Splatter: on FILM

WORLD WAR Z (2013) movie review

November 18, 2013October 25, 20153 Comments

They run faster, stare harder, scale walls, headbang, stick around for a quick bite, and have no feelings. Sound like your last relationship?

This zombie apocalypse has a new face. In our world, the slow moving, cannibalistic, “Walking Dead” reign. However, director Mark Forster, a favorite since his Finding Neverland (2004) and Stranger Than Fiction (2006), and WWZ‘s producer Brad Pitt have reinvented the franchise.

Some criticized the action zoom in at minute 5 or so in the film initiating the continuous conflict, but character development, schmaracter development, right? Pitt and Jolie have laid the foundation for Pitt’s trustworthy, fatherly character by adding a new child to their brood each year. We buy that he is the hatchet-wielding family man with a heart of gold whose war-shredded past shows in each line of his face and in his stringy beard. He is apt for the task, a believable and beautifully clever team player father figure rushing to save the world.

Back to nuts and bolts. To see or not to see. Despite its furious filming foibles and over budget fear-driven rewrites, they succeeded. Zombie flix can easily ring cheesy, but true to genre, it is scary. Rental was a good call for me. I can’t do gore or 2 hours of breathless intensity. So, the catchy bird-like zombie squawk that introduces each toothsome attack became my cue to get up and fold some laundry or send an email. The Zombies weren’t skip-trudging toward their next human meals; they rushed for the bite to turn the next victim. Anxiety comes in ocean waves, then pulls back long enough for audiences to breathe.

Don’t miss Jimmy Fallon’s “Yodel” interview with Brad Pitt: (linked below)

ROMEO & JULIET (2013) movie review

October 26, 2013October 25, 20154 Comments

I teach Romeo & Juliet to freshmen. So, how thrilled am I when a film does justice to a story and offers yet another visual option to help students connect with literature, especially their first taste of Shakespeare.

This version is beautiful. Filmed in the actual city of Verona in Italy, you feel transported by the orange-hued sunrises, the castled landscape, and the constant flavors in renaissance artwork layered on each backdrop.

It’s visually perfect. Certainly Julien Fellowes, Downton Abbey writer, takes his literary liberties as screenwriter, allowing for a medieval tournament and fewer characters. He does, however, speed up the action and include scenes and characters rarely enjoyed in film versions. He is also somehow able to keep it clean (classroom appropriate) without losing the romantic heart of the play. I believe that Shakespeare himself would have approved of Fellowes’s translation.
Paul Giamatti, never before a favorite of mine, flawlessly endeared the Friar character and stole the show.
Damian Lewis (brilliant as Winters in Band of Brothers and currently starring in tv’s Homeland) played Lord Capulet perfectly. His performance was unexpected and fresh. Hailee Steinfeld, the True Grit lovely, sweetened Juliet with youth and believability. The statuesque and stunning Douglas Booth played well the lovestruck son and heir Romeo.

Any attempt at Romeo & Juliet begs a comparison.

There is no better teaching tool to offer freshmen boys than replacing swords with guns, an orchard below the balcony with a swimming pool, and awkward tights with khakis and Hawaiian shirts. Baz Luhrmann‘s 1996 version with gorgeously brooding Fortune’s fool Leo and a pre-pubescent Claire Danes helps students relate and hear actual Shakespeare with modern connections. We scaffold to what we know, and suddenly learning is not a chore.

Most stage versions cast the couple too old, so it’s a hard sell in a classroom. Zeffirelli’s classic 1968 version, though prominent in schools and sporting a boastable Zac Efron look-alike as Romeo, is now nearly unrelatable to students who mock the forced lines, abundance of cleavage, and laughable characterizations.

The flaw in Fellowe’s version is that students will forget to treat it as an adaptation and No Fear Shakespeare will reign over actual script. Well, we shall all take a tip from Juliet in this and, “Look to like, if looking liking move, but no more deep endart my eye than your content gives strength to make it fly.”

PRISONERS (2013) movie review

October 26, 2013October 25, 20153 Comments

…or rather 1/2 of Prisoners.

A cold, dank landscape mirrors an even colder script as hopelessness banks the curbs of this one-way highway of a film. I had to pull over and get off.

If my metaphor is lost on you, then you feel a bit like I did 20 min. into this film when long pan shots lingered over sticks from the woods and panels on an old RV. These are not clues. They are B-role.

The film opens to the Lord’s prayer as Hugh Jackman teaches his son how to hunt for an odd venison Thanksgiving dinner. Jake Gyllenhaal eats his holiday meal alone avoiding the flirty waitress who must have been drawn to the cross tattoo on his hand. The priest is classically portrayed as the drunkard. Purposeful signs of a director’s devotion to faith perhaps, but more likely part of the frigid bitterness plaguing each scene.

Lost in details but not plot points, the cast of A-listers never actually gets to develop these absent-seeming characters. They say everything, pepper it all with profanities, and care little for the emotion of the audience. It goes 0-60 in intensity without allowing us a buy in. Hugh Jackman barely has time to pet a dog before the girls are missing and he is torturing the only witness, bringing Terrance Howard and Viola Davis along to…watch?

