M. Night Shmyalan had his cake, ate it, and threw it up all over the Avatar: The Last Airbender fan base.
The discussion is long over, (after wasting ninety minutes watching this monstrosity who’d want to keep talking about it?), but I’m not over it. Let’s move past the inert plot, and this is simple as the plot was so inert it’s difficult to remember what happened between Aang breaking out of the ice and Aang scaring off the Fire Nation with a big scary wave. Let’s forget the horrible casting, and not the token white kids in the clearly Inuit tribe but the fact that every actor was either horribly miscast or horrible.*
*The guy playing Sokka, famous for being part of the sullen Cullen clan in the Twilight movies, didn’t smile once. This is Sokka, the character responsible for every bad, nay every brilliantly bad pun, failed rescue attempt turned hillarious bit of slap stick, butt of all the best jokes and you cast a kid who can’t smile without risking his entire angsty fanbase!
Finally, let’s set aside the complete lack of character development and pretend it’s convincing when characters become best of friends or fall in love because the segue in the constant voice over narration tell us they do.
Insta-true love, just add earnest voice over
Based on his earlier films, these are things I expected when I heard M. Night was writing and directing the live action version of one the best television series’ of all time. The Last Airbender was never going to be as epic as say the Lord of the Rings trilogy or even as mildly distracting as the first two Christopher Columbus-helmed Harry Potter films. But at the very least, I was hoping that M. Night would follow the example set by Tolkein and Rowling camps and realize his job was to do the source material justice as best he could. But no. M. Night took it upon himself to “improve” upon the original series. (more…)
In Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, the Red Queen’s head was beautifully bulbous, Alice’s size and dress fluctuations were incredibly fun, and the tea party with its flying flatware was mad indeed. But did the movie have to be about a dragon and a sword? There are many great stories about the child who must become the hero capable of slaying the ultimate evil, but Alice’s tale never struck me as one of them.
When Alice arrives in Wonderland, she’s shown a scroll that predicts she will slay the Jabberwocky with the Vorpal Sword on Frabjous day and free all of Wonderland’s anthropomorphic creatures from the tyranny of the Red Queen. This is a world known and celebrated for its nonsense and absurdity, but this incredibly linear, rigid plot device makes all the really great whimsical story elements feel like dead weight. What does a tea party with the Hare, Hatter, and Dormouse matter if Alice is no closer to the Vorpal Sword?
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“Would you like the cancer?”
“What?”
“Would you like the can, sir?”
There were so many things that I enjoyed about this film. The cast was amazing, particularly Anna Kendrick as Natalie Keener. She was brilliant in the largely ignored Rocket Science – which if you haven’t seen it, go hunt it down right now – and it’s awesome seeing her in such a big film. I wish we’d seen even more of Ryan’s older sister Kara, played by Amy Morton who was breathtaking on stage in Tracy Lett’s August: Osage County. And I loved how everything looked and felt like airports and hotels but the most pristine, comfortable, beautifully designed airports and hotels you’ve ever seen.
Beyond the cast and the cinematography, there’s the story, and though I loved many of the scenes, most of dialogue, and certain twists in the narrative, I don’t know that I liked the story. I had trouble putting my finger on it until I stumbled upon this article on /Film.
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When I first heard about this movie, I was so pissed because the title completely mislead me. I thought it was referring to a live action version of Avatar: The Last Airbender, one of my favorite television series’ of all time. And sure that movie is coming out, but literally every time I heard about this movie, it was like being lied to again and again.
Then I wanted to hate this movie for that stupid cross campaign they did with Coke that aired before every movie all summer. It was so cheesy and predicated on the idea that their are fanboys out there drinking soda who were already so excited about a movie that was shooting arrows at them from their computer screens.
Finally, I wanted to hate it because for the first two weeks it was in theaters everyone who saw it told me, it’s so pretty that the fact that the story was predictable and basically a retelling of Pocahontas, Fern Gully, and Dances with Wolves didn’t really matter.
But I saw it. I even paid the extra three bucks for 3D. And I liked it. Really liked it. It was a movie movie and it totally sucked me in. The two hour and forty minute running time that I had scoffed at flew by. Sure there were some wince-inducing lines and obvious plot twists, but I didn’t just ignore them because the film was so pretty. I let them go because the whole thing was so sincere. Every character believed everything they were saying and doing so intensely. There was no subtext because this was melodrama at its absolute best. And that was awesome.
