Half-Assed Movie Reviews

July 13, 2010:  Light of Day

OK, I brought this one on myself.  I watched the wrong movie.

Everyone knows Michael J. Fox from the TV show Family Ties (1982-1989) and from the Back to the Future films (1985, 1989, 1990).  I won’t recount his entire career here, but he has sprinkled dramatic roles among the comedic ones through the years, then saw TV success again on Spin City from 1996-2001.  I’ve been a fan of Fox for as long as I can remember.

The film I intended to watch on this particular evening was Bright Lights, Big City (1988).  Instead I accidentally put on Light of Day (1987).  Both are gritty dramatic turns by Fox during a time when his comedic star was shining brightly, and both have “Light” in their titles.  I don’t know how Bright Lights, Big City has held up, but Light of Day is crap.

Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett play a brother and sister who are struggling rock musicians.  They try to get through life while caring for Jett’s young son, taking factory jobs to make ends meet between tours with their band.  Jett eventually goes out on her own since she feels the rest of the band is holding her back musically, leaving her son with Fox and their mother.  While this whole mess is not an acting stretch for Jett, Fox seems out of place portraying a profane blue-collar guy.

Speaking of blue-collar existences, Light of Day’s writer-director is the inimitable Paul Schrader, whose directorial debut was Blue Collar (1978), a wonderful little film about union-busting automakers and starring Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto.  Schrader has worked a fair bit with Martin Scorsese over the years, including writing the screenplays for Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).  However, my reaction to the films he has directed has been mixed, most recently with Adam, Resurrected (2008).

Gena Rowlands, best known for her work in husband John Cassavetes’ raw and emotional films, plays Fox and Jett’s mother, a deeply religious woman who struggles to understand her daughter.  When she becomes ill, the two of them have a heart-to-heart and are better able to see eye-to-eye after a shocking revelation is made about their family history.  This prompts Jett to go back to the band, just as Fox has just volunteered to take over singing for a gig when they have been left abandoned by her.

And that’s about it.  I found the movie to be awkward and oddly paced, as if it was a solid idea for a 40-minute film but needed to be expanded to feature length.  It’s a shame there aren’t more commercial opportunities for shorter movies, in order to tackle shorter stories.  Schrader knows what he’s doing, but Light of Day strikes me as a misfire.

Michael J. Fox as a rocker.

July 4, 2010:  The Shawshank Redemption

When asked what my favourite movie is, like any movie fan I can’t really give an answer without a bunch of clauses narrowing the field and leaving room for other top films which might not happen to be #1.  Whenever I am forced to answer with a single title, I tend to go with The Shawshank Redemption (1994).

That’s not to say that this is the greatest movie ever made, but it’s a movie that I can put on, which will mesmerize me at any time, and which I must watch through to the end from whatever point I start it.  There’s a complexity to its craft and yet a simplicity to its flow.  I measure the number of times I’ve seen The Shawshank Redemption not in “times” but in weeks.

A nuanced and deliberately paced prison drama, The Shawshank Redemption is based on a short story by Stephen King, and benefits from strong casting and direction.  Andy Dufresne is a man who has been wrongfully convicted of killing his adulterous wife in the 1940s, and is sent to a maximum security prison for a life sentence, where his smarts, his passion for living, and his patience come to inspire his friends over a span of multiple decades.  Played by the always-fascinating Tim Robbins, Andy has a quiet confidence in himself and all of humanity even as he struggles to make sense of the injustice he has suffered.  He comes out on top in the end, but pays his dues along the way.  His closest friend, Red, played by Morgan Freeman (who also provides beautiful voiceover work), has already been in prison for 20 years by the time Andy arrives, and shares his spark of life.  As the corruption and violence in the prison become worse and worse over the years, Andy is eventually forced to make a stand.