Even television shows like Law and Order SVU and Criminal Minds that deal with this subject matter in re-run ad nauseam, allow for comic relief or the odd splash of color between commercials knowing that viewers need it.

Titles often have meaning. Perhaps each character is prisoner in some way to his own stubbornness or addiction or fear or need for control. Jackman’s character claims that he prides himself on being able to handle any situation. His own wife accuses him of failure since he had claimed he could protect them from anything. The confines of grey hues in this film look very much like a prison. Suddenly the theater felt enclosed, cold, four-walled, and I felt the need for escape.

Hugh Jackman was about to pummel a mentally challenged boy for information. Torture him. Wow. One child ruined to save another. I liked this cast too much to want to remember them like this. I quickly clutch and brake, turn, and head for higher ground.

ABOUT TIME (2013) movie review

October 26, 2013October 25, 2015Leave a comment

A conceptual Time Traveler’s Wife, more Groundhog Day in its repetition, About Time is not the next Notting Hill.

It is a lightweight film about living without regrets. It has perhaps the sweetest voice-over opener I’ve seen with true moments of originality and grace, but the script and story, though not complete “rubbish,” was perhaps a bit “dodgy.” Like a run-on sentence without commas, too many scenes felt too drawn out and annoyingly slow, like a director’s cut.

Sex and the occasionally purposed “F-word” earned it the “R” rating. Both unnecessary and both stealing from what could have made this a keeper of a chick-flick.

Rachel McAdams herein only ever plays the sweet dimensionless rather every-woman role with very little personality. Passenger seated in this and many a film, she does allow her leading men to shine in the spotlight. She and Domhnall Gleeson have tangible chemistry.

Fans of Gleeson will no doubt flock. He is known best for his role in the Harry Potter series, but I loved him best for his sweet insecurity in Anna Karenina (2013), his sass in Never Let Me Go (2010), and his quirk in True Grit (2010). In About Time, he is, as my British friends would say, “so lovely.” Truly, his face alone tells his story.

This film preaches carpe diem, seizing moments of life in the face of grief and powerlessness. We all rush about our days, forgetting to stop and take tea by the seaside, as his family does. Some sprites have the gift of making the mundane special. Even those who could go back and have “do-overs” find that it’s not about fixing the details, but in savoring them.

BLUE LIKE JAZZ (2012) movie review

October 6, 2013October 25, 20151 Comment

It’s a dry season in theaters, friends.

Netflix the oasis, I suppose, I found a title that jumped from the screen and I turned it on: Blue Like Jazz.

Preface:
This book is close to my heart. Where some friends used Donald Miller‘s words, one man’s story, to justify smoking pot for Christ, for me it was at the time a breath of fresh air that threw open the closed doors of the church.

I wrote my first screenplay based on stories from that book. It was a tribute, a reckoning, an outlining, a recognition of story. His story. My story. They intermingled and I wrote it all down for the first time.

I found a piece of myself, not in his life but in writing.

I admit I turned this film on with some trepidation. My fear, I suppose, was that despite Miller’s own work on the screenplay, the beauty and art of his first work would be bullied into Hollywood submission.

It was worse than I suspected. Budget perhaps forced the indie feel, but the film collapsed in execution. Characters, though well acted for the most part, became caricatures. The film should not have used the same title as the book as it was not an adaptation, but a tight angle focus on a piece of Miller’s Reed College experience. So much of it felt exaggerated, almost cartoon, especially in its representation of Christianity, more like an office episode than a purposeful glimpse into one man’s conversion story.

Life is messy. Christians are expected to look perfect or the world must face the truth that no one is. If Christians need a Savior, all must.

Christian filmmaking, unfortunately a genre, has given itself a bad name for many years by promoting poor art.
I personally believe that Jesus performed miracles. And if He turned water into the best wine, his films would be phenomenal. Beauty, professionalism, story, art.

Miller is not oblivious to any of his film’s failings, I am sure. His recent book is an honest journey through the making of this film titled: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life. In the book he says, “When something happens to you, you have two choices in how to deal with it. You can either get bitter, or get better.”
So despite my own despair after seeing this film, I had to take Miller’s advice and start writing again, more and better stories. And so did he. It seems our journey continues, together and separate, learning from our mistakes as all of humanity must.

“We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn’t mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It’s a good calling, then, to speak a better story. How brightly a better story shines. How easily the world looks to it in wonder. How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them.”
– D. Miller

PERCY JACKSON Sea of Monsters (2013) movie review

October 6, 2013October 25, 20152 Comments

The script is smart. Logan Lerman is stellar. Certainly this film from kid-fic is kid-friendly, but like most cartoons today this one grins all teeth with proper myth, a well-written script, and likable characters.

It’s a complete story, each character given an arch. It’s dangerous. It’s an Odyssian journey, (not to confuse the mythologies).

It’s entertaining, and it boasts scenes with the two top fellows of film and tv: Stanley Tucci …

and Nathan Fillion. Deep love.

