not begging for a sequel, but I could certainly go for more movies like it. Why? Well…
I’ve seen enough of these movies to have a good feel for where the story beats are going to come; I won’t claim that I can call them all before they show up, but I rarely feel surprised. Following the ladies offers a different experience. I still expect the pieces that are staples of the buddy-cop genre (which The Heat delivers on), but The Heat’s take on romantic side-interests is refreshingly entertaining (the plucky puppy-dog local FBI agent is worth a good laugh, as are Melissa McCarthy’s terribly mixed signals). These aren’t really new, just a fun reworking of already well-known story patterns.
But I really think the interpersonal social dynamics deserve a mention: we end up sympathizing with two women who are clearly not especially sympathetic according to our standard cultural expectations. These are women who have almost certainly been called “bitch” repeatedly by their detractors. They are brash, overbearing, and competent. But instead of disapproving of them the movie clearly wants us to like them. Novel and intriguing, no? We’ve long been shown men like this and been told that they were protagonists, it seems only fitting that we should see a movie with women in those roles.
The Heat isn’t a masterpiece. It isn’t even terribly unconventional except for its casting of two female leads and how that plays out in the film. But if you are looking for a movie to watch with your friends and you feel the need for buddy-cop goodness, take a look at The Heat.
*SPOILERS*
Oh and by the way, talk about badass: crawling down a long corridor to shoot the bad guy after being stabbed repeatedly in the leg? Groovy. It’s very reminiscent of poor shoeless John McLean with his room full of broken glass in Die Hard.
Guns, Gams & Go-Fast Machines: Fast & Furious 6
I feel a little embarrassed saying this, but I recently watched and enjoyed the fast-car soap-opera-with-guns Fast & Furious 6. It was just as intelligent as I had expected it to be, with plenty of zoom-zoom-bang-bang to make up for its intellectual shortcomings. Which is to say, the movie was almost entirely about action and cars. Much as in other entries in the series, women’s legs also made an important appearance by filling the screen at (in)appropriate moments.
While the writers clearly didn’t care one whit about how computers actually work (normal for the genre), they surprised me by offering a genuine sense of continuity with the other Fast/Furious films. This made me very happy indeed, as the various tie-ins towards the end brought Tokyo Drift into relation with the rest of the series. They also clearly established where the next action will most likely take place and why it will be exciting…
Who Did it Better: Elysium vs Johnny Mnemonic
I just saw Elysium, and in discussing it with a coworker we determined that it was indeed a cyberpunk film. Our fellow coworkers weren’t familiar with the genre, and in introducing them to it we remembered the 1995 film Johnny Mnemonic. We then realized that Elysium shares many aspects of the classic William Gibson story. From this point on there will be spoilers, and unlike previous posts I won’t be whiting them out, so if you don’t want either film’s secrets to be revealed, you should stop reading.
Cabin in the Woods
Abraham is told that he should really just watch the movie already
Cabin in the Woods is an excellent film, particularly if you’re looking for a bloody romp through the menacing trees with a plot twist that will leave you trying to screw your head back on straight. You get plenty of warning, and the ending is staring you down from a mile away, looming like a blood-hungry Macy’s parade balloon as it swoops down on you and consumes all in its path. But for all that you can see it coming once you put the pieces together, it’s so totally not what I’ve come to expect from a “kill-the-youngsters” horror movie that I was still gobsmacked when I actually realized what was happening. And if you can handle the buckets of gore and unrepentantly dark story, the humor which rears its head time and again will keep you chuckling the whole way through.
Beautiful Creatures is more than skin deep
Just to make things clear, this is about the 2013 movie, not the book by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. I honestly haven’t even looked sideways at the book, though I probably should. I originally watched the movie because I was bored on a long flight and I hoped it would inspire me in running a Monsterhearts game. I was totally right.
On the face of it, Beautiful Creatures is a fairly average movie that nestles comfortably in the niche most recently made by Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. I haven’t read those books either, but yes, this is all about teenage monsters and teenagers who have magical powers. See how I just implied that most teens are monsters?
I have no love for the Twilight books, and the only times I’ve watched the movies were during “watch to regret, drink to forget” parties, mourning the particularly shitty moments in my friends’ lives. Beautiful Creatures, on the other hand, is genuinely fun and rewarding to watch.
Pacific Rim
If I made a top 5 list of things I think are cool, it would look something like this:
- Dinosaurs
- Dinosaurs
- Robots
- Dinosaurs
- Dinosaurs
But I don’t really think the above captures how much I like dinosaurs. My parents swear that my first real word was ‘dinosaur’, I still know the names of far-too-many dinosaur species, I can give you a compelling argument as to why the T-Rex was likely a scavenger, not a hunter, I have practiced several dinosaur noises, although I remain jealous that my phone makes this noise when texted, as I doubt I could ever be trained to replicate it, and I once nicknamed a lady I dated ‘raptor girl’ to my friends because she did a raptor impression on the internet and gave me a dinosaur head (cut out of a magazine) attached to a popsicle stick on our first date — boy was that a good move! — and we remain close friends to this day. Basically, I want to be a dinosaur when I grow up. When Jurassic Park was re-released recently… let’s just say that the number of times I saw it is shameful, or would be if I were capable of feeling shame about my love for dinosaurs. So you can imagine when I saw this trailer for Pacific Rim, I all but soiled myself. IT’S DINOSAURS FIGHTING ROBOTS! But having seen it, I must admit to a mixed reaction.
WARNING: with most media, I feel obligated to introduce a complicated system of spoiler tags. But there is no plot of which to speak in this movie. So if you fear the spoilers, don’t read on, but know that I’m judging you.
RED brings comedy to a knife-fight, wins
I suppose it would be more accurate that they bring guns to a knife-fight and then laugh about it. RED is none other than Retired, Extremely Dangerous, a movie about aging covert operatives who appear to be targeted for forceful extra-retirement by some very well connected people. Loosely inspired by Warren Ellis’ graphic novels of the same name, this movie takes those books’ themes and runs with them, delivering in a huge way. A few names you’ll recognize own the movie’s screen with their presence: Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Brian Cox, Karl Urban, and Mary-Louise Parker. They’re maybe kind of a big deal, and they totally make the movie.
Fistful of Wits 