Sunday Morning Movies – The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Not being a huge fan of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, I wasn’t terribly keen on seeing the prequel, especially the story is smaller and perhaps less interesting then the huge events that take place in the “main event” series of Tolkien’s work.  Doubly worse was finding out that this relatively tiny children’s book had been somehow bloated beyond all recognition into a three-part, three-hour a piece movie extravaganza that was going to suck up nine hours of my life.  I don’t want to seem cynical, but considering Peter Jackson’s relative failure to reach the heights of success he had with the original trilogy, one might think it a desperate gambit to get back in the A-list game (and get some easy money) to revisit it.  That’s harsh, though, as he clearly loves the source material, which is a problem. 

Iron Man 3

The Marvel Machine rampages on in Iron Man 3, which is already taking in incredible amounts of money because, I think, Marvel is exceptionally good at product management.  It says something about the skill of digital effects companies that you can make a solid action blockbuster product without the specific skill-set of an “action director”, and thus we have reached the point where the talent is brought in for their ability to keep a certain level of quality, not take risks and, most importantly, keep the writing snappy.  Though some of the films have had minor aesthetic differences, they all more or less look the same:  generally bright, inoffensive, with a dash of pop art stylization without going full-blown Ang Lee.  The last two entries, especially, have had one major authorial difference and that’s in the writing.  The Avengers largely kept to Joss Whedon’s not inconsiderable talent for wit, and now Iron Man 3 flows right into Shane Black’s wheelhouse.  The fact that it’s distinctive is down almost solely to the script, and if it doesn’t set it necessarily to a higher standard than other Marvel fare, it’s at least different. 

The Expendables 2

When the new recruit to the rag-tag group of buffed up mercenaries presumably called “The Expendables” is asked why he left the military to join, he relays a story about being stuck for three hours in a firefight in Afghanistan.  He called for aerial support but his superiors wouldn’t allow it for fear of harming the locals.  Several of his fellow soldiers died “for nothing”, and to top it all off, his superiors killed the stray dog he had adopted.  This fear of the military institution and the lionization of the fighting man is reminiscent of classic, Reagan-era Stallone in Rambo: First Blood Part II, and indeed there’s nothing about The Expendables 2 that doesn’t just wish it was living in those halcyon days of pumped up heroes righteously killing en masse to hold up the classical values of American masculinity.  

The Raid: Redemption and Act of Valor

The action film must be one of the hardest for anyone to justify enjoying to him or her self on a moral level.  We can talk all day long about the technique and the artistry and, in the best cases, the moral depth that create a great action film, but at the end of the day, there’s always going to be that element of thrilling to the violence.  In a fashion, the closer to a realistic depiction of violence an action movie achieves, the farther away from its purpose it gets.  If you think of the brutal physicality and sad desperation in the fistfight-cum-wrestling match of a drama like All the Pretty Horses or the bathhouse finale of Eastern Promises, or even that moment in Saving Private Ryan where Adam Goldberg’s character kills the sense of war-action heroics by pleading with the German soldier not to slowly plunge a dagger straight into his heart, the last thing you feel is “fun” or “thrill” – the reality of violence is that it is generally a sad, ugly thing that represents the absolute worst in humanity.  Therefore, the more outlandish and choreographed and lovingly filmed and edited an action scene is, the better.  Many of the good ones have more in common with a Hollywood musical number than an actual fight.  Even the recent turn towards the more guttural action, like the Bourne films or Craig-era Bond rely heavily on swift editing and choreography to keep the fast-paced excitement going so it can be punctuated by a violent knock to the stomach.  It is on the level of thrills that the action scenes in Act of Valor and The Raid: Redemption hope to deliver, but due to the circumstances of each of the films, there is a drastically different effect on the viewer.

This Means War and Wrath of the Titans

There’s a relatively tedious, though not unfounded at all, cliché about Hollywood making market-tested films that appeal to x demographic by including x types of characters embodied by beautiful stars and putting them in romantic/funny/exciting/all three situations and BOOM:  Instahit.  It’s generally a lot more complicated than that, as there’s bound to be someone along the creative line who has a whiff of the artist about them, or at the very least actors who know how to work a script in their favour, and a director or an editor who can nurture that into something vaguely entertaining.  I don’t know know anything at all about the development or the production of McG’s This Means War, but if there ever was a film that played right into that cliché about clueless moneymen suits at the studio putting an entire movie together and creating exactly what they think a “successful” (not “good”, mind) product would be, this is it. 

