There Will Be Discomfort

There Will Be Blood is, of course, a much acclaimed and heavily awards nominated film.  As such, I had pretty high expectations going in. Like A History of Violence before it, my expectations weren't met. When will I learn...  ;-)

This film did win two awards, best actor, and best cinematography.  To that end, I do say those are well deserved.  Daniel Day-Lewis turns in a splendid performance as oil man Daniel Plainview, and the visual elements of the film are very well done.  The other performances are pretty good as well.

The musical score is unbelievably distracting.  I think they were going for a continually tense mood that periodically escalates to full-blown creepiness, but the overall affect is that of a band warming up.

The story, for its part, felt incomplete to me.  Daniel starts out as a savvy business man of questionable repute and through the course of the film delves into a state of either extreme greed or insanity (a line which is pretty finely drawn here).  What was missing for me was the "why" for his demeanor.  It becomes increasingly apparent that his actions are motivated by a deep, vast reservoir of hatred but we have no context from whence it came.  Is he just a generally evil man?  Did he suffer an abusive father?  Many prior years of playing fair in business and getting the shaft?  We just don't know, so it remains a big unanswered question from beginning to end.  He comes off as an enormous jerk just for the sake of being a jerk.

The story is that of a hard working, shrewd, and determined oil man (Daniel) who, over the course of his life must, for the sake of growing ever prosperous, work with a variety of other people, pretty much all for whom he harbours deep hatred (not for any personal reason, he just doesn't generally like people).  Early on, he takes on an infant orphan who grows throughout the story and who he treats like (and introduces as) his own son.  He manages to stake out a pretty big claim and then we watch as Daniel struggles to live and work with a variety of people in a small remote community.

If you're a Daniel Day-Lewis fan, then this is probably worth a viewing.  Otherwise...  I'd be inclined to catch it on cable sometime perhaps.

Eragon

What're the odds that I'd run across a movie and a book that both have the same title?!  Well, ok, that happens all the time I suppose.  In this instance, I'll be reviewing Eragon, giving a bit of my highly sought after opinion on both. 

The big excitement that got me to read the book was that I lived in the next town over from the young wunderkind author, and as this was Montana, it was a pretty big deal.  So, how'd the youngster do?  Well...he did pretty well for himself, and the stories aren't too bad.  The target market really is the younger crowd though.  If you're a big fan of Lord of the Rings and such, you'll really need to be in the right mood to read Eragon and the rest of this trilogy. They are LotR-lite.  I mean this in a fairly literal sense.  There is a heavy influence at work here (elves, dwarves, magic, quests, etc).  The writing is the cheap romance novel equivalent for the fantasy genre, but minus the sex (like I said...great for the younger crowd). 

The story is roughly this:  Eragon is a young farm boy who through crazy random happenstance obtains a dragon egg.  The dragon hatches, thereby choosing Eragon as her rider which sets off the chain of events for the plot...namely that it's Eragon's destiny to ultimately challenge the ruling tyrant king John Malcovich.  They successfully do this by going to the 7 and 1/2 floor of the Mertin Flemmer building in NYC...  wait...  sorry...  wrong movie.  Back on track here, along the way they meet bad guys, and with assistance and tutelage from a variety of characters, young Eragon is learning the tools of the saving-mankind trade.

It might be a good one to recommend to your kids (I probably will with mine), but for my money, I'll take something more along the lines of Tolkien.

Ok, the book was so-so, what's that mean for the movie?  Well, great movies have been made out of flimsy books, so the movie needs to stand on its own.  Did they do a good job, or did they not, that is the question.

They did ok.  It's not great, and it could use some serious work. Regardless of book quality, the book quantity was definitely there, and there were many story elements to accommodate in the formation of a movie.  After the wildly successful LotR movies, each in excess of 3 hours, I was really surprised to see the movie lurch along as though they had a bus to catch (1 hr, 40 min).  Longer, of course, doesn't always equate to better, but in this case their brevity hurt the film. The acting was ok, but parts that would've helped flesh the movie out better were lacking.  They ran forward with some of the plot points so fast and loose that I'm not quite sure what that means for a potential sequel.  It's been awhile since I read the book, but I'm reasonably sure that the movie wasn't too terribly faithful in places.  Kinda like the book, your kids will probably like this, but again, I'd take a re-watching of LotR.

