2013 in Reviews: The Best

Yin and yang, peanut butter and jelly, rice and soy sauce, ham and cheese. All things require balance. (Also, I appear to have food on the brain. But let that go.) To balance my picks for 2013's worst movies, here's my list of some of the best.

A caveat: several of the year's most highly acclaimed films never came to theaters in my area, so I haven't seen Upstream Color, Before Midnight, or 12 Years a Slave yet -- I anticipate all of them would have made this list otherwise.

10) Warm Bodies. On the one hand, it's a fairly standard young adult romance: the isolated loner meets the sheltered sweetheart and they realize they have more in common than they first expected. On the other hand, it gives me a chance to use the phrase "zomromcom." Nicholas Hoult's tortured "R" has a funny, snappy inner monologue and John Malkovich gives a surprisingly restrained performance as Julie's father. It's not going to change the world, but it's a sweet little film that tries for more than it had to, and it's a refreshing change of pace from the insistent doom-and-gloom of most zombie flicks. *** out of ****

9) Much Ado About Nothing. I'm a big fan of Whedon's. This adaptation of Shakespeare's play is problematic in some respects, particularly its retention of the virginity plot, which just doesn't play well in 2013. Nevertheless, the film is slick and elegant and the two lead performances are quite engaging. It's also encouraging evidence that, in an era of megabudget blockbusters (one of which Whedon directed), the art of filmmaking on a small scale is still alive and thriving. *** out of ****

8) Stoker. Brutal, disturbing, and beautiful. Park Chan-wook, of Oldboy fame, delivers another stunningly sumptuous visual feast with his trademark attention to (literally) gory detail. The performances are top-notch. It's not for everyone (a scene with pruning shears was almost too much for me), but as a Gothic drama directed with precise, gorgeous vision, it's hella good. *** out of ****

7) The World's End. It's not as good as Shaun of the Dead, but it's got a lot of the same quirky charm that that film had. Like Shaun, it veers between the mundane and the bizarro, but Simon Pegg and his ensemble give funny, solid performances that keep the film grounded. *** out of ****

6) Hunger Games: Catching Fire. The second Hunger Games movie improves in a lot of ways on the first. No more shakicam! The first hour and a half is the most interesting part of the film for me in its satire of media consumption culture, while the games themselves feel a little rushed. The performances throughout are strong and the visuals -- especially in IMAX -- are stunning. ***1/2 of ****

5) Frozen. I was less immediately enamored with Frozen than I was with Brave (like Merida, I have crazy curly red hair), but both are significant in their challenges to the traditional Princess Romance plot. In Brave, Merida rejected a suitor altogether and the plot centered on her relationship with her mother instead. In Frozen, the two young women do end up with romances (spoilers, I guess?) but the progress towards the Happily Ever After ending is constantly checked and confronted in interesting ways. The animation is, as usual, sumptuously gorgeous. ***1/2 out of ****

4) Mud. After movies like Reign of Fire and Failure to Launch, my idea of Matthew McConaughey was as a good-looking man who had charisma but wasn't a terribly good actor. The past couple of years have changed my mind. His performance in Mud, like Killer Joe and Magic Mike, is gutsy, raw, and compelling. The film itself is by turns sweet and sad, much like coming-of-age itself. ***1/2 out of ****

3) Pacific Rim. It may have underperformed at the box office, but for all its flaws Pacific Rim does an amazing job at conveying the director's love of film, and inspiring that sense of joy in the audience. Visually beautiful with plenty of callbacks to the wacky creature features of yesteryear. It isn't very complex, character-wise, but this movie isn't about that: it's about watching giant robots beat the crap out of giant sea monsters. This is everything I want out of an action movie, with an extra helping of fun. ***1/2 out of ****

2) Gravity. It's a very simple, direct story: People get lost in space. People try to survive. See what happens. Neil deGrasse Tyson gave it a serious fact-checking, but Alfonso Cuarón's vision is a still a feast for the eyes. Hands-down THE best use of 3D I've ever encountered. I also appreciate the almost singular focus on a female character in a major action movie, unencumbered by being someone else's love-interest or sidekick -- it doesn't happen often. Gravity might play it simple on the story front, but as sheer filmic pleasure, it's hard to beat. **** out of ****

1) The Wolf of Wall Street.  A lot of people seem to think Scorsese's latest film glamorizes Wall Street greed. I don't see it that way. Sure, there is plenty of excess on the screen, but it's played as hollow and sordid, the empty enjoyments of shallow people without souls. Over the course of the film's three hours viewers come to understand that Jordan Belfort is a desperate, disgusting man who doesn't care who he hurts in his pursuit of wealth, not an aspirational idol. The dialogue, written by Sopranos alum Terence Winter, crackles and even though the film is long, it never drags -- a major directorial feat. DiCaprio as usual gives an amazing performance. **** out of ****

2013 in Reviews: The Worst

It's that time of year again, folks, the time when we look back on the year and ask ourselves, "Why were there so many shitty movies this year? And why did I see so many of them?"  In keeping with the spirit of the season, I present my list of the ten worst films of 2013.

10) Star Trek: Into Darkness. I really enjoyed J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot in 2009. It had a fast-paced, fast-talking energy that I appreciated, and (lens flares aside) presented some of the best visuals of that year. Unfortunately, Into Darkness suffers from the law of diminishing returns. I liked it well enough while I was watching it, but the more I thought about it, the less it made any sense. Here is a movie that opens with Kirk explicitly and cavalierly violating the Prime Directive for no discernible reason, followed only minutes later by a scene that's supposed to be intensely emotional because of Kirk's responsibility not to -- you guessed it -- violate the Prime Directive. The movie only really works because of the strength of the performances: Simon Pegg is delightful as Mr. Scott, and Benedict Cumberbatch's Khan is a menacing blend of intelligence, calm, and brutality. Unfortunately, the story is lackluster and full of plot holes as big as the Enterprise herself. **1/2 out of ****

9) Iron Man 3. A close runner-up in the "plot holes the size of Manhattan" category, Iron Man 3 disappointed me on a variety of levels. I actually wasn't upset about the film's tinkering with the Mandarin backstory; Ben Kingsley's half-menacing, half-drunken idiot performance was the highlight of the movie for me. But I was unable to suspend disbelief about the film's central big-bad premise, and this sense of absurdity only escalated as the film went on. The film was very flashy, but ultimately as empty as Tony Stark's one million Iron Man suits. *1/2 out of ****

8) Oblivion. The title says it all: only a few months after I saw this movie and I remembered so little about it that I had to refer to imdb to jog my memory. Alien invasions, Tom Cruise, clones...yawn. The film has some beautiful visuals, but the story is a ludicrous mishmash of elements and never has much of an impact. * out of ****

7) Elysium. I love Matt Damon, but I hated basically everything about this movie. The plot simply doesn't make sense, the characters are thinly sketched and act with no discernibly human motivation, and what is meant to be a huge emotional payoff at the end comes across as a hollow triumph. I enjoyed director Neill Blomkamp's District 9, but this failed to live up to that movie's promise. * out of ****

6) Olympus Has Fallen. This is one of two DC-takeover films this year, and although this one boasts the better pedigree, with director Antoine Fuqua (of Training Day) behind the wheel, it just wasn't much fun. I don't hold disaster movies to the same standard as I expect from Quality Entertainment, but it's unforgivable for a disaster flick to be dull. The action clips along, but the plot is ludicrous and the performances surprisingly dour. The movie simmers with anger and a surprising amount of violence, but it fails to deliver any real thrills. * out of ****

5) Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. I have a very high tolerance for the filmic absurd. I unironically enjoyed Shark Night and will watch Prince of Persia whenever it's on TNT. Nevertheless, despite its promise of goofy fantasy schlock, Hansel and Gretel felt overlong at 88 minutes. There are a few laughs -- Hansel is diabetic thanks to his childhood candy ordeal -- but the story in general takes itself too seriously, and the gory violence feels over the top. * out of ****

4) The Host. I watched this on a transatlantic flight, and even as a captive audience I had a hard time finishing the film. The story is paper-thin, the acting melodramatic and often unintentionally hilarious. Given that Stephenie Meyer of Twilight fame is the genius behind this mess, it shouldn't surprise that it's a bloated, ponderous "love story," hyperactively handwringing over The Big Questions in Life while failing to deliver any emotional validity or genuine feeling. * out of ****

