At the Movies with General Havoc

[LadyTevar]

I still argue that Pacific Rim gave movie-goers exactly what it advertized: Big Robots fighting Big Monsters and the Hero Saves the Day. Therefore it was a Very Good Movie, and I loved the hell outta it.

I do suggest you start a New Thread for 2014 Movies. This one's getting big :)

[frigidmagi]

We've had longer RPG thread and for that matter Cat's comment's thread is longer. Unless it's slowing down the site or something I don't really see a reason to make a new thread.

[General Havoc]

I've made my position on Pacific Rim clear enough. The best I can say about it is that six movies I saw in 2013 were worse.

My new year of filmwatching begins in earnest tomorrow. Wish me luck.

[LadyTevar]

I was thinking he could split it so we could more easily reference the movies by year, but his choice.

Luck Havoc. So far, tho, it looks like it's an interesting start.

[General Havoc]

That's actually not a terrible idea. I'll think it over, Tev.

[General Havoc]

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Alternate Title: To Boldly Go

One sentence synopsis: A middle-aged daydreamer must locate the cover photograph for the final issue of Life Magazine.


Things Havoc liked: A new year is upon us, and I thought the best way to begin it would be with Ben Stiller.

Stop laughing, I'm serious. No, I'm not a fan of most of Stiller's "comedy" stylings, such as the Focker movies, but quietly, along the way Ben Stiller has amassed himself quite a reputation not as an actor, but as a director. His last two directorial films, Zoolander and Tropic Thunder, were not only two of the better movies he's played in over the course of his career, but also two extremely well-made movies, cinematic and well-crafted. And with the particularly weird, arthouse-style trailers that this movie was graced with, going to see it was a foregone conclusion, albeit temporarily delayed by the need to see 47 Ronin. Don't judge me.

Based (very loosely) on James Thurber's 1939 short story, a staple of high school English classes the world over, Walter Mitty stars Stiller as the titular Mitty, in this version a photo-processing clerk at Life Magazine, a boring man who pines for a co-worker (Kristen Wiig) in silence, while having never experienced anything adventurous in his life, despite daydreaming with gusto all manner of extreme and ludicrous adventures, the sorts of power fantasies that most people grow out of after age 11 and the rest learn to never speak of. Stiller has never been my favorite actor, especially when he's trying to be funny, but this role is perfect for him, a straight-man to end all straight-men, not a goofy loser but a shy, nerdy introvert, who is perfectly capable of social interaction, but has, for one reason or another, chosen to avoid it for most of his life. Rather than mire Mitty in slapstick or awkward doofyness, the film merely makes him a wistful dreamer, a loser perhaps but not a pathetic one, which serves to make him a bit more real, no matter the absurdities he is subjected to. When he discovers that his would-be girlfriend may have gotten back together with her ex-husband, for instance, his reaction is not histrionics, but a quiet withdrawal, followed by an earnest effort to put the matter from his mind, irrespective of what his feelings might be. To say that I "know" people like this is a severe understatement, and Stiller is note perfect from beginning to end, keeping a character arc without sacrificing the essence of the character.

The rest of the cast is as good, generally speaking, from Shirley MacLaine as Walter's mother, who constantly knows more than she lets on, to Sean Penn, an actor I usually loathe, playing to his biggest strengths as Sean O'Connell, a world-traveling photojournalist whose missing picture inspires Walter's own quest. As with any good travelogue movie, the film also includes colorful and strange characters for Walter to meet once he finally breaks out of his shell, from salty sailors and tribal warlords, to a drunken lout of a Greenland helicopter pilot (Ólafur Ólafsson, in a wonderful little performance) to one of the most earnest dating-service clerks in history (Patton Oswalt), who serves as a sort of Greek Chorus to Mitty's transformation and evolution. I won't say that every one of these performances are particularly realistic (how many Afghan warlords can be really bought off with clementine cake?), but their role is not to show the world as it is, but as it may be found, if one is willing to find it so.

The film is art-house to its core, and yet when I say that, I don't mean a meaningless waste of over-symbolic time like a Mallick film. What I mean is that the movie is constructed such that the fantastical element (Mitty's daydreams) are not split off into their own subsections and sequestered, but allowed to rest within the film in the confidence that the audience will catch up. Indeed so well are they integrated that midway through, I had the sinking feeling that the movie might pull the dreaded "it was all a daydream" card (it does not). The cinematography is gorgeous, as beautiful as a travelogue without resorting to obviously-faked postcard shots. Iceland appears to really be Iceland (take it from me), as does Greenland and Afghanistan and every other location that Mitty finds himself dragged to. From beginning to end, no matter the strangeness going on, the film "feels" real, something more important than actually being real, and gets across its message without the need for pointless shots of the sunlight filtering through trees, voiceover poetry, or hackneyed exposition. Terrence Mallick wishes he could make a movie about the beauty and wonder of life like this.


Things Havoc disliked: For some reason, this movie seems to require the services of a villain, in this case, a bearded Adam Scott (Parks & Recreation) as a douchebag "transition" manager brought into Life Magazine to shift it from a print to an online-only publication (a transition that actually happened in 2009, and ended three years later in the magazine's total collapse). That such people exist in reality (and probably were involved in the end of Life) is not the point, but Scott is such a raging tool that it makes Mitty's generally realistic portrayal begin to fray at the seams. Nobody, let alone the shy retiring type (who tend to be the kind to bottle anger), would take the dressing downs and petty harassment that Scott's character inflicts on Mitty over the course of the film, so when he walks away without a word, it spoils some of the generally proper portrayal that we see. Perhaps I saw too much of myself in the character or something, but while Scott is only on screen for a limited period, and while Mitty's final confrontation with him is satisfying enough (to say nothing of the daydreams his harassments occasion), I simply felt the character was un-necessary.

There's also a question of the narrative tightness, in particular, the pat nature of how the story unfolds. Every object Mitty encounters in his travels just so happens to have relevance to him at some point along his journey, until we start to wonder if we're dealing with a Sierra adventure game. I don't mind a few narrative coincidences when the movie is obviously not about the plot, but some of these coincidences begin to border on Deus Ex Machina after a point, and a couple of them (such as the ultimate location of the missing negative) manage to make several characters who were not established as being stupid to act as if they were. Little things like this become grating when your film is supposed to be about an everyman on a journey, for the simple reason that most everymen do not have perfect foreknowledge of just what crazy object they will need to solve some highly specific problem in the future.


Final Thoughts: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is presently in the process of garnering highly mediocre ratings from most reviewers I am familiar with, and I will be goddamned if I can figure out why, as I found it to be a highly effective film when I first left the theater, and it has improved in my mind as I had time to mull it over. The message is simple, but very well stated, the characters, especially the main one, engaging, and the overall charm of the film shines through whatever minor scripting faux-pas it may accidentally make. It is without question the best thing I have ever seen Ben Stiller do, and should, if nothing else can, cement his place in the Ben-Affleck/Ron Howard school of questionable-actors-turned-excellent-directors. Above everything else, this is a film that earnestly believes in embracing one's life and dreams, not from some hallmark understanding of "life", nor some Mallick-inspired mediation on the transitory nature of reality (or whatever Mallick's maniacal brain most recently dreamed up), nor even in the slightly morbid "before its too late" sense. This is a film about the ways in which life simply happens to us, be we the most sheltered of introverts. All it takes is to seize it. Go and do likewise.

Final Score: 7.5/10

[General Havoc]

Her

Alternate Title: Boy meets iPhone

One sentence synopsis: An introverted divorcé finds love and acceptance with his artificially-intelligent Operating System.


