Category: Movies

I was probably destined to either love or hate Kick-Ass.

On the one hand, I have a great fondness for superheroes.

On the other, I have a great annoyance with the oversaturation of superheroes.

On the one hand, I have absolutely no interest in anything Mark Millar writes. (Exception: I’ve heard his Swamp Thing was pretty good.) Nothing I read about the Kick-Ass comic persuaded me to even look at it.

On the other, I absolutely adore Matthew Vaughn’s Stardust.

Clearly, there is no room for middle ground here, unless it all came together in a hideous mess of mediocrity. But while I suspect most people will fall into the love/hate dichotomy, I must declare that I absolutely fucking love Kick-Ass.

Kick-Ass is no one’s idea of a realistic movie, but it starts from a fairly grounded premise: What if a regular guy decided to become a superhero? The answer quickly presents itself: He would get his ass kicked. (more…)

In Knight & Day, a normal woman meets a man who’s some kind of crazy secret agent, and she gets dragged along on his adventures. I’ve seen the trailer four or five times now, and not once have I had even the slightest interest in seeing the film.

It’s not just Tom Cruise, though he seems to be playing a hyperactive version of himself. It’s that Cameron Diaz – or her character, anyway – looks so very, very stupid. She’s a woman, see, and there are guns and punching and explosions, oh my. Screaming and hijinks ensue.

I probably wouldn’t have thought too much about it if not for seeing the trailer for Killers, in which a normal woman meets a man who’s some kind of crazy secret agent, and gets dragged along on his adventures.   Screaming and hijinks ensue.

Granted, a movie trailer does not always accurately depict the final product. But a trailer is also supposed to sell the final product, and these trailers appear to be selling movies where women act like complete idiots when separated from their daily routines.

My first inclination is to ask “Is this really what women want?”, but then I feel skittish about being offended on someone else’s behalf. Instead, then: Is this really what men want to watch? (more…)

I have a general mistrust of Hollywood remakes of foreign films, and I’m particularly aghast at the thought of someone re-making Let the Right One In, one of the best vampire movies ever made and a pretty damn fine piece of cinema in general.
But I’ve got to admit: I really like the poster.

Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee are probably as good a cast as I could have hoped for, too.
I still don’t like it on the general principal of being a movie snob, but I’m ever so slightly optimistic it won’t make me angry.

So it turns out the Olympics were a pretty big deal for Canadians. I may have been skeptical, but I can appreciate some of the excitement; whatever your feelings may be on commercialization and costs, it’s nice that so many people can get behind athletes who’ve trained for their entire lives to be good at a sport most people don’t care about for 3 out of every 4 years. And while I have some questions about what “patriotism” really means, it’s nice that people can get excited about being Canadian every once in a while.
But perhaps that just makes it more disappointing when things go back to usual the very next day. The Genie nominations were announced today, and it’s hard to get very excited about them. I want to get excited about them, but I’m not sure if most of the nominees for Best Picture have even played in English-speaking Canada; if they have, it wasn’t for very long.
(It probably goes without saying that Quebec has a different attitude towards “Canadian” culture, since Hollywood doesn’t crank out a lot of French-language films.)
Granted, there are some issues with the Genies, such as not recognizing “Canadian” films that don’t meet the awards’ criteria. But hey, this doesn’t – or at least, shouldn’t – be difficult for people: Here are a bunch of films that are probably pretty good. Could we all see one or two of them between now and April 12th, when the awards are handed out?
I mean, sure, Before Tomorrow probably isn’t many people’s first choice for a relaxing night at the cinema. But outside of the Olympics, no one cares about bobsledding, speed skating, or moguls skiing, either, and we seemed to get pretty excited about them anyway.
The Olympics can be pretty fun, but maybe we could get just a little bit excited about other dedicated and talented Canadians?

If the editorial offices of Maxim and FHM ever master the art of human cloning and bioengineering, they’d probably come up with something a lot like Megan Fox. She’s got a ridiculous body, perfect skin, pouting lips, and a voice that always sounds breathy, feminine, and slightly submissive.

So who better than Fox to play the perfect high school girl, the girl every boy wants and every girl wants to be? Jennifer has a killer body before getting mixed up in demonic virgin sacrifice gone wrong, and continues devouring boys after, though in a much more literal sense.  Unfortunately, while Fox may be the perfect prom queen, she doesn’t have nearly the personality to dominate a film as the villain.

Fox gives almost every line the same delivery: Bored, dismissive, and seductive. She doesn’t have the charisma to dominate the screen as a villain, but she’s also never particularly sympathetic as a victim. She’s just a pretty, bitchy, silly high school girl who likes fucking and/or killing boys.

It’s not all on Fox. She’s hardly the best vehicle for the material, but the role doesn’t have a lot of meat to it. There’s very little depth to Jennifer, either before or after being stabbed and dumped in a demonic whirlpool. Jennifer’s friendship with Needy (Amanda Seyfried) is at the core of the movie, but we never actually see the two of them being friends.  Jennifer is so self-absorbed, narcissistic, and generally dim that it’s hard to imagine why anyone would be her friend. It’s shown that they’ve been friends forever, and nerdy “Needy” obviously doesn’t have the best sense of self-worth, but that’s not enough for the audience to get behind Jennifer as a real person.

Jennifer’s Body treads a delicate line between comedy and horror, and doesn’t always keep its balance. It’s seldom scary: only Jennifer’s post-sacrifice appearance is suspenseful. After that, it’s a simple and straightforward equation: Jennifer + Boy = Dead Boy. There’s no doubting what’s about to happen, nor is there ever the slightest possibility the victim will escape. The final confrontation between Jennifer and Needy is similarly straightforward, as is the familiar process where no one believes Needy when she tries to tell them what’s going on. Most of her victims don’t have enough personality to generate sympathy; they don’t deserve their fate, but they’re still just archetypes of high school boys.

But for all its flaws, I enjoy Jennifer’s Body. Most of the credit for that lies with Amanda Seyfried, who makes Needy such an adorable, likeable heroine. She knows when to play it straight and when to be playful; her delivery on lines like “actually evil. Not high school evil” is note-perfect. Her opening and closing monologues show her as the perfect action movie heroine, like a much cuter verision of Linda Hamilton in T2. She’s clumsy and nerdy, but also smart and self-aware; unlike her co-star, Seyfried never slips into caricature.

In fact, forget about Megan Fox. Just watch the movie and think Needy the Demon Slayer, and it feels much better. It wouldn’t hurt to disregard much of what you see in the trailer, which markets itself as a) a Megan Fox movie, and b) a pretty straightforward slasher flick.
There’s also something wonderfully absurd about the demonic rock band, particularly Adam Brody’s manic ringleader. He’s sleazy and homicidal – “I think the safest place to be right now is my van” –  and yet still charming and, if I were a 16-year-old girl, totally dreamy.

Jennifer’s Body is also fascinating for its lineage. Where else will you find a horror movie written by a woman, directed by a woman, and starring two women who never have to be rescued by men? It’s strange that this sort of thing should be considered revolutionary today, but Jennifer’s Body just feels different sometimes. It has its own beat, its own quirks, and while sometimes they’re a bit too self-conscious, it nevertheless stands out as a singular film. Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it can be uneven and jumbled, but the sincerity and character make it feel like an adorable mutt at the pound that just wants to be loved, even if it’ll pee on the carpet now and then.

Daybreakers has a great premise and a lot of ideas: What if vampires won? What if almost everyone was turned into a vampire? It’s not an entirely original idea – if you can, find a copy of Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula, which is criminally out of print – but writers/directors Peter & Michael Spierig put a lot of thought into their sci-fi/horror world.

How does an entirely nocturnal population get around during the day? And more importantly, where do you get human blood if everyone is a vampire? The film establishes early on that vampires who drink the blood of other vampires turn into feral beasts, so that’s not an option; animal blood may be functional, but it won’t keep bloodsuckers in peak condition.