3) Safe Haven. This was another captive-audience choice, as it was the only movie played (TWICE) on a recent flight from London. I have never enjoyed Nicholas Sparks' brand of sentimental schmaltz, and this film delivers as expected. Whether it's the overwrought, melodramatic story full of incomprehensible and laughable moments (there's a dead-wife ghost!) or the banal, saccharine performances, watching this film felt like drowning in cheap "maple" syrup: too sweet, too thick, and taking way too long. * out of ****

2) After Earth. The third Big Space Adventure of 2013 also failed to deliver. I shouldn't be surprised at this, of course; I haven't enjoyed an M. Night Shyamalan movie since 2004's The Village (and even that, I hated the ending of). After Earth, for all the trailer's promises of action-packed chases and space explosions, is that worst of combinations: preachy and boring. It insists on the message of its tagline: "Danger is real. Fear is a choice." (Biological autonomic responses be damned!) I wish boredom had been a choice. 1/2 out of ****

1) Now You See Me. I didn't have a lot of hope for this when I saw the trailer, but I enjoy watching Woody Harrelson, so I gave this a shot. This is probably the film that I felt most insulted my intelligence this year. Supposedly a movie about a group of magicians performing the ultimate con, the story is full of more holes than a lace hanky. This movie's logic asks you to accept that a group of people attending a magic show would suddenly find surprise sums of money in their bank accounts, stolen from someone present at the show, and that they would all a) accept that this had actually happened and wasn't a prank, and b) be able to keep the money. Worse still, it reveals a surprise "twist" at the end that was never hinted at at all and doesn't actually work in the logic of the story. It's the kind of tacked-on twist that makes M. Night Shyamalan's movies look subtle. When we finished this movie, my husband and I looked at each other and said we wished we had those two hours of our lives back. ZERO out of ****

And there you have it! What movies were your least favorites of 2013?

THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG

I am probably not the most objective judge of the Hobbit movies. I grew up on Tolkien's books, and I am not ashamed of admitting that I saw The Fellowship of the Ring in cinemas 9 times. Simply to see Middle Earth onscreen will always be a pleasure for me.

Much of that pleasure is present in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (H2 for short), the second installation in the Hobbit trilogy. I can't help but think that if the Lord of the Rings trilogy hadn't come first that these films would be being hailed as the standard-setters in fantasy filmmaking, because there really is nothing else like them, even now, more than a decade after The Fellowship of the Ring hit theatres.

The thing that Peter Jackson is arguably best at is a sense of scale. Middle Earth is huge, and Jackson's swooping camera movements and wide pan shots emphasize how small individuals are in this massive world of Tolkien's imagination. I saw this film twice, once in 35mm and once in HFR 3D, and while I'm usually a skeptic of 3D films, I have to admit the effect actually made a real contribution to the movie's impact. I know that plenty of people have complained about the HFR, and it does take some adjusting; actions move smoothly, details are crisp. Once my eyes became accustomed to it, however, I appreciated the lack of blur in the fast-paced, ever-moving sweeping shots that Jackson is so fond of. When I saw H2 in 35mm, many of the action shots seemed to pass in a blur. In HFR, every hair on the spiders and every scale on Smaug was crisp and clear, making these monsters even more terrifying. The 3D also contributed; Jackson's camera motions are notorious for their drunken, helter-skelter sweeping through the scene, and in 3D I felt even more like I was flying through Dol Guldur or swooping down a tunnel with Smaug.

The action has been considerably ramped up, both in quantity and scale, from the first film. While I actually really loved the opening of Unexpected Journey and its focus on Hobbiton and Bilbo's dismay at meeting all these unruly Dwarves, many other people hated what they perceived as slow pacing. That isn't really a problem here, although those who haven't read the books may think the Beorn excursion dead weight that doesn't contribute to the forward motion of the story. (They would be wrong, of course.) The action setpieces are here in full force, and several of them are quite inventive, such as the barrel escape from Mirkwood. Bilbo's confrontation with the Mirkwood spiders made me squirm in my seat, and I may or may not have squealed once. (I did. I totally did.)

In fact, for me there is almost too much action. The reason I love Jackson's original Lord of the Rings trilogy isn't its action scenes -- although the battle of Helm's Deep will remain one of the greatest battle scenes ever committed to film -- but its heart. He was comfortable taking a break from the epic to focus on moments of intimate emotion, such as Boromir's death scene in Fellowship or Sam's heartbreaking inspirational speech in The Two Towers. When Jackson is content to linger on his actors' performances in these new films, there are some real moments of beauty. Ian McKellen's Gandalf can't help but dominate the screen when he's present -- he could be reading the menu at Pizza Hut and make it sound apocalyptic. Martin Freeman remains my favorite actor in this trilogy, although he is sorely underused; for a movie about THE Hobbit he isn't onscreen as much as you'd expect. When he is, though, his performance continues to be pitch-perfect. Freeman brings exactly the right blend of pluckiness and timidity that I would hope for from Bilbo Baggins. His interactions with Smaug, voiced by his Sherlock costar Benedict Cumberbatch, are incontestably the best scenes in the film.

The trouble is that there aren't enough of these personal moments, and characters tend to get lost in the onslaught of action. Even excellent confrontations, like the scenes near the end when Smaug and the dwarves face off, are drawn out too long. This movie would be better about 20-30 minutes shorter. And there are no emotional gut-punches like there are in the original trilogy. Jackson tries, with his addition of Tauriel and her (completely unnecessary) love triangle or his expansion of Bard the bargeman's backstory as an unwilling political dissident. These character touches are nice, but they don't carry the weight of the stories in Lord of the Rings. 

Perhaps that is somewhat inevitable: although the events in The Hobbit would eventually be ret-conned into The Lord of the Rings, the scale of the events is smaller. We're not looking at the extinction of Middle Earth here; we're talking about a very small band of people trying to reclaim their homeland. While that shouldn't be dismissed as a story not worth telling, it can be more difficult to feel like the weight of the world relies on this group's success. Jackson begins to suggest in H2 the larger importance of getting Smaug out of the Lonely Mountain with scenes involving Gandalf investigating the potential rise of Sauron, but for people unfamiliar with the source material, it might not be very clear yet. And Thorin Oakenshield is -- as he was in the book -- an unrelenting douchebag. The Hobbit films seem to want him to be another Aragorn, a king in search of his kingdom, but while I like Richard Armitage, he isn't Viggo Mortensen, and Thorin has few of Aragorn's redeeming characteristics.

Nevertheless, while the characterization leaves a lot to be desired, technically, the film is beautiful. There are scenes here that made my jaw drop; the aforementioned spiders, the first time Bilbo enters Smaug's hoard room, and a gorgeous moment when Smaug, covered in gold, pirouettes through the night sky scattering drops of light around him. Enjoyed simply as a feast for the eyes, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug delivers. As an adaptation of Tolkien's short novel, it has some great moments, but it's too long in general and too focused on action scenes in particular.

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE

There is a scene near the end of Catching Fire that encapsulates, for me, why the Hunger Games movies have been successful so far: a close-up of Jennifer Lawrence's face as emotions flash across it, conveyed by a crinkle of a frown, a twist of the lip, a widening of the eye. Serious emotional complexity presents itself to us in a matter of seconds. Jennifer Lawrence has a powerful screen presence, all the more remarkable given that she's only 23.

It's been interesting to watch these first two films, because they've been the first really successful action movies I can think of in quite a while to focus so centrally on a female protagonist. The other franchise that springs to mind is Alien and Sigourney Weaver's ass-kicking Ripley. That also was a sci-fi/fantasy story, and I wonder if one reason that stories like Alien and The Hunger Games are more palatable to society at large is precisely because they take place in an alternate reality. Nevertheless, it is refreshing to have an intelligent, resourceful, emotionally complex female character onscreen with bigger problems than finding/keeping a boyfriend. (You're damn right that was a dig at Twilight.)

