January | 2012 | this nerding life

Jan 29 2012

The Resolution Project Season Two, or A Kind of Manifesto

Hey everyone, I’m sorry that I haven’t been posting very much here, but things have been crazy this month. Between Graphic Content screening The Rocketeer, interviewing Atomic Robo creators Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener, being interviewed on podcasts (more on that coming soon…), trying to catch up on movies I missed last year, the absolutely frigid temperatures we had here a couple of weeks ago, end of the month comics ordering, and everything else, I have not had much time to devote to reading my way through the Time 100 Best Novels list.

Well that’s coming to an end. I’m about halfway through a book that it took a long time for me to find, Elizabeth Bowen’s The Death of the Heart, so I should have a review up for that one in the next week or so.

I’m also thinking of shaking up the format of my reviews. I’d like to let you guys know what I knew about each author and book going in, rather than adopting the occasionally stuffy “editorial” writing style I’ve been known to drop into by reflex. I don’t care if you guys find out about the massive gaps in literary knowledge with which I somehow graduated with degree in English Literature. I’m renewing my commitment to making the highbrow stuff I’ve been trained to process palatable to the modern audience, which of course means comparing them to Pokemon, or Voltron, or the pinnacle of modern-day bildungsroman, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It’s not like this blog is called “This Literary Life”, so I’m going on record here as renewing my commitment to geekery, general nerdishment, and the pursuit of frost trolls.

I’d like to do more with my film section, as well as more with comics. I’ve written an article for a much more reputable site than mine on the subject of comics that are soon to be gone, which I’ll link to as it comes out, and I’d like to do more like that. I’ve also really wanted to take a look back at film noir ideas I had back in school, and with a noir film festival happening here next month, that might be a great opportunity for me to do so.

I guess I’m trying to say sorry to you, the readers, who have undoubtedly been sitting at home, refreshing a browser window or watching an RSS feed intently, waiting for me to come back strong. I’m saying today that yes, it’ll happen, and yes, together we will be more powerful than you ever imagined. So come dream with me, won’t you?

Your friend,

Matt

Jan 14 2012

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film, graphic content, sitting in the dark with strangers 2011

Sitting in the Dark With Strangers 2011 – The Rundown

First off, here’s the entire list of films watched this year.

1. Attack the Block
2. Drive
3. The Adventures of Tintin
4. Hugo
5. Rango
6. Submarine
7. Troll Hunter
8. 13 Assassins
9. The Muppets
10. X-Men: First Class
11. Captain America: The First Avenger
12. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
13. Hanna
14. Hobo with a Shotgun
15. Midnight in Paris
16. Real Steel
17. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2
18. Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop
19. Le Havre
20. Rubber
21. Thor
22. Moneyball
23. Super 8
24. Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil
25. Resurrect Dead
26. Paul
27. Marwencol
28. Blank City
29. Bridesmaids
30. Source Code
31. Margin Call
32. Red State
33. 30 Minutes or Less
34. Burke and Hare
35. The Adjustment Bureau
36. Your Highness
37. Sucker Punch
38. The Mechanic
39. I Am Number Four
40. Cowboys & Aliens
41. Green Lantern

- Movie attendance by myself was up around 10% higher than it was last year. Also, I’d say that I enjoyed more of the movies I watched this time around! Part of this was due to the fact that I didn’t go to every free screening I got offered. There were a few that looked like absolute stinkers.

- My favorite movie moment this year obviously came from hosting a film series at Metro Cinema at the Garneau Theatre. Honestly, nothing much can compare to the feeling you get when hundreds of people come in to see a movie that you’re all passionate about. No matter what film we’ve screened so far, there’s always been one person in the city who’s been dying to see it on the big screen again, or for the first time. My city’s not huge, and the repertory theatres in town usually stick to the arthousey-type stuff, so to see genre cinema kind of get its due has been a real treat. Thank you so much to the staff and board of the Metro, and a big thank you to Lady E., who’s crazy idea this whole enterprise was to begin with.

- Other great movie moments this year: seeing David Lynch’s Wild at Heart for the first time; seeing The Passion of Joan of Arc with live musical accompaniment by Smokey! during the Metro’s opening gala weekend; the Saturday Morning Cartoon and Cereal parties, again at Metro; seeing the awesome weirdness that is El Topo during Metro Bizarro; going on the Jay n’ J podcast to promote Graphic Content and talk about The Muppets;

- A movie I saw this year that really affected me but was very difficult to place on a list was Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void. I’ve talked about this film here before, but it really was something else. Seeing that film in a theatre was almost essential to the whole experience, as I don’t know if I would have made it through the thing at home. Challenging, a visual spectacle, many adjectives can be applied to the movie, but it is at its heart an intensely human experience. And now, because I like them so much, here’s the opening credits to Enter the Void again.

- Things I wish I’d seen this year and still hope to seek out:

A Dangerous Method (opened this week here, yay!)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Carnage

Headhunters (hopefully before it gets remade)

A Boy and His Samurai

The Grey

I Saw The Devil

The Guard

Colombiana

In Time

The Artist

Hopefully 2012 is as rich a film-going year to me as 2011 was!

Tagged genre cinema, Metro Cinema, movies, movies that suck, repertory theatres, review, trailers

Jan 07 2012

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film, sitting in the dark with strangers 2011

Sitting in the Dark With Strangers 2011: Part Four

And here’s the last part of my 2011 movie reviews, parts one, two and three can be found by clicking their respective numbers. As I’ve stated before, this is my completely subjective and fluid opinion, and especially in these top 10 they might shift around in order depending on my mercurial mood. HERE IS THE FINAL SPOILER WARNING FOR SPOILERBABIES DON’T GET MAD.

