(A new feature. Looking for something to watch? Let this occasional movie blogger be your guide. Presenting "A Brief Unsolicited Enthusiastic Recommendation." First up: Tower from 2016.)
On August 1, 1966 a man with a sniper rifle went to the top of a tower on the campus of the University of Texas and opened fire. For a long time (but not long enough) it held the record for the most deadly school shooting. Tower is a documentary of the 96 minutes the shooter spent on his deadly perch. It is told in typical documentary fashion, with interviews, voiceovers, flashbacks and reenactments. But the reenactments and some interviews are portrayed using rotoscope animation. Rotoscope means that the animation is done overtop of real footage of the subjects. The technique creates a unique look that manages to be both lifelike and abstract.
Reenactments in documentaries can be distracting. The actors often look nothing like the people they portray and the scenes and effects are often cheaply made - like when survivors of a shipwreck are obviously floating in a small pool inside a studio, or when lost hikers survive the night in a cave clearly made out of plaster and foam. The animation in Tower is used brilliantly to avoid being distracting. It seems counterintuitive, but by not attempting to be lifelike re-creation, the animated scenes end up making the action seem more real, true, and vivid. It achieves this while still maintaining its own artistic beauty: the animation itself is just really cool.
The story of the shooting gets to the heart of tragedy and the beautiful things that almost always come out of it. Its focuses on the bravery, selflessness, and heroism of the first responders, classmates, faculty, and citizens who took action during the crisis. It also explores the healing and forgiveness that came after, highlighting the beautiful side of human nature and showing that that side is the dominant one or maybe the only one. There may not be an evil side. The movie doesn’t portray the the shooter as an evil monster or less than human, but as a severely ill individual. That doesn’t make anything he did acceptable or even understandable. But for at least one woman in the film, it helped her forgive and move on. And that’s a beautiful thing.
Tower is currently available on Netflix.
(Even if rotoscope-animated school shooting documentaries aren't your typical fare, give it a try. You won't be disappointed.)
The original Independence Day has a 61% rating on Rotten
Tomatoes. That’s somewhere between fresh and rotten - probably like tomatoes
that have been sitting out for a few days and have starting losing colour and
flavour. Not exactly high praise. It’s a much lower rating than I expected. I
assumed Independence Day was awesome and that everyone else thought so too. So
I revisited it a couple weeks ago.
And Independence Day is still awesome.
It actually probably isn’t, but I grew up feeling that it
is, and that feeling has been there - as the new one reminds us at least 35
times - for 20 years, so it’s not going away now. Sometimes revisiting
childhood favourites is underwhelming and disappointing, as these sacred
objects turn out to be false idols (fans of the original Ninja Turtles movies,
leave your happy memories alone - don’t watch them as an adult). But sometimes
things line up perfectly - like a spaceship over the White House - and the results
are explosive. The perfect way to become a lifelong Independence Day fan is to
be 10 years old when it was released in 1996.
And I think the only way to become an Independence Day:
Resurgence fan is to be 10 years old in 2016.
The aliens are back, for reasons unclear. They want the
Earth’s core, yes, but they also seem to be pretty pissed that President Bill
Pullman’s speech from the original has made it onto so many “Top 10 Best Movie
Speeches” click-bait websites. One of the boss aliens had the speech on loop -
I guess it got the recording from that megaphone somehow, or bought the VHS of
the movie - and had been torturing itself, again, for 20 years(!). I was
surprised we didn’t see its dartboard with Pullman’s portrait taped to it. But
anyway, they’re back.
And so is almost everyone from the original. Whether they
should be is another question, but it doesn’t matter because the movie
shoehorns them in wherever it can. Jeff Goldblum saved the world the first time
and so now he’s in charge of everything. His dad is back (Judd Hirsch), and the
movie doesn’t let us forget he’s Jewish (everyone is a putz). Bill Pullman is
back, played mostly by his beard (though the beard leaves when it’s time to get
serious). Even the guy who got squeezed and used as a ventriloquist dummy
(“reeeeleasssse meeeee!”) is back, even though he was definitely dead in the
first one, but oh well.
Conspicuously missing is Will Smith, and that’s the problem.
