I've seen a whole bunch of movies over the past few weeks, both new in theaters and on DVD. I couldn't decide which of these to review, so I'm going to run through the lot of them.
The Simpsons Movie - Second favorite movie of the year (right after Knocked Up). Wow, I mean, they took their time getting a Simpsons movie put together, but it was worth the wait. Rather than relying on endless references to episodes and characters from the past thirteen years or so (though there's plenty of that), The Simpsons Movie presents an original and surprisingly solid story. Simply put, after Homer causes Springfield to be declared an environmental disaster, the power mad director of the EPA encases the town in a large glass bubble. Through a series of events, the Simpson family escapes from the bubble, moves to Alaska, then learns of plans to blow the town up. Simple enough, really, but this is The Simpsons we're talking about, so of course this story involves bizarre side trips as well as plot holes and impossibilities delivered with a nudge and a wink. The humor is fast and clever, the dialog is snappy and all the voice talent on their A games, and the animation (which includes Futurama-style CGI elements) has never looked better. All of that makes this an hilarious and enjoyable film, but it's the extra step that makes it a great one.
What really makes the Simpsons Movie shine is its emotional underpinnings. A few scenes, for example the "Dear John" video Marge leaves for Homer at one point, brings out a level of honest, human emotion that most comedies - let alone animated comedies - lack. It's to the film makers' credit that the move never dwells on these scenes longer than is necessary, quickly returning to the jokes once the point has been made. Rather, they're used more to draw you in and to make you care, and give the story that extra push from good to great. Still better is how organically the humorous and dramatic elements work together. I suppose that after nearly a decade and a half they should know what they're doing by now, but there were so many ways to screw this up that the fact that it's not only good, but great, is a triumph.Honestly, if you like The Simpsons even a little, and you haven't seen the movie yet, get thee to a theater! I saw it twice in as many days, and I'd see it again if asked, it's that good.
The Bourne Ultimatum - I have a mixed view of the Bourne films. The Bourne Identity was fantastic, and I sang its praises to friends who'd barely heard of it, practically forcing a few to watch the DVD when it came out. The mix of furious violence, intelligent action, and intriguing plot - all handed down using bare bones filming and little to no CGI - was an irresistible combination. The Bourne Ultimatum shared many of those traits, including a far more intense script, but delivered it all with a terribly shaky and seemingly sluggish hand. I'm sure the action was great, but I couldn't see any of it because the camera never stopped shaking and couldn't seem to follow the action. I understand that this was a stylistic choice, but in my opinion it was a bad one. If I were Matt Damon, I'd be pissed that the choreography I'd worked on for months never actually made it to the screen.And now we have The Bourne Ultimatum. The shaky cam is still there, shaking away even when nothing else on screen is moving, but at least it actually follows the action this time. As for the rest of the movie, it's vintage Bourne, and as with the second ratchets up the tension even more. The agency's attempts to track and capture Bourne, scenes that could have been boring and routine, are some off the most exciting and riveting ever put to film. And once Bourne really gets going, well, I wouldn't want to get in his way.
In a way, the shaky cam adds to the drama a bit. It has the look of surveillance footage shot hand held from a distance, adding a sense of realism to the proceedings. In fact, at only one point in the movie did I spot a "bullshit" moment. Bullshit moments are those times when something happens that in no way could happen in real life, and even if you keep quiet a small voice in your head yells "bullshit!" Most action movies have many, and if they're exciting or inventive enough they're forgivable. The Bourne films take a different approach, actively avoiding BS moments, which makes the action that much more exciting because what you're watching could really happen. Sort of. In reality, no one could survive the punishment Bourne regularly receives. It's a testament to the skill of these films that even knowing that, you still believe.I know this movie finishes up the original trilogy, but there are more Bourne books that those three, and I hope they keep making them into movies. I could envision a time when Bourne films become like Bond films, dozens of movies with no sign of stopping, with new actors swapped in as needed. It would be appropriate, seeing how Bourne is in many ways the anti-Bond.
