Monthly Archives: December 2010
127 Hours (2010)
So would you give your right arm for a good movie? 127 Hours is the true-life tale of a man trapped between a rock and a hard place. Hiking in dusty canyons, James Franco gets his arm pinned under a rock. And that’s about it from the plot standpoint. That’s because everything is leading up to the grisly inevitability that he will be forced to cut his own arm off for survival. And director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) does not let you off the hook. You will see every gruesome second of a man hacking away his own arm, slicing nerve-by-nerve, crushing bones, etc. It’s not the uplifting experience that Boyle and the producers mistakenly believe. The film’s true success is that it still manages to be entertaining and exciting, despite having a central character unable to move more than inches. It’s fascinating to watch Franco use the tools at his disposal to survive for five days before, well, you know. Boyle does a terrific job of making an intimate almost claustrophobic plot feel much more open. Nobody probably could have done this movie better than Boyle, taking his kinetic trademark style and allowing us to enter the mind of Franco’s fallen hiker. 127 Hours isn’t so much an inspirational tale as it is a morbid curiosity that entertains in spurts. But all the visual tricks in the world can’t get people to want to pay to see a man cut off his own arm.
Nate’s Grade: B
Share this:
The King’s Speech (2010)
Public speaking is a nerve-racking position. Nobody wants to seem like a fool but it can be hard to do anything else when all eyes fall upon you with expectation. There was a poll a few years ago that asked Americans what their top fears were, and death came in second to public speaking. The Grim Reaper should feel relieved. Now imagine that you’re the leader of a country during a time of duress and you have a speech impediment. That’s the grueling circumstances for King George VI (affectionately known as “Bertie” to family), leader of Britain on the eve of World War II. The King’s Speech tells the inspirational true story of one of the most powerful men in the world finding his own voice.
Before becoming king of his country, Bertie (Colin Firth) was the Duke of York and a man suffering from a debilitating stutter. When stressed, it was difficult for Bertie to even read a statement. This speech impediment is made all the more troublesome now that the world has entered into the radio age; kings and presidents are now expected to speak to their peoples, no longer content to just be a striking figurehead. Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), future Queen Mother, seeks out different speech therapists but the traditional methods are getting her husband nowhere. Then she comes across Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), a self-taught speech therapist who worked with shell-shocked WWI soldiers in his native Australia. His methods are unorthodox but he’s the first to begin to get results with Bertie. The demands of his position get even greater when Bertie’s father, George V (Michael Gambon), dies in 1936 and Bertie’s older brother, Edward VIII (Guy Pearce) abdicates the throne. Now Bertie is expected to lead his nation, that is, if he can string two sentences together in public.
The King’s Speech is really the heartwarming story of the unlikely friendship between a king and a quirky Australian commoner. Their warm, humane friendship allows for several scenes of great humor and great drama. Watching the irreverent Lionel bounce off the proper and isolated Bertie supplies plenty of comedy. It’s essentially an odd couple comedy mixed with a true-life historical drama. There’s great pleasure in watching the chilly relationship between classes thaw, the men grow closer together, and Lionel’s unconventional tactics make progress. Each time Bertie discovers a new practice that removes his stutter, whether it is speaking while listening to music or speaking in the cadence of a song. This is a film that follows the English tradition of understatement even given the dramatic setting, principle characters, and a speech impediment. The characters don’t go around blurting their feelings, leaving the actors room to explore oodles of subtext. There’s a signature scene where Lionel coaxes Bertie into opening up by promising to allow him to paint a child’s model airplane (a treat for a man of title never allowed such toys). As he paints away, Bertie reveals a damaging truth about a neglectful childhood nanny. The truth is so painful that Bertie is forced to reveal it through the cadence of song, which somehow makes the revelation more sad and tragic. Their ongoing relationship is deeply satisfying and emotionally rewarding.
