Real Steel

Either the prospect of Rock-Em-Sock-Em Robots the Movie makes you smile, or it doesn't. If it doesn't there's no way Real Steel has any chance of entertaining you so I wouldn't even bother going to see it. For me though, well I sort of enjoy the over the top ridiculousness of the premise and felt that, if executed correctly, the film could be a successfully 'dumb' action movie. It sort of succeeds.

The plot is pretty basic. In the future people have decided they'd rather watch robot's fight than actual people (why this is, is never adequately explained. Its difficult for me to believe that watching guys play video games will ever replace a real live fight, Its not like battle bots was tremendously popular, but whatever). Hugh Jackman is a washed up boxer, fighting robots around the country with the occasional help of Kate From Lost (Note, the actress who plays her will always be Kate from lost. She's not quite good enough to ever escape the role so I hope she just accepts it). Eventually a son he never knew shows up, they fight, they bond, they find an old robot and turn it into a fighter, etc. Nothing new here, all that matters is whether or not there's enough Robot on Robot action. There is, and its much better executed than say, Transformers (i.e. I could actually tell what was going on), and that's good. But man is the film too long. Over two hours. They should have chopped a half an hour out (anything involving the Robot dancing would have been fine) and it would have been so much better. Also, as much as they tried, I couldn't get that emotionally involved in what robot won the fight. I mean I love my quesadilla as much as the next guy, but if it suddenly got beat up by the neighbor's Cuisinart I can't say I'd be that broken up (not as much as the quesadilla maker at least - zing).

But whatever, its more watchable than you think, and features some of the most blatantly self-aware product placement I've ever seen. And if there's one thing I can always appreciate, its wholesale selling out.

Moneyball/Contagion

Its appropriate that I saw these films back to back since Steven Sodenbergh was two weeks away from shooting the former, before production was stopped, and ended up directing the latter instead. So that's something, and shows what an informed blogger I am.

Anyway Moneyball first. I'm a fan of the Michael Lewis book, and was definitely curious about how the film would get a conventional narrative out of the story of a small market baseball team that initiates a statistical revolution, but doesn't end up winning the big game. They get around this issue by focusing on the triumph of an idea rather than a team, and focusing a character who had no more than a passing mention in the book (Billy Beane's daughter). Overall the approach works. I wouldn't watch this film for a 100% accurate representation of the Billy Beane (just like I wouldn't watch the Social Network to learn about Facebook), but its entertaining, well-acted, and moves along at a nice pace. Its radically simplifies the basic idea, but in general captures the spirit of the book, which is more than I can say about The Blind Side (which in the interest of full disclosure I haven't been able to bring myself to watch even though somebody gave me a copy that is sitting on my floor. If I want to see a film about a brave white woman whose gumption helps her save an under appreciated black child I'll just watch the help. No I won't).

Contagion on the other hand attempts to show how a pandemic would affect the world, but in the most clinical, non-thrilling manner possible. Really for most of the film its almost as if Sodenbergh wanted to just do a meticulous live-action simulation of the mechanics of a pandemic. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. By stripping out most of the normal gyrations of this genre (namely worrying about who's going to die), you're able to really just focus on the effects of the disease and consider its implications. Really the only times the film doesn't work is when it jumps away from this approach and focuses on a completely unnecessary side plot involving a paranoid blogger (Jude Law). Still overall its engaging (if a bit draggy at times) and will make you try to avoid physical contact with other people (thankfully I'm already way ahead of them on that count).

Note: Two girls in front of me thought they were going to see The Ides of March (playing in the next theater). When they realized there was no Baby Goose in this one there was much consternation for a few minutes, but I'll give them credit that they actually sat through the whole thing.

The Ides of March

This is a film that wants you to understand that it is important. Every scene is crafted to show the weight of what the characters are going through, every speech meant to either make an impassioned plea or show you how screwed up and full of compromise the political system really is (what a new and radical sentiment). Its kind of like the West Wing only without the sense of humor or likable characters.

Now given the film's cast (George Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei, and Geoffrey Wright) this is all executed competently and in a reasonably engaging matter. However I couldn't help but feel the entire thing was all surface, and not doing anything new. Its almost as if Clooney got so tied up in trying to make something momentous he ended up drowning in it. Its not worthless by any stretch of the imagination, just no where near as insightful or important as it thinks it is.

