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Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)
The city has changed, and not for the better
I sip some whiskey. A gallon to be precise. Jack Daniels to be precise. Tastes like crap. I proceed to smoke a pack of cigarettes and sense a manly timbre developing to my voice.
I feel like going back to Sin City. It was 2005 since I last been there. It was a riot (9/10). Wonder if things have changed; for better or worse.
I take my bicycle and start pedaling towards Sin City. It's Autumn. The freezing rain is battering my face without remorse. I feel like I might catch a cold. Good. It'll make my voice even manlier.
I reach the city gates. It takes 11 Euros to pass. But it's 3D, and pretty good 3D too.
The story begins. Marv (Mickey Rourke) flies out of a window. Lots of monologue talked with a manly voice. Women don't talk monologue in Sin City.
Looks great, even better than last time. More tits (Eva Green). More silhouettes.
The people are in trouble. It's pretty serious. People threatening to kill other people. People shooting other people. People talk boring stuff. People walking. People driving cars. People talking boring stuff again. People shooting other people again. Clumsy fist fights happen in Sin City too.
I see corruption, manipulation and copulation. Not the most nuanced of kinds.
This Johnny guy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) with his girl and troublemakers ain't so boring. But I see them quite rarely. Other people too boring.
Great action with Miho (Jamie Chung). She's badass. Lasts only 30 seconds.
After 102 minutes it's all over. I leave Sin City. The city has changed, for the worse. 6/10.
Gravity (2013)
I recommend seeing this in the theatre in 3D
Gravity tells a story about survival in space afer an accident has taken place. That story is not very profound nor original in itself but it is executed in a fantastic way, enough so for me to recommend seeing the film. If you have seen the director Alfonso Cuaron's previous film Children of Men then you might have some idea about how absorbing it can get.
The intense action is what really makes the film great but there are also some scenes of sheer beauty and calmness that balance the action. The acting by Sandra Bullock really helps to become abosrbed in the experience and Geroge Clooney does a fine job as well. The music is perhaps the weakest point of the action sequences: not bad but not memorable either, just a bit bland. In certain emotional scenes the composer Steven Price fares very well.
If you intend on seeing this film, I definitely recommend seeing it in a movie theatre in 3D. I'm not generally a fan of 3D but here it is definitely a positive factor that builds up the immersion instead of creating distraction.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
"Thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread"
I have high respect for Peter Jackson for managing to direct three great films based on the Lord of The Rings (abbreviated as LOTR from here on) by J.R.R. Tolkien, a fantasy epic that some deemed unfilmable. So, years ago, I was naturally excited to hear that Jackson had decided to produce adaptation of another Tolkien masterpiece, LOTR prequel "Hobbit - there and back again", and had chosen Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy films, Pan's Labyrinth) as the director.
Del Toro worked on the film for a while but apparently thought it was too big a challenge and left the project. Peter Jackson saved the production by once again taking the role of director, and at first intended to make a two film adaptation of the Tolkien novel. Whatever the reason was for Jackson's initial refusal of sitting on the director's seat - perhaps he was busy with King Kong or tired as he mentions many times in the DVD extras of the latter two of the LOTR films, or just thought Hobbit was best left for someone else - I think it would have better been a decision to keep.
With the "Hobbit - an unexpected journey" it feels like Peter Jackson is trying to play safe by bringing us a very LOTR-feeling experiene, with similar grandiose music playing to similar helicopter shot imagery of a fellowship travelling through majestic landscapes, and what seem to me be dwarf versions of Aragorn (Thorin) and Legolas (Kili). The film lacks distinct creative spark and soul, and it seems like it's trying to suck the soul out of the LOTR films. I think Peter was very uninspired, perhaps because of tiredness, and he uses LOTR as a director's reference point far too much. To me, "An unexpected Journey" is a dwarfed down version of the first LOTR film in many respects.
