It opens: “You think your world is safe.”

That should be epic! But I’ve heard it so much lately, it holds the same weight as, “Aw, we’re out of milk.”

I enjoyed the first (new) Star Trek. It felt like a risk. I felt like anything could happen in that movie/universe and there would be some way to explain it while also thoroughly entertaining/ thrilling. Of course it followed a formula, but it was a universe I didn’t know. Yet with the sequel, we get Star Fleet vs terrorists. Throw in some John Mcclain and I’m onboard. I don’t think my world is safe. How could I with every movie telling me it’s not!

This teaser just reminds me of every single movie in which a larger than life nemesis threatens “our world.” Now I don’t know what is going to happen in this movie, but I can guess that we will have to watch faceless people suffer for an hour and a half before Kirk & Co. amazingly manage to turn the tide. Those poor weak faceless people who can’t do anything without their heroes. Wait a second…THAT’S ME! I remember the last time I felt like humanity was nothing more than sheep that need saving; The Avengers. I give it a day before someone cuts the VO from this trailer into the Avengers trailer – or vice versa.

I wrote a bit about the escalation in film; how the need to constantly “out do” the last movies major set pieces will ultimately exhaust the audience. You can only destroy the world so many times before it stops having meaning. Obviously, that critique is a little premature for Star Trek: Into Darkness. It’s a huge movie and it needs to feel that way! I am just hoping the personal stories aren’t forgotten and give the threats a little more weight.

Now, who is going to thank Nolan for the direction film is going while we anticipate Star Trek: Skyfall Into Dark Knight Rises.

(It should have ended with someone saying, “Set phasers to…kill.” DunDunDun!!!!!)

Our Idiot Brother is a small movie though you won’t be able to tell from the cast: Paul Rudd, Zooey Deschanel, Elizabeth Banks, Emily Mortimer, Adam Scott, Rashida Jones, and Steve Coogan. Yet the movie came and went without so much as a whisper. In fact, I only found out about it from…well I don’t remember where. I do know I saw the trailer and thought it looked like a happy uplifting movie with a positive message. I wanted a positive message. I needed it. Well good news! The movie does indeed have a positive message. It just doesn’t deliver it well. In fact, I’m still trying to figure out what I watched but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t all that happy or uplifting.

I think Our Idiot Brother is billed as a comedy. Comedy is a hard genre to nail. What is funny to one person may not translate to another. Even at this point, I am not entirely sure if Our Idiot Brother is even intended to be funny or if the jokes just didn’t land. Stuff happens. I think said stuff is supposed to be humorous but I found my eyes darting back and forth waiting for the punchline. Only it never came.

So, Our Idiot Brother is not really a comedy per se; it’s just not very funny. Now that isn’t a criticism on its own. There Will Be Blood isn’t funny either but I believe that is a fine movie. However, you do not expect to laugh when you watch the trailer of There Will Be Blood (although you might.) Our Idiot Brother could have easily suffered for the marketing, the fact that Paul Rudd is generally in comedies, or the lack of a clear identity. Even with all that against it, Our Idiot Brother could still be a good movie. So is it?

The story follows one brother playing the role of a hot potato as three self-centered sisters pass him off after he negatively impacts their lives. The real juice of the story comes about in the sisters dealings with others in their lives. The problem is it’s hard to cheer for any of these women. They make their bed of nails and then complain about it and blame others when they have to go to sleep. In fact, most of the side characters are jerks as well. This movie, in the sense, is about jerks being jerks to each other with a bunch of crappy moderately outcomes.

You need someone in which to invest yourself. That is clearly supposed to be Ned; the idiot brother. The problem is that he doesn’t have a dramatic arc. He is simply there as the stimulus by which everyone else’s sins are outted. Ned stays the same from beginning to end. What you’re left with is akin to listening to a story about a bunch of people you don’t know or care about. You may feign an emotional reaction but…you really don’t care.

By the start of the third act I was ready for Ned to open his eyes and prove to everyone that he wasn’t an idiot. I was waiting for the moment when he slapped them all and said, “Stop being a crappy person, stop blaming me for the problems you created, stop evading your issues and grow the F up!” That didn’t happen. But he did scream at them for messing up a lovely game of charades. His emotional outbreak comes for the wrong reason; a reason unbeknownst to the sisters. Therefore, it has little weight on any actual character growth. Yet, in the last moments of the film, everyone has grown from, I guess, Ned’s example or something.

