July 13th, 2009, 2 Comments »
I’ve been rather remiss in posting little reviews of movies I’ve seen over the past few months. Here’s part one of recent movies I’ve seen, and I’ll post part two tomorrow.
Terminator: Salvation - 6/10 - Worse than the first two movies, but better than the third. It’s essentially a war movie, with Christian Bale playing his usual grim law-bringer role. The special effects are impressive, and there’s always something to look at. However, it lacks a lot of the depth of the first two films. The themes are much simpler, and there’s little of the time travel fun that made the earlier movies so enjoyable. Also, this movie included two female characters, both of whom had thankless roles as plot or expositional devices.
Up - 9/10 - Pixar keeps hitting it out of the park. They’re a factory churning out great animated films. I didn’t enjoy “Up” quite as much as “Ratatouille”, which was exquisite, but it’s still a superb film. Among other things, this film takes on a very unlikely topic of “how do we cope with life after the death of a loved one?”.
Away We Go - 6/10 - I wrote a review of this film that sums up my thoughts. Sam Mendes is a terrific director, but I was distracted by my disdain for the protagonists and their utter loser-dom.
Transformers 2 - 2.5/10 - It was everything I expected it to be: 57% killer robots, 32% huge explosions and 11% lingering shots of Megan Fox. This film may feature the most incomprehensible plot (a term I use charitably) I’ve ever seen. The only redeemable feature is Shia LaBeouf, who I believe to be destined for a long, Tom Hanksian career. On top of all the usual complaints, I was struck by how difficult it is to tell the killer robots apart. I was a casual fan of the TV show as a kid, but after Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, they all looked the same.
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June 29th, 2009, 4 Comments »
Early on in “Away We Go”, Maya Rudolph’s character asks her boyfriend, “are we fuck-ups?” Because Dave Eggers co-wrote the script, the answer is surely a resounding “yes”. In an earlier post mentioning Eggers’ first novel, I said “Eggers is a great stylist, but must all of his books feature such aimless losers?” In truth, I’ve only read two of his books, but that’s kind of how I felt about “Away We Go”.
The movie’s plot is frustratingly thin. Verona (Maya Rudoplh) and Bert (John Krasinski) are expecting a baby, and so travel the country looking for a new home to raise a family. The film’s inciting incident–Bert’s parents announce they’re moving to Belgium–reveals the protagonists as selfish slackers. It’s as though we’re watching Juno and Paulie, fifteen years later. This isn’t really a legitimate critique of the film, but I found the lead characters’ charmless entitlement really frustrating. So much so that it distracted from my enjoyment of the film.
Which is too bad, because the movie is comprised of a bunch of great scenes. The script, though overly concerned with meta-discussions of language, feels truthful, and the supporting cast–Jeff Daniels, Catherine O’Hara, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Paul Schneider, among others–are all excellent in their one-off scenes. But the movie never seems to coalesce into a fully-realized work of art. Like Eggers’s books, it meanders.
Sam Mendes directs, so the film is a visual treat. In “American Beauty” and “Revolutionary Road”, the British director seemed a little obsessed with the American suburb. In this movie, Mendes heads out on the highway, looking for adventure. The result is splendid road trip fare, from Phoenix to Montreal.
Roger Ebert liked the movie. A. O. Scott did not (I see he started his review with the same as I did), and I like what he has to say about the protagonists:
And even though they express themselves with a measure of diffidence, it’s clear that they are acutely, at times painfully, aware of their special status as uniquely sensitive, caring, smart and cool beings on a planet full of cretins and failures.
Metacritic gives the film a 57, which feels about right.
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