Then James Cameron won the Golden Globe for Best Director. I’m not saying he didn’t deserve it, because creating an entire world was a huge achievement. (Side note: The CGI was jaw dropping, but how did they get Sam Worthington’s legs to look atrophied? That was crazy!) So kudos, Mr. Cameron. Then Avatar won the Golden Globe for Best Picture, and I found myself writing a post. This movie is going to win so many awards for all the things it did right, mainly the effects, the score, those colors! But I refuse to believe that if something is pretty enough, the strength of the narrative doesn’t matter. Film may be a visual medium, but it’s visual medium through which we tell stories.
So here are five things that James Cameron could have done differently to make the story worthy of the breathtaking Pandora. (more…)
Go see it. Now. Turn off your computer. Get in your car or a cab or on the subway, and get you and your loved ones to the nearest screening. Unless you’re reading this on your iPhone or Blackberry inside the theater waiting for the movie to start, you are doing something wrong. That is all.
I finally saw this movie just before it left theaters in Phoenix, AZ. It never came to the tiny Eastern Canadian berg where I used to reside, and the weekend it opened everywhere else, the one theater in town was still showing All About Steve. I kid you not. Before going into the movie itself, full disclosure. I liked Whip It before I saw it simply because it was a movie clearly marketed towards women that wasn’t about getting married, finding a man, or proving that women who’ve gone through menopause still want to have sex, ie. nearly every movie Diane Keaton has starred in for the last five years. For no other reason, I wanted to give this film my money, and I wish that more people had done the same because it’s sad that movies like this are few and far between. Moving on.
Once we were introduced to the all the great characters in this movie, I was hooked. It was just fun and smart enough, that the clumsier moments were easy to ignore. Kristin Wiig was brilliant as the roller derbying single mom, and even when she said lines like, “Be your own hero,” she felt absolutely one hundred percent genuine. The jean cut off wearing coach named Razor was another favorite. His sheer frustration with the stoners and girls just out to have a good time who ignored him and his game changing plays was one of the funniest parts of the film. It seemed like Ellen Page was trying very hard not to play Juno, but I found her character endearing anyway, and she and Alia Shawkat were great as loner best friends (oxymoron?) who worked part time at the Oink Joint. Jimmy Fallon’s character, the announcer at the roller derby rink, however, is the source of the one the most awkward and forced segments of the movie. (more…)
I saw the trailer for this on a movie site nearly a year ago, and I’ve been looking forward to watching it ever since. Beyond Zach Galifianakis’ character George Washington Winsterhammerman struggling to tear apart a roll of paper towels and dreaming of being George Washington, I didn’t know what to expect.
The film is set in a near, dystopian future where the the masses work for the Jeffers Corporation, everyone greets each other with a Jeffer’s salute (pictured above), and people everywhere are exploding. Literally.
The entire time I was watching it, I couldn’t help but compare it to Brazil and Stranger Than Fiction. Sam Lowry in the former also has strange, liberating dreams while living and working in a very bureaucratic society, and Harold Crick in the latter also has to reexamine his empty, meaningless life when he learns of his imminent death. While I enjoyed Visioneers and the scene with the roll of paper towels, I wish it had been more like either the more fantastical Brazil or the more character driven Stranger than Fiction. (more…)
The whispered conversation I had in the third row of the movie theater (the place was that packed) while getting sour stomach on peanut M&Ms and super salty popcorn. Oh, and two large root beers.
Me: I want to do that. (Cook every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking.)
J: No you don’t.
Me: Yes I do! I want to cook like that!
J: You don’t have time.
Me: I’ll skip the beef jellos!
After seeing Julie & Julia , I’m anxious to cook, to write, to find something to dooooo. Meryl Streep made me love Julia Child, need to debone a duck, and hanker to murder lobsters. Having scavenged the internet for clips of Julia’s show, I wonder just how many people have fallen in love with her joie de vivre. I don’t think Meryl Streep improved on that woman’s wonderful persona one bit. She simply embodied it perfectly.
Many people have written that the Julie Powell portion of the movie was the film’s weaker half. Though I agree, because I don’t know who could have competed with Julia Child, I think the Julie parts of the script were almost there. (more…)
Zach Galifianakis had me at Out Cold. I will sit through any movie if this man graces the screen at some point. (And if I can’t find a way to see Visioneers soon, I may explode.) None of this to say that The Hangover was a terrible movie where I waited for Galifianakis’s lines. It was definitely entertaining, and only mostly because of Galifianakis, but it wasn’t exactly the movie I thought I was going to see. That’s the effeminate Chinese gangster’s fault. (more…)
The relationship between Benjamin and Daisy, that was the heart and soul of the movie, and yet, I don’t know why they were in love. I don’t know what kept them apart or together. And for the most part, Benjamin’s peculiar chronology didn’t seem to be a factor.
Here’s how their relationship could have been a bit more visceral and specific to them and them alone (more…)
