Super 8

Well, there was a lot of running in Super 8, but not as much as I would expect in a JJ Abrams movie. Super 8 unfurls in a leisurely fashion, introducing the characters and situation slowly. I read that Abrams was trying for the feeling of an early Steven Spielberg movie and he succeeded, to a point.

Super 8 has received a lot of buzz - or maybe hype - but it's not a big movie. The train crash was ridiculously complicated yet non-fatal and the way the thing in the train behaved was inconsistent. No, Super 8 is a just decent little movie. The characters were nice, the acting was good and the movie is an adequate way to spend a hundred minutes, but it's not a movie for the ages and it won't be on the list of 2011's top popcorn movies.

1:44

Pre-impression of Super 8

I'm off to see Super 8 shortly. I predict a lot of running. Yep, running.

Super 8 was directed by JJ Abrams and if he has one trademark, it's running. He used it in his previous movies Mission: Impossible III* and Star Trek, and on his TV shows Alias, Lost and for all I know, Felicity. Extended, occasionally unnecessary tracking shots of people running in profile. While Jennifer Garner always looked good running for her life on Alias, the rest of the examples are somewhat mixed in effectiveness.

I predict running.

* Don't get me started on why the modern Mission: Impossible movies have nothing in common with the original TV series. For your own good, don't get me started.

Thor

Studios have been making a lot of movies based on comic books lately and, judging by the releases in the pipeline, they won't be stopping anytime soon. Thing is, the medium of motion pictures is not the optimum medium for a comic book story - a comic book is.

Thor is a prime example. Not a bad movie at all, but the superficiality of the story, the two-dimensional characters and over-the-top action scenes did nothing to draw me in to the movie. The part I liked the most was actually the CGI scenes of Odin's realm. They showed a beautiful golden city on a mountaintop - think Rome and Greece at their peaks, only bigger.

And what is with Natalie Portman being in every other movie made lately? I love her to death and she always does a great job, but take a breath, kid. Unfortunntely, in Thor, she had little chemistry with the he-man lead. That might have something to do with Thor being based on a comic book. She's much better in movies based on original screenplays. Black Swan, No Strings Attached anyone?

1:44

Fast Five

At last, a movie that delivers exactly what it promises. Fast Five doesn't promise a lot, but cars are chased, bullets whiz, biceps are flexed, bikinis are bikinied, and lots of things go BOOM! There's lots of attractive scenery in and around Rio de Janeiro, attractive people galore and lots of fun stunts.

Fast Five is the fifth movie in the The Fast and the Furious franchise, but I only saw numbers 1& 2, and I had no trouble keeping up. Among the elements Fast Five promises, a labyrinthine plot is not one of them. If you're looking for a fast paced movie that allows you to turn off half of your brain (or more) for two hours, I recommend Fast Five.

Two additional notes. First, the plot of the movie is pure caper. I remember reading apocryphal mentions a few years ago of a sequel to The Italian Job to be called The Brazilian Job. I wonder if someone appropriated the plot of the never-to-be-made Italian Job sequel for Fast Five. The two movies parallel each other in many regards, but that may just be a function of the caper movie genre.

Next, Elsa Pataky has a supporting role as a cop from Rio. Well known in her native Espana, she's only done a few projects in English, including Snakes on a Plane. Elsa has fabulous screen presence and only a bit of a Spanish accent, so it's hard to believe that American film makers don't employ her more often. Fools.

 2:01

Something Borrowed

Do not bother. Something Borrowed was sold as a romantic comedy but it's really of the romantic trainwreck ilk. Despite the promise of the commercials, it has few laughs in the first half and none in the second. But let's suppose you are interested in a romantic trainwreck movie - it's a real genre and sometimes the movies can be good - there are much better ones out there.

Among the other reasons to dislike Something Borrowed include logical problems with the story, miscasting, no chemistry between the leads, and characters so sterile you won't be able to garner any emotional attachment to the movie. There's also the matter of the movie being 20 minutes too long and having two false endings.

There is one redeeming quality to Something Borrowed: the always adorable Ginnifer Goodwin.  My advice?  Skip Something Borrowed - whether you want to see a romantic comedy or romantic trainwreck, you can find better examples of both.

1:47

Love and Other Drugs

I never got around to seeing Love and Other Drugs when it was in the theater last winter, so now that it's out on DVD - that was fast! - I gave it a watch.

From the previews, I see that it was a romantic comedy about a drug rep for Viagra. Oh, and after it left the theater, I heard it was the movie where Anne Hathaway gets naked. What could be bad?