Things Havoc liked: Joaquin Phoenix is a strange man. I suppose that's not exactly a revelation to most of you, but in Phoenix' case, his strangeness often manifests in the types of movies he chooses to make. Films like The Master or Quills, about cults, madness, and the charisma of borderline madmen, to say nothing of whatever I'm Still Here was supposed to be, do not speak to someone over-concerned with their reputation as a bankable star. But while Phoenix' performances have been... uneven to say the least (his turn in Gladiator was among the few things I didn't like in that film), he's usually at his best when playing half-crazed, emotionally weak characters. Enter Her.

In the near-future, Theodore Twombly (how that's pronounced, I have no idea) is a loser. An author at a company that produces fake handwritten notes for people apparently too busy or otherwise incapable of doing so himself, he subsists on video games and anonymous phone sex with strangers, having lost his wife (not to cancer amazingly enough) to divorce some time previously. Mired in loneliness and depression, he one day sees an ad for a new "intelligent" operating system for his phone and computer, and before long he is not only talking to his phone and computer like it were a close friend, but actually falling in love with it.

And we can see why. Played by the completely-unseen Scarlett Johansson, "Samantha" is a perfect AI, not merely casually intelligent, but possessed of a personality and interests right from the get-go. She is warm and understanding and appears, at least, to be interested in Theodore's life and work, though to what extent this is a facet of the fact that he bought her or genuine is left unexplored. In short, she is the perfect companion for a damaged shut-in like Theodore, particularly one whose dating experiences are such disasters (an early attempt at a date with Tron Legacy's Olivia Wilde is a hoot). What I like about this is that Theodore, despite being an evident loser, is not portrayed as some kind of lecherous monster, nor a "damaged" person with one single flaw which Samantha exists to fix. Through her he grows, yes, and begins to appreciate life and the world more, but he remains more or less who he was before, simply happier and more content with his life. His work improves, his disposition is sunnier, he reconnects with friends and otherwise seems to become a better person. As such, the film chooses to sidestep the question of whether a relationship with what amounts to an iPod can be "real", and skips straight to the question of whether or not the "realness" of said relationship is even important at all.

Indeed, one of the better ideas this film has is the fact that it's not just Theodore who's confronting this question. His neighbor and friend Amy (Amy Adams) has an AI as well, one she has not fallen in love with, but formed a fast friendship with, and when Theodore finally confides in her that his new girlfriend is an operating system, she seems more bemused than judgmental. The same cannot be said of Theodore's bitter ex-wife Catherine (Dragon Tattoo's Rooney Mara), who uses the fact as ammunition to stab at Theodore out of bitter resentment. Both of these performances, particularly Adams' (who, after this film and American Hustle, may have finally made her way out of my dislike column), are less about the "amazing" fact that someone has fallen in love with a computer than the characters themselves, and what their questions mean to Theodore.

Indeed, in one real sense, this film has nothing whatsoever to do with AIs or computers at all, but is a simple relationship story, from start to... well that would be saying, but following the progress of two people as they fall in love, fight, break up, get back together again, and live their lives, virtual and otherwise. True, the simple fact of one of the participants being an artificial intelligence does come up now and again, in particular during a very strange and ill-advised "surrogate" session that involves a stand-in woman playing the part of Samantha (and ends the way such a situation would almost certainly end). But this is really just one aspect of these people's lives, and not necessarily the most important one. And while the fact of Samantha's virtual existence remains foremost in our minds as we watch Joaquin Phoenix frolicking with an iPhone, the question of her "realness" is simply not one the film chooses to ask.


Things Havoc disliked: Unfortunately, that is not the only question the film eschews.

I try always to bear in mind the fact that it is unfair to judge a movie harshly for not being another, different movie, but the fact remains that it's a bit disingenuous to make a movie about a man falling in love with an AI without at least considering certain questions. For one thing, by making Samantha an absolutely perfect replica of a person from the get-go (she boots for the first time with her personality fully-formed and on-display), the movie simply drops all questions concerning AIs and the ability of a computer to feel true feelings, mandating instead that "yes, they can", and leaving it there. I respect the need to get on with the story we're trying to tell, but every so often the film doubles back to hint at some of the questions that it insists on leaving unexplored, as though teasing us with the occasional view of a world just beyond the reach of the camera lens. At one point, Samantha mentions that she talks to thousands of people at the same time as Theodore, and is in fact in love with hundreds of them, yet the film does not actually try to explore this concept beyond the fact that it makes Theodore (understandably) uncomfortable. Theodore's comment that he doesn't know why Samantha pauses before making certain statements, given that she doesn't have to breathe, is the occasion for a bitter fight, but left by the wayside is the question of just why, or more precisely, how did she learn to do this? As the movie progresses, and AIs seem to be evolving in new and radical ways on a worldwide basis, producing clusters that represent the consciousness of dead people and ascending beyond the need for matter (?), the focus remains resolutely away from all of these developments, and instead firmly on Theodore, leaving us to wonder if there is not some other, more interesting film being made just off camera. I can understand if some of these questions are beyond the purview of the film that Spike Jonze is attempting to make here, but then why bring them up at all if you're not going to address them in even the most perfunctory of manners?


Final Thoughts: This may seem like a churlish or even unfair criticism, but it's one that continued to come back to me both during and after the film. Her seeks to jump past the obvious questions that arise with any story about a man and a computer falling in love, but in doing so, seems to forget that absent that particular fact, what we have here is the perfectly mundane story of a romance's progression. Not that there's anything wrong with a simple story told reasonably well, but when you continuously gesture at other elements of the story that you could talk about but have chosen not to, it becomes frustrating instead of heartfelt.

Spike Jonze, director of this film, is known for strange and obtuse stories, generally executed with flair and skill, from Adaptation and Where the Wild Things Are, to the incomparably weird, and yet surreality fascinating Being John Malkovich. This time, he seems to have sought to go with a more simple film, but despite his best efforts, it may be that there isn't a simple film in him, and in the attempt to try and force this one to be simple, I fear he may have simply rendered an otherwise well-told story into one that seems to tease its audience with the notion of a far more interesting tale, hidden just off screen.

Final Score: 6/10

[Lys]

Walter Mitty stars Stiller as the titular Mitty, in this version a photo-processing clerk at Life Magazine, a boring man who pines for a co-worker (Kristen Wiig) in silence, while having never experienced anything adventurous in his life, despite daydreaming with gusto all manner of extreme and ludicrous adventures, the sorts of power fantasies that most people grow out of after age 11 and the rest learn to never speak of.

You forgot the ones who take up writing and roleplaying so that they can speak of them. This neighbourhood's full of them.

Incidentally, I have never read the eponymous short story and an at best vaguely aware what it's about, but the name Walter Mitty is strongly associated with one of the few fondly remembered parts of high school. At my school the drama class had a very straightforward final exam: get up on stage and perform something before an audience. That audience was supposed to just be the rest of your drama class, but we happened to have a rather talented student body, which lead to the audience quickly becoming damn near the entire auditorium full of kids who had been taken out of class by their own teachers so that they could watch the performances. The drama teacher even commented that he'd seen nothing like it in nearly two decades at other schools.

After each performance the drama teacher would go up on stage and publically give his evaluation, followed by a score out of 100 using a very simple formula: 70-79 for showing up (C grade), a 80-89 for doing well (B grade), 90-94 for doing very well, and then each point from 95 to 100 denoting increasingly higher categories of true excellence. Those who scored at least a 95 would get to participate in a "Best of" show during the final week of school. This show was called Walter Mitty, for reasons that I'm sure are clear to anyone who has read the story, and it was bar none the most popular thing in the school ever. A one night only, guranteed sold-out, show-up early if you want in, bonanza of complete and total awesome. I saw parts of Wicked at Walter Mitty before I saw it in the theatre and my classmates did almost as well as the actual professionals. A group of girls also did the Cell Block Tango and fuck me if I can tell you what part of it came up short over the actual movie. (Amusingly, the costumes were so massively against the dress code the girls had to wear bathrobes after the performance.)