The romance angle was the weakest part of the first film, and it's similarly underdeveloped here. Liam Hemsworth's Gale is a very pretty man, but that's about the only trait he appears to have, and why Katniss should be so attached to him remains a mystery to me. Her relationship with Peeta is more complicated. The first hour of the film is the best part, as Katniss and Peeta realize that although they may have left the arena behind, they haven't escaped it: they are part of a media machine that will keep going, as Haymitch sadly tells them, until they die. This revelation helps to explain Haymitch's angry alcoholism: in addition to having to watch District 12's tributes die every year, he's paraded around with the other "victors" in an unending pageant commemorating something despicable, and he can't refuse to be. No wonder he likes his whiskey.

The social satire isn't exactly subtle here, but then again, most satire isn't. The skewering of society's strange desire to feast on the details of strangers' personal lives and to watch them live out their lives onscreen is more aggressive than in the first film. So is its critique of our tendency to use entertainment to escape unpleasantness in our real lives.

Philip Seymour Hoffman's Plutarch Heavensbee, the new Games master, embodies this criticism. His Heavensbee is enigmatic: at one moment advising President Snow to increase the horrific violence towards the districts with a soft-spoken delight, and the next having what seems to be a heartfelt, sympathetic conversation with Katniss. Smug, quietly intense, wearing a perpetual look of amusement, Heavensbee comes across as having has his own secrets (which, of course, he has). He voices the film's most literal criticism of our media obsessions: what better way to sow fear and resentment, he asks Snow, than nonstop coverage of violence interlaced with relentless attention to the frivolous details of a celebrity wedding?
Everyone is wound tighter in this film as fissures in the media machine begin to appear. Elizabeth Banks's Effie Trinket has an increasingly difficult time keeping her cheery facade uncracked as she watches the children she's come to have a real affection for be summoned to the slaughter again. Effie's manic cheerfulness is edgier here, the product of a woman who has been confronted with the real ugliness of the world that she is a part of and is trying to cope with that cognitive dissonance, and Banks's portrayal makes Effie much more sympathetic than I expected her to be. Stanley Tucci's Caesar Flickerman is equally manic: his grin is wider this time around, his laugh louder, his gestures broader, but beneath the purple eyebrows there is panic in his eyes as he realizes his world of flashy TV interviews is undergoing a paradigm shift.

The irony of all this, of course, is that we are watching a critique of people who delight in watching a pageant of people they don't know kill and be killed...while we do precisely the same thing. It's difficult to say whether the film is aware of the contradiction; there certainly isn't the level of meta-commentary as there was, for example, in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.

Despite its many strengths, Catching Fire has some significant weaknesses. Perhaps most disturbingly to me, the film is very, very white. It has characters of color, but they're desperately undercharacterized. In fairness, most of the characters other than the main protagonists are also sketched quite faintly, and this is perhaps an unavoidable flaw in the games structure of the story: how do you adequately characterize and humanize 24 people at once? And given that most of them are destined to be quick cannon fodder, would you even want to?

Regardless of the story's inherent character limitations, I have to believe racial diversity could be better implemented than it is. Although Lenny Kravitz's Cinna looks at Katniss with sympathetic eyes (lined in effortlessly cool gold liner), there's not much more to him than that onscreen. Jeffrey Wright's Beetee fares even worse, which is double shame because Wright is a fine actor and manages a great deal with what little he's given. There is also a black female tribute who makes a brief appearance -- Enobarbia? -- but her characterization doesn't extend beyond her filed teeth, which she flashes at Katniss during training.

This trend continues the disturbing absence of racial diversity in big-screen action movies. I'm particularly confused by the lack of representation here given the first film's choice to make Rue a black character. Compared to most of the games cohort, Rue had a significant amount of screentime, and she was a sympathetic and more fully drawn character. Why was it so hard to give the characters of color some detail the second time around?

There's significantly less person-to-person violence shown onscreen in Catching Fire than there was in the first film, and part of me feels like it's a cop-out. The first film's use of violence struck me as disturbing in a thought-provoking way; watching children murder each other provokes intense dissonance. Children aren't supposed to do this. Children aren't supposed to like doing this. Granted, "children killing each other is bad" isn't going to win the Nobel Prize for Deep Thought any time soon, but I felt that there was more to the violence than that. Those children who took delight in the killing were bullies; their viciousness had simply been allowed a greater outlet than is usually accepted in society. Raised from birth to be tributes, the "careers" have been immersed in a culture that privileges their brutality, tells them they are superior to everyone else, encourages self-centeredness at others' expense as the ultimate virtue...uncomfortably familiar things from our own culture. When all the violence occurs offscreen, it's too easy to distance the protagonists from it, rather than seeing them as complicit in it, however unintentionally.

Overall, the games feel rushed. I would have liked to have seen more of the arena, and in particular its peculiar psychological effects on the tributes. After the slower, more exploratory pace of the first part, the games seem hurried, and characters who have the potential to be very interesting don't get the screentime they need or deserve.

Sad Stories of the Death of Kings: RICHARD II

Like many Americans, I suspect, my first experience with David Tennant's acting was his role as the stunningly insane Barty Crouch, Jr., in 2005's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Since then I have come to love him as my Doctor (the Tenth and best) in Doctor Who, and yesterday, thanks to the wonders of technology, I was able to watch him mesmerize as Richard II in a live cinema broadcast from the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

This was my first experience with a live-beamed performance, and it didn't disappoint. The RSC is known for the quality and care of its productions, and -- aside from this summer's terribly misguided production of Hamlet starring Jonathan Slinger -- I've never seen anything there that wasn't visually stunning. The stage and lighting design for Richard II are gorgeous. Using projection on long hanging strands of fine chain, the stage comes alive as the interior of Westminster Abbey, the hills of Gloucestershire, and the dank interior of Richard's final prison. (Oh, yeah, spoiler alert...) At the same time, the chain gives the images a slightly indefinite quality, making them a little hazy and always just out of reach, not quite real...perfect for the equally delicate energy that Tennant gives his Richard.

The most observable benefit to watching a live cinema broadcast over attending the play live is that the camera can show close-ups of the actors' faces. Unless you're able to spring for the really expensive seats, you're not likely to catch the nuances of expression and gesture watching a play live that you can get from a broadcast performance, and although the camera does control your gaze in a way that live theatre doesn't, I'm glad that I got to see these performers up close, because the cast is universally strong and give powerhouse performances.

The star here is, of course, David Tennant. Clad in long white robes and flowing auburn hair, he's fairly obviously Christ-like, the martyred lamb Richard believes himself to be. Tennant brings the same nervous energy and edginess to Richard as is observable in his Doctor. At the same time, he shows a restraint that honestly I wasn't sure he was capable of. I've seen other amazing Richards. Most recently, Ben Whishaw, whom I'm loved since I saw his debut performance as Hamlet straight out of RADA, astonished me with his delicately fey and frail Richard in the BBC's sumptuous The Hollow Crown. Most actors seem to choose the dainty route for Richard, and Tennant certainly has some of that vulnerability, particularly in his wide-eyed stares and twitching smiles.

Unlike Whishaw, however, Tennant's Richard has an undercurrent of more manic energy that gives a stronger pathos to some of his soliloquies, particularly towards the end of the play as his life unravels. This energy never tips him into Barty Crouch territory, though, instead giving the impression of a king who constantly walks the knife-edge between disregard for the rules to which he doesn't believe a king is bound and vulnerability to the same worries that plague us all: whether he is feared, whether he is respected, whether he is loved. Tennant's combination of skittish, almost childlike energy, pompous haughtiness, and raw emotional vulnerability makes his Richard the obvious center of the play. I found it impossible to take my eyes off him, even when he shared the stage with others.

To so dominate the stage with this cast is a real feat. Jane Lapotaire, as the Duchess of Gloucester, sets the tone for the production early in the play despite being only in one scene. She veers from collapsing into tears for her murdered husband to demanding vengeance on his murderers to confusion as to what her role is now that her beloved husband is dead. She is absolutely heart-breaking.

Michael Pennington's John of Gaunt brought tears to my eyes with his dying rage at the "wasteful king" who refuses to heed him; sacrilegious though it might be, I think I found his Gaunt even better than Patrick Stewart's in The Hollow Crown. He plays the famous "sceptred isle" speech as someone who has lost so much -- his son, his king, his health, his sanity -- that he has nothing left to lose. Oliver Ford Davies brings unexpected comedy to his role as the Duke of York, emphasizing just how unfit he is to be the king in absentia that Richard asks him to be. He also brings to the forefront the emotional turmoil and confusion that must beset a man torn between loyalty to God's minister on earth and recognition that that minister is not doing the job God sent him to do. 

