If I told this was a science-fiction film that for 99% of its running time only featured one actor on the screen, had no explosions, and featured a restrained piano driven score by the guy who did the requiem for a dream sound track - does that sound like something you would be interested in? Probably not, and I'll admit that most of my enjoyment from Moon came from everything it was not. The plot is set in the future (probably didn't need to be said) when most of the earth's energy is harvested from the moon (don't worry about the details they're not important). The harvesting station is manned by a single employee (Sam Rockwell) for three year intervals. Sam doesn't have live contact with the earth, and his only companion is a monotone voiced sentient computer named GERTIE (Kevin Spacey). One day he does on a mission and gets into a horrible accident. When he wakes up back in the station later he has no idea how he got back, and when he goes back out to the crash site he finds another person who look suspiciously like himself (ooooh, how is that for giving a thinly veiled spoiler). The rest of the film then follows him as he tries to figure out what happened before a 'rescue' team arrives in fourteen hours.
Getting back to my earlier point, what really the enjoyment of the film is how it takes the usual sci-fi conventions (cloning, a faceless corporation, and a sentient computer) and plays with them in unexpected ways. For example, GERTIE is set up in as a HAL like presence throughout the film, and I honestly expected the payoff to similiar to countless other films with malevolent computers, but the way it plays out in Moon is much more subtle and satisfying. The big mystery that the plot eventually revolves around isn't even that important, and the film is more concerned with engaging in a low key character study as opposed to big reveals and plot twists. I also enjoyed the way the film didn't feel the need to explain every little plot point or character motivation, instead being content with leaving some thing ambiguous and letting the audience form their own opinions.
Anyway this isn't a big or important film, but if you feel like watching something that that deals with classic sci-fi conventions in a low-key intelligent manner you'll get some enjoyment from Moon. Or you could go watch Robots punch eachother in the other big release this weekend. Which I guess is something.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
The Brothers Bloom
For about 80 minutes I felt like I was watching one of the more entertaining films I had seen this year. The plot follows two brothers Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and Bloom (Adrien Brody - whose parents must have hated him since they named him Bloom Bloom), who've made their way through life working as con-men. Like all classic con movies one of the partners (Bloom) wants out, and the other has to talk him into one last score. So far so good. I loved the universe that the film creates where its set in the present day but everybody still dresses like it's the 1920's and talks like they're part of a gangster film. The proceedings initially have a nice breezy feel reminiscent of other great con films (like the Sting). I was settling in nicely for the ride when unfortunately over the last half an hour the film jumps the rails. It suddenly decides it wants to say something serious about humanity (always a mistake when you've spent the whole time up to that point treating the proceedings in a considerbly lighter matter) and tries to pull off some unearned emotional moments. The plot also gets needlessly convoluted and complicated over this span. Now complication can be good in Con films, but here it just felt tedious and I found myself wanting them to get the point already. I'm probably being a little harder on the last third of the film than necessary, but I was getting so much enjoyment up to that point that the radical tonal shift just left me feeling frusturated. I don't think anyone should avoid checking it out, but just be ready to feel letdown.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
The Hangover, Up
I don't feel like writing two different reviews and the idea of doing a combo review of two films that would make up the most incongruous double feature ever seemed like the way to do.
First The Hangover. The recent trend of producing big R-rated studio comedies has been pretty hit or miss for me. For every one I find funny (Stepbrothers, Role Models, Knocked Up, Wedding Crashers), there's at least two that I find tiresome, or weakly amusing at best (Old School, Forty Year Old Virgin, Van Wilder, The American Pie films). Thankfully The Hangover, while not a home run by any means, falls closer to the former camp. The story revolves a group of cliches, I mean characters, who go to Vegas for a bachelor party and wake up the next morning having lost the groom and with no recollection of what happened the night before. They spend the rest of the film trying to find him and piece together their night. Along the way they run into Mile Tyson. There's not much more to be said.
The film generally works when it lets its characters, particularly Zach Galifianakis (who deserves all the props hes been getting recently) play off eachother and generally behave badly. It has its share of jokes that don't work, but I actually laughed out loud at least five or six times (or roughly half as much as I did during Pearl Harbor) which is pretty good. The film makes the common mistake of trying to have the chracters learn life lessons after having spent the entire runtime making them seem like pretty reprehensible (and therefore funny) characters, but its not enough of a mis-step to kill my enjoyment. Anyway overall its not a great pice of work, but an above average example of this type of film.
