laraemeadows's film blog

Shoddy Production and Smoking Hotness

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X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

Forged in the heat of war and personal tragedy, claw wielding Wolverine was born. Shoddy production and inconsistent writing makes me wish that X-Men Origins: Wolverine could be retroactively aborted.

After his life is turned upside down, the young James Logan - Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) embarks on a tragic journey with co-mutant Victor Creed (Live Schreiber) that spans four wars and endless killing. When the wars finally end, they are dispatched to be members of a special squad of men sent to commit unspeakable acts. Unable to stomach the discomfort of his orders, Logan splits to find newer, more unimaginable pain. All the while Hugh Jackman is hot.

It surprises me that a movie with such a large budget and characters with a following as strong as the X-Men comics could not find a company to produce quality visuals. (Good thing Hugh Jackman didn’t need help with his high quality visuals.) The computer generated effects are more than 20% of the movie, and are 80% of the problem. Lighting on the actors is a different color and are at a different angle than the green screen scenery behind. The generated backdrops lack an understanding of shadow and depth of field. This basic misunderstanding of lighting irons the visuals so flat, it’s impossible to suspend disbelief.

The frustration is further compounded by the unnecessary use of generated objects. (And the unnecessary use of clothing on Jackman.) Instead of using models to create locations too expensive to build fully, they are created using the same disappointing generations. When props could be used to save money on the film and create a better visual effect, director Gavin Hood still uses artificially spawned effects.

The writing by David Benioff and Skip Woods does not come naturally either. Events that could prove Wolverine’s humanity are sped through at a pace that makes them almost comedy. The love story is so rushed, it is hard to feel their connection. Characters multiply so quickly, it is hard to keep them straight. (Except Wolverine, it is hard to miss Jackman when he is burning a hole in the screen.) Some of the one liners are as cliché as teenage angst.

The audience is forced to languish in poorly lit fight scenes that drag on in near complete darkness. Those scenes that had enough light were poorly choreographed, and it is hard to get interested in what they are doing. Well, when they have their clothes on.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine has an almost orgasmic amount of pretty. I admit it shamelessly: I am in complete and total lust with Hugh Jackman, and his special attention to his body for this movie did not go unnoticed, by me or any of the other people in the theater. Jackman wasn’t alone in unbelievably, moist-worthy hotness. Live Schreiber’s creepy character can’t outshine his ha-cha-cha-cha gorgeousness. Lynn Collin, who plays Kayla – the love interest in the film, made me want to fall in love with her.

These actors did not just rest on their beauty. Hugh Jackman was completely handcuffed by an imprisoning script. Jackman and Collins have really beautiful chemistry. My only gripe about the acting was the complete lack of emotional connection between Jackman and Schreiber. Neither gave bad performances individually but they can’t seem to really bond the characters tight enough to make enough to give the story the depth.

All I wanted from X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a bit of ass kicking fun. Even accounting for the Yowza Factor, X-Men Origins: Wolverine fell short. The substandard visuals made even the best looking people (Hugh Jackman) look stupid.

Posted Friday, May 01, 2009 1:45 PM by laraemeadows | with 0 comments

Dull-plicity

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Duplicity (2009)

Duplicity distills corporate espionage, super secret agents, and romance down to something as exciting as a discussion of the differences between lotion and crème through the cunning use of bad acting, tedious dialogue and sleepy visuals.

Ray Koval (Clive Owen) and Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts) were spies for the British and American governments, respectively. They abandon their government spy games for the seedy world of corporate surveillance. They take the chance of a lifetime by taking dueling CEO’s Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson) and Richard Garsik (Paul Giamatti) for a financial ride. A strong but supporting role, Champagne has a mountainous amount of screen time playing itself.

There is a serious case of “actor playing self” in Duplicity. Champagne appears, bubbly and expensive, at every opportunity to celebrate or lamentation. Clive Owen plays the handsome and rugged, but not well put together tough-guy. Tom Wilkinson, the stiff upper lipped British guy. Paul Giamatti plays a loud mouthed, over egoed, windbag. Julia Roberts plays the beautiful, intelligent woman in love with the rugged and handsome, but not well put together tough-guy. The actors in Duplicity had as much problem finding their character as genius would have with a four piece puzzle.