THE LONE RANGER (2013) movie review

September 8, 2013October 25, 20155 Comments

Solid ideas, explosive execution, but they forgot to choose an audience.
It’s too scary and gory for kids (the bad guy is also a cannibal …gruesome). But it’s too silly for most adults. (Johnny’s big repeated physical joke is feeding a dead crow that he wears on his head.) It’s classic Johnny Depp in every scene. He drops one-liners and quirky quips throughout. It felt like The Hatter got a facelift. Then it just exhausted with the second layer of Johnny as an old man telling the story. Overkill. Over overkill. Deathly overkill.

Armie Hammer was a great cast for the role. He pretties up the screen and makes the character likable. The Lone Ranger icon came into existence in comic books and on televisions in the 1940’s. Echoes from my grandfather prepared me to recall of the name of his friend “Tonto” and the Ranger’s call: “Hi-Ho Silver, away!” These were not, however, enough to endear the premise of this drawn out and violent film.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (2013) movie review

September 2, 2013October 25, 20152 Comments

Straight Shakespeare, and all black and white, but half way through I forgot both. This is a modern drunken romp through an old story.

Title and meaning: Shakespeare knew that this was a play based on misunderstanding and people making much of nothings, of well-placed bywords and hearsay. It’s all the dramatic irony of friends preying upon each other’s longings and relationships. A timely compliment or critique allows for the two feistiest creatures to believe that the other loves him, loves her. Then all infatuations are tested when exclusivity comes into question. The whole things looks to turn tragedy until you recall that Shakespeare played either /or, the twain never to meet. So it is comedy and all set aright with a few twists of fate and three veiled faces testing the young man’s honor and metal. Public disgrace makes room for public joy and, of course, a dance of forgiveness.

See this film if you love the play. It does cross more moral lines than the play, but it maintains the PG-13. It gives new faces to beloved characters, and the actors are true professionals and Joss Whedon own friends gathering for this revival play at his own home. The players ring true as best friends spending the summer together at a friend’s house filming for fun. So much so that it feels a bit peep-holeish at times.

The favorite guest is Nathan Fillion as Dogberry, a role I happily admit to playing in college. The lines are still dear and so funny. Fillion is lovable in every role, especially as title character in his show “Castle.”

Whedon is proving Jack-of-all & master-of-all. It seems he is a Midas where film is concerned, directing and writing sci-fi, action, and now Shakespeare well. Should he take up knitting, he could easily pearl a city.

RED 2 (2013) movie review

August 20, 2013October 25, 20151 Comment

I can’t decide on a solid thumbs up or down on this one, so here is the good, bad, & ugly revealed:

The GOOD guys are still killers with blood lust. The one innocent character maintains an almost perverse fascination while holding to her “please don’t kill them” m.o..

The best of best actors converge here as quirky assassins offering and receiving relationship advice as they travel the world.

The BAD: massive body count. Laughable to most audiences but unbelievable in sheer numbers. It’s almost all action and shooting. It of course has sweet moments, but mingled in murder. A scene that shows this most aptly is one in which Helen Mirren sits in evening gown, fur stole, and jewels offering tips over the phone on how to keep romance alive, all while she disposes of numerous bodies.

The UGLY truth is that death is not well received in real life. One death in the family produces real and long lasting grief. What are we allowing with this senseless satisfaction in calling murder entertainment? Yes, I love a good crime drama. Hitchcock is a favorite, and he was quoted once saying, “I’ve brought murder back into the home where it belongs.” We often say we will protect children from watching too much violence and sex, but what about ourselves? Murder is wrong. We know this. But when do we begin to enjoy mayhem rather than protect our minds from the force of evil disguised as comedy?

WOLVERINE (2013) movie review

July 31, 2013October 25, 20154 Comments

I am sad to report that this film was a shameful contribution to an already too slobbery Wolverine franchise. I usually respect director James Mangold for his visual decisions. I loved his 3:10 to Yuma, and Night and Day was just plain fun. Though not all great decisions, I did recognize some of his signature camera angles in this, his stunt tricks like killing off the same guys more than once, and his forced Christ-pose via tethered arrows. I was surprised at his choice to spare audiences the sight of blood, perhaps keeping it PG-13. The Wolverine’s 3-prong approach is usually a bloody business. Not here.

Perhaps we blame the cuts made on the editing floor – or rather the cuts that should have been made. The Venomous skin-peeler could have made fewer appearances, said almost no lines and still perfected her 80’s snake dance move at the end. Every scene took a mini-series pace. This movie made an episode of Downton seem rushed. Hugh Jackman, though I’m a great fan of his body…of work, could have left his one liners at the door and sung this. There’s an idea! Wolverine the musical!

This tale follows our hero from Japan at the end of the Second World War to animal activism in Alaska, through too many Inceptionesque visits with nightie-clad ghost Jean Grey, and back to Japan.

Upon re-entry into Tokyo, it feels like a remake of The Karate Kid Part 2. Remember when Mr. Miyagi takes Danielson back to Okinawa? Ralph Macchio fights the angry cast off son, wins the girl who falls in love with him over a tea ceremony, and finally fights in the great battle at the end to the sound of spinning drums. It’s all here in this film. But I really missed that Peter Cetera song in this one. So, here you go: