Pacific Rim

 

 
  Shortly after seeing Guillermo del Toro's blockbuster Pacific Rim, my fiancee and I discovered something about the story that seemed entirely implausible.  Then we realized that if we were willing to get on board with the plot in the first place, then we have no right to question the believability of any of its outlandish contents.  Bottom line, this movie is a really fun escape - a perfect summer flick that will help you forget that school is less than two weeks away.  In terms of giant robots versus giant alien monsters, this one is tough to beat.  Del Toro, who directed Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy movies, creates a captivating world and does a great job at inviting us to come along for the ride.
  The movie starts with an incredibly eye-catching opening fifteen minutes that serve to set up the state of our planet in the not-too-distant future.  Charlie Hunnam (yes, the president of SAMCRO) plays a pilot named Raleigh who opens the film with voice-over exposition of what the monsters are and how humans have learned to combat them.  The monsters, called Kaiju, come up from a fissure in the sea floor and wreak havoc on our world while the humans have responded by building Jaegers (no, not the Jaeger), which are monumentally large robots that are operated by two people working in concert with one another.  The pilots are mentally connected and, while harnessed side-by-side in the stand-up cockpit, work perfectly together to move and manipulate the Jaeger.  It reminded me of how people operate a Nintendo Wii - or if you're older, a Nintendo Power Glove.  You and your co-pilot are both on the same page enough to know to both punch left at the exact same instant, which, in turn, swings the gigantic arm of the Jaeger you are controlling.  Pretty neat.
  The whole set-up was really effective.  It got me completely invested in the story and made me suspend disbelief enough to just sit back and enjoy the show.  If the first fifteen minutes didn't work then the rest of the movie would proceed on a shaky foundation and would probably fall flat.  But that didn't happen for me - I was totally into the movie.  Del Toro did a fine job at creating tension through much of the action sequences, mostly because he made it very clear early on in the movie that Jaegers can be destroyed somewhat easily by the monsters, so you never know when one of the great machines will die in a battle.  Due to this tension, I found myself biting my fingernails through much of this creative science fiction movie.  And who says a teacher's summer vacation isn't stressful?!
 
 

The Conjuring

"Yama hama, it's fright night."
                             - Cosmo Kramer

Sure The Conjuring has plot inconsistencies and unnecessary tangents, but who cares?  If you go to a horror movie looking for Oscar-worthy writing, you're never going to be satisfied.  This movie is scary, plain and simple.  And what I respected most about it was how it literally does nothing to move the genre forward - it contains nothing new or original, yet still manages to stay within itself and scare the bejesus out of you.  And the scares are not merely "gotcha" moments, there are some real horrifying scenes that linger far longer than the initial startle.

As a writer, you must possess supreme confidence if you are going to pen a story about exorcism, since that has already been mastered back in 1973.  I certainly wouldn't put this up there William Friedkin's masterpiece but it definitely is worth checking out, especially if you're looking for a fun two hours.

I purposely didn't read anything about this movie prior to seeing it.  Nor did I even see a trailer or find out anything about the plot.  The only thing I knew was from seeing an article about the actual woman played by Vera Farmiga - she said that out of the thousands of cases that she investigated, there is only one that she will never revisit.  Kind of brilliant marketing, I'd say.  I'm sure she is receiving plenty of residuals.

Mud

Finally!  I saw Mud.  And loved it.  From writer/director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Shotgun Stories) comes this textured drama that stars Matthew McConaughey as the title character.  Here is the plot summary from the film's studio:

14 year-old Ellis (Tye Sheridan) lives on a makeshift houseboat on the banks of a river in Arkansas with his parents, Mary Lee (Sarah Paulson) and Senior (Ray McKinnon). He sneaks out early one morning to meet his best friend, Neckbone (Jacob Lofland). Neckbone, also 14, lives with his uncle, Galen (Michael Shannon), who makes a hardscrabble living diving for oysters. The two boys set out to an island on the Mississippi River, where Neckbone has discovered an unusual sight - a boat, suspended high in the trees, a remnant of an extreme flood some time in the past. They climb the tree and into the boat only to find fresh bread and fresh footprints. Realizing that they are not the only ones who have discovered the treehouse boat, they decide to leave. When they reach the shore, they find the same footprint in their boat. And that's when they meet Mud (Matthew McConaughey). Mud is a gritty, superstitious character; his clothes are dirty, his tooth is cracked, and he needs help. He tells the boys he will give them the treehouse boat, his current hideout, in exchange for food. Neckbone is reluctant, but Ellis brings food to Mud, and they develop a tentative friendship. Ellis learns that Mud has killed a man in Texas, and police and bounty hunters are looking for him, but Mud is more concerned about reuniting with his longtime love, Juniper (Reese Witherspoon). Ellis, who has recently developed his own crush, agrees to help Mud escape with Juniper. Ellis and Neckbone carry out bold schemes in an effort to protect Mud and relay messages to Juniper, who is holed up in a fleabag motel, under constant surveillance by Carver (Paul Sparks), a Texas bounty hunter. Carver and his gang are intent on capturing Mud, on orders from the cold-blooded King (Joe Don Baker). As the boys risk everything to reunite these seeming mythical lovers, Ellis's own ideas about love and romance are challenged by the strains in the relationships closest to him: his parents' marriage is dissolving while he himself falters in his efforts to impress May Pearl (Bonnie Sturdivant). Through it all, Ellis struggles to look for an example of love that he can believe in, learning about the unspoken rules and risks of love and the reality of heartbreak.

I've been meaning to see this movie for several months now and finally caught up with it last night as its theatrical run nears the end.  While I've heard plenty of sky-high praise for the film, I purposely never dug too deep into what the movie was about.  I don't even recall seeing a trailer for it, which contributed to the film's mystery to me.  After 2011's Take Shelter blew me away a few years ago, I would pretty much go see anything that Jeff Nichols was a part of.  And Mud didn't disappoint.  I found McConaughey's performance to be fantastic.  He captured the subtleties of a fractured and confused man quite well, while still giving us the obligatory shirtless scene.  In fact, his shirt plays an interesting role throughout the movie.  McConaughey has been on a nice little run the past 24 months, with Killer Joe, The Paperboy, Bernie, Magic Mike and Mud.  Turns out, he is a pretty good actor.  For years, he has been dumbing it down with romantic comedies and other crap, but what a difference a few years makes.  It has been quite a resurgence.

Tye Sheridan is good-beyond-words as Ellis, the boy who helps Mud reunite with the love of his life.  What struck me most about the two boys in the film were how honest their characters were.  If an adult asked them a question, they told them the truth.  Kids have a refreshing way about them in this regard, and Nichols nails it with his script.

Mud is about a teenager's attempt to discover the meaning of true love.  Ellis' parents are divorcing, his girlfriend betrays him, his best friend's uncle is a womanizer yet he still wants desperately to believe that love is possible.  I really enjoyed the varied layers of how the theme was driven home.  Even though the story has a lot of fantasy elements, it struck me as a very realistic portrayal of how a 14-year old boy views the complex relationship between men and women.  Ellis needs to believe that love is real.

This is the End

For Seth Rogan's first directorial effort, he really went for it with This is the End.  He wrote and directed the apocalyptic comedy with his creative partner Evan Goldberg, who has written everything with Rogan up to this point in their careers.  I am a fan of Rogan - especially in Knocked Up, Take This Waltz and 50/50.  Here, not so much.  I found This is the End to be a big disappointment for one fairly important reason: I just didn't find it that funny.  Sure, there were hysterical parts, like the exchange between James Franco and Danny McBride about the latter's willy-nilly expulsion habits.  That was easily the funniest moment for me.  There were other funny lines and deliveries, but overall, I didn't laugh as much as I thought I was going to.  McBride stole the film when he was on screen.  And a hat tip to Craig Robinson for bringing some great lines.

I am not going to write much about this movie.  I sure hope it doesn't steal audiences away from the summer's best comedy, The Heat.  Go see The Heat.  

The Intouchables

The lead in The Intouchables is a French actor named Francois Cluzet, but if you know him, you may know him as the man who looks EXACTLY like Dustin Hoffman.  If you are like me and have never heard of him, look him up online and prepare to be overwhelmed by the striking resemblance.  Cluzet stars as a wealthy quadriplegic named Philippe who hires the unlikeliest of personal caretakers, a wayward ruffian named Driss, played with tremendous charm and flair by Omar Sy.  Philippe is tired of having medical assistants who shower him with pity and condolences.  It is time to hire someone with an attitude, someone with no medical background, someone who will often forget about Philippe's physical limitations.  That person is Driss, a 20-something man from the French projects who goes into the interview to obtain the last remaining signature he needs in order to be eligible to collect unemployment.  After he is hired, what follows is a deeply affecting friendship between two men who enter one another's lives at precisely the right time.  What a thing to behold.  

