How Reviews SHOULD Be Written

I stand in awe.

As I already commented the other day, "this review makes me want to watch the movie."

What movie? King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.

Yeah, that. Saw the trailers and it looked like a hacked together bit of CGI with little respect for the source material or the viewer.

Saw go read the whole review, but I'll give you a taste - for I'm utterly floored, and applaud, the writing, and sheer enthusiasm that comes off the page.

Ritchie does not mess about (this will be a theme).  The movie opens with 200-foot tall olyphants straight out of Lord of the Rings assaulting Camelot.  Mages from the tower of the kaiju elephant’s back incinerate soldiers manning the walls.  It almost veers into the lazy disintegration CGI trope, but it still looks great.  Magic isn’t easy to translate to the screen; Legend of the Sword does it very well.

The fair knights of Camelot are screwed, no?  Well, no, not when King Uther (this is backstory) has his Sword +5+25 of badassery.  He leaps from the remains of a stone bridge onto the side of the elephant, scales it, uses the power of the Sword to dispel Mordred’s magical attacks, and single-handedly slays him.  This is a king who gets shit done.

Mordred is defeated, but all is not well in the kingdom.  There is fighting in the castle, and both Uther and his brother, Vortigern (played by Jude Law) are rushing their families to seeming safety.  But if you’ve seen any of the trailers, or, uh, that his name is “Vortigern,” you can guess Law’s character is up to no good.  While Uther is trying to get his wife and son to safety via the water (why he is running now when he just faced down a kaiju without blinking isn’t explained), Vortigern stabs his wife by the water (Why?  Give it a few minutes.)  A young Arthur watches Frazetta’s Death Dealer kill his mother, then is off on a boat to be raised in a brothel.

This is an origin story, but Ritchie spends about 10 minutes on what another director would have burned an hour on.  A rapid fire sequence shows Arthur growing into a man.  Defending prostitutes, making a little coin on the dock, learning how to fight from a Chinese guy named Kung Fu George.  Why?  Because it’s cool, that’s why.

Still have no idea if the movie is any good, certainly others over at Vox Pop disagree, but either way, the review made me reconsider watching a movie I'd already decided not to watch.

John Wick Chapter 2 (is out)

... and I have yet to see it (but soon... soon....). As you well may know, I'm a huge fan of the first movie.

But others have, and they like it:

I'll be frank, I thought this movie was great. The lore from the first movie is expanded upon and given a real kick in the pants, John Wick himself shows even more charisma and surprising depth, and the supporting cast is even stronger than the one from the original. Everything is a step up.

But what about the action? Of course you want to know about the action.

Well. Um.

Let's put it this way. There's a scene where John Wick buys a bunch of different weapons (at least five by my count) and like some hyper-violent Chekov, ends up using them all until the ammo runs dry . . .

By the halfway mark of the film.

I think it has a chance of living up to my expectations, rather than falling to sequel-itis.

Chinese Fatalism - a Good Hero is a Dead Hero

Cataline Sergius critiques Rogue One, and this line stood out:

The film grammar, the pacing, the tone are all straight out of Chinese film epics. It is a long damn movie, one with an oppressive sense of fate and tragedy through out.  You know these characters aren't getting out of this alive because you never see or hear of them in the first trilogy.  They start off as goners.

The People of the Han eat that shit right up.

I don't know Chinese culture that well, but have absorbed enough Japanese movies and stories to "get" a little bit of the fatalism the Japanese have. So after seeing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Hero, I figured that the only good hero who stands out from the crowd allowed in Chinese culture is a conveniently dead one. Fate and tragedy are certainly woven deeply throughout those movies.

John Wick, er, Keanu, Does Three-Gun

Due to @BrittPettibone on gab (gab.ai) posting about the forthcoming John Wick movie previously mentioned which the Didact has also gushed about, @SmartGrunt posted a link to a video of Keanu doing a three-gun tactical course. While the video he posted also included the gunfight inside John Wick's house from the first movie, I've instead posted the original from Taran Tactical below.

Impressive.

OK. First John Wick 2 and Now This

Yes, I am a Nolan fanboy. Ever since Memento, as a matter of fact, and I personally think his version of Insomnia compares well with the original.

Identity has been a consistent theme of his movies (Inception, Memento, and the batman movies). So has nobility, truth, and adventure. Two of my favorite lines in Interstellar occur on earth, one about how we used to look up at the stars, and now just look at the dirt - not even ground, dirt, perfectly encapsulates postmodern, typically liberal, narcissism. The other in the confrontation between Cooper and his daughter's teachers. He also dwells on the nature of the abstract. Where Terry Pratchett, in Hogfather, once had Death remark that we cannot sift the universe so fine as to find one atom of Justice, they nevertheless exist.  Despite the common misunderstanding as new-age pseudo intellectualism, Interstellar also anchors itself in the existence of love - that we cannot measure it, but we can show it exists by its effects - and how Coop knew his daughter would keep the watch because she loved him, and knew he loved her.