Julia Roberts can’t even act herself well. Just because you have red hair does not mean you are a carrot, nor does it mean you are in anyway related to a rabbit but she does her best to channel the Cadbury Bunny in Duplicity. It is most kindly described as an extended facial seizure. Her face twitches so often, a well placed drink would make James Bond a martini, just the way he likes it. The only blessing of this unrelenting cheek and lip shivering is that distracts from everything else on screen or in the ear.

There is nothing interesting or repulsive about the way Duplicity is shot. It is remarkable only in its mediocrity. Scenes rich with opportunities for heart-pounding excitement instead employ copy machines, blue prints, and printers. Let’s not forget how often Champagne is on screen. It seems we cannot go more than five minutes without seeing yet another bottle of champagne, two glasses and another tedious reason not to drink it.

The fact that bubbly booze is a main character is a testament to the dime store quality writing in Duplicity. The dialogue is difficult to listen to at all stages of the film. The ending is totally foreseeable to anyone above age 15 with half a brain. The characters trip over their stupidity but have been able to function in high level jobs, requiring higher cognitive function than the average burger-flipper. There was no shortage of lines that made me want to commit suicide by eating my own shoe; lines I will not share with my readers because I can’t bear to transmit these bastardizations of language; these memes of brain cell death.

Duplicity is a perfect example what happens when a writer and director are the same person and substandard at both, left with no oversight. Tony Gilroy, the writer and director of Duplicity, was left to his vices and smeared his addiction to his laziness all over the audience. It would be reasonable to expect even minimal quality from actors of the caliber employed in Duplicity but instead, poor writing and direction encouraged an overall decline in quality of all aspects of this movie.

Duplicity should be renamed Dull-plicity. Tony Gilroy, I demand a refund of my time.

Posted Monday, March 23, 2009 10:48 PM by laraemeadows | with 0 comments

Cinema Constipated

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Watchmen (2009)

Watchmen is the cinematic interruption of Alan Moore’s influential graphic novel of the same name. Constipated visuals, dialogue and plot, coupled with atrocious acting dooms Watchmen and the audience.

Set in an alternate timeline where Richard Nixon is elected to a fifth term and the United States and USSR are on the brink of nuclear war, the morally-tainted superhero The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a member of the original Watchmen, is murdered in his home. His death stirs the uncompromising Rorschach (Jackie Earl Haley), another member of The Watchmen, to investigate his death. He contacts all the current and former Watchmen including the glowing blue radiological reasonist Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), the beautiful badass Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman), the ultra smart and fastest man in the world Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) and the reasonably average Night Owl II (Patrick Wilson). Together they try to uncover the plot and prevent the extermination of the human race.

Most of Watchmen’s visuals have a gritty and ominous style. Much of the movie feels like someone put a pair of scratched up sunglasses over the camera while they were shooting. It gives the movie a slightly off kilter feeling while still amongst the familiar.

Amidst the beautiful cinematography, director Zack Snyder made terrible decisions that are perplexing and infuriating. There are nonsensical signs that the director forces our attention to linger upon. There are moments when computer based effects harken us back to the 1980’s. Dr. Manhattan, one of the characters with the most film time, suffers from inconsistent animation. Rorschach’s mask distracts from the dialogue. Silk Spectre II’s shoes go from high heeled to flat to high heeled again with no explanation. All of the costumes are cheesy enough to make me run for crackers.

No attention is paid to the tempo of the film. The amateurish editing smothers any gasps of excitement. One of the most frustrating things about Watchmen is the endless number of unexpected pauses. Right in the middle of a sex scene, the characters would contort into an awkward and unnatural position and then hold it for an extended period of time. During a fight scene, there are pauses for no apparent reason. There is no shortage of scenes where a character kicks down a door and stands backlit, all tough like.