I just hope that if they do, they add another line item to the budget and buy a steady cam (or just use the one from the first movie, it worked just fine).
Transformers - Let me put it this way: I'm glad I saw it once on the big screen. Spectacle is what this movie has going for it, and nothing else (except, perhaps, Megan Fox, who gave the robots a run for their money as big screen eye candy).The giant robots fighting are, well, giant robots fighting, and blowing things up. On that count this movie is a resounding success. The only flaw, robot combat-wise, is that the robots themselves are so detailed and feature so many parts - all moving constantly for some reason - that at times you find yourself watching a large yellow pile of industrial garbage fighting a large black pile of industrial garbage. Or worse, occasionally you can't tell what you're really looking at. Thankfully this isn't too much of a problem until the end, when multiple robots, good and bad, go at it simultaneously. The final showdown also features a breathtaking sequence in which Starscream fights half a dozen or so actual fighter jets, constantly switching between jet and humanoid form to do so. The mess that was the rest of that final battle was worth it for that short combat alone.
As for the other aspect of the Transformers movie, well, meh. I'm somewhat a fan of Michael Bay's movies. Generally speaking they're disposable entertainment, and I'm fine with that. Occasionally he proves that he's capable of more, as he did with The Rock, the movie that makes it OK for movie buffs to tolerate him. If The Rock exemplifies everything that can be good about Bay, however, then Transformers exemplifies everything that's bad about him. Virtually every time a character opens his or her mouth it's to spout the dumbest dialog you've ever heard.Incidental characters are liberally covered in layers of weirdness at the expense of actual characterization. In a single movie Bay managed to give us a cop who thinks he's in a tough-guy cop movie, a car salesman who thinks he's in a black comedy, a hip and cocky hacker (?!), a young and beautiful analyst with a sexy accent and the ability to hear hacks in progress (!?!?), and a government agent who, well, I can't even imagine where they got that strange collection of quirks and mannerisms. Not that any of the performances were bad, per se, just shockingly one dimensional even for an action movie. That's not to mention that one of the robots seems to think he's a jive talking soul brother, and the fact that Bay even managed to make Optimus Prime come off as an idiot more than once.
As a movie goer of (I hope) reasonable intelligence, as well as a Transformers fan of old, the failings of this movie far outweigh the successes. As I said, I'm glad I saw it once on the big screen. I don't care to ever waste my time with it again.
Dog Soldiers - British commandos vs. werewolves? I'm in!Taking a few pages from the Aliens and Predator handbooks, and tossing in liberal doses of The Howling, An American Werewolf in London, and other horror movies, writer/director Neil Marshall has created one hell of a fun movie. The story is simple but enough for a movie like this, and the performances are spot on (I was especially fond of the character "Spoon"), and the action is pretty good for a low budget action movie.
The werewolves themselves are a mixed bag. Their animatronic heads are quite amazing, and thankfully most of what we see are close ups and quick flashes of snarling mouths and the like. The bodies, well, it's a good thing you only get a few quick full body shots. They're passable considering the budget, but less is more here.
The Descent - I liked Dog Soldiers so much that I immediately looked up what else Neil Marshall has done. Low and behold, he was behind this movie from 2005. In every way except for outright action and fun factor, The Descent is a far better movie, and has become one of my favorite horror movies, if not my absolute favorite.Basically, a year after losing her husband and daughter in a car accident, a woman and four friends go "caving", exploring underground caves. Things quickly start going wrong, then go from bad to worse, not the least of which being existing tensions within the group. The first third or so of the movie plays out as a straight forward suspense movie, and a very effective one at that. I've never felt so claustrophobic watching a movie in my life. Then they introduce the creatures...
I won't spoil anything except to say that they're creepy and very well done. Marshall knows how to create atmosphere, and tension, and how to make mosters genuinely freightening. And the ending, oh my god, the ending (particularly the slightly extended international ending that's found on the DVD, let's just say that "The Descent" has several possible meanings in the context of the movie). I'm on board for anything he does in the future.