10. X-Men: First Class

This was so close to being higher up, if it wasn’t for one stupid scene that I still can’t understand, as it has to do with how one guy’s specific mutant power is introduced and then immediately counteracted within 10 minutes. I don’t really want to go into it, as it just boggles the damn mind, especially given much of Hollywood’s track record when it comes to minority characters in film. Anyway, apart from that, this was an awesome Bond-film infusion of life into what had become a moribund franchise after X-Men Origins: Wolverine. In my mind anyway, this new continuity completely eliminated all the other films from memory. I really hope they do another one.

The way I’d do it would be to replicate the impact that Giant Size X-Men #1 had in rejuvenating the comic book by setting the next film in the 1970s. That way you can introduce a bunch of new X-Men, including Wolverine of course, and have a lot of wiggle room when it comes to describing how the struggle between Professor X and Magneto has gone over the years. There’s many historical events the X-Men could have taken part in during the period, how about the OPEC raid by Carlos the Jackal (who’d obviously be some sort of cult-of-personality accumulating mutant), or the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, dealing with that’d be right up Magneto’s alley, especially if the Israeli athletes turned out to be mutants like him. Plus, like First Class did for the ’60s, you can show the cool version of the 1970s, using films like The French Connection, Taxi Driver and maybe Close Encounters of the Third Kind as touchstones for visual and narrative styles. This could potentially tie into the long rumored “Wolverine fights Yakuza grindhouse-style” project as well. The most complimentary thing I can say about First Class was that it completely re-energized me to watch X-Men movies again, not to mention think about them at length, and considering how shitty the last few ended up being, that’s definitely a feat.

9. The Muppets (saw for free for work)

Confession time: as much as I enjoy the Muppets and their body of work, I’m not actually sure how much of their stuff I came into contact with when I was an actual child. I seem to remember enjoying Muppets Christmas Carol when I was little, and I know the show was on PBS so we would have watched it when we had cable, but apart from that I don’t actually know how much of it I would’ve seen. I remember watching the late-night version of the show, Muppets Tonight, but that’s not exactly the same thing. Anyway, this movie still hit me on a pretty deep emotional level. I cried a little bit, but shut up whatever. Rainbow Connection’s just a beautiful song, alright? You can tell though, that as much as I like the Muppets, Jason Segel, the mastermind behind this project, LOVES the Muppets. And a film created with love for an audience that’ll love it back, that’s a beautiful situation. My highlights were the ’80s robot, Gonzo’s toilet factory, and the fart shoe walk denouement. I could have done without Chris Cooper rapping though, that was painful to watch.

8. 13 Assassins (saw on blu-ray)

I’m counting this one on the list, because as far as I know the film never had an actual release in my fair city, and the BR only came out not too long ago. My list, my rules. Anyway, this movie is potentially one of the best samurai movies ever made. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, imagine Inglourious Basterds set in a Japan on the cusp of leaving the samurai era. A group of men is tasked with killing the shogun’s son, who has gone absolutely mad with power. The twelve assassins know that this is a suicide mission, as their honour will be forever tarnished by killing this high profile target, but they also know he must be stopped. With the help of a bandit they pick up along the way, the now 13 must face down 200 of the target’s personal guard. This is almost two different movies. The first half is an examination of the way honour and duty worked in the Japanese society of the time, and how no matter how bad your lord is, you have to follow him. The second half is one of the best extended action sequences you’ll ever see, as the men reinforce a whole town and turn it into a death trap. So, so good. If you enjoy either classical samurai films like those of Kurosawa, or the majority of the films director Takeshi Miike is known for, you owe it to yourself to track this one down.

7. Troll Hunter (Metro Cinema)

Keeping our theme of badasses doing badass things going, this movie was an absolute delight. An enigmatic man is tasked by the Norwegian government with keeping the local population of trolls in check. Yes, the trolls of mythology are real, and it’s one guy’s job to cover it up, just stay with me. A group of documentary film students initially think he’s poaching bears, but are soon brought into the conspiracy, as the Troll Hunter is tired of his job and wants to blow the whistle on it. Chaos ensues. This movie is a textbook example on how to use the found-footage format to cover up small budgets. The trolls are always shown to us through a filter, or at nighttime, or from far away, and this heightens the fear we feel from these weird looking guys in an interesting way. We never get close enough to one to see the digital strings holding it up, so our disbelief remains suspended throughout. The character of the Troll Hunter is a fascinating man, and his attitude towards his work almost reminded me of John McClane from Die Hard, just a regular guy stuck in a bad situation but making the most of it. He also starts out being very lonely, and we get to know the guy to a certain extent as the film progresses.

6. Submarine (Metro Cinema)

Such a great little coming of age flick. We were talking about Nathan Rabin’s idea of the MPDG (Manic Pixie Dream Girl) when we had people over the other night, and I feel like Submarine presents an alternative to this sometimes grating archetype: the Manic Pixie Demented Girl. Oliver’s girlfriend Jordana’s a strange one, she enjoys the occasional arson, and so must he. So many good little moments in this one, I don’t really want to spoil them for you, but be prepared for some sadness should you decide to check this one out. Paddy Considine is especially good, as a douchey light and crystal-worshipping charlatan, who obviously must become the main character’s nemesis. Excellent use of animation in this movie too, I hesitate to make the comparison between it and Wes Anderson’s work (especially The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou), but it’s somewhat true.