I will definitely jump at the chance to see live broadcasts of this kind again; at just £13 for a student ticket at Odeon, it's an excellent value for a wonderful experience.

On the Raggedy Edge: GRAVITY

When I first saw the trailer for Gravity, I turned to my husband and said "I don't see how that movie could be more than two minutes long." How could a person disconnected from any life support systems and drifting in open space possibly survive?

Clocking in at a brisk 91 minutes, Gravity runs full-tilt for almost the entire time in answering that question. It is the sort of movie that is best if you don't know too many plot details, so I will try not to give too much away. It is sufficient to say that the film is stunningly beautiful. If you went only to see the visuals, it would be worth the price of admission. 

It's also surprisingly feminist. There is no inherent reason why Dr. Ryan Stone (played by Sandra Bullock) would have to be female. To make her so is a gutsy choice, considering the still-prevalent Hollywood notion that a woman can't anchor a box office success (despite what The Hunger Games suggested with its numbers). It is also an encouraging one; here is a film in which we are limited almost entirely to a single female "focalizer" character through whose point of view we observe the story's events. At times, director Alfonso Cuarón's camera even presents the viewer with shots directly from Stone's point-of-view: we see what she sees.

In other words, Bullock's Dr. Ryan Stone is a subject, not an object. Despite sharing the screen with George Clooney, God of Sex Appeal, she is not subjected to that problematic "male gaze" that objectifies women as primarily sex objects even when they're supposed to be intelligent, important characters. As a case in point: consider actress Alice Eve's Carol Marcus being displayed in her underwear for no good reason in Star Trek: Into Darkness. There are two scenes in which Stone is shown in skimpy clothes, but they don't come across as being there simply to show off Bullock's body. (Admittedly, "real" astronauts wear be-tubed long underwear and adult diapers under their spacesuits rather than tank tops and tiny gym shorts, so Stone's apparel is unrealistic, but I can forgive that if only for being spared the sight of Sandra Bullock in Depends.)

I was also genuinely surprised by Bullock in this movie. I've never had a problem with her as an actress, but I've also never thought of her as particularly talented; amiable, sure, but not terribly nuanced. My opinion of her has been completely changed with her performance here. Carrying a movie almost entirely on one's shoulders is something very few actresses are required to do, and Bullock pulls it off. She projects convincing vulnerability and heartbreak, but also steely determination and clear-headedness when it is called for. If she doesn't get an Oscar nomination for Gravity there's no justice in the world.

The word "jaw-dropping" is thrown around a lot; just this afternoon, I saw a sign for "jaw-dropping specials" on produce at the grocery store. I don't think that's appropriate, any more than it is generally so for the movies it's applied to (sorry, Transformers), but it is here. During several scenes my jaw literally hung agape, as I clutched my seat and squirmed and crossed my fingers that things would work. As I watched I was reminded of Ang Lee's Life of Pi; although the two films have very little else in common, I experienced the same sense of visual wonder in Life of Pi that I did in Gravity. I felt in both movies as though I were seeing things that I had never seen before, things that weren't of this world (as indeed, in Gravity they aren't). I have a feeling that images from this movie will stick with me for a long, long time.

Gravity is the only movie I can recall since Avatar -- a laughably inferior product -- in which the 3D seems integral to the film, and seeing it without it would lessen the effect. Cough up the extra money for a 3D ticket, Real3D if you can get it, and sit as close to the screen as possible. Don't check your phone (it's rude anyway). Don't look away. As one of the characters says, it'll be a hell of a ride.

These Are Not the Hammer: THOR 2: THE DARK WORLD

I'll be honest. Way back in 2011, when I heard there was a Thor movie coming out, I didn't expect to like it very much. Thor has always been kind of a dweeb in the (admittedly few) comic books I've read, and how could it possibly be interesting to watch a being who's essentially a thunder god crush some enemies? Wouldn't that be the shortest movie ever? 

After I saw it, I was pleasantly surprised. Granted, part of that was no doubt thanks to director Kenneth Branagh's ability to frame a scene beautifully:

Nice aesthetics, Branagh.

And Chris Hemsworth's surprisingly nuanced performance of what could've been a simple meathead role:

Just look at all that nuance.

And the production design's attention to presenting a world of suitably epic scale:

Really epic, am I right?

Okay, okay, I'm kidding. Um, mostly.

I liked a lot about Thor, much more than I expected to. My only major beef with the film was that they underused Natalie Portman's abilities and her character, Dr. Jane Foster. Fortunately, this time around that issue is addressed!

This was the gif you were looking for, admit it.

My apprehensions about its treatment of female characters aside, I was really excited to see Thor 2 because although Branagh is no longer at the helm, new director Alan Taylor has directed some of my very favorite episodes of Mad Men, including "The Hall of the Mountain King." He has a polished, sharp sense of visual style, and even though Mad Men isn't exactly full of gods throwing hammers (although MOUNTAIN KING, you guys) Taylor has also directed a fair number of excellent Game of Thrones episodes, which are much more in line with the Thor feel.

Taylor doesn't disappoint. The action feels suitably epic and is visually as stunning as in the first film -- perhaps even a little more so. An aerial chase scene through Asgard is particularly beautiful, although as with all things surrounding that realm, it feels a little unreal in the best way possible. The film's climax, which I will not give away here, makes use of the multiple realms of Yggdrasil to provide both disorienting action and a touch of humor. Although it runs a full two hours, the film is well-paced (better so than the first Thor, which did drag in places) and I didn't even check my watch once. Mostly because my watch is actually a cellphone because I kill batteries and I don't check my phone in theatres because that's rude, but just go with it as a metonym for my not being bored, okay?

There's actually a fair bit of humor here, which is appreciated; one of the problems I have with Man of Steel and Nolan's Batman trilogy is their persistently dour take on the world. That wouldn't work in a movie world where Earth is literally part of a big universe-tree helmed by attractive blonde people, and fortunately, the people behind the Thor franchise seem to understand this. The tone that Joss Whedon set in The Avengers continues here, with some very large-scale action and Epic Statements accompanied by slapstick moments and visual laughs. At one point in the film it almost becomes a buddy-cop flick starring Thor and Loki conspiring together, and this is my favorite sequence of the entire movie.

The chemistry between Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston is actually much more sparkling than that between Hemsworth and Natalie Portman (again, much like the first film). Of the two men, Tom Hiddleston is the superior actor, and his expressions are wonderfully nuanced to convey glee and outrage simultaneously. Watching him is delightful. Hemsworth and Hiddleston play off each other well, though; Thor is the embodiment of blonde earnestness and Loki always, visibly, has 20 schemes going in his head at once. Their scenes together, although not frequent enough for my tastes (like Loki, satisfaction isn't in my nature, I guess), are supremely enjoyable.

Of course, we're supposed to care about the Romance between Thor and Jane because this is a Love Story etc. etc. There are a few cute moments between Thor and Jane, but in general I'm still unconvinced about the two of them together. However, the filmmakers have done a great deal better this time around with Jane Foster's character. In the first film she really didn't do much other than run Thor over a few times and talk romantically over a rooftop fire. She had basically nothing to do with the film's central story or its climax.

I was worried after seeing the trailer that this would be yet another plot where the female character is a maiden-in-distress and serves only to catalyze the hero into action. It is and it isn't. A crucial part of the plot involves Jane in distress. However, Jane is also an important part of the film's save-the-world climax, and as much more than mere inspiration to the hero. Yet she's no superwoman; she needs the help of her friends and colleagues and her space-boyfriend. Too often being a "Strong Woman" in the movies means trusting no one and needing no one; having no empathy and just Punching all the Things. In Thor 2 Jane plays a critical role in saving the world, with the help of Darcy and the (batshit and often-pantsless) Erik Selvig, and her actions are perfectly in line with her character and her skill set as an astrophysicist.

