26 Nov - Life of Pi

Life of Pi (2012)

dir. Ang Lee - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

CAST
Suraj Sharma
Irrfan Khan Slumdog Millionaire (2000)
Gérard Depardieu The Man in the Iron Mask (1998)

I went to see Life of Pi in 3D at the for-real movie theater with a fella. We watch a lot of movies together but at $10 a pop (even with a student discount) going to the cinema still seems like a big deal. We saw another movie together...it was Taken 2. Which I think would have been better named, Taken, Too. But no one asks what I think. He didn't even read the book, Life of Pi, I mean, by Yann Martel. I know I read it when it first came out because I still have the hardback copy at home somewhere. Sometimes I'm really disappointed when I choose a book based on the bright colors (plus a tiger) on it's cover, but in this case I was right to choose as I did. I think I read it twice.

The movie preserved the key elements of the book, but I think lost a little in the streamlining of the plot. While I'm never thrilled about a movie that's more than 2 hours long, I wish some of the parts where Pi's just sitting around were preserved. These are the scenes where we get to feel the thrill of his smallest accomplishments, learning to fish, using the solar still, when he catches a turtle. Without these trials, Pi's survival is punctuated only by fortuitous interventions, the school of flying fish, the carnivorous island, etc.

4 Jan - "You have to look forward, or you'll never get home"

War Horse (2011)

dir. Steven Spielberg (Jaws, 1975)

CAST
Jeremy Irvine
Peter Mullan (Braveheart, 1995)
Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves, 1996)
David Thewlis (Timeline, 2003)
Benedict Cumberbatch (Amazing Grace, 2006)
Patrick Kennedy (Atonement, 2007)
Pat Laffan (Leap Year, 2010)

I think the only bad thing I can say about War Horse is that it's terribly self-aware. Spielberg can tug on heartstrings like Celtic Woman can wail on a lap-harp. I would be interested in a side-by-side comparison to determine exactly how closely the plot of this movie parallels E.T..

Apart from that it was lovely. Very sentimental. Very feel-goody. I know this was a play for a while, and I guess a book before that. I don't really know about either of those but some scenes looked and felt very theatrical. Especially that very moving scene where the English guy and the German guy walk out into no-man's land to cut the horse out of the barbed wire. When I saw that scene I imagined it on a stage. I could see it. The dialogue was very stage-like as well, and for that reason it felt like the continuity of style was a little disjointed. Is this a movie or a stage production? Make up your mind, everyone.

Here's the thing about horses, though. Some people get it, and some people don't. So when I am talking to people and they ask me what I thought of War Horse, I just have to answer with a question, "Well, did you like Black Beauty?" Because it's essentially the same, and you either love it or you don't.

26 Dec - "humans don't like smart ape"

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

dir. Rupert Wyatt

CAST
Brian Cox (Braveheart, 1995)
Tom Felton (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, 2010)
James Franco (Never Been Kissed, 1999)
Leah Gibson (Eclipse, 2010)
Jamie Harris (Princess Caraboo, 1994)
David Hewlett (Where the Heart is, 1990)
Chelah Horsdal (On Strike for Christmas, TV 2010)
Adrian Hough (X-Men: The Last Stand, 2006)
Tyler Labin (Zack and Miri Make a Porno, 2008)
John Lithgow (Skrek (voice), 2001)

Ty Olsson (Lake Placid, 1999)

David Oyelowo (The Last King of Scotland, 2006)
Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire, 2008)
Dean Redmond (2012, 2009)
Jesse Reid (Watchmen, 2009)
David Richmond-Peck (The Day the Earth Stood Still, 2008)
Sean Tyson (2012, 2009)


I feel like this movie has already been reviewed to death and since I'm clearly a latecomer to this game I'll keep the report necessarily brief. Yes, the CGIed Ceasar had a lot of attitude. Yes, you might say the moral of the story is that 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions'

Maybe this is because I was sort of in&out for the first twenty minutes or so, but I don't understand why James Franco's character didn't send baby Ceasar to a wildlife refuge immediately, that seems totally irresponsible. Anybody who knows anything about chimpanzees knows that they are accidents waiting to happen. Ceasar attacking the neighbor with a bad attitude wasn't just an unfortunate misunderstanding, it was practically inevitable. Chimps are awfully smart, but they are also meeeaaan animals.

