Director: Guillermo Del Toro
Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rino Kikuchi, Charlie Day
Pacific Rim, Guillermo Del Toro's first summer blockbuster, is a modern take on the 1950's Japanese monster movies. Pacific Rim is set in the 2020's where the earth is frequently under attack from giant alien sea monsters known as Kaju and humanity's best defense against the Kaju are giant mechanized robots that must be simultaneously piloted by two humans called Jaegers. Does that premise intrigue you? If yes, you will like this movie. If no, I am not sure.
Del Toro has a keen visual eye and while Pacific Rim's fights appear frenetic they are well constructed and much easier to follow than the 8 cuts per second style Michael Bay uses in the Transformers movies. A monsters fighting robots film traffics in easy spectacle, but at least Del Toro has the chops to make the spectacle worth watching.
A common critical refrain surrounding Pacific Rim is a version of "A 10 year old me would think this is the best movie of all time". This is true, but a backhanded compliment. It implies that the avatar of the reviewer's childhood wouldn't care about acting, story or writing in the same way the wise adult the 10 year old grew up into does. Pacific Rim has corny dialogue and thin characterizations, but I don't think children are appeased by the screenplay via stupidity or low expectations, I think children appreciate the earnestness of Del Toro's screenplay more than adults.
Most summer blockbusters attempt to attract an adult audience through either the snarky, double entendre laced, pop-culture laden, ratatat of the Iron Man trilogy or via solemnity masquerading as maturity as seen in Nolan's Batman films. I prefer some of those movies Pacific Rim, but it's unfortunate that blockbusters are peppered with jokes kids don't understand or full of 9/11 paranoia for a generation that remembers blockbusters recreating 9/11 better than the event itself. Pacific Rim is an engaging throwback that is too rare in the current blockbuster landscape, a 10 year old me would love it and that's because to quote The Hudsucker Proxy "it's y'know ... for kids."
Sunday, August 25, 2013
The King's Speech - 2010 - 3 Stars
Director: Tom Hooper
Cast: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter
The King's Speech is an adequate, but forgettable historical drama that is well acted and has direction that I could charitably describe as competent. If I didn't feel like indulging my extra-textual whims that sentence would be a sufficient review of The King's Speech. However, I do feel like indulging and The King's Speech won the Oscar for Best Picture, so i'd like to discuss how The King's Speech awards success affected my perception of it.
Let's get this out of the way first, The King's Speech was not the best movie of 2010. Of the other Best Picture nominees I have seen, TKS is my least favourite (I haven't seen 127 Hours or Winter's Bone) and there are many non-nominees I prefer to TKS. I am no longer surprised when the tastes of Oscar voters don't line up with mine, but the success of TKS is a pure distillation of the differences in our tastes and I found that hard to ignore as I watched the film. It is a period piece about a historical figure with a disability. Its major theme is the power of theatre and performance and its narrative centrepiece is a minor historical event in real life, but one that that implicitly wins World War II for the allies in the film's world.
What bothers me the most about these types of films is that people assume since they are historical they are in some way educational or mature. The King's Speech is an underdog sports story with a pipe and a monocle, but those accessories don't compensate for it being formally dull or make it thematically richer.
That its major theme is the power of performance theatre makes its award success even more grating. It's self congratulatory to celebrate a movie with those themes, but even more off-putting to celebrate the acting in these films. Firth's performance is great, but it's masturbatory to congratulate a professional actor for convincingly playing someone who doesn't even have basic elocution skills. Thank you for allowing my indulgences, we can now return to our regularly scheduled review.
The King's Speech is an adequate, but forgettable historical drama that is well acted and has direction that I could charitably describe as competent.
Cast: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter
The King's Speech is an adequate, but forgettable historical drama that is well acted and has direction that I could charitably describe as competent. If I didn't feel like indulging my extra-textual whims that sentence would be a sufficient review of The King's Speech. However, I do feel like indulging and The King's Speech won the Oscar for Best Picture, so i'd like to discuss how The King's Speech awards success affected my perception of it.
Let's get this out of the way first, The King's Speech was not the best movie of 2010. Of the other Best Picture nominees I have seen, TKS is my least favourite (I haven't seen 127 Hours or Winter's Bone) and there are many non-nominees I prefer to TKS. I am no longer surprised when the tastes of Oscar voters don't line up with mine, but the success of TKS is a pure distillation of the differences in our tastes and I found that hard to ignore as I watched the film. It is a period piece about a historical figure with a disability. Its major theme is the power of theatre and performance and its narrative centrepiece is a minor historical event in real life, but one that that implicitly wins World War II for the allies in the film's world.
What bothers me the most about these types of films is that people assume since they are historical they are in some way educational or mature. The King's Speech is an underdog sports story with a pipe and a monocle, but those accessories don't compensate for it being formally dull or make it thematically richer.
That its major theme is the power of performance theatre makes its award success even more grating. It's self congratulatory to celebrate a movie with those themes, but even more off-putting to celebrate the acting in these films. Firth's performance is great, but it's masturbatory to congratulate a professional actor for convincingly playing someone who doesn't even have basic elocution skills. Thank you for allowing my indulgences, we can now return to our regularly scheduled review.
