Part 1 of Winter-Spring 2012-2013 Movie Preview

Somehow I've managed again to sync the lack of watched movies with the end of the Fall = just perfect for the usual entry in this time of year. So, let's get straight to the point with some December releases.

"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" is the prequel to "The Lord of the Rings". Directed also by Peter Jackson, having the same production team, the same screenwriters .. should sound promising, right ? Well, not for me, simply because "The Hobbit" is a children's book, relatively short, infinitely less complex than "Lord of the Rings" ... but this alone still wouldn't be a problem. The problem is that this was supposed to be the first part of two. I think this was already exaggerated as length, but now it looks even worse, they want another trilogy ! For a book which if I remember well is shorter than any of the three in LotR. "The Fellowship of the Ring" is for me somewhere up high in the top of all movies ever watched (partially subjective) and one of the best adaptations for the screen from a book (yes, even better than "Return of the King" which is excessively lengthened in the end). Unfortunately I can't see how "The Hobbit" in three parts could get at least up the level of "The Two Towers" which is a book a bit harder to adapt considering the action threads, and still the result was decent. Conclusion: I'm afraid that everything is about $ .. and since more movies mean more $ .....

Since we're close to the adapting topic, another title with a box-office potential for the end of the year is "Jack Reacher". Here I can't say much because I have no idea what is in the book which seems to be actually a series of crime novels having the above mentioned as main character. The part that might deserve some attention is the director and screenwriter of the movie: Cristopher McQuarrie who after the success with "The Usual Suspects" from long ago was also involved in "Valkyrie" or "The Tourist" more recently. Well .. none shined, but anyway both were above the usual mindless Hollywoodish action.

For the end of December we have the final production made by Tarantino. Maybe I'm a bit too skeptic today but for some reason Jamie Foxx doesn't look very convincing as lead character in the trailer of "Django Unchained". We'll see ...

Since it's been a while from my last reference to a real horror, I'll stop to "Mama" for the beginning of January 2013. I think the trailer says enough. And for who tastes the genre, it seems that somewhere online there's also a short movie on which this one is based upon ;)

I didn't see yet the second part of "Expendables", but from what I've heard it shows that Schwarzenegger took a long break from acting (not that we're speaking of Oscar material anyway). Despite all these "The Last Stand" for me looks more fun than Tarantino's production from above (maybe I'm subjective, and I still have my childhood marked by "Terminator 2", "Total Recall", "Predator" and others :) ). To top this the direction belongs to a Korean - Jee-woon Kim - from whose movies I didn't see any, but I have four or five on my "to watch list" (all having a rating bigger than 7 on IMDb).

Sometime long long ago we had a Lee Marvin pissed off by being betrayed and left in a pool of blood by his partners in crime. More recently, but still more than 10 years ago, Mel Gibson was getting the same treatment in the remake. Both of their names were Porter (as a side note somewhere meanwhile Chow-Yun Fat was getting into the same troubles in a Hong Kong made production). Well, it seems that the character's name is actually "Parker" and I found out that he's also the lead in a book, or again more exactly a series of crime novels - more or less good. Even if the story somehow is able to catch your attention (like a sort of condensed and energized Monte Cristo) I still think I'll prefer the Gibson's Porter version to a "yet another Jason Statham movie" coming out at the end of January.

In February we have a sort of mix between a light horror, comedy and romance - "Warm Bodies". As a reference, the movie has the same director as "50/50". And even given that I'm not really into the last two of the above, I don't know why but from all the premieres in this entry it seems this one is the most promising :)

After Schwarzenegger, we have an entry with Stallone (and the third "action hero" comes immediately below). Actually the reason why I'm bringing into discussion "Bullet to the Head" is that it's the first movie directed by Walter Hill since 2002 (in case it sounds a bit cryptic make a name check on IMDb). Unfortunately, what's below doesn't seem that promising ...