Tied together by Red’s parole hearings every 10 years, as he claims to be rehabilitated but is repeatedly turned down, The Shawshank Redemption has a carefully constructed timeline whose simple basic structure makes the film very accessible, but upon multiple viewings the complexity of the intertwined stories can be appreciated without being overwhelming.  Andy’s development of friends and enemies in the prison, his burgeoning accounting work escalating to money laundering, the warden’s and the main guard’s changing perspectives, the possibility of Andy’s retrial with new evidence, the expansion of the prison library, and the release on parole of one of the old-timers, are all placed in such a way as to build upon and incorporate the wisdom gained from earlier events.  The Shawshank Redemption is long, but worth every minute, taking the time to really let us get to know the characters, and with a captivating final half hour as everything is tied together.

I saw the trailer for The Shawshank Redemption several times in the theatre, but never saw the film itself until its release on video.  The trailer somehow didn’t make the movie appeal to me at the time, although I remember it clearly.  The awkward name certainly didn’t help it at the box office.  It seemed to be a significant contender at the Oscars that year, with seven nominations, but the fact that it didn’t receive a nomination for Best Director was a bad sign, as it tends to be an indicator that a film will not win the big prize.  This was the year of the sweep by Forrest Gump, with Pulp Fiction in the wings, so without the benefit of the good word of mouth which didn’t spread like wildfire until after its video release, The Shawshank Redemption was not a high-profile picture at the time.  That has all changed now, with it sitting atop the IMDB Top 250 list, with Forrest Gump only making #37.  I’m obviously not the only one who has been struck by the power of this film, and while I feel a bit like I’ve just been sucked in with the crowd, I did discover and grow to love this film on my own.

It’s surprising, therefore, that director Frank Darabont, who cowrote the screenplay with Stephen King, hasn’t been more prolific or successful in his filmmaking career.  The Green Mile, released in 1999 and starring Tom Hanks, did reasonable box office business but has the appearance of chasing another Shawshank-style story and comes up noticeably short, though the film still has its followers.  But Darabont’s later films reveal a typical box office take around $30 million aside from The Green Mile, which strongly suggests that it was the popular Hanks’ star power which elevated that film in particular, and we can conclude that Darabont is not a particularly bankable director.  The Shawshank Redemption may be claimed as my favourite film, but as a director, Frank Darabont is no Martin Scorsese.

Powerful yet compassionate angle on humanity.

June 30, 2010:  Day & Night

Day and Night (not to be confused with the recent terrible action picture Knight and Day) is a Pixar short film which ran in theatres ahead of Toy Story 3.  I saw it in 3D, not that it would have been necessary.

Two big lumbering animated guys, more or less blobs with little heads and hands and feet, move around on a black background, and they are transparent, showing outdoor nature scenes through them.  One of them evidently represents daytime, and the other one is nighttime.  In a series of “grass is greener” scenarios, they see what each other is experiencing – a sunny green meadow, a beautiful moonlit night – and each wish that they had what the other had instead.  Eventually, they get to a point where they both have the exact same scene, and from there they cross over from day to night and night to day.

In just a few minutes, the point is made that what you have is exquisite in its own way, and that with patience, you will probably get what you want, even if it’s what someone else has right now.  Differences are then able to be celebrated rather than envied.  This wasn’t my favourite Pixar short, and I can’t say that the point it made was particularly profound, but it was a pleasant time-filler before seeing the main feature.

Pixar shorts aren’t always that great.

June 27, 2010:  Surrogates

I watched Surrogates because I wanted to sit down and watch a movie but only pay about 60-65% attention to it while I did some dull tasks for work one evening, so I needed to make an appropriate selection.  I understood this to be a middling sci-fi concept flick, with some star power in the form of Bruce Willis, but which disappeared pretty quickly out of theatres.  I was presented with a thoughtful if unremarkable vision of a society with technology adoption taken to extremes.