I don't necessarily consider Up and above average film of its type, but that's only because Pixar has set the bar so high that if a film doesn't blow you out of the water it feels dissapointing. Don't think this means that I don't recommend Up, far from it. The film follows an old man (voice dby Ed Asner) whose wife has recently died. Rather than being forced into an retirement home he fits his house with hundreds of balloons and sets off to fly to the hidden 'Paradise Falls' in South America that he and his wife always dreamed of going to. He's joined by a stowaway cub scout and adventure ensues.
Even though its not perfect the film has some really nice aspects. The film-makers are able to paint a fully realized picture of a couples life together in a five minute wordless montage, and it sets to shame hundreds of conventional hollywood films who try to do the same thing. The two main characters are also fully realized, and their interactions are feel natural and not at all obnoxious (as little kid old people relationships are so often portayed). The film loses steam when they actually get to South America and run into a possibly crazed explorer (voiced by Christopher Plummer) but overall it maintains a nice light tone that keeps the momentum going for most of the running time. It really is impressive that even for one of their lesser entries, Pixar is able to churn out something that is more engaging than what 70% of other studio's put out.
Anyway I think you can check both of these out with minimal trepidation. If you do them as a double feature with a some little kids you're forced into babysitting - Even better
First The Hangover. The recent trend of producing big R-rated studio comedies has been pretty hit or miss for me. For every one I find funny (Stepbrothers, Role Models, Knocked Up, Wedding Crashers), there's at least two that I find tiresome, or weakly amusing at best (Old School, Forty Year Old Virgin, Van Wilder, The American Pie films). Thankfully The Hangover, while not a home run by any means, falls closer to the former camp. The story revolves a group of cliches, I mean characters, who go to Vegas for a bachelor party and wake up the next morning having lost the groom and with no recollection of what happened the night before. They spend the rest of the film trying to find him and piece together their night. Along the way they run into Mile Tyson. There's not much more to be said.
The film generally works when it lets its characters, particularly Zach Galifianakis (who deserves all the props hes been getting recently) play off eachother and generally behave badly. It has its share of jokes that don't work, but I actually laughed out loud at least five or six times (or roughly half as much as I did during Pearl Harbor) which is pretty good. The film makes the common mistake of trying to have the chracters learn life lessons after having spent the entire runtime making them seem like pretty reprehensible (and therefore funny) characters, but its not enough of a mis-step to kill my enjoyment. Anyway overall its not a great pice of work, but an above average example of this type of film.
I don't necessarily consider Up and above average film of its type, but that's only because Pixar has set the bar so high that if a film doesn't blow you out of the water it feels dissapointing. Don't think this means that I don't recommend Up, far from it. The film follows an old man (voice dby Ed Asner) whose wife has recently died. Rather than being forced into an retirement home he fits his house with hundreds of balloons and sets off to fly to the hidden 'Paradise Falls' in South America that he and his wife always dreamed of going to. He's joined by a stowaway cub scout and adventure ensues.
Even though its not perfect the film has some really nice aspects. The film-makers are able to paint a fully realized picture of a couples life together in a five minute wordless montage, and it sets to shame hundreds of conventional hollywood films who try to do the same thing. The two main characters are also fully realized, and their interactions are feel natural and not at all obnoxious (as little kid old people relationships are so often portayed). The film loses steam when they actually get to South America and run into a possibly crazed explorer (voiced by Christopher Plummer) but overall it maintains a nice light tone that keeps the momentum going for most of the running time. It really is impressive that even for one of their lesser entries, Pixar is able to churn out something that is more engaging than what 70% of other studio's put out.
Anyway I think you can check both of these out with minimal trepidation. If you do them as a double feature with a some little kids you're forced into babysitting - Even better
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Twilight
There's a Blockbuster a block away from my apartment and about once a month they do a four for $20 DVD sale. I am unable to pass this up even though the inevitable time crunch happens and I have stacks of unwatched DVD's sitting around (a good portion of which are some random titles that I picked up to fill up my four). This is one step in a continual effort to get through the monstrosity.
Okay just bear with me. I figured I should at least give this a chance and see if all the hype was warranted for two reasons. One, I don't mind vampire stories. Blade II was bad-ass, and Buffy and Angel were two incredibly entertaining TV shows, and heck I even enjoyed Van Helsing (on the other hand just about every other Dracula movie has sucked) so the fact that Twilight mixed vampires with a teen angst drama meant that at the very least the potential for blood and/or unintentional comedy was high. The second reason is something I refer to as the Harry Potter corollary. The last media property that I remember seeing this much hype surrounding was the Potter books, and like Twilight I had absolutely zero interest in having anything to do with them based on the story description (I mean come on a teenage wizard in high school, really?) still after much cajoling by some people whose opinion that I actually respected I gave the books a shot and actually found them to be solidly entertaining. So anyway I figured I'd give Twilight a shot to see if the same phenomenon held (spoiler alert, it didn't).