You won’t see a better-acted movie all year, thanks to Firth and Rush. More than following a checklist of gimmicks, Firth inhabits his character from the inside out. He feels like a living, breathing, somewhat broken person instead of a collection of ailments. Firth doesn’t overdo his stutter and treats the character, and the ailment, with a deep sense of compassion. Firth gives what is likely the greatest acting performance by any male in 2010. He is magnificent, commanding, and empathetic in every scene. Likewise, Rush doesn’t overpower as a personality foil. His character manages to be irreverent but without being flippant; he finds a reverent irreverence, if you will. Lionel is treating the future King of England, and the gravity of this stately relationship is not lost on him. Both men hide an inner melancholy, perhaps one of the things that ultimately bonds them together. Rush is flush with vigor and merriment, truly delightful to watch. This is his finest onscreen performance since he won his Oscar in 1996 for Shine.
The enormity of the king’s duties is given due care. You feel the weight of the crown that awaits Bertie and empathize with his quaking hesitation. Ever since childhood, his family looked down on Bertie. His father felt a stern tone would best aid the young stammerer, and his older brother would often belittle Bertie with cruel taunts. You see flashes of this unhealthy dynamic when Edward cuts down his little brother after their father passes.
Bertie was seen as unimportant. Edward was the one set up for the throne. And yet Edward is the one who shirks his responsibilities in the name of love (a twice-divorced American woman). Edward refuses to become the leader of his people if the ancient rules forbid him from marrying a divorced woman. Bertie cannot buckle under the tremendous pressure and expectations that wait. Even when the rather passive Bertie lashes out, you feel like his anger is a moment of achievement. King George VI also had to deal with the fact that his brother is still alive and well and an alternative to the throne if Bertie is deemed incapable. Firth makes it easy to feel the remarkable pressure of being a leader not born or elected, merely expected. And even if an audience is clueless about British monarchy history and the rules of royal succession, The King’s Speech is easy to follow and comprehend for a daft American like myself.
Truth be told, The King’s Speech is a little stagy, a little square, and a little too fastidious for its own good. Hooper and crew are too content with making a pleasant moviegoing experience that the film lacks any slight form of edge. It’s all just a little too safe, a little too staid. While rated R, this movie could easily be a PG-13 family film, maybe even a PG one, sans the two sequences where Bertie unleashes a torrent of profanities in frustration (he discovers that he does not stutter while swearing). I feel like a curmudgeon for dinging a movie for being, essentially, too nice and gentle, but it clips the ambition of the movie when crowd-pleaser is the zenith of accomplishment. The fateful speech to the nation, on the eve of war with Germany, is even given an extra oomph thanks to the background music of Beethoven. A larger story of triumph seems reduced to the Oscar favorite storyline of Man Overcoming Physical Adversity. The direction by Hooper has some curious tics to it, like sequences of two people talking where they will never share the frame despite sitting side by side. I assume Hooper is trying to communicate some form of emotional distance or wariness, or perhaps it’s just a nod that different actors had unworkable schedules and could not be filmed together. Hooper is a talented director, as anyone who saw the massive undertaking of the masterful HBO miniseries John Adams can attest. However, like John Adams, Hooper is prone to TV-movie staging. His direction limits the cinematic power of the film. It looks like any ordinary episode of Masterpiece Theater.
The King’s Speech is pretty much everything you’d wish for in a movie groomed for awards consideration. This is prime Oscar bait. You may tear up at points, you’ll probably smile in many places, and your spirit will definitely rise. Plus it features some of the finest acting you’ll witness all year. And yet it’s that conscious need to please, to uplift, that can occasionally distract you from the many charms that The King’s Speech offers. The fact that the story is predictable is not a detriment, but the fact that the film doesn’t push harder, dig deeper, or expect more from its audience is a missed opportunity. The material is so rich, but a terrifically acted, smartly written film isn’t a bad consolation. Especially when that film happens to be one of the most rousing and rewarding theatrical experiences of the year.
Nate’s Grade: A-
Share this:
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (2010)
There’s a moment late in Joan River’s somewhat biographical doc where she’s telling a random offensive joke at a comedy club, this time about Helen Keller. An irate audience member pipes up, “I have a deaf son,” and chastises the 75-year-old comic of legend for the offense. She goes into a defensive position and argues that it is the point of comedy to make life bearable, even the horrors and pains that we know no other means to suffer through. This awkward moment of clarity sums up Rivers’ life fairly well: tenacious, volatile, and genuine. She turns pain into inspiration. She’s fought long and hard to get where she is in the comedy world and she will have to be dragged away kicking and screaming. When fans compliment her on being influential, Rivers tiffs that she’s still influential and isn’t ceding her spotlight for any young female comics. The documentary follows Rivers on a upswing in her career, notably winning a 2009 edition of Celebrity Apprentice. But this woman will work any gig no matter how small. She fears that if she stops she’ll be forgotten. Part determination and part desperation, this standard documentary showcases the abrasive and dynamic personality of Joan Rivers (you even get to see that famously refined face without makeup).
