Movies

[Fred]

So I watched a good number of movies during the summer. I thought we could talk about movies that we've seen recently that have moved us or made us think recently. I'd like people to discuss, as much as possible. This means as few comments of the form "I liked _______, it was AWESOMES". Why did you like/hate it? If we're likely unfamiliar with it, what was it about? Did it make you think? What about?

[Fred]

I'll go first:

Breaking the Waves by Lars Von Trier is probably the one that hit the hardest. Basically, it's about this very childlike, innocent woman who lives in a small Calvinist community in Scotland, who has fallen desperately in love with, and marries, a man from outside the community. They have a sort of beautiful relationship that changes dramatically when he gets in an accident and is paralyzed from the neck down. He has some form of minor brain damage, and instructs his wife to have sex with strangers and tell him about it. His wife comes to believe that doing this is an act of love and the will of God, and that it might even have the power to heal him. I mean, it sounds like the premise of some steamy late night cable movie, but Trier's script and direction, and Emily Watson's transcendent performance elevate it to the level of art. Really gut-wrenching, and thought-provoking.

Synecdoche, New York, Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut (he wrote Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) was also great. It could have probably been 30 minutes shorter, and is a little too ambitious at times, I think, but it is still a great study of the emotional brokenness and physical fragility of humanity. The story itself, such as it is, follows a theatre director as his wife leaves him, he becomes mysteriously sick, and begins his magnum opus - a theatre piece that gradually absorbs an entire city, with a cast of hundreds of thousands. It's one of the few movies I think fits into the magical realism school, which was originally a literary movement (one famous work in this genre is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hunded Years of Solitude). It's extremely dreamlike, and as it progresses, blurs the line between what's real, what's in the play, and what's just in the characters deteriorating mind. It manages to be very philosophical while at the same time being very viscerally emotional.

Speed Racer is probably the most underrated movie to come out in the last couple of years. I think most people misread it as a mindless kids movie, which is not completely wrong. But it explores the same themes; of freedom, systems of oppression, reality, transcendence, and identity; as the Wachowski Brothers did in the Matrix trilogy and in V for Vendetta. But they deceptively embedded the treatment of these ideas in a hyperkinetic, bubblegum children's movie that is faithful to the spirit of the original animated series. It's the closest thing to a live action anime that I've ever seen, and certainly their best movie since the first Matrix movie.

[Dr. M]

I was very disappointed with District 9. A competent, entertaining movie to be sure, but horribly sloppy in regards to the outrageous, completely nonsensical plot the movie begins to spin half an hour into it. Very overrated and not as deep as most seem to think. Fun to watch, very entertaining, a very "good" film. Nothing more. Considering the original premise, this is very, very disappointing

Oh, and that CGI was pretty damn good for a supposed "low budget" film. That I was impressed with.

Coraline was not a summer film, but I must say I enjoyed it immensely and found it to be a tremendous work of art. Visually stunning, atmospheric to the max, thoughtful and contemplative, and to top it all off heart-felt, something you'd never expect given those first three things. Definitely belongs in the very top-most ranks of movie animation and kid films in general.

Up was excellent as well. It was not on the same level as Wall-E, though very few films are (I can think of maybe one or two). Looking back on it, the first and second half almost feel like two different films to me, which is one of the things I found lacking in it. The first half was pure classic-status, the second was simply a little too strange.

[ryanr]

I haven't sat down and watched too many full-length films this summer.

UP was a very different kind of movie from Wall-e. Where Wall-e pushed the fantasy/scifi elements to the foreground and used them as the overwhelming atmosphere for the drama, UP felt more like a drama about one man and his expectations for life, oh and talking dogs. It's a great movie (I mean, it's pixar, what do you expect) but the emotional hooks were fantastically flesh-ripping for a young married guy like me.

CORALINE was fun movie, very much in the vein of 80s mystery action films for kids, but far less predictable and more intriguing and gorgeously filmed. It reminded me quite a bit of the Babe the Pig movies (intended as an outstanding compliment) and it is one I definitely plan to plant my nieces, nephews and daughter in front of sometime in the future.

