Director: Daniel Gordon
Subject: Ben Johnson's steroid scandal in the Seoul Olympics.
Canadians who consume a lot of American culture and media, like myself, very quickly develop an inferiority complex. I am irrationally excited when I see the Blue Jays, the Raptors or hockey being discussed on ESPN. It doesn't matter why we are being discussed, I am just happy that we are being talked about. To some this may seem like a case of social-media manufactured generational narcissism, but I see the same reaction from fellow Canucks of all ages; even if the discussion is just thirty seconds on PTI about Jeff Frye hitting for the cycle. So even though I was in utero when Ben Johnson set the 100m dash world record and had it taken away during the Seoul Olympics of 1988, I have a strong connection to that race; it is literally a nascent moment for my sports fandom.
9.79* is an engaging, well researched, well shot documentary that also confirms every thought my reptilian sports brain has about this race, the use of PEDs in sports and Carl Lewis's assholery. Gordon biggest coup is interviewing all the participants in the gold medal heat and allowing them to paint a thorough picture of the track and field world in the 1980s. These men all provide a different perspective on the race: Desai Williams speaks about being Ben Johnson's teammate, Calvin Smith's effeminate drawl voices the strongest anti-PED sentiments and Robson De Silva's has a zen like view of the past as he hang glides over Rio De Janiero. The two stars of the race and the documentary are Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis and while Johnson's frankness is refreshing, Lewis's slipperiness makes him a much more intriguing character. Lewis's ambitions didn't stop at athletics and in interviews it is clear he is equal parts athlete, celebrity, politician and businessman. He is so interested in protecting himself and his brand that it seems like he is always hiding something. His Machiavellian nature makes him a charismatic heel for this documentary, especially when contrasted with Johnson's frankness, a frankness that is usually only present after someone has already been caught.
The results of the race in Seoul are common knowledge for most sports fans; Gordon recognizes this and doesn't bother hiding those results to construct dramatic tension. Instead he takes information that is public, but not common knowledge and parcels it out in such a way that he creates dramatic tension by obscuring his rhetorical point until the last act of the film when he drops the hammer in a satisfying way. Admittedly, his rhetorical point happens to defend someone who I still consider to be one of Canada's great athletes, vilifies a hated American athlete, plays into my general cynicism about how widespread PED use was and still is and vindicates all the beliefs I've held about Ben Johnson for my whole life. So while others may not share my belief that the final act of the film is brilliant payoff from the restraint shown earlier, Gordon's access and visual style, make the movie one of the most entertaining 30 for 30s and a must watch for fans of the series.
24 years later Ben Johnson's victory and scandal are both two of the biggest in Canadian sports history. It's one of the few stories in Canadian sports history that people around the world remember. Fans of dynastic teams have a wealth of experience to draw back on Yankees fans can root for the current team or be nostalgic about Bernie Williams, Reggie Jackson, Mickey Mantle, Joe Dimaggio and Babe Ruth. When you routinely root for mediocre non-public teams you must cherish the moments in the spotlight you get. In 1988 Ben Johnson had an iconic track and field performances and outperformed a legendary Olympic athlete from our biggest rival, then he tested positive for stanozolol. At least he was the lead story on ESPN for awhile.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Everyday - 2012 - 2 1/2 Stars
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Shirley Henderson, John Simm, Johnny Lynch
Michael Winterbottom's new film Everyday was commissioned by BBC Channel 4, who wanted Winterbottom to make a story about the prison system. It is the story of a mother of four and her husband who is in prison for reasons we don't know and never discover. It's shot entirely in digital, has a documentary aesethic and I assume is heavily improvised. The film has one large extra-textual conceit, it was filmed over 5 years so the children in the film could age properly throughout shooting. Bad aging makeup and multiple child actors playing the same character is something that irks me, so while I intellectually appreciated Winterbottom's choice and the producers for humouring his obsession, ultimately the payoff for this decision is nothing more than a "hey, that's kind of cool" and it only enriches the films on the margins.