It’s all buttoned up nice and neat because that’s what is supposed to happen at the end of movies. Only in Our Idiot Brother, it happens without seeing any actual character growth anywhere. As far as I am concerned, these three women still kinda suck but their lives are going to get better only because that is what’s written. The only meaningful change is that, by the end, Ned has his dog back. Great. A happy ending.

Everything else in the movie is perfectly serviceable. The cinematography, lighting, sound…it all functions the way it should but doesn’t do much else. It’s as if the whole movie production was on rail. Everyone shows up, does their job, and by the end they have a movie. That is what this is; a movie. It’s not really good or completely bad. It’s just…bla. In fact, I don’t really feel anything for it. This is the hardest review I have ever written because I just don’t care. In fact, after watching the trailer again, I do believe some of those scenes were cut from the original film. The trailer seems to contain more complete movie than the actual movie.

Did I regret my time watching Our Idiot Brother? Not really, I think; but time has a way of weighing on opinion. Would I recommend it to anyone? No. I would not. I know it has an audience. I know there are people out there who could enjoy this movie. I just don’t know who that is. I don’t even think the creative minds behind the movie know the answer to that question. If nothing else, Our Idiot Brother is a movie, but only in the most literal sense.

Not My Thing!

I remember when I first saw, John Carpenter’s The Thing. I was younger than I am now but not really a child. It was a defining moment in my life as far as creature features go. Now, I know it isn’t a flawless movie but I really liked it. I remember thinking, “Those effects are amazing. It’s as if that “thing” is actually real. It’s so ambiguous yet it embodies real space in the physical world. It is dangerous. It is disgusting. It is remarkable. It must be destroyed. BUT I don’t want to see it go. I don’t want these moments to end. It is too beautiful.” I was of course thinking about Kurt Russell’s Hat. The Hat did not make an appearance in the prequel/remake/reboot tHat is The Thing (2011) therefore I had none of those feelings. 

The Thing 2011 is a strange bird. It doesn’t really have any reason to exist. Just like the title character, The Thing 2011 aims to absorb key characteristics of the original then parade around as a less good copy. It’s too much of a coincidence to not be intentional on the creative teams part but a clever idea doesn’t make a good one and The Thing 2011 can’t stand on its own CG jelly legs. Just like the human copies in the movies, The Thing 2011 eventually breaks down into a sloppy, withering, computer generated mess mess. Yes yes, a mess mess.

Kill the Original

TheThing2011 takes place prior to the events in John Carpenter’s The Thing and leads right up to the beginning of the original. The original has several “wHat the hell happened here” scenes. When Kurt Russell’s Hat arrives at the Norwegian camp, it finds the place is in ruins, a charred grossly disfigured body, a man frozen post suicide, and a giant hollowed out block of ice. These scenes in the original are incredibly important. Just as the Space Jockey does in Alien, these scenes give the movie a “larger than earth” feel, they allude to the thrills to come, and they are as equally ambiguous as the creature itself.

This ambiguity is wHat makes the creature so terrifying; an ambiguous background doubly so. We humans fear wHat we can’t classify. When Kurt Russell’s Hat leaves tHat camp it can only be thinking one thing,” wHat the hell happened here.” Here is the thing. The original movie answer tHat question thoroughly albeit not literally.

TheThing2011 labored intensively to address those ambiguities and remove any mystery involved. THat grossly disfigured body? It’s really just two annoying dudes in the middle of body osmosis. The frozen suicide? THat was another annoying dude tHat killed himself pretty much after the threat was gone. Unfortunately, we are simply given a shot of him frozen post suicide. It’s a shame. That might have been an excellent source of tension. I can imagine him with the blade at his wrists, afraid to do the deed, but after hearing the sound of another human being coming around the corner and believing it to be the monster, he starts hacking away only to realize tHat it was a friend.

Original's Ice Block - What Could it Mean?