Nate’s Grade: B
Share this:
The Fighter (2010)
Somewhere along the line, the boxing film became the perfect metaphor for the underdog story. Two men at battle with only their fists and iron wills. Somehow this match up has come to symbolize man’s eternal struggle against himself and society. From Body and Soul to Rocky and Raging Bull, it’s hard to imagine the filmic landscape without the tropes of boxing. It’s also a pretty staid and tired genre, where filmmakers often rely on those tropes to fill in the gaps for lazy storytelling. The Fighter is a true story that star Mark Wahlberg has been nursing for years trying to get it off the ground. It’s the knockout acting and attention to character that separates The Fighter from the competition. Rarely has such a sedate formula felt so freshly presented.
In the mid 1990s, Mickey Ward (Wahlberg) is a man trying to come to grips with his life. His welterweight boxing career has stalled thanks primarily to his trainer, his unreliable half-brother Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale). Big brother used to be the pride of Lowell, Massachusetts, once fighting Sugar Ray Leonard and boasting about knocking the giant down (this claim is in dispute as replays show that Leonard may have simply tripped). Dicky’s boxing career went away about the same time that Dicky became addicted to crack cocaine, spending long hours inside Lowell’s many crack houses. An HBO documentary crew is following around Dicky, which he mistakenly believes is a ticket to his comeback. Mickey’s mother, Alice (Melissa Leo), also serves as manager to both her boys. Dicky is clearly the apple of her eye and Alice enables his destructive behavior. Mickey is pushed into fights to feed his extended family (eight siblings), and the thrill is gone. Then one day he’s approached by a promoter who will give Mickey one more chance. The only catch is that Mickey has to cut his family loose.
Truth be told, The Fighter isn’t really much of a boxing movie. Sure that’s the selling point and it allows for a rousing, crowd-pleasing finish, but Mickey could just as easily be striving to open a deli or striving to go back to school. The real story is the family. The boxing is only a backdrop, and if it weren’t for the true-story basis I would say it serves as little more than a metaphor for the punishment Mickey has taken in life. The Fighter is about a man working up the courage not to step into the boxing ring but to break away from his self-destructive family weighing him down in misery. This is a dysfunctional family drama disguised as a Rocky-style boxing redemption picture. The boxing aspects are small, mostly contained to the final act as Mickey’s career finally begins to gain some traction. For some, this will be disappointing news. But for me, I loved the family drama stuff. This is a fractured family with deep lines of division, nursing grudges, resentment waiting to boil over, all the marks of meaty drama. The focus is on Mickey trying to break away from the pull of his harmful older half-brother and his boorish mother. His mother enables Dicky, her favorite child, to the detriment of the rest of her brood. Her relationship with Dicky is fascinating and complicated, like a mother sacrificing the rest of her clan to help her most damaged child. You can catch some of the invisible ripples from these decisions, like the seven sisters all forming one unified hive-mind to survive. They’re like a block of cheerleaders for mother, only able to get attention and some form of affection by doing so. The extensive family unit revolves around Leo’s matriarch, fiercely protective and fiercely myopic. She refuses to remove herself from Mickey’s management team, and thus Mickey and his career suffer. It’s downright Oedipal. If only he can escape the clutches of his family, perhaps Mickey can taste success that has eluded him so long. The family drama makes up a good majority of The Fighter, and that’s just fine with me when I get characters this damaged and complicated.