A story of mammoth proportions

We rented 10,000 BC because, well, just look at the cover.  A dude's facing down a sabre tooth tiger with a spear made out of some other animal's spine AND the tiger has the high ground! Muy macho!!

To sweeten the deal, it was directed by the guy who brought us Independence Day (ya know, where Jeff Goldblum dooms a super-advanced civilization who've traveled light years across galaxies with a computer virus hosted on his Mac Book), and The Day After Tomorrow (where extreme global climate change and a massive new ice age comes, literally, two days from now)!!!  How could it miss?!

I jest...

I do enjoy a good popcorn flick (yes, I enjoyed the aforementioned movies), and while I can see why this didn't win any Oscars, it was fun to watch. The effects were impressive and it had a pretty grand scale about it.  The critters were large, and the people didn't have much for weaponry ("Thak, go, hit mammoth on head with rock!").  Everybody loves a good underdog story.  ;-)

The story was as old as time, and the setting made it interesting just the same.  Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, marauding hordes steal girl away, boy goes after girl.  It's a sweeping story of love and devotion, a man rising to claim the role of supreme leadership from a life of toil and trouble, and heroism in the face of adversity.

It's fun to watch if you don't set your expectations too high, settle in with some popcorn, and set your critical thinking adrift for a couple hours.

Chris Carter cashes in.

Chris Carter is the on-again off-again genius behind the X-Files television series and subsequent movies.  I was a big fan of the series and was very disappointed with the way Carter wrote the series into a coma.  He went off, recharged his creative batteries a bit and was able to jolt the X-Files back to consciousness with the first movie which we rather enjoyed.  Apparently not satisfied with leaving the concept alive, if a bit crippled, he went away to, I assume, some remote mountain lair to plot the ultimate demise of the X-Files world.

After 10 long years, beard no doubt down to his knees, completely bedraggled, and apparently satisfied that he could kill it once and for all, he returned to create The X-Files: I Want to Believe.  The acting, for its part, is good.  Mulder and Scully are back and inhabiting the characters we grew to know, love, and ultimately feel sorry for (off, stuck in some idiot plot line).

So, from the folks who gave us endless mysterious alien stories, bizarre mystical concepts of divine and/or supernatural origins, psychokinesis and other bodily anomalies, what sort of plot do they give us to keep us clinging firmly to the edges of our seats this time?

Well, they give us a storyline that is so un-X-Files that, as you're piecing it together, your mind is churning furiously trying to guess what the big twist is going to be that makes this a plot worthy of Mulder's time.  When that big twist never comes and you're left with the plot they used, it's hugely disappointing.

Had they pared this down to 40 minutes and made it for television, it would've been more exciting, but still one of the more lackluster episodes of the series.  So, with a quick spoiler disclaimer, let's look at the plot.

Some Russians have set up shop out in the woods with the devious purpose of practicing the successful transplant of a person's head onto a donor body.  Sure, this is a good idea, if properly done, but this is more of a Morgan Freeman crime thriller than X-Files.  When you're Chris Carter and you try to make this idea seem more mysterious than it is by being vague and darkly dramatic, it fails.  Scully, as the ever-rational and scientific doctor type might have been interested in this, but certainly not Mulder.  It was set up to be a situation where we're supposed to believe Mulder is super interested and Scully couldn't care less.  Bass-ackwards if ya ask me. Had they reversed this and had Scully trying really hard to drag an uninterested Mulder along, it would've been more believable.

Did I mention the psychic pedophile Priest yet?

He's a very vague psychic who leads them to some body parts which the aforementioned Russians have been dumping.  The mystery connection here?  Well, turns out one of the Russian suspects used to be one of his alter boys.  Oooooo...spooky.  No, wait, I mean...Oooooo...lame. There really isn't any compelling reason to have a pedophile in the movie that I can think of, except the possibility that Chris Carter was brought up Catholic and had some traumatic experience.