The other point I feel compelled to point out (and this is nit-picky) is that they wouldn't have been doing medical experiments on chimps, they would have been doing them on rhesus monkeys. And finally, if the virus makes chimps super-smart but kills humans, it doesn't seem likely that the virus would have the same effect on orangutans as it does on chimps, because orangs have much less in common with chimps than humans do, which is to say that we are all almost identical, but orangutans are slightly more differentiated than the African apes (which are chimps, gorillas, and humans)

That being said, there's plenty of room for a sequel (a sequel to the prequel), which I have no doubt will be forthcoming. How does a pack of multi-species apes expand from a small home base in the California redwood forest to world domination? What do they eat in the redwood forest? Pine needles? Does their group even include females? Are female super-intelligent apes capable of demanding equal rights from their male counterparts or do the baser ape instinctive social order still apply? SO many questions have been left unanswered...

My last point is that is was pretty cool when Cesar NO! to Draco Malfoy, but I wasn't into it when he said "Cesar is home" to James Franco at the end. Apes don't have the physiological capability of speech. It makes a sort of sense that this ability could evolve in the thousands of years it takes until Charlton Heston arrives on the scene. But within a lifespan? Impossible. "No" is not a particularly difficult syllable. If they can teach a Siberian Husky to say "I Love You," I can believe that a super smart chimp can shout a mono-syllabic protest. That scene was very exciting, it was like I wasn't quite certain I had heard correctly until he repeated himself. And I was scared because it was unearthly and just wrong. But they that final scene detracted from the earlier climax. Not only was it unbelievable, but I think even if a super-intelligent ape learned to speak English, he wouldn't talk like Tarzan and he would know how to pronouns. I think it was a mistake.

4 Aug - "I'm gonna strip away this mystery and expose it's private parts"

Rango (2011)
dir. Gore Verbinski (Mousehunt, 1997)

VOICES

Ned Beatty (Back to School, 1986)
Gil Birmingham (Eclipse, 2010)
Abigail Breslin (Zombieland, 2009)
Johnny Depp (Dead Man, 1995)

Isla Fisher (I Heart Huckabees, 2004)

Charles Fleischer (Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (voice), 1988)
Beth Grant (Flatliners, 1990)
Alfred Molina (Dead Man, 1995)

Bill Nighy (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow Part 1, 2010)

Joe Nunez (Superbad, 2007)
Timothy Olyphant (First Wives Club, 1996)
Stephen Root (Ghost, 1990)

Harry Dean Stanton (Alien, 1979)

Ray Winstone (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, 2005)

Good Lord! Finally I see a computer animated movie that I actually like! I feel that Rango had an interesting and compelling plot that was both intensely amusing as well as attaining a level of emotional depth that I thought was appropriate for the material. The character development was tangible and neither the thematic element nor the humor insulted my intelligence. Kiefer was so pleased when we chose this off the On Demand that he gave me a long tight hug, so clearly it was a hit with the younger audience as well, proving my long-standing assertion that you don't need to dumb down the material to make kids happy. Let's treat children like clever and insightful individuals and, God willing, they may become such.

This was fun for me last time, so I thought I'd do another brief interview with my little brother, Kiefer.

P: Can you tell me what Rango was about?

K: Well, it started out from a lizard, or should I say, whatever you want to call it, a chameleon. Is that right?

P: Yep.

K: The chameleon, also known as Rango, who's told from a armadillo that he found outside of Rango's little box in the car--he didn't have any real friends until that armadillo showed up with little tire marks on him...

P: Hang on, Kief, you don't need to give a whole play-by-play, you can just sort of sum it all up.

K: It's kind of hard to tell because it's a long story. I don't really remember most of it but I do think it's a good movie.

P: Did you like Rango better than Gnomeo & Juliet or Tangled?

K: It's kind of hard to say 'cause they're all animated, which is equal. And they're all different kind of comedies, that's equal. I can't really compare it because they're almost the same and equally divided, and they're all comedies. So I don't really know what would be better, because they're only movies and they're all animated and they're comedies and they're all, like, journeys.

P: I don't know if Gnomeo & Juliet was really a journey.

K: I said sort of like a journey.

P: OK, sorry. Did you like the way the characters talked in Rango?

K: Yeah, you could say, but I don't understand why that would be a question because different people talk in different ways. But I also wonder if all the voices are done by the same person like Looney Tunes.