Bait

and

Switch.

Love and Other Drugs isn't a romantic comedy, it's an occasionally humorous drama about a young woman with Parkinson's disease. Downer.

Anne looks good without her clothes, Jake Gyllenhaal proves he is a Movie Star, but Love and Other Drugs is a Love Story Drama. Even though we know she has Parkinson's, Anne really has Alimacgrawitis, the ailment named after Love Story star Ali MacGraw, whose character became more radiant and lovely the sicker she got.

If you want a modern illness drama, Love and Other Drugs will do fine - it's a decent movie - but if you want a nice romantic comedy, keep looking.

Hop

Hop is a fairly flat hybrid of live action & CGI about the Easter Bunny. There is nothing particularly interesting or special about Hop, in fact, I found a few things objectionable, but I'm known to be surly.

The versatile and shameless James Marsden plays a 30-ish slacker who is unfortunate enough to meet up with a slacker junior Easter Bunny. Kaley Cuoco (of The Big Bang Theory) gets second billing (for humans) but is in the movie far too little and wears far too conservative attire.

1:30

Talking at Movies

There are three kinds of people who talk during movies: people who just plain like to talk at movies; people who talk to their young children out of necessity; and people who talk at movies under the pretense of talking to their children.

Guess which of these heinous, selfish, no-good excuses for humans being sat down one seat away from me today (in an almost empty theater, no less) and talked almost non-stop for the entire* movie?

*I moved to a seat out of earshot about five minutes into the movie but I could still hear murmurs coming from that direction during quiet parts of the show.

Hanna

I went to see Hanna this afternoon, for the second time. Aside from that implied endorsement, here are a few things you need to know:

The title character is German, so her name is pronounced Honna. The lead actress is Saoirse Ronan, whose name is pronounced Sur-sha (if we believe the internet).

Although it looks like a spy movie and fully 3/4ths of the characters are current or former spies, it's not a spy movie. Hanna could be considered a full-tilt, balls to the wall action movie but it's really a coming of age movie. It's a character study about Hanna finding out who she is. Unlike your typical 17-year-old girl finding herself, Hanna is a killing machine.

Hanna has been raised by her father in seclusion in northern Finland. It's possible that she's never met another person and definitely no one her own age. She's never used electricity or heard music. Her father has raised her to be strong, independent and lethal. He drills her incessantly, repeating "Always be ready, even in your sleep," and "Adapt or die." That last mantra is really the theme of the movie.

The father never kept from Hanna that her mother was killed by a CIA officer named Marissa Weigler. That name sounds more ominous when said with a German accent. He trains Hanna to get revenge. After giving her lukewarm warnings about how dangerous it will be to start down the revenge path, he gives her a device that will attract the attention of American intelligence and allow her to come face to face with her mother's killer.  Really, he programmed her for this mission from infancy.  She had no choice.

The rest of the story is a cat & mouse game where the CIA peoples don't understand that they are the mice. Hanna has to travel across half of Europe to catch up to her father and she learns much about herself in the process.

Here's what I liked about Hanna. It ends up with a necessary confrontation but gets there in unexpected and leisurely ways, many of which you don't normally find in an action movie.

Director Joe Wright is highly talented, helming Pride and Prejudice (the Keira Knightley version) and The Soloist, and worked with Saoirse before, in 2007's Atonement, which netted her an Academy Award nomination for Supporting Actress. She was also fine in City of Ember (a terrible movie otherwise) and OK in The Lovely Bones.

Wright is so talented he couldn't resist showing off in Hanna. There is one scene that takes place with a single shot. The father steps off a bus, scoots across a lane of traffic, walks through the terminal, out the other side, down a long sidewalk, down an escalator, then gets into a fight with four spies in a large underground plaza, and then walks out. It's a three minute plus shot and it's beautiful, although unnecessary. Wright did it before in Atonement, with a much bigger wartime shot. I like the idea of continuous shots but this one seemed like showing off.

Much of Hanna involves Hanna seeing the outside world for the first time. When she escapes custody, she takes refuge in a rundown motel. The clerk turns on a light switch, which she finds mesmerizing. Same for the TV. She flips out when the phone rings. Much of this discovery is made with pounding techno music assaulting our ears so we get a hint of what she feels. Yet, Hanna adapts, as later in the movie she stops at an internet cafe and surfs as well as anyone.