This film is simply fantastic.  It was originally released in France in 2011, but didn't make its way to the United States until it traveled the festival circuit in 2012.  I've had my eye on it for a while now and jumped at the opportunity to see it while having dinner in the courtyard of a terrific French restaurant around the corner from my house (Bistrot La Minette).  I found out that they play French movies once a week outside under the stars.  It was such a great night.  

World War Z

It is never a good sign that a movie has exactly one big star.  Other than some semi-recognizable actors, Brad Pitt is the face of this mega-budget zombie flick.  Another ominous sign for a movie is when its release date is delayed by 7 months.  And it doesn't help curb negative rumors when the studio hires big-gun writers Damon Lindelof and Drew Goddard to rewrite much of the script.  Oh, and finally, it's a bad thing when a movie's ending is completely re-filmed after the studio screened the first cut and realized that the third act was too action-packed and chaotic.

Having said all of that, I must say that they pulled it together enough to create a pretty entertaining movie.  I especially enjoyed the subdued characteristics of the final 30 minutes, which is very much the antithesis of most big studio blockbusters.  The formula for big-budget action movies is to ramp up the action through the entire third act (see The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Transformers, etc).  This was a refreshing take on how to end a big movie, with quiet, cerebral moments with the main character.

I did have quite a few issues with the movie, though.  First, and most glaring, I was extremely aggravated by the fact that this was PG-13.  Who wants to see a zombie movie and not actually see any blood?  Not me.  There were dozens of moments in the film where the director cut away from the gore or simply framed the violence just out of view, which I found very distracting.  It took me out of the movie every time.  Clearly, movies make more money if they appeal to a larger audience.  I get that.  But this was one of those instances where I wish realism took priority over a film making more money. I guess that is what happens when your budget balloons to nearly $200 million and your only chance of turning a profit is to make it PG-13.

My second issue with the movie was how manic the blocking was for the main action sequences.  The camera was so shaky and the position of the actors and zombies in relation to each other was confusing.  Everything was moving so fast and there was such great care to cut away from the action the instant actual violence was about to occur, which caused a visual frenzy.

(semi-spoiler territory ahead........maybe? but not really)

My third and final gripe was the voice-over narration at the end.  It frustrates me when there is no voice-over throughout an entire movie and then the last 60 seconds are explained to us by one of the characters.  You haven't been our narrator at any point in the story, don't start now.  Instead, the coda should have been exposited by news reel, just like we see in the opening credits.

I'm a big Brad Pitt fan and enjoyed watching him carry a flawed movie.  

A Late Quartet

A Late Quartet has been on my radar since it came out in the fall of 2012.  With a cast that includes Christopher Walken, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener, count me in.  Mark Ivanir, who was a new face for me, rounds out the foursome with a strong performance as the lead violinist.  His place as the first violin pretty much makes him the leader of the quartet, much to the chagrin of the second violinist, played by Hoffman.  Keener's character, who plays the viola, has been married to Hoffman for about as long as the quartet has been together - 25 years - and they have a daughter around that same age, who is being taught the violin by Ivanir.  Walken, the cellist, finds out pretty early on in the story that he is exhibiting early signs of Parkinson's disease, which will bring his legendary music career to an end in the next year.  This announcement provides the spark for the movie's drama.  Since they are going to have to replace Walken with a new cellist, Hoffman proposes that it would be a good time to begin splitting time with Ivanir as the lead violinist, which even his own wife thinks is a bad idea. The lack of spousal support causes Hoffman to cheat on his wife.  She finds out about the infidelity and asks him to move out.  As if this weren't enough drama for one movie, we find out that Ivanir and his pupil are having a love affair.  The fact that his own daughter is in love with the first violinist enrages Hoffman and further fractures the already embattled quartet.

This probably sounds like a lot to cram into one movie, and it sure felt like it.  Especially in the middle of the film, where everything was piling on top of itself, causing it to come across with great (unintended) humor.

I loved the final scene and ultimately came away from this film with a positive opinion, even though it was a bit over the top.  I truly got the sense that these interpersonal issues carried serious enough consequences to support my investment in the story.  To these people, music is everything.

A Late Quartet is currently streaming on Netflix.