24/March/2011
"You were programmed to be an asshole!"
And so, I've finished the Alien quadrology (I can't help but laugh every time I hear that) with Alien Resurrection. It is better than Alien3 in a lot of ways, but it just came across as the least appealing film.
Ripley died in the last flick, but two hundred years later a new organisation clone her using a blood sample so they can extract the alien. Surprise surprise, that eventually goes tits-up, and Ripley, a scant few crew and a bunch of bounty hunters are trapped on the space station with them. That's about as far as the plot goes, really.
Uneven as it was, I felt Alien3 would've been the best place to end the story. Ripley has lost everything she knows and loves in her encounters with the xenomorphs, and she dies taking out the species with her. Sure, there's probably (if not definitely) more of them somewhere, but given how they've just messed up her life, that's not a bad way to go. This one does make her a clone, but it's not the exact same Ripley we've come to know - she's aware that's a clone, and due to her stint of being impregnated with the queen she's acquired a mental connection of sorts with the species, not to mention super strength and acidic blood. It's interesting to observe her concern over being a clone - especially when the other clones are seen having been subject to obscene mutations, a blending of human and xenomorph biology. For all she's done to protect humanity from the aliens, people have only kept screwing her over and making things worse, and now she's responsible for this new form of beast.
The problem is that the movie takes quite a while to feel like it's going somewhere, and when it does, it only seems to focus on Ripley's bond with the aliens; and not in an interesting way, but in an unsettling way. We're talking needlessly long footage of her nuzzling her half-human half-alien hybrid child thing. You know, the kind of thing you don't really want in a story.
Mutating the aliens into a supposedly stronger being is an intriguing concept, but the result just bored the piss out of me. Xenomorphs are freaky because they're basically stacks and stacks of penises moulded into an alien shape; they murder for fun, they screw with the bodies of their victims in a variety of grotesque ways, and they're pretty much nightmare incarnate. That's freaky! The human-xenomorph hybrid is basically a vaguely human-esque stack of mashed potatoes with big eye holes and an occasional tendency for crushing human skulls. There's just not enough time to play up its predator factor. Yes, from an emotional viewpoint the fact that Ripley was kinda-sorta responsible for this mood swinging, violent yet child-like monster is a great concept to explore, and a whole story exploring the drama of being the mother of a monster would be one I'd like to see. But from a movie-goer perspective, if you're going to make this thing overshadow the real aliens, you gotta make it kickass. Giant needy monster babies that crush heads don't quite compare with acid penises.
In a way, I just found the movie hard to take seriously; partly because it feels very different from the other films in the series, and partly because it is legitimately ridiculous. Everyone's making stupid faces! The entire crew of the space station seems to be composed of people with funny eyes and a tendency to waggle their eyebrows furiously. You've got them trying to look seriously shocked when something unfortunate happens, but they end up looking like they're trying to mug for the camera in hopes of getting a guest appearance on Harry Hill's TV Burp. You've got emotional deaths, and then you've got deaths where someone just waits stupidly for their head to get crushed, or picks a bit of flesh from the back of their head where they've just had an alien burrow itself in (while making funny faces). There are times you almost think the movie's just trying to be a parody.
The face of Alien Resurrection.
And then there's the bounty hunters. At least, I call them bounty hunters because the movie certainly doesn't go out of its way to say who they are. The whole time I saw them I just couldn't help but feel it was Joss Whedon making a prototype of the crew in Firefly. I'd love to extend that analogy, but I only ever saw one episode of Firefly and I wouldn't even be able to name any of the characters, so that falls flat. Some of them survive long enough to get some degree of personality, and some who do survive for a fair while have absolutely nothing to their name by the time they snuff it - how would you describe the pilot woman besides... "pilot woman"? Ron Perlman totally steals the show, but the others seemed like they were trying to create a distinctive cast for their own stories, but didn't have the time to actually flesh them out at all.