Instead of two films as originally planned, we get three. Tolkien's Hobbit is a relatively short fairytale, shorter than any of the novels in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Three 3 hour films are justified for the Lord of the Rings, but not for the Hobbit. At 169 minutes, "Unexpected Journey" is just too long. "There and back again" feels thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread, to quote Bilbo Baggins from the first Lord of The Rings film.
For the first hour or so, not much happens in the way of plot advancement: A hobbit named Bilbo Baggins receives thirteen dwarf guests and one wizard and they eat. The high points of the first hour are a prologue about the Dwarf kingdom and a dwarf chant. The rest of the film is mostly about chases, cliffhangers, charges, and yells. They are delivered with pompous instrumental music and sinister visuals that would have perhaps worked if Tolkien's Hobbit was an epic with apocalyptic tones like Lord of The Rings. However, Tolkien's Hobbit is a fairytale about thirteen dwarfs and a hobbit and a wizard on a way to reclaim a treasure and home from a dragon.
Tolkien himself has stated that he created the Lord of the Rings because there was no national epic for the Great Britain. Hobbit, in contrast, is more similar to the fairy tales he created as bedtime stories for his children. The Hobbit story does have epic elements but for this film at least, it is my opinion that there is a mismatch between content and execution here.
One of the big challenges for the Hobbit was to make the thirteen dwarfs of the tale work cinematically. The Dwarf challenge is similar to the one Walt Disney faced with the Snow White. With major film length limitations and lots of dwarfs, Disney decided that the film would get a boost of liveliness if each of the dwarfs were given a distinct personality, a caricature, and named after their characteristic.
As with Disney's Snow White, the dwarfs of Hobbit are very distinct from one another, but two major issues arise, at least for me. First is that they don't match my mental image of "dwarf". Regarding features like body language and mentality, the dirty dozen just feels too "human". I think Jackson missed a comical gold mine here. What is supposed to be fun in this film is that the dwarfs are really hungry, but that doesn't quite cut it, especially since there's no "second breakfast" kind of funny quips as with the hungry hobbits in the first LOTR film.
The second major issue has to do with the simple story of Tolkien which the film stays true to. As distinct as the dwarfs here are, it is all the more harrowing that the differences between the dwarfs that cost a lot of introductory time to establish, don't shape the story at all. Now if i watched the film carefully enough, the truth is that there are no twists or turns that would depend on the individualities of the dwarfs, except for one of them. For a short children's animation like Snow White that's not a major issue, but for a three hour film that's a major negative.
Basically all of the dwarf characters could be rolled into one, preferredly Thorin Oakenshield, the Aragorn of dwarfs and leader of the gang, without creating a need for Gollum-esque divided personality.
I have to balance the criticism by saying that Peter Jackson, a true craftsman and a technological innovator, is a perfectionist when it comes to creating worlds. Certain aspects of the film are really impressive when judged on their own, especially the visual design and it is also the reason why people who are not Tolkien fans might think this is a film worth seeing. I'm planning on watching the film for a second time in theatre with HFR technology to see if that brings a new level of immersion to an already impressive looking film.
The Da Vinci Code (2006)
A decent escape movie with controversial topics
The Da Vinci code is a thriller directed by Ron Howard, starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou in the lead parts. Most of you also know that the novel of the same name that it is based on, caused major controversies partly because it doesn't tell history of Christianity from the common winners' point of view.
Instead, Both the book and movie dwell into the mysteries of the lost forms of Christianity and tell a largely fictional version of their legacy through fictional characters and fictional events taking places in non-fictional locations in the 21st century Europe. There are those fanatics who want to dig up the almost forgotten heretic 'facts', those fanatics who want to stop them, and of course the main characters symbologist Robert Langdon (Hanks) and cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Tautou), who have to escape the inevitable mess that the fanatics create. During their journey they team up with enthusiastic Grail seeker Sir Leigh Teabing (played by Sir Ian McKellen) who offers his insights and resources to keep the main characters following the mysterious and dangerous path to truth.