Then, out of nowhere, the grit is set aside when the characters travel to Mars. While on Mars, the film looks like a cheap, gaudy fantasy poster. Randomly placed stars dot the background as the glowing blue character glitters off the red background like a kindergarten child’s drawing.

I know the writers, David Hayter and Alex Tse, were attempting to leave the audience with some deep and resonating warning about what happens when the rules don’t apply to everyone. Instead, there is blathering narration that nearly bored me into a coma, incomplete ideas, unnatural behaviors and Phantom of the Opera-like turns of events.

Compounding the writing and visual problems is the utter bowl-swirler offered up by the actors. Twitches and melodrama abound, but no real emotion is shared with the audience. There is a scene between Silk Spectre II and Dr. Manhattan that should create some sense of grief, anger or sadness but just made me want to slap Malin Akerman just to see some sincere emotion.

Watchmen is nearly three hours long and offers me no reason to risk an embarrassing strain of my bladder. A more promising hope of enlightenment might come from studying history or reading the graphic novel on which the film is based. I value the sanity of my fellow human beings to recommend Watchmen to anyone.

Posted Thursday, March 05, 2009 6:38 PM by laraemeadows | with 0 comments

Cinematic Baklava

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Role Models (2008)

Danny and Wheeler aren’t Role Models, but they are motivated. I wanted so badly to hate Role Models for the shallow jokes, but its sweet story won me over.

Wheeler (Sean William Scott), a slacker womanizer and Danny (Paul Rudd) a self absorbed Debbie Downer, work together for an energy drink company. One day, Danny has a mental breakdown and commits an act so heinous, the best their lawyer, Beth (Elizabeth Banks) could do was for both to be sentenced to 150 hours of community service at the judge’s favorite charity, Sturdy Wings. Danny is assigned to Augie (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), a reclusive geek who aspires to greatness. Wheeler is assigned to Ronnie (Bobb’e J. Thompson), a little kid with a big dirty mouth.

Pre-adolescent jokes about sex permeate Role Models. There is no shortage of gay, almost gay, and gay animal jokes. You can’t go ten minutes without tripping over a homosexual speed bump. Heterosexual coitis jokes come almost as often, especially from Wheeler and his kid, Ronnie. Almost every time they grace the screen there is some sort of sexually-charged banter.

Despite all of the sexualization, Role Models never becomes inappropriate for a twelve year old. In fact, wrapped up in their juvenile discussions about boobs or chasing tail, is a man trying to impart his wisdom on a kid, and affectionately caring for his sassy, gregarious buddy. Paul and Augie are no less tender. Augie is awkward and a bit strange but loveable. Paul isn’t the best fit for Augie, but their discomfort is sometimes very loving.

Yes, Role Models is stupid, sure it is idiotic, to call it moronic would be a kindness, but it is not an unrewarding brand of foolhardy. Their interactions offer the youngsters something of substance but more importantly, they offer the men who refuse to grow up something more valuable, some much needed perspective.

Not all the character’s idiosyncrasies are appreciated. Jane Lynch, who plays Gayle Sweeny, the head of Sturdy Wings is unrelentingly annoying. When she comes on screen, without fail, I wanted to take a chisel to my gums. She is supposed to be annoying but she takes it to such an extreme that even looking at her makes you want to put her in a blender and pulse. Is it a crime to pulse the irritating?

Role Models reminds me of baklava. Role Models is chalked with nuts, really bad for the waistline, and a little hard to eat, but the honey pastry tickles the sweetest parts of the taste buds.

Posted Thursday, November 06, 2008 6:03 PM by laraemeadows | with 0 comments

The slip and slide of cinema

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Morning Light (2008)

What happens if you put fifteen young, good looking adults in the same place, and make them compete to join a team that will participate in one of the most elite races in sailing? As it turns out, nothing but sailing in the documentary Morning Light.

Roy Disney wanted to get young sailors in the TransPac race so he bought the Morning Light, and set off to get the best to man it. Fifteen of the mostly obscenely rich, mostly white, all good looking, young sailors, Chris Branning, Grahm Brant-Zawadzki, Chris Clark, Charlie Enright, Jesse Fielding, Robbie Kane, Steve Manson Chris Schubert, Kate Theisen, Mark Towill, Genny Tulloch, Pieter van Os, Chris Welsh, Kit Will and Jeremy Wilmont are chosen to vie for eleven spots on the Morning Light. They go sailing, talk about sailing and look at sail boats.