What about some of the background noise in all of this.  Let's see, Mulder and Scully are officially shacked up/living together, but (if memory serves), they're not married.  Also, at some point they mentioned they had and lost a son, and it's addressed in the movie about as quickly as I did here.  Mulder was chased out and semi-wanted by the FBI apparently, but again, no additional detail was given for that.  Scully, the ever-rational and scientific doctor now spends her time working at a pretty strict and constraining Catholic hospital.  Of all the places she could work, why at a place likely to stifle science and rational thought?!

Overall, this movie was a depressing low-key stinker which is unlikely to be enjoyable to anybody, least of all long-time fans.

Geek disfunctionality

What to say about this movie.

I rented Eagle vs Shark primarily because it has Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords in it, he's a pretty funny guy, and this is a comedy.  I really didn't have much to go on besides that and the film festival stamps on the cover.  So, what'd I get then...

This movie is painful and awkward to such an extent that it gives Ben Stiller a run for his money.  It's a relationship comedy about a couple of really awkward and geeky people, and the manner of the filming and scripting keeps it pretty raw.  For starters, yes, they do really wear the costumes on the cover in the movie, at a "dress as your favorite animal" party thrown by Jarrod (Clement) and attended by Lily (Loren Horsley) who wasn't invited to this nerd fest, but who found Jarrod so dreamy, she just had to crash the party.  However awkward you think this film might be, double that and you'll be getting close.

So, the plot goes roughly like so.  Lily has a crush on Jarrod, and Jarrod has a date to dole out some whoop-ass on a bully who picked on him for years back in high school.  Because Lily has access to a car (which Jarrod lacks), she accompanies him on his journey back to his home town where his parents and siblings still live.  They are a largely dysfunctional bunch and we see Jarrod is on a never ending quest for approval from his father.

All of this geekiness made us wonder for the first half of the movie just what we were doing wasting our time.  There were some funny moments here and there, but by and large it just didn't really make a whole lot of sense to us why this film would even be made.  The second half started slowly pulling it together, and the movie wraps up in a manner that is, for lack of a more appropriate word, sweet.  Not "sweet" as in "cool," but "sweet" as in "adorable."  Horsley's portrayal of Lily completely makes this movie.  

It's tough to recommend this outright, because one feels compelled to throw in the caveat that they need to be really patient and endure the first half with the promise that there'll be a worthwhile payout at the end, but there ya have it.

High Crimes

Quick quiz:

High Crimes is:

a.  The bestselling book that Snakes on a Plane is based on

b.  A harrowing tale about a family of trapeze artists

c.  Insight into the altered mental state of convicted drug users

d.  The extremely dubious nature of business on Earth's highest peak

If you answered anything other than (d), then you didn't take a very good look at the picture.

High Crimes:  The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed by Michael Kodas takes us on a journey to the slopes of the world's highest peak and proceeds to tell one ghastly tale after another about how it's not just the altitude, lack of oxygen, and freezing temperatures you should be worried about.

This book generally garners favorable reviews, but some detractors use "sour grapes" on the part of the author (who didn't summit in two attempts) to point to his biases and overall negative experience.  The short answer to that is, "Well duh."  Kodas didn't write this book because it was all smooth sailing and they had the world's first ever game of Everest Summit Volleyball.  He wrote it because he was more than a bit shocked to see vast amounts of money being spent, and in spite of that (and partly because of it), people can still find themselves abandoned on the mountain by the very people they paid to help them out.  In light of this, I thought it was reasonably balanced.  Nobody came out smelling like a rose, but few people were entirely villanized either.  Many of the woes up there are a burden shared by the climbing community.  Sour grapes can't explain away a climber who hired a guide at great personal expense because he believed that guide had actually summited before (when he in fact hadn't, wasn't particularly experienced, and had caused a very serious incident with that last attempt).  It doesn't explain away his own guide knocking his wife (the guide's) unconscious and throwing her out of the tent.  It doesn't explain away rampant theft of often life-saving supplies, or highly problematic oxygen equipment.  No, there's more going on here than sour grapes.

I've never personally had any aspirations to climb Everest.  After reading this, should I ever hear of anybody else who does, I'll certainly encourage them to do their homework.