Even Rene Russo's Queen Frigga is given a little badassery. We still don't have a Wonder Woman or a Black Widow movie adaptation yet, and we probably won't for awhile, but this type of flick is visibly getting closer to having fully realized female characters who are smart and capable, as well as occasionally a little in trouble with Epic Evils. Buffy would be proud.

To JURASSIC PARK, on its twentieth anniversary: A Feminist's Love Letter

As someone who talks a lot (I mean really, a lot) about movies in her daily life (I even find ways to teach them in my classes), the subject of "my favorite movie" is one I encounter fairly frequently. However, when I give the answer to that question to someone who hasn't talked to me about it before, their first response is usually surprise, then incredulity. "Really? That? Uh...why?"

You see, I'm going to let you in on a little secret: Jurassic Park is probably my favorite movie of all time. Because I'm earning my PhD in English literature, most people don't expect that; they expect my answer to be something literary, like The English Patient, or at least something classic, like Casablanca or something by Hitchcock. And I love those movies (okay, so not The English Patient), but when it comes to my cinematic equivalent of comfort food, it's Jurassic Park every time.

I usually explain my choice to my questioners by talking about its quality of filmmaking; after all, it and Jaws represent Spielberg doing what he does in top form. The special effects that still look miraculously good twenty years on. The careful visual composition of shots. The suspense. The velociraptors.


But it wasn't until very recently that I thought I'd try and give some more thought to why exactly this movie has such a hold on my imagination. I love a good creature feature, to be sure. In fact, I'll watch bad creature features (SHARKNADO!) just for the fun of watching animals eat people in ludicrous ways. But there's more to my deep and abiding love for Jurassic Park than that, and I think I've figured it out.

You see, Jurassic Park is really an excellent example of feminist filmmaking.

Okay, if you're still reading, let me explain. This is going to be pretty long, so maybe fetch a cup of tea. Or, if you don't feel like reading a multi-thousand-word essay on the feminist virtues of a dinosaur movie, go read something else. It won't hurt my feelings. But I think you should stay.

To begin with: the story itself. Michael Crichton isn't exactly the first name one thinks of when one thinks "feminist storyteller," I know. But the adaptation in Spielberg's film really is, and there's more than one reason for that.

The most obvious is the main theme, if you will, of the plot: arrogance kills. Okay, dinosaurs kill. But arrogance made the dinosaurs. Ian Malcolm explains it thus: "God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs." Ellie Sattler adds: "Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth."

Ian Malcolm, the rockstar-emulating mathematician, explains his objections to the park's project early on, and this is the film's first real foray into feminist thinking. While John Hammond and the "bloodsucking lawyer" Gennaro are giggling over how awesome they are and how much cash they'll rake in, Malcolm is deeply concerned with the authority Hammond and his scientists are attempting to wield over nature. This authority is unconsidered, required "no discipline to attain," and rests on assumptions of human control and superiority that are rightly called out later by Sattler as "illusion." These objections are actually very much in tune with ecofeminist thought, such as that expressed by Val Plumwood in her fantastic essay, "Being Prey," in which she meditates on her narrow escape from a crocodile attack and what the experience taught her about her relationship to the world. If you haven't read it already, go read it now. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Okay, now that you're back (and wasn't that wonderful?), you can probably see what I mean. Plumwood's main point, like many other ecofeminist philosophers, is that the patriarchal systems that separate "man" from the rest of nature are imaginary and harmful, both to us and to the other inhabitants of nature. Plumwood saw her experience as "a humbling and cautionary tale about our relationship with the earth, about the need to acknowledge our own animality and ecological vulnerability." We're animals; we're prey. Crocodiles attack us when we arrogantly venture into their territory, armored only in our own delusions of superiority, and we're the ones to blame for that. It's really the same for T-Rexes.

Malcolm's other point is, perhaps ironically given the amount of money Jurassic Park earned at the box office, that Hammond's use of scientific power is wrong because it's exploitative, based in capitalism rather than the quest for knowledge. Malcolm, Grant, and Sattler are academics, so it's not as though the film is anti-intellectual. Rather, Hammond's greed is the problem. Grant and Sattler are shown awestruck with delight when they first see the living dinosaurs; for them, this is scientific knowledge made manifest, but it's also just really cool. They work with what they do because they love it and want to understand it. Hammond does his work to take a power trip and rake in money. Crucially, he doesn't understand the extent of his own power: Malcolm points out that his scientists didn't even understand what they had really done, they just "patented it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now, bam, you want to sell it." Putting profit above people kills, just as many philosophers have said it does; it's just here, it kills you with dinosaurs.

If Jurassic Park had been made in 2013 instead of 1993, the black-leather-wearing, open-shirted Ian Malcolm would probably be the main character, saving everyone while looking hip and macho and cracking wise-ass jokes. But instead, he's very quickly injured, rescued (by Sattler) and holed up for the remainder of the film in a bunker, unable to take direct action. This sidelining of the figure audiences might expect to be the hero of an action-adventure is a fascinating move, because it allows for other characters to take center-stage, none of whom is more interesting to me as a feminist than Ellie Sattler.

A recent essay by Sophia McDougall (which you should also read, but not, like, right now) argues that "Strong Female Character" is often just a label for a female character who's shoddily written and glossed up with some sort of action detail. What I love about Ellie Sattler in this movie is that she's complex; she's not just an "SFC" for show. Sure, she's an action hero, athletic, able to kick some dino butt and get the power back on in the park. But she's introduced to us as an intellectual. The first shot of her we see is her skillfully excavating a dinosaur skeleton, and she's referred to as the "top mind" in her academic field, a status which is proven by her extensive knowledge of botany (demonstrated several times in the film). She's also tenacious, a problem-solver, willing to dig shoulder-deep into a heap of triceratops poop in order to get answers (a feat which leaves both Malcolm and Alan Grant hanging back and making "eww" faces). The film directly addresses her status as female action hero late in the film, when she decides that she needs to take action to get the park's power back on. Hammond hesitantly suggests that "But it really ought to be me going," and when Sattler asks him why, he stammers: "Because I'm a--- and you're a---" In reply, Sattler pulls a face and says, "Look, we can discuss sexism in survival situations when I get back," and then heads out to get the job done (which she does).

For a generic SFC, those would be the defining traits: kick-ass and smart. But this movie gives Sattler more, which is one of the things that helps make this movie the feminist classic I'm arguing it to be. In addition to her physical and mental prowess, Sattler is also emotional. She loves kids and thinks about having one of her own; she forms an emotional connection with Alex and Tim and helps defend them from the dinosaurs. At one point she breaks into tears thinking about Grant and the kids being out alone in the park. And this behavior, rather than being painted as something too unstable and "feminine" for the "real" heroes, is portrayed as essential. It's what's missing in Hammond's calculations, and it's why his park fails. Hammond is shown to manipulate people as well as nature in his attempts to play god; he rushes the park into operation despite knowing that it has safety issues; he underpays his employees in his quest for profit. He believes that he can rebuild Jurassic Park better, stronger, faster; he believes he'll have control again, and "next time, it'll be flawless." Except that perfection of authority isn't true of humans, and Sattler knows that: "You never have control, that's the illusion! I was overwhelmed by the power of this place, but I didn't have enough respect for that power and it's out now." Much like Malcolm, Sattler understands the importance of understanding that humans are only a part of nature, and that our attempts to assert unquestioned dominance over it are doomed to harm and to fail. Yet this understanding doesn't make her cold or distant; she is shown to deeply and emotionally value her relationships with other people.

This emotional comfort forms a major part of the other principal character's story arc: Alan Grant has to learn to be okay with kids, and specifically, the emotional connection they require of him. In a memorable scene early in the film, Grant is shown almost literally eviscerating a child not suitably impressed by a velociraptor skeleton, sarcastically snipping at him with both words and a fossilized raptor claw. He's awkward and distant around pretty much everyone but Sattler, trying to avoid any kind of connection with young Tim, who idolizes him, and preteen Alex, who appears to develop a rapid crush on him. The story forces him to take on the role of a father/protector to these two, but rather than making Grant more stereotypically "masculine" (read: punching everything), this arc requires him to get more in touch with his feelings. In addition to physically protecting them, he serves as emotional comforter to the kids, assuring them he'll watch over them and letting them snuggle against him to sleep. He has to learn to encourage them to keep going. In a subtle touch, he's shown throwing away his fossilized raptor claw as the children lean on him after a close escape; rather than distancing himself from others, he's learning to allow intimacy, and this is proposed in the film as positive growth for his character. Both he and Sattler are allowed a balance between physical action and emotional stability that just isn't present in most characters (of either sex, really) in movies today, and that balance is, I'd argue, very feminist.

