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corvuscorax-ti22
Reviews
Attack the Block (2011)
Nice addition to the alien invasion genre
First, it seems many of the negative reviews of this film have to do with the portrayal of the youths in a South London street gang as heroes. If you cannot buy into the premise that a teenager who mugs people at knife-point could be a hero trying save his public housing block from alien invasion, then you won't like this movie. Don't watch it. If you can accept the idea long enough to see where it goes, then this film is definitely worth a look. Now, on to the review....
There's some gore and horror, but it won't be terribly scary for most people old enough to handle R-rated movies. There's action, but it's not over-the-top. There's humor, but the film isn't a laugh-fest. There's social commentary, but it's not too heavy-handed. Perhaps some would see these as flaws -- as if the film didn't go far enough in a particular direction to define itself as something more typical (and more easily marketable) -- but I see it as a more balanced film. Plus, it lets the focus remain on the characters and the story. The actors do a wonderful job, too; the characters seemed very authentic. Maybe that's why so many people didn't like them -- it really felt like these kids had grown up in a hard neighborhood and had become hardened themselves.
I've had disappointments in the past with films where the director filmed the screenplay he wrote; too many directors are more oriented to nice-looking visuals and so construct a weak story with flat characters just to make something that looks visually stunning. Joe Cornish is not one of them. The story by itself is pretty simple, although there are quite a few characters running around. If you don't like ensemble casts, you may find this annoying. But the characters are written and acted well, and the directing is strong. There are some great subtle elements, too, like the interaction between Moses and Tia. I'm not surprised that this movie has won a slew of film festival and critics' awards.
Not really any new ground broken on the style of the aliens, but we've all seen so many types of aliens (the ones with fangs, the ones with tentacles, the quasi-human ones, etc) that it's difficult for anyone to come up with something totally new. Still, the ones here are done well and are a nice twist on fang-type aliens. Given the limited budget of this film, they look good. I liked the fact that while tough, the things aren't invincible. They're just plain nasty animals, and in a way, it keeps them believable in a film that tries to keep the setting and characters believable. I've seen many Hollywood blockbusters with aliens that can barely be defeated, and what I enjoyed most about Attack the Block was that it's NOT one of those movies.
Although produced by the same people who did Shaun of the Dead, this film is not quite as funny. That's not a bad thing -- I think the more serious edge works here -- but if you're looking mainly for a comedy focus similar to SOTD, then you might be disappointed with Attack the Block. There were some parts I found predictable, but it didn't bother me. On the whole, it's a unique and fun movie to watch!
John Carter (2012)
This is what a movie should be!
Although I have yet to read "A Princess of Mars", I knew going into the theater that 1) changes would have to have been made to get an almost 100-year-old sci-fi story to appeal to a modern audience, and 2) what wasn't changed would seem odd or possibly even ridiculous due to the original story being written so long ago. I'm suppose that may be where some of the negative criticism comes from, but keeping both of those points in mind, I was able to enjoy the movie for what it was. The plot seemed to ramble a bit, and this probably has to do with adapting Burroughs's original story. A few times I found myself wondering when John Carter was going to get around to saving the princess and Helium. I'm not sure I'd mind this if I watched it again. And I will watch it again!
I enjoyed this movie immensely – yes, it was visually stunning and there's a lot of action, but it the storytelling and character development are also superb. Taylor Kitsch and the entire cast did a fabulous job, and everything was put together so well. I saw it in 3-D, and while the 3-D at first seemed a little like layers of cardboard cut-outs (I heard this was due to being filmed in 2-D and converted to 3-D), I got completely sucked into the story and the world of Barsoom and didn't notice. I don't think the 3-D matters. It's an excellent movie in either case, and one of the best movies I've seen in a long time.
Bridge to Terabithia (2007)
Well done!
I read "Bridge to Terabithia" years ago as a kid, and it was one of my favorite books. I had a certain picture in my mind of the characters and how the story played out, and seeing the amount of CGI in the trailers, I figured the story had been mutilated to include the fantasy world in the same vein as the Narnia novels. I did not want to see a great story butchered, and I thought I would despise this movie, based on what I saw in the trailers. Well, too often trailers don't do their films justice. I did watch it, the story wasn't butchered, and I thought it was great!
The characters weren't quite the way I pictured them of course, but the cast was excellent, and they captured the essence of the characters. I haven't read the book in a long time, but all the important plot points seemed to be present from what I remembered. And I was so happy to see that the CGI was used just enough to enhance the fantasy world of Jess and Leslie and not dominate the film.