It falls on the shoulders of Ed Dalton (Ethan Hawke), a haematologist researching blood substitutes. He wants to save humans from being hunted and farmed by vampires, but his boss, played by Sam Neill, merely wants to increase profit margins. His sympathetic attitude brings him into contact with a human resistance movement, and a man who was miraculously, and mysteriously, cured of vampirism.

Unfortunately, there may be too many ideas for a movie that’s just over 90 minutes. Daybreakers opens with a striking sequence of a vampirized 12-year-old committing suicide because she can’t accept the idea of living forever and never growing old, but the effect of immortality on the populace is never explored.  Strained family relationships between vampires and humans are brought up, but never dealt with in any depth. The blood shortage creates clear haves and have-nots in society, but it’s not really explored. And for a film about a scientist trying to perfect a blood substitute or outright cure for vampirism, the scientific discovery seems pretty simple.

All this unexplored potential becomes even more frustrating when the film kicks in to Dumb Action Movie mode. It’s a vampire movie so there obviously needs to be action, and I don’t begrudge it some slashing and bloodshed.  But it seems forced an unnecessary when this generally smart and stylish film – there’s an interesting 1930s noir feel to the fashion and design, and some of the vampiristic innovations look great – resorts to car chases and shootouts, as though the filmmakers were afraid the audience was going to stop paying attention. Daybreakers is never a particularly subtle film – the exploding head takes care of that – but the pounding dramatic scores and slow-mo action sequences are the work of someone who’s afraid audiences won’t understand what’s going on if it isn’t super-emphasized.

The casting is interesting, but not entirely effective. Sam Neill is delightfully evil as the corrupt corporate vampire CEO who harvests human blood for profit. Ethan Hawke is likeable as the mild-mannered scientist caught in the middle of everything, though he rarely feels passionate about much of the story. Willem DeFoe plays Willem DeFoe. Sometimes he has an accent, sometimes he doesn’t; sometimes he’s funny, and sometimes you just wonder what the heck Willem DeFoe is doing in the movie.

There are too many characters, and too few of them have enough depth to be interesting: Audrey, the brave and attractive resistance leader; Hawke’s brother, a loyal vampire soldier; Neill’s daughter, a human who ran away when she saw what her father had become; a vampire senator helping the human resistance; Hawke’s research assistant. They’re all there, they all have roles to play, but we know little about them that isn’t demanded by the plot.

All things considered, Daybreakers feels like it could make a very satisfying miniseries, with its cast of characters and wide-ranging social commentary. Or maybe it just needs to be a longer movie – another 20 or 30 minutes could give the story and characters added depth without making the film unwieldy.  It’s an interesting film, at the very least, one that’s just good enough to make you frustrated that it’s not better; there’s an odd mix of the thoughtful and the bizarre, with an unfortunate helping of stupidity from time to time. I have some hopes for a more complete director’s cut of the film, as well as high expectations for the Spierig’s next outing.

Love will mess you up.

Unless you’re one of those lucky, possibly boring, people who meet the perfect match in grade 2, there will undoubtedly be a time when you’re in love with someone who isn’t in love with you.

Sometimes, at the easier end of the spectrum, they don’t know who you are. Sometimes they simply reject you, which at least provides some closure.

But the worst kind of Love is the one that isn’t quite there.  You meet someone, fall deeply in love, actually have a relationship together… and then nothing, because it turns out most of the feelings were one-sided. It’s not that she didn’t love you, it’s just that she wasn’t in love with you, something was missing, the timing was off, she just wasn’t ready for a serious thing.

It’s this sort of love that forms the basis for (500) Days of Summer. Greeting Card Writer and Would-Be Architect Tom meets Perfect Girl Summer. Tom falls in love. Summer doesn’t quite. Things go poorly. (more…)

I wanted to like it.

Honest. I like Star Trek. Not so much the original series, but the movies, Next Generation, and DS9, at least. And I at least have an appreciation for the original series, what with William Shatner, cheesy makeup, and nifty 60s sci-fi.