Then there is the giant block of ice. When watching John Carpenter’s The Thing, we know the monster was frozen in tHat ice. We guess at its size. At the way it looks. WHat kind of creepy and unique features would it have and how would those features logically work. Our imaginations run wild. THat is a question tHat not even the original answered. I admit I wanted to know wHat the thing looked like. Now I have an idea. It kind of looked like a crab or some type of crustacean thingy, I guess. A big roach? I don’t know. You don’t really get a good look at it. It was just enough to ruin the imagined design but without actually giving you a solid view.

A question left unanswered by the original is of the creatures origins. Simple, it’s an alien. It landed on earth with its impressively large yet unoriginal spaceship. It’s hard to imagine the Thing walking around its space ship before it landed in Antarctica, wiping off the table in its mess hall, attending to the air ducts and wHatnot. The writers allude the ship actually belonging to a different race. They allude to the landing as an emergency to get away from the body copying thing. I like tHat but it’s so barely mentioned tHat I am not even sure if I made tHat up or if it was actually hinted. Regardless, we’re really just ripping off Alien at tHat point.

Absorb Key Characteristics

In all seriousness, John Carpenter’s The Thing has two great things going for it: The creature effects and the trust-no-one storyline. Thing2011 does indeed try to absorb those two attributes. Some might argue tHat it couldn’t be a “Thing” movie without those characteristics. I disagree and those people can call me if they want to talk about it.

Thing2011 does absorb a couple other things as well. You have the Kurt Russell character. Don’t get excited, he doesn’t have the Hat. In the Hats place is a tiny gold earring; similarly weird but it’s just not the same. Actually, it feels like most of the cast has its double in the prequel.

Obviously the setting is similar. Antarctica is a must but the camp feels like a carbon copy of the originals. My guess is tHat there is simply one manufacturer of Antarctica bunkers and, therefore, they should all look similar. I buy tHat. My problem is tHat a lot of the action in this movie takes place in the hallways as it did in the original. In fact, if someone didn’t know better, they may walk in while you are watching Thing2011 and think you are watching John Carpenter’s The Thing. WHat I’m getting at is it feels like the same movie (see section heading.)

The similarities don’t stop there. In both movies a storm is coming.  In both, the protagonist develops a test to decipher who is masquerading as the thing. Flamethrowers are abundant. They both end out in the snow in a blaze of fire. There are enough characteristics of the original absorbed into the prequel to have me wondering if it was supposed to be some sort of reboot/ remake. I am still not totally sure.

Parade About

I once read tHat Steven Spielberg joked about going back to practical effects for the new Indiana Jones but then decided it would be stupid to throw away years of technological advancement in effects. We all know how tHat turned out. The outcome is largely the same in Thing11. The creature effects are some of the worst I have seen in a while. The monsters often look like they are missing a few shaders or lighting details. They just look incomplete. This pulls the viewer out of the movie like a barrel of monkey’s swinging on vines…with Shia Labeouf.

For the time, the effects in John Carpenter’s The Thing were remarkable but they may not hold up today, however, they might! The creature design was logical and interesting and the stop motion was serviceable all culminating into an epic climax. Thing11′sspecial effects were behind the times before the movie was released and the character design is largely uninteresting or logical, which is a problem when the story is about a creature that adapts to survive.  This is a huge problem when the idea of a shiny cartoon monster pulls you straight out of the film you are watching and tHat monster is the source of ALL tension. I found myself bored. I wasn’t engaged. I simply didn’t believe the characters were in any real danger.

Creature design for Thing 2011

Creature design from John Carpenter's The Thing

The “Trust No One” storyline was maintained from the original as well. Ever wonder why James Cameron went a different route with Aliens? Probably because doing the same thing Ridley Scott did would force comparisons and as the second movie, he would have simply been second to the party, less original, and less engaging. The tension between the characters feels like a poor imitation of the original. It has a sort of “me-to” quality but without adding to or even really successfully portraying the said tension from the original. I’m not totally sure why it seems this way; be it the language barrier blocking subtle emotion just a lack of compelling characters.

