Super (2010)

Tags

Action, Comedy, Ellen Page, Kevin Bacon, Liv Tyler, Michael Rooker, Movie, Nathan Fillion, Rainn Wilson, Sean Gunn, Super

hahaha! it's funny cuz he died...

R

Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Kevin Bacon, Liv Tyler, Michael Rooker, Sean Gunn, Nathan Fillion

Frank: People look stupid when they cry.

After his wife is sucked back into the world of drug addiction, Frank (Wilson) decides to invent a superhero and fight crime on his own, with hopes of getting his wife back.

Holy uneven tone, Batman!

This movie is all over the place.  I really didn’t know what to think from moment to moment.  Is it sad and depressing?  No wait, it’s (supposed to be) a comedy!  Hmm, or maybe it’s a super-violent action picture?  Touching love story?  Yikes, nope, depressing and disturbing!  That’s what I’m going with…

I can theorize about what writer/director James Gunn was going for, but I can’t be sure.  It seems like a sort of more realistic spin on what The Watchmen and Kick-Ass were attempting.  That is, average people trying to become superheroes.  Kick-Ass started off with a sort of realism, as we see Dave fail miserably at fighting crime, as he probably would in real life.  But eventually that movie turned its regular people into more comic book like superheroes, which was a little disappointing.  That doesn’t really happen in Super, at least not to the same extent, but that alone doesn’t make it a better movie.

In fact, it’s not a better movie than Kick-Ass.  It could have been, if it had pulled off what it was trying to do…but it just doesn’t.  I like the more realistic approach to violence, even if it’s hard to watch.  Instead of cartoonish action sequences (like an 11 year old girl dodging bullets and leaping around like she’s in the Matrix), in Super, people are stabbed to death, have their heads bashed in on bricks, get blown up by pipe bombs, or just plain shot.  No real theatrics…just blam, dead.  That adds a very dark tone to the movie, which would be fine if the rest of it worked.

It doesn’t.  It’s just not that funny when it’s trying to be funny, and despite a few sweet flashback scenes, I never really bought the relationship between Frank and Sarah (Tyler).  Frank and Libby (Page) have a little more chemistry, but that’s probably just because both of them are borderline psychotic.  Actually, Libby has probably crossed over that line.  I will say, though, it’s good to see Page doing something pretty radically different than what she’s done in the past.  I don’t know from what depths of her soul she found the maniacal laugh she uses as she kills people, but it kinda creeped me out.

I guess the real issue here is that Super is just not a fun movie to watch.  It’s depressingly dark and mean, and after watching it I just sort of felt…bad.  Maybe the movie is right about what sort of person probably would dress up as a superhero and how they’d act.  Maybe it’s right about how the whole situation would eventually turn out.  Maybe the point is, “this is not a good idea!”

Point taken…

Leave crime-fighting to the professionals…like Batman.

10 – 2.4 for a wildly uneven tone – 2.5 for just not being all that funny + .2 because Ellen Page is so darned cute = 5.3

Inception (2010)

Tags

Action, Cillian Murphy, Dileep Rao, Drama, Ellen Page, Inception, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine, Movie, Suspense, Tom Berenger, Tom Hardy

hey! we were just...um...does this look weird?

PG-13

Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard, Dileep Rao, Cillian Murphy, Michael Caine, Tom Berenger

Cobb: Dreams feel real while we’re in them…it’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.

Cobb (DiCaprio) is the best dream extractor in the business.  He goes into people’s dreams, convinces them it’s reality, and steals secrets from them.  Cobb and his team are hired by Saito (Watanabe) to complete a much more complicated job, though.  They must plant an idea in a man’s mind rather than extract one.

Is there a more consistent director working right now than Christopher Nolan?  He may not make perfect movies (who does?), but you know going in that you’re going to get something interesting and of high quality every time.

