Cuz We Said So

Clash of the Titans (2010)

I still have an issue with 3D film.  It seems more like a gimmick than a storytelling device.  Also, this film was retroactively made 3D, largely because of the pressure of Avatar.  So I wasn't too disappointed when I found that the theater I went to was showing the 2D version.  Though, based on my fondness for the film, I might go ahead and seek out a 3D cinema to see it again.

I was never a huge fan of the original 80's version of COTT.  It was cheesy even then, despite the appearance of Lawrence Olivier.  I knew even as a kid that Bebo (the mechanical owl) was kind of doofy.  But you have to like Medusa and, of course, the Kraken.

In the new version, many things are altered.  This time around, Perseus is not on a quest for love.  He and Andromeda share about twelve lines in the whole film.  No, Perseus has a chip on his shoulder about the Gods, and he's on a quest to increase man's fortunes in the world, and bring these dieties down a peg.  That's a strange tack for a big Hollywood film to take, but I think it works.  Since these Greek gods are shown as flawed and certainly not omnipotent, it's not like this is a tract against current religious belief (though I'm sure many people will misinterpret it as such).

There's a lot of great acting in this one.  Liam Neeson nails Zeus.  Ralph Fiennes does a not-too-Voldemorty take on Hades.  Pete Postlethwaite is his always-awesome self.  (If you doubt me, take another look at The Usual Suspects, or even The Lost World.)  I really enjoyed Alexa Davalos' performance of Andromeda.  They didn't make her some ridiculous amazon (see Keira Knightley in King Arthur for what I mean).  Neither was she a squealing damsel in distress.  She was a strong woman who was willing (though certainly not eager) to sacrifice herself for her people.

But the film lives or dies with Perseus, and Sam Worthington does the job well.  He plays that whole tortured hero thing very well.  (Really, is Perseus really that different from Marcus in Terminator Salvation, or Jake from Avatar?)  I liked that fact that he never wavered in his hatred for the Gods, even when he's forced to accept help from them.

And, of course, the effects.  They were really quite awesome.  Loved the scorpions.  Loved the Pegasus.  Loved the Kraken.  Medusa was the least impressive, as if they hadn't put the final layer of texturing on the CG model, but it wasn't enough to bounce me out of the film.

I did have a couple of quibbles.  One was the use (again) of Hades as the bad guy in the film.  This does not match with my understanding of Greek mythology.  Hades wasn't the bad guy.  They were all bad guys.  Hades was just the one living underground.  But that's a minor quibble, since the film has to have a bad guy.  The other was the heavy-handed sequel set up at the end.  I have no problem with there being a sequel.  That'd be cool.  But don't dare me to hate your movie by being so blunt!

Even so, big thumbs up!

2009 Movie Wrap Up

It occurs to me that I never did my year end list of the movies I saw in 2009 with a relative breakdown of their merits.  So, here we go:

Great
Star Trek
Invictus -- The best Eastwood film I've ever seen.  Damon and Freeman are both perfect.  A surprisingly emotional film for being about racial disharmony, politics and rugby.
Taken
District 9

Very Good
Avatar
Monsters Vs. Aliens -- Cute, funny, inventive.  The number of laughs they get just on the topic of scale alone would make this recommendable.
Sherlock Holmes -- This deserves a full review from me, but I'm lazy.  Downey is awesome, Law is great.  The look and feel of the film is enjoyable.
The Hurt Locker -- This pretty much is the example of a taut thriler.  And the hero (played by Jeremy Renner) is someone you can love and hate simultaneously.  (But mostly you love him.)
Food, Inc. -- A documentary that will make you question how you eat.  And if can do that for me, you know it's good.
2012 -- Loved it.  It made no sense, and it was awesome.
The Proposal
Watchmen -- Wasn't quite as chock-full-of-awesome as I would have liked, but I found Billy Crudup's Dr. Manhattan and Jackie Earle Haley's Rorschach to be pretty much perfection.
Zombieland
The Informant! -- Based on a non-fiction book about the craziest anti-trust investigation in US history, Matt Damon plays the least heroic character of his career.  And (yay!) Scott Bakula is in it!
The Taking of Pelham 123
A Christmas Carol -- After Polar Express and Beowulf, I was getting kind of motion-captured out.  Can't Zemeckis direct live actors anymore?  But this one is remarkably subtle for great swaths of its running time.  I could have done without the crazy chase sequences, but most of the film is remarkable and very true to the original Dickens novel.

