The accolades for Children of Men are many and all well-deserved. The small cadre of writers, including director Alfonso Cuarón, adapting the novel of the same title by P.D. James have delivered a tight, suspenseful, and totally engrossing script. The first time I saw Children of Men, I could hardly think the film was so commanding.
Of course a large part of that suspense comes from the director's masterful pacing and exacting detail. From the beginning, the audience is kept a bit off-kilter. It's our world, but something terrible has happened to it.
The exposition works not because of the overt plot points like when Theo talks with Julian about needing him to get some papers but because Cuarón makes sure the background offers information to fill in the pieces. For example, throughout the first twenty minutes there are shots of people in cages, a train hit with stones, a bombing, and graffiti reading "Last one to die, turn out the lights" all of which create a world complete enough to capture the imagination.
Technical and visual expertise aside, what sets this movie apart is its complete story. Lots of films have great acting, great cinematography, effects, etc., but they don't have "story," by which I mean a combination of events and reflection that captivate you, such movies I've seen recently without a powerful story or plot element are Hollywoodland and Running with Scissors. In both movies, I started looking around, wondering if I missed something because nothing seemed to be happening.
On the surface, Children of Men's action, story, or plot, whatever you want to call it is an action adventure sequence of events in which the protagonist must journey with his charge to a safe place. Still, Theo does much more along the way; he moves from living a kind of comatose, emotionally euthanized life to being fully alive. Like any good art this isn't stated directly but seen. Even when Theo meets Kee, he is still only after money. It isn't until he learns she's pregnant that hope is reborn in Theo. Jasper, in a rare moment of reflection in the film, labels this hope as "faith" and contrasts it with chance. Perhaps, faith is reborn too, but Theo's hope that faith can overcome chance is what allows him to act, to protect Kee.
Thus, this film addresses the question of humanity and the dilemma of a single human as profoundly and delicately as any I've seen.
I understand that we all have our ideas of what a great movie should be, especially when it involves characters we've loved... characters we grew up with. When it comes to adapting such an enormous and epic story as that of Spiderman there are always going to be critics.
Me being one of them.
I've heard some say the story was lacking, the effects were too much and even some say that it was a waste of $258 million. And though I can't justify my staying up for the midnight showing with the quality of this movie, I still thought it was a great film.
The effects, for one, were frickin' amazing! I don't care what you say, if you hated the film with a passion, when I saw Venom (after he obtained the suit, because I saw that part about a thousand times online) it was so awesome to see one of my favorite Spidey villains on the big screen. The Sandman was great too and the fight scenes were phenomenal between each character.
I will agree with most and say the story was the most lacking. If you're as big a geek as I am, you'll know the story of the symbiote and how Spiderman actual got the black suit. I realize it's difficult to adapt such a huge storyline into a 2 and half hour film, so I wasn't too disappointed with how they handled the Venom story. If you want to know the actual story, you can check it out here.
It may not have been worth $258 million, but it was definitely worth seeing. Bringing such a beloved comic book character to the big screen is a difficult task, and I thought they did well enough for me this time around.
Everyone knows this is a great movie; I mean a movie has to be some kind of good to be nominated by the Academy Awards 11 times in a range of categories and to have won for Best Original Screenplay. Still, I didn't know what to expect when I finally sat down to watch this famous film, but two things stuck out to me about Chinatown.
One startling feature was the constant threat of violence and sexuality. The threat of violence is an easy enough concept and is clear enough in the movie; indeed, Jake is constantly being attacked by thugs, random guy in a barber shop (verbally), farmers in Oakland, more thugs, even cops. And it's not a little violence. Jake is repeatedly beaten, even sliced up a little; however, the threat of sexuality is perhaps a more difficult concept. What I mean is the sexuality in the movie gets people in serious trouble. The movie opens with a husband seeing pictures of his wife's infidelity, whom he later batters a bit, and ends with the pedophiliac, incestuous rapist getting a new daughter and the threat looms over her thin body and shrill shrieks deepens the tragedy that lays bloodied behind the wheel of the car, and that doesn't include all the stuff in between the opening and closing acts, which are many, grotesque at times, and sometimes deadly.
