Movie Review: Final Fantasy VII – Advent Children (SPOILERS)

(Editor’s note:

This movie is currently available for free viewing on the TV and movie streaming services Hulu and Crackle.

This movie is not to be confused with the theatrical release Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within – which, incidentally, is also available for free viewing on Hulu. The movie as presented on Hulu and Crackle features Japanese text but is dubbed in English. Opening and closing credits are also in English.

This movie is a sequel to the role-playing game Final Fantasy VII and does contain spoilers for the game. Due to the nature of the events of the story, this review will discuss SPOILERS for both the game and the film.

—————————

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is recommended (and probably accessible) only for fans of the source material, but players who enjoyed Final Fantasy VII and who are willing to make some compromises with regard to storytelling will find a lot to enjoy in this film. Viewers who dislike what they see as “Japanese animation’s way” of developing stories and characters, as a friend of mine puts it, will want to pass on this film. I would instead highly recommend watching The Secret World of Arrietty instead, as it’s infinitely easier to understand. It’s also an utterly fantastic movie in itself and a perfect recommendation for families.

Advent Children has an impressive opening sequence that uses the same sort of quick camera cuts and theme music the game began with, as the lion-like creature known as Red XIII and others of his kind are looking out over an expansive and gorgeous valley (which is actually how the game ended, not how it began).

After succinctly recapping the main events of Final Fantasy VII, the film reintroduces the viewer to Shinra, an electricity-producing corporation with a reputation for causing environmental destruction. This takes the form of harnessing the Lifestream, essentially the spirit energy of the Planet, represented as a living being, and using it as a power source. (It should be noted that Midgar, a very large city where most of Shinra’s reactors are located, is an exceedingly filthy city almost uninhabitable for plant life, let alone all the people who make their homes in the city slums.)

The movie then quickly moves on to explain the various primary characters’ roles. Main hero Cloud Strife was once a member of a Shinra-produced class of warriors known as SOLDIER. An extremely gifted man named Sephiroth was also a member of SOLDIER and was also the power-hungry main antagonist of Final Fantasy VII. Advent Children takes place two years after Sephiroth’s defeat at the end of the game. The story of the film states that Sephiroth wanted to destroy the world–a technical truth and an incomplete explanation. Since the Lifestream heals the Planet in much the same way that our own circulatory systems heal our wounds, Sephiroth’s intention was to cause a cataclysmic event, simply referred to as Meteor, that would force all of the Lifestream to one location in order to repair the damages to the Planet. Sephiroth would in turn exploit these events and merge with the Lifestream to become a god.

Suffice it to say that the story only becomes more complex from there, as Cloud returns to avert a new threat to the Planet, and while the movie does not know how to pace itself in such a way that the viewer has time to digest all of the events that are occurring, the story itself is usually pretty decent (if a bit too similar to the game it’s based on), and the art and music design have received quite a lot of care in most scenes. The music especially functions well, whether the current scene calls for heavy guitar riffs or gentle piano playing, though one scene in particular plays music that doesn’t seem at all appropriate for the events on display.

Attempting to provide many more details about what is going on would only serve to spoil many of the events of the film, as they’re quite often too unusual to even hint at. The character development could use work for heroes and villains alike, though at least the heroes often have the advantage of being returning characters from Final Fantasy VII, such that their personalities and backgrounds had already been explained. Cloud is still burdened with guilt over certain specific events from the game, and as such he stands as probably the most developed character of the film. Other characters appear at convenient times to aid Cloud against the story’s antagonists, but given that the events of the story are so significant that they would surely make world news in-universe (we’re not shown this, but the technology is almost certainly still there), these sudden appearances and reunions are made easier to believe.

When the film isn’t rapidly shifting between characters and subplots, it does have moments of greatness. Two of these in particular are on the part of the story’s villains, the one moment being a disturbing but powerful scene of children being kidnapped and manipulated for the sake of a cause, and the other moment being an even more disturbing but visually amazing scene where the villains begin attacking and wreaking havoc on an innocent yet justifiably angry crowd. The villains’ motivations for wanting to harm the Planet could use a little more explaining, however.

Most of the rest of the film consists of wonderfully choreographed but intense and over-the-top fight sequences as well as the occasional plot revelation, with a contrived but well-meaning nod to teamwork and perseverance late in the story. The story closes with a somewhat convenient ending as well as what appears to be an unnecessary sequel hook. The very last scene in the film, however, is a beautifully touching demonstration of forgiveness that validates Cloud’s character development as well as the film as a whole, for all its flaws.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is not a film to be recommended to a wide audience, particularly not to anyone not strongly familiar with the preceding video game, but fans of that work might consider giving this a watch, if only to see the return of their favorite characters, with some awesome music and action sequences to match.

(As a closing note, it should be mentioned that the film has a Blu-Ray edition that contains a significant amount of additional footage, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete. This is not the edition of the film that Hulu and Crackle have, and as such I have been told that it contains quite a bit of additional content, which would likely do wonders for the plot pacing.)

—————————

(Additional thanks go to the Final Fantasy wiki and to Wikipedia for their help in clarifying certain background concepts and minor details.

Movie Review: Aliens

James Cameron’s Aliens is a terrifying and deeply emotional classic that is every bit as powerful for a first-time viewer in 2012 as it must have been in 1986. Relying on atmosphere and character relations over spectacle alone, Aliens nonetheless maintains a perfect balance of excitement, horror, and genuine compassion.

Ellen Ripley, given a fantastic and disturbing performance thanks to Sigourney Weaver, is traumatized by the horrific events of the film Alien, of which she was the sole human survivor. She learns that the planet where the original film’s crew found eggs of a deadly alien species, is now home to a colony–and that contact with said colony has been lost. As a consultant, Ripley accompanies a group of Colonial Marines to investigate.