5. Rango

As I’m looking over my list again here, it really strikes me how good of a year this was for kids films. 2011 was filled with entertainment that didn’t really talk down to children, at least in my experience, and this quasi-adaptation of Chinatown of all things was a great example. I haven’t talked to any actual children about whether or not they liked it, I guess, but I loved it. It provided Timothy Olyphant with his best role of the year, although to tell you who he was would ruin the surprise, and Johnny Depp was excellent as a kinder and gentler version of the lizard-beast he was starting to become by the end of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (joke). The music was also excellent. Running out of ways to say “great movie” here, so I’m just going to call attention to my lack of vocabulary and just move on.

4. Hugo

Oh, hey, look another great kids movie. This one kind of hits a special place in my heart, and not just because I live with a Film Studies graduate. When I went to Europe with my family a couple of years ago, I made a special pilgrimage to the Cinémathèque Française, which is located in what felt like to me just outside of Paris proper in the 12eme arrondisement. I went there partially out of curiosity borne of my own love of film and partly out of the aforementioned graduate most likely wanting something to remember it by. When I got there after navigating the excellent Paris transit system, they were presenting a special exhibit of props from the oeuvre of a celebrated French director whose storywould eventually crop up again in Hugo. As I’d actually stayed relatively spoiler free for this one, and had not read the original book which we had for sale at my work, I was very pleasantly surprised to see an old friend who I travelled far out of my way to see before. This is one of the few movies I have ever recommended people to see in 3D. Scorsese’s pretty good at this whole movie thing by this point, and uses the new technology in very inventive ways to make a new cinematic experience. He’s a lot like the man at the centre of the film’s narrative in that way. Everyone does a great job in their parts, and it’s always nice to see Sasha Baron Cohen wearing elaborate clothes and sporting an even more elaborate accent. Words fail to describe this one.

3. The Adventures of Tintin

This one brought me back as well, this time to afternoons spent enjoying the cartoon version of Tintin in my youth. I’m sure I must have read most of the books growing up, but it’s totally the TV show that captured the majority of my attention, and the movie definitely stirred the same adventurous feelings. I was so glad they didn’t tone down some of the aspects priggish parents might have found objectionable; people shoot one another, faces are punched repeatedly, Captain Haddock drinks like a fish with a serious alcohol problem. The pirate ship fight in this movie has retroactively made the Pirates of the Caribbean films pale in comparison. And the chase scenes! I tried to put myself in the shoes of the poor bastard whose job it was to storyboard the motorcycle/tank/falcon chase near the end of the film, and it must have taken like a whole damn year! Everything was so spot on, they didn’t tack on any stupid Hero’s Journey stuff with Tintin, we understand from just about square one that he’s a reporter who likes solving mysteries and that’s about it. What more do you need, really? I really hope they do more of these, there’s still so many artifacts to be retrieved from dusty coffers, and gangsters to be turned in to Interpol!

Drive poster by James White (Signalnoise)

2. Drive

As I alluded to before, I really want to revisit this one as soon as that becomes a possibilty. It’s a slow burn, and the film has grown to a much bigger size in my head than I think I realized early on. Like Hanna, this was another perfect melding of music and pictures, a weirdly idiosyncratic tale of a guy who’s good at driving and that’s about it. I’ve been listening to a lot of the soundtrack while writing this article, and it never fails to make me feel like a badass. I feel like I like this film because it’s entirely, understandably realistic in spite of its hyper-stylized image. Driver feels like a successor to many ’70s-era heroes who got pushed too far, and I’m glad to see this particular genre make a comeback. While the normal poster was pretty cool, I had to use the above one, the development of which can be seen here. Again, words fail me when it comes to this movie. This is why I normally write about books. Apparently there’s a sequel to the original novel coming out, so maybe he might drive again in a few years time? I’d love to see that.

1. Attack the Block (Metro Cinema)

One of the just straight up funnest films I’ve seen in a long time. While the accents were occasionally incomprehensible (I’ll probably use the subtitles for home viewing), no other film got me as engaged in the lives of its characters than this one. The narrative arc resembles another movie I absolutely adored, District 9, with the way it forces you to care about terrible people who turn out to be not so terrible, etc. Some people thought the aliens looked hokey, or cheap, but for me, having just gotten home from Metro’s screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey, their other-worldliness reminded me instead of the very starstuff that informed the creation of the Monoliths from that film. I’m eagerly awaiting what’s next for the cast and crew of this film, director Joe Cornish was one of the three writers of The Adventures of Tintin, proving that this wasn’t some sort of fluke.

And that about does it for this year, tune in tomorrow for a wrapup of the list in its entirety, plus some film experiences which just didn’t fit into the list in this form and deserved to be singled out for further consideration. And hey, while you’re here, why don’t you use the comment section below to tell me how your own list stacked up against mine?

Tagged 13 Assassins, Attack the Block, comics, Drive, geek, Hugo, movies, Rango, review, Submarine, The Adventures of Tintin, The Muppets, Troll Hunter, X-Men: First Class

Jan 05 2012

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film, sitting in the dark with strangers 2011

Sitting in the Dark With Strangers 2011: Part Three

Here’s the third part of my yearly movie reviews, parts one and two are right there. For the uninitiated, my ranking system is of course completely subjective and could shift a little depending on my mood and the length of time passed between me seeing the movie and now. Except Green Lantern. Fuck that movie. SPOILERBABIES GET A SPOILER WARNING HERE IT IS.