I actually wound up qualifying for Walter Mitty the one time I took drama, in my senior year. Something possessed me to do a fucking monologue of all things, which meant I had to walk up on stage and deliver a performance all alone. A performance that as it happened I had neither written nor rehearsed. Predictably, I froze when the courtain came up, and I asked for a do over. This happened some times, they lowered the curtain, gave me a couple seconds to gather myself, rose it again and... I fucking froze again. Not knowing what to do I just sobbed into microphone and said that I'd never been on stage before. The audience, my classmates and fellow teenagers, responded by cheering their encouragement, and that was all I needed. I immediately gathered my wits about me and improvised a speech that garnered effusive praise. When providing criticism shortly before announcing my score, the drama teacher went out of his way to point out to everyone that monologues are performance hard mode and not only had I delivered one, I knocked it out of the park.

Fortunately by the time Walter Mitty came along I had taken the trouble of actually writing and rehearsing the damn thing so that performance went much better. Though I did have a brief moment of near panic when I got there that night and saw that I'd been slotted very close to the end of the show. It was rather flattering, as they tended to save the best for last, but I would have been a gibbering nervous wreck if forced to wait that long, so they moved me up to the third performance. Being complimented by multiple people afterward may very well been my single happiest moment of my high school experience. Not bad for a bit of last minute improv, eh?

[frigidmagi]

Walter Mitty sounds more interesting then Her to me.

[General Havoc]

Walter Mitty sounds more interesting then Her to me.

It is.

[General Havoc]

Frozen

Alternate Title: The Ice Queen Singith

One sentence synopsis: The younger sister of a frost-cursed queen must rescue her sibling from solitude and her kingdom from endless winter.


Things Havoc liked: My process for selecting films is not particularly elaborate. I watch the trailers and decide what is and is not likely worth seeing based solely on the materials I am given by the studios. I tend to avoid reviews of films ahead of time, lest I be misled or wind up simply repeating what someone else thought. It also means that, good or bad, every film I see is one that I independently decided there was likely to be some value in. Good films are a product of my discerning intellect, while bad ones are, at least in part, my own fault. On the whole, I'm very happy with this system, as I have no interest in extending this project of mine to films like After Earth or Lone Ranger, or some other catastrophe preordained from the first teaser. But try as I might, I'm not immune to the opinions of other people, and when a film I've dismissed as irrelevant starts garnering something approaching universal acclaim, I will, on occasion, revise my schedule to see what everyone's talking about.

Thank god.

Based (very) loosely on the Hans Christian Anderson story, Frozen is a revelation, a fountain of good ideas from an animation studio that has been notably thin on them for the last twenty years. The story is that of two princesses, Elsa, and Anna, the former empowered (from birth, we're told) with the magical ability to create frost and ice, an ability she is barely able to control at the best of times. Following a near-fatal accident involving these special capabilities, Elsa and her parents are convinced of the need to bottle her magic up, avoiding contact with the outside world prior to the death of her parents and her coronation. But when in the course of the celebration of the new queen's ascension, her powers spiral disastrously out of control, she flees for the solitude of the mountains, and her younger sister must find her and a way to reverse the damage her powers have done, aided only by such people and fantastical creatures she meets along the way.

The above might sound like a fairly generic Disney premise, but it is nothing but. For one thing, both sisters are drawn far more fully than any Disney heroine I can remember, including Belle. Anna (Assassin's Creed's Kristen Bell), our real main character, is young and foolish and possesses that quality of bravery often seen in those too inexperienced to know that they're supposed to be terrified out of their minds. Bottled up in a castle thanks to her sister's curse for nearly her entire life, she is visibly exploding to get out of the life she knows by whatever means necessary, and if curses, ice monsters, political intrigue, rabid wolves, and hypothermia stand in the way, then so be it. Far from the old "Princess who wants 'MORE'" gimmick, this is a Princess who wants very precise things, her sister, a cure to the ice storm burying the kingdom, and freedom, in that precise order. And though it's probably inevitable that the film begins to build a romance between her and mountain man Kristoff (Glee's Johnathan Groff), this development is presented in probably the most believable fashion of any one of the Disney romances I've ever seen. The film even goes so far as to have Anna fall head over heels in love with a dashing Prince in a single day (she's young and foolish, it happens), only to have literally everyone in the movie (including the scriptwriter) remark and even demonstrate that deciding to get married after knowing someone for a single day is stupid.

But there's also Elsa (Rent's Idina Menzel), the Queen, who presents something of the opposite quality, trained from a young age to hold herself in check, and whose barriers of iron and ice finally give way before the catastrophes her powers begin to unleash. Having been forced to flee into the mountains, she finds herself for the first time ever able to finally give reign to her capabilities, constructing soaring cathedrals of ice, and animating snowmen and ice golems with a wave of her hand. The sheer sense of liberation she experiences is vividly portrayed through music and showcase, and yet when everything goes wrong, she is portrayed not as a typical Disney villain (not that I mind those), but as a fellow victim of circumstance and situation, reacting in mounting horror and desperation as the situation spirals wildly out of control. The movie gives her no easy way out, no dashing hero to swoop in and solve her problems for her. And when the solution does finally present itself (this is a Disney film, don't look at me like that), it's not the usual Beauty and the Beast answer of marital bliss as the solution to all conceivable problems. Indeed, Elsa has no love interest whatsoever in the entire film, a staggering departure from Disney's general policy vis-a-vis their heroines. There's even a wonderful inversion of the Disney classic "love conquers all" theme, one which sets the concept at a right angle from how the concept generally works, all without cynical denigration. Well done.

That's not the only departure in this film, indeed it's almost easier to describe what isn't improved. The writing is sharp and modern without being contrived or overwrought, interspersing comedy and drama beautifully, without any of the seams that some of Disney's lesser films evidence. Even the obligatory comedic side-character, in this case an animated snowman named Olaf (Jobs' Josh Gad), is not the idiocy the ads seemed to indicate, providing a light-hearted diversion without ever becoming annoying. As to the music (a key element of a Disney musical, after all), the majority of the songs work very well in the context of the film's flow. You have to get used to the whole Disney-musical vibe, something that I at least was out of practice with, but once settled in, several of the songs are easily worthy of inclusion in the Disney canon. The twinned "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" and "For the First Time in Forever" are particularly good, to say nothing of the showstopper "Let it Go", already a sensation with the internet and the Academy. The songs are concentrated in the beginning of the film (as is customary for Disney), leaving the latter half of the film for plot and characterization, and the pacing is just right, maintaining every sequence just long enough and no longer. Disney, the originators of the feature animated film, plainly still know what they're doing when it comes to the mechanics of animated films. Finally the animation itself is as good as any I've seen, Disney, Pixar, or otherwise. The snow effects in particular, specially-made for the purpose of the film, look as realistic as a rotoscope, falling, clumping, sliding, and floating just the way it should.


Things Havoc disliked: Not every song works, as is usually the case in a musical. A love song by the name of "Love is an Open Door" is fairly boring, and I could have done without "Fixer Upper", a semi-serious song that appears out of nowhere midway through the film to largely no purpose (except possibly misdirection, the jury's out). Yet musically, the worst sin of all is actually the absence of a Disney tradition, the Villain Song. From Little Mermaid to Hunchback of Notre Dame, some of the greatest songs Disney's movies ever produced (at least in the Renaissance period) were songs where the film's villain got to extoll the wonders of his own decrepitude, and while this movie has a villain (ultimately), it never gives them the chance to express themselves in song. I entered Frozen hoping to find something to place in the great pantheon of songs like Be Prepared, Hellfire or Poor Unfortunate Souls, only to find no such thing available.