The other thing that struck me about this movie, is that in this atmosphere of death and sex the characters take on rather surrealistic, almost archetypal qualities. Now seeing archetypes in a movie or literature or what have you, is easy enough, but it's not always appropriate. Rather, some works lend themselves to such analysis more readily than others, and Chinatown is one such movie. The most obvious reason for such a 'reading' of Chinatown is the plot. Jake is clearly in a cycle; he's repeating actions of the past with the same outcomes no matter how hard he tries to change them. Along those lines, it's telling Robert Towne, the writer, never let's us know exactly what happened in Jake's past regarding that cryptic invocation repeated several times, "Chinatown." It's simply a place where something bad happened to someone Jake loved, whom he thought he could save, which seems specific, but when the events repeat themselves again, in Chinatown, without clarification of the original event, I begin to suspect there is a deeper text going on. Polanski being a bright fellow picks up on this and brings it into the forefront by adding film noir elements to the filming. One scene in particular stands out. Jake returns to the place where Mr. Mulway's body was found. It's night and the place is locked-up, so Jake jumps the fence. Then Jake is almost washed out to sea when the dam is released in a culvert where Jake is standing. Escaping drowning, Jake is attacked by two thugs who appear out of the darkness, where Polanski makes a cameo as the short thug. The darkness, the silence, the drowning, the appearance of tormentors, all lend themselves to a deeper reading of this movie, especially since these elements repeat themselves again throughout; indeed, thugs seem to appear from nowhere whenever needed, which isn't poor plot construction making people wonder "Where did those guys come from?" because in this world thugs, violence, and death can and will appear at the slightest provocation, and Jake has provoked the ire of the ruler of Hades. Noah Cross runs this world, and Jake's pitiful attempt to trap him at the end of the movie, only lets Cross get what he wants while Jake again fails to protect his charge, highlighting Jake's ineffectiveness to change anything in Chinatown. Thus, it seems Chinatown is a kind of hell, representing to Jake Gittes a world in which his choices continuously turn to destruction and worse deliver that which he loves to men he loathes, a world in which the powerless remain exploited, and the powerful never fear justice.
There are really only two movies I wanted to see this weekend (though I get to see neither of them) out of all the other movies coming out.
The Invisible with Justin Chatwin and Next with Nicolas Cage.
Ever since seeing the trailer for the Invisible I've been wanting to see it. Although it feels like the concept may have been used before in a movie, the trailer makes it look like an amazing movie... but I guess that's what they're supposed to do.
As for the movie Next, I'm always a little strange when it comes to action films. They inspire me in a totally different way than other movies. There's really less character development and more ass-kicking, which is ok if that's what you're looking for in the movie.
Nicolas Cage never disappoints me, being in some of my favorite films (adaptation and matchstick men to name a few) so seeing him as the star makes me want to see it regardless. Also, written by the screenwriter of Minority Report gives it a lot of credibility in my book.
Here's the synopsis from IMDB:
If you see the future, you can save it in Next, based on a short story by Philip K. Dick. Cris Johnson (Nicolas Cage) is a Las Vegas magician with the ability to see a few minutes into the future. Seeking to escape government scrutiny, he lives off the grid, performing cheap tricks for meager cash under an assumed name. But when a terrorist group threatens to detonate a nuclear device in Los Angeles, FBI agent Callie Ferris (Julianne Moore) becomes determined to track Cris down and convince him to help stop the attack.
... and this trailer helps with the seeablness of this movie:
If you're like me, you feel like you've already seen Spider-Man 3 via trailers. I mean, they're all over the internet. One will focus on the Sandman, the other on the new Green Goblin... but what we're all waiting for... what I've been looking forward to since the first Spider-Man movie came out, is the appearance of Venom.
I first saw the trailer with Venom in it at the theater waiting to see Frank Miller's 300 and it made me want to skip 300 and transport all the way to May 4th.
Well, I couldn't resist when I saw this. If you want to see some more Venom action, go download this video from this video site. If you want to wait for the movie, then don't click on this link, but I just couldn't resist (as I've already mentioned).
I've been wanting to jump on this blog for so long and am finally able to do so. If there is one thing I love it's movies. They are only second to a good book and they're only getting better as time moves on.
So who needs another blog about movies. Aren't there enough out there. You'd think there is, but here I am, creating another one, another useless barrage of ideas from someone who thinks they know everything and has the right to criticize any film because his intellect is superior to that of the filmmakers.
But that's not what this is. I am no intellect, I didn't take a course in film critiquing, I have no idea how to professionally critique a movie (if there is such a thing). All I do is bring my honesty to the table.
If you really want to know how I review a film, I'll simply tell you. If a movie inspires me, if it's the type of movie I watch and it makes me actually want to write... write a movie, write about a movie, write a story... whatever... that's what makes a movie "good" to me. If something is so powerful, you want to create something that does that to people, I think a movie has done it's job. Not only of entertaining, but changing someone's perspective.
So that's what you're in for with Film Geeks. An honest review of movies from an honest person with no credentials thereof.
I understand that we all have our ideas of what a great movie should be, especially when it involves characters we've loved... characters we grew up with. When it comes to adapting such an enormous and epic story as that of Spiderman there are always going to be critics.