20. Rubber (Metro Cinema)

See, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “How could he like a movie about a fucking killer tire more than Thor?” I say that’s easy. When a film is made of something I either like or at least know a fair amount about, I’m obviously going to be a little more critical of it, as I’ve got more emotionally invested in the whole enterprise. When I went into Rubber, on the other hand, the only thing I knew of it apart from the trailer was that it was directed by this guy:

Yeah. I like that music video. I must have seen it late one night on MuchMusic’s Wedge block. Ah, memories. Anyway, Rubber caught me completely off guard, and I was all the better for it. The plot, as much as there is one, is that there’s this sentient-ish car tire with the ability to explode things telekinetically roaming around the American Southwest, going about its business. There’s also a group of people roped off into an area far from the action, who have (presumably) paid for the chance to see the events unfold with what have to be amazing binoculars. This half of the film eventually devolves into a sort of Buñuelian style of social commentary, as the spectators have to deal with a lack of food and water, as well as the encroaching elements. So that was even unexpected in a movie I had no preconceived notions about going in anyway. If only for the amazingly epic and hilarious final moments of the film (at which I realized the human race in the film was absolutely doomed), along with the cool postmodernity of the story, you should see this movie. You’ll agree it’s better than dumb ol’ Thor.

19. Le Havre (Metro Cinema)

A heart-breakingly beautiful film about people on the wrong side of the tracks in the French city of Le Havre. E. never gets tired of saying this, but this film was the winner of the coveted “Palm Dog” award for best canine performance of the year. Bet you didn’t know that was a thing. This movie is great if only for bringing French singer Little Bob back into the public consciousness. Seriously, if you’re interested in a film that reaches great limits in terms of human kindness, and is shot in a really interesting style resembling a stage play, check this sucker out. It’s really great.

18. Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop (Metro Cinema)

Occupying just about the same place in my heart that the White Stripes documentary captured last year, this movie is kind of a rock film as well. It takes you behind the scenes of Conan O’Brien’s stage show tour that he roped together after losing his timeslot to Jay Leno in one of the most talked about TV stories of the last year. Even though this movie showed people in my hometown acting like racist assholes (which to be fair a lot of them are), I really liked this look into the mind of an amazingly talented and driven comedy performer. Actually, when we watched this at the Metro, when that scene came on, everyone in the theatre looked around and sort of grimaced our collective shame at one another. It was awkward, but we all realized that being the distinguished art patrons we are sort of precluded us from being dicks like the guy in the movie. The concert scenes are really solid, especially once they get to Jack White’s recording studio in Nashville for a concert.

17. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (saw for free for work)

Not much comes to mind when I think about this one. It’s almost like reflecting on what you thought of the last few pages of a really good book, yeah, you liked them but they’re a part of a whole rather than an individual entity. I really liked how they handled the massive battle at Hogwarts castle in this one, as they sort of backgrounded all the really crazy shit that happens in favour of strong character beats. Other movies would have gone all out to try and get you amped up at this part, but the people who made Harry Potter realized we had a lot more emotionally invested in the characters rather than in sweet battle scenes. It was a little long, though, they could have definitely trimmed down a certain individual’s return by a few minutes. On the plus side, though, there wasn’t any camping in this one, yay! They didn’t take my advice and change who Harry ends up with though. That would have been nice, as those two characters are so wrong in my eyes. </fanboy>

16. Real Steel (saw for free for work)

For a movie that could have easily been another ridiculously terrible exercise in sub-mediocrity like the Transformers franchise, this movie about robots hitting had one another had what boxing trainers in movies always rag on about: heart. And also a kind of unexpected vicious streak. The nonchalance that Hugh Jackman’s character shows his son for most of the movie’s running time is nothing short of breathtaking. He yells at him, buys him crappy food, takes him into dangerous locales without thinking about his safety at all … what I’m trying to say here is that it’s great. For what’s basically a kids movie of the moment, Real Steel has an approach to dealing with children that reminded me of the greater films of yesteryear, when kids weren’t so mollycoddled. The subplot about how the robot might not be letting on about his own intelligence kind of went nowhere though. This movie made me believe that a robot designed for punching other robots could succeed at doing its task really well.

15. Midnight in Paris

I’ll admit right now that I have not seen very many Woody Allen films. In fact, thinking off the top of my head, all I can remember seeing and enjoying were Radio Days and Manhattan Murder Mystery, the latter being a sort of pastiche of one of my favorite film series, the Thin Man movies. So I didn’t really have much love for the director going in. It was the story that really did it for me, an English literature nerd, as it’s basically “The League of Extraordinary 1920s Authors.” It’s also got a sort of time travel in it, so there’s another plus right there. It also did very little of a thing that time travel movies always do which pisses me off. There’s only one moment in the film in which the character from the future tells somebody something and then changes the course of history as a cheap joke. There’s no “Hey Steve Jobs, look at this Apple” sort of bullshit, only one specific little joke that you wouldn’t even get if you haven’t seen a specific avant-garde Spanish movie from the era. Owen Wilson’s character is instead continually awestruck by all the cool people he runs into, and that’s great. It’s what I’d be like in the same situation. See it if only for that.

