Sherlock Holmes

A Sherlock Holmes movie doesn’t really cry out “action-adventure”, even more so than with the stereotypical image of Sherlock Holmes as the calm, collected, steel-nerved thinking machine. Take that and add in that Guy Ritchie is directing (Snatch, RockNRolla, Revolver) and Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man) is starring, there’s the possibility that this movie could simply attach a known name to a film that bares little resemblance to the spirit of the material. It’s to this film’s credit that this portrayal of Doyle’s most famous character gives it new life and calls previous incarnations into question.

There’s an interesting scene near the beginning in which Holmes is seated at a restaurant waiting to meet Watson and his fiancee. As he’s waiting, he notices little details: bit of a conversation, the sound of the silverware, a watch ticking. Soon these details grow and intensify with Holmes struggling to maintain composure. It’s a very interesting theory that Holmes brain is wired differently than other people in that he can’t NOT notice the details we all miss. It works to give Holmes a humanity we can appreciate. Another scene takes Joel Silver’s almost patented slow-motion fight sequence and adds Holmes using his deduction to reason the best moves to see a fight through. It works very well.

For the main plot, Holmes and Watson must discover and attempt to foil the plans of Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong, who played Archy in ‘RockNRolla’), a villain who seems to hold supernatural power. Strong plays him well, making him menacing and giving him real character. Rachel McAdams does a great job portraying Irene Adler, possibly the only woman who has ever bested Holmes and could keep his interest. McAdams doesn’t have as much material to draw upon as other actors do for their characters, and I think that freedom to play comes through in the confidence and charisma of her Adler.

The movie is shot in an industrial England that thankfully doesn’t drown in black, but uses gray and heavy desaturation in the colors. It’s a visual choice I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ritchie work with in his previous films, but one that gives the film a unique identity. This is also true of the music, which uses a lot of smaller orchestrations and string quartets to give definition to the time period.

This was well worth seeing in the theater at least once, and it’s worth a purchase once it’s released to homes. A very good action film with some brains behind it.

Gamer

TheJoe, DJ and I saw this Friday at the AMC in the Santa Monica Promenade.

Movies about video games suck. They’re either lackluster and disappointing adaptations of a game or a half-hearted attempt to ‘connect’ to the gaming culture by dropping a few gaming terms that Hollywood hopes will be enough to connect with the gaming crowd yet not be so alien as to confuse the average viewer.

Nothing about Gamer struck me as something that was going to impress me, either. The main plot about an inmate fighting for his life in a violent game against other inmates (It’s MORE than a game! It’s REEEAAAALLL!) has been done in other movies and games before, and the idea that the main character is being controlled in the game by someone else has also been explored before (and seems to be the trendy story hook used in upcoming movies like Surrogates and Avatar).

This is the mindset I had going into this movie. The most exciting thing I was looking forward to was checking out this theater I’d never been in and whether the popcorn was any good.

The story concerns a very dystopian world where the opiate of the masses is in the form of games where real people are willingly placed under direct neural control of a gamer with enough money to make they’re character do whatever they want. This takes the form of two games: “Slayers”, a massive first-person-like shooter where violent inmates use overpowered firearms to survive and make it to through enough matches to win their freedom, and it’s predecessor, “Society”, a very Sims/Second Life-like MMO where lower-class people fortunate enough to be pretty enough earn a living as ‘characters’ that follow the (usually) sexual whims of whatever gamer is in control.

When I got out of this movie I wanted to give it no thumbs up. As I was talking to TheJoe about the movie I talked about how gamers really weren’t put in the best light in this movie. There’s the cocky young gamer who controls are protagonist who talks trash and has a bloated ego from being the top player. There’s the wife of the protagonist working in “Society” that’s really controlled by an overweight male shut-in. There’s the juvenile, nonsensical names characters are given in “Society”. When I was complaining about all this to TheJoe, his response was basically, ‘isn’t that what gamers do right now?’ I realized that I was taking the material too personally. I also realized that this movie was made by people who understand the gaming world and I was giving a lot of thought to the concepts presented by a summer action movie.