To complete the list, I'm closing February with the fifth episode of Bruce Willis' life as John McClane in "A Good Day to Die Hard". Somehow the impression given by the trailer is the opposite to the previous title. On the other hand the directing is also on the other side of the balance ... ("Max Payne" should be enough as reference)

Next week : March - May ;)

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. Safety not guaranteed

This is written on the poster :) In case it wasn't visible enough. And it represents a classified ad from '97 published in a bi-monthly US magazine targeting mainly .. life on a farm, around the farm, etc. For real. Meaning that's what really happened + an P.O. Box address that I didn't reproduce. What's not that real is the part with "This is not a joke". Actually it is a joke, and you can find the complete story here: The time-travel ad . To put it short, the editor needed something to fill up the page. Of course, the conspiracy theory says that's just a late cover-up excuse :) especially given the context in which that ad cause a lot of online activity at the time and after with responses, investigations, theories, other following ads, and so on. I remember that I stumbled into this a while ago (before the author's explanation) and I lost I think something like 30 minutes surfing from link to link and getting more and more amazed up to what something like this can go (+ I caught some other publicly made "time travel" tracks, with a trust degree ranging from "hmmm..." up to "this is laaame"). I never thought though that the ad will generate also a movie script. And I have to say it now that this wasn't bad at all to happen ...

The movie is an indie with not too many actors, and surprisingly for the budget also featuring some nice effects on the ending. It starts with the idea of investigating the above ad. The inquiry is lead by a journalist, who is more interested in finding his high school girlfriend, who by chance lives in the same city with the ad author. Consequently, the job is actually done mostly by two interns, freshly college graduates - an Indian with a classic geek/nerd profile and a girl a bit too fed up with the everyday life. Actually the job is done mostly by the last of them, who seems the only one able to successfully interact with the ad author. Author, who in the movie is a measly supermarket employee, apparently having some mental issues, but possessing a big hangar, lots of spare parts and a time machine made of these + an even bigger ambition to travel into the past. Well, there is more to say from the subject but I don't want to spoil something that can be a very pleasant hour and a half in front of a screen.

Essentially the movie is a comedy, that gets also a bit into romance from a point onwards (reaching up to some scenes which were a bit too corny at least for me). And obviously we can't ignore the "SF" = the time machine. Without getting into spoilers about this, something deserves a note: if you're carefully watching the action flow you'll have a way to explain yourself the "I have only done this once before" part ;) in case you'll feel the need to. And you might feel the need to if after the ending you'll read again the ad :)

Rating: 4 out of 5

Blog break .. again ...

I'll just cut this short to .. hope to be back in November .. take care & be happy till then ( and afterwards of course :) )

Man on a Ledge (2012)

After the "heavy" entry from last time I'm getting back to the "usual light Hollywoodish" movies area with "Man on a Ledge" in a (hopefully) much shorter and concise entry, especially considering that I'm experiencing the usual lack of time for writing.

The movie is somewhere between action and a light thriller. What caught my eye was the context that looks rather original (at least I don't remember seeing anything close). More exactly, a guy, former cop, escapes the prison taking advantage of his fathers funeral, and instead running to Mexico he chooses to get out on a ledge of a hotel, somewhere at the 20+ floor, threatening he's going to jump. Of course, the reason behind the suicidal action is apparently that the guy is innocent. And as it gets obvious a bit further (unfortunately the trailer already gives a lot, so don't blame me for spoilers) his action is not that suicidal. Let's say in brief that the whole movie is a sort of cat and mouse play, with the final purpose ... Well, I think the final purpose is not given 100% clearly by the trailer ( not that you have more than two options :) ) so I'll leave it for the movie ;).