14. Hobo With a Shotgun

There’s another amazingly great poster. The attention to detail right there is superb. The review’s basically all there in the title. If you feel you’re the sort of person who’d enjoy a movie called “Hobo With a Shotgun”, this is everything you want and more. It’s a greasy, dirty, awesome slog through the worst city in the world. The best part about it is, while some of the actors are chewing scenery and are clearly in on the joke, Rutger “Goddamn” Hauer never breaks character and winks at the screen, not once. He’s always completely on point as the eponymous Hobo, and the movie benefits greatly from it. To repeat: if you’re the sort of person who’d like to see minor Canadian television personalities get killed in increasingly ridiculous ways, this movie’s for you. And if you’re not, I don’t know if we can be friends any more. And, for bonus points, the movie ends by playing the theme song from The Raccoons of all things. When this part came on, I immediately burst out into laughter, and reflected on how much I love my country, and our sense of humor.

13. Hanna (saw for free for work)

This and the #2 on my list are the movies I’d most like to revisit as soon as possible. This is such a stylish little piece of work that I’m sure I’ll like it even better the second time. The marriage between image and music in this movie is so well done that it definitely elevates it above other movies drawing from similar source material. The original soundtrack is by The Chemical Brothers, and at some points it seems like the movie is being edited towards the music track, rather than what I’ve always assumed was the norm, that the music is added later into an almost-finished film. It’s also really entertaining to see Saorise Ronan beating the crap out of goons twice her size. If they ever get around to making a Queen and Country movie/TV show in the next few years, which they really should, I think that she’d be the perfect choice for Tara Chace.

12. Rise of the Planet of the Apes

I love the Planet of the Apes movies, and my favorite apart from the first one is Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, the one in which we see how human society fell to an ape insurrection. So when Rise was announced, I was cautiously optimistic for it, as Conquest, while fun, had a few glaring flaws that kept it from being perfect (namely the fact that monkey butlers caught on enough to eventually become a societal problem). I was not disappointed in the slightest. Andy Serkis deserves a goddamn Oscar for this, playing not only monkey revolutionary Caesar, but also a dull-witted ape sanctuary worker. One of my favorite parts had to be the “Why Cookie Rocket?” scene, which makes me sad in retrospect that that little meme never caught on. Highly recommended for people who like monkeys, or for people who definitely just hate their fellow man and want him to be crushed by monkeys.

11. Captain America: The First Avenger (saw for free for work)

This movie was great fun, in a way that Green Lantern wished it was. It had a similarly difficult task set before it: make audiences care about a comic character who, let’s face it, has had his best years come and go. Where GL tried to shoehorn Ryan Reynolds’ natural douchiness into a standard Hero’s Journey bullshit mould, Captain America instead had a main character who was raring to go from the very beginning and just let him rip. Add to that a great villainous turn by Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull, and much fun was had throughout the land. I did have a few worries going in, I didn’t really like the new costume (it has since started to grow on me), and I was worried that they were going to make fun of the original wing-helmeted version. They thought of an excellent way around that, in a move that hearkened back to director Joe Johnston’s use of Hollywood artifice in The Rocketeer: the classic comic book costume was the one used on USO fund raising tours in a hilarious montage sequence. Once I realized that this adaptation was ready to pay real homage to the character’s rich history, and not just lip service, I was 100% on board. The “First Avenger” stuff kind of wore on me though, and the last few minutes of the movie were really rushed into being an ad for the Avengers film, but for the most part I really liked this one. I’ll give a tentative “Make Mine Marvel!” for this summer’s tentpole event.

And that does it for this installment in the list of movies I watched, stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion!

Tagged Captain America: The First Avenger, Conan O'Brien Can't Stop, geek, Hanna, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two, Hobo With a Shotgun, Le Havre, Midnight in Paris, movies, Real Steel, review, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Rubber

Jan 04 2012

Sitting in the Dark With Strangers 2011: Part Two

Here’s movies 30-21 on my annual list of films for this year. Again, my ranking system is completely arbitrary, so feel free to bitch about them and share your equally valid opinion in the comment section below. If you’re a spoilerbaby, SPOILER ALERT throughout. Feel free to sit in a hole and not interact with culture. The first set of films is available here.

30. Source Code (saw for free for work)

Forgive me the obvious, but yeah this movie was basically Quantum Leap. But luckily, I love Quantum Leap, so it was alright. I also really enjoyed Moon, the previous film by this director, which was actually way better than this one, so you should check it out. I like Jake Gyllenhaal, I really like Michelle Monaghan (mostly for Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) so this was pretty good. Like any mystery sci-fi movie that isn’t Primer, though, the structure of the mystery in this movie’s a little easy to figure out, plus the movie goes on for ten minutes longer than it has any right to. Those ten minutes of stupid right at the end definitely knocked this one down about 10 pegs, easily. Also the poster is pretty terrible.

29. Bridesmaids

Funny, but fairly forgettable. I didn’t dislike it, but it’s not in the same class as 40 Year Old Virgin, Role Models or Pineapple Express.

28. Blank City (Metro Cinema)

This was a cool little documentary about the no-wave film movement that arose in New York in the wake of punk and New Wave. My friend JP said to me something afterwards which rang really true: the doc was pretty good, but you’d never want to watch any of the films they showed the making of. I understand that sentiment quite a bit; one of my treasured collections is a set of DVDs holding nothing on them but awesome trailers for what were undoubtedly shitty grindhouse films. It’s tough sometimes to make people understand that no, I’m not into rape-revenge flicks, or extremely violent slasher movies, I just like watching the trailers for them as I admire the sheer balls-out approach they took to trying to put asses into seats back in the day. Anyway, Blank City is undoubtedly the best introduction into this brief moment in cinematic history.