This movie was written and directed by the team of Neveldine and Taylor, the same guys behind the Crank movies, which I thought of as movies about a video game character that had yet to be created, never mind the numerous video game references in the movie itself. These are definitely two people that understand the gaming culture (and the internet culture) and have more accurately portrayed it onscreen than anyone has done lately, giving it a future-tech sheen of 360-degree surround sound screens and ‘the-computer-just-translates-my-movement-into-action’ controller schemes. I wasn’t bored by this movie by any means. The story moves along OK, and it goes beyond it’s action movie shell to make statements about control and class. These people indeed DO behave the way gamers and internet surfers behave these days. The act of giving those actions real consequences to real humans tends to expose a mindset that some would consider very ugly. Like I said, I had to step back from this part of the movie. I play a LOT of first-person shooters.

I had no complaints about any of the acting in this film. Gerard Butler delivers as the top Slayer Kable trying to get out of the game and back to his wife (Amber Valletta) and daughter (Brighid Fleming). Michael C. Hall plays Ken Castle, the mastermind behind the technology driving the games and richer than God and Bill Gates. He plays him with a full evil and cockiness he doesn’t get to flex in his role as TV’s Dexter. Ludacris works well as the face and leader of the underground hacker group Humanz. An unexpected cameo is made by Milo Ventimiglia as “Society” character Rick Rape. Despite the name, his turn is actually amusing.

Not everyone is going to ‘get’ this movie. Although many more people play games now than in the past, some people might still get lost in the use of concepts like ping, mods, and memes. For those people this is a one thumbs up movie. For those that game like me, this could very well be a two-thumbs up. I’m glad I saw it in the theater and will definitely download it upon release. It’s one of those few movies that, for me, will actually be different upon repeated viewings.

Video game movies suck. But then comic book movies used to suck too. Then people who understood the culture of comics started making movies that took it as the legitimate art form it is and realized that there were real stories to be told from this medium. I don’t think this is the turning point for game movies, but it is a step in the right direction.

District 9

An interesting campaign for this movie was launched in Los Angeles. On busses, benches and billboards, graphics declared areas as “humans only” with a phone number to call and a website to visit should one spot any alien activity. It was a very simple design that brought one of the issues of the movie to the attention of the passerby. This campaign is an excellent match for the movie, which takes racism and other issues and uses sci-fi to twist to these issues into new perspectives for people to examine. Those people who wished the recent reboot of “Star Trek” had more allegory with its’ action will find plenty to like with this film.

The tribe and I caught this at Mann’s Chinese Theater on the main screen and we enjoyed it very much. It was a very well-done movie with a lot of over-the-top sci-fi action. The big screen really showed off the crisp digital picture (this film was shot on high-end RED cameras) and the excellent digital sound. I was very entertained by this film.

So why only two thumbs up? You really have no idea how close this film was to getting the full three. Really. It’s soooo close.

Neil Blomkamp has spent more of his career as a visual effects artist (Dark Angel, Stargate SG-1, Smallville) and he definitely puts as much of the budget onscreen as he could and it shows. The aliens and the spaceship look amazing and the interaction with humans is very realistic. Great care was taken to blend the CGI with the real world as seamlessly as possible. There is no no doubt of Blomkamp’s skill in this area. He is also the writer and director, though, and for all of his creativity in the visual effects field, the story is very pedestrian. I could see the plot progression coming a mile away. I’m usually able to let myself go along for the ride in a good sci-fi movie and not notice these things but the story was very obvious. However, Blomkamp’s talent as a director really helps make up for this weakness. While the story is nothing new, it is told excellently. I could guess what happens next, but I was certainly not bored waiting for the next thing to happen.