Now, how'd the book flow you ask.  I agree with some who found it disjointed.  The narrative concerns itself with two major story arcs in particular, and I think the intent was to break it up to perhaps heighten the intrigue a bit.  The result was unnecessary and often confusing.  There are enough people and places in here, and the true stories of people dying on Everest are sufficiently compelling that there was no need to break it up so thoroughly.

That said, yeah, I'd recommend it.  The stories of big money (upwards of $60+ thousand per climber), shoddy knock-off equipment, amateur climbers, and unscrupulous guides and Sherpas makes for interesting (if disturbing) reading.

Some people make the point that you never know what you're going to do when you're up on the mountain, your energy's drained, etc. etc.  I'll concede that yes, somebody on their way back down after many miles of hiking, physically exhausted, perhaps almost out of oxygen themselves would be hard pressed to additionally shoulder the burden of getting somebody else who's in trouble off the mountain.  They just might not be able to do it, and might need to save themselves.

Where I have a hard time is, there seems to be story after story of people on the way UP the mountain...as fresh and energetic as they're going to get...passing by people in trouble because hey, they paid their money to summit, and they're not about to give up that opportunity to stop and help some poor hapless soul.  Should that person go on to succeed, how can they sleep at night with that memory playing over and over.  That's a sad commentary on human nature.  Equally sad are tales of this going on, and people can't so much as radio back to base camp to let others know that somebody is in trouble.  Or, they do radio, but nobody at base camp can step away from their parties to mount some kind of rescue.

Overall, the book is a mix of heroism and the corruption of the human spirit.

One of those films

Every now and then we'll hear about a movie repeatedly, often part of pop culture references in conversations with friends and such.  The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is one such film.

It's the story of three drag queens who set out from the cosmopolitan city of Sydney, Australia to perform a cabaret show in the country's center, Alice Springs.  Priscilla isn't one of the queens, she is, interestingly enough, the bus.  I first saw this film ages ago and vaguely recall laughing uproariously...but I also vaguely recall being quite intoxicated, and as we'd heard fresh reference to it and my wife hadn't seen it (and frankly I didn't remember much about it), we gave it another view.

The first thing I noted was the cast.  The first time around I had no idea who any of the leads were.  Now, many movies later, I was really surprised to see the cast.  It was quite a surprise to see Hugo Weaving (The Matrix, Lord of the Rings) in full-on flaming drag.  Also, Guy Pearce (Memento, The Time Machine), and Terence Stamp (Star Wars Episode I, Yes Man).

I didn't laugh as much the second time around.  It wasn't as comedic as I seemed to remember, but it certainly does have its funny laugh-out-loud moments.  What it also had that I didn't get out of it the first time (possibly due to alcohol) is a fair dose of heart.  It's well acted, often light heartened, occasionally serious, and puts ping-pong in a whole new light.  Put this one on your rental list sometime.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

The folks that brought us The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up (two excellent and funny films) now give us Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  It does not disappoint.  Much like the other two films mentioned, this one gave us quite a few laughs, yet still maintained a sensitivity about it.  Well done indeed.  The writer of the script, Jason Segel, is also the main character, and he's willing to give 100% for his craft.  In a film featuring two highly attractive women, he writes a rather large number of nude scenes...for himself.  Not how some would've done it, but the rest was done so well he's forgiven...

To the plot!

Peter (Segel) has just been dumped by his long-term love, Sarah.  He didn't see it coming, and turns into an absolute mess, blubbering and seriously grinding on his friends nerves with his whining.  The solution?  For starters, it's decided he should get out of town for awhile.  Get a change of scenery.  Meet some new people and move on, so, off he goes to Hawaii where he very shortly runs into his ex and her new boyfriend.  Turns out they're staying at the same hotel.  Hilarity ensues (except this time, I'm not being sarcastic, it's actually funny).  If you liked either of the two other films mentioned, I'd highly recommend this one too.  If not, well, you're not likely to like this one any more.

Not what we expected

We finally got around to watch a couple of movies we missed when they came around to the cinemas.  Neither one was what we expected, but for different reasons.  