Like the book, the film has real heart, and it turned out to be one of the best adaptations of a beloved book I have seen.
The Final Cut (2004)
Great story idea that went nowhere
This film had a great premise -- neural implants that record all of a person's memories from birth -- but did very little with it. Like too many movies I see these days, it has a great cast, excellent production values, appealing cinematography and a lousy script. While watching, I got the feeling that the script had been written by a filmmaker. After it was over, I checked the credits, and I was right. Could we please ban directors from making films of their own screenplays until they learn how to write a decent story? This could have been a great movie if the script had been better.
A few of the many story & character problems:
- The neural implant idea wasn't taken far enough. Apart from protests against implants and Re-memory viewings, there's no indication how implants affect society on a larger scale.
- You'd expect to see characters modifying their behavior given the knowledge that others have implants, but they don't. Example: the mother's completely unrealistic behavior in regard to the child molestation subplot. Hello! The whole family has implants, and you're going to let your husband molest your daughter? The father knew he and and the daughter had implants, but he did it anyway? Makes no sense.
- Neural implant technology is hand-waved. It's never explained why implants are done while a child is in the womb (surely complex surgery, apart from the ethical aspects), but no one gets them them later in life. Accessing your implant while alive is dangerous, yet the scene where Alan is okay right up until the timer runs out is silly; there should have been some side effects before that. Also that someone could have an implant go undetected for about 50 years is questionable.
- Main plot is not one coherent story. Most of the film centers on Alan Hakman trying to find a man he thought had died as a child. That story is more or less resolved, then it shifts to him being chased by the anti-implant crowd for his memories for a small portion of the film before the abrupt, unsatisfying ending.
- Alan Hakman as the protagonist, AKA the hero, is terribly weak. His actions revolve around himself. He seems to show compassion for the molested girl, but he just wanted information from her for his search for the man with the glasses anyway. He puts together a memory video for his love interest, and she says it's like he read her mind. Seems sweet, doesn't it? Then you find out later that it's because he read her dead boyfriend's mind! He had the man's memories from his implant. Totally creepy that he's pursuing this woman after seeing her in another man's memories AND he has no problem taking things from those memories to woo her. Mira Sorvino decking Robin Williams and destroying his equipment at that point was the most realistically human moment of the entire film. Alan religiously adheres to the three cutter's rules (simplistic and flimsy, given the implications of implants), yet he completely lacks ethics in using other people's memories for his own purposes where the cutter's code does not apply. Ultimately, everything he does in the film is for his own selfish ends, which does not a hero make. It's difficult to care about him because of it.
- The guy who DOES have a purpose greater than himself and a concern for other people is the villain! Jim Caviezel gets the best character in the movie. (Mira Sorvino as Delila could have been good, but she was reduced to playing a sort of "voice of conscience". A waste of her talent.) Fletcher is the one character who comes closest to having the traits of a hero, but Hakman is set up as the protagonist; you couldn't flip it, though, because Alan is far too weak to be a villain either.
A better script and more time devoted to characterization would have helped. Most of the characters are too flat, and some behave in very unrealistic ways. The tattoo scene went on several minutes too long, and there are probably others that could have been shortened to let the characters do more.
On the plus side, the film is visually beautiful, and the cast gives some good performances. If you don't care about story -- obviously, I do -- then you're more likely to enjoy this film. It's a case of style over substance here. If this film were a meal, it would be gorgeously presented, but afterward you'd be thinking "It was nice, but it didn't taste like I thought it would. And I'm still hungry."
Tron: Legacy (2010)
Slick looking action-fest leaves a disappointing Legacy
I rated this at 5 stars because it's very watchable and entertaining, but having seen the original "Tron", I really can't rate it higher. Sequels always have more to live up to than stand-alone films, and "TRON: Legacy" did not do its predecessor justice in continuing said legacy.
The first movie took an original concept and really ran with it, from story to characters to costumes to computer generated landscapes. Everything looked, felt and acted like a different world. The programs had real-world user counterparts, had specific functions, and the whole world had a certain way things worked that was based on how computers work.
"Legacy" on the other hand, goes strictly for looks and rehashing the same kind of action sequences seen in other movies. The whole thing looks and acts too much like a techno version of the real world. Or like another version of The Matrix. The light cycles can jump over things now -- since when can you cross light trail barriers? There are aircraft and quasi-parachutes, but there's no sense that these things have a computer-related function, they just look cool and provide vehicles for the action. The programs presumably eat and drink and dance at nightclubs now. Michael Sheen is fun to watch, but his character and the whole nightclub scene was unnecessary. Even the names of the characters are more like real-world names versus computer-world names. Sorry, spelling "Cora" as "Quorra" and "Zeus" as "Zuse" for the credits doesn't count.