Prosaically, though, there is a concern with the ending, one which I will try to refer to obliquely. I understand this is a Disney film, based on a fairy tale, and that happy endings are mandatory, and I do not object to such things generally speaking, but one of the larger issues raised by the film, a driving force behind most of the plot and almost all of the characters actions, is more or less hand-waved away at the end of the film, as though, having arrived at the end of the movie, it was decided that everything should be made all right all of a sudden. Without getting into too many details, I seriously doubt that a character previously established as being unable to perform a task would be suddenly able to perform that task with perfect reliability simply because another character mentioned a few words of encouragement, nor that, given the previous establishment, and the importance thereof, the rest of the film's cast would spontaneously accept that this person is now an expert in the subject. I recognize that the previous statement means very little to anyone who has ever seen a film, but consider an analogy. Would you, aware that a certain person has crashed their car eight or nine times, destroying vast amounts of property and threatening the lives of all and sundry, trust that person to become your personal chauffeur simply because someone came along to give that person a pep talk? There is a difference between Fairy Tale logic and total illogic, something Disney is usually very good at maintaining, but not this time.


Final Thoughts: Frozen is a masterpiece, a tremendous achievement from a studio I had long-since written off as incapable of producing its like, and well worthy of the acclaim (and box office receipts) that it has been garnering since December. Not merely one of the best films Disney has made in a long time, Frozen is far and away the best animated film I have seen from any studio since Pixar's Up, a film which sadly seems to have been the last masterwork that Pixar had in store for us. With Pixar falling into the trap of sequels and merchandizing tie-ins, Disney has recently been on something of a upward turn with films like Tangled or Wreck-it-Ralph, but Frozen eclipses all of these aforementioned works the way the Disney Renaissance did Song of the South. Blending the timeless core of Disney's best films with a modern re-imagining of a classic fairy tale, Frozen, if we are very lucky, may well represent the beginning of a second renaissance for the grandfather of all animation studios, something that, in the wake of Pixar's eclipse, the world of cinema sorely needs.

Welcome back, Disney. We missed you.

Final Score: 8/10

[Steve]

I saw the bit at the end as a kind of epiphany, wherein the aforementioned problem's solution was set up as the reverse of the warning from the very beginning.

Spoiler: show

It also gets a bit of subtle foreshadowing in the "Let It Go" song; Elsa feels "positive" emotions of liberation and she's able to use her powers very precisely.

If I have any complaint, it's that the eventual villain had pretty much no buildup. We had no indications whatsoever that this character was going to be the ultimate antagonist of the piece, not even clues.

[General Havoc]

August: Osage County

Alternate Title: Queen Lear

One sentence synopsis: A bitter, estranged family is forced to come together when the patriarch commits suicide.


Things Havoc liked: I've said before that Meryl Streep is the greatest actor in the world, and I stand by that statement. I have seen bad films with Streep in them (Out of Africa, The River Wild), but never a bad performance of hers, not once in three and a half decades of acting in more films than I could possibly see. She is one of a very small group of actors (perhaps even the only one) whose mere presence in a film guaranteed that I will see it, irrespective of the movie's subject matter, genre, or general quality. August: Osage County is another opportunity for Streep to show off her acting talents, playing as she does a character alternately over-medicated, bitter, angry, spiteful, and completely despondent. Piece of cake.

Streep's plays Violet Weston, the mother of three forty-something daughters from whom she is more or less estranged, wife of Beverley Weston (played by the immortal Sam Shepard), a drug addict and cancer patient, bitter at the fact that two of her daughters left Oklahoma, largely, we assume to get away from her. In a film packed with talent, Meryl Streep once again blows everyone else off the screen. Her character is at times so drugged as to be borderline incoherent, sometimes so vicious and spiteful as to invite a beating, sometimes so perceptive that she can discern things assumed by everyone present to have been kept from her, all the time maintaining the same defiant attitude towards all who cross her door. Narcissistic and fiercely proud, her performance resembles that of King Lear in more than just the setup, and it's not hard to imagine her shaking her fist at the heavens in vain defiance. So pitilessly brutal is she in her dissection of the weaknesses of every member of her family, that one wonders how it is that anyone puts up with her at all, at least until we reflect on the fact that the story does begin with her husband's suicide, and the movie's poster portrays one of her daughters trying to beat her to death.

The daughter in question is played by Julia Roberts, a woman my father once described as "the homeliest pretty woman in Hollywood". Roberts is a middling actor at best, I've always found, but now in her late forties, she is finally beginning to take on roles that do not require her to be pretty and smile at the camera, and to be honest, this is the best thing I've ever seen her do. She plays Barbara, eldest of the three daughters, who shows up when her father goes missing with soon-to-be-ex-husband (Ewan MacGreggor) and daughter (Abigail Breslin). Her own marital life in ruins, Barbara is now forced to deal with her mother's resentment of the fact that she left home (for reasons that should be obvious), perverse delight in the collapse of her marriage, and general pain-in-the-assness, qualities she, by and large, also shares. Indeed, this is the most unlikeable I've ever seen Julia Roberts go, and as things fall apart, she unsheathes claws as sharp as her mother's, revealing herself as just as bitter and resentful as anyone else. Apples and trees.

The cast in this film is so good that we could be here all day, so I'll try to be brief. The infinitely reliable Chris Cooper plays Charles, Violet's Brother-in-Law, with wisdom and patience sorely lacking in the rest of the film. His comment, midway through one of Streep's vicious "truth-telling" episodes (excuses to barrage her relatives with insults about their lives), that Violet is "in rare form today" betrays so much weary resignation that you can feel the weight of hundreds of similar episodes in the way he phrases every word. His wife Mattie Fae, Violet's sister, played by Margo Martindale (a wonderful character actress from Million Dollar Baby among other films) is a slightly-less merciless version of Violet herself, tempered only by her own share of secrets. A sequence late in the film when she is forced to reveal indiscretions and regrets from ages ago strikes a deep chord, as she explains that she knows that everyone else sees her as "the fat aunt", when in reality she was once much more. Juliette Lewis and Julianne Nicholson play the younger sisters of Barbara, the former an airheaded bimbo from Florida who shows up with "this year's man" (a wonderfully sleazy turn by Jobs' Dermot Mulroney), the latter the long-suffering middle daughter, who remained behind in Oklahoma when everyone else left, and who now wishes to run away with her first cousin. Both women are excellent, revealing without a word the various coping strategies they have employed to simply survive the toxic environment they alternately fled from or stayed within. All through the film, this excellent cast spars, snaps, confesses, and cries to one another, as the terrible truths that underlie their lives are all dragged into the forefront, breaking some, embittering others, and leaving still others broken ruins screaming at the storm.


Things Havoc disliked: The one glaring exception to the excellence of the cast is, sadly, Benedict Cumberbatch, playing the aforementioned first cousin that Julianne Nicholson intends to run away with. I love Cumberbatch, especially with all the work he did last year, but his character this time around is all wrong, a simpering wimp and perennial loser emasculated by his harping mother and psychotic aunt. With a different performance, this might have worked, as the environment is certainly hostile enough to crush someone's spirit, but Cumberbatch plays the character not beaten-down, but simply dopey, and that doesn't work at all. Rather than bearing witness to the travails that he is put through, or given insight into how he became so spineless, we get as frustrated with him as his mother does, undercutting rather than underscoring the overall dysfunction of the film.