Peter Jackson’s name was hyped the most in the movie’s advertising even though he’s a producer and not a director, which makes sense business-wise, but the influence on this movie is not from the Lord of the Rings fanatic most of the public knows. This movie has more in touch with the guy who splattered his way through “Bad Taste”, “Meet the Feebles”, and “Braindead” (“Dead Alive” in the US) and if you’ve ever wondered what THAT Peter Jackson would do with a bigger budget, this is the answer. One scene in particular paid homage to the grisly opening of “Braindead”, putting the protagonist in an almost identical predicament.

Speaking of protagonists mention must be made of Sharlto Copley who plays the lead role of Wikus van de Merwe. According to my research, he is more of a writer and producer and had no plans or even aspirations to act or have any type of part in front of the camera, PLUS he improvised most of his dialogue. Coming from this background, I have to say he does an amazing job taking an unlikely wimp like Wikus and making him a sympathetic character. Part of this is probably due to the fact that many of the other human characters are very UNsympathetic and out to get Wikus for reasons that I’d rather not venture into spoiler country to explain, but Copley does a good job of making sure we like this guy. If he didn’t want to act before, he’d better learn to start turning down offers.

Maybe it’s the shifting of roles (effects artist-turned-writer/director, producer-turned-actor) or the fact that the story doesn’t take more risks (including setting itself up for an inevitable sequel), but there’s just a small amount that separates this very good film from a great film. It was well worth seeing in the theater, maybe even twice, and it is a solid digital download. If there is more from this story in the future, I really hope they step it up a notch.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

I went to the opening midnight showing at the Arclight with the Technochubby tribe.

This movie shares kinship with Transformers in being based on a toy line (The same company, Hasbro, in fact). It’s also based on the 80′s cartoon incarnation, taking the origin-story route. It follows Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) as they discover and are inducted into the secret that is G.I. Joe while tracking weaponry that ultimately marks the (as the title says) rise of the Cobra organization and its key players. Charting the beginnings with a property like that is a real balancing act between a multitude of characters’ backstories and the main story. I think the writers got a little heavy on the characters origins to try and satisfy the fan base. While I didn’t feel like anything put a drag on the pacing, I do think some things could have been trimmed out and saved for a sequel, particularly the flashbacks about Snake Eyes (Ray Park) and Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee). Their backstory feels like it’s supposed to lead up to their big conflict in the big battle, but it really doesn’t have a payoff for either character. Again, if the writers are holding back for a sequel with these two, I think it would have been much cooler to keep these two martial artists’ conflict shrouded in secrecy (Or at least saved for a director’s cut, as the young actors playing these two in the flashbacks made some enjoyable fight sequences).

The leads on the file, Channing Tatum (Duke) and Marlon Wayans (Ripcord) are competent and compelling as the soldiers who stumble on this (somewhat) secret war. I was actually surprised by Wayans, who actually gives a more grounded and subdued performance in his sidekick role. I actually found him to be funny without being annoying. The actors for this movie run a very international gamut in keeping with the more global flavor of this version of G.I. Joe. The overall movie follows this route, leading to a more sci-fi, action route than a war movie.

It’s this last point that seems to perplex some people. The tribe and I attended a midnight showing of this movie with a lot of people some would classify as geeks, including a few wearing G.I. Joe T-shirts, all looking forward to the film. At the end of the film I could overhear many of these same people trashing the film and making fun of it for being basically like the cartoon. And this movie is that: a big-budget, live-action version of the cartoon, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything more than that. It doesn’t provide some deep insight into the horrors of war or why we fight. Going into G.I. Joe expecting to see “Apocalypse Now” is like going to Transformers expecting to earn a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence and robotics.

This is a popcorn movie with lots of cool, advanced-looking weapons, armor and vehicles getting into big fights. Air battles, undersea battles, laser fights, hand-to-hand combat, giant global landmarks in peril. All the stuff anyone playing with G.I. Joes as a kid imagined was happening, and aside from a couple of effect shots that, to my eye looked horrible, the effects and setting were well-done.

