Articles of the Opinionated: Choosing Substance Over Style In Films

A friend of mine just posted on Facebook her enthusiasm regarding the anticipated delivery of a ”Wall-E” Netfix DVD to her waiting mailbox, and I am happy for her, to be sure.  I would typically express either interest or disdain at her choice, but honestly, I have no idea what the movie is about, other than having a little robot that is apparently cute.  Then it struck me how often, over the past several years, it has happened when I have seen an advertisement for a coming attraction that provided little context other than the bright, flashy images on the screen.  More often than not, this observation occurs when the film in question is an animated feature or an over-hyped sequel.  You might accuse me of making an obvious argument with little depth to it, but still, it happens so often that a film’s marketing campaign will thrust images at us without much mention of story to it.  And not all of us will take the time to read the review or hit up the website just because the studio has paid for three hours of TV time a day.  Here are some examples of the details I can recall from some past movie advertisements:

WALL-E:  As I mentioned, a cute robot that makes cute noises.  But can it improve on the quality of my life without a hostile takeover?

Robots:  This time, more than one robot, and one of them sounds like Robin Williams.  But can they improve on the quality of my life without a hostile takeover?

Surf’s Up:  Something that looks like an emperor penguin, looking at you with total confidence that you will waste money on this film.  I assume it also surfs.

Righteous Kill:  All I know is that Al Pacino and Robert de Niro are “together at last”.  I wish I had gotten an invitation to that wedding.  Are they cops or mobsters in this one?

Cars:  I don’t think I’ll ever watch any of these movies where the one-word title should be good enough.  “Oh, cars, you say?  Let’s rent that sucker now!”

Pirates of the Caribbean 3:  Is anybody in this film NOT a pirate?  Some of you have to accept that Johnny Depp is not the only justifiable reason for watching a film.

Madagascar:  I think a bunch of animals are trying to escape a zoo and go to Madagascar, so if I’m right, maybe this is a bad example.  But I do know it has Ben Stiller in it, so I’m leery.

Bee Movie:  Much as I loved the TV show, a bunch of bees and a weak pun of a title are not good enough for me to listen to Jerry Seinfeld for 90 minutes.  “What’s the deal with honeycombs?” I wonder.

Spider-Man 3:  Spidey seems to fight 3 baddies, a bad job and a weird love life, all of which will probably give me a seizure from trying to keep up.  The only thing I’m missing is the central story.  Seriously, are you trying to tell me that Topher Grace is Venom?

Sex and the City (the movie):  It’s got the ladies.  Is that good enough?  I rarely ever saw this show, so that’s  about all I can say.

Open Season:  A film about two animals dealing with each other’s bad qualities, or so I guess.  Isn’t this “Shrek”?  And speaking of…

Shrek the 3rd:  Mike Myers seriously needs to stop and try to come up with some other lovable character, or unlovable character, whatever.  I think they make Shrek babies in this one.

High School Musical (all of them):  Kids sing and dance.  I get enough of that nonsense in my classroom.

Ice Age 2:  The Meltdown:  Does the subtitle say it all?  Maybe.  I guess the title said it all in the first film, too, then.

Role Models:  Apparently, guys who look like losers trying to convince kids that they can be winners should be good enough for you.  It’s always fun to watch children’s time be wasted!

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What I’m trying to get at is that the people who market these films are confident that the only context you need might be the star or stars involved, or the success of similar products in the past.  And they may be right, because many of the films above have been box-office successes.  But I would suggest a dumbing-down of the culture when the only reason to see a movie is one minor plus or detail.  I always think that the main draw to a story should be the story, not whether or not it has the word “Pixar” attached to it.  Part of the problem may be that, in our current tech culture, the demand for readily-consumable entertainment is such that the product itself often becomes condescended into one selling point.  And then afterwards we wonder why nothing seems original anymore.

 

A Cautionary Tale Against Cool Concepts – A Review of “Vantage Point”

Led by a promising review from a local source and and some other minor info, my girlfriend and I were misled into watching the recent thriller, “Vantage Point”. When she told me the premise of the story, I considered it a neat concept and wanted to give it a try as did she (she ended up not liking it either). I should have remembered that films with neat concepts often have little else, and such is the case with this film.

“Vantage Point” is a political thriller involving the assassination of a U.S. President coupledwith a terrorist attack, as seen from the eyes of several persons involved. Secret Service agents, the President and his advisers, news-people, witnesses and other involved parties and assailants all have their own perspective shown. The pace is brisk and there’s no denying there is thrilling action. By limiting perspectives to a case-by-case basis, the audience is presented with many mysteries and possibilities. Early on, the film feels somewhat promising if a tad cliched. The cliches then get much worse, as does the film.

The two greatest problems with this film are the Hollywood-esque moments and the utter lack of focus. Too often does the film lend itself to predictable stock characters and premises, and that feeling culminates into a final half-hour to hour of sheer disappointment. Veteran actors like Dennis Quaid and Forest Whitaker (among others; yay, ensemble casts) are given paper-thin characters that they have to figure out, to the detriment of the plot’s believability. So many moments, betrayals, twists and so on feel absolutely hackneyed and even lazy. Little here is original, you experience more than a few familiar filming gimmicks, and the ending is guaranteed to make you mock everything you just witnessed.