27. Marwencol (Metro Cinema)

This was a fascinatingly strange film. Just as you think it’s as weird as it’s going to be, some other peel of the onion is taken off the main guy, and suddenly we’re forced to see him in yet another new light. Also, in my opinion, his photography is absolutely beautiful. For those of you who haven’t seen this, it’s about a man who receives massive brain trauma and copes by creating a small WWII-era European village in his backyard, which he populates with American and German soldiers. His analogue in the town of Marwencol has various adventures which replicate things that happen to him in his daily life, or which he uses as revenge upon the men who hurt him. Simply fascinating.

26. Paul (saw for free for work)

This was another good film that I don’t remember too much about. I liked seeing Pegg and Frost onscreen again (they make an appearance in another film much higher up on the list, so keep your eyes peeled), Seth Rogen’s stoner alien was pretty funny, Sigourney Weaver was appropriately menacing, etc. I did think Kirsten Wiig’s character was a little annoying though, and you could really tell that Pegg and Frost were not accompanied by director Edgar Wright in this one, so the film suffered some in comparison to their previous outings. Still, pretty fun over all.

25. Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Files (Metro Cinema)

This was another fascinating documentary (the more astute among you may be noticing a theme here…) about strange men doing strange things. This movie focuses on the urban legend of the “Toynbee Tiles”, strange street art that can be seen all over the Eastern seaboard of the United States in addition to South America. The pictures in question refer to a prophecy that all dead human beings will be reborn on the surface of Jupiter, as Stanley Kubrick foretold in the film 2001 A Space Odyssey. It really reminded me of what a real-life version of my favorite role-playing game Unknown Armies would be like, a world in which obsessive-compulsives battle one another in a war underneath all of our noses. It could have used some trimming though, as there was a lot of re-enactment of what the investigators felt as they uncovered new clues, which I feel could have easily been excised. Although, it’s not like the movie was that long, really.

24. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (Metro Cinema)

This locally made (in so much as Calgary is in the same province as me…) film was a fun re-imagining of the classic slasher genre. I’m a fan of both of the male leads, who were on the TV shows Breaker High and Firefly, and I like seeing college kids get killed by their own stupidity. So much so, in fact, that I ran a role playing game based on the same subject a little while ago. So yeah, I enjoyed this film quite a bit. I liked how “hillbilly” eventually became the dirtiest word imaginable, and the part when the guy accidentally jumped in the woodchipper made me laugh pretty hard. You might need to know a little bit about the genre before watching this one, though, as a lot of the jokes are predicated on your knowledge of slasher film etiquette.

23. Super 8

Of the two “kids on bicycles find and defeat aliens” films this year, this was definitely my second favorite, but that’s not to say it’s a bad movie. I just feel like this is a nostalgia-seeking smart missile that couldn’t directly hit me as a target as I’d never really grown up during this era. I will say that I thought the movie the kids actually ended up making was pretty hilarious, and I also enjoyed the 80s-esque attitude towards kids and violence, swearing, etc, which is almost gone nowadays. This movie actually really made me recall Let Me In from last year, which also used the same time period, but to a massively different effect. I feel like that one was potentially a bit more successful than Super 8, at least from a directorial standpoint. The scene in which the vampire’s keeper sneaks into the kids’ car and patiently tries to kill them before all hell breaks loose was like a mini masterpiece. And can I say, getting back to Super 8, the alien hanging people upside down like that would have killed them really quick. you don’t live too long in that position. Definitely not a week, or however long it was.

22. Moneyball

This was an excellent argument for not knowing much about a film going in. Since this movie is about baseball, and I’ve only ever successfully finished watching a whole baseball game once in my life, I knew next to nothing about the Oakland A’s franchise going in, other than the fact that their use of an apostrophe is incredibly incorrect and irritating. So I had no preconceived notions about what was going to happen going in, which was a huge benefit. I really liked how this movie took you into the behind the scenes of running a ball team, as that’s not something I’ve seen too much in movies. I liked how the players were treated in a sort of hands-free manner, as they’re professionals and don’t need the sort of mollycoddling you might expect; they understand for the most part that they are just meat to be used in pursuit of championships which are in turn only in aid of eventually selling merch. It was kind of nice to see a broken-down guy get a chance back into the big leagues though. I also like that it was basically a movie about math, that’s kind of the reason I went to see this film, come to think of it. I was intrigued by the fact that it wa about a cool equation you could use to win baseball games. Kind of reminds me of the equations used to derive collateralized debt obligations (as seen in Margin Call) to some extent.

21. Thor

What’s this? A legitimate comic book movie around the half-way mark of my list? There’s a variety of reasons that Thor was not the greatest film, and this doesn’t just have to do with my intense hatred for the character in the comics. First off, it was shot shall we say “obnoxiously” in 3D. Characters would stand stacked along the screen sometimes to attempt to drum up visual interest, or occasionally there’d be dutch angles for no real reason than so that the 3D would be “justified”. Don’t do that, 3D is not a neccessary evil, so don’t make the home, non 3D viewing experience awkward in retrospect. Also, the movie ends completely backwards. By the end of the film, Thor is safe back home in Asgard, with pretty much all the loose ends sewn up. This is not exactly the most interesting way to end a film, by returning everything to the status quo. Plus it makes getting him back for this years Avengers megaflick somewhat needlessly difficult, as someone needs to fix the Bifrost Bridge and get his ass back on Midgard before he can do anything. One last thing, the way that the destruction of Laufey’s realm, Jotunheim, is held up as this big plot point is pointless and dumb. Who gives a fuck about Jotunheim. None of the humans even know that it’s real. Threaten to blow up Earth maybe? Don’t try to make me care about the ice planet full of assholes.