A reasonable person would venture a guess that a bunch of young virile men in a competitive situation trapped in a small space with a couple of women might bring some sexual tension. It would be expected that directly competing to participate in one of the most elite races in sailing, the TransPac, would cause outbursts or the occasional jockeying for attention or recognition. The powerful part of competitive reality TV…er movies… is the strong emotional connection between the people on the screen.

Watching Morning Light is like trying to swim on a slip and slide. While it is wet and you can move across it swiftly on your stomach, you can’t drown in the story because the water is only there to lube you up. Nothing that would make the audience submerge into the depths of the people or circumstances even grace the screen.

Morning Light has the emotional depth of a sociopath. We might as well be watching, “How to sail: A Step by Step Guide for the Rich and Moronic,” because it offers equal levels of emotional expressiveness. They did not make me wonder or care about who would be selected to make the team, if they won the race or how they got along. Instead of asking myself questions of wonder during the movie, I often asked myself, “Who cares?”

On the plus side, I do know far more about sailing than I ever did before, maybe enough to encourage me to buy a sail boat – if I could afford one. Until then, I hope Disney leaves Morning Light out at sea.

Posted Tuesday, October 21, 2008 2:57 AM by laraemeadows | with 0 comments

Brothers Bloom is the Archer Fish of Cinema

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The Brothers Bloom (2009)

The Brothers Bloom unwinds the story of two confidence men, an Asian sidekick and their rich but isolated mark. The Brothers Bloom is a charming off kilter dramedy about love.

Bloom (Adrien Brody) and his brother Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) work as confidence men with their explosive sidekick Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi). Tired of the life, Bloom tells his brother he’s done. His brother talks him into one final con against Penelope Stamp (Rachael Weisz.) Penelope is a rich, excentric shut-in who has yet to live. They take advantage of her loneliness in a scam meant to satisfy her need for adventure.

Rian Johnson sees the world in The Brothers Bloom the way an archer fish sees bugs. The archer fish hunts bugs above the water’s surface by shooting water at the bug from below the water line. When looking up from underneath everything looks like it is one place but actually is in a slightly different place because water refracts light, changing the view for the submerged. The archer fish has to see things slightly cockeyed in order to get the archery right. Rian Johnson took a slightly crooked approach to get the cinematic physics just right.

Penelope Stamp is the Robin Hood of cinematic archer fish. Everything about her life, her development, and her emotions are delightfully off balance. She isn’t brilliant but she had dedicated herself to learning how to do many strange and obscure things. It wasn’t good enough for Rian Johnson to make Penelope interested in pinhole cameras (a camera made by putting a piece of photo paper in a light-tight container and poking a pin hole in it to expose the paper), it had to be a pin hole camera made of a watermelon. Johnson made sure Penelope is beautiful, but by casting Weisz, made her an interesting beauty.

It isn’t just the nature of the characters, but also how they talk. Johnson commits so fully to this strange-ified world, that dialogue that would warrant a call to the loony bin in real life, seems natural in the world created in The Brothers Bloom.

The downside to making the characters fit so naturally in their world is jokes or emotions that might resonate deeply in our world sometimes fall a little flat in The Brothers Bloom. There are no gut busting jokes but occasionally the audience finds themselves chuckling. Cheeks will not be soaked in tears, but occasionally a frog may find way into the throats of the viewers.

The Brothers Bloom is an endearing quirk-filled film sure to whisk the audience away on a flying crime filled love carpet.

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Posted Tuesday, October 21, 2008 2:35 AM by laraemeadows | with 0 comments

laraemeadows Blog

Reviews

Shoddy Production and Smoking Hotness

Dull-plicity

Cinema Constipated

Cinematic Baklava

The slip and slide of cinema

Brothers Bloom is the Archer Fish of Cinema

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