Postscript: I now remember why the film felt so familiar. Its really just a remake of Primary Colors, except not as good. Its lacking that films sense of humor, and identifiable characters, so its unsurprising this film ended up just leaving me blase.

Drive

Drive has become an incredibly divisive film with people either calling it 'genius' or 'incredibly pretentious and slow.' I guess I fall closer to the former camp, but I can't say I fell as head over heels in love with it as a lot of its defenders.

The film follows an un-named driver (Ryan Gosling) who works as a stuntman/mechanic/getaway driver, and goes through life saying as little as possible. He eventually forms a relationship with a neighboring woman (Carey Mulligan) and her child, but when he tries to help her recently released (from prison) husband get out of some trouble, things, to say the least, go bad. And that's pretty much the whole plot. The film as a whole is a slow burn, punctuated by moments of extreme violence. With one notable exception (which I'll get to in a minute) it doesn't lay anything out for you, and just tries to communicate via subtext with as little dialogue as possible. And in general I liked this approach. The whole thing has a sort of hypnotic quality, and I appreciated that the script doesn't feel the need to underline every beat. Basically stuff happens, they don't try to soften the idea that the ostensible hero is a bit of a pshycopath (of course so is Batman), and you just kind of have to roll with it. That's all good.

However there are two things in the film that kept me from completely embracing it.

1) The music. I actually like the choice of using sort of euro-pop electronica to score the film. It fits the overall vibe well. What doesn't work are the lyrics. While the rest of the film tries hard to let the subtext and the emotion speak for themselves, the song lyrics are the complete opposite and blatantly spell out every emotion that the characters might be experiencing. Seriously it reminded of the Family Guy joke where Randy Newman just wrote songs about what was happening. It would be like you see a film where a guy just killed his brother and a song started where the words were 'Oh I bet you feel really bad and conflicted...' Just a weird choice that completely out of sync with the rest of the film.

2) I'm sorry but any film set in Los Angeles that features multiple car chases, and not one instance where they're sitting in traffic just throws me out of the reality of the story. Seriously, these guys were driving back and forth from the Valley in broad daylight at one point, weaving all over, probably averaged like 80 mph, and only saw other cars sporadically. I call BS. Having sat through LA traffic for years I think I can reasonably say this isn't possible (definitely not at the regularity that the film portrays it). The only time I was driving as unimpeded that the chases in the film, was new years eve 2009 coming home from a 10 pm screening of The Bad Lieutenant at the New Beverly. And that was so eerie we spent the whole time commenting on how crazy the whole thing was, and that we were probably going to get car jacked at any point.

In an even more ridiculous moment, Drive features a scene where Gosling is making a get away drive around the staples center during a game with no significant other of cars around. In fact they show that no fans leave the game until the final tip, enabling him to sneak away in the mass exit. Right. First of all there would have been a steady stream of ans leaving from the middle of the 4th quarter on, and he wouldn't have been able to make a qucik left turn within two miles of the stadium. The only film to less accurately portray LA travel is 500 days of summer that somehow made it look like lots of people use the subway.

Warrior

Warrior takes the basic sports formula and applies it to MMA. This mostly works. The story follows two brothers who haven't seen each other in 14 years after their mother took one of them across country to get away from an abusive father. The movie picks up with the younger just having gotten out of the marines, and the elder working as a physics teacher in danger of losing his job and house. They each end up entering a winner take all tournament and, in a surprise to no one who saw the trailer, end up on a collision course (literally) with one another and their various demons.

Since there's nothing really that new or surprising in the story, what really matters is execution. Admittedly I have a soft spot for sports films, so I might not be the most objective opinion, but I think that the film mostly succeeds in what it tries to do. The three central characters (two brother and their estranged father) are compelling, and I cared what happened to them. When the film focuses on their relationship is when its at its best. In addition, the fight scenes are well staged and believable (even if, like every other fight film, they make it look like every fight is an all out brawl instead of 20 seconds of flurries followed by four minutes of getting a submission like real MMA fights), and the final showdown was as satisfying as it could have been given the genre's accepted conventions.

That said, it does has its problems. When we get to the tournament things do get a bit out of control, and cartoony, and it feels more like a plot device than something that might actually happen. Additionally, the wife is completely unsupportive and shrill until the protagonist starts winning, and the big emotional denouement between the younger son and the father ended up feeling more like an excuse to get Nick Nolte to cry than anything that moving.