Good
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Terminator Salvation
Ingourious Basterds
The Road -- Yes, it's just as bleak as the book (and the trailer) would have you believe.  Viggo Mortensen plays the best dad ever.

Okay
Surrogates -- Bruce Willis as a plastic-coated robot!  Then Bruce Willis as a broken-down slob of a man!  Who wouldn't want to see that?  Does a nice job dramatizing a world filled entirely with couch potatoes.
The Men Who Stare at Goats -- There's some really funny stuff, and some really dumb stuff.  The performances are good, the story is bad, so it clocks in at okay for me.
The International -- The story is entirely forgettable.  (Really.  I can't remember it now.)  But that gun fight in the Guggenheim is awesome!
Fast and Furious -- Never saw installments 2 or 3, but this was mildly diverting, and had some nifty car chases.
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li -- It's tough to categorize a film that you enjoy thoroughly because it's so terrible.  And terrible this one is.  Terrible... and awesome!  Chris Klein rules!!
Knowing -- Here's what I know about this film.  Two great action sequences eclipse a ridiculous story.
The Girlfriend Experience

Okay, But Should Have Been Much Better
Angels & Demons
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
The Twilight Saga: New Moon -- I really want this franchise to be good.  It just keeps not doing that.  Still, this one's an improvement over Twilight.

Kind of Bad
Whiteout -- One of those "Maybe there's a supernatural component!" films that doesn't deliver.  But you get to see Kate Beckinsale in her underwear, so there's that.
Jennifer's Body -- Wasn't funny enough to be a comedy, wasn't scary enough to be horror, wasn't enough skin to be sheer titillation.
Law Abiding Citizen -- Over the top performances followed by over the top plot contrivances.  I hoped for better from Butler and Foxx.
My Bloody Valentine 3-D -- Everything you think it'd be, based on the title.

Very, Very Bad
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Sherlock Holmes

To jump to the meat of the matter, if you are a fan of Sherlock Holmes, and don’t insist that a movie fit every particular of stories written for an audience from the 1890s, you should see this movie. You don’t need to read any further. Stop here, get in your car and go.

In this new Sherlock Holmes film we have an updated, original story, well tied in to the original stories and historical events in numerous ways. This is no massaging of one of Sir A. C. Doyles stories, but something new written for a modern audience, not taking itself too seriously, and weaving politics, drug habits, good old anti-social behavior and a couple of love interests in, resulting in a very fun take on Holmes.

The casting is nicely done, with a great lead part for Robert Downey, Jr, Jude Law as a nicely done Dr. John Watson, and Eddie Marsan as Inspector Lestrade. Almost across the board I found the actors/actresses nice fits for the characters.

The dark Victorian London backdrop sets the mood very well, and numerous small details of the times are very nicely worked in, such as the Central European immigrants and even the practice of copper sheathing ships that was popular at the time (yes, I’m a geek in many ways).

I hope we see a sequel or two.

Star Trek on BluRay goes great with the new HD TV

On top of all the joys of Christmas bills, this year our main TV, a 7 year old Panasonic projection screen, decided to flake. After a trip to Best Buy, and based on watching movies on the beautiful TV my father recently got, I decided it fork out for an LCD. Like I really had any choice this time around. But the price point is at least finally down far enough I did start choking looking at the price tags.

So, one Samsung LN52B630 later, courtesy of Amazon (over $200 less than Best Buy’s best price with delivery and setup included), and I’m an loving my new Star Trek. While this may not be as great a watch as the Dark Knight BluRay, which I’ve had several people tell me is the one to get, it is a beautiful movie at home. The color depth and smoothness work throughout, and even without running it through surround sound it sounds great. Two thumbs up for new TV and the movie.

Russell Lutz’s Old-School Movie Reviews

While Russell has been writing movie reviews here since the week we launched the site back in November 2003, he’s been cranking out reviews on the Web since way back in the summer of ‘96, originally at his personal web page, Club 437.  While you can still see that original site in the Internet Archive, we’ve now imported his reviews here, for old times’ sake.  You’ll find them between September 1996 and December 2001 in the Film category.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Micro-Review

Unlikable characters swept up in a plot so dumb you’ll wonder whether it was written or assembled by trained otters pulling paper scraps from a hat.  I suspect Kurtzman and Orci had this ghost written while they worked on Star Trek.  Does anyone know if they have pet otters?  Also, there are giant robots that turn into other things. 