Thing11’s status as a sad imitation becomes the most apparent when the main character devises a test to figure out who is not human. The original did this with a cinematic draw of blood from each of the characters. Then, Kurt Russell’s Hat would stick a hot piece of metal into the blood and, if infected, it would react wildly spurring the infected man into defensive action. A dramatic battle would ensue, everyone would reel at the sight of their newly disfigured friend. When it was over they would go back to the test. It was an interesting and visual way to flush out the alien and the audience got to participate in guessing. Thing11′s test? The characters open their mouth to display their metal fillings – or not. No real tension.  No dramatic conclusion when someone is found out to….have clean teeth. They just go stand over in the corner until something better happens. I’m not even going to get into how dumb this test scene is, but it seems the creators knew it when they had the main character say, “this is all I’ve got.”

The facade doesn’t stop there. The storm I mentioned earlier is an excellent source of tension in the first film. It’s used to explain closed communication and limited visibility and mobility outside. Not only are they locked up with the thing inside, but no one could survive outside for more than a few minutes. Thing11′s storm just never seems to arrive. People are popping in and out like it’s no big deal. The only sign of it actually being cold outside is the cold frost on beards. Thank you Thing11 for reminding me I can’t grow a beard. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.

Decompose in a Fiery Blaze

Copying wHat made the original special isn’t inherently bad. I believe taking some of the originals qualities and expanding on them could be interesting. THat didn’t happen. And there are enough semi-stupid things about the movie to bring it down a few notches regardless of its state as a prequel/ sequel/ reboot.

To be perfectly honest, I was onboard for the first quarter of T11. The tone was right. The ambiguity was there. It was all so mysterious and my imagination ran. When they finally find the frozen thing in the ice, I was eating it up! You could see pieces of it but the view was disfigured by refraction through the ice. It was…perfect.

Microscope User and Thing Expert

The fateful moment in the film, where I lost most of my interest, was in the lab.  The protagonist (who she is isn’t really important) has captured a tissue sample from the first casualty. In the span of a minute, she goes from knowing nothing about wHat they are dealing with to being an expert on the Thing. How could this happen? Easy! She simply looks in the eyepiece of a microscope and watches a poorly animated sequence in which one circle with spikes jumps on top of a circle without spikes, than loses it’s spikes and resembles the rest of the circles…without spikes. It’s a lazy plot device equivalent to someone looking at a monitor from the 80′s, shouting nonsense about simulations, and then having the answer.

To make matters worse, she has a fellow research assistant there watch the same CG animation. He reels at the thought and states, “I’m not sure what I saw.” Perhaps he should stay an assistant or maybe the idea of something that can mimic others is so terrifying to him that he can’t digest that idea. Yet for some reason, the main protagonist is able to put the pieces together because earlier she saw some blood in a shower and some tooth fillings on the bathroom floor. If the filmmakers don’t want to take the logic of their story seriously than why should I invest myself in something tHat, at the drop of Kurt Russell’s Hat, could change with the laziest explanation. From that moment on, the protagonist is resolved and strong-willed; almost a different character completely. Too bad the poor CG didn’t do the same for the rest of T11.

How Did They Do it!

If you stand back and look at T11 from afar, it’s not a bad film.  It ticks all the boxes required. It does the bare minimum. But we don’t watch movies from afar. We watch them to be pulled in, invested in the world of the characters, and experience something tHat we will not experience in our day-to-day life. If I have any gripe with T11, it’s tHat it doesn’t go far enough. It doesn’t take any risks. It exists purely to fill in gaps from the original. Gaps designed to be there. Gaps that did not need to be filled. It treats the original like a blueprint instead of an inspiration and all without Kurt Russell’s Hat. So really… wHat’s the point. Just watch the original.

What are your thoughts? Agree or disagree? Should I have touched on something else? Let me know what you think in the comments below and I will do it…maybe.

Deliberate Drive

When Superman came out in 1978 it was amazing to watch a man fly! In a similar movie today, we aren’t satisfied if most of New York isn’t destroyed before the hero rises triumphant. Story tellers have been trying to one-up each other since the beginning of our story. The outcome is bigger, more outlandish, less personal and less deliberate movies. Action set pieces happen for almost no logical reason other than to galavant across the world. In the process, the message or theme of the movie gets buried under the rubble of each ruined city. But Drive isn’t a superhero movie, at least in a literal sense, so maybe this doesn’t matter.