Still, I can't deny that I was generally entertained throughout, and cared what happened in the end (that's what she said). Since that's the most important thing a sports film needs to do Warrior can be considered successful. Or at the very least a solid B. Not close to Hoosiers, but way better than Seabiscuit.

Big Recap

So I've been on the road and don't feel like writing anything in depth so here's the run down:

Another Earth

Nice little Sci-Fi film that actually has very little special effects or, indeed, science fiction. The film just uses the discovery of another planet identical to earth as a framing device for a story about two people brought together as the result of a tragedy (but not in the way you might expect). I liked how the film dealt with the relationship honestly, and the resolution felt real and unforced. Its not a big film, but one worth checking out.

Water for Elephants

This was a plane viewing (I guess its too much to ask that United have the individual entertainment consoles in the seats), and I just found it kind of boring. It basically has the same framing device (and really story) as Titanic (replace gloria stuart with Hal Holbrook...sexy), except it takes place at a depression era circus and doesn't have the guts to at least kill one of the main characters like the former film did. Its not horrible, just overwhelmingly perfunctory and unnecessary.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Any film that a features a monkey in pants is going to be on my good side (its like he thinks he's people), so Planet of Apes automatically gets a couple of points from me. Also I saw it in Hong Kong where it was 60% humidity and 90 degrees, so I think the respite of the theatre air conditioning would have made me feel good about whatever I was watching (side note: At hong Kong theatres you buy pre assigned seats, and they don't open the theatre until five minutes before the start time. Everybody then crams their way in. I just thought it was interesting). That said, this reboot is generally entertaining, even if the human villians are drawn so broadly its laughable (though I guess they felt it was necessary so people would actually root for the monkeys). My biggest problem is that in a matter of hours, the main primate is able to round up hundreds of large simians from just the south san francisco bay area, Being a resident of that general vicinity I refuse to believe there are that many giant ape-sized primates just hanging out waiting to be liberated. On the other hand pants-wearing super smart monkey's presented no problems for me.

The X-Files: I want to Believe

Really disappointing. I've seen pretty much the entire run of the original TV show, and consider it one of my favorites. This film just comes off as a pale imitation, and they completely ruin the Scully character making her Adrian Balboa to Mulder's Rocky. She was always skeptical in the show to be sure, but would never just hang him out to dry like she does in this film. Just a weak effort all the way around.

The Lincoln Lawyer

Another plane viewing, but one that was surprisingly entertaining. I avoided this one in the theatre's because even though I do love me some McConaghy, the trailers made it look like another Grisham-lite-lawyer-on-a-mission film, which I'm almost as tired of as emo vampires. The Lincoln Lawyer actually ended up being a pretty well-executed reasonably intelligent thriller, with a plot that generally made sense. I'd dare say this is even McConaghy's best lawyer role since Amistad (you forgot he was in that didn't you?). Boom, double punctuation.

Captain America

Captain America manages to be the most straightforward unironic of the Marvel film adaptations and it works much better than I would have expected. The Captain doesn't have any of the angst or recklessness of most other superheroes, he just wants to go out and kill some Nazis. I think this is the right approach, because when you're main character is named after a country and runs around with a shield its going to be difficult to sell that he's secretly tortured. Anyway, even though I'm getting tired of origin stories the film was generally well executed, and had a nice sense of humor about itself to go along with the lack of irony. The Cap isn't as compelling as Iron Man, but he's way more interesting than the Hulk, and I'll be interested to see what Joss Whedon does with all these characters in the Avengers.

All that said, and possible spoilers ahead (actually definite spoilers ahead), the action scenes don't always hold up to scrutiny, and the ending in particular lacks any semblance of sense it almost serves to derail the whole operation. Dig This. So if you're flying a bomb loaded plane that's hurtling out of control for NYC and you don't have time to find a safe landing area, where do you think you'd end up crashing the plane? Somewhere in the Atlantic? Possibly Maine? Boston? I mean, you literally only have seconds to make a decision so obviously you must be super close to new york? Right? Wrong. Apparently the Captain didn't have time to find a corn field, but he did have time to fly to the freaking North Pole to crash and then be frozen for the next sixty years. Right, if you're trying to convince us that he doesn't have enough time to even finish a radio conversation with his girlfriend but he does have time to fly 5,000 miles out of the way then you should probably rethink your story execution. Whatever, shut up brain.