Yup, I know. I'm late with the entry promised for last week. Compensating with a 2-in-1. Sort of. Meaning that I thought there's room for both VFX and makeup today, since anyway we mostly have overlapping titles.
"Ex Machina" starts the nominations series for visual effects. I find it a bit as a "category fill" item here. Maybe I'm subjective, since I found the movie way more pretentious than what it actually delivers. Of course, Ava - who's 99% the subject of the nomination, looks good, but I don't find it groundbreaking in any way. And we have groundbreaking material below ...
"Mad Max: Fury Road" is my prediction for both VFX and Makeup. I won't write again all what I already did in the movie's entry last year. What we have here is a resurrection of "for real" VFX = non-CGI (although we have CGI too, as you can observe below). It's the only movie I've noticed using real staged visual effects at this scale in a long long time. About the makeup, I'm no expert, bt it's clearly the most "visible" among all nominees.
"The 100-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared" is a pleasant surprise in this year's nominees list. It scored in makeup, and I can say it's a lesson given to some Hollywood titles, such as "J. Edgar" for instance, in respect to "aging" a character. The year passing on a guy's face looks much more natural in this Swedish comedy that's a sort of a northern Forrest Gump, much much colder, and way less serious.
"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" is seen by many as a VFX winner. I disagree. It looks too ... common for me. It's simply in the same line of recently released movies. Besides the swords, what we see here is not far from what we also saw in "Transformers", "Avengers", etc...
"The Martian" offers planet Mars as a VFX subject. Again, it looks like an entry that stays in the average range of what we typically have here. More I would say, it's even "eclipsed" by last year's "Interstellar" :) ...
"The Revenant" scored nominations on both VFX and Makeup. Unfortunately the clip below is centered on the second, but it's the only I found which displays a couple frames from a scene that I say it makes it the main contender against "Mad Max" for VFX ( and also my wishful winner :) ). It's of course the bear scene, which I think we can consider the next level in CGI, at least from what I've seen by now (maybe "Planet of the Apes" gets slightly close). Well, we'll see where the votes are going ...
This year started with deadlines and way too limited time. I said I'll try to cover again the Oscar season, but I think I'll be a bit more restrictive than last times. So I'll start in a total "unprofessional" manner by sending directly to the official site: http://oscar.go.com/nominees , instead enumerating myself the nominations. It's faster, and you also have trailers there ;). What I won't change is the typical order I start with ... = I should be back with VFX next week.
I thought that before starting the Oscar 2016 season (yup, I'll do that again ...) might be a good idea to blog about something I don't want to miss. I had the inspiration to add "La Isla Minima" on my "to watch" list for the holidays. It's a Spanish thriller that got the public prize at the latest edition of the European Film Awards. Location: a swampy rural area of '80s Spain. Context: two missing girls and two police detectives sent to deal with the case. Spoiler (more or less - we have already the trailer and the IMDb synopsis): the responsible proves to be a serial killer, and more: one who did operate in the area undisturbed for quite a while.
I can't say that the movie amazed me with its "crime story". I've noticed online some comparisons with "Prisoners". It's not the case, it still has a long way to get to the story development we have there. Even so, it's still a decent thriller. What's also maybe a bit downgrading on the script side are the loose ends. Maybe they're intended, but still it's a bit too .. unsolved. However, "La Isla Minima" compensates through some other aspects. We probably have one of the best character development I've seen lately. Without spoilers, the two detectives come with different backgrounds, different experience, and let's say that the case makes them "grow" differently. Besides that we also have the place and the time. I have no idea personally how was the rural Spain in the '80s, but a more intense influence of the location in the action development I probably didn't see besides Alexander Payne's movies ("Sideways" - Californa Wine Valleys, "Descendants" - Hawaii, etc.), with the note that there you could feel the opposite, relaxed side, of the time and place.
Probably there is more to be said, but I'll close up with the technical side. I regret that I didn't have the opportunity to see this movie in cinema. Besides the soundtrack, the visuals are amazing. If last time I was saying that "Youth" is very good with this, then let's just add one extra class on top of it ... It's a lesson about how to do the visual part of a movie. There's a clear contribution of that in everything that the viewer will feel: suspense moments, uncomfortable silences, etc. .. maybe a bit centered on tensed vibes, but in the end.. it's a thriller :)
I wanted to close the year with something a bit better than the disappointing of last time. So, between two cooking rounds, I decided to try a short entry for "Youth", although it probably deserves a more detailed review than the previous one. Who has seen "Il Divo" and "La Grande Bellezza" probably knows already the directing and writing style of Paolo Sorentino. For who didn't see "Il Divo" and "La Grande Bellezza" what I can summarize in two words is: chillout movie. Probably this doesn't cover all that should be covered = the drama part, the reflections over life part, the bitter comedy, and all else you can find in the two movies and even more in "Youth". But I think "chillout movie" catches the essential regarding the mood state where this movie fits. It's slowly advancing, and it might awake some strong feelings on the way, but nothing suddenly. It does it gradually, until the end credits roll over.
Technically, "Youth" is a remarkable achievement. I cannot tell how it is overall compared with "La Grande Bellezza", but for camera work what we have here is clearly better (and it wasn't bad in the other place either). There are many voices praising Michael Caine's performance in the leading role. I agree, but what I find overlooked is the character played by Harvey Keitel, who I think here has the best performance ever at least from what I've seen.