And all of this is blissfully entertaining. Director David O. Russell is miles away from his other films like Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees. This is different kind of redemption story where the main guy winning a title is nice, and we can all celebrate, but it’s really his separation from a harsh family dragging him down. The film also produces an engaging romance for Mickey, which gives him a renewed sense of purpose to finally break free of his family. Amy Adams (Enchanted, Doubt) is a bartender at a local hangout with some college under her belt, a point that irritates Mickey’s family. The Eklund sisters lash out at Mickey’s squeeze in childish ways. Adams, playing Charlene, shies away from the daffy or genteel roles of her past. She gets to spit profanities with glee. Her relationship with Mickey serves as a foil to his family, showing what strength a positive, healthy relationship can achieve. But while the family is presented in an antagonistic sense, they are not blithely demonized. Russell and his team of writers and actors use humor to find surprising pockets of warmth amidst all the darkness and shattered dreams. This isn’t an addiction story that plumbs the depths of human weakness. The production feels bathed in authenticity and the city of Lowell, Massachusetts and its lived-in, blue-collar culture feels like another vital character. When the HBO documentary finally airs, you feel the cloud of hurt that covers the entire town in shame. Nobody wants to be known as a town famous for crack addiction (you can watch the 1995 doc online for free).
The acting is also some of the best you’ll see all year. Wahlberg is a sturdy center, used to the abuse and underplaying his character’s transformation from punching bag to assertive human being. This is Wahlberg’s home turf, and he’s been shopping the story for years in Hollywood, so it’s no surprise that everything comes so natural for the Beantown kid. But his understated work is going to get obscured with the flamboyant performances from both Bale and Leo. Bale (The Dark Knight, Rescue Dawn) has long been considered one of the finest actors of his generation, his Method devotion and versatility a godsend. In The Fighter, he’s a live wire, a bundle of energy in a haunting skeletal frame. He’s a figure of lost promise, of tragedy and bruised ego, trying to live vicariously through his younger brother. He’s deluded himself into thinking that this HBO documentary will launch a comeback at 40. Bale excels with the bombastic bits, practically bouncing off the walls, but then he nails the quieter, smaller moments of his character, where Dicky realizes that he’s wasted his gifts. Leo (Frozen River) could easily fall into an outsized monster of large hair and nicotine-stained fingers, but the Oscar-nominated actress finds exciting ways to tap into her character’s humanity. She fully knows that her beloved child is a crack addict, but watching her rationalize and justify her actions is exciting.
The Fighter is a meaty family drama, stirring tale of redemption, and a showcase of superior acting. In an awards season where it feels like many films are missing some secret ingredient, The Fighter has it all together. It’s an underdog story of a different flavor that manages to be authentic, entertaining, charitable, and engrossing even while staying within the boundaries of a predictable framework. We all know that Mickey will triumph in the ring; otherwise his tale would never have caught the notice of Hollywood producers. This is a fresh take on old material. The focus is on the fractured family dynamic and the many characters, not on a simplistic rising through the rankings of sport. It’s because of the tremendous acting and character work that the first half of the film easily outshines the second. Once the family is sidelined, and Mickey’s boxing career takes off, The Fighter turns into a more conventional genre picture, though still engaging. The movie ends on a satisfying note of uplift that feels fully earned without a twinge of naiveté. This Oscar season, expect audiences and voters alike to find something to cheer about in this return to the ring.
Nate’s Grade: A-
Share this:
Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)
This twisty documentary begins as a chronicle of guerilla street art and then flips the script. Its star subject, mysterious British artist Bansky, becomes the director, cutting down Thierry Guetta’s massive amount of footage into a workable frame. The subject becomes the filmmaker and the filmmaker becomes the subject. Exit Through the Gift Shop is a canny film that questions the nature of art, good and bad, the documentary format, and even our perspectives on reality (what is real when seen through a lens?), all with prankish humor and an anarchist’s eye. The film starts as an introduction to street art and famous underground street artists. Initially wary, they come to trust Guetta’s ever-present camera and then wish they hadn’t. At the end, when Guetta becomes a multi-million dollar street artist under the guise Mr. Brainwash, you’re not quite certain whether everything you’ve just witnessed is one elaborate put-on, a master practical joke on the commercialization of art and style. This is far more than a look at ordinary graffiti artists. These cultural satirists question the very idea of what constitutes art, who owns it or deserves to, and the overwhelming power of self-manufactured hype to hoodwink. You get to watch the birth of an underground art form and then watch its commercialization. We’re probably only minutes away from knock-off Bansky-like tote purses. See Exit Through the Gift Shop and watch the stylistic birth and near death of an art form you never knew existed.