P: Did you think it was harder to understand than Gnomeo & Juliet?

K: No, not really.

P: OK, one last question. What do you think is the most important thing for a really good movie?

K: Most of the time I think it would be the thrill or a journey that takes place. Or something happens to someone really poor or really alone with no friends and ends up to be in a journey for life and death, just like Jane Eyre.

Last night Kiefer and I and our Mom watched Jane Eyre On Demand. So I guess that's why he stuck it in there at the end. I guess if you think of it that way, Rango is a little bit like Jane Eyre, minus the madwoman locked in the attic. I suppose what we could glean from this is that kids don't really know what they're watching, so there's no reason the adults have to be utterly bored and maybe some of those big words are penetrating the subconscious. In conclusion: Rango = more like this please.

6 July - "You got city hands, Mr. Hooper. Been countin' money all your life."

Jaws (1975)

dir. Steven Spielberg (Hook, 1991)

CAST

Roy Scheider

Robert Shaw

Richard Dreyfuss (James and the Giant Peach (voice), 1996)

Carl Gottlieb (The Jerk, 1979)

I not sure why, but for some reason I'm just totally not in the mood for writing about Jaws. Which is odd because I would about myself that, at given moment, I am on average 70% enthusiastic about talking about Jaws (and sometimes I'm sleepy or hungry and I don't really feel like talking about anything at all, so obviously that skews the statistics.)

Despite this setback, we will press on. Jaws is one of the most iconic American films ever. Consider the soundtrack, DUN DUNT! - two notes that are immediately recognizable and undoubtedly creepy. How about that perpetually misquoted line, "You're gonna need a bigger boat."?

And the villian! There are no special effects, there's no sinister back story. It's not a mutant shark, it's not a super shark, it's not a particularly clever shark. None of that, this movie appeals to the basic shared human instinct: sharks are creepy as fuck. AH! There's one here!

Look at those unfeeling black eyes, the mouth that doesn't seem to fit quite right on it's head. If you can call that a head. It just sort of tapers at the front end of the body. Would you even call it a snout?

Sharks are just one of those animals that when I see them in real life I just have to say AH! because I really cannot wrap my head around the fact that I am sharing the planet with something that is so different from me. It's like, what are you doing in my universe?

And if you don't feel anything like that sort of feeling then there is not enough wonder in your life.

The major conflict of the movie is that even as Chief Brody knows that the shark will kill again, Mayor Vaughn doesn't want to close the beaches on fourth of July weekend, the big tourist holiday and the major source of revenue for Amity Island. Isn't it so true that we refuse to account for the primal forces of nature as we are making our personal agendas? Mayor Vaughn's conscious cognitive dissonance stems from the belief that nature is something controlled and subjected. The horror of Jaws is the in-your-face reality that this enormous animal is very real - it's in the world with us right now, and it's bigger than you and it's underwater and it can kill you so, so easily and if it decides to chill out off the coast of New England during tourist season there isn't a lot you can do about it. That's scary stuff, right there.

And my favorite part, because I'm also tired, and I want to go home.

Show Me The Way To Go Home - Jaws from Thomas Kelly on Vimeo.

June 24 - "But the universe is designed to break your heart, right?"

Must Love Dogs (2005)

dir. Gary David Goldberg

CAST

Diane Lane - The Outsiders (1983)

John Cusack - Serendipity (2001)

Elizabeth Perkins - Finding Nemo,voice (2003)

Christopher Plummer - The New World (2005)

Stockard Channing - Where the Heart is (2000)

Dermot Mulroney - Burn After Reading (2008)

Julie Gonzalo - Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)

Glenn Howerton - Serenity (2005)
Patrick Fabian
Victor Webster - Bringing Down the House (2003)

I picked this movie tonight because it was one of seven that aren't on my external hard drive, which I have to stand up and plug into the laptop if I want to use. I also picked this because the others are action movies like Kiss of the Dragon or thinky movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey (Check back for reviews on those movies next month, kids!), which normally I like but earlier today I got a little bit teary-eyed at work when one document seemed too similar to another document and I asked one of the other guys if one was supposed to be a more recent draft of the other and he didn't understand because they have different titles but I was like, look! The introductions are NEARLY VERBATIM and then I felt overwhelmed. So I've decided that I'm hormonal and decided to indulge my monthly surge of femininity by painting my toenails pink (even though I've been wearing hiking books every day for the past month) and watching John Cusack fall in love with Diane Lane.