I think that's one of the reasons the film didn't sit well with me; it just doesn't feel like an Aliens movie. It's like they wanted to focus on the drama of Ripley's clone and her alien bond, yet they also wanted to shoehorn in a new breed of alien, but they also had these great ideas for a group of ragtag tough dudes in space, and - man! - these guys had ideas for some really cool action sequences! It feels like they tried to rope those all in to a two hour film, and it just didn't feel satisfying. Joss has been quoted on how the studio butchered his original script, so it wouldn't surprise if they did just let any guy with some grand ideas dump their load on it.
I'm actually surprised at the amount of crap I'm flinging at the film, because I did enjoy it to a certain degree. I didn't like the plot, I wasn't fussed on the characters, the aliens didn't impress me... so what did I like it?
Well, it's got some great action sequences.
I totally loved the underwater sequence - the series relies so much on the characters keeping in contact even when far away. This time they're all nearby in single-file, but they can't speak up at all. The aliens are more manoeuvrable underwater than the humans are, meaning if they can't fend them off, they've got no chance of outrunning them. The part afterwards on the ladder is entertaining, but it's totally fucking ridiculous as well. If you'd ignored that this was an Alien instalment you could get away with it, but man, what the hell.
Personally, I'd say this is my least favourite in the series. From a production perspective it's probably one of the best (in a traditional Hollywood sense), but for story, atmosphere or comparison to the others... I just felt it fell flat. It's no longer Aliens, it's just a traditional action-horror flick with the creatures brought in. Yeah, Ripley's there, but now that she's a bit wacko, I couldn't help but lose the attachment over the past movies. It's a very different vibe, it's a very different setting; even the way it's shot is wildly different. It's not dreadful, but for someone who's come to love the previous movies, it just didn't sit well with me from the start. I don't think I'll bother watching the Alien vs. Predator movies, but knowing me I'll be suckered into it of my own accord anyway.
And having finally seen it in context, the alien getting sucked out ass-first makes for a pretty crummy climax.
23/March/2011
Paid another visit to Xtravision today, where I rented Transformers: War for Cybertron, Prince of Egypt, and Space Chimps. The last one was at my father's choice. He's got a thing for all things simian.
We watched Space Chimps over dinner last night - mainly because I probably wouldn't have watched it without an incentive. It's a very bogstandard CGI kids flick that offers no real surprises. A space rover is lost in a wormhole and lands on an inhabited planet, where some jerkass alien uses it to enslave the entire civilisation, and to get the rover back, three chimps are sent into space. Attempts at morals and weak humour ensues.
While there are probably worse kids' flicks out there, Space Chimps just lies in the very, very, very broad category of "mediocre". The animation is decent, but the character designs felt lacking, as if they weren't cartoony enough. Often the vocal performances (the only notable actor is Jeff Daniels as the evil alien and Joe from Family Guy as Titan, the best character in the movie) would be enthusiastic and entertaining, but the character designs just wouldn't have the flexibility to suit it. One thing I couldn't help but notice was how all the mouths were very small. Admittedly on a realistic human they would be about right, but on mildly stylised cartoon characters they just felt limiting.
It only cost me a pound and a little over an hour of my life, so it's not as bad as it could've been, but it's the kind of film that goes in one ear and comes out the other.
I sunk about three
days into Transformers: War For Cybertron, finishing the single-player
campaign on Easy, dropping an hour or two into the deathmatch mode, and tried a
couple of chapters on online co-op.
It takes a little while to get into, mostly because the first chapter of the
campaign mode just isn't very interesting. I don't know if you need to complete
it first before you can access the chapter select, but the first Autobot mission
makes for a much more appealing start to the game - it introduces you to all the
basic commands in a non-obtrusive manner, the three characters are all
pleasantly different, and it's simply a more exciting mission. The later
chapters include more exciting setpieces, such as scurrying through Cybertronian
highways while the humongous Omega Supreme constantly intercepts your group;
riding space slugs through the core of the planet; and exploring the dark, dank,
yet beautiful catacombs of their homeworld... but the Decepticons' first chapter
is just slogging through room to room and blowing up waves of dudes slowly.