So I saw this trailer, and I damn well intend to see this movie.

Fate, Courage, Groundhog Day, and the Edge of Tomorrow

This isn't precisely a review as it's got major spoilers, but I felt I really had to go deeper into the story and characters of the Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow than the short review I gave it.

I really love this movie. Frankly, I think it really is a better Groundhog Day, and that's saying a lot. Bill Murray is fucking brilliant, and nice guy/blue pill romantic elements of the script aside, his portrayal of Phil, the arrogant, jaded, and cocky weatherman is awe inspiring. You start with the realization that he - apparently - has no consequences as everything resets, but he remembers his past. He takes advantage of it, mercilessly. Then he realizes that there ultimately is a consequence - he's trapped. In desperation to escape, he tries suicide. Again, and again, and again. Even stealing the groundhog to find a way out.

Eventually, tired of being stuck in the same rut, tired of hedonism, tired of self-destruction, he decides to seek self-improvement. While those who've taken the red pill may argue with some of what is portrayed as good - being helpful to people of of genuine kindness, learning to play music, and becoming an expert at innumerable practical skills are all good things to achieve, and he had a lifetime, some say dozens, to learn them.

Once his core nature changed, he got out of the rut. It's a powerful lesson.

OK, Andie McDowell is actually pretty cute too.

So why would Edge of Tomorrow be better? It too starts with a glib charmer who is, if anything, worse. Bill Murray's Phil was competent at his job even if he was a bitter and jaded human being.  Tom Cruise's William Cage is a superficial charmer, and deeply inside, a coward. It would be easy to say "because I like SF tropes more" as a cheat.

It's because while both characters are placed on a path to virtue, where Phil is placed on a path to improve himself for his own sake, Cage not only has to overcome his debilitating cowardice, improve himself, become an expert at war despite never having a background in it, but also overcomes his personal failings in the cause of something far greater than himself. Yes, this gives him additional outside motivation, but he could have just as easily lived a life of debauchery and said "fuck you", given in to his cowardice. Where Phil's suicides were played seriously, showing how selfish they were, and how they affected everyone around him not in on the gag, the nature of the time loop is played for very dark battlefield humor in Tomorrow.  Can't train because he broke his leg? Bullet to the head.

Despite the fact he - like Phil - did not control his entry into the time loop, he too embraces it. He knowingly suffers, over and over again, to find a path out through the other side by winning this war.

In the end, Chekhov's gun is respected, and instead of escaping the loop by killing the mimics, William Cage loses his ability to loop after a blood transfusion. This is the moment of truth for his character, as he is no longer immune, so to speak, from death. If he dies, he's not only gone, but there will not be another chance to stop the aliens, to put his knowledge to use.

In the end, he sacrifices himself, and yes, the day is won.

Building a Better Groundhog Day

It's pretty easy to make fun of Tom Cruise - especially with the whole couch -jumping incident and his Scientology issues, but he actually can act. He's also in two of the better recent science fiction films I'd seen: Oblivion, and Edge of Tomorrow.

Edge of Tomorrow suffered from a lot of issues at the studio level. No-one seemed to have any idea how to market it, and the Japanese short-novel the concept was borrowed from had an even less descriptive title (All You Need is Kill).  It almost seemed that the tag line "Live, Die, Repeat" was the name of the movie, and you could be forgiven for thinking that looking at the posters. What you get is Groundhog Day as sci-fi action shootemup, and a damn smart one at that. For all of the other marketing failures, the tagline and the trailers promised us that, and the movie delivered in spades.

Cruise plays Bill Cage, a PR flack, and something of a coward, who ends up dropping into a D-Day style invasion of France to push back an alien invasion. Everything comes apart, but he manages to kill one alien before dying....

... and wakes up, the day before. He's literally stuck in a time loop, going back to the same point every time he dies.

The movie manages to play with the idea of trying, over and over again, trying to convince people the invasion will fail, to find a way past the invasion point, find the center of alien power, and disable it, with both a dark and deft sense of humor as needed. The action is over the top but true to character and the tone of the film, the armor worn in many of the scenes feels like something that could have stepped out of Warhammer 40K.

And at the end, Cage grows as a person, having to face his cowardice at a moment he really could lose it all.

Update - I've followed up with more thoughts on this movie here.

More on John Wick

There are only so many movies that I consider effectively "perfect." Movies so tightly done, with good acting, good editing, every piece has its place, and even knowing the twists you can watch them over and over again.

One for me is "The Usual Suspects".

Another is John Wick.

OK, it's not flawless. It's certainly not terribly "original".  But, and this is a huge but, it delivers exactly what it promises, with excellent pacing, interesting characters that behave exactly how you'd expect people to behave, and utterly fantastic fight scenes.

It's all in the details. It's a consummate action movie, down to the droll way that body disposal is ordered as if ordering catering for an event.