It makes me feel a wistful because I don't have anyone to pine over at the moment.

Well, no one who deserves it, and anyway, I wouldn't call it pining.

So I've decided to start adding screenshots to my posts, because I learned how to do screenshots. Also, if anyone wants to give me a prezzie, how about some picture editing software, because I have to copy/paste into microsoft paint and then "save as" a .jpeg. It's a little tedious. This is how I add flair to my blog: sad looking John Cusack with puppy:

I heard that pictures of dogs will get you more hits on search engines. Check out that West Highland Terrier! ANYWAY. As far as romantic comedies go, this one didn't really bring anything new to the table, but I wasn't really annoyed by it either, so that's something. John Cusack played that same quirky, philosophical, snarky character who is bummed out because some chick isn't into him, as he always does, but that was okay. In a nutshell, Lane is a divorced woman looking for a new beau, and so she has this back-and-forth between the dad of one of her students and a guy she meets online, and the guy who's on the movie poster is the one she ends up with. There are some misunderstandings in the middle, but for some reason no one thinks to just explain what's really going on (they never do...) and so we have "conflict."

I was curious where Cusack's character was supposed to be getting his money from. He was supposed to be making sculls out of wood, but he hadn't sold any yet and he didn't have another job. Nobody explained that.

It was a pleasant movie. It's banal. I like Someone like You better. I like Clueless even better than that. I guess sometimes you've just feel like watching a movie which doesn't require any thinking. This was good for that. But sometimes I want to pull my brains through my ear with chopsticks because so little thought was put into the creation of this so-called "entertainment" and for that reason I would do well to remember to stop watching movies like this.

11 Jan - "Squirt? I'm a king!"

The Chronicles of Narnia: the Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)
dir. Michael Apted (Gorillas in the Mist, 1988)

CAST
Ben Barnes (Stardust, 2007)
Georgie Henley (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, 2005)
Skandar Keynes
Liam Neeson (voice) (Batman Begins, 2005)
Simon Pegg (voice) (Star Trek, 2009)
Anna Popplewell (The Little Vampire, 2000)
Will Poulter
Shane Rangi (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, 2008)
Tilda Swinton (Broken Flowers, 2005)


My favorite part about Voyage of the Dawn Treader was the kid who played Eustace. He was so funny! A perfect little snotty kid. Except I didn't like him so much after Aslan got to him and he turned nice. That doesn't bode well for the upcoming Silver Chair, which features Eustace and his school chum Jill Pole on a quest to rescue Caspian's son, Rillian.

Tilda Swinton was in the movie, as an illusion haunting Edmund from time to time. I'll tell you, they will do anything to keep Tilda Swinton in these movies. Luckily for Disney, The Silver Chair has the perfect role for her. I will be totally surprised if they don't cast her as the Green Witch keeping Rillian prisoner (spoiler alert!)

If you're a smartypants like me, or if you read the Chronicles of Narnia anytime after age ten, you probably know that C.S. Lewis was a big deal Christian and really the Narnia books are all about how awesome God is. Voyage of the Dawn Treader is, I think, where the evangelical message gets laid on the thickest. There's a bit near the end where Aslan tells Lucy that she won't be coming back to Narnia (Actually, the whole team comes back in The Last Battle) and he tells her that he exists in the normal world, and that he brought Lucy to Narnia so that she could know him better in the other world. This is where I leaned over to the fella sitting next to me and whispered, "He's talking about Jesus!"

Because Aslan is Jesus.

17 Dec - "If I have to hear any more of his ridiculous owl jokes..."

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010)
dir. Zack Snyder

VOICES
Jim Sturgess (21, 2008)
Helen Mirren (National Treasure:Book of Secrets, 2007)
Sam Neill (Jurassic Park, 1993)
Geoffrey Rush (Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, 2003)
Hugo Weaving (The Wolfman, 2010)

You'll recall I have been eagerly awaiting watching Legend of the Guardians since I first heard of it. Well, I finally got to watch it On Demand last night and you know, it exceeded all of my expectations.

I guess there was never a big fuss about this movie because no one (well, presumably some people) ever heard of the books it was based on. I'd like to point out that even though Legend of the Guardians was based on THREE books in a larger series, the plot still flowed smoothly and unforced, unlike certain adaptations of novels concerning schools of witchcraft and wizardry.