The controls are pretty functional; the robots are a lot less heavy than the PS2
game, so naturally you spend less time struggling under your own weight, and
they're not more manoeuvrable, gaining such luxuries as a double jump and the
ability to dash. The vehicles are probably closer to the Ghost in Halo 2
than the PS2 game; regular movement is floaty and multi-directional, while
holding the L Trigger makes them accelerate and become slightly closer to
traditional vehicle controls. The controls are a bit sensitive with the faster
vehicles, and quite often I've fallen off the level because it turns sharper
than I expected, but in the end it works out well. I lament the loss of the
realism in comparison to the PS2 game, but I welcome the fact that you're not a
sitting duck - all vehicles have mounted weapons with their own separate ammo
count.
Yes, for some criminally stupid reason, all guns have ammunition. The PS2 game
used a charge-based / overheat based system, which did the job just fine - you
could use the weapons to your heart's desire, but it stopped you from just
spamming them endless in a hail of terror. Mind you, the PS2 game only let you
change your weapon outside of the level, so if you came equipped with something
totally ill-suited to the mission, you had no choice but to beat feet back to an
exit teleporter. War For Cybertron just has weapons and ammo crates lying
around; a more traditional method, though the fact ammo exists at all just feels
unnecessary. It doesn't help that none of the guns seem to have a high enough
ammo capacity, and all too often you burn through it quickly and literally have
no options but to club everyone to death. When you spend the first half of the
game's first chapter going totally ammo-less with very, very few ammo crates to
refill, it doesn't cast a promising first impression.
There's a nice variety of guns and every character has a built-in melee weapon,
though there's no real surprises. One thing I loved about the PS2 game was the
variety - yes, there were stinkers, and yes, there were some that were useless
from a serious winning-the-game perspective, but being able to pick up dudes
with a tractor beam and throw them off cliffs, watching them tumble down like
ragdolls before exploding... it's a mesmerizing experience.
War For Cybertron is explicitly linear, and revolves entirely around
combat, which is in stark contrast to the PS2 game. Yeah, it had combat
(challenging combat!), but the real heart and soul of the game lay in the
humongous maps you could explore, and all the various trinkets and Mini-Cons you
were rewarded with for snooping around. It helped that the environments,
although a bit samey, were vast, lush and beautiful, and with the glider
Mini-Con there were great incentive to just diverse from the missions and fly
over the jungle surrounding you.
WFC is set entirely on Cybertron, and the artists involved really put
their all into making it look varied, distinctive and captivating. Okay, a lot
of it is just grey with some coloured highlights, but the architecture and
general look of the city is awesome. The levels are vast with an awe-inspiring
sense of scale to them, and the chapters set in the cities (the Autobots' first
chapter being a prime example) are really, really nice looking - I found myself
just stopping in the middle of a highway to view the sights around me. I wish
the colour palette was a bit sharper and wasn't so dulled down, but it really
does good at bringing an alien planet to life. The problem lies in how the game
is just so linear. It's not like Sonic Heroes where it's literally a
straight path to the end; the levels do have a realistic flow to them, but
there's just no chance to explore on your own initiative. Either you're walled
in to a set path with force fields blocking all extraneous paths, or you're
floating above a giant bottomless pit. It's repressing.
Like Batman: Arkham Asylum, the real challenge lies in how you'll take
care of an increasing number of strong foes in environments that become less and
less suitable for combat, so when they throw a predictable pattern-driven boss
at you, it's just a total bore. The bosses in the PS2 game were a mixed bag, but
one thing I truly admired was how it gave the real sensation of fighting another
transformer. They didn't hide behind force fields or gimmicky weapons, they just
faced you the way they were best fit. The battle against Cyclonus is my
favourite fight in the game - a ground-based Autobot versus a missile-toting,
helicopter-mode Decepticon in the dense jungle is just a fantastic fight, as you
need to balance evasive action and return fire properly to beat him - too much
of one over the other and he'll either fill you full of missiles or swing you
into a wall.