The film introduces one of its best characters early on, a young girl named Rebecca (or Newt, as she calls herself), who out of fear initially hesitates to communicate with Ripley and the rest of the crew. As Newt slowly opens up to Ripley, the two form a bond over the course of the movie that becomes truly heartwarming without ever feeling silly or forced. Ripley’s talents as a mother figure, and by extension Weaver’s, add plenty of depth to both Ripley and Newt as characters, and the film as a whole benefits from human relations such as this. These character interactions and others feel extremely authentic, and they create a similar effect for the enforced drama that fuels the action. This makes said drama feel so much more convincing than it would be if the film relied on tactics such as, perhaps, telling the viewer that millions of people had been killed off-screen. (This does nonetheless happen, to a comparatively very small extent, but by that point the film’s already done a fine job of giving the viewer a reason to care about who lives and who doesn’t.)

Aliens seems to use the idea of the “strong woman” as a running theme, with Ripley fiercely protecting her new-found companion; a soldier named Vasquez essentially behaving like “one of the guys,” with the battle competence to match but thankfully without the boorish personality; and one more example at the end of the film that’s just done too well and developed too well (without any dialogue on this character’s part) to spoil or to ignore. By comparison, a number of the men in the film seem to be annoyingly weak, whether in terms of morals or courage. Of this film’s few flaws worth mentioning, one is the film’s tendency to repeatedly demonstrate and emphasize this comparison–strong women, weak men–to the point of excess, where the dichotomy, whether intentional or not, becomes as tiresome as a number of the characters driving it. (On that note, one character’s goals and motivations bring to mind the plot of the original Alien a little too eagerly, and that’s not the only element in Aliens that seems lifted from the original.)

Despite a few too many recycled plot elements and story events, Aliens is overwhelmingly successful in establishing an atmosphere of dread and terror–the Colonial Marines quickly find themselves completely unprepared for the enemies and circumstances they face. Machismo and bravado quickly give way to vulnerability and uncertainty, and beyond simply keeping the viewer interested and guessing throughout the action scenes, character deaths serve as horrifying but logical events, not as random excuses to beg for the viewer’s emotion. The characters most often in danger are usually the most likeable, with one notable exception producing a guilty but likely intentional amount of pleasure.

It’s rare when a film truly terrifies me. Though I admittedly don’t watch many horror movies, it’s nevertheless not often that I actually get scared watching a film anyway, whether it’s a horror movie or not. While not quite as rare, it’s always a blessing when a film moves me to legitimately care about its characters. Somehow Aliens manages to succeed gloriously at doing both of these, and for those who are brave enough to get through the story, a viewing can hardly be recommended enough.

Movie Review: The Avengers (or Marvel Avengers Assemble)

How to even begin?  The Avengers is destined to be one of the standout pictures of 2012, and it easily ranks among the best films in the genre.  With a story that is simple enough to be easily understandable but complex enough to be thought-provoking, Joss Whedon does an astounding job of essentially telling half a dozen superhero stories at once.

The film boasts an amazing cast that features names such as Robert Downey, Jr. and Scarlett Johansson, and many of those familiar faces have already headlined big-budget films of their own.  Deciding the best of the lot is a difficult task; the fantastic acting, supported by dialogue that never feels silly regardless of the mood, serves as an example for any future entries in the series (and in the genre).  The character interactions call to mind, in more ways than one, the totally believable dialogue sequences in films such as Inglourious Basterds.  The patriotic and usually straight-laced Captain America and the laid-back but singularly focused Iron Man (Tony Stark) are a joy to watch as they bicker back and forth at one another and with an external humanizing element and mediator–the mighty Thor, of all people, a much more mature individual than he was at the beginning of his own film.  Thor plays opposite his power-hungry brother Loki, and the acting performance for the latter role has undergone quite the improvement.  Viewers who were interested in seeing Loki because they felt sympathy for his experiences in Thor, however, may be somewhat disappointed–Loki does nothing in this film to appear remotely sympathetic, remaining bent on domination from start to finish, and that’s really the extent of his character development throughout the story as he prepares to unleash a massive army to subjugate mankind.

Scarlett Johansson turns in an unexpectedly marvelous performance as she reprises her Black Widow role from Iron Man 2.  (This was “unexpected” not because of any lack of acting ability on her part, but because I personally thought her role was useless to the plot in Iron Man 2, through no fault of her own.)  After putting up an impressive fight against interrogators at the beginning of the film, she later changes roles and becomes a humanizing element to the also well-done Bruce Banner, otherwise known as the Incredible Hulk.  The Black Widow’s empathy toward the Hulk’s compelling internal struggles is very poignant, and it serves to make her character noteworthy for more than just delivering effective fight scenes.

Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury doesn’t have much character development for such a (literal) leading role, but Jackson turns in the sort of bold performance he’s generally known for, as he struggles to convince a team of heroes who don’t always get along, to stop fighting with each other and focus on the bigger problems at hand.  It is here that The Avengers becomes what Watchmen (both the book and the movie) should have been–a compelling look at “superheroes” who have character flaws and who make mistakes (in some cases, including having blood on their hands, an irony that doesn’t go unnoticed by others) but who are ultimately enjoyable to watch and are willing to put aside their personal interests for the sake of serving others.  It’s the cliched lesson of the superhero film, but it works excellently here.  The character Hawkeye seems somewhat isolated overall, in that he doesn’t seem to get a whole lot of interaction with the other superheroes until the end of the film.  He performs well enough with his arrows, but the movie doesn’t seem to say much about him.