What I will say for the film is that it was no where near as bad as I though it would be. Given the basic plot description (girl moves to new town, meets handsome brooding boy, he turns out to be a vampire, there's lots of angst) the whole thing sounded like a massive bore at best. Therefore the fact that I found it to be watchable and bordering on mildly entertaining qualifies as an upset. Still the story has one massive flaw (and several smaller ones) that keep it from being a truly engaging film.
Before I get into the criticism (and while I'm not going to turn off the no Mocking sign completely I will try to keep it relatively sane) let me go through a few things I like about the film:
i) Kristen Stewart - She's just one of those actors/actresses that I always find entertaining no matter what they do (like Amy Adams and Matthew McConaughy) which is a good thing here because I think if they had thrown the typical actress du jour (Kate Hudson I'm looking at you) to play what is actually a pretty thinly written part my interest level would have plummeted below its already low levels. Seriously though ever since Into the Wild I think I could watch her do a mentos commercial and be intrigued. This makes her inevitable appearance in whatever the 2013 equivalent of Bride Wars is going to be that much more depressing.
ii) The lack of angst. For a film whose premise could generously be described as Dawson's Crypt (I stole that line but its still funny) it actually restrains from having the typical amount of whining and equivocating you would typically expect from a teen themed film. If anything the characters were too locked into to what they were doing (everybody is ve-ry se-ri-ous), but at least they didn't sit around complaining for the entire two hours (probably just a good twenty minutes)
iii) Some of the vampire's at home stuff was amusing. And while I"m still not sure how I feel about the baseball game, it was at least a different approach to show the undead playing sports.
Anyway now onto the problems. I'm going to try to avoid making the easy jokes about the sub par special effects, and plot holes (this is a film about vampires for gods sake, I can't really spend much too much time complaining about flawed plot logic). The biggest problem is that I don't buy at all the heroine's obsession with her vampire lover boy. Their relationship basically unfolds like this: She sees an overly pale guy with what looks to be five hundred gallons of hair spray on his head. He goes out of his way to avoid her (because he's afraid he won't be able to contain himself), yet at the same time stalks her, plays with her head, and ends up saving her from getting hit by a car. She begins to suspect that there may be something different about this pigmentally challenged aqua-net model (other than the fact that he's apparently a sociopath who can stop cars with his bare hands) and with the help of google (ahh google how would any high school student be able to do any research without you) and a native American bookstore she realizes he's a vampire. My favorite part of this research exercise is when she's on a vampire website with different tabs for information about vampires in the usual places, Egypt, Peru, Europe - and the Pacific Northwest (who knew). Even though she's in Washington she avoids clicking on that tab. You think that might have saved her a few minutes of searching.
Anyway so far so good (or so far so mediocre), she goes to confront Edward (vampire boy) and even after he says that he really really wants to eat her and throws her around a bit, she's like 'I don't care I have an epic love for you so lets rock and roll.' She does this with no thought or equivocation, and the rest of the film involves them trying to find ways to satisfy their love, and it even goes so far as to have Bella ask Edward to bite her so she can stay with him forever (oh spoiler alert). I don't mind the fact that she's willing to go all the way to stay with her vampire boy toy, what I do mind is that the background I just gave is all the justification the film really gives for her obsession. Apparently wearing lots of hair gel, staring broodingly at a chick, threatening to rip out her throat, and generally acting creepy is enough to get a woman to want to join the undead for you. I really need to change my dating strategies.
Normally I wouldn't care that much about the romantic aspects of a vampire film, but since the entire story hinges on the idea that the main characters are so inevitably intertwined that being apart would literally kill them (I guess metaphorically in Edward's case), the fact that the whole relationship seems to be entered into as a plot convenience kept me from having any real involvement with characters, and as a result I didn't really have more than a passing interest in the story. Maybe the book does more to flesh this out, but the film left me with no desire to find out (a damning critique for any film based on a work of literature).
So anyway, Twilight - not as a bad as I thought, but still not that great. I must be getting old.