The film itself is a low-key naturalistic British drama about a middle class family and a determined mother struggling to make ends meet. The title Everyday is appropriate because it tends to focus on minor day to day events for a family who's patriarch is temporarily incarcerated . Winterbottom and co-screenwriter Laurence Coriat avoid the melodramatic climaxes one would expect from a movie about a single mother with an imprisoned husband and instead focus on how one accepts and adapts to this major change on a daily basis. As with the children's aging in the film, I enjoyed Winterbottom's intimate-micro perspective of a family on a cerebral level, but no others. Shirley Henderson gives a great performance as an overworked mother, but the low stakes throughout the movie make everything feel inconsequential; as if we were watching a collection of the well shot and edited home videos. I commend Winterbottom for trying an interesting experiment, I just wish the results were more dynamic.
Cast: Shirley Henderson, John Simm, Johnny Lynch
Michael Winterbottom's new film Everyday was commissioned by BBC Channel 4, who wanted Winterbottom to make a story about the prison system. It is the story of a mother of four and her husband who is in prison for reasons we don't know and never discover. It's shot entirely in digital, has a documentary aesethic and I assume is heavily improvised. The film has one large extra-textual conceit, it was filmed over 5 years so the children in the film could age properly throughout shooting. Bad aging makeup and multiple child actors playing the same character is something that irks me, so while I intellectually appreciated Winterbottom's choice and the producers for humouring his obsession, ultimately the payoff for this decision is nothing more than a "hey, that's kind of cool" and it only enriches the films on the margins.
The film itself is a low-key naturalistic British drama about a middle class family and a determined mother struggling to make ends meet. The title Everyday is appropriate because it tends to focus on minor day to day events for a family who's patriarch is temporarily incarcerated . Winterbottom and co-screenwriter Laurence Coriat avoid the melodramatic climaxes one would expect from a movie about a single mother with an imprisoned husband and instead focus on how one accepts and adapts to this major change on a daily basis. As with the children's aging in the film, I enjoyed Winterbottom's intimate-micro perspective of a family on a cerebral level, but no others. Shirley Henderson gives a great performance as an overworked mother, but the low stakes throughout the movie make everything feel inconsequential; as if we were watching a collection of the well shot and edited home videos. I commend Winterbottom for trying an interesting experiment, I just wish the results were more dynamic.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Something in the Air (Après mai) - 2012 - 2 1/2 Stars
Director: Oliver Assayas
Cast: Clément Métayer, Lola Créton, Felix Armand, Carole Combes
Making autobiographical movies is a tricky proposition; the director must walk a thin line between using their experience to craft a detailed, naturalistic aesthetic and telling stories that no one else cares about. Something in the Air is a fictionalized adaption of Oliver Assayas's non-fiction essay A Post-May Adolescence. It follows Gilles, an Assayas surrogate, during the summer after his second to last year in high school as he bounces between different French socialist organizations, hippy communes and his father's work while he tries to find himself romantically, artistically and professionally.
The film has a loose, meandering structure, which is designed to mimic our hero's lack of focus as he travels from group to group. At times it's a successful series of focused vignettes, but as the revolutionary movements Gilles is associated with begin to splinter and lose power, so does the film. The film's first hour is dynamic and lively, but the second half loses that energy as the story shifts to one of what happens when youthful vivaciousness fades. The film's second half rings true thematically and historically, but it's a slog to watch the dissolution of revolutionary movement not via coup, but via waning interest and mild evolutions in maturity.
Assayas's strong authorial voice gives the film a strong sense of place, but also causes it to veer into self-indulgence. Assayas digs deep into his own record collection, which gives the film a sense of time and place beyond a generic "the 70's". The soundtrack replaces 70's staples from Sticky Fingers and Who' Next (which I doubt they could afford had they wanted to use them anyways) and replaces them with Captain Beefheart and other more eclectic musicians that Assayas has a connection with. Assayas indulging his musical taste is delightful, the conversations name checking his personal favorite political philosophers are less so. I appreciate that the high-schooler's in the film possess an intellectual surety that can only be held by teenagers. To them the choice between being Trotskyite or a Leninist is the equivalent to the choice between Communism and Fascism, but this specificity is draining during long conversations where Assayas references his favorite philosophers even as it gives the film the same detailed textures I liked about his soundtrack.