The story setting all of this personal drama and conflict in motion is fairly simple, basically a fight for a tesseract, a device that can serve as a gateway to clean, sustainable energy–or, instead, as a literal gateway allowing for Loki’s minions to invade Earth.  For those who saw Thor’s film, without giving spoilers, Thor’s presence here might come across as somewhat jarring, and the implications of this aren’t really given a whole lot of detail.  Thankfully the film’s commitment to getting through its numerous character subplots comes without a lot of downtime.  None of the events on display in The Avengers feel wasted or unimportant, and the film sometimes feels like a distilled version of its parts: Thor’s character interactions are just as fun to watch here as they were in his own movie, though this film doesn’t really have time to indulge in some of the former’s goofier humor; and Iron Man’s Tony Stark still comes across as sarcastic and colorful as he ever was, even though the film thankfully doesn’t give him the time to waste by being the sort of womanizer as he was for portions of Iron Man 2.  The story as a whole is probably accessible enough for those who haven’t seen these heroes’ own movies, though Captain America, whose film I’ve not gotten to see, gets some helpful flashbacks to move the early plot along.

The action scenes and special effects are generally done exceptionally well, and while the second act of the film can feel somewhat quiet (in terms of literal explosions, not so much of metaphorical ones), the story itself begins with a bang as Loki arrives and begins wreaking excessive amounts of havoc.  The action is distributed somewhat more evenly throughout the story than in the nonetheless wonderful Thor, with small skirmishes here and there to help keep things interesting, as well as perhaps surprising.  The environmental destruction is very believable (I feel like that poor city just gets hammered in movies), the explosions are awesome and plentiful, and the enemy designs toward the end of the film are fantastic.  Other than making computer monitors and foreground objects fun to look at, the 3D effects are basically useless for this film, which is a shame simply because the rest of the film’s visuals work so well, even if they’re sometimes a bit too dimly lit.

The story overall shines near the top its genre without necessarily redefining it, and the numerous character stories just “work” better together than they perhaps should, both inside the context of the story and outside of it, without ever becoming so complicated that they bog down the plot or become difficult to understand.  Superhero fans will have plenty to cheer about with a film that kicks off the summer movie season so well; The Avengers, as with many of its characters, is a flawed film, but those flaws never come close to tainting the overwhelming number of things the movie does right.  And please, remember to stay through the entire credits!

(Oh, and I really should have mentioned that one character gets stabbed in the eye–the audience doesn’t actually see this, but it’s clear what is going on–with a sharp weapon at one point in the film. Other than this, language and sex are minimal, while explosions are plenty.)

Movie Review: Thor

Thor is a masterpiece of a film, and it easily ranks among the very best of anything I’ve ever seen from the superhero genre.  With a simple but moving story coupled with exciting action, Marvel Studios constructs a superbly executed origin story that I can’t wait to see more of.

Those who have studied Norse mythology will likely be familiar with Thor’s home realm, Asgard.  It’s beautifully rendered in this movie, somewhat like a golden version of the Emerald City from The Wizard of Oz, complete with flowing waterfalls, fanciful architecture, and a techno-rainbow bridge known as the Bifrost.  It is here that the movie begins, and it is here that Thor, god of thunder and lightning, is set to inherit the throne from his father Odin.  Thor, however, has not inherited his father’s evenhanded temperament, desiring instead to wage open and unprovoked war against the frost giants opposing Odin and Asgard.  Thor’s arrogance, displayed by way of him smashing through dozens of giants, endangers his friends and eventually all of Asgard.  As such, for this and for his open defiance of his father, Thor is stripped of his power and banished to Earth.  His hammer, Mjolnir, is also thrown to Earth, to be wielded only by a worthy hero.

(The opening action scene is pretty impressive on a number of levels: it’s pretty competent at the basest level, but more importantly, because of the perils it shows Thor bringing upon his friends, it never really lets the almighty Thor ignore the consequences of his actions.)

Thor and his hammer wind up in New Mexico, about fifty miles apart from each other.  The same area is home to an astrophysicist named Jane Foster, and thanks to a number of chance encounters, the two quickly establish something of an awkward friendship.  Thor is very much a brute at heart, and he quickly begins wreaking havoc (small-scale, on the level of breaking mugs) in the name of his own special brand of hedonism.  It doesn’t take long before shady agents from the organization known as S.H.I.E.L.D. seize all of Jane’s research and equipment in what seems like a worst-case TSA scenario.  Shortly thereafter, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents build a small ‘base’ around Mjolnir’s crash site as they attempt to extract the hammer.

The movie’s portrayal of the connection between science and magic is very interesting–while it holds some obvious elements that viewers will need to take with a grain of salt, its encouragement of being open-minded toward new and different understandings of our universe is a good one.

It is at this point that Thor learns to truly care about others, even if his means are somewhat questionable: He invades the S.H.I.E.L.D. base, not only to try to get Mjolnir back but also to retrieve Jane’s research.  As an action hero, Thor is borderline unstoppable–in this case he pummels pretty much everyone in the S.H.I.E.L.D. base without breaking a sweat.  This makes the fight scenes fun to watch, but because Thor is so ridiculously overpowered even without his hammer, these scenes lack much of any sense of emotional weight unless innocent people are involved.

The film’s first big plot twist is done well in terms of evoking emotion, but it’s not difficult to see coming if the viewer pays attention to the beginning of the film.  While it is true that events at this point can be dubbed as “just deserts,” it is at least somewhat heartbreaking to see the film’s first big climax basically lead to nothing.

From there the film develops its simple yet careful story that functions somewhat more as a comedy than as an action film, probably in the name of keeping the film’s already high budget down.  The real “silver bullet” of the plot isn’t a magic item or a special ability so much as being normal, regular human interaction.  Thor and Jane grow as friends, and unlike Tony Stark in the Iron Man series, Thor is absolutely a gentleman.  He never treats Jane like a sex object or like anything less than a princess, nor does he ever stalk her or manipulate her in the name of her well-being.