He brings the goods again with Inception, a movie that seems to revel in its own complexity.  Almost as if it’s taunting other dumbed down big budget action thrillers.  Visually stunning, in its own more subtle way, I’d say this movie uses special effects in a much more interesting way than something like Transformers.  It’s special effects used to tell a story…not to give you a headache.

I will, however, go ahead and get my criticisms out of the way.

First of all, in his last few films, I feel like Nolan has let the emotional core of his movies fade into the background a little for the sake of highlighting the intricate plots.  It’s not totally absent, but it seems glossed over or less accessible.  I felt the same way watching The Dark Knight as I did watching this movie at times.  It looks great, the story is interesting, it has me on the edge of my seat…but the characters seem a little flimsy.  At least some of them do.  Cobb is fleshed out pretty well, but the others, not so much.  I can’t really tell you much about Ellen Page’s Ariadne other than the fact that she’s an architect student and…well…that she has a weird name.

Now, the next few sentences might be a bit SPOILERY, so read at your own risk if you haven’t seen the movie.  There may be a reason the characters seem one dimensional, but I’m not going to discuss it here.  But if it was all done intentionally because that’s the story being told, then my criticism about the characters is moot.

Okay, end of spoilerish stuff.

On to my second criticism.  I wish the dreams had been a little more dreamlike.  I get that they are being constructed to mimic reality, but when they start to break down, I think it would have been much more interesting (and realistic) to have things just get really weird rather than having everything explode.  People’s faces could get all creepy…there could be talking animals…the sky could turn green…a dinosaur could show up…anything could happen, really.  I would have had fun as a writer or director coming up with crazy stuff that happens when the dreams start crumbling.

But enough negativity!  It’s too good of a movie to dwell on the negative.  The best things about Inception are as follows.  One, it has a serious tone that is severely lacking in a lot of big movies.  There’s barely a wink at the audience to be seen, and it doesn’t go for a bunch of lame one-liners.  There’s one character, Eames (Hardy), that is basically the outlet for any of that, which works well because it gives his character some individuality.  Second, there’s the story.  As I’ve said, it will make you think.  You can’t go to sleep on this movie, or you will get lost pretty quickly.  Yet, despite all it’s complexities, it all comes together and seems to work in the end.  There are some things open to interpretation, but I don’t think there are any gaping plot holes to be dealt with.  Nolan spent a long time on this script, and it shows.  Sure, he may have borrowed a bit from Dreamscape, but he’s taken it many steps forward and into much more interesting psychological realms.

So wear your thinking caps when you go to this one, people.  You don’t want to get lost midway through, otherwise the big climax won’t have nearly the impact that it should have.

If you’re looking for a movie you don’t have to think about…well, I’m sure they’ll roll out another Transformers soon enough.

Getting lost in your subconscious dream world sounds kind of fun, actually…

10 – 1 for the plot intricacies overshadowing the character development a bit too much – .6 for the dreams not being dreamy enough = 8.4

Whip It (2009)

Tags

Alia Shawkat, Comedy, Daniel Stern, Drama, Ellen Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Movie, Whip It

yes, she's that awesome...

PG-13

Ellen Page, Alia Shawkat, Marcia Gay Harden, Daniel Stern

Maggie Mayhem: Just because you’ve found a new family, doesn’t mean you throw the old one away.

Bliss (Page) is a 17 year old beauty pageant regular living in a small town outside of Austin, Texas.  She and her best friend Pash (Shawkat) dream of bigger and better things, but feel pretty stuck in where, and who, they are.  When Bliss discovers the world of Roller Derby, she finds something she’s good at and loves.  She just has to make sure her parents don’t find out she’s doing it and that the roller derby league doesn’t find out she’s only 17.

Since I’m such a big fan of using other movies to describe the themes and general feel of a movie, I’ll do that with this one.  It’s like if you put Hoosiers and Coyote Ugly into a blender, then poured the resulting combination over Days of Thunder.  How’s that?

