Category Archives: Review

Review: Blue Valentine

One would suspect that all a romance needs to do to succeed is give you two characters who are likable, giving the audience a reason to care about them so that, in the end, the audience’s interest lies in seeing them come together and decide they were meant for each other, or something as gushy as all that. Most romances can’t even accomplish this, and, unfortunately, many of the ones that can aren’t capable of taking those characters and moving us from sympathy for them into empathy. This is what truly moves romance beyond good and into the realm of greatness, and this is what Blue Valentine has in anguished, blood-and-dirt-covered spades. Because of this, the two central characters and the problems they face ache with life-blood, and the movie is a powerful, effective and affecting, if profoundly intense to watch, experience. Continue reading →

Review: Godzilla

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Edited

If Godzilla is primarily a test of filmmaking prowess, it proves Gareth Edwards’ big budget credentials. Especially in its first and final quarters, the film borders on awe-inspiring as a work of visual and aural construction. Edwards retains the essence of the project which got him the job here, Monsters. Godzilla is a slow-burn affair – Edwards knows how to tease. We witness Godzilla in glimpses here and there for most of the film, only for Edwards to let loose with aplomb during the final 30 minutes. It avoids monster overkill by presenting the titular character and his opponents through human eyes throughout. Edwards uses POV shots and shoots images through various obscuring mirrors to reflect humanity’s dangers back upon itself. He ruthlessly shoots from low angles, his quite literally subjective camera tilted upward to capture the mass of destruction from the eyes of his puny characters. Above all, this is the Godzilla film about the big man as he exists as a force of nature, a chaotic being unable to be approached by mankind. He’s an oppressive fact, whether present or not, and Edwards absolutely nails the horror-infused imagery of the film as he moves away from violence and destruction as exciting and toward violence and destruction as fire-and-brimstone human containment. Continue reading →

Review: Argo

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Edited

Argo is the second of 2012’s late year films arriving in theaters with heavy loads of Oscar buzz attempting to bring home the hearts of film-goers, and more specifically, the Academy come February. Following The Master, the five year toil of the director whose previous film was perhaps the most critically acclaimed of the last decade, hype for Argo was comparatively restrained. With two stellar efforts behind him, director Ben Affleck is well-liked in Hollywood circles but still likely hoped this film would shake off some of the vestiges of the ever-persistent fan-boy hate factory criticisms aimed at his acting (some of which was admittedly deserved). While Affleck has certainly proven he doesn’t need to take these accusations seriously by this point, the real question for many is still simply: How’s the film? Continue reading →

Review: How to Train your Dragon 2

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Dreamworks Animation, long lambasted as a second-tier Pixar Studios, kind of came out of nowhere with How to Train your Dragon in 2010. They’d made plenty of good films before, but their bread-and-butter was slapstick comedy and verbal punnery and didn’t hold a candle to the subtle artfulness and nuanced emotion of their competitor’s finest. Perhaps luckily for them, HtTyD came out at the dawn of Pixar’s currently, and sadly, still continuing descent into competence. Although it’s faced competition from Disney’s assumed new second-silver age , these Disney films haven’t yet touched the elegant grandeur and beauty of How to Train your Dragon, the second best mainstream animated film of the decade after Pixar’s decade-beginning (or decade-capping) masterpiece Toy Story 3. As a result of its success, it was almost impossible not to believe in the likelihood of future sequels, and, although the company took longer than expected for it to be released, a sequel is here as expected. The rule of thumb would suggest inferiority, but let’s not jump to conclusions. Continue reading →

Review: The Wind Rises

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Update late 2019:

(as another quintessentially modern, 21st century technology)

Original (Edited) Review:

The Wind Rises carries a lot of baggage. It is director Hayao Myazaki’s retirement film, if he is to be trusted, and thus will inevitably be compared to every film he’s ever made and hampered with the impression of future films left unmade. My usual rule of thumb would indicate to divorce the film from Miyazaki’s history and view it on its own terms. While there’s ample reason to take this path, such a take would also do this film a disservice. Not only is this a strong film in its own right, but it’s a telling and touching commentary on Miyazaki’s career as a whole, and thus it invites the comparison.

Although a biography of Jiro Horikoshi, a Japanese inventor famed for his prototype Mitsubishi A5M, it’s easy to see the film as a confessional of sorts for Miyazaki as he comes to terms with his own career in filmmaking and the dangers of the medium for the world. While the director’s films usually approximate dreams and desire, this is a surprisingly straight-forward piece, and the surprising pre-release comparisons to the classic epics of David Lean reveal themselves not only worthy but perfectly fit to this grand but personal film about art and consequences that uses the director’s flair for visual storytelling as much as conventional dialogue to tell its story. It isn’t perfect, and it is difficult not to wish for something a touch more ebullient and deconstructive for his final film. But conventional quality is quality nonetheless, especially in a film which so quietly, so sedately, and so rigorously meditates on and appreciates the necessity of sturdy, incremental improvement and diligence within a chosen field, all while eyeing – in its periphery, admittedly – the tragedy such a (potentially) blinkered focus may emit into the world. Continue reading →