The main villain’s motivations are simple and somewhat unreasonable, stemming primarily from misunderstanding and personal jealousy.  The S.H.I.E.L.D. (that word is so annoying to type!) subplot is resolved but not really elaborated upon: the film never really explains the nature of the agency, and inasmuch as I can recall, the agency’s motivations and goals are never really made clear.  S.H.I.E.L.D. winds up as a sort of throwaway villain, primarily one that exists for the sake of giving Thor something to do while the actual antagonist brings his own plot to fruition.

Thor really does grow and develop as a character, and without wanting to spoil too much, there is a definite “love-your-enemies” message running through the plot, and that message is certainly worthy of praise.  The film climaxes with a powerful display of self-sacrifice that just seems so much more poignant and, dare I say, situationally common than the time-honored cliche of laying down one’s life for one’s friends.

Most of the other characters in the film are primarily flat, but they’re still fun to watch.  There are very few scenes of overacting, and by and large the cast does a great job.  Anthony Hopkins is, of course, completely convincing in his role as Thor’s father Odin, even without being a major character for most of the film.  In terms of being emotionally convincing, Natalie Portman’s come a long way from Star Wars: Attack of the Clones.  Kat Dennings’ portrayal of Darcy Lewis, a co-worker of Jane’s, is hilarious, full of verbal and behavioral eccentricities and character quirks that make Darcy feel less like a “movie character” and more like a believable human being, despite her lack of an elaborate backstory or of a significant impact on the events of the story.

The art and music in this film are amazing.  Patrick Doyle’s compositions, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra (!), lend the whole film a stirring and majestic atmosphere.  The art direction is usually of two different extremes, as most of the film takes place either in the stunningly idyllic but somewhat fake-looking realm of Asgard, or in a small yet pleasant community in New Mexico.  The film doesn’t really have an even distribution of action, with most of it being at either the very beginning or the very end of the film.  A particular Foo Fighters song is put to great use early on in the movie, shortly after Thor arrives on Earth, but the subtlety of the moment is lost when the same song is used for the end credits.  The song’s appropriateness remains, however.

It’s exceedingly rare that a movie makes me so highly anticipate a sequel, but I can’t imagine how I could be more excited for the return of Thor and Jane and company.  With a slightly more elaborate plot, even with not quite as many subplots as Iron Man 2 tried valiantly but failed to really develop, it shouldn’t be difficult for Marvel to make a wonderful and memorable film franchise.

Movie Review: The Secret World of Arrietty

The Secret World of Arrietty is a moving, artistic masterpiece that should not be missed by any viewer of any age.  It is a likable, adorable, and compassionate film that says so much in its great simplicity.

In case that sounds like a cliched way to begin a review, let me start at the beginning.  Based on The Borrowers novel that has been adapted into film several times, Studio Ghibli’s latest deals with the adventures of a curious and precocious girl, Arrietty, and of her loving parents, all of whom are Borrowers — very small people who live beneath the floors and “borrow” whatever they need to survive from human residences.

Arrietty’s firm but touchingly compassionate father Pod is generally the provider of the family, tasked with fetching whatever is necessary, while Arrietty’s lovingly overprotective mother Homily generally takes care of their little “household.”  Arrietty takes a strong, early interest in her father’s work and is overjoyed when he allows her to come along on her first Borrowing, complete with her own set of climbing gear.

Late at night, when the inhabitants of a particular household are sleeping, Pod and Arrietty begin their unstable journey into the kitchen for the sake of a single sugar cube.  The story effortlessly evokes interest in the plight of the Borrowers; their fear of even (literally) the smallest threats feels completely convincing.  Arrietty’s exciting journey takes a turn for the worse when she is spotted by a boy named Shawn, who is immediately curious about this tiny stranger and what she wants.  This budding one-sided friendship is questioned both by Arrietty and by her parents, often citing the fates of other Borrowers who were seen by humans.

The plot becomes more fully developed from there but remains simple enough throughout the film for adults and children to enjoy.  Unlike most films where I can’t really elaborate on a thin story without spoiling details, the measured pacing and small amount of detail in Arrietty serve as a blessing rather than an aggravation (contrast films such as The Road and The Fountain), since each story event that does happen, feels genuinely special.  As a viewer, I saw the ending of the story coming a mile away, but thanks to the wonderful characters, this understanding made me so deeply and genuinely happy to think about, that the predictability didn’t bother me at all.

Except that that’s not what really happened, because the story decided to surprise me in two big ways without ever deciding to evoke cheap drama, and how I wish I could elaborate here without ruining the ending.  Nonetheless, while the plot sometimes became bittersweet, it was never truly negative or anything less than optimistic.

The story largely glosses over the morality of taking insignificant items for the sake of providing for one’s family, in essence stealing them.  Other than this, Arrietty is a brave and mostly responsible protagonist who is greatly concerned about the well-being of her family even while she slowly gets to know the boy Shawn against her parents’ wishes.  (One thing I loved about this film was that while it featured a strong female lead, the story never needed and never bothered to shove this in the audience’s faces.)

From the opening shot of a beautiful hand-drawn Japanese city, to a final shot that reminds me of parts of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the artistic direction in this film is stunning.  Arrietty’s “garden” bedroom is likened to a “jungle” by her mother, but it is simply and absurdly beautiful.  The colors are vivid and lively, creating a world that should inspire genuine wonder and curiosity in any viewer.  (“What interesting uses could my small items have?”)  This is a feeling I express very strongly, because I’m usually more interested in straightforward, matter-of-fact storytelling than in open-ended exploration of “what could be.”  Not so here.  The stringed instrumentals and vocally performed songs (there aren’t many, and none of the characters ever really break into song) are absolutely lovely and are a delight to listen to.