War For Cybertron
is just gimmicky pattern-based bollocks that runs by ye olde
three-chances-to-shoot-them-and-then-they're-dead method of defeat. Arguably you
fight Starscream mano-el-mano, but it's just a boring fight because he flies
outside the room for the first half of the fight, and you do face down Omega
Supreme and Trypticon yourself, but given the fact they're several stories tall,
it's not the same as getting a real challenge out of facing someone your own
size. Admittedly the boss fights do make great set pieces for the levels -
fighting a giant robot worm-spider piercing the core of Cybertron while it spews
spiders at you is a real sight, even if it makes for a boring fight. even just
shortening the fights would've made them a little more bearable.
If the gameplay were superb, I would forgive it. The gameplay's not bad. As I
said, it's very combat-orientated, and levels can be summed up as strolling from
room to room, occasionally getting locked in so you can fight a few waves, and
repeating. The combat is fun, mind you, particularly due to how smooth it is to
control the characters, and playing as Megatron gives a real sense of
uncontrollable power - dudes tumble the air after being hit with his fusion
cannon, and mowing down vast armies with only two allies at your side is really
fun. For the first few hours, anyway. Then you just kind of wish there was more
to do. There's ten levels in the game, and only two of them allow you to use
characters with flight capabilities - and they're easily the most enjoyable
characters to play as. Heck, even if you could take any character into any
stage, that could give things a bit of extra replay value. Instead the only true
replay value to the single player mode are the three difficulty settings, and
the online co-op. I had high hopes for the co-op, as this would be the very
first time you could play a Transformers game co-operatively in the main
story mode. It's pretty... meh. Nothing special. It's online only, so you can't
have two people on the same console, and every time someone dies you're booted
back to the last checkpoint. It's not even like Halo where the other
person stays dead until the current fight is over, and then revives - anyone
dies, instant game over for all. Naturally this gets very tiresome in the battle
against Zeta Prime, who has instant death crushers in his arena.
Multi-player is clearly where the game's replay value lies - the game has been out for nearly a year, but it seems to have a reasonably active userbase. Deathmatch was still host to a good few hundred players, a healthy mixture of veterans and newcomers like myself. Heck, even the connection was good - I played at the time of day when my connection is capped badly, but I could still get five full matches in without a single glimpse of lag until I lost connection. Not a bad run! It emphasises the differences between the four classes in combat, all of which have their strengths, weaknesses and style of play. I only had the time to try out the Scouts, though the difference between looked reasonably vivid when watching others in combat. Getting more open environments to utilise the transformations was a definite plus, and it really brings the combat to life so much better than the campaign. My only real beef is how crappy the colour palette was during character creation. Either it's faded so bad it's nearly grey, or so bright it sticks out like a cancerous thumb. A broader palette wouldn't break a camel's back, folks.
As I mentioned
earlier, the art direction of the game, especially in the environments, is
pretty great. I'm not too fussed on how all the character designs just look so
beefy and bulky, though I do admire how layered they look - components fiddle
and move even in the characters' idle animations, a feature I loved in the
live-action films, as it makes the Transformers really look like mechanic
organisms rather than big boxes with robo-guts inside. I do just wish the
palette wasn't so "modern video game," though. There's enough minor colour
variation so you aren't just looking at an all-grey screen, but even just upping
the contrast and making the colours pop out more would help. Then again, that's
me and my love for pastels.
I rented the game mostly because it was the first thing that caught my eye and
partly for giggles - I was concerned that I would only play the game for a
couple of hours, think it was crap and then only begrudgingly sink more time
into it just to get my money's worth. I'm actually unsure quite what I think -
first I was quite keen on buying it, but now that I've finished it (and returned
it), I think a rental was the best option. There was very little replay value to
the single-player mode, and although the multi-player mode looked promising, I
feel uneasy buying games strictly for the multi-player. If it had offline co-op,
I would have had more incentive, but as it is, I'm not in a rush to pay full
whack for it. But talking about the game to my brother over Yahoo! Chat just got
me thinking about certain sequences and how enjoyable they were. Then again, if
I were to buy it it'd probably end up just sitting on the shelf gathering dust.