More movies on the list in a little while. Feel free to explain why Jotunheim’s continued existence as one of the Nine Realms is worth me caring in the comments section below.

Tagged Blank City, Bridesmaids, geek, Marwencol, Moneyball, movies, movies that suck, Paul, Resurrect Dead, review, Source Code, Super 8, Thor, trailers, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

Jan 01 2012

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sitting in the dark with strangers 2011

Sitting in the Dark With Strangers 2011: Part One

Happy New Year everyone! As part of my one-year blogoversary, here’s my yearly list of all the movies I saw in theatres this year! Just like last year, I saw most of these movies for free, as studios drop tickets off at the comic store to try and build buzz among my “people” (nerds with money). Here’s the bottom eleven films of the year.

These are all ranked subjectively using the highly scientific method of making a big list and then determining which movies I liked better by process of elimination. SPOILER WARNING is in effect, so go access whatever the Amish use to get information if you’re a spoilerbaby.

41. Green Lantern (saw for free from work)

There are so many things wrong with this movie, I could talk for hours. Not just fanboy nitpicky shit either. Pretty much every single piece of this movie is an absolute failure, as this is what happens when a creative team has no love for the work they’re adapting. Ryan Reynolds’ smarmy douchebagginess is not the right blend needed for Hal Jordan, it’s barely even good enough for Guy Gardner.

(sidenote: Hal Jordan is a pretty shitty character in the comics anyway, so they kind of shot themselves in the foot right away, but at least he wouldn’t pussy out of Green Lantern school after 30 minutes of training like Reynolds does. Fuck that shit.)

Blake “Lively” turns in mediocre work as the world’s youngest aviation executive. We’re supposed to believe that her, Reynolds and Peter Fucking Sarsgaard all knew each other back in the day? She’s at least 15 years younger than both of them. Speaking of Sarsgaard, I’ve heard people say that he was a “high point” in the film, but his over the top screaming bullshit was actually one of the worst things. The CGI was terrible, the costume was fucking terrible, the story was laughably bad (they basically just took the plot from Spider-Man and pasted a completely different character’s name over it). Speaking of the CGI, turning the main villain Parallax’s shape from that of a weird yellow space bug to being a weird yellow cloud is a decision that makes no sense at all. At least a bug would have not drawn the audience’s attention to the fact that, much like movie-Parallax, Green Lantern is a diarrhea-esque mass of failure pie masquerading as a superhero picture. The only good thing I have to say is that Mark Strong makes a decent Sinestro, up until the absolutely useless heel turn after the motherfucking credits. The fact that this movie has a 6.0 on imdb is absolutely astounding. Ryan Reynolds’ league of assistants must work round the clock to keep putting in good reviews. Fuck this movie. It may sound like I’m a big fan of the comics based on how much I’ve griped over the changes here, but I’m really not. I just like it when movies are not terrible.

40. Cowboys and Aliens (saw for free for work)

One of the biggest examples of missing the point I’ve seen in a comic book movie adaptation. The original book wasn’t half bad, and didn’t deserve to be turned into this star-bloated piece of garbage. My favorite part of the book was that the aliens were a sort of space-Roman Empire, subjugating other species and planets by way of slavery. It actually had something to say about colonialism in our history, as both the “Cowboys” and the “Indians” of the American West had to team up against a race that aims to do to those of European descent what they did to the indigenous peoples in North America. In the film, the aliens came to Earth to steal all of our gold. What a cop out. Our gold.

The film is also filled with stupid design and screenplay choices, seemingly just out of laziness. Why was there an overturned paddleboat in the middle of the desert? Because it makes for an interesting location. Why did the evolution on the aliens’ planet result in them having chest cavities that open up to reveal their beating, unguarded hearts? So that the kid from Avatar: The Last Airbender can stab one of them in the heart, duh. Completely awful, and it gives the idea of comic book adaptation films a bad name with this sub-video game approach to storytelling. If you liked this movie, you are wrong and we can’t be friends.

39. I Am Number Four (saw for free from work)

I actually forgot I’d seen this movie before looking at a list of films from 2011. The best thing I can say about it is that I’ve seen episodes of Smallville that were worse. And also that it was marginally better than the first Twilight film, which it desperately wants to emulate. I also liked when the dog turned giant. Other than that, this is a complete blur to me. I feel that Timothy Olyphant needs to fire his agent and maybe be in a good movie some time. I really do like the guy.

38. The Mechanic (saw for free for work)

Look at that poster, pretty cool, hey? I am again at a bit of a loss as I don’t remember much about this movie. I do remember a weird gay subtext thing that I would bet you was not in the original Charles Bronson film. Something about how you must immediately go have angry sex with a woman after killing another man, as it’s too awkward to deal with your kill-partner’s emotions afterwards? This movie defines mediocre.

37. Sucker Punch

Hey, there’s another cool poster. Unfortunately this movie had so many problems that for most of its duration I kept saying to myself “I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.” The three levels of reality thing sounded like a good idea in theory, but in execution it was stupid-boring. I would have honestly preferred a picture about some sort of sexy girl-assassin squad that fights mecha-Nazis, like they do in one fantasy sequence, than the quasi-intelligent “oh, she’s trying to escape her reality by going into another, sexier one” bullshit. I really empathised with the main character, as I too wanted to escape her reality and go see another movie. Say what you will about Zack Snyder, though, with this and 300, he has demonstrated himself as the heir to Leni Riefenstahl, the premier objectifier of the human form in modern filmmaking.