Roger Ebert ended his review of Midnight in Paris, by saying , "I'm wearying of movies that are for 'everybody' — which means, nobody in particular." I appreciate that Assayas made a movie that is for someone in particular, but as the movie dragged on it felt like I was watching friends tell a story that I wasn't present for and was littered with inside jokes I didn't get. There is someone in particular who will love this movie, but it's not me.
Cast: Clément Métayer, Lola Créton, Felix Armand, Carole Combes
Making autobiographical movies is a tricky proposition; the director must walk a thin line between using their experience to craft a detailed, naturalistic aesthetic and telling stories that no one else cares about. Something in the Air is a fictionalized adaption of Oliver Assayas's non-fiction essay A Post-May Adolescence. It follows Gilles, an Assayas surrogate, during the summer after his second to last year in high school as he bounces between different French socialist organizations, hippy communes and his father's work while he tries to find himself romantically, artistically and professionally.
The film has a loose, meandering structure, which is designed to mimic our hero's lack of focus as he travels from group to group. At times it's a successful series of focused vignettes, but as the revolutionary movements Gilles is associated with begin to splinter and lose power, so does the film. The film's first hour is dynamic and lively, but the second half loses that energy as the story shifts to one of what happens when youthful vivaciousness fades. The film's second half rings true thematically and historically, but it's a slog to watch the dissolution of revolutionary movement not via coup, but via waning interest and mild evolutions in maturity.
Assayas's strong authorial voice gives the film a strong sense of place, but also causes it to veer into self-indulgence. Assayas digs deep into his own record collection, which gives the film a sense of time and place beyond a generic "the 70's". The soundtrack replaces 70's staples from Sticky Fingers and Who' Next (which I doubt they could afford had they wanted to use them anyways) and replaces them with Captain Beefheart and other more eclectic musicians that Assayas has a connection with. Assayas indulging his musical taste is delightful, the conversations name checking his personal favorite political philosophers are less so. I appreciate that the high-schooler's in the film possess an intellectual surety that can only be held by teenagers. To them the choice between being Trotskyite or a Leninist is the equivalent to the choice between Communism and Fascism, but this specificity is draining during long conversations where Assayas references his favorite philosophers even as it gives the film the same detailed textures I liked about his soundtrack.
Roger Ebert ended his review of Midnight in Paris, by saying , "I'm wearying of movies that are for 'everybody' — which means, nobody in particular." I appreciate that Assayas made a movie that is for someone in particular, but as the movie dragged on it felt like I was watching friends tell a story that I wasn't present for and was littered with inside jokes I didn't get. There is someone in particular who will love this movie, but it's not me.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Frances Ha - 2012 - 4 1/4* Stars
Director: Noah Baumbach
Cast: Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Michael Zegen, Adam Driver
In a world full of formulaic mainstream comedies and formulaic indie's that are generously called comedies, Noah Baumbach's newest film Frances Ha manages to be as funny as the crude, banter heavy mainstream comedies, while having stronger character work than the multitude of indies about post-college ennui. Frances Ha is a movie about the friendship between Frances (Gerwig) and Sophie (Sumner) and how these two women-children's relationship changes as they grapple with impending maturity and responsibility. A generic premise, but one that gains traction from focusing on female friendship (this movie passes the Bechdel test with flying colours) and strong execution.
The coming of age indie is a tired genre and though Frances Ha uses some genre tropes Baumbach and Gerwig's script is so singular that it never feels derivative. Frances Ha's originality is a function of Greta Gerwig, who gives an amazing naturalistic performance; eventhough her character is chock full of eccentricities, they all feel true to life and not screenwriter created manic-pixie dream girl "look at how much of an individual I am" traits. In addition to Gerwig's great performance the screenplay economically creates well-formed characters in short amounts of screen time via specificity. Hip movies walk a thin line between referencing ephemera to create a positive association with the audience and using ephemera as a touchstone to provide information about characters. Frances Ha mainly sticks to the latter; characters aren't working on "their screenplay" they have fixed the second act to their Gremlins 3 screenplay. These details peppered throughout help world-build and contribute to the great chemistry between the ensemble cast.