Tellingly, characters who fare badly in the movie lack this balance. The slimy lawyer Gennaro chooses to save his own skin rather than staying to help the others and ends up as T-Rex chow. Programmer Dennis Nedry, feeling underappreciated by Hammond's cheapness, attempts to steal the power of the park for himself and fails to adequately respect the wildlife he's confronted with; he ends up as a dilophosaurus's chew-toy. Even Robert Muldoon, probably the film's most literal representation of the Action Hero (those shorts, am I right?), winds up hoist with his own petard when he overestimates his superiority to his prey and is bested and eaten by a group of velociraptors (teamwork for the win!). The only reason Hammond survives is because he has a group of people who take care of him and he appears at the end to have learned his lesson.

"Okay," I hear you saying, "but what about the fact that all the dinosaurs are female? Doesn't that create a psychological fear of the feminine as all-devouring force?" And I answer, of course it does. There's more than one way to read a dino. But even this can also be read as challenging the patriarchy, because it defies human attempts to assert an artificial control over forces that are larger than ourselves, a major concern of ecofeminism. As Malcolm puts it, "Life finds a way." Despite Hammond and Wu's best attempts at playing god, they can't ultimately outsmart or control nature, no matter how much money and power they throw at it. The island's very instability -- dinos swapping sexes, for example -- messes with that comfortable binary dichotomy discussed by Plumwood and others. It also disrupts our notions of sex and gender: if girl dinosaurs can spontaneously become boy dinosaurs, why should gender roles of humans be any more fixed?

Val Plumwood concludes her essay (which, seriously, if you didn't read it, go do that now) by reflecting on the general human unwillingness to recognize our vulnerability: "In my work as a philosopher, I see more and more reason to stress our failure to perceive this vulnerability, to realize how misguided we are to view ourselves as masters of a tamed and malleable nature." Weird though it may sound, Jurassic Park encourages the same sort of reflection, at least for me. Unlike the book, the film doesn't end with the humans reasserting control over the created ecosystem (trust me, there's a lot of nonsense with raptors and weapons), but leaving it to balance itself. The final shot of the film is Grant looking out the window of his helicopter and smiling thoughtfully at a flock of birds moving gracefully over the water, emphasizing not the monstrosity of nature but its beauty and its interconnectedness. After all, as Grant told that scared kid at the beginning, some dinosaurs evolved into birds, "So, you know, try to show a little respect."

Or, perhaps, a lot.

_____________
This post is dedicated to Brandie Ashe, probably the only person in the world who understands the true extent of my affection for this movie. You can check out her work at True Classics.

"Elysium," or, Matt Damon Becomes a Thumb Drive

When I first saw the trailer for Elysium, the new film by Neill Blomkamp, the writer/director of District 9 (a movie I very much enjoyed), I was intrigued. I'll watch pretty much anything with Matt Damon, but this looked particularly promising, a sort of sci-fi take on his Bourne escapades: Matt Damon, Robot-Man, Punches All the Things. What wouldn't be awesome about that?

Spoilers abound after the break...

At Least It's Not "X-Men Origins": "The Wolverine"

To say that I was excited about The Wolverine would be a bit of an understatement. Wolverine has been my favorite of the X-Men since I was first introduced to them, and I lovelovelove Hugh Jackman.

So I went into this film intentionally knowing very little about the premise and having high hopes. After all, after the Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad X-Men Origins: Wolverine, anything had to be better. And "Wolverine becomes a ninja" seemed like a very fun idea indeed.

The good news: it's way, way better than Origins: Wolverine. The bad news: it could have been way, way better.

Even the epic stench of Wolverine could not entirely obscure the pleasure of watching Hugh Jackman inhabiting that character onscreen, and so it is here. The movie looks great, and Jackman looks great.

Yet this pleasure is not unalloyed. The film's central premise -- mentioned in the trailer, so I'm not spoiling anything -- is to ask what would happen if Logan weren't The Wolverine anymore. What happens if someone who's been essentially a god for decades finally knows what it's like to not heal from a bullet wound? Considering what might happen when a power we have come to take for granted is taken from us is an idea that comes up quite a lot in comic book stories; that may be one of the reasons I find them fascinating. Americans have always had too much of a tendency to consider ourselves invincible.

Unfortunately, there really isn't enough time devoted to exploring the psychological effects of events on Logan's character, which is a shame because Jackman has increasingly convinced me over the years that he's an actor capable of nuance and power (I hate to admit it, because I don't enjoy musicals, but he really was stunning in Les Miserables), and Mangold has produced fine, subtle character scenes before. Two things seem to stand in the way of more character development: the requisite love-interest plotline and the increasingly common overwhelming of audiences with ALL THE PUNCHING.

The love-plot is what irks me most. There are two female main characters here, which is promising for a Comic Book Movie (a genre sorely lacking in strong female leads). One of them, the sword-wielding Yukio, eschews romance in favor of asskicking, which is refreshing, and her camaraderie with Logan is fun to watch. However, the film tries to shoe-horn in a relationship between Logan and Mariko, a corporate tycoon's daughter, with no reason given other than that they went through a traumatic few days together. Now, Jackman is a beautiful man, so I can kinda understand sleeping with him almost immediately...

Because seriously with those abs.

...but in order for a relationship to hold the kind of emotional weight that is asked of it later, there needs to be more than some stress-induced sexual attraction, and there isn't. Mariko is relegated to "damsel in distress" and Logan to "passionate rescuer" almost by rote. If the film had suggested a connection between Logan's torturing guilt over killing Jean Grey and his desperation not to "let" another woman die, I would have been pleased, but it doesn't aim that high. I wish it had.

The film's Japanese setting is another promising aspect that seems sorely underemployed. Logan/Wolverine is about as far from Japanese cultural ideals of politeness, indirectness, and respect as someone can get, and that sharp juxtaposition could have been very interesting. Yet other than a few scenes played for humor -- Logan finds out what the interior of a Japanese "couple's hotel" looks like, Logan is scolded for his ominous use of chopsticks -- the Japanese element of the story seems largely window-dressing rather than integral to the story. This is problematic for many reasons; the use of "other" cultures as exotic flavoring smacks uncomfortably of unthinking Western cultural imperialism. And in sheer story terms, it's an opportunity to explore a complicated and, in many ways to Western minds, peculiar culture that goes too often undeveloped.

The trend in comic book adaptations is to go for gritty, dark, psychologically incisive, and I like that. It's a particularly fitting feel for Wolverine, who has always been a little rough around the edges. Captain America he ain't. 3:10 to Yuma director James Mangold brings dark grittiness to The Wolverine, and initially, the movie feels a lot like a well-directed suspense thriller: someone is trying to kill someone else, and our hero must figure out why while protecting his charge. Information is fed out very slowly here, revealing only a little bit of the story at a time, which put me in mind of the best Batman stories, where he too plays detective. I was engaged with finding out what was happening and who was behind it, and things weren't telegraphed too overtly.The film's denouement, though, descends into the maelstrom of punching that has come to mark CBMs of late (I'm looking at you, Man of Steel), and sort of falls apart. What had been a lack of blatantly telegraphing plot points becomes a lack of coherence. The action still satisfies, and one scene involving a host of ninjas straining to keep Wolverine in check is really beautiful visually, even though it's pretty painful-looking. Yet big reveals are made that don't make a lot of sense (giant adamantium samurai robot?!), motives of fairly significant characters (most importantly, the Viper) remain barely hinted at, and why this really needed to be set in Japan remains a bit of a mystery.

All this isn't to say that it's not enjoyable. If this review seems to focus mostly on missed opportunities, it's because there is a great deal of visible potential here. Some scenes are quite beautiful, and there are some lovely touches of foreshadowing. The pacing often works well, and the action scenes are visceral, swift, and engaging. And I will absolutely pay money to watch Jackman be Wolverine whenever I get the chance. One could do far worse with a comic book movie. It's just that, like a slow-burn TV romance, the build-up here is better than the payoff.