There's another scene that I found remarkable yet it passes almost unnoticed. Her host in Berlin begins to make waffles and gets out a carton of eggs. Hanna asks for one, he tosses it to her, she catches it, cracks it open and swallows the contents in a single motion. It's a great scene that tells you almost everything you need to know about her yet it's over in a few seconds.

Although I'm raving about Hanna - perhaps not in ways the studio might approve of - there are a few downsides. Cate Blanchett, one of the best actresses working today, uses a clumsy southern accent while playing Marissa Weigler. Never mind that Hanna takes place in Europe, where she was one of a very few people speaking American, and that Cate is immediately recognizable as not being from the American south, the accent really gave no additional element to the character. It seemed like a distracting quirk more than anything else.  Her shoes and flossing fetishes were much more interesting.

Worst thing about Hanna, though, is that the studio put a spoiler in the commercials. When Hanna is captured, she turns the tables and kills a CIA officer and some guards. That's no spoiler - it's in the commercials. The scene is powerful, elegant, long and shocking. It would have been gasp-worthy if the idiots in marketing hadn't used it. It may well have been considered one of the best movie moments of 2011, if only it hadn't been shown to us before we even saw the movie.

Let's end on a positive note. I mentioned that Hanna is as much of a character study as it is an action adventure. In her travels, Hanna meets up with an English family, with the mother played by Olivia Williams, a favorite of mine and late of my beloved Dollhouse. It becomes apparent rather quickly that the mother is much more in tune with Hanna than her own daughter. Hanna senses it as well but also knows that she is well beyond needing a mother anymore. She has adapted.

1:43

Torchwood

For the last couple of weeks, I've been watching this ridiculously addictive TV show on DVD called

Torchwood. It was produced by the BBC from 2006 to 2009. It's a sci-fi adventure crossed with a

police procedural. I devoured each episode as fast the mail and Netflix streaming could deliver

them. 31 episodes were produced.

Cardiff, Wales, sits on a rift in time and space. Things pass through the rift unfettered. Torchwood

exists to fight aliens, protect humans and appropriate alien technology for use as weapons when

malevolent and predatory aliens make an appearance later this century.

The rift is a perfect sci-fi plot device. Need an alien? Got one. Need a monster? Here. Need a

doohickey to wreak havoc? It's over there. Need a romance with a babe from 1953? Here she

comes now. Want to send your own people back in time? Would you prefer World War I or II?

Torchwood is an independent agency located in an old tube station under Cardiff. Its leader is

Captain Jack Harkness, an action hero sent over by Central Casting. Jack is played by John

Barrowman, who is possibly the most handsome man in the history of, well, men. Jack is a

confident rogue and a fearless leader, as well as a mystery. It is established early on that he is

immortal, bouncing back to life shortly after he is killed, which happens frequently. That trait is

related to him being a former Time Agent, as Torchwood is a spin-off of the BBC's 2005 recreation

of Dr Who. I've never seen Dr Who, so I just went with it whenever references came up.

The heart of the show is Gwen, a former police constable who tracks down Torchwood in the first

episode. Where Jack is often amoral or just rude, Gwen is the conscience of the show and keeps the team

focused on helping humans more than exploring alien swag. Played by Welsh actress Eve Myles,

she is more than a little adorable, despite a David Lettermanesque gap between her front teeth.

Hey, it's the UK and hot is hot.

There are a few things you need to know about Torchwood. First, it has movie-quality visuals.

This must have been an incredibly expensive show to produce. The lighting is lush and beautiful,

and the action sequences are adrenalific. Cardiff looks like a dramatic, sexy city and I'm guessing

that in real life, it might not be.

Another thing, Torchwood is unbelievably bi. Except for Gwen, every character has sexual

congress with members of both genders at some point during the series run. It's kind of strange (although welcome) to see this degree of liberation and you'll never see it on American TV. Captain Jack, born

sometime after the year 5000, hints that attitudes will change in the future but that doesn't account

for the omnivorousness of the characters from this century.

Finally, the Welsh and English accents are a bit thick, so captions were helpful and necessary for me.

Barrowman, born in Scotland but raised in the US, certainly sounds American, but you can tell his

writers had no interest in making him be American. He talks like a Brit, based on phrasing and word choice, but without the accent. For example, he addressed a couple of people as "You lot," which no American would. We'd say "You," "You two," "You guys," or even "All Y'all," but we'd never say "You lot." Maybe it's intentional, as Jack has lived in the UK for centuries. Hard to say.

