Tag: film

The Equalizer

~ Mark

The Equalizer. Average, with a few bright points here and there. I love the diner scenes. They build Denzel’s character as the precise, exacting, confident type, but I like the hints of compulsive behavior beyond that. Not just the careful folding of the kitchen towel, or the tea ritual, or the perfectly crisp button-ups, tucked in. There’s the opening and closing the door, flicking the lights on and off, maybe even the car window opening and closing, rearranging the skulls. Nice little wrinkle.

Visually its a mess. It reminded me of the colorfully shifty, dizzying jumps and zooms that Tony Scott used in Man on Fire, except without the thoughtfulness and consistency with mood. Also weakly similar to that movie: there is an art to “walking away slowly from an explosion” scenes, and you have to earn it. You can’t just shove one in the middle of the movie.

I enjoyed the fight scenes. But have to mention something that drove me crazy: the Sherlock Holmes-ian superpower thing in the office brawl. I’m talking about the thing where time is paused or slowed for a moment, where we get to see how the hero analyzes and calculates all the situational details before getting in a rumble – who is where, what weapons they have, the layout of the room. I don’t mind this sort of movie cliché, or this way of making the hero look awesome. That’s fine. What made it frustrating was that the movie had already shown us those details. I assume it was done to heighten the tension beforehand. But it’s draining to show a guy sitting ready with a knife, and then show us Denzel noticing the guy has a knife. I love that stopwatch, though.

All that said: whatever Denzel has, I want it. He’s got charm coming out the ears. And Marton Csokas is awesome.

Training Day

~ Mark

Training Day. Pretty good. Denzel covers some good range here, maybe a little toooooo schizo/flip-floppy. Always switching, probing, testing. I was a bit impatient with it after a while. Surprised how well Hawke carried his chunk of the movie.

Man on Fire

~ Mark

Man on Fire. This is the beginning of my Denzel Washington self-education program, as I’ve seen embarrassingly few of his movies, and they were all a long time ago. A guilt-ridden drunk on a revenge mission. Young Dakota Fanning is impossible not to like. And her on-screen friendship with Denzel is fantastic. I really liked the lively, kind of spazzy directing. A rush of colors and cuts, zooms in and out, accelerating and coming to a halt, and how that ties in with characterization and mood. I like the work with the occasional subtitles, too. Interesting that the bullet and the St. Jude medallion come along with sobriety (like AA tokens). Also note the recurring theme of “I’m just a professional” or “I’m just doing my job.” It’s not enough. Cf. Taken, of course.

There is no such thing as tough. There is trained and untrained.

Blue Ruin

~ Mark

Blue Ruin. Holy. Crap. Watch this movie. There’s some kinship with Shotgun Stories here, swirling around revenge and vicious family rivalry. Just multiply the intensity by 3 or 4. A wee bit of Fargo, too, what with the bumbling? Great acting, sound, editing, the whole package is legit. This will probably be very high in my 2014 rankings.

Locke

~ Mark

Locke. I really liked this movie. Two things it reminded me of: Arbitrage, because he’s in a really crappy position and he’s trying to make do. And Bronson, because it’s Tom Hardy putting on a one-man show and just nailing it. About 99% of it is watching him on phone calls while he’s driving. I love it when movies play with constraints like this. So good.

Collateral

~ Mark

Collateral. My third viewing. (Ignore my comments after the second.) It feels like every time I watch a Michael Mann movie it becomes my new favorite of his.

This movie is seriously in love with LA, too. You almost never get this much richness in setting. The surfaces, the light, daytime and night. Passing scenes and shots of a Hispanic gas station, a Korean (?) newspaper, murals, traffic, strip malls, modest neighborhoods, airport boulevards. Crucial scenes in Latino and (mostly Asian) nightclubs.

This sense of place fits with one of the movie’s themes – presence. Our protagonists are Vincent (Cruise’s cool, decisive, efficient professional) and Max (Foxx’s daydreaming perfectionist). Max is dreaming miles into the future, but too hesitant or cautious (“It’s gotta be perfect.”) to do anything to get there. Vincent is skimming along the moment, zipping through assignments. (“We gotta make the best of it, improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, shit happens, I Ching, whatever man, we gotta roll with it.”)