PS - AT ALL COSTS STAY FOR THE POST-CREDITS SCENE.

Of Men and Monsters: "Pacific Rim"

Before we get even the title card, Pacific Rim has given us a languages lesson ("Kaiju"=Japanese for "monster," "Jaeger"=German for "hunter"), a short history of the kaiju invasion and the jaeger (aka "giant f***ing robot") project, and the requisite angsty backstory for its hero. This is accomplished in the first five minutes. Guillermo Del Toro knows what this movie needs to deliver.

What follows is increasingly a rarity: a movie that's over two hours long but doesn't feel like it. Perhaps it is because we are given a nerdy "Kaiju groupie" scientist (alien biologist?) as an audience surrogate, who is fascinated by these creatures and excited to learn more about them even as he is terrified and repelled by them. Perhaps it is because this character's enthusiasm reflects Del Toro's own clear pleasure in playing with these fantastical creatures. Perhaps it is the magnificently handsome Idris Elba. Really, it could be all of those.

It could also be because, although it is after all a movie about giant sea monsters punching giant robots, there is much that is new and even unexpected here, and infused throughout it all is a sense of awe and delight that creature features and action blockbusters in general just don't have that often. Jurassic Park has it, and oddly I was reminded of that film as I was watching this one. I have seen Jurassic Park more times than I can count, and I still enjoy it. The main reason for that, and why I think the first movie is a classic while the other two are not, is that Spielberg does an amazing job there of capturing the awe of what it must be like to see these huge, otherworldly creatures in our world, where they do not belong and yet where they are far more powerful than we are. That film also takes delight in its visuals, which Pacific Rim similarly revels in. Everything in this movie is big, shiny, and beautiful.

Del Toro has always excelled at imagining the fantastic, and this movie is no exception. The monsters are disgusting but oddly beautiful too, phosphorescing lines of electric blue in the darkness. The camera conveys a sense of scale in a way that films like the Transformers series don't: these bastards are huge. And most importantly, when kaiju and jaeger meet, the physics feel right; several times I felt myself flinch when one or the other landed a blow. This is most important in a creature feature/punching picture (if I may coin a useful term): if I can't tell where one fist ends and the other begins, all the punching in the world will leave me unimpressed. That Del Toro has carefully considered the physics of these creatures is even given a winking acknowledgement with a Newton's Cradle sight gag, and really, what more could you want from a movie?

I also very much appreciated the orchestration of the fighting scenes. Each jaeger is operated by a two-person team (or, in one case, a three-person team), and each has a distinct combat style. Even better, the fighting is constantly adapting, right along with the kaiju themselves, so that each engagement offers something new to the viewer, including a few tricks I did not expect. The kaiju are crafty creatures.

Human-wise, there is nothing particularly deep here, although each main character is given enough of a story to give the viewer a sense of their motivations, and that is really all I need from a movie whose primary function is to smash things for my pleasure. The protagonist, Raleigh (whom Sons of Anarchy fans will recognize as being played by Charlie Hunnam), experiences trauma early on, must be brought back to the fold by an older mentor (played with gravitas and sympathy by Elba), is emotional and a bit reckless, yadda yadda yadda -- standard, but functional. His co-pilot, a Japanese woman named Mako, has secrets and emotional recklessness of her own, but also considerable strength. In a strange way, the story's central conceit -- that in order to handle the "neural load" of operating a jaeger, two pilots must undergo a "neural handshake," essentially a mind-meld in which you enter the other's thoughts and memories -- makes the inevitable love-interest element between the two more plausible: how better to fall in love at first sight than to have instant access to the other's thoughts and feelings?

It is also a delight to watch a city other than New York or D.C. be destroyed onscreen. Judging by most action flicks, in which inevitably either the Statue of Liberty or the White House topples and/or explodes, one would think those two were the only cities in the world. By shifting the focus to the Pacific Rim, the crew are also made more multicultural: in addition to the requisite white men, we begin with a Russian team, a team of three Chinese triplets, a Black English commander, and an ambitious and talented Japanese woman. Unfortunately, the cast gets whittled down by the monsters until it is once again mostly white guys, which is disappointing, particularly given the potential of the setting's geopolitics.

The gender politics are also still disappointing in ways: both the scientist and the mathematician, key figures in the plot, are male, as are all but one other of the jaeger pilots. Nevertheless, it was refreshing to see a woman in an action movie be both badass and keep all of her clothes on. Indeed, Del Toro's focus, as Zack Snyder's was with Henry Cavill's body in Man of Steel, is far more on the sexualized body of Charlie Hunnam, who is gratuitously shirtless in more than one scene. Chalk one up for the girls.

Most of all, this movie is fun. It is made by a director who clearly loves movies and has made one that he would wish to see. It is bombastic and extravagant and nerdy and delightful and keenly aware of its goals. It has a sense of childlike wonder in what it shows you: "Isn't this cool?" it asks. And, if you're like me, the answer is definitely yes.

And then it punches that cool thing in the face, and that's fun too.

Much Ado About Nothing

"Timeless" is a word people like to throw around when speaking of Shakespeare. Just today, a preview for Carlo Carlei's absurdly straightforward-looking adaptation of Romeo and Juliet tossed the word to me as I waited for Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing to start. But while teenagers still swoon over the misfortunes of Juliet and her Romeo, who are, like, SOULMATES 4EVAH, I was reminded while watching Whedon's film that maybe not all of Shakespeare's plays age so well.

Case in point: Much Ado About Nothing. I am predisposed to love Whedon's work: I am a cult follower of "Firefly," and while it took me awhile to jump on the Buffy bandwagon (on which I am now firmly lodged), I enjoy a good TNT "Angel" marathon. I've seen The Avengers probably a dozen times since last year. I always cry at a certain point in Serenity. Yet this movie didn't quite work for me, and I think it's really Shakespeare's fault.

Adapting Shakespeare into modern settings isn't something I'm inherently opposed to. Unlike some drama purists, I think that putting Shakespeare into anachronistic settings can actually intelligently comment on or enhance the plays' themes: witness Baz Luhrmann's angsty 90s-grunge Romeo + Juliet, which so perfectly captures the irrationality of teenagers in love, or Richard Loncraine's delicious alternative-1930s-England spin on Richard III. 

The problem with Much Ado About Nothing is this: like many Early Modern plays, the central crisis revolves around a woman's virginity and whether or not it's intact. (The title itself gives this away, though not so much to modern audiences; "nothing" was slang for a woman's naughty bits back in the day.) Say what you will about Claudio perceiving the real crime against him as adultery or betrayal or whatever, his lines at the disastrous wedding make explicitly, painfully clear that it's really Hero's lost "maidhood" he's upset over, as do Hero's repeated cries of "I'm TOTALLY A VIRGIN YOU GUYS WTF!" This emphasis on sex as irrevocably staining just doesn't update well to a modern setting, particularly when Whedon also makes the understandable but rather unusual adaptational choice of showing Benedick and Beatrice as former lovers. I rather wonder if Whedon's adaptation couldn't have gone farther and eliminated or altered the lines regarding all the is-Hero-a-virgin business; thinking you've seen your fiancee getting it on with a random stranger in her room the night before your wedding is upsetting enough on its own without worrying about her "maidhood," no?

The play's emphasis on Hero's virginity, Claudio's indignant (and, let's be honest, flat-out dickish) response to what he thinks he's seen, and the weird and creepy ending in which Leonato essentially tricks Claudio into his own happiness by playing Bride Swap ("Hey, I have this other niece who looks just like Hero, just marry her and we're cool"), have always left me unsettled, but they stood out in starker contrast here than they have in other adaptations I've seen. For example, Kenneth Branagh's adaptation, set vaguely in the 19th century, doesn't jar so much with this emphasis on chastity because a) we all kind of think that those 19th-century people were creeps about sex anyway, and b) Italian sunshine and beautiful blonde people make us happy and indulgent.

