2010 in Film: The Squekquel

After leaving you all hanging last week, I thought I should really make up for it this week, and have decided to turn my first official post here into a running series. Every few months, I'll check back in with short comments about each 2010 new release I see, thus satisfying both my inner writer and film buff. Enjoii.

Green Zone (Paul Greengrass)
Before I can dive into any criticisms I have, I do have to give this film an A for effort. For all of its problems, Green Zone does have a lot of ambition, being audacious enough to reach for such high-minded goals, such as being nothing more than a left-wing cousin to Rambo. Having said that, Green Zone is still the worst new release I've seen so far this year. But don't get me wrong, it's not terrible or anything, just overachievingly average [oxymoron win]. The premise itself is just one big flaw right from the get-go, dropping a fictional super-soldier into the midst of 2003 Iraq, shortly after the invasion, to re-write recent historical wrongs in our own favor. When it comes to modern action directors less interested in serving the audience rather than satisfying their own vapid fetishes, Paul Greengrass has gotten off pretty easy, despite the fact that his two Bourne films' nauseating handheld cinematography turned every fight and chase centerpiece incoherent. Thus it's no shock to find this film employing the same bump-and-jostle attention-deficit aesthetic that served as a big warning sign that you're about to waste your time, reappears here in tenfold.

Clash of the Titans (Louis Leterrier)
In a rare instance of honest studio advertising, this film has wisely been promoted for exactly what it was. Which means don't go into this thinking it looks like the stupidest film you've ever heard of, hoping to be pleasantly surprised. You won't be. Personally, I thought it looked like silly, if not completely brainless fun, and that's exactly what I got out of it. And the sooner you accept the fact that things like hurried pacing and non-existent character development are due to the fact that this film just wants to get to the next action setpiece, the sooner you'll be able to enjoy this for what it is, if that's what you're looking for. It's not trying to impress you with faux social commentary, or contrived dilemmas of humanitarian concern. Flawed, but inspired badassery.

Kick-Ass (Matthew Vaugn)
Acknowledging that where a film originates from isn't usually important to how good it is as a whole, I deem it necessary to go over some of the original graphic novel's problems. It was a franchise I never familiarized myself with, and that was due mostly to the fact that it could never find a satisfying balance between aggressively juvenile, and pitch-black cynicism. This film adaptation sidesteps that problem by chucking out the more downbeat aspects of the source material, and making aggressively juvenile the order of the day. Granted, the comics were darker and had more to say, but were also thematically unfocused, while this filmic version has admittedly been simplified but holds together better as a story. At first, said story seems like a simple parody of the Peter Parker/Spider-Man persona, but eventually developes a real heart, gaining the film a sense of humanity that the comics were mostly lacking. Granted, this film condones precisely the type of merciless, desensitized movie violence that Quentin Tarantino had in mind when he wrote the finale of Inglourious Basterds. But entertainment is entertainment, and Kick-Ass is just that from minute one, even when it doesn't have a lot on its mind.

Iron Man 2 (Jon Favreau)
Earlier in my Green Zone capsule, I mentioned that despite the absolute lack of effort on nearly each level, its ambition made it salvageable as a whole. Well that can work both ways, as pride can also be a films undoing, and boy does pride wreck this one good. But the most disappointing thing about Iron Man 2 isn’t the fact that it fails, in an altogether underwhelming way, to live up to the creative success of its predecessor, but that it does so for purely misguided reasons. Sure, the script isn’t as tight as the original, but nor should it be when plots are complicated and characters with varying motives are collecting in droves. On paper, Iron Man 2 should work, but on screen, it unfolds as a film without a singular connective vision, lurching forward in fits and spurts as it strains itself to recapture the blend of drama, comedy and action that was bestowed so effortlessly on the original. If there’s any blame to be dealt out to the creative forces behind the movie, it’s that they tried too hard.

w00t.

Yello'

Sorry, no blog for this week. It's not [just] that I didn't have anything of worth or value to discuss or rample on about. I was actually quite busy this weekend...

[briangordonforpromking!]

Summer Bucket List

Over the past few weeks, with summer approaching so rapidly, I kept mulling over the things I’ve always wanted to do, yet never have. Therefore, I have opted to make my own mini “Bucket List” of sorts, with the deadline being the end of summer instead of, y’know, when I die. The goal of my posting this here is that I have some initiative to accomplish these goals. Around the time I get settled into college, provided I’m still using this page, I’ll create a follow up blog to this one, and say whether I did any of these things or not. Until that time, here goes;

1.) Attend the midnight premiere for a film
2.) Try as many strange and outlandish soda-ice cream float combinations as possible
3.) Develop a habit of hiking. [Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy a nice scenic route as much as the next guy, but I’d like to make a legit habit out of this one.]
4.) Successfully learn the way from my house to Millersville
5.) Improve substantially at playing guitar
6.) Familiarize myself better with campus [both lifestyle and surroundings] at Millersville
7.) Pass on the “Shop Rite parking lot” tradition
8.) Get involved in a recent TV series [recommendations are welcome]
9.) Start eating waffles and/or pancakes for breakfast again
10.) Make it just a little further into the ‘Vampire Chronicles’ book series. Let’s say, oh I don’t know, at least two more

If I end up thinking of any more, I’ll just add onto the list. Until then, here it is.

The Village / The White Ribbon

This really is turning into a film blog, isn’t it?

With writing and producing a film being what it is lately, it’s typical that certain new releases are a tad derivative from much more influential material. Recent cases of this would be Moon and 2001: A Space Odyssey, and 500 Days of Summer and Annie Hall, among others. Although a rarity, a newer film drawing inspiration from one that's barely a few years older does happen. Such is the case with Michael Haneke’s recent The White Ribbon, which shares many artistic and dramatic similarities with M. Night Shyamalan’s underappreciated The Village.

Although comparisons between the two films are valid, with their seemingly brothers-in-spirit setting and tonality, they couldn’t be more thematically dissimilar. To fit their basic morals into a mere sentence, The Village is about how the power of love can conquer anything, so long as it’s not a solo effort (barring the social commentary). The White Ribbon, on the other hand, is not so optimistic, and is rather an exploration of the roots of a certain kind of evil. It's also very much about how sins of one generation carry on to the next, despite (or perhaps because of) the best efforts of the adults to mold their children into "good" citizens.

The Village, great film though it is, doesn’t seem too preoccupied with fleshing out its motifs with as much complexity and precision as The White Ribbon. No matter how much they ring true, the ideas in The Village are admittedly a bit…naive. But the subject matter of The White Ribbon, dates way back to the 1950s and has been explored by such directors as Ingmar Bergman and Carl Theodore Dreyer. Oldness be damned, it still feels as relevant now as it did over 50 years ago. Even the most unpleasant characters in the film are given moments of humanity, and it's clear that they are all victims of - and perpetrators in - a rigid, repressive hierarchical society that dehumanizes people and codifies behavior to such an extent that deviating from the "norms" at all can only bring misery.

But maybe that’s the difference between contemporary mainstream and arthouse cinema. Or perhaps M. Night Shyamalan just has more faith in humanity than Michael Haneke. Whatever the case, both of these films work just as well separately as they do when observing just how much they have in common.