I'll wrap up with what I usually have in the introductory part. What's the subject in "Youth"? We have a snapshot from the final years of an orchestra conductor, while he spends his usual vacation in a mountain resort in Switzerland. That's it. Mainly a few days from a guy's life and what surrounds him. To conclude, starting from the subject description, I think "Youth" is actually recommended to watch until a certain age .. Don't know why, but I guess seeing it after you're 40-50 years old might gain a stronger depressing factor than what it already has. Even if, in the end, the final part can be seen as a metaphor of "you can stay forever young" :)
First thing: If you didn't see any "Star Wars" and you'd like to start with this one, maybe it's better to stop reading here. You're the fortunate case! You might not get many references from the movie, but you might still like it. And it doesn't make sense to alter your expectations by getting a couple spoilers, which I'll try to minimize, even though it's impossible for me to remove them completely...
Now let's get to us, the rest who had a piece of the SW universe before. If I would do a statistic of my blog entries and the associated ratings, I think what I'd get would be at least 2/3 in accordance with most of the professional critics related to the "fresh" vs "rotten" verdict for a move. That's for saying that I can't be accused of being against the wave just for the sake of doing so. This was a disclaimer for what follows ... Because I'm baffled by the appreciation "The Force Awakens" gets. I simply can't understand, and unfortunately I can't say that I've read many reviews to get it .. but the reason for that is that they don't present reasons! at least not objectively! Besides subjective awe and ecstatic appreciation like wow, we finally find out that Force is in anything that's living (no man, we knew that already!!! - and seriously, I've seen that in a review by a "top critic"), that stormtroopers have heart and are capable of feelings (we knew that too! at least literally speaking = they're humans for God sake!), and others like these ... I'll try to make an objective analysis of what we're served with (as objective as I can). And I'll start with the negative part, because ... the dark side is stronger in this one.
Let's leave aside the many parts that are too SciFi even for a SciFi, because that's what we get in pretty much any movie of this size. This is minor. Let's get to what's much worse than this, and a first mark to make is the negative character: Kylo Ren. The comparison with Darth Vader is unavoidable. Both the one in the original series, and also Anakin Skywalker from Ep. I-III. The difference is huge. Hayden Christensen got many critics for his acting skills when he played Anakin, but ironically exactly his lack of expression served him extremely well for a character who's slowly dehumanizing. The voice of James Earl Jones for the original Darth Vader is the definition of charisma. That's totally lacking in the new movie. Maybe it's not that much the actor's fault, but the script is definitely to blame. Let's move over the unknown reason why the guy wears a mask, which is also damaged (maybe the Dark Side lacks funds for renewing helmets). The character is hilarious ... it's prone to parody. His nervous breakdowns when he strikes everywhere with his sword like a spoiled teenager made me think on the "Spaceballs" Darth Vader version. There's needless to say that even the movie itself makes a laugh out of it with one of the many jokes that aren't at all fit in the script = we have a scene when during such a breakdown, two stormtroopers change their patrolling route which passes by the the angry wielder of the red laser. May the Schwartz be with us ...
J.J. Abrams tried something that worked in "Star Trek". It made it more relaxed. And it worked because he had room to make it more relaxed (plus the crew of the original series fits with that). You can't do the same with "Star Wars". SW has already a wide target audience that's much less geek oriented compared to ST, and which includes also small age categories. There's no room, and in many situations as the joke above or other aspects it feels that "nope, that didn't work" ...
That's something more that Abrams got in "Star Trek", superbly I could say, and here gets close to embarrassingly bad. Trying to make key references through scenes close to the previous movies. Kirk's death scene in "Into Darkness" for instance, the exact opposite of the similar death of Spock in "Wrath of Khan" .. this was pure gold. Inverting the roles almost identically, the alternate timeline, the same negative character, the climax moment in the movie, there's lots of stuff that put together give a connecting point over years with the older movie, and it's impossible not to feel something about it if you know what dots to connect. "Star Wars" on the other hand is simply repetitive ... and that's it ... we start with a droid lost in the desert who carries a secret message (sounds familiar?) ... we have a bigger and meaner Death Star which does pretty much the same thing as the previous one: destroys planets ... and (spoiler alert) we have the climax scene as in "Star Trek", in which we also have here the role inversion, father-son with a reference to "Empire Strikes Back". Only that the symmetry we had in ST that hit you with a nostalgic feeling of "history repeats", that symmetry is really messed up here ... Ironically even if the symmetry is not that much there, probably unfortunately intending to obtain something original, this originality suffers of another huge problem: it's ultra-predictable! where ultra = you know what follows with something like 5-10 minutes before the scene's climax ... But, let's stop here and keep the "surprise" factor.
And still ... let's not drop it completely. Probably the scene wanted to be a key moment in the movie. A memorable one. It fails badly. Stuff that only happened (maybe) in "The Phantom Menace". In each of the other "Star Wars" we have at least a scene to remember. In "A New Hope" is either the first sight of Darth Vader, or the destruction of the Death Star. In "Empire Strikes Back" is the duel Darth Vader vs. Luke when the latter loses his hand. In "Return of the Jedi" is the death of Darth Vader and the first time when the mask falls down. In "The Clone Wars" is the duel Yoda vs. Dooku when we see for the first time why Yoda carries a sword. In "Revenge of the Sith" is the ending of the Anakin vs. Obi-Wan duel and practically the birth of Vader. In "Phantom Menace" maybe it wanted to be the death of Qui Gon Jinn, but that didn't work as it doesn't work now either ... you cannot have a key scene that looks like trying to repeat another key scene but it's also undecided about that ...
Let's move a bit to the light part ... at least a bit. The movie is long but you can't feel it. I have to admit this. And if one of the worst problems is the negative character, maybe the best part is the positive character: Rey. Finally, we have a girl as Jedi knight :) + the actress did her job perfectly. Unfortunately I can't appreciate much besides these. What I can, is to hope that "The Force Awakens" will be an Episode I "The Phantom Menace" comparing to what's coming after ...
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