The Secret World of Arrietty is a blessing. It is a G-rated film that really feels like a G-rated film.  There is no sexual content or innuendo, no profanity, one mild joke about sherry (though alcohol is on display in a few glasses), and very little in the way of outright violence, a large part of which is rendered in a silly manner and played for laughs.  (A cricket leg is shown by itself at one point and is offered by one character as food.  It is refused.)  Though the plot sometimes ventures into sad territory and is willing to acknowledge themes such as death, those topics aren’t focused on.  Deviating somewhat from typical Studio Ghibli fare, magic and mysticism essentially play no role in the story, which establishes the existence of tiny Borrowers but doesn’t condescend to give them special powers or abilities.  There are no overly bizarre creatures or beings as in Spirited Away, giving this film the wonder of a Ghibli production without any of the oddness.

There’s really not much more to say about this film, partly because of its innocent simplicity and partly because of its overwhelmingly successful execution.  It is a brilliant and life-affirming experience of a movie that deserves to be enjoyed and cherished, often in the littlest of things.

Movie Review: Cars 2

Well, that was atrocious.

Cars was never a franchise I truly cared for: the first film’s plot felt oddly cliched for a Pixar film, filled with largely unlikeable characters, and now the second film is filled with so many strange design decisions as to become nearly unwatchable.

Someone at Pixar apparently must have thought that weaving an uncreative “just-be-yourself” message into the framework of a James Bond spy thriller would make for a good family film, and that is how our movie plays out.  Secret agent Finn McMissile receives a video message from fellow agent Leland Turbo, who is promptly compacted into a cube–think of the trash cubes from WALL-E–by means of crushing.  (The actual crushing is not shown.  Its results are.)  After sneaking onto an oil platform to uncover the schemes of a weapons designer, McMissile is quickly discovered by a number of henchmen and is forced to make his escape.

Then the gunfire begins, and many cars blow up.  Welcome to Cars 2.

Cars 2′s violent approach to storytelling is its own undoing, as the movie (usually) exercises enough restraint to keep the action from becoming too intense or brutal for younger viewers, and yet the film has no problem at all with showing off stacks of machine guns and missiles whose destructive power really can’t be showcased in a film like this.  Cars 2 is a family film that often seems as though it doesn’t want to be: bullets usually hit only tires; most deaths are offscreen, including the aforementioned explosion; and missiles are shown off but are seldom used.  That being stated, this is still a movie that deals in outright death much more strongly than any Pixar film I can remember, including The Incredibles, which seems completely inappropriate for the target demographic.

After McMissile flees the oil platform, the story returns to two of the main characters from the first Cars film, the self-confident racing car Lightning McQueen and the kindhearted yet clumsy tow truck Tow Mater, the latter of whom is again voiced by Larry the Cable Guy.  After McQueen and Mater have a happy yet somewhat awkward reunion, punctuated with irresponsible behavior (tipping over a dump truck), it doesn’t take long for McQueen to ditch Mater to go on a dinner date with the former’s girlfriend, Sally.  As one of the very few sympathetic characters in the series, Mater understandably feels left out, a theme that echoes throughout the whole film.

A series of events sees McQueen being entered into the World Grand Prix, a racing series sponsored by an ex-oil tycoon as a means of promoting an alternative fuel source called Allinol.  “BIG OIL IS EVIL” is one of the underlying messages of the film and could hardly be any less subtle; viewers who thought WALL-E was in any way environmentally preachy (I really did not) likely won’t be able to stand this.

The grand prix has many participants but few personalities, as the convoluted story rarely takes time to develop any of the numerous characters who have been established.  What little character development there is, feels awkward and forced: Italian racer Francesco Bernoulli has a heavy Italian accent and is painted with the colors of the Italian flag.  (Lightning McQueen isn’t painted with American-flag colors to show he’s from America, is he?)  The racer’s later “character revelation” feels so out of place that I honestly don’t remember if it was meant seriously or as a joke.  Tow Mater ends up in an awkward-to-watch relationship with another secret agent named Holley Shiftwell, who at least contributes a great deal of technical expertise as the story of international espionage unfolds.  Few of the returning characters from the first Cars film, including Sally, receive much of any additional development or narrative use.

The spy story unfolds, none too cleanly and without charismatic main personalities, alongside the alternate plot of McQueen attempting to win the various races of the World Grand Prix, but his and his main rival’s personalities are so self-absorbed and unsportsmanlike as to make rooting for either to win the race difficult.  Even McQueen’s defense of Tow Mater against racer Bernoulli’s insults feels awkward when it morphs into simple taunting.

The first of these races occurs in Tokyo, which is established as a colorful yet somewhat bland location, as the various signs feel somewhat copied and pasted from one another.  I preferred the similar settings that WALL-E had.  A series of several events unfolds at breakneck pace: The development of Tow Mater takes a turn for the worse, as he lacks any sort of social graces and quickly makes a fool of himself.  (In another scene, the sound of rapid Japanese speech, or Mater’s lack of comprehension, apparently makes for acceptable joke material.)  As the plots alternate quickly between the grand prix and the spy story, we watch a macabre fight scene where several cars ram repeatedly into each other in a bathroom.  Shortly thereafter, another secret agent plants his gathered information regarding the sabotage plot on Tow Mater, immediately before the agent is captured and tortured to death in a rather disturbing sequence.  (There’s no screaming or begging for one’s life here; still, the concept of a car being destroyed by having its Allinol fuel source detonated by a magnetic pulse is more than a little bizarre to watch.)