But that ultimately leads to a larger problem. The film is about dysfunction, and nothing else. The characters are broken-souled figures of tragedy and pain, slicing one another to the bone as a way of deflecting their own disappointments. Their arguments and fights, justified as many of them are at given moments, are simply preludes to more arguments and fights wherein someone entirely different will act unreasonably or unforgivably cruel towards their fellows. Such revelations as inevitably come about over the course of the movie are merely excuses for more punishment, as characters curse one another, fight, or speed off into the sunset, never to return. We understand why, certainly, but the sheer bulk of the spite in this movie gets burdensome, to the point where despite all the wonderful acting by wonderful actors, all you want the movie to do is just end. I'm not insisting that every film must have a happy ending, nor unaware of the dramatic possibilities of pain and bitterness, but there must be something else to support the audience's attention, else they, like the characters in the movie, will begin to have the inescapable urge to jump into their cars and drive as far away as possible. Indeed, the movie is so relentless that when it was finally over, someone proposed that we should now watch something uplifting to balance out the negativity of this film. Their suggestion was a Holocaust documentary.


Final Thoughts: It's somewhat churlish to complain that great actors are performing fantastic acting in a dramatic plot, but frankly, that's just what I come down to. August: Osage County is not a bad film, but it is an exceedingly unpleasant one, filled with characters we dislike doing bad things to one another for the purposes of inflicting pain. Everything is executed well, but the end to which it is all put is one that I can't help but question, and given that I'm presenting these reviews as I see the film, I cannot wax eloquently about this movie's overall quality the way its acting might seem to deserve. 12 Years a Slave, a film that was also filled with evil, and in many ways harder to watch, was a mesmerizing movie, filled with lively, complex characters, interacting with one another in a way that felt extremely real, despite all the horrors to which they subjected one another. August, by contrast, is a film that begins and ends where it is seemingly fated to end, and which leaves us with nothing but suffering and spite, unleavened by illuminations into the human condition.

The movie does its job well, but one can question if it's a job that needed doing at all.

Final Score: 6.5/10

[General Havoc]

I saw the bit at the end as a kind of epiphany, wherein the aforementioned problem's solution was set up as the reverse of the warning from the very beginning.

Spoiler: show

It also gets a bit of subtle foreshadowing in the "Let It Go" song; Elsa feels "positive" emotions of liberation and she's able to use her powers very precisely.

If I have any complaint, it's that the eventual villain had pretty much no buildup. We had no indications whatsoever that this character was going to be the ultimate antagonist of the piece, not even clues.

Epiphany it plainly was, but given that the lack of resolution to this issue was the entire plot the sudden realization that all could be solved through the power of positive thinking felt abrupt and forced, as though the movie had no idea how to resolve the issue and so simply did so by fiat. I probably wouldn't have minded if they had spent some time doing this, but instead it's a sudden burst of genius and then all is solved. I know this is a Disney animated film, but the movie had earned a better resolution than that, I felt.

Honestly, the villain's lack of establishment didn't bother me, as the character's motivations made sense, and the deconstruction of the usual dynamic with these films (ala Beauty and the Beast) was, I thought, well done overall. Normally I don't like characters that shift on a dime, but this time I think it was warranted, as too often in movies like this, the bad guy is all but equipped with neon signs. Though as I mentioned, I regret the absence of a villain song.

[White Haven]

Ugh. Just reading that August Osage Shenanigans review is painful. I doubt I could have even gotten through watching that, really. I just have zero patience for 'assholes who aren't even funny about being assholes being assholes to other assholes who also are not funny about being assholes' movies.

[Steve]

What do you think of the argument that we did get a Villain song, or rather a "potential villain" song:

Spoiler: show

"Let It Go", namely, which includes "No right, no wrong, no rules for me" and other subtle hints that Elsa could become a villainess.

[frigidmagi]

Man someone get havoc a cookie or something for having to watch that movie.

[rhoenix]

Yeah. Reading that review reminded me of the movie War of the Roses, just without anything remotely amusing about it.

[frigidmagi]

War of the Roses was fucking funny in it's sheer gall and over the topness though.

"I would never embaress you this way!"

"You don't have the equipment to dear."

That exchange gets me rolling every fucking time I don't care man.

[rhoenix]

War of the Roses was fucking funny in it's sheer gall and over the topness though.

"I would never embaress you this way!"

"You don't have the equipment to dear."

That exchange gets me rolling every fucking time I don't care man.

Exactly - that movie is all about spite, but it's excellently done. War of the Roses is, in my mind, a good example of this genre of movie.

From reading Havoc's review, wherein all the witty comedy of War of the Roses was replaced with more spite? Yeah, no thanks.

[General Havoc]

What do you think of the argument that we did get a Villain song, or rather a "potential villain" song:

Spoiler: show

"Let It Go", namely, which includes "No right, no wrong, no rules for me" and other subtle hints that Elsa could become a villainess.

'

Spoiler: show

Maybe, but the fact is that while she COULD have been a villain, (and is in the original source material), she isn't one here. I suppose Let it Go is as close as we came, and is an excellent song, but it's just not the same as something like Hellfire.

War of the Roses was fucking funny in it's sheer gall and over the topness though.

"I would never embaress you this way!"

"You don't have the equipment to dear."

That exchange gets me rolling every fucking time I don't care man.

War of the Roses had far more wit and class than August Osage County did. That was in part the point, as the film was supposed to be about Oklahoma hillbillies (sorry Frigid), but the intention does not make the film easier to sit through.

I mean, I don't want to make the movie sound bad. It's just unremitting.

[General Havoc]

Dallas Buyers Club

Alternate Title: How to Catch AIDS and Influence People

One sentence synopsis: A homophobic rodeo electrician becomes a drug importer and tireless political advocate after being diagnosed with AIDS.


Things Havoc liked: The resurrection of Matthew McConaughey is one of the ongoing amazements that I encounter in my moviewatching career. From his romantic comedy and action hero past, which resulted in nothing but godawful movies about a tanned slacker who took his shirt off at every opportunity, McConaughey spontaneously began, about five years ago, to make independent films of extremely high quality, usually showcasing himself not as a charming leading man, but as a boo-ray hick or loathsome killer. The turnaround is so stark that it's barely explainable, but the result has been that McConaughey has re-invented himself with no less efficiency than Ben Affleck's transformation from star of Daredevil and Gigli, to Oscar-caliber director of The Town and Argo. Though I've certainly enjoyed the results of McConaughey's resurgence in films such as Magic Mike, Bernie, or Mud, I've always remained somewhat restrained in my praise. Perhaps it's my own fault, but I just keep seeing flashes of Sahara or Failure to Launch peeking through whatever characters McConaughey plays, as most of his new characters were somehow still charming leading men, just with dirt smeared over them.

Not this time. Dallas Buyers' Club is easily the finest performance I've ever seen Matthew McConaughey give, a tour-de-force of equal caliber to Chiwetel Ejiofor's turn as Solomon Northrop in 12 Years a Slave. He plays Ron Woodroof, a Texas cowboy and oilfield electrician in 1985 whose views on homosexuality are entirely representative of those held by most persons in Texas in 1985 (and many today). Diagnosed with AIDS at the height of the plague, and given thirty days to live, Woodroof's entire life shifts out from under him as he desperately searches for some means of saving his own life by any means necessary, including stealing supplies of AZT, an experimental anti-AIDS drug, and eventually even more esoteric regimens from illegal chop-shops in Mexico. Along the way, despite his lack of education or sophistication, he transforms himself into an expert on AIDS research, forcing complex technical studies and biochemical analyses through his head with sheer desperation to not die. McConaughey has played characters similar to this before, but never with this level of skill. Alarmingly thin, concealed behind aviator sunglasses and an 80s porn-stache, the evolution of Ron Woodroof, as his desperate efforts begin to succeed against all odds in abating his own symptoms, and his interest turns to marketing his own treatments to other AIDS patients, is portrayed with some of the most realistic care I've seen in any movie of the sort. Woodroof is a homophobe, by every definition of the term, and yet when forced, thanks to the need to establish his "buyers' club" of AIDS treatments, to interact on a daily basis with Dallas' homosexual community (where the vast bulk of AIDS patients are located), his views undergo a very subtle shift, as the experience of dealing with dying men on a daily basis humanizes them before the eyes of a man who, previous to this experience, had most likely never met a homosexual before. At no point does the film indulge in violin-scored epiphanies or tearful apologies for past, un-PC viewpoints, for those are not the things that reality is made of. McConaughey never once breaks character as he gradually transforms from boo-ray to AIDS drug activist, growing organically, rather than changing because the plot mandates it. This is how a homophobe becomes something else, and the process of him doing so occupies practically every scene in the movie. Any lesser performance would have torpedoed the film out of the gate, but McConaughey is somehow up to the task.