Maybe I could just rent it again, that'd make a good halfway point.
Oh, and I didn't even get to watch Prince of Egypt because I didn't get the time to. Dad watched and said it was "very sing-y." For all the good stuff I've heard about it, I keep forgetting it's a musical. Shackles that the medium has yet to fully shed.
17/March/2011
Watched Alien3. I'd seen it once before years ago; it was actually the first movie in the Alien series I'd seen, but I couldn't remember much about it besides the totally gratuitous deaths of everyone but Ripley from the previous movie - before the movie even begins! - and the ending, so I was looking forward to seeing it in full.
You'd need a lengthy list to detail all the ways it's different in tone from the first two films, but the main point is that there's only one alien, the place they're trapped on has no useful working technology to fight the creature with, and for some reason, despite being set on a dingy prison planet in the ass-end of the universe, it's probably the brightest of the first three movies. I can understand Aliens because it was on a ravaged human colony that about to blow up or something, but who'd thought a near-derelict prison would be lit well?
Yep, that's a great comment to start the review off with. Let's get some less stupid topics going.
You don't bond with the characters much. The one character who Ripley truly bonds with, the doctor, only seems to be there to help her out and explain some of the mystery surrounding him for the first hour, and once all of his mystique has been explained away, he's killed immediately. So much time is spent on the interaction between him and Ripley that everyone else gets very little to define them (besides "wacko"), so when the occupants of the prison are slowly whittled down to a mere one, you don't exactly notice much.
The alien itself seems a little odd in this one. We finally get a clear chance to see its strange, animalistic scuttling over walls and ceilings (yeah, that happened in Aliens, but you only saw it in the midst of them being shot at), but its births from a cow in its fully-grown form; it doesn't grow from a chest-burster into the full xenomorph. Rather than make any attempts to turn its prey into eggs for more face-huggers, it just seems to eat every dude it finds for a little while and then walks away. Yes, it fits in with the "it toys with its prey" theme that the series likes to remind us of, but you'd think when it's the only one of its kind on the planet, it'd want to be a little more productive.
If you can ignore the fact that a vast majority of the cast are worthless and can live with some minor errors with the mythos, I'd dare say it's not a bad movie. it doesn't pare up when you place it side-by-side with the first two (though since it's an actual sequel and not just a random one-off, you can't try and pass it off as a standalone film), but the premise and setting are very intriguing; the faith-in-religion vs. faith-in-the-man parallel makes for an interesting running theme; the sets and visual direction of the film are very, very nicely done; and I feel it makes for a decent end to Ripley's story arc, even if it was a needlessly cruel journey (who's going to look after Jones?!). the main problem I find is just... there's nothing new for the alien.
The first movie introduces us to it and its uncanny biology; the second then expands on that (human eggs!) and shows us the queen; the third... makes it tuna-coloured for a while? It doesn't break any new ground the alien as a species, and most of the movie's drama comes about through how totally unprepared the prisoners and their environment are for such a threat. It doesn't help that there's no real drive to the climax; again with the comparisons, the first movie has the ship set to self-destruct, the second has them trying to rescue Newt before, again, the place blows up, and this one just has them trying to dispose of the alien before The Company shows up. It doesn't help that the method of getting rid of it is just really, really boring; the sequence of the prisoners running around in tunnels gets old real fast, and you just wonder what the hell they're trying to achieve. I can't imagine it's a sequence that would've read any better on the script.
For a movie I'm saying that I like, I sure have a lot of complaints, don't I?