Frances Ha was shot in black and white; in a post-screening Q&A Baumbach cited Manhattan; an obvious inspiration. The decision to shoot it in black and white is not just an homage it gives Frances Ha a strong visual aesthetic that was missing from previous Baumbach films and separates it from the generic sepia-toned, digital look of a lot of coming of age indies. This aesthetic is present on the soundtrack where classic rock and music snatched from French New Wave films refreshingly replace the Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes and other cabin-dwelling, mandolin playing, indie music that are used to show melancholy, inspiration or any other emotion that one might feel in an existential crisis. Shooting in black and white and using classic rock are hardly groundbreaking decisions but it is indicative that every decision in film was purposefully made. On the surface, this is a generic coming of age story, but the direction, acting, writing are all elevated and combine to produce one of Baumbach's strongest films.
*The quarter star is to indicate I preferred this to The Squid and The Whale which I think is a 4 star movie.
Cast: Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Michael Zegen, Adam Driver
In a world full of formulaic mainstream comedies and formulaic indie's that are generously called comedies, Noah Baumbach's newest film Frances Ha manages to be as funny as the crude, banter heavy mainstream comedies, while having stronger character work than the multitude of indies about post-college ennui. Frances Ha is a movie about the friendship between Frances (Gerwig) and Sophie (Sumner) and how these two women-children's relationship changes as they grapple with impending maturity and responsibility. A generic premise, but one that gains traction from focusing on female friendship (this movie passes the Bechdel test with flying colours) and strong execution.
The coming of age indie is a tired genre and though Frances Ha uses some genre tropes Baumbach and Gerwig's script is so singular that it never feels derivative. Frances Ha's originality is a function of Greta Gerwig, who gives an amazing naturalistic performance; eventhough her character is chock full of eccentricities, they all feel true to life and not screenwriter created manic-pixie dream girl "look at how much of an individual I am" traits. In addition to Gerwig's great performance the screenplay economically creates well-formed characters in short amounts of screen time via specificity. Hip movies walk a thin line between referencing ephemera to create a positive association with the audience and using ephemera as a touchstone to provide information about characters. Frances Ha mainly sticks to the latter; characters aren't working on "their screenplay" they have fixed the second act to their Gremlins 3 screenplay. These details peppered throughout help world-build and contribute to the great chemistry between the ensemble cast.
Frances Ha was shot in black and white; in a post-screening Q&A Baumbach cited Manhattan; an obvious inspiration. The decision to shoot it in black and white is not just an homage it gives Frances Ha a strong visual aesthetic that was missing from previous Baumbach films and separates it from the generic sepia-toned, digital look of a lot of coming of age indies. This aesthetic is present on the soundtrack where classic rock and music snatched from French New Wave films refreshingly replace the Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes and other cabin-dwelling, mandolin playing, indie music that are used to show melancholy, inspiration or any other emotion that one might feel in an existential crisis. Shooting in black and white and using classic rock are hardly groundbreaking decisions but it is indicative that every decision in film was purposefully made. On the surface, this is a generic coming of age story, but the direction, acting, writing are all elevated and combine to produce one of Baumbach's strongest films.
*The quarter star is to indicate I preferred this to The Squid and The Whale which I think is a 4 star movie.
Argo - 2012 - 3 Stars
Director: Ben Affleck
Cast: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, Alan Arkin, Kyle Chandler
Once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence, thrice is a trend and after seeing Ben Affleck's latest film Argo, I think it's fair to say that Ben Affleck is a pretty damn good director who is capable of consistently making entertaining, albeit superficial Hollywood thrillers. Argo is based on the true story of a CIA agent who went undercover as a film producer scouting locations for a sci-fi film in Iran so he could smuggle American hostages back home during the Iran hostage crisis of 1980.
Argo is a competently shot film that is well-edited, especially during large suspense set pieces where the audience different people performing disparate actions in various locations in close to real time. However, while those segments are well-edited they do strain credulity as we are regularly forced to believe that people halfway across the world are coincidentally performing actions at the last second to save our ragtag group of misfits. When used sparingly yhese kinds of scenarios are classic tension builders in heist movies, but are employed so frequently throughout Argo that crowd-pleasing gears of the movie's plot start showing.