For the Love of Film III: The Tragedy of Margaret in The 39 Steps

This is my little contribution to the Hitchcock Blog-a-Thon in an effort to raise money for the National Film Preservation Foundation’s efforts to score and stream The White Shadow.  Please click the button to donate a few dollars towards a worthy cause.  And of course, please browse the many other entries in this blog-a-thon.  The quality of the contributions is staggering and the real fine minds of film should be appreciated by all.  You can find the other entries here, here, and here.

 

 

The Avengers

Despite being a ready-made blockbuster success, The Avengers had a pretty significant hurdle to clear if it wanted to be any good – a notion that is hardly necessary when the quality of a film like this is rarely important when it comes to being a “success”.  Ensemble films are tricky enough, but when four of the central characters have each had movies of their own, attempting to corral them all into something sensible without giving short-shrift to anyone is doubly (or, quadruply?) so.  This is all to say that anyone who says that writer/director Joss Whedon, who was given the task of putting this all together, merely has to “not screw it up,” they’re doing an extreme disservice to the sheer difficulty of the task at hand.  A surfeit of good, existing elements is probably harder to make into something even basically functional as a movie than starting from the ground up.  It’s a small wonder, then, that The Avengers is not only good, it is better than it probably needs to be and is certainly the best of this slate of Marvel films.

The Hunger Games

The difficulty in approaching any film, especially one based on a popular book, is that of knowing and understanding history and where it might fit in.  It’s almost impossible to watch John Carter and not think of all the similar elements it shares with a host of popular movies from the 20^th century, and yet it was published far before those works and is clearly an influence on a number of them.  It is probably best to disregard the notion of ‘authenticity’ as being crucial to enjoyment when possible – though that gets tricky when you think of the number of films and TV shows that function almost entirely on the audience’s preconceived notions of a particular genre (think of everything Joss Whedon has done).  In a perfect world, pure originality shouldn’t matter.  After all, it’s the specific approach to an idea that pays dividends, or else you’re left with nothing but an idea.  In that spirit of generous critiquing, I can’t blame Suzanne Collins for writing a hugely popular book and then having it adapted into a successful film even though Battle Royale has existed for over a decade now.  That’s not to say it doesn’t matter, though.

In the Bleak Midwinter: The Grey

It begins with a serene, but ominous, shot of the Alaskan mountains at dawn before harshly cutting to the hazy orange light of an oil refinery facility at night.  The man (technology) versus nature duality is established immediately, and knowing roughly what the film was about, I had a pretty good idea of where this was headed.  Ottway (Liam Neeson) begins reading what we soon find out to be a letter explaining the hellish circumstances of his job and the place he finds himself.  He marches about the facility with a gun, shooting infringing animals and protecting the workers, whom he describes as “ex-cons, fugitives, drifters…assholes”.  This view is confirmed as soon as he enters the facility’s bar, where we hear loud music and watch as a ludicrously cliché bar fight escalates into smashing tables.  Very quickly, the music fades and we see the soft-lit vision of a woman in bed with Ottway, and though well-shot, it feels even a little more cliché than the bar fight – to the cynical mind, at least.  We get an idea of just how much despair Ottway is in when he leaves the bar and puts a gun in his mouth, the would-be final act interrupted by the howling of wolves.  He eventually boards a plane bound for Anchorage with an assortment of ne’er-do-wells and roughnecks, and a fantastically tense plane crash scene later, he and the few survivors are stuck in the cold, snowy wilderness.

Sunday Morning Movies – Conan the Barbarian

I really can’t figure out who likes Conan the Barbarian.  Not just the latest reboot/reimagining/remake, but also the character in general.  What is the appeal? Fantasy fiction, whether it’s Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, takes us into new worlds that are somewhat recognizable and also completely alien.  The baseline interest in the genre is, really, world building (and a certain fetishization of medieval garb, I suppose).  Set up a fantastical, intriguing place and then create characters to play around in it.  I’ll bet this is a reason for the success of World of Warcraft or the Elder Scrolls series of games.  Still, there are characters in the fiction in which to invest, and a whole set of rules that are ever changing to inhibit their desires.  Conan the Barbarian’s sole source of interest is his muscular physique and the way in which that allows him to swing a sword quite well.  There are notions of heroics and honor, but this isn’t a well-established universe – at least as far as the film adaptations are concerned – and there doesn’t seem to be a central struggle.  In the new film, he wants revenge on a guy who also happens to want to take over the world.  Conan, then, must be devoid of personality or conflict or even flaws.  He is a Hero in the most banal sense – the always-good guy who can’t be beat.  Why is this interesting for anyone?