Nate’s Grade: B+
Share this:
I’m Still Here (2010)
Joaquin Phoenix may not be the most stable of actors, but anyone could have successfully guessed that his public meltdown and entry into rap, complete with a scraggly mountain man beard, was a hoax. Phoenix and his brother-in-law Casey Affleck worked out a two-year piece of performance art, with Phoenix completely committing to his egotistical, self-destructive send-up of actors. Affleck directed the exploits, which is another clue that everything is a hoax. Do you think his brother-in-law, and a respected actor, would film Phoenix going overboard, snorting coke, lying with hookers, having an assistant literally defecate on his face, and then try and turn a buck? I’m Still Here is like a Saturday Night Live sketch, or an improv game, that stretches on forever. Whatever points Phoenix and Affleck may have had in mind get utterly lost at a plodding 108 minutes. Phoenix’s Andy Kaufman-esque practical joke is admirable but that doesn’t mean anybody needs to see this ramshackle, artless mess. It all comes across like a self-indulgent jape between friends, a personal project that loses all meaning outside a limited circle of friends.
Nate’s Grade: C
Share this:
Chloe (2010)
Director Atom Egoyan, working simply as a director, brings some serious heat to this somewhat lurid and Euro trashy art house potboiler. Egoyan gives the movie a credibility that it might otherwise lack. It starts promisingly enough with a doctor (Julianne Moore) convinced that her husband (Liam Neeson) is cheating on her with his younger students. So to prove her suspicions, she hires a sexy call girl to seduce her husband. Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) agrees to help, but nobody seems to fully understand the magnitude of the consequences as Chloe inserts herself more into the family. For a solid hour, the movie offers some tantalizing drama about infidelity, doubt, and the nature of attraction. Then the movie shifts focus after a few tawdry, but effectively steamy, sex scenes. Sadly, the movie abandons the smaller-scale drama for lame thriller shenanigans. Chloe becomes a spurned lover pushed to the edge, like a third rate Fatal Attraction. At that point, Chloe just completely unravels into an unremarkable late-night Cinemax thriller. Even the gratuitous nudity feels tacky, and as a red-blooded heterosexual male, that’s a statement that makes me depressed.
Nate’s Grade: C+
Share this:
The Killer Inside Me (2010)
This is an unsettling thriller that takes us into the mind of a psychologically dangerous deputy policeman (Casey Affleck). He patrols the small Texas city by day and kills for pleasure by night. The movie runs into a problem because the character doesn’t have a semblance of any moral code, which sounds contradictory for a serial murderer. He doesn’t kill for profit or to cover a secret or anything that would come across as identifiably rational. He kills because he feels he has to; he’ll even kill the mistress he loves because he can’t control himself. It’s an upsetting premise that keeps the audience at a controlled distance throughout the film. There’s an ongoing theme of extreme sexual brutality, and director Michael Winterbottom (A Mighty Heart) seems to linger on extended sequences of sadomasochistic sex and ugly violence against women. There’s some ugly stuff here, like watching Jessica Alba get her face pummeled for a solid two minutes. You just feel sorry for what Alba and Kate Hudson go through (“voiding a full bladder” is amazingly low on the list of awful these women endure). Eventually Affleck has to keep killing to cover his tracks, and the threat of getting caught provides some moderate tension, a relief from wallowing in cruelty. All of this ickiness would seem worthwhile if it felt like we were learning something about our disturbed lead. Affleck plays his opaque character rather flatly, making him free of charisma, empathy, and sadly, insight. He’s just the same as a masked killer in a slasher movie. That’s the worst disappointment in a film with so much ugliness.
Nate’s Grade: C
Share this:
Tron: Legacy (2010)
In 1982, TRON was a movie ahead of its time. It took place in a world inside the world of computers, which couldn’t have been that advanced back then. But “ahead of its time” and good are not the same things. Arguable one of the most influential science-fiction films in terms of design and CGI, the original TRON was a financial dud for its film studio. All this makes it so curious why Disney would spend upwards of $200 million dollars on a fancy, shiny, big-budget sequel to a movie people didn’t really give a damn about before. TRON: Legacy looks to capitalize on a generation of geek nostalgia. At least it doesn’t fare as poorly as the Star Wars prequels.
Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) is 27 years old and the lead shareholder of Encom ever since his father, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), mysteriously disappeared in 1989. Kevin had found a way inside the world of computers, which he called The Grid. He studied it and based his company’s arcade games on what he found. Then after saying he was going to break the world of gaming wide open, he vanished. Then in 2010, Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner, a sight for sore eyes) visits Sam with a message. He got a page from a number that’s been disconnected for over 20 years. Sam ventures into his father’s old arcade/workstation and gets zapped inside the world of computers. Now he’s amidst all those racing light motorcycles and flying disc battles. The slinky program Qorra (Oliva Wilde) rescues Sam from the gladiatorial battles. Inside this realm, the Grid is run by Clu (CGI Bridges), a digital doppelganger of Kevin Flynn. Sam is reunited with his dear old dad and together they try to escape this digital prison and stop Clu.
Never have I felt more like an old man than after watching TRON: Legacy. All the special effects dazzled, but after a while it felt relatively empty and insubstantial. But what did all those gleamy flashes of light and snazzy 3-D effects do, ultimately? Distract from the void of a story. I consider myself a fairly intelligent individual, able to follow complicated narratives and appreciate complex storytelling. And yet, when the lights came back up in my theater, I said, “There is a lot that I never understood.” The setup is relatively painless, but where the movie grinds to a deadly halt is for an exposition-heavy 20 minutes in the middle after our second big action sequence. When father and son are reunited they get to talking, and talking, and talking some more about God knows what. I think my brain shut off from all the stilted dialogue. Every character seems to stop and unload a pile of exposition. Even though the characters seem to explain so often, you always feel like you’re still missing something important. You still feel left out. But after this dreadful slog, suddenly there’s Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon) to save me from my stupor exactly like he did at the end of the turgid Twilight film, New Moon. He brought me back to life, but after his campy, cane-guitar rockin’ sequence of battle, I was trying to get caught up on the parameters of plot and setting. But then the film just flew from one set piece to another and I was forever lost. I couldn’t tell you why anything happened in the last hour of the movie. It just seemed like one thing was following another without any sense of logic or foresight. I got the idea of the need to escape this virtual world and that there was a special doorway to make this happen, but after that it all became an unintelligible chain of ones and zeroes.
The incoherent screenplay by Lost scribes Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis is a bleak vehicle for special effects. TRON: Legacy will certainly melt your eyes but it leaves the brain cold and overlooked. The rules of the TRON universe are never adequately explained. When Qorra suddenly drives a vehicle off the Grid and says, “We can do this, they can’t,” you’re forced to just shrug and go with it. Why is Clu trying to kill Sam and his dad when he’s pretty much had the run of things for 20 years? What exactly is his plan for world domination? He thinks his electro-tanks will be able to take out the military powers of the real world? Do these programs have free will or does their engineering trap them? Why would they gather at a stadium to cheer the death of other programs in violent sport? All of these walking/talking computer programs got me thinking about The Matrix and how much more creative and effective and overall better that movie was with storytelling. There are some token nods to character, mainly Sam’s reunion with his long lost pop, but this is a movie designed to mesmerize with flashing lights rather than story and character. I would find this somewhat acceptable if I wasn’t bored so much, let alone paid an extra four bucks for the luxury of being bored in three dimensions.
But if special effects are what you want, TRON: Legacy delivers big time. The sleek production design is married seamlessly with the flashy, techno-oriented effects inside the computer world. Watching the floating spaceships and zooming racecars is a luscious, exhilarating rush to experience. The visual style obviously has to hew close to the first film in 1982, which seems to handcuff the imagination of the crew. We’ve made gigantic leaps in the world of movie special effects but we’re stuck with characters in glow-in-the-dark jumpsuits and cityscapes that look at like half-finished neon outlines. I haven’t seen a 3-D movie since two-time reigning king of the world James Cameron’s Avatar, but I would readily advise people to see TRON: Legacy in 3-D if available. It gives the film that extra whiz-bang quality. This is not just a cheap grab at extra cash where the studio throws a 3-D rush on a film late in the game. The 3-D, which kicks in when Sam travels inside the computer world (like the change into color from the Wizard of Oz), feels more immersive without resorting to hurling countless objects at the audience. The greatest 3-D effect, bar none, is Olivia Wilde (TV’s House, Year One). Director Joseph Kosinski has a steady background in computer effects, and it shows. His handle on actors is another matter entirely.