Loud and uncommonly dumb, even by summer blockbuster standards, I gritted my teeth and made it 53 minutes into this film before giving up and sending it back to Netflix.  That it was commercially successful ($834 million worldwide) should embarrass all of us.

David’s 2012 Micro-Review

While no one can know the future, I think we can safely predict that when the end of the world really does arrive, it will be entirely less preposterous than nearly everything you will see in this movie.  Of course, you would not go and see a film like this because you were yearning for realism. 

I enjoyed 2012 well enough; it has a great cast, and it has all the requisite pieces: the heroic speeches, the sad farewells, the knowing looks between the hero and his wife as he goes off to almost certain doom so that others may live—and of course, incalculable death and destruction, rendered in glorious hi-def with Dolby Digital sound.  It could, however, have used a bit less… almost everything.  Don’t get me wrong—I enjoy watching scores of people being incinerated, drowned, and crushed under falling buildings as much as anybody.  But Emmerich could have easily made this film a third shorter, a third as expensive, and two-thirds better.

It should be a massive hit.

Zombieland

I'm a fan of zombie films, and zombie comedies are even better!  (Okay, I liked "Shaun of the Dead".  That's the only one I can think of at the moment.)

This very tongue-in-cheek riff on the well-worn tropes of zombies is one of the least socially resonant I can remember seeing.  Yes, once again, zombies illustrate a social force in our society.  But this time around, they're a stand-in for our technology-based alienation from each other.  And it takes the the destruction of our civilization for our heroes to realize they really do need each other.  (Yawn.)

The jokes, on the other hand, are pretty good.  Jesse Eisenberg ("Adventureland") is our narrator, giving us his backstory along with several Max-Brooks-ish rules for surviving in the post-apocalyptic Zombieland, such as "Check the back seat" and "Don't be a hero".  His mentor in zombie killing is a suprisingly likeable Woody Harrelson.  (I say "surprisingly", because I haven't liked the guy in anything since Cheers.)  Joining these two are a pair of sisters played by Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin.

There are a few too many reversals which seem to have irretrievably broken our little foursome up... but since you're a movie viewer, you know they won't be broken up for long.  An extended celebrity cameo is a great deal of fun.  And the finale surprised me a little.

All in all, it was enjoyable, but nothing very earth-shatteringly original.

Ebert's List of 312 Great Movies

With links to his reviews (via Newmark's Door). 

I have only seen 31 of these films all the way through that I can be sure of, though I may have seen others and simply don’t remember them.  For what it’s worth, I maintain Kieslowski’s Three Colors should count as three not one, and I should get partial credit for seeing several of Apted’s Up films, though I’m still working my way through them.  (I wonder if there will be a 56 Up in 2012?)

Summer '09 - Blockbuster #12 - "Inglourious Basterds"

Stupidly mispelled title aside, I was really looking forward to this new Tarantino work, because, according to the pattern, I should like it.  Here's the pattern.  I like every other Tarantino film.

"Resevoir Dogs" -- Didn't see it, but I heard about the ear.  So I don't think I'll like it.

"Pulp Fiction" -- Absolutely perfect movie.

"Jackie Brown" -- Boring!

"Kill Bill" -- I believe that this is a single film, despite the fact that he broke it into two parts for release.  I loved it.

"Deathproof" -- This was the Tarantino-directed, Kurt-Russell-starring half of "Grindhouse".  And it was by far the lesser half.

So, now, a Jewish band of soldiers infiltrates Nazi Germany late in the war to commit horrifying atrocities, thus undermining the Germans' faith in their leadership.  They are led by an accent-and-scar-sporting Brad Pitt.  They are helped by a blithe-yet-deadly Diane Kruger.  And the temp from "The Office".  No, really.

Now, if the film had been just about the "Bastards", then I might have liked it more.  But it was also about Shoshanna, a French Jew who watches her entire family get killed by Nazis, and vows to have her revenge.  (I won't go into the manner of the revenge.  But it's pretty cool.)

Similarly, if the film was just about Shoshanna, then I might have liked it more.  But there was all this very Tarantinoesque shifting of perspective.  Even that wouldn't have bothered me, except that, in the finale, when the two groups start to collide.. they don't really.  Neither story was significantly altered by the other.  It was an fascinating structure, to be sure, but not one that increased my cinematic joy at the experience.  I wanted more interesting, intersecting stuff to happen.

The very ending is remarkable, and caps the film very well.  But I can't give IB more than a half-hearted thumbs up.