Starting off, Superman Returns, and very nearly lulls me to sleep.  It wasn't a bad movie, but just wasn't that...I don't know...exciting...engaging...it was missing something.  Kevin Spacey as Lex Luther is pretty excellent.  He provided the bulk of the entertainment with his performance and was a real treat to watch.  Brandon Routh is not just Superman, he's also Captain Even Keel.  He's so generally unexcitable that he doesn't really bring a lot to the movie.  This is likely the intent...Clark Kent/Superman as a mild mannered guy, just trying to save the world, but they could've let the guy get a little more worked up in my opinion.

WALL-E also wasn't what I expected, but not for the same reason as Superman.  The main character, WALL-E, is absolutely adorable.  The film is splendid.  What was unexpected was what a sad commentary the film makes about human existence.  WALL-E is the last of his kind and has been left on the abandoned planet Earth to clean up the monumental mess left behind by the humans, who left the planet in a completely uninhabitable state.  It borders on heavy-handed in its coverage of consumerism and obesity, but is told with a really sweet relationship between machines.  This continues Pixar's streak of great films, and we're becoming fans of Brad Bird's work as well.  This one's worth renting, and if you have children (like us), it's probably worth a purchase.

I'm not creative

I caught The Devil Wears Prada and Click for no reason other than I just couldn't think up anything else to do with the time, and I can only assume I must not have been in arm's reach of the remote.  That in and of itself is a rather sad commentary on my level of ambition that evening.  But enough of that nonsense, on to the reviews!

Prada is largely a chick flick.  This is nothing against the film, but is why it's not something I would've intentionally sought out.  Nevertheless, we heard good things about it and decided to watch.  Meryl Streep is the tough-as-nails boss at a high-profile high-fashion magazine who knows all and sees all, and the kind of person who makes people cry (or not) depending on her mood and how she looks at them.  She is one of the worst bosses imaginable, and it's unfortunate that in movies and often in real life as well, these people tend to be successful.  Anne Hathaway is the plucky young fashion-illiterate girl who applies to be Streep's assistant and gets the job based in part on her fantabulous resume which includes a campus newspaper (reality, how we laugh at thee).  The flick then teeters on the edge of seriousness and zany madcap misunderstandings as Anne first can't handle the stress but then later becomes the best darned assistant imaginable.  Um, and that's about it for me.  If you're a huge fan of either of the stars, or really enjoy chick flicks, or find yourself on the couch, unmotivated, and too far from the remote, give it a watch I guess.  Otherwise, go rent something good instead.

By good, I wasn't referring to Click.  When someone says, "One of the best parts of the film was David Hasselhoff," you have a pretty good idea what you're dealing with.  The good news is, this is extra cheezy Hoff.  This is Hoff hamming it up and overacting in a manner previously dominated by another great (to laugh at) actor.  The Hoff is William Shatner: The Next Generation!  The film is almost worth watching just for some Hoff.  Otherwise, it's just like all of Adam Sandler's other movies (with the possible exception of The Wedding Singer, which was pretty decent).  There's a plot of some sort...sometimes important, sometimes not...there are tremendous loads of childish humor which at times is so childish it's not even that funny to the uber-childish like myself, followed by the inevitable, often extra sappy ending where a lesson has been learned, and we receive some great moral about life, and how to properly make use of it.  Sure, many movies share this format, but some actually dare to do something to the story to turn it on its head a bit.  

Not here.  

So how's this one go then, you ask.  Adam Sandler's a hard working architect with a beautiful loving wife and two darling children who just can't quite find the time to be bothered with daily distractions like having a beautiful loving wife and two darling children ("No Kate Beckinsale, stop trying to get all nekkid with me all the time...that's so distracting...").  He happens upon the always entertaining Christopher Walken who imparts upon him a remote control with which he can manipulate his life.  He can pause, fast forward, etc.  Arguments with the boss/wife?  Fast-forward.  Don't have time to properly massage, entice, and otherwise spend serious quality nekkid time with a willing Kate Beckinsale?  You must be a eunuch (ooops, I meant "fast-forward").  The inevitable, of course, happens, and he royally screws his life up.  How will it all end?  Will he get his act together and figure out how to fix things?  Does anybody even care?  Meh.  It was ok...to catch...by accident...on TV.  Seriously, rent something better, save this for late night cable, and only if there isn't something better on somewhere else on cable.