I'm not sure what the story is behind Torchwood's odd production history. There were two

13-episode seasons, followed by a five-episode season. That third season took place over five

action-packed days and probably cost as much to produce as an entire 13-ep season. It was even

aired in the UK on five consecutive nights, making it quite the broadcasting event. I understand that

Torchwood season four will air ten episodes sometime this summer. It will be interesting to see

where they take the show. After you save the world, what do you do next?

First Thoughts on Hanna

This movie is not about my Onvoy co-workers John and Megan Hanna. It is not about cartoonist William Hanna of Hanna-Barbera fame. It is not even about the 11th governor of North Dakota. It's a spy movie about a girl.

I'm not sure what to think about all this.

Battle Los Angeles

Battle Los Angeles is a pure combat movie. There is no character development, no big picture, just good guys vs bad guys in an urban environment. As a movie that just follows a platoon as they execute a simple rescue mission that goes sour, Battle Los Angeles works very well. Staff Sgt Nantz is also the role that Aaron Eckhardt was born to play.

At times, the movie seems like a recruiting film for the US Marines, but let's just assume that's the nature of war movies and not a Pentagon plot. If you had to make the obvious comparison, I would say I liked Battle Los Angeles a bit more than Independence Day because of its simplicity and its lack of humor. It's a combat movie and not much else.

Here is something I thought about on the drive home from the theater. Movies or TV shows where Michelle Rodriguez plays a bad-ass:
Battle Los Angeles
Avatar
Lost
The Fast & the Furious
Resident Evil
SWAT

Movies or TV shows where Michelle Rodriguez is hot without vamping it up:
Battle Los Angeles
Avatar
Lost
The Fast & the Furious
Resident Evil
SWAT

Hmm... 100% overlap. As far as I'm concerned, this is not a bad form of typecasting.

1:51

Rango

A pet chameleon is released into the desert and becomes sheriff of a critter town. I suppose the plot is no stranger than that of WALL-E, Ratatouille or Bambi, but Rango isn't in their league. I've complained - maybe not in my blog but complained nonetheless - that animated creatures in modern animated movies are too clean and fashionable. Well, if it was grit and grotesqueness that I was asking for, I got it. Half the varmints in Rango are approaching the line of icky and the other half are way over the line.

The plot of Rango is a bit convoluted and the motivation of the villain doesn't hold up under mild scrutiny. There are a few laugh-out-loud gags for adults but I suspect that most kids would yawn many a time during the movie. This child-at-heart did.

1:40

The Adjustment Bureau

The Adjustment Bureau was promoted as a stylish sci-fi film and it is stylish, but they explain the sci in a hurry, which deflates much of the excitement. Matt Damon and Emily Blunt do well in their roles, but the movie is more about their romance than the thriller that was promoted in the commercials.

All-in-all, The Adjustment Bureau was a decent movie, even with the bait & switch, but I had a big problem with the ending. Actually, to have a problem with the ending, you have to have a problem with the premise, but I'm only going to talk about the ending. It was based on a short story by Phillip K Dick. I've not read any Dick stories but I've seen several movie adaptations and I recognize that he writes dark stories.  The Adjustment Bureau has a syrupy sweet-ending, so I'm guessing the movie followed his story closely but it wasn't one of his best, or the film-makers made their own ending.  My guess is that this wasn't the planned ending. They probably had something darker in mind that the studio or test audiences didn't like, so they re-edited and threw in a voice-over to wrap things up.

My recommendation, for the Matt Damon part of the movie, is to watch anything else he's done in the past two years that you've missed (True Grit, Green Zone, Hereafter, Invictus, The Informant!). The guy is fabulous, but this movie was a misfire by his standards. As for Emily Blunt, her ultimate romance was in My Summer of Love (2004).

1:38

127 Hours

127 Hours was nominated for Best Picture, etc, so you may have heard of it.  Here are a few observations about it spread out in nutshell .

First, Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn appear in the movie, albeit briefly. No movie with those two in it could be completely bad. If you are a film-maker, let me give you a phrase that should be your mantra: More Kate Mara.

Next, either the name of the movie should have been changed or they should have lost the graphics telling us how much time had passed. We see the guy get trapped in a cave. We know the title of the movie is 127 Hours. What are the odds that it's going to take five days & seven hours before something changes? Every time they flashed a graphic stating it was Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, et al, my brain left the movie and calculated how much time was remaining. Sure, a lot of stuff happened and much of it important, but THERE WAS NO SUSPENSE. When I knew nothing crucial would happen for X number of days or hours, I felt like I was the one trapped.

Decent movie, big problems with the execution.

1:29