The only other new movie I've seen this summer is one I am loathe to bring up: TRANSFORMERS 2. Let me qualify what follows with the fact that I own and didn't entirely hate the first Michael Bay Transformers movie (though I am generally sour on his whole catalog) and I am enough of a Transformers fan to own the original animated film (VHS and DVD), a good chunk of the cartoon on dvd, several t-shirts and a fairly ridiculous (for a married man) amount of Transformers toys, both new and vintage. I've loved Transformers since I was four years old. As for my review of this movie: It made me question my Transformers fandom. It made me dislike Transformers. From the ridiculous girl-sex-bot to robot balls to a plainly incomprehensible plot, this movie aggressively hates you when you watch it. You come out of the movie stunned and confused, realizing only later that you have been brutalized, mocked, and robbed. And the toys aren't even cool.

[tamajinn]

I saw "The Elephant Man," the 1980 version with Anthony Hopkins and John Hurt, and liked it immensely. It's about human dignity and goodness in spite of hardship and abuse. It follows the true story to a moderate degree, which means you may already know the ending if you know about Joseph Merrick. But it is very touching all the same. I thought about it for days afterward.

A few days ago I saw "The Second Chance," which was the movie that came out a few years ago directed by Steve Taylor and starring Michael W. Smith. My curiosity about the movie was mainly because I've been a fan of Steve Taylor for a long time and remembered that he traded his music career for one in film. I was very interested to see what he would come up with, especially since I enjoyed his video collection "Squint: Movies from the Soundtrack" so much.

It was a very mixed bag. I thought the story could have used some work. It was about the white assistant pastor of a wealthy mega-church spending some time with the black pastor of their sister-church in the inner city.

SPOILERS***



You can probably guess the ending-- the rich white guy realizes he's too comfortable in his megachurch celebrity life and decides to move to the inner city (with his fiancee) so he can work with the church community there. But that's the ending to the movie. It's like so many movies that end with the wedding so they don't have to deal with the "honeymoon over" phase of the relationship. Or in this case, like the sinner repenting at a tearful alter call with everyone shouting Hallelujah, but not showing the struggle ahead. Smith's character is going to risk safety and security (his car is vandalized and he has a gun pointed in his face just in the short time he's been there), he and his wife will have to raise their children there when just a few weeks ago they were busy picking out $350-a-setting wedding china. I agree that Christians should not get too comfortable and that there needs to be more social reconciliation between races and classes, but the movie just seemed to make it too tidy, plus moving out to the ghetto is not something most suburban Christians are ready to do. It might have been interesting to see a Christian getting out of his comfort zone but still staying where he is, if that makes sense. I might watch it again with the commentary to get more insight into it.

[Fred]

Dr. M, it's interesting that you mentioned that Up feels like it is divided into two different movies. I didn't notice that, but that's exactly what I thought about WALL-E, actually. The first act is basically a silent film, a meditation on love at the end of all things, hearkening back to classic movie tropes and archetypes, and totally transcendent and unlike virtually anything I've ever seen. The second act, which starts not that long after they reach the ship, is largely a more conventional children's film, although it returns to some of the mood of the first half. That's not to say that that's necessarily a shortcoming, or even if it would have been preferable for the whole movie to have been like the first half. And I think the same goes for Up. The second halves of both of these movies bring them more down to earth, keep them accessible for children, and ease up on the melancholy and wistfulness of the first acts, which might have worn thin.

Both WALL-E and Up are fantastic movies. Pixar, more than any other single director or studio, is making the great American movies of our time. I'm a little worried about Toy Story 3 and Cars 2, because I think Toy Story 3 could suffer from the usual problems that sequels have, and the original Cars movie is probably the worst thing that Pixar has put out. But I'm excited about the two movies that follow that - The Bear and the Bow in 2011, and Newt in 2012.

[Dr. M]

I thought the way Wall-E's storytelling worked was fabulous. It had to pick up at some point, every full-length movie does, and they managed to develop the plot while still keeping a minimum of conventional dialogue. Other then how cartoony they made the humans look I thought the direction the movie moved in complimented the beginning perfectly.

I didn't think this of Up. The story of the man floating his house with balloons, to go on the adventure he never got to have with his wife, was simply flawless. It seemed to me like a fable that could last for generations. But then once the house crash-landed, all I could think was "Uh-oh, where are they going to go from here?" And it really felt like the creators were kind of thinking the same thing. Maybe I just need to see it again and I'd change my mind, but I felt the rest of the plot happenings were just too random and abrupt (like they didn't know where to go so they went in a totally random, unrelated direction). Where as with Wall-E, every new development felt perfectly natural.