The book was a best-seller for a good reason. It gives the reader almost constant suspense as the mysteries stack up and events unfold. Though the book is real page turner, it is also so long that people have lots of the time to reflect upon what they read during the breaks between reading.
The movie stays very close to the source material written by Dan Brown, both in good and bad.
It was a very hard task to squeeze the book, with it's long and detailed discussions, into a two and a half hour long movie. As much of the thought-provoking pondering gets cut out, the movie turns into almost continuous escape, which is not ideal, because after all, the original story is at least as much about discovery as it is about running and hiding.
The few calm sequences amidst the storm are mostly rushed and too far between, which is why the movie ends up being abrupt and undramatic when the characters discuss of the background events. This is very unfortunate because the background story is what made the book popular in the first place. Most of the action and drama both in the book and the movie is not very interesting, although Ron Howard does succeed well in some sequences that zoom in on the fears and pains of characters or zoom out to show magnificent locations or historical events. But mostly this story is ran through.
The acting is a mixed bag. Credit must be given to Sir Ian McKellen who succeeds in giving his enthusiastic character Leigh Teabing depth and entertaining the viewer with his strong, theatrical performance. Tom Hanks does a nice job as witty professor Robert Langdon, that is, nice relative to his other performances. The french actress Audrey Tautou has a bit too tough a task. The character Sophie Neveu she plays is so perfect that she's dull. She is attractive, intelligent, tough and sweet all at the same time, basically a flawless person. Considering the task, Tautou pulls off a proper performance, although her English isn't very strong. The supporting cast is surprisingly strong and their characters interesting personalities.
The Da Vinci Code is not only cinematically well-executed and entertaining, but also thought-provoking, although not as much as the book it is based on is. The main flaws of the film have to do with the undramatic way the background story is told, the rushing through events, and the uninteresting main characters. Overall, Da Vinci Code is a decent thriller that deserves seven points out of ten.
Good Will Hunting (1997)
So unrealistic that it hurts
Good Will Hunting is a story about a 20 year old MIT janitor named Will Hunting (played by Matt Damon). The not-so-flashy hobbies of Mr. Hunting include hanging out with his friends, telling jokes, drinking beer and starting fist fights. But you know what? He's also stupefyingly gifted at mathematics. Will seems to know math better than anyone else in the world, including a Field-medal awarded professor with whom he talks in the movie, just because he has heard some MIT lectures and read a couple of books.
Sounds realistic? No it doesn't. What the movie loses in it's realism, it aims to gain in it's emotional power. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck wrote this story of the hardships of a mathematical genius the way they did to make a typical moviegoer identify him/herself with the main character. At it's core, Good Will Hunting is a collection of very finely executed drama: romance, violence, fight against authorities. You name it, GWH has it. The level of acting offered by Damon, Affleck, Skarsgård and Driver is good. Robin Williams is excellent.
The movie contains a reference to Srinivasa Ramanujan, a mathematical prodigy from a poor Indian background, who astonished the world with his unconventional theories in the early 20th century. This real life genius received a big book about advanced trigonometry from his teacher at age 10, came to understand it fully by the age of 13 and dedicated the rest of his life to mathematical research.
If Hunting was portrayed as an eccentric like Ramanujan and if his mathematical abilities were an integral part of the character's way of seeing the world, this movie wouldn't probably have had as much viewers as it ended up having, but it could have had some depth and believability.
Sadly Hunting's mathematical/logical abilities are only portrayed in scenes in which he draws some diagrams on paper or chalkboard. It's understandable that creating a superbly talented mind entirely from scratch is hard for writers who are not mathematical geniuses. You might ask then, why did Damon & Affleck choose to write a story about a mathematical genius in the first place? Had they chosen any other type of talent, they would very probably have been able to create a more convincing character. My guess is that they did that simply because mathematical abilities are often seen as something mystical and mystical abilities draw in crowd to theaters.
I had high hopes for Good Will Hunting. Sadly this movie is embarrassingly childish and sentimental collection of audience luring issues with very little credibility.