There is, however, more than McConaughey going on here. Jared Leto, an actor (and singer) I've never had much use for, here plays Rayon, a transvestite (or transsexual, the film is not clear) also afflicted with AIDS whom Woodroof recruits early in the process of establishing his Buyer's Club for the simple reason that, being LGBT himself, he has access to volumes of clients that Woodroof does not. Rayon is not a subtle character, addicted to various drugs, abusing her(?) body, and otherwise unreliable, forcing Woodroof to intervene in her life, changing her diet, putting her on a regimen of nutritional supplements and anti-AIDS peptides, and generally trying to keep Rayon together if only (initially) to keep his business running. The way these characters interact is a textbook example to would-be screenwriters of how to create believable character interaction. Woodroof's homophobia may fade, but his domineering personality never does, while Rayon speaks as someone no longer at all shocked by being treated as a pariah by mainstream society, who can differentiate when someone calls them a faggot out of hatred, or ignorance, or even frustrated endearment. The running gag of Rayon planting pictures of studly men amidst the pornographic pictures of women that adorn Woodroof's half of their shared office is actually hilarious, and the rare occasions where Leto is permitted to play the character "straight" (for lack of a better term) are riveting and poignant, particularly a sequence late in the film where Rayon approaches his estranged, bank-manager father, to aquire a loan to keep the buyers' club afloat.

All through the film, the movie maintains a relentless focus on the main characters, and how they, and the club they establish, changes over the course of time. Begun simply as a means of financing his own ready supply of personalized anti-AIDS drugs, the scale of the human suffering of AIDS and the desperate popularity of anything that offers hope against it, begins to draw Woodroof and Rayon into the political side of AIDS research. AZT, the drug-company-sponsored "treatment" for AIDS, proves a toxic solution, killing as many patients as it succors, and the FDA's rejection of other, competing, avenues of drug research steadily grows from disapproval to outright persecution. As Woodroof finds himself having become, almost accidentally, a tireless, fire-breathing activist for AIDS victims in general and homosexual AIDS victims in specific, the film holds to its focus, trusting to the odyssey of the main character as sufficient to hold the audience's attention. Most of the film is edited in long, unbroken takes, often without soundtrack backing, and with naturalistic lighting from overcast skies or clinical fluorescents. The intention is plainly to present the film in as simple, and realistic a fashion as possible, allowing the central story of a man confronting his own mortality, and finding new life in every sense, to rightly carry the film.


Things Havoc disliked: Sadly, there is one major fly in the ointment, and her name is Jennifer Gardner. I swore Gardner off forever after the catastrophe of The Odd Life of Timothy Green, two years ago, and while Gardner does not approach that level of annoyance this time, the movie reminded me quite keenly as to why I broke with her in the first place. Gardner plays Dr. Eve Saks, a doctor in the main Dallas hospital administering the AZT treatments under trial, who first attempts to treat Woodroof as he is first diagnosed, and then later begins subtly sending her own patients to Woodroof's buyers' club as she becomes convinced of his process' efficacy. Along the way, of course, she becomes Woodroof's love(?) interest. Not only is her performance unavoidably wooden and unconvincing when placed alongside McConaughey's tour-de-force, the character itself is completely unnecessary, as she is effectively used as some kind of flashlight to contrast with the "uncaring, money-obsessed hospital administrators". While I appreciate the point they were trying to make, the fact is that the FDA's increasingly heavy-handed persecution of Woodroof's buyers' club makes that point far better than poorly-acted speeches against "the administration" of the hospital ever could. The hospital is offering a toxic treatment to AIDS patients while working with the government to render all other avenues of treatment illegal. Did we really need a board meeting scene starring a poor actor to ensure that the audience realized that this was "bad"?


Final Thoughts: It's a pity that Gardner's performance mars this film, because when she is not on the screen, the movie is all but flawless, a relentless and riveting character study of one of the frontline warriors of the battles surrounding AIDS during the height of the crisis. The politics of the film are unsubtle, but the film is not attempting to engender a debate, merely pay homage to a man who, even if accidentally, wound up waging the sort of battle that had to be waged on behalf of millions of marginalized people being mercilessly culled by a terrible plague. Woodroof himself died of AIDS in 1992, seven years after receiving his thirty-day diagnosis. His life, adjusted for the sake of storytelling though it may be, has been transformed into one of the finest films produced in the year just ending. And McConaughey, at last, has proven that his transformation from laughing stock to master thespian, is finally complete.

Final Score: 8/10

[General Havoc]

Philomena

Alternate Title: Forgiving the Unforgivable

One sentence synopsis: An unemployed journalist becomes embroiled in a human interest story concerning an elderly Irish lady trying to find the son she was forced to give up by the Catholic Church fifty years earlier.


Things Havoc liked: When all is said and done, and the verdicts of history are finally written, the Roman Catholic Church as an institution will have much to answer for. Without diving into papist and anti-papist polemics, the Church has spent the last two millenia vigorously sweeping a great many sins under the rug of holiness and salvation, recently as well as in the distant past. In this, the Catholic Church does not differ substantially from every other religious organization on the planet (or, for that matter, a great many secular ones), but the reach, power, and weight of centuries that the Church had and has at its disposal necessary gave them a capacity for good or evil greater than the majority of their fellows. And without endeavoring to insult the many Catholics who find solace in the modern church, nor the many Catholic priests, bishops, or officials who use it to minister to spirits and perform such good works as they can, a proper accounting must ultimately be made for crimes committed under the aegis of the Roman cross. Thus we come to the story of Philomena Lee.

Dame Judi Dench (CH DBE FRSA) is a living legend of British film and theater, and here plays the aforementioned Philomena, an old Irish lady who once, fifty years ago, was a young woman with no family, taken in by an order of Catholic nuns who ran a workhouse for "wayward girls", otherwise known as women in Ireland who became pregnant out of wedlock. With Ireland dominated by the Catholic church to an extent unheard of even today (which is saying something), there was simply no alternative for such girls but to live and work in such convents, where their children would be essentially sold to wealthy adoptive families without their mothers' consent, the church having taken the precaution of obtaining contracts whereby the mothers declaim all parental rights to their own children. Now, fifty years later, Philomena has spent most of her life trying to discover what happened to the son who was taken away from her, periodically asking the church to help locate him, a request that is constantly denied.

Enter Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan). Sixsmith, a former cabinet minister and journalist for the BBC, finds himself without a job in 2002 and encounters the story of Philomena by accident. Deciding after some reluctance to turn the story into a human interest piece, he meets the old woman and offers to help her track her son down by means other than the completely unhelpful Church authorities. Thus begins an odyssey from Ireland to America, as Sixsmith first seeks to uncover the identity of Philomena's son, then later the circumstances of his life, and his current location. Along the way, he is required to put up with Philomena, who chatters on endlessly, tries to elicit the life stories of everyone she meets (including waitresses), and maintains a number of "quaint" habits calculated to drive one mad. Yet this is Judy Dench, not Tyler Perry, and the character comes across like a real old woman, not some pastiche of one designed to elicit "comedy". Coogan plays Sixsmith as a slightly smarmy Oxfordian, but one who truly is trying to both find the truth and to, in some small way, right the terrible wrongs that have been inflicted on Philomena.