The fights are choreographed to a "T", and not the showy  stuff you usually get, epic as that can be, but tight, fast, vicious, claustrophobic, and obeying for the most part physics, people's ability to track, and the laws of ammo shortages on all sides.

The characters, from the sniper played by Willem DeFoe, to Ms Perkins are all slightly larger than life. And Ms. Perkins is athletic, but against men usually gets by on wits and feminine wiles, which she wields very effectively. The dialog is simultaneously wonderfully over the top, utterly sincere, and understated, blended as needed.

And every piece in the story has its place. Better yet, the logic and tropes of action films are played out to their logical conclusions, and for once, the rules that inconvenience the "good" guy also affect the bad guys as well.

So yes, I'm looking forward to the sequel, fingers crossed.

More John Wick

Posting has been light the last couple days as I'm about 350 miles from where I normally reside and making plans to get back home with dogs and family after a mildly oversized storm system came through. I'm fortunate, my home was above flood lines, and thanks to a recently replaced transformer around the block I still have power (in 2004 I got to watch my neighbors lights - on a different transformer - for two days before power came on with Gaston...). Certainly better than some towns in West VA. 

Nevertheless, checking in, I saw the Didact has posted this piece of awesomeness:

Yes, the boys are back, and whoever is doing the editing for the Amazon trailers knows exactly what made that show so awesome. That level of epic masculine awesomeness is too dangerous to be experienced without the intermediary of a TV screen. 

So - following that sweet trailer I caught this: 

I'm torn. I love, love, love the first John Wick movie. The tone, the action, the pacing, make it a movie I'll watch twice in a row. The moment where the mob boss chews out Leguizamo's chop shop manager, and is informed that the mob boss's son was stupid enough to steal John Wick's car, and kill his dog, and just... stops.. "oh". The comeuppance to the crooks who violated neutral ground (the first time I remember said sanctuary ever being an issue for anyone but the good guy...). The interplay between Wick and the mob boss at the end. 

I fucking love that movie. Keanu, everyone in it, nailed it. 

And I'm not sure, despite how cool the trailer looks, that this one will "work". It could - but it may also suffer from sequelitis. 

We'll see. 

The Fiddler on the Roof - and Throwing Tradition off of It

When I was growing up, listening to reel-to-reel recordings of the many albums my parents had accumulated, one of my favorites was Fiddler on the Roof. It was catchy, etc.

It wasn't until many, many years later, seeing the movie version, that I came to appreciate exactly what a poisonous and subversive work it was, cloaked in a pleasant and even "happy - ending" coating. If for some reason you haven't seen it, and care, there are spoilers coming.

The story opens with a paean to tradition, and how everyone knows where to fit in, and that life, as a result, is happy. But changes are coming, and they portend ill. Tevye wants to be wealthy, but cannot have it, oppressed by the constant progroms of the Russians. His daughters want men who are tall, competent, rich, and handsome, and coming from a poor background, and as the matchmaker explains, won't be having any of that. One gets apprenticed to the butcher, but she's in love with the tailor.

And so, we introduce tradition, how it gets in the way of self- actualization, and then the story proceeds to murder the traditions.

The central theme of the story is that change is coming (and as assumed recently in Obama's speeches, change is always good. of course, getting a head chopped off is change...), and one must adapt. There is a kernel of truth there, of course. Over the course of the story, despite having promised his daughter in marriage, Tevye uses superstition and religious belief to fool his wife into thinking if the marriage goes through (to an admittedly good man) their daughter will be cursed. Arranged marriages are replaced by "love". One of the boys the girls want to marry is alluded to be, but obviously involved in the communist revolution. There is a wedding, and a progrom, and they must leave, for the states.

One can argue about the pros and cons of arranged marriages, but the point here is this - despite the professed pride in their traditions, nearly every one of said traditions is thrown under the bus. Tradition is left dead in the dust of their streets, with the implication that nearly every painful change results in a better overall, often material, good.

We know the fruits of most of those changes now. Especially the communist revolution. Once you've taken the red pill, you cannot unsee these things.

Pacific Rim Soundtrack - Main Theme

Until I get around to reviewing it, suffice it to say I absolutely love this movie. Yes, it's corny. Yes, physics and engineering are violated so many ways that they went home and cried. But I still love it. The robots, the directing, the characters. And it believes in people, with only the aliens viewing humanity as a plague to be wiped out.

And the soundtrack is awesome. No, it's not perfect, but it fits this giant cornball movie to a tee, taking itself just seriously enough, and turning the "epic" up to 11.

 

I want to highlight the main theme here today. This piece matches the tone of the whole film - epic, heroic, and yes, power chords utterly appropriate to  building-sized robots moving through cityscapes and knocking down buildings. It perfectly captures the courage and determination of the "cancelling the apocalypse" speech, the mass and might of the Jagers, and their floating, ponderous grace. 

 

Elements from this theme show up in the rest of the tracks, playing to different emotional cues, as well.

 

Enjoy.