Affleck's pedigree must have helped in casting, where in addition to the names above Richard Kind, Phillip Baker Hall, Bob Gunton and other familiar character actors regularly steal scenes when given the chance to.
It's a fun caper that is already getting some undeserved Oscar buzz, because it's about an important moment in recent American history and is being publicized as a historical drama instead of a light caper. The final shots of the movie was offputting and felt like a cynical attempt to garner pathos for the hero and generate even more oscar buzz, but ultimately Argo is an entertaining two hours and a well-executed, funny, suspenseful, Hollywood thriller, something which is becoming increasingly rare.
Cast: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, Alan Arkin, Kyle Chandler
Once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence, thrice is a trend and after seeing Ben Affleck's latest film Argo, I think it's fair to say that Ben Affleck is a pretty damn good director who is capable of consistently making entertaining, albeit superficial Hollywood thrillers. Argo is based on the true story of a CIA agent who went undercover as a film producer scouting locations for a sci-fi film in Iran so he could smuggle American hostages back home during the Iran hostage crisis of 1980.
Argo is a competently shot film that is well-edited, especially during large suspense set pieces where the audience different people performing disparate actions in various locations in close to real time. However, while those segments are well-edited they do strain credulity as we are regularly forced to believe that people halfway across the world are coincidentally performing actions at the last second to save our ragtag group of misfits. When used sparingly yhese kinds of scenarios are classic tension builders in heist movies, but are employed so frequently throughout Argo that crowd-pleasing gears of the movie's plot start showing.
Affleck's pedigree must have helped in casting, where in addition to the names above Richard Kind, Phillip Baker Hall, Bob Gunton and other familiar character actors regularly steal scenes when given the chance to.
It's a fun caper that is already getting some undeserved Oscar buzz, because it's about an important moment in recent American history and is being publicized as a historical drama instead of a light caper. The final shots of the movie was offputting and felt like a cynical attempt to garner pathos for the hero and generate even more oscar buzz, but ultimately Argo is an entertaining two hours and a well-executed, funny, suspenseful, Hollywood thriller, something which is becoming increasingly rare.
Friday, September 7, 2012
Tabu - 2012 - 2 1/2 Stars
Director: Miguel Gomes
Cast: Teresa Madruga, Laura Soveral, Ana Moreira, Henrique Espirito Santo, Carlotto Cotta, Isabel Cardoso
There are structural elements in Tabu which must be talked about. I won't give away key plot points, but there are structural spoilers.
Tabu tells two stories; the story of three elderly women in Lisbon in 2011 and a story narrated by a man named Ventura in 2011 Lisbon. Ventura tells the story of a tryst with one of the aforementioned women and his narration is a constant presence throughout the the second half of the movie, which is titled Paradise. In Paradise Director Miguel Gomes uses many techniques to showcase the haziness of memory; some are well-worn like the use of grainy film, while others are daring, but unnecessarily restrictive; outside of the narration there is almost no audible dialogue in the second half of the film. Eventhough Gomes shows characters speaking the audience can only hear diegetic sounds and music.The decision to not use dialogue, while innovative, hampers the film because it prevents the audience from fully-rendering the main characters in Paradise.
The characters are stock-tpes; our hero is a daring rebel, handsome with long hair and a wispy mustache. The man he cuckolds is a stuffed shirt with short hair cut, a proper appearance that hides his unseemly political motivations. The woman at the center is a free-spirit tomboy who feels repressed by the men in her life. It's too bad the characters are so thinly drawn, because the mise-en-scene and sound design are impeccably constructed throughout. During the climax of the film there are two unforgettable shots, but I found myself more invested in the quality of those shots than the life changing events that befell our leads in those unforgettable shots.