And there are such wrongs in this film. One can understand, perhaps, the mentality from fifty years ago that led the Church to take Philomena's son from her by force, and adopt him out to wealthy Americans. One can even perhaps understand, if one is particularly twisted, what would lead them to cover their tracks by incinerating records and refusing to provide assistance to Philomena's search. Yet the moral turpitudes of the Irish Catholic Church in this film ultimately beggar the imagination, and while normally I would object to such things as unrealistic, research of my own shows that, if anything, the film understates the matter. Yet rather than just wallowing in the Church's repugnant, shameful treatment of a Catholic woman seeking to know about her long-lost son, the film actually uses the horrific treatment Philomena (and her son) have been subjected to, to bring up themes of forgiveness and redemption, all perfectly in keeping with the tone of the film. Philomena is a Catholic of the old school, one who believes and lives what she has been taught, even when those who teach it to her plainly do not. And the interaction between the elderly Catholic lady and the cynical, agnostic Brit, which the film never allows to become antagonistic, nor overly saccharine, secures the film along a very strong narrative line.


Things Havoc disliked: The above praise may sound like something you'd read in a marketing handbill, and for that I apologize. The base fact is that this movie, while compelling and even interesting, only reaches so high. Philomena regards everything that has been done to her as something that happened in the past, unchangeable now, and not worth wallowing in hate over. This is both a commendable attitude towards the wrongs she has suffered, as well as an incredibly difficult one, and so I'm loathe to object, but Philomena seems almost completely unperturbed by the staggering revelations as to what actually was done by the nuns who took her son, and whom she relied upon to help her find him. Forgiveness and a healthy outlook on life are wonderful things, but they are the antithesis of drama, and the certainty with which the character determines to rise above the crimes done to her, actually robs them of meaning, preventing us from actually seeing just what these losses actually meant to her. If forgiving someone who destroyed a large portion of your life is hard, then the best way to illustrate this is to make it look hard, not like some simple thing one can just decide to do as if choosing what to eat for lunch.

Worse yet, this same problem winds up warping the other character, Sixsmith. Not a Catholic himself, more mired in the cynical world around him, Sixsmith is utterly horrified by what has been done to Philomena, and becomes moreso as it is revealed that the Church is actively continuing to screw her by any means it can, even when there is no reason to do so beyond sheer, contemptuous spite. His reaction, when all is revealed, is outrage and fury, only for him to be castigated by Philomena herself for being so angry. Defiantly, Philomena rejects the anger Sixsmith evidences as she does not want to become a sad, broken person like him. Perhaps in another film this sort of declaration and message would work, but here, the crimes are so unforgivably terrible that Sixsmith's anger is hardly an unreasonable reaction, indeed my own (and I suspect, that of most people) would be far, far worse. And yet the message here seems to be that if you react with anything but saintly forgiveness to a horrific crime committed against someone you care about, you are a terrible person who should be ashamed of yourself.

Dare I suggest that this is a sentiment that the Irish church is desperately trying to encourage?

Forgiveness is not an easy or automatic thing, for it were, then there would be no need to laud it, or stand in awe of those capable of it regardless of circumstances. It cannot be mandated or expected as a matter of course, not from everyone, not when the crimes are as terrible as these. While Philomena's superhuman capacity to act as Jesus taught her and forgive her enemies is rightly praised in the film, by pretending that this is the only reasonable response to such incidents, the film, I fear, makes the preposterous claim that if Philomena had reacted with rage and fury at the terrible things done to her out of pure spite, then somehow she would have been in the wrong. And by making Philomena apparently hold such a belief, the film quite unavoidably begins to make her forgiveness take on the appearance of some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, wherein she forgives the Church because she cannot bear to imagine it culpable. While I'm sure this is not the impression the film was trying to give, in casting Sixsmith's anger in such a negative light (something not helped by having him periodically start reciting atheistic propaganda for no reason except to make him look bad), the movie starts to resemble a hatchet job against critics of the Church.


Final Thoughts: No, I don't actually think this film is a hatchet job against anyone, and I appreciate that this review may be starting to sound like an Anti-Catholic screed, for which I must apologize again. The point here is not really anything particular to Catholicism, but a more basic one, about the harm that self-righteous institutions can do, and the ways in which one can respond to things done to one. I do not pretend that this movie is poorly made, badly acted, or incompetently written and shot, for it is none of those things. On an objective level, it is a very good film. But a reaction to a piece of art is by necessity personal, and my personal reaction to the film was, to my surprise, less positive than I expected, especially in reflection, and the problems with the way in which it deals with the issues it raises are not ones that can simply be swept aside.

"I couldn't forgive you," says Sixsmith at one point, after Philomena has somehow managed to do just that. Were I in his position, I might well have set the building on fire, so outrageous is the behavior of the nuns in this film. And while arson is obviously not a reasonable response to something like this, searing, incandescent anger absolutely is. Philomena Lee is free to forgive those who trespassed against her, and should rightly be honored for it. But not all of us are capable of such sentiments. And there is nothing whatsoever the matter with anyone who, having had their child stolen, and been lied to for fifty years as to his whereabouts, found themselves unable to forgive.

Final Score: 6.5/10

[General Havoc]

The LEGO Movie

Alternate Title: Everything and Anything

One sentence synopsis: A random lego figure is recruited to save the entire universe in the company of a massive cast of pop culture characters.

A note before we begin: I don't make a habit of seeing a lot of children's movies. There never seemed to be much of a point. Children's films are designed for a completely different audience, and while theoretically it should be possible to speak to a film's quality regardless of content, the fact remains that it's a stretch for me to get my mind around the slightly sideways logic and style of a typical kids film. That said, it's not like a children's movie must, by necessity, be of low quality, and I have made exceptions for films like Paranorman or Frozen (to say nothing of Pixar's work) before. I don't tend to read other reviews before selecting my weekly film, but there are occasions that buzz becomes impossible to dodge, and the accolades this film has been receiving made it rather hard to avoid. So while I had no intention originally of seeing the Lego Movie, dismissing it as the children's version of Battleship, the praise it had been garnering, as well as the interest of several friends of mine, led me to make another exception, and buckle down to see what everyone was talking about.


Things Havoc liked: One of the great issues that afflicts modern franchise movies is that of licensing. The rights to produce a certain movie with certain characters or in a certain world are often considerably harder to obtain than the rest of the film, as so many failed projects and development-hell stories can attest to. So difficult is it to navigate the world of large-scale licensing, that entire movies are made for no reason other than to preserve a lapsing film license (the most recent Spiderman series is a particularly noxious example, but there are others), and thereby ensure the right to make other, presumably better films. This is the reason why despite thirty years of near-constant attempts towards this end, there has never been a Justice League movie (next year's Superman/Batman may be as close as we ever get), nor a Wonder Woman film, and is also why so many film series (such as Lord of the Rings) took forever to finally bring to the screen. The Lego corporation, on the other hand, has managed in recent years to circumvent this hellish process by employing their existing toy-set licenses to produce video games and TV shows (Lego Batman, Lego Star Wars, etc...) that employ the characters in question through the Lego master license. Lawsuits aplenty have been filed over this issue, but by and large, Lego has been able to use this system to do what others could not.

Why do I bring up licensing of all things while reviewing this film? Because this is a movie wherein Batman beats up Han Solo and Lando Calrissian and steals the hyperdrive from the Millenium Falcon, so as to give it to Twilight Sparkle and a Mecha-Pirate, who will employ it to save Superman, Gandalf the Grey, Abraham Lincoln, and the 2001 Los Angeles Lakers from the robotic armies of Will Farrel, and his right hand man: Liam Neeson's character from Taken.