But the biggest misstep with the special effects occurs with the 1980-version of Bridges. Whenever we get a glimpse of this Bridges of old, whether it’s from Clu or a brief and distracting scene in the film’s 1989 opening, it’s another opportunity for the movie to remind you of its lack of authenticty. The de-aging technique still needs some serious tinkering. What it does is make an actor look like a plastic doll, with dead Polar Express zombie eyes. It’s creepy and off-putting and every time you see the de-aging effect it rips you out of the movie. Watching young Bridges take on older, current Bridges would have been more interesting if we had an entire digital rogues gallery of Bridges characters. Imagine the Dude and his drunken, self-destructive country singer from Crazy Heart involved in digital games of combat.
There are some nice action sequences that begin to touch imaginative possibilities of this unique world. The flying disc duels are interesting enough for the time being. The first few disc battles make fine use of the unique features of the boomerang-esque weapon. The motorcycle battle where the ribbons of light/exhaust create a wall is still a great idea for battle of wits at high-octane speeds. It just never fully materializes. The edits don’t occur in that hyperkinetic Michael Bay fashion that discombobulates the senses; however, I never really grasped the geography of the action realms. In order for the viewer to appreciate the action and the moves and counter-moves, we need to understand the arena and boundaries of the setting. With the cycle chase, it just seems like they’re all appearing at random. An action sequence is less satisfying if it doesn’t seem like it’s building and making use of the particular surroundings. The moody score by electornica duo Daft Punk gives the film a thematic lift, though having them score with a full orchestra feels like hiring Yo Yo Ma and forcing him to play a trombone.
TRON: Legacy feels at times like a super-sized Light Bright meant to dazzle and distract from the gaping void at heart. The story merely exists to get the characters from one place to another. The leaden exposition pretty much destroys the film’s momentum. It becomes plodding and tiresome. It would be like if Luke Skywalker sat and listened to 20 years of history rather than actually, you know, doing something. It’s been 28 years since the first TRON and the world has gotten far more computer savvy, and the jargon from the first flick would be readily understood. TRON: Legacy doesn’t feel like you’re in a computer, just whatever weird alternative universe. It seems like the real legacy of TRON ends up being hollow special effects.
Nate’s Grade: C
Share this:
Best Worst Movie (2010)
Being an ardent fan of crappy cinema, I wanted to like this documentary a lot more than I did. Best Worst Movie is a documentary exploring the cult following of Troll 2, a bizarre 1990 horror sequel (that had nothing to do with the original) universally regarded as one of the worst films of all time. It’s all about killer vegetarian goblins that turn people into plants, among other things. Michael Stephenson, a child actor who starred in Troll 2 and got a hard life lesson, directs the documentary. He tracks down other cast members and reminisces about the strange shoot in Utah and their strange Italian director. I expected more colorful anecdotes and analysis, but Best Worst Movie is too navel-gazing. It focuses on the cult movement that has embraced the film and how the actors have found some merit of appreciative fans. Clearly Stephenson is trying to fashion validation for himself and his cast mates. The main figure of focus is George Hardy, a gregarious Alabama dentist who got his first, and only, acting job with Troll 2. He clearly hungers for the spotlight but at the same time dismisses the cult fans as being too “weird.” The best moments of Best Worst Movie are when we peel away the ironic veneer and catch the glimpses of personal joy people find from Troll 2. Whether it’s the audiences in bafflement, or the actors finding a modicum of relief and appreciation, an indescribably bad movie can link people into a loving community. For my money, The Room is the better trashy midnight movie experience.
Nate’s Grade: B
nathanzoebl 
You must be logged in to post a comment.