The King's Speech is an adequate, but forgettable historical drama that is well acted and has direction that I could charitably describe as competent.
Monday, August 12, 2013
The Mouse That Roared - 1959 - 4 Stars
Director: Jack Arnold
Cast: Peter Sellers, Jean Seberg, William Hartnell, David Kosoff
The Mouse That Roared opens with a meta-joke that feels lifted from a Zucker, Abrams, Zucker film, however it predates the ZAZ films by three decades. Therein lies the fundamental problem with The Mouse That Roared, a comparatively forgotten movie that is between Duck Soup and Dr. Strangelove on the evolutionary scale of film comedy. It is funny, but its jokes rarely produce raucous laughter because their brilliance has been dimmed from frequent use in modern comedy. Like Duck Soup it follows the travails of a fictional country and like Strangelove it features three outstanding performances by the chameleonic Peter Seller, however the similarities run deeper than those superficialities. What these movies share is an ability to deliver scathing political satire and broad vaudevillian comedy in the same film without creating a tonal imbalance.
The Mouse That Roared follows the travails of a bankrupt fictional country Fenwick, who decide the best way to get out of debt is to declare war against the US, immediately surrender and wait for the US to give money to Fenwick's post-war rebuilding effort. It's a sharp premise and one that leads to some excellent jokes about US Foreign Policy and some prescient insights about Cold War Paranoia years before The Cold War began. There is a tacked on a romantic subplot and a lame twist at the end. If this movie were released today I doubt I would be as charitable with my grade, but this was clearly a groundbreaking film when it was made and it deserves to be rewarded for that.
Cast: Peter Sellers, Jean Seberg, William Hartnell, David Kosoff
The Mouse That Roared opens with a meta-joke that feels lifted from a Zucker, Abrams, Zucker film, however it predates the ZAZ films by three decades. Therein lies the fundamental problem with The Mouse That Roared, a comparatively forgotten movie that is between Duck Soup and Dr. Strangelove on the evolutionary scale of film comedy. It is funny, but its jokes rarely produce raucous laughter because their brilliance has been dimmed from frequent use in modern comedy. Like Duck Soup it follows the travails of a fictional country and like Strangelove it features three outstanding performances by the chameleonic Peter Seller, however the similarities run deeper than those superficialities. What these movies share is an ability to deliver scathing political satire and broad vaudevillian comedy in the same film without creating a tonal imbalance.
The Mouse That Roared follows the travails of a bankrupt fictional country Fenwick, who decide the best way to get out of debt is to declare war against the US, immediately surrender and wait for the US to give money to Fenwick's post-war rebuilding effort. It's a sharp premise and one that leads to some excellent jokes about US Foreign Policy and some prescient insights about Cold War Paranoia years before The Cold War began. There is a tacked on a romantic subplot and a lame twist at the end. If this movie were released today I doubt I would be as charitable with my grade, but this was clearly a groundbreaking film when it was made and it deserves to be rewarded for that.
Sunday, August 11, 2013
O.C. and Stiggs - 1985 - 1.5 Stars
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Daniel Jenkins, Neil Barry, Jane Curtin, Paul Dooley, Jon Cryer, Cynthia Nixon, Dennis Hopper
A director with a career prolific and varied as Robert Altman is bound to have some bombs, curiosities or plain forgetful movies. O.C and Stiggs is a combination of the three, certainly a bomb, it is mostly an inconsequential movie that possesses the vivaciousness and structure of cult comedies, but is too scatter shot to create a satisfying whole.
Cast: Daniel Jenkins, Neil Barry, Jane Curtin, Paul Dooley, Jon Cryer, Cynthia Nixon, Dennis Hopper
A director with a career prolific and varied as Robert Altman is bound to have some bombs, curiosities or plain forgetful movies. O.C and Stiggs is a combination of the three, certainly a bomb, it is mostly an inconsequential movie that possesses the vivaciousness and structure of cult comedies, but is too scatter shot to create a satisfying whole.
Technology has increased the availability of older movies and this has led to some critics re-assessing the back catalog of auteurs. One prominent re-assessment of O.C. and Stiggs I found was by Nathan Rabin in his series My Year of Flops. In his review Rabin posits that O.C. and Stiggs was a "Secret Success" because Altman snuck sly class commentary into what was on the surface a frivolous teen sex-romp. Rabin's take is a charitable one, while OC&S does have a message its satire is so leaden it feels more like Altman slyly snuck a teen comedy into a clumsy satire than the opposite. The film opens with a staple of the genre, our smart-alecky duo O.C. and Stiggs prank the household of the square Schwabs while they are distracted by their own company's ad on TV, where Randal Schwab states amongst other things doesn't tolerate "the continent of Africa". That joke is funny, but it is hardly subtle and neither is much else in the film. Altman seems to think that he can replicate the ideas of great satire by possessing the vitriol that motivates great satire, but ultimately his commentary about class warfare is about as sophisticated as his two teenage protagonists.
O.C. and Stiggs is interesting in the margins, it has to be by the fact itself that Robert Altman directed it. However Altman has directed many films that are interesting in a lot more places than the margins and I can only really recommend this film to people who are Altman completists or those that want to perform an autopsy on an interesting failure.
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