So when the prequel/remake came out this summer, I felt like I should see it. It certainly looked exciting, and received generally positive reviews. But somehow, I just couldn’t motivate myself to go to the theatre. It’s probably JJ Abrams’ fault: Alias bored me, Lost annoyed me, and most of his other work completely failed to capture my attention. He seems to wallow in a geek/kitsch/nostalgia field that doesn’t appeal to me at all.

My curiosity got the better of me at the video store, and I figured the film was at least worth a rental. And hey, sometimes low expectations are the best expectations to have – it’s easy to be pleasantly surprised that way.

But I was still ready to turn it off after the first half-hour.

For a “reboot”, Star Trek wallows in nostalgia and gets weighed down by convoluted continuity. Because it’s not really a reboot, you see: In the regular, old-Kirk-and-Spock timeline, Spock accidentally contributes to the destruction of Romulus with a black-hole-cum-time-warp. An angry Romulan miner gets sucked in and transported to the day of James Kirk’s birth and vows revenge on Spock, who soon follows through the time warp, and sets about destroying those who destroyed his world, thereby creating a new parallel time line.

That was about the point I started swearing at the television.  Batman Begins didn’t have an alternate timeline. Casino Royale didn’t try to explain why George Lazenby never existed. So why did Abrams have to make a movie about why he had to make a new movie?

Even without the time travel plot, Trek is far too concerned with nostalgia. Green-skinned women, red-shirted deaths, “Damn it Jim, I’m a Doctor…” lines all nod and wink to the audience like a mime with a facial tic. And yet Abrams and co. still introduce every character with big flashing lights that announce They Are Very Important, as though they’re not making a film for people that know who everyone is.

That said, things do pick up once the story gets moving, provided you forget about the stupid story. Chris Pine makes a good Kirk; he doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously, and has the casual action hero thing down. Zachary Quinto is about as interesting as a Vulcan can be, and I oddly enjoyed Karl Urban’s Doctor McCoy, as occasionally over-the-top as it can be. Simon Pegg’s Scotty is ridiculous, but pleasantly so.

On the other hand, Frank Cho’s Sulu doesn’t have much to do, and Anton Yelchin’s Chekov is fairly silly and useless – which, I suppose, is much the same as the original. Zoë Saldana’s Uhura is supposed to be a beautiful, intelligent, and charismatic love interest, but very little personality shines through.

Of course, this is the problem with translating a relatively large cast of significant characters to a two-hour movie: There’s just not enough time for everyone, particularly if you want to focus on the Kirk/Spock relationship (which is the strongest dynamic in the film anyway). But Abrams wants to give everyone their time in the spotlight, so everyone gets a moment to shine before fading back into the anonymity of the ensemble. Really, aside from “This is Star Trek”, is there any reason for Chekov, Sulu, or Uhura to be in this movie?

We’re not talking about Magnolia here – there’s not nearly enough time or space to develop multiple characters in between explosions.

Some of those explosions are interesting, at least. The skydiving-parachute-fight sequence on the upper-atmosphere drill is outstanding, and there’s a nifty snow moster. But the final showdown with the angry Romulan miner (dear god that’s a terrible thing to have to write repeatedly) is formulaic, and “Young Kirk Steals a Car” took way too long.

On the bright side, the movie looks great. It successfully updates the aesthetics of the original series without losing the general style and charm; it feels like this is how the future is supposed to look. And the Romulan mining ship, all jagged ends and pointy machinery, is a nice departure from the typically sleek ships of the Trek universe.

Star Trek could have been great entertainment, with all the pieces necessary to update and revitalize a flagging franchise. But Abrams seems to have been more interested in making a Star Trek movie to do that, too in love with the characters and the stories to risk disrespecting the material or angering any fans. Perhaps a sequel could improve on the film’s faults, but I’m afraid there will still be a “Why Chekov is useful” scene and some tribute to Frank Gorshin and a bunch of Tribbles weighing things down.