I thought it was a decent film. it is hard to put it on the same podium was the first two, but aside from some iffy pacing and a very weak final battle (though the ending afterwards is very satisfying), I thought it was a worthwhile watch. it's not like some movies where you feel you would've been better off spending the time knitting a scarf or something. Though I should probably do that anyway. I am big into multi-tasking.
So, presumably next week we'll get watching Alien Resurrection. Literally the only scene I've ever seen of it is the big where an alien gets sucked out of a tiny hole in the ship, ass-first, so it'll be interesting to see if the rest of the film is just as entertaining.
15/March/2011
Went to see Battle: Los Angeles, because that's the kind of braindead movie one wants to watch after you've done nothing but feel ill and write code all day.
When I say braindead, I really do mean it. The movie is practically Military Movie 101, it throws in so many clichés. The first half hour is spent 'getting to know' the main players in the force, which is not only needless because their personalities are summed up in less than a minute, but also... well, let's face it, they all end up looking the same in the heat of a battle. One guy is joked about by the others because he's a virgin, but it's difficult to see what other contribution he makes to the movie because it's so damn hard to keep track of who's who. We have emotional overreactions thrown about every ten minutes. The group find two adult civilians who provide one useful bit of support and then are made redundant. There are the kid civilians are there just for the marines to give inspirational speeches to. At one point there's a helicopter with wounded soldiers (who are all given emotional good luck speeches from their comrades) that is blown up mere seconds after takeoff. There's a rather needless scene where the hero and female civilian (who I guess is meant to be a love interest, but it sure isn't developed!) muck about with an alien corpse and try to find its weak spot (which is to the right of where a human's heart would be. Yeah, like you wouldn't hit that eventually through regular fire). All the film needs is a dog that somehow survives all the hellish action until the end of the film and the aliens taking over a human's body and that would nearly complete the set!
I won't deny that even for a braindead action film, it was kinda hard to sit through the first half of the film, because it just feels so by-the-numbers. The aliens totalling this huge city does cast an impressive visual, but it's not something I haven't seen before in several movies and video games. The aliens themselves are interesting looking, a strange mix of organic and robotic elements to their biology with an intriguing mixture of drone aircraft and gun turret walkers at their disposal, but again, there have been more exciting alien threats in other media (though given the fact these aliens have no backstory and their only motive is to kill shit and take our water, it's not like they're a complex, layered race). And given the marines do little more than just shout all the time, you wouldn't be challenged to find a more intriguing band of heroes.
I admit I found it a little limited in comparison to other films of the basic earth-vs-them-other-fellas genre; the entire movie is spent with this one squadron, and it's all just ground combat. Mind you, my main measuring stick is Independence Day, which not only had the irresistible charms of Will Smith as the leading character (don't try and convince me he isn't!), but had him engaging in air combat with alien ships (and stealing one of their vehicles!), more expert analysis of the alien biology and their technology, and the president flying a fucking fighter jet. It's the kind of thing that puts hairs on your chest that are dyed red, white and blue. Battle: Los Angeles, meanwhile, is a lot more low-key... if you can somehow use that word when describing a movie about aliens invading earth and blowing us the hell up. While Independence Day focuses more on the drama of every major (and supporting) character and the curiosity over who these alien invaders are, Battle: Los Angeles is simply "aliens are stealing the goddamned ocean, and we don't approve one bit." Also, Independence Day is totally ridiculous fluff while Los Angeles seems very concerned with giving us gritty, 'realistic' Marine fluff, with aliens.
Mind you, in a way that does give the movie a more unique feel. It's a lot more self-contained, and the work of one group of Marines is nearly all it takes for the alien threat to be removed from Los Angeles. Independence Day is constantly whipping between the president, the soldiers, the tech guys, the politicians and all manner of groups who all collaborate to defeat the threat, but this one shows that a mere few men with faith in their ambitions can kick some ass hard and heartily. Of course, this is probably more to do with how the film feels more like a love letter to the armed forces that happens to have some aliens kicking around. Independence Day is more of a general feel-good film where even the drunkest bastards and the oldest planes can stand up to alien warships.