The other reason I think the virginity plot works so badly in Whedon's film is that its visual style often reminds me of the romantic comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, especially the ones in which Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy go head-to-head in a battle of wits. The film's black-and-white shots, composition homages to classic directors (there's mirror shots and shadows aplenty), and emphasis on screwball physical comedy all link it strongly to that early romcom tradition, which makes sense: the squabbling-but-totally-in-love Benedick and Beatrice are obvious precursors to the Hepburn/Tracy tradition. But those movies were often well ahead of their times in terms of sexual/gender politics, while the virginity emphasis here makes the whole thing seem weirdly regressive. These people appear to be living in California in 2013 -- Leonato & co. learn that Don John has been recaptured via smartphone -- but their sexual mores, at least regarding poor Hero, could just as easily be 1613, and it's terribly disconcerting.

The film is not without its pleasures, however. A few players are fairly weak (poor Hero!), but most of the cast are competent, and some are excellent. Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson from The Avengers) is funny and a little fumbling as Leonato, and Sean Maher (Firefly!!) is perfect as the sullen and scheming Don John. Nathan Fillion's Dogberry is delightfully played as a comically bumbling CSI-type: his sunglasses go on and off as he makes pronouncements that seem very important to him, even though nobody else can make sense of them.

Okay, this one's pretty clear.

The film rests fairly squarely on its two leads, however, and they don't disappoint. I do wonder if the film was done chronologically, because Amy Acker's Beatrice begins as a little bit forced and stilted, but by twenty minutes or so into the film she's got both the comedy and the pent-up anger of Beatrice down. Alexis Denisof is a solid Benedick, a modern womanizer who nevertheless can't resist the woman he really loves, and both actors have some great physical comedy bits, particularly in the scenes where they overhear others setting them up to believe each other infatuated. The actors have a warm, believable chemistry between them, although I admit I don't think anyone will ever quite match up to the Emma Thompson/Kenneth Branagh powerhouse of the 1993 film.

Overall, Whedon's Much Ado wasn't quite what I had hoped it would be, but I can understand why it couldn't be. Unlike "timeless" themes like Romeo and Juliet's young love or Hamlet's existential angst, an emphasis on a woman's virginity as dealbreaker just doesn't translate well to 21st-century America. Nevertheless, it is refreshing to see a clever, carefully crafted movie in theatres that doesn't involve $400 million dollars' worth of CGI or marquee megastars, and nerds like myself will enjoy the parade of Whedon's perennial stable of actors. If the 1993 Branagh film is a potent glass of sweet Italian wine, Whedon's is a jazzy modern cocktail -- well-made but with an edge of bitter.

And let's not forget to specify, when time and place shall assert, that Dogberry is an ass. It's important to him.

Of Patience and Plato: Man of Steel

It's been a long time since I sat down and wrote about a movie for myself, rather than for an essay or journal article. It's time. So here's this.
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The thing about adolescence is that it's messy. It's uncomfortable. We do really dumb stuff when we're teenagers, partly because we don't know any better and partly because we're unsure of our place in the world and are willing to try just about anything to figure it out.

That awkward struggle, and its transposition onto the Superman story here, is the most interesting thing about Zack Snyder's Man of Steel. Snyder and his cast, particularly Henry Cavill, do excellent work in the first hour establishing just how hard it is for Clark Kent to find a place where he belongs. And how could he? He's an alien from a destroyed planet who crash-landed in Kansas, which is equally weird in its own Midwestern way. It's hard enough growing up when you don't have X-ray vision. And so soulful-eyed, bearded(!) Clark wanders from place to place, a hard worker, as someone remarks to Lois Lane, but unable to earn respect; he's always going to be the "greenhorn," the newbie who just doesn't quite seem "right." The fact that Clark can also impale a semi onto telephone poles doesn't change the fact that people don't like him, don't trust him, can't understand him. What better metaphor than this for the angst of becoming an adult?

The film's emphasis on patience suggests its interest in the necessary pain of transformation. Jonathan Kent (shockingly well-acted by Kevin Costner) is shown repeatedly cautioning Clark on the necessity of waiting, of learning, of developing. I don't think it's just coincidence that in one childhood flashback a young Clark is shown clutching a copy of Plato's Republic: exactly how does a kid who can lift a schoolbus and crush a steel fencepost become a just man? Does it matter if you're a good person if nobody can see it, or--even worse--everyone thinks you're unjust? And would we really be just to others if we weren't just a bit afraid of them?

The more I think about it, the more I think the film tackles these questions. Not always deftly, but they're there. Plato's answer, and Jonathan Kent's, is that of course justice matters. Hence the necessity of patience. As Jonathan explains at one point, Clark's moral character could very well change the world, for better or for worse. But like the philosopher who climbs out of the cave, he's going to be blind for a little while before he adjusts to the sun. (It's also no coincidence that in the film Superman literally climbs out of a cave into the sun.)

The Republic and this problem of justice also suggest a way to read the wanton destruction of the film's second half. Socrates famously claims in Book 1 of the Republic that a just man would never do harm to another person; this is also a premise on which the Superman mythos has been constructed, and the film's deviation from that in its final showdown between Superman and Zod has outraged many people. But Socrates also goes on to explain that this idea's too simple; justice doesn't work that way in real places. It might not even be possible, not even with a philosopher-king. And if it were, it would mean severe restrictions on life and freedom: limited education, planned breeding, pre-assigned roles in society---the very things that, at least according to Jor-El, harmed and eventually destroyed Krypton.

So, as there is in the Republic, there is in Man of Steel a difficult dilemma: is justice about knowing instinctively what is right for people and imposing that, regardless of consequences? Or is it about allowing the freedom to fail? And how can a philosopher-king rule rightly when he's still blinded by the sun?

Much of the film's destruction is caused by knee-jerk reactions: the US military burns down half of Smallville because they're instinctively reacting to a violent threat with violence. And the threat is in Smallville because Superman saw Zod threaten his mother and, lost in his rage, flies him right downtown. These are hot-headed testosterone-fueled moves, not the patient, cautious, measured action Jonathan Kent tried so hard to encourage in his son. And they have drastic results: I saw people still standing in the IHOP after Superman and Faora fly through, but I'm pretty sure everyone at that Smallville gas station was incinerated. These are not positive consequences, and although the film's focus on action shots often flies right by them, it's hard for me not to see them as the failure -- by the military, by the Kryptonians, by Superman -- of that instantaneous reaction to violence with more violence.

The destruction that isn't the result of knee-jerk violence is still marked by a lack of patience: the reason Zod refuses to share Earth with humans -- other than that Zod is an off-his-rocker asshat -- is because it would take too long for the Kryptonians to adapt to Earth's current atmosphere. And it would hurt. Despite his talk of doing everything for the greater good of his people, Zod is unwilling to sacrifice. Unwilling to be patient.

The problem is that Superman, for a lot of the last half of the movie, is too. The film collapses into a maelstrom of Boys Punching All the Things; no forethought, no caution, just fists. It's upsetting when Superman finally breaks Zod's neck, but it's also kind of his own fault he's in the situation to begin with: if he'd had the patience to think before punching, he might not have dragged Zod into Grand Central Station, full of people -- an action quite similar to his earlier knee-jerk attack leading Zod right into downtown Smallville, which clearly had problematic consequences. Superman will have to think about that action and its ramifications, and if Man of Steel 2 addresses these (as Snyder has hinted in interviews it will), I think it might just work.

And here's where I think the film's initial emphasis on a metaphorical form of adolescence -- of not fitting in, of not knowing what to do, of trying to figure out one's place and role in the world -- and that strange little nod to Plato come in handy in understanding how the film ends up where it does. Growing up is a shitty business. It's hard and messy and feels like it takes forever, and adolescents are notoriously bad at thinking before they act. It's easier to stay in the cave and live with familiar shadows. If you leave the cave, you risk being blinded by the sun, by the force of the new knowledge and power and responsibilities that confront you but you haven't yet assimilated. It takes a long time to attain understanding. And while you're blinded, there's a possibility that even as a good person you will do some really dumb things. Possibly even some really terrible things.

But there is also the possibility that past that there is growth. Plato says that it's the philosopher's burden to re-enter the cave and educate others about his experiences, to encourage the same growth in others that he has fought so hard for himself. To foster the achievement of good, even when it hurts first, even when it takes a long time. To provide hope. And, if you believe Superman, that's what that symbol on his chest represents.

Although it is definitely also an "S."

Whatever, Superman.