Besides being about owls (which are awesome) what we've got here is a classic adventure story about a group of misfits teaming up to defeat a great evil. Isn't that the essential formula behind The Goonies (1985), Lord of the Rings (published 1954), and Star Wars (1977)? Not that this is even almost as awesome as one of those movies, but I think they could all hang out at the same cafeteria table, get it?

The story is about a young barn owl named Soren, who is kidnapped with his brother Kludd (obviously sinister) by some race-supremacist owls who think that barn owls should rule over all other owl kingdoms. This is a picture of barn owls. Kludd, who has self-esteem issues (I think of him like the younger brother in American History X (1998)), swiftly turns to the dark side, but Soren makes a gallant escape with a super cute elf owl (elf owls live in cacti) They team up with a burrow owl and another kind of owl (??) yo seek the help of a legendary group of owl warriors sworn to protect owl kind, but end up playing a critical role in rescuing masses of enslaved owlets (those are baby owls) from the evil Pure Ones (those are the villains I referenced before). So you've got a great good v. evil, triumph of the underdog kind of story. Great success.

3 Oct - Kids and whales and vaginas

Free Willy (1993)
dir. Simon WIncer, starring
Jason James Richter (Clown #2, Bones: Double Trouble in the Panhandle, 2009)
Lori Petty (Tank Girl, 1995; A League of Their Own, 1992)
August Schellenberg (The New World, 2005; Eight Below, 2006)

So for the very first time in my life I got around to watching this classic tale of child-large mammal camaraderie, and as I expected, it was wonderful! I definitely got teary-eyed when Jesse (who has a really depressing resume) transferred his own unrequited love for his mother onto that big ol' whale. And bonus points for having an actual Native person, August Schellenberg, play the Haida park manager. However, the best part of the movie (besides the iconic leap over the marina wall) was the reprise of Michael Jackson's "Will you be there" during the final credits, which is an appalling $1.29 on itunes. I'm always pleased when I hear a MJ song I like, because I'm so sick of "Billy Jean" and "Thriller" ("I want you back" is also starting to wear on me). Anyway, the Free Willy theme is nothing short of uplifting. In summation, if you haven't already seen Free Willy, get around to it.
Score: 5/5 - this isn't great cinema, but it perfectly accomplishes what it sets out to do, make me empathize with an orphan kid and his cetacean buddy



Teeth (2007)
dir. Mitchell Lichtenstein
starring Jess Weixler (no movies that I've heard of)
John Hensley (that insufferable kid on Nip/Tuck)
Josh Pais (Adventureland, 2009)

Why? Needed to see something more grown up than Free Willy
This one popped up on my netflix recommendations and since I'm still waiting for The Assassination of Jesse James to show up, I had to pick something I could stream online. I didn't know quite what to expect from the description, which said "when virtuous high school student Dawn becomes the victim of sexual assault, she discovers that she has an unusual line of defense: a toothed vagina." Given that, this movie was a lot smarter than I expected, and I think well executed overall. Dawn is a sweet, sexually repressed girl who publicly advocates abstinence (there is a scene where she almost masturbates while fantasizing about herself in a wedding dress). Around her is a culture which openly denies female sexuality. In science class, the teacher finishes his piece on the penis, and asks the class to turn the page to a big gold sticker covering the vagina diagram. When one students asks why its okay to talk about penises and not vaginas, Dawn answers that females have modesty built into their nature. Dawn's toothy metaphor is that women aren't passive at all, they're active and volatile. Dawn is violated over and over by men who convince her they are trustworthy. In the process Dawn comes to own her sexuality and realizes that her "Vagina dentata" is a badass weapon that can control (the male in the consensual sex scene finishes unscathed). The highlight of this movie is the final scene with John Hensley, who plays a perfectly awful stepbrother and almost redeems his suckiness in Nip/Tuck (plus his face annoys me - stop plucking your eyebrows, asshole). The cinematography is awesome, I like the recurring image of the nuclear towers above most of the shots. I love Dawn's dorky outfits (long sleeve shirts under tank tops). Sometimes these indie films really blow but this was a treat, that being said, I wouldn't recommend it as a date movie, unless you're a lesbian, then I think it would a fun pick and you would both appreciate it.
Score: 5/5 - clever, pretty to look at, and made me feel empowered