As a jaded video game person, the feel of Battle: Los Angeles didn't seem to quite hit the stride it wanted to. The military stuff offered absolutely nothing new, and the whole alien aspect lacked anything fresh. Which is a pity, as the movie would deliver some genuinely awe-inspiring visuals when it wanted to. The climax of the film involves the alien drone generator having been hit with an airstrike, and to save face, it rises from beneath the ground and is towed through the sky by several drones with grappling hooks, and it's a mad dash to light it up with a homing beacon for a second air strike before it gets away. After the movie feels so humdrum for an hour and a half, it was a really awesome sight, one that made me smile and think to myself, "aw yeah, this is the kind of stuff I paid to see." It's a pity that that was only the end of the freakin' film.
Considering the ticket cost a mere £3, I can hardly complain. If you're a big war film buff then it's probably a no-brainer, but otherwise I didn't feel there was much of a serious draw to make it stand out, unless tickets are cheap. Admittedly, throughout most of the first half of the film I couldn't help but be reminded of Valve's games for some reason. The comparison to Half-Life 2 is pretty obvious, but the scene where the troops are going through various backyards and are ambushed by aliens shooting form rooftops, it reminded me a lot of Left 4 Dead, strangely. I spent a lot of my time pondering how a Left 4 Dead film would work, whether or not four characters could carry the story (if any), and how the film would actually be laid out - it'd be a bit much to cram six campaigns into two hours while keeping all the good bits.
And while I'm waffling, why Battle: Los Angeles? Now that I've skimmed the IMDb trivia I see it's playing into some minor event during World War II, but the alien invasion is impacting all of Earth, and we even see very brief footage of the international attacks. Why not have it set somewhere we don't see much in films, like Nigeria or somewhere? Even Ireland is mentioned as one of the drop sites for the alien invaders. Battle: Ahoghill may not have the same ring as Battle: Los Angeles, but it might have made it stand out a little more. Not that I'm even familiar with the Ahoghill area, but it'd be nice to see something take place in Ireland that isn't just another bloody dramatization of the Troubles.
Yes, a stupid movie about shouting people fighting bug robots has gotten more wordage out of me than a darkly comedic Biblical parallel of a suburban Jewish family. Clearly I am the bane of good film critique.
14/March/2011
Father roped me into watching A Serious Man. I sat through it to the end, and was able to wriggle my way out of stating what I thought by scoring it an interrobang out of ten, sending him rummaging through dictionaries to identify the word.
It's an interesting film. I will wholeheartedly give it that.
It is not the kind of movie one wants to watch when you're feeling unwell and just want to see a simple everything-makes-sense comedy where, I don't know, people fall into bathtubs or something. When I'm unwell, I'm not exactly in the mood to watch a film exploring the injustices and justices of the world and how simple actions can warp the moral fabric of the universe and screw everyone over.
Maybe sometime I'll be willing to analyse it, but at the moment I'd just like to go to bed each night knowing that I have something worth contributing to the cosmos around me.
10/March/2011
Watched Aliens. I'd caught the final half hour of it while on holiday about five or six years ago, but otherwise can't remember much about it. I know James Cameron did the directing and writing this time around, and I was curious to see how it would impact upon the style and setting. I still remember watching Rambo II; the first one was a fantastic movie that I still love, but as soon as I saw his credit during the opening of the sequel I knew that this time it'd just be a heartless action movie. I was right. Fun action movie, but no real soul to it, unlike the first one. Thankfully, Aliens is just as good as the original, in its own way.
It's a very different ambiance from the first time around; it isn't just a ship of everyday dudes stumbling upon this threat that they have no chance in hell of taking care of, but now a team of marines explicitly going on a bug hunt. Thus, the drama is no longer "what is this strange creature, and how will we inexperienced space people react to such a predicament?" and more "how many strange creatures are there, and how many guns will we over-excited army folk use against them?" Bailing out is no longer an option since their given mission is to eradicate the things, and naturally there's a lot more tension waiting for the things to show up.