After Tow Mater’s antics ruin Lightning McQueen’s interview, McQueen, who wasn’t much of a likeable personality to start with, quickly ditches Mater yet again, making the latter more depressed than ever.  That being stated, even though McQueen’s excessively harsh treatment of his “best friend” Mater is uncalled for, Mater does need to learn the disruptive and sometimes destructive consequences of his actions, a lesson largely ignored by a movie that’s too busy validating his behavior with a “be-yourself” message that feels far too blindly accepting and undiscerning, given that the movie contains plenty of visual examples of why it sometimes is good and necessary that we as individuals change who we are and how we behave for the benefit of ourselves and others.  (This stubborn, sentimental refusal to change, for the simple sake of refusing to change, nearly compromises the spy plot as well, in ways I won’t spoil.)

One of the most intensely disturbing sequences in the film, to the point of being upsetting and depressing, comes as Tow Mater eventually does feel remorse over his lighthearted yet irresponsible antics and is forced to face an emotionally brutal montage of characters demeaning him as stupid and burdensome because of his actions.

Though the storytelling largely doesn’t improve as the races and the espionage plots unfold–there’s little room for the sorts of inventive solutions to inventive problems that characterize Pixar films in my mind–the art is truly the highlight of the film.  Paris is quite lovely (sadly I noticed no Ratatouille references), and so is Italy.  Neither of those locations ever feels self-indulgent in being showcased, and both provide spots of beauty that stand apart from the ambitious but disappointing plot.

As for other material that parents may consider objectionable, the various cars drink what strongly resembles alcohol, though it’s never referred as such by name.  (One character proposes a toast, however.)  Other dialogue lines seem laced with innuendo (“I give you good head-LIGHTS!” cries one character who frankly evokes images of a prostitute in a Paris back alley).

(SPOILERS)
One of the main plot points of the movie is that the “big oil” villains not only endorse continued use of gasoline but altogether work to sabotage faith in alternative energy so as to capitalize on their enormous oil reserves.  I can’t think of any “big oil” company so irresponsible and short-sighted.  It definitely can’t be BP.
(END SPOILERS)

Ultimately I’m honestly not sure what to praise about Cars 2.  It does have lovely art at times, but lovely art can’t make up for a plot that’s too complex and violent for its target audience, jokes that often fall flat (“ladies and gentlecars!”), unlikeable and underdeveloped characters, and a blunt message that feels divided against itself, as the main vice seems to be unhindered greed, not any sort of oil-related pollution or environmental damage.  I can’t recommend the film to older viewers, even as a rental, and I can’t recommend the film for younger viewers at all.

Movie Review: Spider-Man 3

(Spider-Man 3 was another movie I’d wanted to get around to writing a review for, but I had simply never gotten around to it.  The desire to do so has been eating at me, and the news that my best friend had begun following my blog motivated me to finally finish this review as best as memory and research will allow, as I believe this is one of her favorite films.)

——————————————————-

As with United 93, I never saw this movie when it came out (though in the case of United 93, that was just as well, considering the film’s raw emotional brutality and my being a high-school student at the time), and I didn’t actually get around to watching this until a few months ago.  It’s been interesting, however, to see the ways this film series has and hasn’t held up over the years.

After a really well-done introductory sequence of shattered glass and event montages, we receive a suspiciously happy opening narration: school’s going well, Peter Parker’s romance is going well, and life is good.  This won’t last long.  Cut to Mary Jane Watson on Broadway, singing (admittedly decently) a flavorless song about love and romance.

Following a series of events that ultimately create this film’s villains — the Sandman, Venom, and a second Green Goblin — we eventually receive our first major action sequence, with Peter Parker/Spider-Man facing off against his best friend Harry Osborn, who is seeking revenge for his father’s death, caused by Spidey in the first movie.  The pacing of these various set-up sequences is questionable, but the choreography of the action itself holds up extremely well and really does serve as a standard of the superhero genre.

To comment on this scene with (MASSIVE SPOILERS), I do have to question the wisdom behind some of Peter Parker’s actions at this point.  After Osborn suffers a massive head injury, Parker tries to revive Osborn with CPR and with a defibrillator but does not call 911 until long after the fact, as best as can be recalled.  To keep Osborn’s fate ambiguous, or to steer the viewer in one direction, the film doesn’t make a clear distinction between whether the defibrillator is being used to stop an erratic heartbeat (correct; follow up with CPR) or to revive a dead one (incorrect) (END SPOILERS).

———-

On another note, the music used in this scene and throughout the film is really good; it feels a lot more muted than Hans Zimmer’s work (e.g., his collaboration on The Dark Knight), and yet the music feels like it would complement Zimmer’s quite well.

As the Sandman begins wreaking havoc, a romantic challenger appears: Gwen Stacy, who has nothing in the way of charisma, a likeable personality, or a history of friendship with Peter Parker.  That being said, neither she nor Mary Jane Watson do much of anything of note in this film except perhaps talk, preferring to take the role of hapless damsels in distress.  Watson isn’t much more likeable than Parker or Stacy, but her pleading with Parker to “try and understand how I feel” is more interesting to watch than Peter’s one-note “get back up and try again” personality.

The romances in this film are horrible and self-centered, with lowlights including (SPOILERS) Mary Jane expressing jealousy over watching Peter kiss Gwen while she does exactly the same thing with Harry after he wakes up.  Peter’s personality feels extremely drawn out, and the least he could do, though he never really does, is to apologize to Mary Jane for hurting her.  This particularly comes across as forced when Mary Jane apologizes to herself on Peter’s behalf, and all he can say is, “I don’t need your help.” (END SPOILERS)  Do I honestly want these characters to become romantically involved?  I don’t even know anymore if they and especially Peter are going to act as uncooperative as this.

The film’s other major moral decision, when Spider-Man has to choose between his regular red suit or a Venom-enhanced black suit, which at once grants strength and madness, is much more interesting to watch than the ongoing romantic drama, even though this also feels unsubtle, not so much thought-provoking as merely black and white (black and red?).  As stated, the action scenes–when they actually come, though they’re not as infrequent as in the largely disappointing Iron Man 2–are some of the most exciting this reviewer has seen in any superhero film.