I can summarize this way. To prepare to see this movie, I took a nap as soon as I got home from work so I wouldn’t nod off after midnight (as anyone that knows me can tell you, this is a herculean task), woke up, showered, assembled with the whole tribe to travel to the theater together, get parking, get some food beforehand, and got our seats. I can say, that while I wasn’t highly-impressed with the movie, I didn’t feel like my time was wasted. I enjoyed myself. Everybody had a great time. I’d say at least see it as a matinee and it will make a solid home purchase. Don’t let any overblown expectations get in the way of a good movie.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

When I got the tickets for Transformers 2 in IMAX, the only tickets I could get were for 8:45AM on a Saturday morning. Something clicked in me when that happened: I realized I was once again watching a Saturday morning cartoon. I immediately hit up the local 7-11 for a couple of mini-packs of “Lucky Charms” to sneak into the theater to complete the experience.

That was the attitude I had going in to see this film. I had seen the first Transformers movie and saw it for what it was. A big dumb action film. And that’s what I got. Big robots battling big robots on our world and causing big property-damaging explosions.

I’m actually trying to decide if the sequel raised the bar or if it was just more of the same. They blatantly return some things that changed in the original movie, from Bumblebee losing his voice and talking again in song samples, to Megatron coming back from the deep. All the original actors are. Megan Fox does her job very well, which is to look like Megan Fox. Shia LeBeouf plays his part well too which is a feat considering he has to play a kid who is somehow in a relationship with Megan Fox. For the rest of the cast, I actually found Julie White who plays Sam’s mother a bit of a comedic scene-stealer that had some pretty great bits at the beginning of the movie, putting her up there with John Turturro’s Agent Simmons and well beyond Rainn Wilson’s turn as an egotistical professor.

The voices of the Transformers are all excellent as well. The original Optimus Prime himself, Peter Cullen, returns and I can’t think of anyone else who could voice him. Hugo Weaving also returns as Megatron and he is quite good in this role, but the filmmakers correct the appalling error of leaving out the original Megatron, voiceover legend Frank Welker, by giving no less than three roles to play: Soundwave, Devastator and Reedman.

The action, being a Michael Bay film is well done. There’s some very cool robot fighting sequences (I hesitate to use the word small-scale. These are giant robots after all) These scenes were probably the scenes that took me back to a younger time and really fulfilled a dream of any kid who collected these toys. What kid didn’t take these robots and make them fight each other? Sure there’s big all-out battles with planes and weapons and gunfire, but those scenes with the robots just fighting and punching the hell out of each other were some of the most satisfying.

Plot? Easy enough to follow, but not intrusive enough to get in the way of the action. Ludicrous moments? For sure. There were some robot characters that were downright corny. Consistency? Probably the biggest inconsistency was that the IMAX showing had only some scenes filmed in full IMAX so that when it switches from those scenes to the letterboxed regular print, it’s a little jarring, but not a movie-killer.

I have really avoided reading any reviews on this movie in order to have a clean slate in my opinion, and the fact is, I really enjoyed watching this movie. It was fun. It took me back to Saturday morning watching cartoons. Totally worth seeing in IMAX. I’d pay to see it again, and I will definitely be looking the HD digital download when it’s released. This movie is firmly focused on what it is and does it well. If you have the same frame of mind, then this well worth watching. Just don’t forget the cereal.

Taken

Saw this in the theater. Liam Neeson plays a retired field agent who launches a one-man war to get his kidnapped daughter back. There was really nothing surprising about this film. The plot was very much by the numbers. I could see where this film was going to go every step of the way. The action scenes were filmed in a way I’ve grown to hate with what seems to be very unecessary shaking of the camera in order to add more intensity to the pieces, but it ultimately leaves me confused and unable to follow what’s going on.

Having said all that, I can still say I enjoyed the film. Neeson was enjoyable and sympathetic in his role as the lone agent trying to making up for his absentee past as a father. While Maggie Grace is a little too old to play a 17-year old, she pulls the role off quite well. Although the story is very generic I never really found myself bored with the film and was able to enjoy the ride as the filmmakers presented it.

Defenitely a good rental. Maybe a matinee.