This is an entertaining movie, despite its flaws, mostly due to the fun roller derby scenes.  The performances by Page, Shawkat, Stern, and Harden are all good, but those scenes are mostly standard stuff.  Disapproving mom, lovable lazy dad, neglected best friend…it’s all been done before, but like I said, the performances make it watchable.  However, I was cringing a bit at the romantic scenes between Bliss and Oliver (Landon Pigg).  Watching her get all goo goo eyed over him seemed to undermine the themes of Bliss breaking out on her own and toughening up.  That story line did have a pretty satisfying conclusion, though.  As did most of the story lines.  They were somewhat unexpected conclusions, which I suppose is what made them more enjoyable.

This was Drew Barrymore’s first major directing gig, and it showed a little here and there.  Though, mainly it was the editing I had a few problems with.  Some scenes went on when it seemed they should be over, and the characters were just wandering off camera.  If you notice yourself thinking, “aaaaaand cut,” during a scene, that’s a good bet that it needed another pass through the editing process.

I’m getting too technical though.  The overall experience of the movie is a good one.  I even enjoyed Jimmy Fallon for once.  When I first saw that he was the announcer at the roller derby, I was worried, but he actually has some of the best lines in the movie.  Andrew Wilson (yes, brother to Owen and Luke) is also funny as the coach of The Hurl Scouts, the team that Bliss joins before earning her new derby name of Babe Ruthless.

It may not be as funny a movie as it tries to be, but it’s pretty much as entertaining and sweet as it tries to be, which earns it a pretty solid recommendation from me.  It also managed to teach me a few things about roller derby which, let’s face it, is, alone, an important enough reason to see the movie…

I learned the fairly simple rules of Roller Derby…and I am a better person for it.

10 – 1.4 for the plot lines being pretty standard – 1.2 for some odd directing/editing moments + .2 for those 4 main performances = 7.6

Smart People (2008)

Tags

Comedy, Dennis Quaid, Drama, Ellen Page, Movie, Romance, Sarah Jessica Parker, Smart People, Thomas Haden Church

just...people...

R

Dennis Quaid, Thomas Haden Church, Ellen Page, Sarah Jessica Parker

Vanessa: What’s it like to be stupid?
Other girl: What’s it like sitting by yourself at lunch every day?
Vanessa: …It sucks…

Lawrence (Quaid) is a professor who has had to raise two kids alone after his wife passed away.  He is not at all good at interacting with other people due to his pompous, superior attitude, which he has passed down to his daughter Vanessa (Page).  When he suffers a head injury and isn’t allowed to drive himself anywhere, Lawrence’s adopted brother Chuck (Church) moves in and becomes his personal driver.  In the meantime, Lawrence has started to date Janet (Parker), which does not please Vanessa.

A ways into this movie I was thinking it should be called Annoying People, or maybe Miserable People.  There’s a lot of unhappiness on display, and there doesn’t seem to be any real reason for it other than the characters are jerks to each other.  You could assume it’s a family broken by the loss of their wife/mother years ago, but that doesn’t really seem to be explored as the cause.

Thomas Haden Church’s character enters into the scene and seems more likable, but really he’s an irresponsible slacker who forgets appointments to pick up his brother and gives his 17 year old niece pot and alcohol.  Yay.

Also, this movie feels like somebody read the Indie Movie Handbook and followed it step by step.  The characters, the situations, the nearly constant acoustic guitar music punctuating almost every scene.  It all seems a little forced.

For a movie called Smart People, they don’t seem to treat the audience like they’re very smart.  There’s a lot of hand-holding going on.  Making sure we have the back story spelled out, making sure we get why Vanessa is jealous of Janet, etc.  Sometimes it’s good to have a little mystery in your characters actions.

That’s not to say there aren’t bright spots.  The actors all do a good job with their characters, and there are some genuinely funny moments.  It’s not a hard movie to suffer through, it’s just a little predictable, and with the characters not being very likable, I found myself not being too interested in the outcome.

10 – 3 for characters I didn’t care much about – .5 for being predictable – .4 for dull soundtrack = 6.1