The story tramples on Peter’s and Mary Jane’s friendship several times after that, after (again, SPOILERS) the second Green Goblin holds Peter’s life ransom and demands that Mary Jane meet him on a bridge in order to tell him that she hates him.  And Peter believes this, even though this is completely out of line with their character history (at the beginning of the film, he’s planning to propose to her, and she “hates” him now?).  Watson’s tears don’t even seem real in-universe, let alone in terms of Kirsten Dunst’s acting, and yet I couldn’t honestly blame her if she did want to leave Parker, simply because of how he all too often treats her. (END SPOILERS)

As far as the remaining villain plotlines go, the Venom plot is yet another case of a character being made into a villain without truly being evil–see also Doc Ock in Spider-Man 2–making this character sympathetic for all the wrong reasons.  It’s almost impossible to really enjoy watching a hero beat to a pulp a man who isn’t even in control of his actions.  The Venom/black-suit moral issue is resolved poorly, and this plotline is never really developed in such a way that allows Parker to face accountability for choosing to use the suit at all.  (That being said, Evil!Spidey’s dancing is the most hilarious thing in the movie and probably in the whole film series.)

The Venom plotline is probably the only unsatisfying villain plot in the film, as its central character proves to be not so much evil as extremely stupid.  The Sandman and second Green Goblin plots are resolved much better, but the status of Peter’s and Mary Jane’s relationship, even as friends, remains awkwardly confusing.

All in all–please excuse my prior gaps in exposition; I will try not to procrastinate so much in the future on writing reviews–this movie is largely a series of highly engaging action scenes interspersed throughout an almost entirely unlikeable story, but viewers willing to overlook this will almost certainly walk away satisfied.  Not the best film in the genre or even the series (I still preferred Spider-Man 2, as much as that movie’s romance doesn’t hold up well, either), but definitely worth a watch.

Movie Review: United 93

(Goodness, it’s been a while since I updated!  Sorry about that; I’ve just been a horrible procrastinator lately.  Today I have two new reviews that I hope you will enjoy.)

——————————————————-

United 93 is going to be a very interesting movie to review.  There is little to nothing in the way of a traditional “plot,” the people in the movie hardly even have names (none of them, of friends or foes, come readily to mind), and there is very little exposition.  The movie’s storytelling is about as simple as it gets.  We see four hijackers getting ready to perform their deeds, and we see flight attendants, air traffic controllers, passengers, and other airport personnel getting ready to go about what should be an ordinary day.

These events are delivered without narration or external commentary, just as they would appear to, perhaps, a fly on the wall.  Furthermore, nothing is portrayed (from the perspective of anyone except for the hijackers) to be out of the ordinary, until Flight 11 crashes into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.  (It should be noted that on the day this actually happened, my father assumed this crash was an accident, at least until he heard about the second one.)  Then Flight 175 crashes into the South Tower.  Then another plane, Flight 77, is hijacked.  It ultimately crashes into the Pentagon.

As the events of the day progress and become more and more horrifying, and as the passengers of Flight 93 desperately unite against their hijackers upon realizing what’s going to happen to them, the acting remains completely convincing and completely believable, and as far as can be remembered, the movie never once requests (or necessitates) that the viewer suspend his or her disbelief.

“Moving.”  If there’s one word I would use to describe this movie, it’s “moving.”  Well, that and “horrifying.” I can’t honestly recommend this film to any reader or viewer who is not emotionally ready to deal with the severe emotional brutality and nightmarish horror this movie so fantastically presents.  The movie itself, however, is utterly fantastic, let down by only the slightest of pacing issues late in the film, and it definitely ranks as one of the greatest films I’ve ever seen.

Revisited: Inception

(WARNING: The following post will contain massive SPOILERS for Inception.)

——————————————————-

Inception was my most loved movie of 2010, and in the year since I saw the film for the first time (with help from being able to see it again on television), I’ve noticed that my feelings about the movie have steadily changed in many ways, that I have really come to consider the movie successful and unsuccessful in ways that did not occur to me or bother me at first.

Inception contains a number of powerful action scenes, but those aren’t the film’s greatest strength.  Dom’s and Ariadne’s masteries and subsequent warpings of the laws of physics don’t really seem to play as much of a role in the later parts of the film as those elements do in the beginning.  That being said, the movie’s use of physics does become brilliant, either through Nolan’s genius or sheer accident.  The subconscious mind’s perceptions of “physics” become more pronounced in the deepest layers of dreams, so even slight changes or tilts at high levels become magnified to complete disorientation further down.  While this still doesn’t quite meet the potential of the reality-warping “superpowers” that two of the main characters have already exhibited, it’s still a really neat concept.

The film’s greatest strength is how it treats its two central relationships, the first being Dom’s emotional inability to get over his wife’s passing, and the second being Robert Fischer’s fragile relationship with his father.  The first of these relationships asks a very difficult question about such an intimate partnership that had never truly grown cold yet was cut so short — “What do we do when our time together runs out?”  In the deepest layers of their subconscious minds, Dom and his wife Mal had created their own dream world over the course of figurative decades, which she had slowly become convinced was truly reality.  Her own inability to leave her dream layers and acknowledge them as fiction, coupled with her subsequent inabilities to stop trying to “wake up” (by killing herself in one dream layer so that she could move to the next one up) and to distinguish reality from fiction, created the most unfortunate divide between her and her husband, the kind that neither had invited.