Like I was saying in the beginning the production is a light one, but it doesn't bore and fortunately it succeeds not to get too stupid (although, there are a series of scenes that in my view are less explicable that many of the "Looper" plot holes). The ending seems to break though this fragile balance, closing up in a way that makes you roll your eyes at least a bit = the classic perfectly synchronized action for everything to end well (with a real probability of 0.000...). Overall however was fun to watch, so if you're not in the mood for something very "deep" to give you food for thought after, this one is perfect before going to sleep. Although... I was left with a troubling question :| : what in the world are the old ladies from Manhattan eating that makes them able to instantly spot a guy getting off the window at 70 meters above the ground (who I actually had trouble to spot in a frame taken apparently a bit closer than that) ...

Rating: 3 out of 5

Looper (2012)

Since where I currently reside the movies are usually dubbed, if I want to see something on big screen I normally have to get on the train and travel 15-30 minutes to a nearby city that is bilingual (so we have a subtitle instead, a double one). But also since the price of the train + of the ticket it's getting a bit too high for a movie, I usually avoid doing like this, limiting myself on the Ro visits to take my dose, or at the seldom cases when the local cinemas hava a VO (original version) screening. Actually, until yesterday I only went out of the city once for this, last year for "Adjustment Bureau", and this motivated mostly by the group factor + my own fixation on P. K. Dick. Since the result was lame = the worst PKD adapted movie that I've ever seen .. and since I'm anything but in a movie seeing mood these days .. I've initially abandoned the ideas I've got when I've noticed "Looper" in English in the region cinemas schedule at the beginning of the week. So I have no idea what got into me last evening (maybe Emily Blunt, again, as subconscious reason :P). The thing is that in the end I've got alone on the train, after I rapidly Google-walked to see where is the "guilty" tempting cinema, hoping that 20 minutes are enough to find it after dawn in a 700m perimeter from the train station. I've got there (actually a bit early), I've bought the ticket, I've seen the movie. And it was worth it.

I started with a long intro hoping that I'll get an idea about how to actually write about the movie. Well, I didn't get it yet. So, I'll start with the trailer and the first three minutes. In the trailer you have something like .. in the future the time machine has been invented. The time machine is used by the mob to send people back in time and get them killed. The context sounds stupid. Why the hell bother to send somebody back to be "terminated" instead of doing that on place. And from here starts an entire series of some apparent plot holes in the movie logic (if you look on IMDb I guess more than half the threads are "plothole related"). To solve the one stated above I'll refer as I was saying to the first three minutes, which is a minor spoiler. I can't explain why is a minor one because it'll make it grow :) In the first three minutes, Joe - "a looper" - one of the assassins used by the mob in the past explains you the context in a very concise way - in the future the people are sort of tagged, making highly unrecommended to be killed there. Therefore, for a clean procedure, without traces, you use the time machine. It's so concise that is not very convincing actually. And this is one of the problems of the movie - the lack of details and in the same time probably being still too dense. For instance the three minutes above might generate a "but, but ..." but you don't get to finish it and answer your question (more details on it later) and you're already at the next one. So, if you're either sufficiently relaxed not to ask yourself anything, or you're capable to accept what's given as it's given and leave everything else for later, or you're thinking fast enough to answer everything on spot :), in any of these cases the experience you get is one which unfortunately doesn't repeat very often in what's out in cinemas today. The way the subject develops is so beautifully built that I really don't want to spoil anything, but absolutely anything from what you'll get. Let's just say that Joe's life, who meets his 30 years older self (stuff that you get from the trailer), has a very complex evolution in a very short interval. Why Joe has to meet exactly Joe, why Joe can't get rid of Joe, and other stuff related with Joe you'll get from the movie .. or you'll have to explain them by yourself :)