Drive. At it’s heart it’s an incredibly simple story about “Driver,” a guy in over his head. (He doesn’t really have a name.) However, don’t let that mislead you into thinking it’s not worth a watch. The thing Drive really has going for it is a clear and certain identity. While it doesn’t try to push any boundaries story-wise, it also doesn’t overextend itself. It isn’t trying to “one-up” others in the same genre; it is simply trying to tell a small story in the best way possible; deliberately.

Direction

The most stand out aspect of Drive is the direction. I often feel like there is a “just because” mentality among producers and directors now-a- days. There is little thought about how a scene fits in with a story. Stuff is done just because they can. It is my, admittedly uninformed and naive, belief that this kind of haphazard direction comes through in almost every aspect of those films. The editing is choppy as we try to cover over-extended action or poorly blocked out scenes. The acting feels improvised and unsubstantial as if the actor is just about to say, “will that work?” The cinematography doesn’t enhance the film in any way; it’s simply a slave to the improvisation and limited resources of a poorly planned shoot.

I will be the first to say that amazing things can come out of experimenting but that should be done early, in development. Otherwise, we run the risk of ending up with a less substantial and less deliberate story. Movies have the greatest impact when in service of the theme. That tends to get lost when, at the last moment, the creative team is “just trying something out.” Resources get spread too thin and the final result is slapping what they got together in the edit.

Drive does NOT feel slapped together. It seems pre-determined and polished; like every scene was intended to unfold just as it did. True or not, the deliberateness encourages the audiences’ investment in the story in the same way the creators of LOST did when they said they “had a plan.”

The simplest and most jarring example of the deliberate nature of Drive is the shot length. The director bucks the trend of cutting every 0.0314 seconds to “simulate” good pacing and trick the audience into thinking they are entertained. Instead, the audience is allowed to watch each scene unfold through long takes and deliberate dialogue entertained purely by the merits of the scene, characters, and overall story.

The director could have easily emulated a LMFAO song and ended up with CUTS CUTS CUT CUT CUT CUTS… cuts. Instead, he held those shots. He let the actor’s words settle on the viewer’s minds. He let their eyes punctuate the action that just unfolded; be it a shoot-out in a motel or a make-out session in an elevator. Then, he allowed nothing more. The end result is something that feels deliberate without destroying the pacing. All at a solid running time of 98 minutes. Drive feels like it wants to get a point across without losing that point in the process.

Acting

Let’s talk about Ryan Gosling. Seriously, Ryan, tone it down! You are making life as a male difficult for the rest of us. He doesn’t have a lot of speaking lines in Drive; to the point of it being a bullet point on the back of the box. “Our principal actor only speaks for 12 total minutes, must be seen to be believed!” Make no mistake though; this is his movie. It is the story of his character and it would be a different movie if it stared anyone else. Those limited lines of dialogue make sense for his character and fit the tone of the story. For the rest of the movie, Ryan Gosling must portray his thoughts and emotions through the subtleties of a trembling hammer or…the lack there of. It is an incredibly subdued performance and one for which Gosling seems a natural choice.

That isn’t to say that the rest of the cast doesn’t deliver. Albert Brooks is perfect as a weirdly amicable bad guy and Ron Perlman is just the right amount of over the top as his cohort in crime. Baby faced Carey Mulligan, plays a believable sudo-love interest and young mother; which is probably more of an undertaking that one would expect. It’s Brian Cranston that just makes me smile. It’s just unnatural how good he is in everything he does. Ryan Gosling may be able to make a character simply named “Driver” interesting to watch but it’s the supporting cast that make him sympathetic. Without them getting it right, “Driver” would have felt like a self-centered asshole…or deaf.

Other

There is a lot of good going on in Drive; the music, the characters, the use of lighting to cue the audience of tone, similarities with Taxi Driver, deliberate blocking, the clarity of the action, the use of tight framing to direct focus and enhance tension, the way the writer managed to delicately dance around archetypes without simply feeling hackneyed. I could probably write about it for several more pages but no one would read that far and im trying to keep these “one a day” reviews short for my own sanity. The sum of ALL the parts is simply this: Drive is a fun engaging movie that knows it’s identity and to its own benefit, doesn’t try to be anything else. The hero doesn’t always have to save the world as long as he saves the girl.

What are your thoughts? Agree or disagree? Should I have touched on something else? Let me know what you think in the comments below and I will…touch on something…else.