Two early soundtrack moments underscore the contrast, too. Early on, Max enjoys the nostalgic, old-school vibes of Groove Armada’s Hands of Time as he cruises through the city. Soon after, we see some of Vincent’s subway/disconnection speech (foreshadowing!) backgrounded with a cool blues-y rendition of Bach’s Air on the G String. Pure sophistication. It’s not until (after the missed-opportunity soliloquy in the jazz club scene) Max is forced into impersonating Vincent that he starts to show some real agency.

On this viewing the humor came through much more for me, thanks to Cruise. Lines like “Promise not to tell anybody, right?” and “Don’t let me cornered. You don’t have the trunk space.” and “What? I should only kill people after I get to know them?”. I could go on. What a damn great movie.

The NeverEnding Story

~ Mark

The NeverEnding Story. The handful of times I watched this as a kid I found it too baffling to grow any sort of attachment or fondness. I remembered only a few snapshots before re-watching: boy reading in attic, boy warrior in a terrifying bog, flying on a dogdragon, wolf with a twitchy nose, a young queen in distress. Good young actors in a dark, compressed allegorical movie about bullying, escapism, and the value of imagination. Let’s also take a moment to appreciate that the villain is called “The Nothing” and the rad electro soundtrack in the Swamps of Sadness. :( :( :(

Once Upon a Time in the West

~ Mark

Once Upon a Time in the West. Welp. It’s perfect. This was my second time seeing it all the way through (my first), and I was very lucky to catch it on the big screen. Two things that stood out for me more this time around….

One, the operatic heightening. Straight out of opera, each major character gets a leitmotif in the soundtrack, they’re all introduced in a different way to draw attention to their role, and they’re all pretty unambiguous archetypes: villain, hero, buffoon, hooker with heart of gold. And dang, that score.

Two, the recurring hints about time. The movie opens with a shot of a rail schedule, then shifts to a comically, absurdly extended introduction marked by dripping water and creaking windmills. The anxious father who wants to be ready for his beloved’s arrival. Watches checked, appointments made. A capitalist who wants to reach the Pacific coast before his death. A railroad station that must be built on a deadline. Fancy clocks in the financier’s railcar. The clockface in town during a shoot-out. And battles that the hero faces are a sort of countdown: three assassins, then two, then one.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

~ Mark

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Really underwhelming. I was so fired up for this after re-watching Rise… and hearing good reviews. I think the best way to summarize this one is that there’s just not much to be curious about. Once you get the early outlines, you could finish the screenplay yourself. Bonus points, though, for good use of xylophone in the score. I also thought it was interesting that they only used a handful of locations for this movie: city, grove, dam, village, apartment. Reminded me of the clashing civilizations/neighbors in The New World. Took me the longest time to realize how I recognized Kodi Smit-McPhee: Let Me In.

Snowpiercer

~ Mark

Snowpiercer. I keep thinking about this one. There are plenty of logical flaws, loopholes, heavy-handed messaging, whatever. But it’s so cool. The railroad car constraint lends to some great invention with sets and storytelling and form. Evans shows some range you don’t get to see in the Marvel movies. Swinton drives me nuts sometimes, but I really appreciated her role here for both evil and levity. I rank this highly among 2014 releases, in the good company of Edge of Tomorrow, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The Lego Movie.

The Raid: Redemption

~ Mark

The Raid: Redemption. This is an implausibly heightened* excuse for great choreography and fightin’. (*a pregnant wife; an innocent bystander who needs to deliver medicine to his bedridden spouse; an unauthorized mission without backup; corrupt leadership; sibling rivalry; etc.) I loved early parts of the movie, where there was more play with music vs. silence, shadow vs. light, when things felt more precarious. Once the shit hit the fan, it was still fun, but more predictable, and less interesting. Transitions got a bit awkward as the stories splinter and rivalries come a head, and people start talking more. I think I would have appreciated something leaner, and something that took more advantage of the architectural aspect like Die Hard. Good relentless fun, though. Two more things: 1) I am getting a bit too old and squeamish for gore, and 2) that moment when the camera drops through the floor (!!). Another movie that’s “pure gold when it comes to the art of moving cameras around moving bodies doing cool things”: Ninja.