Review: Inside Llewyn Davis

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After an unusually long gap for the insanely prolific Coen Brothers (three whole years!), they make damn-sure they remind us why we wait with such anxiety and anticipation for each release bearing their sibling stamp. With fantastic attention to detail, a well-realized sense of place that is all too familiar yet curiously distant, and a surprisingly laid-back yet aching, distraught screenplay backing them, Inside Llewyn Davis is their best release since No Country for Old Men and dangerously close to one of their top five films ever. It works as a meandering tribute to the underbelly of the greasy, cut-throat New York folk scene, an homage to the freewheeling works of James Joyce and their ability to uphold the common man as a mythic wanderer, and a picaresque exploration of the the day-to-day doldrums of human existence that combines unaffected social realism and moments of more obviously filmic, signature Coen Brothers flights of subtle fantasy. It’s an altogether plaintive film, but a deeply felt one with cheer tempered by aimless loss that chills to the bone. Continue reading →

Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

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In light of the need for the fledgling days of this new blog to pack in content that isn’t just new releases or me just posting reviews of older films randomly, I’m helping it through its growing pains by using the release of the new summer blockbuster Dawn of the Planet of the Apes as an excuse for posting my recently-dug-out review of its excellent predecessor, Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Enjoy.

Planet of the Apes is a franchise more notable for historical significance than quality. The first film, though solid entertainment, is not the classic it is often recalled as. Certainly, it’s an important film, and it is decent in most regards, with some standout moments in a few high tension chases and a shocking, bleak, and dramatically effective conclusion. However, much of its allegory is obvious and fairly trite, and the story really doesn’t have much else to offer. As for the other films in the original series (I haven’t seen any), their reputation is less than stellar (although Escape, the second sequel, has its share of defenders). The much-maligned 2001 Tim Burton version of the story is nothing special either, although in my opinion the hate directed toward it is undeserved. It’s a standard B-movie with some of the charm associated with the type. Unfortunately, it went off the rails into nonsensical territory during the climax, and it featured one of the silliest, most illogical concluding plot twists in recent memory. Ten years after that film, and over 40 since the original, can Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a new take on the point that kick-started the decimation of the human population and the titular rise of the apes, restore this franchise to the heights of the original film? Continue reading →

Review: X-Men: Days of Future Past

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Update 2018: I was skeptical of this film when it was released, but after having read the phenomenally astute political Molotov of a comic book of the same name, with its observations on state privatization and racial incarceration all folded into a 1981 critique of neo-conservatism and neoliberalism as fascism, the movie’s neutralized, domesticated politics and thoroughly un-transgressive social observations feel all the more banal and negligent.

Original Review:

Final paragraph edited for clarity’s sake

X-Men: Days of Future Past is an ambitious project, attempting to bridge two timelines, a boatload of characters and numerous political positions and wrap them all up in a cohesive, action-packed whole. Furthermore, the film seems to realize how ambitious it is. It’s all fairly confusing, but it at least rightfully understands it really doesn’t need to, and in fact shouldn’t, get involved with logical loopholes. Explaining things, as Professor X does in an early scene, often makes things worse, dragging down and only opening up more questions the film inevitably won’t have time to answer. It’s better to keep things simple and streamlined in films like this, lest everything get too self-important. Continue reading →

Review: Zero Dark Thirty

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Edited

Much has been written about Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s dramatization of the hunt for Osama bin Laden through the eyes of fictional CIA officer Maya Lambert (Jessica Chastain). By a wide-margin, it’s the best reviewed film of a year generally considered a pretty sturdy, upright twelve months for films. It’s been praised as a more-than-worthy follow-up to director Bigelow’s and screenwriter Mark Boal’s Oscar-winning previous release The Hurt Locker and at one point it was all but assured to win its year’s round of awards. Many consider it a seminal docu-drama on America’s role in the global sphere and its much-debated commitment to combating terrorism elsewhere in the world as well as what many would argue instituting its own form of US terrorism in its place. Whatever your opinion about that, it’s weighty material, and more than one person has claimed that Zero Dark Thirty will stand the test of history as a companion piece to the numerous books, documentaries, and journal articles written about America’s involvement in the Middle East during the past decade. Continue reading →

Review: Drive

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Edited

The day has finally come (or re-emerged after a long dormant absence, but more on that later). One of cinema’s most esoteric, obtuse sounding pairings has finally been realized. Drive, the new film from Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, combines two very dissimilar cinematic worlds: the art film and the action film. It’s all kinetic action and flair, but particularly in the later half, it adopts a distinctly 70’s angular, stylized European moody crime film vibe more interested in abstract bodies in motion than bloodletting and tension. It’s about as strange a pairing as can be found in the modern cinematic landscape. Yet it’s wholly wonderful for the same reason, a peek into the past where genre fare did not imply smug grandiosity. And it could only have been made by Nicolas Winding Refn.

Driver (Ryan Gosling) drives. By day, when not working as a mechanic, he drives for films. But by night, he drives for anyone, no questions asked, as long as they pay. Naturally, this means he’s involved with criminals, but, just as he does with anything, he distances himself to keep from getting caught. He has no real friends to speak of, and he doesn’t have much of a way with words either. But one day he helps his neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), and a bond develops between the two, matched only by an equally strong bond between Driver and Irene’s son Benicio. And, as is the case with any movie like this, their interaction changes (at least one of) their lives forever. Continue reading →