Other problems with "Legacy" include glaring plot holes and unanswered questions. As a user, Flynn had to be the most powerful being on the Grid. How is it that he is forced to sit back and watch Clu take over everything? How did Clu change Tron into a bad guy? What really made the ISOs special, apart from appearing out of nowhere? The answer to all of those is to not let a coherent story get in the way of all the cool-looking action. The story mainly exists to piece together one action sequence to the next. Blatant emotional pieces concerning missing fathers, tyrannical dictators and genocide are dropped in to add some sense of story depth, and they do feel dropped in rather than developed in a meaningful way. The ISOs really only serve as a way to introduce the genocide angle and get love interest Quorra out into the human world, and Flynn must sit around so his son can come save him and have that father/son reunion. (Really, he never even tried to contact the outside world with his user powers?)
It feels like they decided Tron had to be included somewhere since he was the titular character of the first movie, even though they had no use for him. His character needed more backstory and development in this film with the good-to-bad conversion, but they chose to give Bruce Boxleitner almost no dialogue (c'mon, he's doing voice-over, it's not like they had to CGI him young again like Jeff Bridges) and have Tron/Rinzler utter Predator-like sounds for most of his very few scenes in the film. He could have been the most interesting character in the film, and they practically threw him away. What a waste. Same for the story in general. There are so many different angles and ideas from the first movie that could have been explored in a new story, and they were all ignored in favor of looking cool. Maybe that's why Jeff Bridges as Flynn either doesn't want to get involved in this mess or tries to focus on his inner peace in the middle of the action.
A big part of the charm of "TRON" was that the computer world was so different, that it didn't have things the real world did but a new set of rules and possibilities grounded in the workings of computer hardware and software. That was the originality of the "TRON" concept, and "Legacy" abandons it in favor of cool-looking sets, costumes and action sequences -- sure, it looks great, but there's no sense of wonder like the first film had.
(Having seen the first episode of the new "TRON: Uprising", I'm sorry to say that rehashing what's been done in other series and looking cool like this latest movie is the direction the franchise continues to go. Sad.)
Good Day for It (2011)
I wanted to like this film more
The good stuff: excellent cast, fabulous moody cinematography, and good suspense.
The not-so-good stuff: most of the cast don't get to do much, the anachronisms, and the suspense being largely generated by the very, very slow pace.
I'm a big fan of both Robert Patrick and Lance Henriksen, and I was thrilled at the chance to see these two actors together. Unfortunately, there's just one scene with the two of them. Since this film is a lot closer to portraying "real life", the performances are appropriately understated. It was obvious that bad things were going to happen, but it was impossible to say just how and when it would all play out, even right up to the end.
Among the things that irked me was that some of the other excellent actors didn't get much screen time or their characters were basically along for the ride (literally for Christian Kane). Robert England made the most of his limited role, though, and I found him to be the creepiest of the pack of baddies. As much as the visuals were done well, I'd have liked less time devoted to landscape and more time devoted to character development and interaction.
I found the Deputy Doug character to be poorly written and thus irritating to no end, despite a strong effort by Joe Flanigan. While I get that as a rural deputy he doesn't see a lot of action, he seems to forget whatever police training he's had. I was literally yelling "Call for backup!" several times while watching this at home on DVD. You can tell he knows things aren't right on several occasions, but he doesn't do anything about it. You see the conflict on his face, but he takes no action. He only seems to remember he's a law enforcement officer near the end when he's ready to take on the protagonist, because he remembers him from a photo, taken 15 years earlier, from a newspaper article on microfiche. (Yes, microfiche. Apparently only the teen daughter has any connection to modern society with her laptop.) But before that, he does nothing about the four bad guys with police records, who he had already pulled over once and let go, and who have his friends Rose and Hec obviously nervous when he picks up dinner at the diner. Instead, he drives off and then takes an exceedingly long time to even look in his take-out and see that his order is purposely wrong. Was the Doug character meant to be stupid or a coward? Or both? His actions or lack thereof have no consistent logic, so it's hard to tell.
On the whole, it's a decent film and worth a look, but save it for a day when you can handle the dreary atmosphere and the extremely slow pace. And I dare you to not notice the rotary phone.