Set in San Diego in the near future, society has transformed over the past decade or so as the technology has improved for robot “surrogates” to go out in the world and represent individual people.  These surrogates are now very accurate animatronic representations of their masters, except that they are most often made up to resemble the people at the peak of their attractiveness and fashionability.  As people lie inside special sensory chairs in their small apartments to control the surrogates, they become pallid and overweight, as the thin and beautifully made up surrogates go about their business for them.  It becomes uncommon for any flesh and blood people to actually go outside their homes.  When a few freak occurrences add up to suggest that using surrogates can be dangerous or even fatal, Bruce Willis is called in to investigate, and ends up being jarred back into a world of humanity, reminded that he misses seeing other real people as he uncovers the multi-layered conspiracy.

This is an interesting premise, and the setup covers a bunch of the peculiarities of this new society.  For example, crime rates have dropped to near-zero since people more or less don’t go out in public anymore.  The surrogates are strong and fast, so being hit by cars or having other physical accidents cause no real consequences (used to comic effect during a car chase later in the film).  It has become so rare for actual humans to be out in public that they are referred to as “meatbags”.  The surrogates have a plastic and unreal look to them, and most real people are unshaven and otherwise unkempt.  The company which created and markets the surrogates uses the tagline “Life…Only Better”.

I found it hard to believe that society could be so easily taken over by this way of life, going from monkey brain testing to near-complete human usage in only 14 years, but it doesn’t take too many examples from real life to realize that this is exactly what people do all the time.  Internet usage went from being a curious academic tool to a widespread and almost essential consumer utility in the span of a decade.  Texting and tweeting and the mobile device lifestyle are an even closer analogue, making people’s actual physical presence anywhere a mere formality, since they can communicate with anyone anywhere anytime and see video and photos and hear first-hand accounts of what’s happening to…anyone anywhere anytime.  That transition didn’t take much more than a decade to happen, and it has taken over.  Bruce Willis’ character is obviously uncomfortable with the surrogate lifestyle and craves human contact with his wife, with whom he lives in an apartment but whom he is not even allowed to see (except for her beautiful surrogate, of course).  I wondered how society could be so completely duped, but doesn’t everyone know a few technological luddites who refuse to carry a cellphone or to use email or to tweet or to use Facebook or to use a GPS to navigate?  Do these people, who promote a slower and more peaceful, personal lifestyle, have a point?  Of course they do, but it doesn’t stop the endless technological push which captures the mindshare of the majority of society.  An important point the movie tries to make is that you can’t take back technology and move backwards, unless there’s a major catastrophe which forces it to happen, which is what the villain in the movie is trying to do, if in fact we can call this person a villain.  That’s the big question.  What is the right thing to do?

Bruce Willis eventually abandons his surrogate and infiltrates a human camp in order to get to the bottom of the crisis, and is surprised more than once by the layers of deception, but he comes to realize that the death and destruction has a purpose and that the purpose, beyond being righteous, may also be right.  Faced with a choice at the end, he has to weigh the valid points of view of several of the people he has encountered, and decide what is best for the world.  It won’t be best for everyone, but hard decisions never are.  Individuals have lost sight of the bigger picture, but Willis has regained that larger view, and comes to wish he hadn’t.

Surrogates isn’t a terrible movie, but it’s nothing special either.  The concept is sound, and the execution is neither here nor there.  If I had to pinpoint my major complaint, it would be the casting of James Cromwell, who is an intense and versatile actor, but he seems to have been typecast over the past 15 years or so, and a movie now tips its hand through his mere presence.  I knew from his first scene how his character would likely fit into the story, and I was not proven wrong.  I liked him as the dorky but loving dad in Revenge of the Nerds (1984) and the pig farmer in Babe (1995), and I liked his current repeating character the first two or three times (notably in L.A. Confidential in 1997), but he needs to branch out a bit more.  Don’t bother with Surrogates.  Read a respected sci-fi story instead, or maybe even the comic book Surrogates was based on.

Good concept.  Great potential.  Mediocre execution.