One of my personal beefs is that you don't get as much chance to know these characters - practically the whole platoon is wiped out with the first encounter with the critters, whereas the first one gave us ample time to bond with the characters. Mind you, what character interaction we do observe is great, and I'd dare say that the relationship between Ripley and Newt almost steals the show.
I do admittedly prefer the original; I wouldn't say any of them is better than the other, it's more down to just if you prefer atmospheric horror movies or slightly gung-ho action movies. I prefer the original for its more desolate environment (the crew have no contact with anyone outside of their own members whatsoever) and the more intriguing setting - seeing these guys totally incapable of fighting giant space things had me more engaged to their survival than, well, a bunch of military guys who are supposed to get into those situations as part of their morning routine, probably. Kinda like Rambo again, where the original put this war veteran in an environment unsuited for him... and then the sequel just dumped him back into his original fighting rounds.
Totally irrelevant note, but man, seeing Mac McDonald was a genuine surprise! I saw someone who looked suspiciously like him and with a voice very similar to his, and I was like... is that Mac McDonald? For the next twenty minutes it was literally all I could think about, it was just that distracting. I was almost anxious to stop the movie and look up IMDb just so I could scour the credits and set my mind to rest. I'm only really familiar with him via his role in Red Dwarf and the various cameos he's made (the most recent one I've seen being a stint as a war-fanatic tourist in Black Books), but I love the guy. It's rather strange seeing him so, er, svelte, though. He's a big, big guy come Red Dwarf, which came out only two years later.
08/March/2011
I watched Alien five days ago. Yeah, I'm really dropping the ball on punctual blog entries these days.
Mind you, what is there to say that more professional, more qualified and more verbose people haven't already said? It's insanely atmospheric and lonely, and I love it. The first hour very much reminded me of Life Force (which you may recall me gushing about two years ago), with its very cold and lonely exploration of an alien ship, though Alien came first, of course. In a way I was almost disappointed when the alien started killing dudes full-time, not because it wasn't entertaining, but because it had less time to explore the dank and desolate environment of space. I'm a total sucker for that kind of stuff.
I also watched The Hudsucker Proxy... half a month ago? Yeah, it was part of a Coen Brothers boxset and was one of the only two movies I was vaguely familiar with (the other being The Big Lebowski). I only became aware of the film through Platypus Comix's very entertaining synopsis of the film with comments and other titbits of information - it's a very good read. Also, hey, have I plugged the site before? I probably should!
Well, gee, linking to a very detailed summary of the entire film kind of spoils my sum-up-the-plot paragraph. Not that it's a movie you watch for story, I felt. The plot is a very simple rags-to-riches, humble-to-jerkass story where they get a guy who appears to be an oaf to replace the deceased head of the company so they can deplete their stock and then buy it up for cheap afterwards, but whoops, he's got a bright idea that sells millions, and there's a reporter who masquerades as a secretary and there's romance and ghosts and a magical negro who controls time and an abundance of run-on sentences. Yes. I almost want to say that it didn't throw many surprises my way, but I just read the entire summary of the film about half a year, so I think that particular criticism is moot.
No, what you really watch it for is the ambiance. The visuals. The atmosphere. The accents! It's like they had a big bucket full of paint that was the pure essence of the 1950s, and they dunked a film in it. The old-timey New York is recreated fabulously, not just in the sights, but in the mannerisms and archetypes of the people you see throughout the flick. The visual direction is fabulous, with a variety of motifs being used to great effect in many shots, and even just how a scene or location is laid out is done fantastically. I haven't seen enough of the Coen Brothers' work to judge how much I like them (I can barely remember a thing from The Big Lebowski besides the memes), but I will say, if anything, they know how to lay out a fantastic shot.
Today's observation: I'd sooner trust a piece of paper to tell me that the ATM is out of order rather than the ATM's fancy-pants touch-screen display. I'm clearly not going to get along well with robot butlers.