36. Your Highness (saw for free for work)

I’m pretty sure I did like Danny McBride at some point. I watched the whole first season of Eastbound and Down, and liked that. This movie, though, was just lazy. I probably would have liked it a lot more had it leaned harder on the D&D tropes it only paid lip service to. Meeting with the dwarfs and having them all end up being actual little people was pretty funny though. This is far and away better than any of the licensed D&D films, though, maybe about as good as Krull was? This is another one of those movies that I forgot most of, due to there being little to latch on to.

35. The Adjustment Bureau (saw for free for work)

The big thing I took away from this movie is that hats are awesome, and everyone should wear one. I feel like this was made by the hat lobby to try and bring back the glory days of menswear pre-1965. Oh yeah, there was a bunch of magic stuff too. Not nearly as good as Blade Runner or A Scanner Darkly in the pantheon of Philip K. Dick adaptations, but not nearly as bad as most of the others.

34. Burke and Hare (Metro Cinema)

So, after and including this movie, I can say I honestly really enjoyed all the ones left on the list, if only for one reason in some cases. I don’t really have anything bad to say about this one for example, it was a slight but enjoyable romp through a period of history I didn’t really know anything about. Was it especially memorable? No. It did have a great amount of UK film talent, including Christopher Lee in an almost unrecognizable role as a guy that gets murdered. If you enjoy black comedies featuring corpses (like Weekend at Bernies maybe?), period pieces, or UK film humor in the vein of Shaun of the Dead, you’d probably enjoy this one.

33. 30 Minutes or Less (saw for free for work)

I feel that, had they stripped out most of the comedy bits, the basic idea of this film would have made an excellent film noir scenario. As it is, though, it’s a pretty enjoyable romp, even with the Danny McBride factor. Actually I didn’t really mind him that much in this one, as you’re never really supposed to empathize too much with his douchey criminal mastermind character. I did have a little trouble with Jesse Eisenberg’s guy right at the beginning though, after him and Aziz Ansari fight over Eisenberg having slept with Anzari’s sister, Eisenberg kind of intimates that he’s better than his pizza guy job, and is only doing it because he’s adrift. I believed that line a lot more coming from his character in Adventureland, where he’d just tried to get into a higher level of school, but this one never made me believe that he was as smart or deserving as he felt he was. Sure, he wasn’t deserving of having a bomb strapped to him either, but whatever. Decent little movie.

32. Red State (Metro Cinema)

The critics really seemed to hate this movie. I didn’t mind it, I saw it at the awesome Metro Cinema with Kevin Smith in attendance, so I guess that’s probably the ideal atmosphere too see it in. The story and the structure are kind of weird, but it works. I didn’t know anything going in, so I thought it was mostly going to be religious-themed torture porn, but I was pleasantly surprised that it turned into a Waco-pastiche. John Goodman was pretty good, the horny teenagers did their job pretty well, the violence was solid, the villains are definitely deserving of what they receive, yeah, I didn’t mind this one at all. People must have been expecting the film to resemble Smith’s other films I guess.

31. Margin Call

This film almost succeeded in making me empathize with the Wall Street-types who brought about the worldwide financial meltdown, and for that I think it deserves some praise. There’s an excellent cast in this movie, with Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto and Kevin Spacey being the real standouts. As a sidenote, Kevin Spacey looks exactly like Gene Hackman now. What is that all about? Bettany in particular is great, delivering a monologue about how Main Street asked Wall Street to make them shitloads of money and finance their mortgages and whatnot, then got mad that this was potentially not achieved in the most honourable ways. The fact that he does this while driving what appears to be an Aston Martin V12 Vantage only compounds the scene’s excellence. I really like his line about equality, and how without the market, we’d all see things become a lot more equal in our lifetimes, and how this isn’t a good thing.

Sadly, though, I made the mistake of going to see this at the other art cinema in town, the one that is nowhere near the equal of the Metro. They honestly just played a fucking DVD instead of film or even a blu-ray, it was bullshit. How do I know? The menu for the DVD player came on before the curtains opened, and a little image saying “DVD” was in the top corner of the screen for about a minute after the movie started. That’s bush league, man. I can watch a DVD at home, why do you expect me to come back to your theatre when you can’t provide a real theatrical experience for me? It wasn’t even like the DVD was in good shape, there were some moments where the image onscreen skipped, or didn’t align with the soundtrack. I do recommend the movie, but I don’t recommend the theatre at all.

Check back soon for the next ten movies on my list. Feel free to tell me how much you liked Green Lantern in the comments section below, so I can make fun of your movie tastes.

Tagged 30 Minutes or Less, Burke and Hare, Cowboys and Aliens, geek, Green Lantern, I Am Number Four, Margin Call, movies, movies that suck, Red State, Sucker Punch, The Adjustment Bureau, The Mechanic, Your Highness

this nerding life

Monthly Archives: January 2012

The Resolution Project Season Two, or A Kind of Manifesto

Sitting in the Dark With Strangers 2011 – The Rundown

Sitting in the Dark With Strangers 2011: Part Four

Sitting in the Dark With Strangers 2011: Part Three

Sitting in the Dark With Strangers 2011: Part Two

Sitting in the Dark With Strangers 2011: Part One

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Monthly Archives: January 2012

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