Oral storytelling is a building block of civilization, but it's also an incredibly narcissistic act. It's difficult to consistently duplicate, it's slow and it's told from one perspective. The oral tradition is in many ways more about the singular power given to the storyteller, than the sense of community and history it fosters. In Tatu, Miguel Gomes plays with inherent narcissism of oral storytelling as we regularly see African servants in the periphery of our narrator's grand-tale of unrequited loved. The trials and tribulations of the servants are of actual significance, but they are sidelined so an old man can tell his story about the one that got away. While this is a savvy criticism of western culture, I don't think Gomes is trying to implicate the audience for caring about this affair at the expense of the horrors of colonialism, which makes the ironic distance achieved from the perspective he gives us even more alienating when we the film shifts back to the love story we are supposed to care about. Tabu features a Portugese cover of the Ronnette's classic Be My Baby, which is an excellent metaphor for the film. All the technical brilliance, innovation and craft is still present, but there is something off, which prevents the art from having any emotional resonance.
Cast: Teresa Madruga, Laura Soveral, Ana Moreira, Henrique Espirito Santo, Carlotto Cotta, Isabel Cardoso
There are structural elements in Tabu which must be talked about. I won't give away key plot points, but there are structural spoilers.
Tabu tells two stories; the story of three elderly women in Lisbon in 2011 and a story narrated by a man named Ventura in 2011 Lisbon. Ventura tells the story of a tryst with one of the aforementioned women and his narration is a constant presence throughout the the second half of the movie, which is titled Paradise. In Paradise Director Miguel Gomes uses many techniques to showcase the haziness of memory; some are well-worn like the use of grainy film, while others are daring, but unnecessarily restrictive; outside of the narration there is almost no audible dialogue in the second half of the film. Eventhough Gomes shows characters speaking the audience can only hear diegetic sounds and music.The decision to not use dialogue, while innovative, hampers the film because it prevents the audience from fully-rendering the main characters in Paradise.
The characters are stock-tpes; our hero is a daring rebel, handsome with long hair and a wispy mustache. The man he cuckolds is a stuffed shirt with short hair cut, a proper appearance that hides his unseemly political motivations. The woman at the center is a free-spirit tomboy who feels repressed by the men in her life. It's too bad the characters are so thinly drawn, because the mise-en-scene and sound design are impeccably constructed throughout. During the climax of the film there are two unforgettable shots, but I found myself more invested in the quality of those shots than the life changing events that befell our leads in those unforgettable shots.
Oral storytelling is a building block of civilization, but it's also an incredibly narcissistic act. It's difficult to consistently duplicate, it's slow and it's told from one perspective. The oral tradition is in many ways more about the singular power given to the storyteller, than the sense of community and history it fosters. In Tatu, Miguel Gomes plays with inherent narcissism of oral storytelling as we regularly see African servants in the periphery of our narrator's grand-tale of unrequited loved. The trials and tribulations of the servants are of actual significance, but they are sidelined so an old man can tell his story about the one that got away. While this is a savvy criticism of western culture, I don't think Gomes is trying to implicate the audience for caring about this affair at the expense of the horrors of colonialism, which makes the ironic distance achieved from the perspective he gives us even more alienating when we the film shifts back to the love story we are supposed to care about. Tabu features a Portugese cover of the Ronnette's classic Be My Baby, which is an excellent metaphor for the film. All the technical brilliance, innovation and craft is still present, but there is something off, which prevents the art from having any emotional resonance.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
The Raid Redemption - 2011 - 4 1/2 Stars
Director: Gareth Evans
Cast: Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim, Donny Alamsayah, Yayan Ruhian, Pierre Gruno
The Raid: Redemption follows an Indonesian SWAT team as they try to takeout a legendary crime lord who is holed up on the top floor of an apartment complex in the slums of Jakarta. Most of the apartment complex's residents are junkies, drug dealers or other criminals who will do whatever possible to protect their lawless building and its leader. If you are intrigued by this premise, you will like the movie. If you are on the fence about the premise, you should watch the first 15 minutes, if you like them, you will like the movie. If you don't like the premise or the first 15 minutes you won't like the movie and your brain hasn't been turned to mush from playing too many video games.