Okay just bear with me. I figured I should at least give this a chance and see if all the hype was warranted for two reasons. One, I don't mind vampire stories. Blade II was bad-ass, and Buffy and Angel were two incredibly entertaining TV shows, and heck I even enjoyed Van Helsing (on the other hand just about every other Dracula movie has sucked) so the fact that Twilight mixed vampires with a teen angst drama meant that at the very least the potential for blood and/or unintentional comedy was high. The second reason is something I refer to as the Harry Potter corollary. The last media property that I remember seeing this much hype surrounding was the Potter books, and like Twilight I had absolutely zero interest in having anything to do with them based on the story description (I mean come on a teenage wizard in high school, really?) still after much cajoling by some people whose opinion that I actually respected I gave the books a shot and actually found them to be solidly entertaining. So anyway I figured I'd give Twilight a shot to see if the same phenomenon held (spoiler alert, it didn't).
What I will say for the film is that it was no where near as bad as I though it would be. Given the basic plot description (girl moves to new town, meets handsome brooding boy, he turns out to be a vampire, there's lots of angst) the whole thing sounded like a massive bore at best. Therefore the fact that I found it to be watchable and bordering on mildly entertaining qualifies as an upset. Still the story has one massive flaw (and several smaller ones) that keep it from being a truly engaging film.
Before I get into the criticism (and while I'm not going to turn off the no Mocking sign completely I will try to keep it relatively sane) let me go through a few things I like about the film:
i) Kristen Stewart - She's just one of those actors/actresses that I always find entertaining no matter what they do (like Amy Adams and Matthew McConaughy) which is a good thing here because I think if they had thrown the typical actress du jour (Kate Hudson I'm looking at you) to play what is actually a pretty thinly written part my interest level would have plummeted below its already low levels. Seriously though ever since Into the Wild I think I could watch her do a mentos commercial and be intrigued. This makes her inevitable appearance in whatever the 2013 equivalent of Bride Wars is going to be that much more depressing.
ii) The lack of angst. For a film whose premise could generously be described as Dawson's Crypt (I stole that line but its still funny) it actually restrains from having the typical amount of whining and equivocating you would typically expect from a teen themed film. If anything the characters were too locked into to what they were doing (everybody is ve-ry se-ri-ous), but at least they didn't sit around complaining for the entire two hours (probably just a good twenty minutes)
iii) Some of the vampire's at home stuff was amusing. And while I"m still not sure how I feel about the baseball game, it was at least a different approach to show the undead playing sports.
Anyway now onto the problems. I'm going to try to avoid making the easy jokes about the sub par special effects, and plot holes (this is a film about vampires for gods sake, I can't really spend much too much time complaining about flawed plot logic). The biggest problem is that I don't buy at all the heroine's obsession with her vampire lover boy. Their relationship basically unfolds like this: She sees an overly pale guy with what looks to be five hundred gallons of hair spray on his head. He goes out of his way to avoid her (because he's afraid he won't be able to contain himself), yet at the same time stalks her, plays with her head, and ends up saving her from getting hit by a car. She begins to suspect that there may be something different about this pigmentally challenged aqua-net model (other than the fact that he's apparently a sociopath who can stop cars with his bare hands) and with the help of google (ahh google how would any high school student be able to do any research without you) and a native American bookstore she realizes he's a vampire. My favorite part of this research exercise is when she's on a vampire website with different tabs for information about vampires in the usual places, Egypt, Peru, Europe - and the Pacific Northwest (who knew). Even though she's in Washington she avoids clicking on that tab. You think that might have saved her a few minutes of searching.
Anyway so far so good (or so far so mediocre), she goes to confront Edward (vampire boy) and even after he says that he really really wants to eat her and throws her around a bit, she's like 'I don't care I have an epic love for you so lets rock and roll.' She does this with no thought or equivocation, and the rest of the film involves them trying to find ways to satisfy their love, and it even goes so far as to have Bella ask Edward to bite her so she can stay with him forever (oh spoiler alert). I don't mind the fact that she's willing to go all the way to stay with her vampire boy toy, what I do mind is that the background I just gave is all the justification the film really gives for her obsession. Apparently wearing lots of hair gel, staring broodingly at a chick, threatening to rip out her throat, and generally acting creepy is enough to get a woman to want to join the undead for you. I really need to change my dating strategies.
Normally I wouldn't care that much about the romantic aspects of a vampire film, but since the entire story hinges on the idea that the main characters are so inevitably intertwined that being apart would literally kill them (I guess metaphorically in Edward's case), the fact that the whole relationship seems to be entered into as a plot convenience kept me from having any real involvement with characters, and as a result I didn't really have more than a passing interest in the story. Maybe the book does more to flesh this out, but the film left me with no desire to find out (a damning critique for any film based on a work of literature).
So anyway, Twilight - not as a bad as I thought, but still not that great. I must be getting old.
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