In his place is his character’s son (played by Jessie Usher) and Thor’s brother
Liam Hemsworth. And it’s like replacing a gourmet steak and lobster dinner with
two pieces of unbuttered toast. That sounds like an overstatement, but it
isn’t. 1996 Will Smith was Will Smith at the peak of his powers. Independence
Day established him as the movie star and we haven’t really had anyone like him
since his decline. Will Smith’s charisma was as big as the alien ships. It was
as big as the movie itself, which spawned a new era of summer blockbusters. If
the original itself wasn’t good, and again it probably wasn’t, it didn’t
matter. Will Smith’s charm carried it. So even though 10 year old boys love
aliens, fighter jets, spaceships, and explosions, if you take out Will Smith,
the movie isn’t memorable. The original probably has as many problems as
Resurgence, but it doesn’t matter. The original had 1996 Will Smith. Hemsworth,
on the other hand, is like a contestant on The Bachelorette who doesn’t get any
screen time because all he is is handsome and probably nice. All the other
characters are just as dull and aren’t even worth mentioning, and there is way
too many of them. It’s like Emmerich knew it would take 10 young actors in 2016
to make up one Will Smith in 1996. But they don’t even come close.
There are plenty of other problems. There are no real stakes
when the stakes are so huge - half the planet gets flattened but no one is
really that sad. There are awkward references to the original, like one
completely recreated scene, or when President Hilary Clinton (actually
President Lanford, played by Sela Ward) shouts “there will be no peace!” for
some reason. And everyone has an annoying sidekick - Hemsworth’s sidekick is
horny for a Chinese pilot who later becomes his sidekick, there’s a guy in a
suit tagging along with Jeff Goldblum until he trades in for an African
warlord, leaving Goldblum with Charlotte Gainsbourg who is a psychiatrist for
some reason, and Hemsworth and Usher are mad at each other but then they’re
pals. It’s all a mess.
There are some fun scenes - I’m always up for a giant
monster, and I’m a sucker for disaster movies. Some of the action sequences are
spectacular. And there are some interesting ideas: in the intervening, again,
20 years (!) since the aliens last attacked, all the societies on Earth have
collaborated and used the leftover alien technology to advance the global
civilization. It could be a big mess of mindless fun, and 10-year-olds will
probably like it. But without a real star or a single interesting character to
care about, it remains flat, dull, lazy, and bloated, and those 10-year-olds
won't love it when they're 30.
We’re all just attending boring prep school without the
Fresh Prince.
Batman v Superman:
Dawn of Justice picks up where 2013’s Man
of Steel left off. Man of Steel’s
finale was a battle between Superman and General Zod, with an army of
spaceships and futuristic drilling machines (or something), smashing their way
through Metropolis for what felt like an hour. Batman v Superman, in a bit of revisionist history, puts Bruce
Wayne on the streets of Metropolis while all that smashing was going on,
scrambling through the rubble, driving through and around and on top of it, and
rushing into the debris of a crumbling building in a (very likely, offensive)
homage to 9-11 imagery. It’s not totally clear why he’s there – I thought Wayne
was a Gotham guy, but whatever. It’s an interesting scene by itself and sets up
the whole point of the movie, or at least its title. A lot of people died and
were injured and some of them even worked for one of Wayne’s companies. So
Wayne blames Superman and wants him gone. It works as a way to set things up
(for a while). But the problem is this is revisionist history outside of the
movies as well. Director Zack Snyder was widely criticized for that climactic
battle in Man of Steel. It was so
over-the-top, so long, and so illogical – no spoilers, but the way it ends could
have happened before it began – and Superman fans were outraged: their hero
would never have been so careless with innocent lives. Batman v Superman tries to claim that the whole mess was intended,
when everyone knows such smashing and chaos is just Snyder’s style. The scene
works and he redeems himself for a while, but then outs himself again with all
the unnecessary chaos and interminable smashing in the climax of this movie. He
even shoehorns in an awkward explanation that this time the battle is in an “uninhabited”
area. You’re not fooling us, Zack.
So Batman is mad (and dark and brooding and serious) and as
he mentions in the trailer, “He [Superman] has the power to wipe out the human
race. And if we think that there’s even a one percent chance that he’s our
enemy, we have to treat it as an absolute certainty.” This has to be
some of the worst logic and one of the shakiest foundations on which to set two
characters against each other (I’m pretty sure that if there’s a 1% chance he’s
your enemy that means it’s almost an absolute certainty he’s not). Batman wants
to kill Superman because he is powerful and because he smashed up a city in his
last fight. It doesn’t matter to him that the city smashing was done to prevent
the destruction of the Earth by a supervillain – Superman is the enemy and that’s
just that.
Superman, on the other hand, doesn’t even get an explanation
for his dislike of the Batman. There’s mention that he doesn’t like vigilante
justice, but he doesn’t seem to be able to reflect on himself. They just have to
fight, because that would be cool, I guess. It is unclear why anyone is doing
anything they do in this movie. Lex Luthor is in it, played by Jesse Eisenberg
who is just outrageous, and not in a good way. He’s up to something and he’s
bad because, well, Lex Luthor is the bad guy in the Superman stories. Wonder
Woman shows up. Lois Lane is running all over the place, needing to be rescued.