The Raid has been compared to relentless video games in so many reviews that I was wary of it in the way I am often wary about arthouse fare. Do I really want to watch 90 minutes of uninterrupted asskicking / closeups of butterflies narrated by an elderly Swedish man? To my surprise Gareth Evans showed some restraint and made a well paced movie: the scenes between fights are all competently acted, drive the plot and allow the audience to catch their breath, before the electronic music kicks in and we are ready to see some more skulls bashed via Pencak Silat, an Indonesian Martial Art.
At times the movie is slightly overwhelming and feels like a Streets of Rage type video game where Axel (or whoever you chose) goes into one generic setting, get rushed by several bad guys and stays in that setting until a sufficient number of buttons have been mashed/people have been killed that he can advance to the next stage. To combat this problem Evans wisely creates a number of disparate settings within the apartment complex, which gives each fight an aesthetic that differentiates it from previous fights and gives the fighters different peripheral items to creatively murder people with. However Evans' best defense against monotony is impeccable choreography and cinematography that supersedes the occasional repetitiveness of the fight scenes.
This Sunday I was watching Breaking Bad when a couple of non-watchers entered the room and started asking questions about the show "Is that the dad from Malcom in the Middle?", "Why is the meth blue?", "His name is Heisenberg ... bad ass" and so on. At this point I excused myself for the room and wasted time until I could watch the 12:30 rerun without any distractions. I am not particularly proud of my actions, but what other people would describe as minor annoyances are horrible tragedies that prevent me from watching my show the "proper way". As I watched The Raid: Redemption, my testosterone frequently spiked to such highs that it could only be released by unintelligibly exclaiming "HOLY FUCKING SHIT WAS THAT A HAMMER?" I looked over to my friends who were also screaming unintelligibly and realized in this case I was watching the film in the proper way.
Cast: Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim, Donny Alamsayah, Yayan Ruhian, Pierre Gruno
The Raid: Redemption follows an Indonesian SWAT team as they try to takeout a legendary crime lord who is holed up on the top floor of an apartment complex in the slums of Jakarta. Most of the apartment complex's residents are junkies, drug dealers or other criminals who will do whatever possible to protect their lawless building and its leader. If you are intrigued by this premise, you will like the movie. If you are on the fence about the premise, you should watch the first 15 minutes, if you like them, you will like the movie. If you don't like the premise or the first 15 minutes you won't like the movie and your brain hasn't been turned to mush from playing too many video games.
The Raid has been compared to relentless video games in so many reviews that I was wary of it in the way I am often wary about arthouse fare. Do I really want to watch 90 minutes of uninterrupted asskicking / closeups of butterflies narrated by an elderly Swedish man? To my surprise Gareth Evans showed some restraint and made a well paced movie: the scenes between fights are all competently acted, drive the plot and allow the audience to catch their breath, before the electronic music kicks in and we are ready to see some more skulls bashed via Pencak Silat, an Indonesian Martial Art.
At times the movie is slightly overwhelming and feels like a Streets of Rage type video game where Axel (or whoever you chose) goes into one generic setting, get rushed by several bad guys and stays in that setting until a sufficient number of buttons have been mashed/people have been killed that he can advance to the next stage. To combat this problem Evans wisely creates a number of disparate settings within the apartment complex, which gives each fight an aesthetic that differentiates it from previous fights and gives the fighters different peripheral items to creatively murder people with. However Evans' best defense against monotony is impeccable choreography and cinematography that supersedes the occasional repetitiveness of the fight scenes.
This Sunday I was watching Breaking Bad when a couple of non-watchers entered the room and started asking questions about the show "Is that the dad from Malcom in the Middle?", "Why is the meth blue?", "His name is Heisenberg ... bad ass" and so on. At this point I excused myself for the room and wasted time until I could watch the 12:30 rerun without any distractions. I am not particularly proud of my actions, but what other people would describe as minor annoyances are horrible tragedies that prevent me from watching my show the "proper way". As I watched The Raid: Redemption, my testosterone frequently spiked to such highs that it could only be released by unintelligibly exclaiming "HOLY FUCKING SHIT WAS THAT A HAMMER?" I looked over to my friends who were also screaming unintelligibly and realized in this case I was watching the film in the proper way.
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