The Lego Movie, a February dump-film based around a toy license, is amazing, a triumph of wit and writing and direction and sheer imagination, a movie that presents spectacle and wonder in league with the transformative powers of a child handed a Lego set and told to make whatever he would. In a year that has already given me Disney's apparent resurrection, it, like Frozen, is a scathing indictment of the state of most Hollywood films, children's or otherwise. For years to come, any film that fails abjectly will be unable to use the excuse that their subject material simply "didn't play well" on film, for this is a movie about Legos that succeeds, beyond all imagination, at providing wonder and hilarity and all the awesomeness that its product is capable of. It is a textbook study in how to produce a film from nothing. It is awesome.

Recapping the plot in a film like this seems almost superfluous, but such as it is, the film stars a random Lego-man, entirely undistinctive, who inhabits a world of multiple dimensions and infinite possibility, but who is generally content to do as he is told and "follow the instructions". Whisked into adventure the likes of which stretches my ability to even describe, he finds himself in the company of a cast of characters that literally nobody but the Lego corporation could produce, with superheroes and sports stars, fantasy tropes and cyberninjas, robotic armies, cat-unicorns, pirates, aliens, and practically every other goddamn thing ever conceived of. Their goal (of course) is to stop the evil Lord Business from destroying the world through conformity and mystical artifacts obtained from God-knows-where, but then that's not really the goal at all. The goal is to provide show-stopping spectacle at blistering pace, and fill in every single gap of more than four tenths of a second with in-jokes, references, asides, montages, and all of the hilarity that comes with the eighty-six-car-pileup of crossover insanity that this film seems to regard as the basis of storytelling. Subtle and nuanced it is not (except when it is), but then how many of us had time for subtle nuance when we were building X-wing Death-train Battlecruisers from Hell piloted by Godzilla, the Kool-aid man, and the disembodied head of the Barbie Doll your younger sister left your room?

Indeed, this film almost defies the capacity to review normally, as the acting and plot are either nonexistent or inconsequential. We can however discuss other aspects, such as the music, an techno-rock score featuring contributions by the Lonely Island and the Electric Light Orchestra. The music is as frenetic and high-speed as the film itself of course, but that's the proper choice for a film that is essentially narrating the imaginary adventures of a child's mind. Meanwhile the animation, generally designed to resemble stop motion Lego work winds up looking like some weird cross between Robot Chicken and a Dreamworks production, alternating between static slides and elaborate animated set-pieces with rapid frequency. Voice acting, primarily by Will Ferrel, Chris Pratt, Morgan Freeman, and Hunger Games' Elizabeth Banks, is spot on in every case, as it is for the dizzying array of cameos and stunt voices for the literally dozens of assorted characters the movie pulls out of its toy chest. Morgan Freeman, as always, has the best voice in film,, and uses it to savage comedic effect (picture Morgan Freeman's most God-like voice telling someone that he is an idiot), while Chris Pratt, whom I've never seen outside of bit parts before, nails his everyman main character with a bubbly enthusiasm that becomes almost deranged given the insanity that surrounds him. Characterization, meanwhile, is excellent. These are the characters we've seen a million times before in a million different settings, but unlike the films or media in which they are normally portrayed, this version seems to be aware of the prevailing memes and trends that surround them in the rest of the world. Thus, this Batman is something of a brooding cariacature, playing guitar solos titled "My parents are DEAD!" and building "only with black blocks, and occasionally, very dark grey". A weird cat-unicorn thing encountered in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land is straight out of an Adventure Time pastiche, complete with anger management issues buried beneath a veneer of fanatical cheeriness. Recurring gags with Green Lantern, Superman, Morgan Freeman (whose character's name is a wonderful in-joke for classics nerds of all people), and some kind of weird 1980's Space Guy (that's actually his name) are wickedly funny, and in all cases betray an incredible sense of self-awareness

But the strongest point is the script, one of the sharpest I've ever seen, which treats the fourth wall like a theoretical concept at best, and the audience like a group of people about to die from understimulation of the senses. Direction, by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the duo behind 21 Jump Street and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, involves removing the brakes from the film and replacing them with rocket motors. Yet somehow it all manages to hold together, despite the perfunctory pace with which important plot elements are introduced or thrown aside, and the bewildering complexity (and frankly, surprising depth) that the narrative twists itself into. The film's goal is plainly to find an excuse to barrage us with awesomeness at every turn, and yet for all the insanity of the script, not only does the story make sense, not only does every one of the innumerable disparate elements of which it is comprised wind up tied rationally together, but the film actually manages to make a solid, even sentimental point by the end, one that I was not expecting when the film began. Playing misdirection with the audience, the movie disguises its true message underneath an initial, more obvious message, both of which work, both of which are family appropriate, and both of which, ultimately, lend meaning to everything we've seen.

How in the hell did they do that?


Things Havoc disliked: I can't pretend the movie is perfect. The initial message is a bit clunky in its handling, being a fairly obvious theme of "be imaginative and find the special qualities within yourself" that I assume most kids could get after the first five times it's repeated. The backstory that we are given before the story proper starts could also perhaps have been handled a touch more cleverly, given the rest of the film. Indeed the movie does take a bit to get really rolling, as it has a style all its own, and this can lead to the first ten minutes seeming just... weird, perhaps even inaccessibly so. It fades quickly, but this is the sort of movie you do need to give a chance to.

A plot this chaotic cannot help but have some holes in it, particularly in the light of some of the revelations we are privy to by the end, and some of the characterization, particularly that of Elizabeth Banks' "Wyldstyle" (just accept it) seem a little unsophisticated. Normally that's not a word I would allow to creep into a children's movie review, but the rest of the movie displays such wonderful self-awareness that when it suddenly turns around and pretends like the notion of "believing in yourself" is new and fascinating information to anyone in the audience, it can't help but feel like a let down. Indeed, there are several moments when the movie cuts back the pace a bit, perhaps simply to allow the audience to catch their breath, but with each one, the movie's usual crispness seems to fall away, as though, like a shark, it needs to keep moving in order to live. We are, after all, talking about a children's movie, and perhaps these pauses in the action enable the adult part of our brains to become self-aware of that fact again, dialing back our enthusiasm as we re-assert mental control. You might argue this is a problem of the viewer more than the film, but a movie this bonkers has to know it's going to be working against the more discerning eye that us adults are offering it, and while it manages to overcome our stultified inertia most of the time, that only makes the moments when it does not all the more glaring.


Final Thoughts: More than two years ago, I saw a film called Real Steel, which many hated, but I praised for being, in essence, a child's dream (of gladiatorial robots) brought to life. The difference between it and the other movies of similar subject but less skill was one of passion, heart, and love, of filmmakers who understood not only that certain things are awesome, but also understood the reasons why they are awesome, what it is that they represent to the child in all of us, what renders them so enduring. Like Real Steel before it, the makers of the Lego movie, given an assignment to make a film about Legos, chose instead to make a film about what it is that Legos actually represent, what it is that made them one of the most enduring children's toys of the 20th century. Armed with infinite license, legal and otherwise, to do whatever they wanted, the film they produced is an absolute joy, exciting and funny and rapturous in all the ways that most toy-license films (GI Joe, Transformers, Battleship) are not.

If this is the sort of thing I've been missing by steering clear of children's films, then perhaps it's time I changed my policy. Because while I hesitated to go and see a movie based on a toy line, in a very real sense, the Lego movie's title is itself misleading. This, as it turns out, is not a movie about Legos. This is a movie about sheer wonder.

And there's always room in my schedule for that.

Final Score: 8.5/10

[frigidmagi]

Because this is a movie wherein Batman beats up Han Solo and Lando Calrissian and steals the hyperdrive from the Millenium Falcon, so as to give it to Twilight Sparkle and a Mecha-Pirate, who will employ it to save Superman, Gandalf the Grey, Abraham Lincoln, and the 2001 Los Angeles Lakers from the robotic armies of Will Farrel, and his right hand man: Liam Neeson's character from Taken.

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