June 11, 2010:  Toy Story

With the imminent release of Toy Story 3, I decided as I typically do to revisit the earlier entries in the franchise.  It’s been quite a long time since I’ve seen either of the first two Toy Story films.  I always liked them, because it’s pretty hard not to, but I’ve never felt compelled to repeatedly watch them.  Toy Story was released in 1995 and seeing it again puts into perspective just how far computer animation has come, buoyed by ever-increasing computing power, in just a decade and a half.

Toy Story was the first full-length animated feature from Pixar, which up to that point had put together a few noteworthy short films (including one which had won an animated short film Oscar).  This was the start of the company’s association with Disney, which would eventually result in its acquisition by Disney in 2006 from Apple, who had owned Pixar since the 1980s.  In the first of what would become an unprecedented string of successful feature films, Pixar brought together a compelling story, relatable characters, and high-octane celebrity voice work to make Toy Story a blockbuster with kids and parents alike.  In what turns out to be a surprisingly fast and lean story, the characters (toys) are introduced during their owner Andy’s birthday party, Andy gets a new toy named Buzz Lightyear who threatens to become the new leader of the pack, and the old leader Woody knocks Buzz out the window.  Wracked with guilt, Woody goes out in the world to retrieve Buzz just in time for Andy’s move to a new house.  There are the requisite number of near-disastrous scenarios which are averted just in the nick of time, the types of situations which are very common in animated films since they are easy to depict.

What makes Toy Story more than just a typical animated action movie, though, are the carefully considered small details with which Pixar has become synonymous, and the integration of real human themes into the big picture.  On the small scale, we have the facial expressions and animation details and the subtle nods to kids misplacing their toys all the time (these toys actually do move, so they really aren’t always where the kid left them).  On the larger scale, dark themes of jealousy and bringing harm to others are explored, as well as the issues of growing old (as in the case of worn out and discarded toys), becoming a second fiddle, and the challenges of leading a group.  In a stroke of brilliance, while the personalities of most of the toys are not well-developed in the film, they are embodied by familiar shapes such as a dinosaur and a piggy bank, and known brands including Mr. Potato Head and Slinky, so from the first time these characters appear on screen, we have already known and loved them for decades.  Disney is a master of merchandising tie-ins, so the licensing of “real” toys is not surprising, but it was a fascinating phenomenon to see how this collision between classic toys and the two new characters of Buzz Lightyear and Woody permitted the studio to present these two all-new toys as being immediately credible, with store shelves packed with examples of Woody and Buzz and sparking Christmas shopping shortages, blurring the lines between popularity and familiarity.  Isn’t Mr. Potato Head “imaginary” as well, and only seems familiar because he’s been around for so long?

On the technical side, while the animation detail is strong, the movement is not very fluid.  Considering that we’re still trying to come up with decent animation techniques for human and animal movement, that’s not surprising, but in Toy Story it’s jarringly amateurish when we see dogs or people moving, and a clear indicator of the vintage of the film.  There’s less complexity to the designs and certainly not as much fine detail and shading as in newer computer animated films (including the later Toy Story films, which I’ve now also seen and which are a good direct point of comparison).  Aside from that, though, it’s staggering what the filmmakers were able to achieve during a time when a 66Mhz Pentium on the desktop was the state of the art.

The only thing which really seemed like a misstep and stuck with me from this viewing of Toy Story was that the character of Woody was more selfish than I remembered him being, and in fact it was jarring how mean-spirited he was when faced with a loss of popularity and leadership.  Having re-watched the second film and now seen the third film, however, I’m confident that it is deliberate, and I remain surprised at how it is such a definite part of Woody’s personality.  This is a courageously drawn flaw in a lovable animated character, and a hint at the depth which was to continue to come from Pixar.  It certainly doesn’t make Toy Story any less powerful, and probably makes it moreso.

Early computer animated classic remains so.