There’s a big monster to take care of. Other DC heroes are awkwardly introduced
for future movies (there’s also a very long dream sequence that makes absolutely
no sense unless it’s setting up future movies as well). Parents get involved. It’s
almost incomprehensible.
Things play out that way for a while, and then the movie takes
a turn for one of the dumbest reasons I’ve ever seen in a serious movie. And
make no mistake, this movie goes out of its way to tell you how serious it is.
There are repeated ramblings about gods and devils and the forces of good and
evil and life and death and the purpose of existence, and it’s all so dark and
ominous, desperately craving importance. It’s like reading the poetry of a
15-year-old boy.
But there’s a ton of superhero action, fighting, smashing,
flying, explosions, and everything else you would expect from a movie with that
title. And if you’ve seen Man of Steel or
any of Snyder’s other films (300,
Watchmen, Sucker Punch) you know what to expect. With such low
expectations, it really isn’t that bad (what a compliment). There are a few
interesting scenes, some powerful imagery, and some intriguing ideas. Ben Affleck as an aging Batman could
work (though for a much better treatment of older Batman, check out the
animated Dark Knight Returns movies).
Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies ushered in an age of dark and serious
superhero movies. The problem is that this works for Batman, but it doesn’t
work for Superman. Superman is a goofy and uninterestingly powerful hero
conceived in the 1930s as a messianic Jesus-type savior who served the popular
imagination as a response to the terrors of Fascism and Communism. He’s a mild-mannered
clean-cut super Boy Scout. He doesn’t brood. But Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is a 2-and-a-half hour orgy of self-serious
brooding.
10 Cloverfield Lane is
a loud movie in a small body. It’s not loud like a large-scale action movie,
and it’s loud in ways most confined psychological thrillers aren’t. It uses
loud noises in small spaces to create almost overbearing tension, and then keeps
poking at that tension with every bang, slam, crack, and crash. It’s like
having a balloon next to your ear while someone stabs at it with a plastic
knife: you flinch every time and you know it’s eventually going to pop. Not
every loud noise in the movie makes you jump – though many do (I jumped enough
at one point that I felt embarrassed) – but each one adds to the claustrophobic
pressure until you’re stressed and strained and ready to burst.
The movie starts with a bang – a really loud one. A woman,
we later learn is named Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), leaves her house in
a hurry but soon gets into a brutal car accident in the middle of the night and
in the middle of nowhere. It’s one of the loudest – and most shocking – car
accidents I’ve seen on film. It’s shot only from inside the car – it’s the
first of many moments of claustrophobic chaos and you feel like flinching to
keep from hitting your head against your seat. The director (first timer Dan
Trachtenberg) uses it to frame the credits in quick and silent cutaways from
the crash. Quiet and loud, like the movie itself.
Michelle wakes to find herself chained to a wall with an IV
in her arm in a drab room in a bunker. And this tension between good (the IV)
and bad (the chain) sets up the tension of the whole movie. She soon meets
Howard (John Goodman) who tells her he saved her – and is keeping her safe –
from the outside world, which has been affected by a widespread chemical
attack. Michelle soon meets Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.) who helped build the
bunker and injured himself trying to get in. But the bunker – and the movie –
belongs to Goodman’s Howard.
With a name that includes the word Cloverfield you know what to expect. 2008’s Cloverfield was a giant monster movie shot on handheld video
camera. 10 Cloverfield Lane isn’t a
sequel, but you know going in that the two are somehow related. And so it’s a
testament to Cloverfield Lane that it
manages to squeeze in so much tension and mystery even with those expectations.
It achieves that mostly because of John Goodman. He plays Howard with
incredible subtlety and precision. You spend the movie with Michelle thinking
he’s probably crazy, but then maybe he was right all along, but then maybe he’s
not what he seems, but then maybe he’s just a simple kook whose preparations
paid off, but then... He’s terrifying one moment and sympathetic the next –
equal parts Satan and Santa Clause.
There is already talk about Goodman’s Oscar candidacy. There’s
nothing wrong with that, as Oscar season theoretically runs all year, though it’s
usually heavily back-loaded in fall and winter. But there are a few performances
and movies early in the year that stand out until nomination time. 10 Cloverfield Lane has a lot in common
with another tense, sci-fi chamber piece thriller released early last year that
ended up on many year-end top movies lists (and won an Oscar): Ex Machina was praised for its unique
vision and the excellent performances of Oscar Isaac and Alicia Vikander. 10 Cloverfield Lane could be this year’s
Ex Machina. Goodman is not alone in
his greatness, as Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Michelle continues the trend from
last year of strong and tough female leading roles.
There are a few acts in this movie and one of them is more
connected to Cloverfield than the
others. That one will likely divide people. But the movie’s tagline makes it
work: “Monsters Come in Many Forms”.