Clerks II - I'll go on record as saying I was one of those people who didn't like the idea of a sequel to Clerks, particularly a decade later. I've never been too down on Kevin Smith for "returning to the well" as they say, it just didn't seem necessary and seemed like it would be too easy to screw up. So it was with little hope that I sat down to watch Clerks II. Honestly, I wasn't terribly impressed the first time through, but I liked it enough that I gave it another shot. The second time through I loved it, it's definitely his best film since Chasing Amy. I think it's the first fifteen minutes or so that threw me the first time. Something about it seemed a bit too "we're Clerks, we talk about sex in a graphic and shocking way and tear apart pop culture", as if trying to tap into the good vibes from the first movie, but in a false way. Once the story really gets going though (during the conversation between Dante and Becky), this movie starts to work very well.In the end, this isn't a movie about Dante's screwed up love life, as it first seems to be. Rather, it's a movie about friendship. The final twenty minutes or so shows genuine heart and makes up for everything that's wrong with the beginning of the movie. I know Kevin Smith has said, again, that he's done making his "Jersey" films, but if this is the quality of what he produces, I'm just fine with him returning to the well again and again.
Ginger Snaps - After Dog Soldiers, I was in a werewolf kind of mood. I'd read some good things about this movie, despite the fact that the title and cover art (to a point) made it look like a light, "teen" horror movie. Oh... Oh my... How wrong I was.Ginger Snaps (which is actually a description of what happens rather than simply a clever play on the character's name) is one of the darkest and weirdest movies I've seen in some time. The title character and her sister are true goth types, depressed and angry and obsessed with death. They live in a faceless suburban community that's being terrorized by a creature that's eating the neighborhood dogs. In the same night Ginger gets her period ("the curse" she calls it), and is attacked by the creature. After that night, Ginger starts to change. She becomes outgoing, flirtatious, violent, and... hairy.
After that, things go very wrong very quickly. For a time there's a question as to whether what's happening to Ginger is simply hormones, or something passed by the creature's bite. As her sister tries to cure her, with the help of the local drug dealer (the only person who believes her), and their mother starts to suspect that something's up, Ginger rapidly goes out of control. The ideas in this movie are intriguing and disturbing, and the equation of lycanthropy with puberty - in fact at one point treating it like an STD - is something that's been done before (similar ideas have been explored in everything from The Craft to Spiderman), but the atmosphere of gloom and hopelessness in Ginger Snaps is something I didn't expect.
Overall a fine movie, the conclusion left something to be desired, not to mention the werewolf effects. Neither was bad, necessarily, just inconsistent, and maybe a bit incomplete.
An Inconvenient Truth - I hadn't seen this yet and thought it was about time. Putting politics aside for a moment (since, you know, global warming is a scientific issue and not a political one, ideology should have zero bearing when evaluating the evidence) I thought this was a very effective documentary. Al Gore seems to have relaxed a little, and the number of times he's given this presentation shows in how well he gives it. The information presented is compelling (though further research is necessary to confirm some parts of it), and it's presented in a way that's easy to follow and understand. You'll have to think, of course, but you won't have to be a scientist to get it.The snippets about Gore himself are interesting, but it's probably a good thing that they're relatively short. They serve as little more than breathers between mountains of facts and figures. It's also interesting that the zinc mine Gore has an interest in is absent, as mining zinc is a very messy endeavor and it really should have been addressed. Other than that, I really liked An Inconvenient Truth. It speaks for the scientific consensus, which is the only way non-scientists have to judge these things (if you went to 100 doctors, and 99 said you had cancer and 1 said you had bad gas, would you forgo cancer treatment because you like the last guy's answer better and his solution was cheaper and easier? Didn't think so), and it does so clearly and effectively.
On August 19th Perry passed away after spending several weeks in the hospital. He'd been fighting several chronic conditions for some time, and they finally won out. This week's episode of the SGU featured a brief but wonderful lecture he'd given some years ago called "The Psychology of Belief", and then a collections of signature Perry moments from the first 100 episodes of the SGU.