At the half way break (around here you have something like this which is around 5-10 minutes long .. reason why I had to run to get the comeback train), the main part, "the whole catch", or however you want to call it, it was just about to be introduced. That makes me come back to what I was saying before - in the sense that information with a high degree of novelty for the current state of the subject is introduced relatively often (that's why I'm saying that the subject is built really nice - you don't have a chance to see the ending to soon since you simply don't have "the building blocks"). But this brain bombing with new story elements gets a bit hard to digest sometimes. I'll continue on the first three minutes as example ... "but, but ..." from above = " but how the hell is different eliminating a guy by a "poof" and he's gone from a bullet in the head and after the "poof" and he's gone " (one "but" from many possible). For stuff like this you have to build your own answer by yourself, the cool part being that the movie is sufficiently vague to leave you space to do it in a more or less limited way, but you can do it = " well... the people in the future have an implant that reports the stop of the brain activity and only that (scalability issue, we don't want to overload the servers with useless periodic reports); with "poof" and he's gone, the implant is also gone and no report is generated = nobody knows that the guy was "poof"-sent back ". This was an easy one :), others are more complicated.

The directing and the original script belong to Rian Johnson. A guy who seems quite appreciated for what he has managed to do up to now - "Brick" and "Brothers Bloom" which I didn't see but I assume were quite "indie". Because you can feel this also in "Looper", the first movie I guess made by this guy who has a substantially higher budget. But I liked that. Maybe it would have been more .. effective to have somebody like Nolan directing, or Zack Snyder thinking at "Sucker Punch", with a more Hollywoodish result. But the simplicity of "Looper" in the first part = without abusing the camera or the FX seems to make it actually more solid, or otherwise said you can't complain that the movie is in any way superficial by hiding the story behind eye-candy stuff, although .. "I'm looping" :) : maybe it would have been more effective, but ... Lots of "but" in this movie. Guess what .. all the lack of visual augmentation from the first part prepares something .. something that starts with a scene whose power is amplified at maximum exactly because up to that point you didn't have any camera effect at the same level .. a scene involving a scream and a safe (one from a locker room not one in the floor, not to confuse somebody seeing it). And after this, we seem to have a different movie visually (it doesn't exaggerate, but something changes). The sound though wasn't that impressive. It's a family work, the composer being the director's brother (if I'm not terribly wrong). It's ok, especially as originality - you get a lot of ambient sound integrated in the soundtrack, broken stuff, phone rings, etc. I would even risk predicting a nominee on sound mixing due to this. Unfortunately though you don't have a theme to stay with you .. as in "Time" by Zimmer from "Inception". Well, since I've dissected the technical part, let me end it with the make-up - and more exactly Joseph-Gordon Levitt transformed in a younger Bruce Willis. Surprisingly, although usually I'm annoyed by the visible fake in such situations, here it actually nails it (despite my deepest concern after seeing the trailer). The reason is probably that Levitt handles his role in a brilliant fashion. The make-up is just half, the other half is done through verbal cadence and even some facial ticks of Willis copied extremely well by the younger version.

To end this, "I'm looping again" to the main issue :) .. The holes in the script, "plotholes" (or "loopholes" :) to get closer to the subject) is a characteristic that I don't think it can be completely avoided by any production dealing with time travel, parallel universes or lucid dreaming. That's why probably also the number of good movies following one of this directions is not very large. And a good one I guess can be defined as either one that succeeds in closing an acceptable amount of holes, either one advancing in such manner that you don't even get to notice the holes. What "Looper" succeeds is to solve in an original, elegant and simple fashion the grandfather paradox, despite other "holes" that appear beside that, but that is one of the main problems in a subject like this. In case it's not clear what I'm talking about, it's the classic paradox in which you return in time, you kill your grandfather, therefore you cannot exist and return in time and do that. Primo, the context in "Looper" cuts this from the start = the idea about the ones sent back is to dissappear as soon as they got there ... otherwise you're messing with the time :). Secundo, when the part before doesn't end up as planned and gets to what we have in the movie .. well .. again it depends on you to put the pieces right in the puzzle, and to see that there is a sequence of "time flow" that makes sense, this of course in case what's on the screen is not convincing enough ;)

PS: And if connecting the pieces gets too complicated :) and with lots of elements of your own .. think ;) : you just got close to a "Looper 2" script

Rating: 5 out of 5