Mal, a subconscious personification of Dom’s deep-rooted guilt over his real wife’s death, pursues him inside of his own mind, angry about how they’d never had a chance to grow old together.  Dom’s response is interesting on several levels.  “We did,” he tells her as the movie showcases the world they’d created over their “lifetimes.”  Here Dom seems to exhibit at least some of his wife’s own mental conflation of dreams and reality: he didn’t “really” grow old with her; he essentially had a very, very elaborate dream about doing so, and his children will still grow up without a mother.  Nonetheless Dom and Mal got to at least have the “experience” of growing old together, the memories of which will likely stay with Dom for all of his own life.  Experiencing something in a dream, however, can never be as valid or worthwhile as living it out and seeing fulfillments of  one’s own heart’s desires that aren’t just figments of one’s imagination.

Robert Fischer, the soon-to-be heir of his ailing father Maurice’s empire, is a powerful execution of a classic father-child tale.  The movie does not spend exceedingly much time elaborating on the relationship that the Fischers had, other than positing it as a target for the protagonists who are looking to prevent the Fischers’ energy monopoly in any way possible.  The Fischers’ own tale, however, is not a complex one of corporate alliances and entanglements but is instead a distressingly simple tale of a child who has never felt “good enough” for his father — with the twist that the father is disappointed not that his son couldn’t be like him but that his son tried to be like him at all.  This makes for a quiet but powerful moment in an otherwise loud film, where the action scenes and even the central dream-world conceit feel like means toward the goal of exploring human relationships.  In this sense, to a degree the film sacrifices its science-fiction elements in order to become a more mature film than the one it was marketed as.  Inception’s greatest strength isn’t its prowess as an action movie, or as a science-fiction movie, or as a crime thriller, but as a relationship drama that explores many different kinds of guilt and forgiveness.

(END Inception SPOILERS)

Movie Review: Inception

Inception remained my favorite film of 2010 from the time I saw it until the end of the year.  I got a chance to revisit this amazing film when it showed up on one of the movie channels of which my satellite service was offering free previews.  Recording and re-watching this film at once reminded me of why I loved it as well as challenging me to think about this film in new ways, which will be explored in their own post.  And since I was able to record it on DVR, I’m not sure I’ll bother to buy a Blu-Ray player for it after all.  But who knows?

——————————————————-

“Inception” is the best movie I have seen all year, with the surprisingly stellar “How to Train Your Dragon” following very close behind, and it is probably the greatest film I’ve ever seen with the exception of “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.”

The film’s single most divisive quality, judging by reviews of critics and average moviegoers, is its accessibility. I went into the film with only a vague idea of what the film was about, nervous that I wouldn’t be able to follow the plot (I’d watched director Nolan’s “The Prestige” the previous night, which I had trouble understanding). Not once did this become a serious issue. Every single plot point slid effortlessly into my understanding in a way that felt unusually comfortable, as though this film were made for me (or I was made for it).

The film’s basic setup is pretty simple. As the Flixster summary states, humans have the technology to enter other people’s subconscious minds (through dreams) and acquire or even manipulate thoughts and ideas. The subconscious mind can be divided into layers of dreams, each stacked one inside another (a concept that does happen in reality), and an idea that is buried deeply into one’s subconscious exerts an unfathomable power over that person’s whole being.

Enter our main protagonist, Dom Cobb (DiCaprio, who does a fantastic job). A sort of thought-thief by trade, he is looking to perform one final job so he can head back home to the United States to see the children he was forced to leave in the hands of a caretaker.

The job? An energy mogul is about to pass his empire onto his son, and if the son carries on his father’s legacy, this will cause a resource monopoly. Cobb and his diverse band want to keep this from happening by convincing the younger party, Robert Fischer, to reject his father’s inheritance. Cobb and company will do this by entering into Robert’s dreams and deeply embedding an idea — a process known as the titular “inception.”

What does a dream look like? That is the job of an “architect,” a sort of subconscious game-level designer, and as is par for the course for all of the acting in this film, Ellen Page performs amazingly as the character Ariadne.

The plot progression is fairly straightforward. Cobb progressively recruits specialist after specialist, then he trains Ariadne on the intricacies of world design. Then the journey into Fischer’s mind begins and grows ever more complex.

The special effects throughout the film are magnificent without becoming excessive, whether they demonstrate the significance of watching a street literally roll up upon itself, or they simply serve as the means for a number of tautly produced action scenes and vehicle chases in a wide variety of settings. This film does not have a 3D version but simply does not need it.

The characters are equally enjoyable, whether to watch as they develop or to simply watch at all. Cobb truly shines as a man stricken to his core by the recent death of his wife, and this theme serves as both an anchor for his character and an obstacle for him to overcome throughout the whole film. This later becomes extremely relevant when thinking about Cobb’s inability to be with his children, or his familiarity with the process of inception.

Let me simply say, however, that I was less than impressed by the marketing. The pre-release trailers for the film did not excite me at all (“what is the film actually about?”), and even after the positive word of mouth began to pour like a flood, I still had a hard time becoming motivated by the actual marketing. The reason for this is that the film’s magnificent special effects are basically deprived of their meaning and context. Why is the drink in that glass tilting? Why is that building being flooded? Why are those two men in the hotel being flung toward one another? All of these things make perfect sense in context, of which none is present in the trailers.

On a very positive note, I want to commend Christopher Nolan for absolutely mastering the concept of pace in his storytelling. I could not have improved this film by speeding up or slowing down the plot progression, and it is one of the most tightly written works I have ever beheld. This reminds me in retrospect of when I was writing a Facebook-note review of the Will Smith film “The Pursuit of Happyness” a few years back. I wrote the review only a few hours after seeing the film, but because of that film’s story structure and random-events plot, I hardly remembered anything that had happened. Conversely, with “Inception” I didn’t get around to writing this review until nearly a month after I saw the film, and yet the only details of the plot I forgot were a few character names and minor bits and pieces. “Inception” is a masterpiece that, God willing, I cannot wait to watch again. Maybe I’ll buy a Blu-Ray player for it. That or “How to Train Your Dragon,” if not both.

“Give him the kick!”