The focus of the film gets so diluted over time that you feel like director Pete Travis was given a hairball to freshen up. The supposed “switching-perspectives” tactic becomes inconsistent and therefore boring. I’m reminded of a friend’s criticism of “Memento” (a film I like) in that taking the cool concept away makes for a boring and predictable film.  I think that film has many other strengths, but “Vantage Point” does not. Creating unnecessary cliff-hanging moments only help to make your eyes roll. Also, the writer and director never seem to had been able to figure out if this is a statement piece or action flick, so the hopeful expectations one has before going in are thoroughly dashed.

This film could have been a lot better if they made one of two changes. One, turn the work into a straight-forward thriller-mystery as all parties try to cope with their circumstances, lengthening story time. Or, maintain the “vantage point” concept but piecing together a better mystery and perhaps eliminating some perspectives. What you end up with is a 23-minute story stretched into 90 and the producers’ desperation at figuring out how to fill that time.  As it stands, the plot is certainly intricate but has some holes that hurt its credibility.

If you choose to dumb your expectations down quite a bit, you can find “Vantage Point” enjoyable. The mystery and action is there for those who crave it, and that’s mostly what keeps this from being a horrid experience. But those who think will find all of that trite, so it’s difficult to consider this even an okay film.

My Review: 2 out of 5

Lasting Appeal: Avoid, unless you want pure escapism on a weekday evening, but there’s better stuff out there.

 

I Feel Nauseous – A Review of “Cloverfield”

Hesitantly, I took my girlfriend to this film on our second date, as I really wanted to take her to the movies, but this was the best possible choice at the moment.  She’s not much of a horror fan, so I was hoping that PG-13 rating would bail me out.  She didn’t hate me in the end, but there were a couple of scenes where I thought she would.  Whew.

“Cloverfield”, along with Korea’s 2006 “The Host” and Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” to an extent, is perhaps the beginning of the return of the big monster film.  Set in New York and filmed almost entirely with a handheld digital camera, the story follows a small group of party-goers sending off one of their friends to Japan as they try to survive a sudden attack by the Cloverfield monster as both it and the military tear up the city.  Beginning slowly as major characters and plot themes are revealed through dialogue, the viewer sits through the drama and cheer of the festivities for quite some time before, naturally, a sudden explosion alters the course of the film.  The group of friends scramble through city streets with plenty of other New Yorkers, trying to survive the night as the beast goes through its rampage.

Given the subject matter, this is a film where acclaim chiefly rests on two elements, the monster’s design and suspenseful utilization of such, and the quality of the camera work.  I have to say that I liked how the filmmakers handled the monster (a CGI creation), whose design and proportions are both intriguing and nightmarish.  Unlike the infamous monster movies of the past, “Cloverfield” is a monster that calls on a higher imagination, and it may be difficult for the viewer to equate the monster to something already known (like how you’d say “Godzilla” looks like a dinosaur), improving the fun and horror for the audience.  Director Matt Reeves does a decent job at slowly revealing “Cloverfield”, carefully giving just enough at select moments to titillate but not so much that the suspense is lost.

The camera work is done from the viewpoint of one of the characters (a la Blair Witch), and that is the film’s double-edged sword.  It certainly makes the film more interesting as you see people running from city streets, dodging all sorts of chaos, and that adds to the suspense and thrill of the moment.  The film gained notoriety for the shaky nature of the filming, adding realism but giving some audience members motion sickness (poor peeps), another intriguing facet to the experience.  This also gives the story more ambiguity, which is actually a good thing here; it’s not necessary to have all the details of the monster or the characters, and character-perspective shooting avoids such hassles.  The problem, however, that occurs in all of these films with character-perspective shooting is that it’s difficult to suspend reality enough to believe that these characters keep filming naturally, turning the camera on and off at choice story and cinematic moments.  “Cloverfield” improves on “Blair Witch” in this regard, but it’s still a conflicting device for any feature film.

In just about all other respects, the film is pretty standard fare.  Most of the acting is honest if cliched, with some touching moments.  The film is paced well and has some truly memorable scenes, but the suspenseful moments after the initial shock often seem obvious, limiting the ingenuity of the camera work.  A great deal of debate and criticism has been lent to the post 9-11 themes in the story, as people struggle to survive and cope with the sudden chaotic nature of an attack.  Personally, I find the complaints in this regard to be overreaching; while seeing a parallel of any kind is for some a hard pill to swallow, I believe it would be less of a film to not have risked challenging that reaction.  The film is about a giant freak of nature, angry and hungry and ready to destroy.  I wouldn’t expect much else.

In the end, “Cloverfield” is an enjoyable film for its technical aspects but pretty average otherwise.  It doesn’t indulge in as much cheesiness as other horror films of recent memory have, but the inability to reconcile certain aspects in filming and story keep the film from being great.  “Cloverfield” is better than average, but not necessarily a keeper.

My Review:  3.5 out of 5

Lasting Appeal:  Rent.  It’s worth watching on the big screen, and a good weeknight-scare to watch, but it doesn’t have a great deal to it that encourages multiple viewings.