Movie Review: Mr. Holmes

Mitch Cullen's novel A Slight Trick of the Mind traces several threads of the life of a 93 year old Sherlock Holmes. It is a punishing novel, dedicated to the exploration of the pain and regret accumulated by a man who has rejected emotional connection as a mode of interaction with the world. I enjoy having read it more than I enjoyed reading it. Mr. Holmes, the new film from Bill Condon starring Sir Ian McKellen and Laura Linney is, according to its title card, adapted from this novel. I suppose, in one sense, that is true. But in a broader sense, this is not an adaptation, but a full scale transformation. A mediocre novel has become a film of exceptional grace and power. A fitting demonstration of the principal players at the heights of their respective powers.

Movie Review: Pixels, or, A Journey of the Soul

Sometimes you bring more to a movie than you intend to. Last night was one of those nights for me. The internet told me that my local discount theater would be playing Mad Max, the 1979 original, on film. I was in. I love George Miller, I love Mad Max, I love when movies are shown on film.

Movie Review: Trainwreck

Let me say, right off the bat, that this is one of those films that does not work on a cinematic level. There are strong performances, good jokes, funny bits, sight gags that elicited laughs at the showing I went to, and moments of genuine humanity and emotional heft. Every possible ingredient that one would need to carve out a solid, even a very good, movie is present, but they never congeal into anything other than 120 minutes of un-assembled pieces.

Movie Review: Ant-Man

There is a short story by Steven Millhauser that I am especially fond of called "In the Reign of Harad IV." It's about a master maker of miniatures, who is able to recreate with perfect living accuracy objects and people in profound miniature. One day, after making a recreation of a palace (complete with furniture in all the rooms, food on all the tables, elaborate detailing in the trim and decor, etc.) the maker of miniatures decides that the last great challenge available to him as an artist is to continue going smaller and smaller, to break beneath the boundary of the visible into the unseen world of infinite smallness. It's quite a story.

Movie Preview: A Look Ahead to this Weekend's Mr. Holmes

A film debuts in American theaters this week called Mr. Holmes, based on the novel A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin. Two things here:

Movie Reviews: Minions and Ballet 422

Let me get this out of the way up front: Minions is adorable. We all knew that it was going to be. These weird looking yellow rascals who just love their buddies (be those buddies fellow minions, Tim the teddy bear, or a pet rat found in the sewers of London) have a newborn puppy-like appeal.

Movie Review: The Gallows

Anyone who knows me even a little knows that I love going to the movies. I will see anything in the theater because there is something about watching a movie in the dark with strangers that strikes me as fundamentally sound. Like listening to a vinyl record through a McIntosh tube amp, you know? Just the way it is supposed to be. There are two kinds of movie going experiences, however, that generally stand out from the lot and are my favorite: any movie showing in an old school theater (without stadium seating, and maybe--like the Redford in Detroit--with nifty architectural and design features), and horror movies. So because my best friend is in town, and because my wife was having some of her co-workers over for some kind of box social, I went to see The Gallows.

Redbox Review: Ender's Game, plus a look back at Pumping Iron

With Redbox Review it is my hope to answer a simple question, to wit: having decided not to see a particular movie in the theater, is it worth the $1.59 to rent that movie from your local Redbox? 

Adaptation is an art form. Which is why it has its own Oscar. The Harry Potter films, for instance, are masterful adaptations. They are also, nearly to a film, three hours long. Ender's Game, the 2013 adaptation of the 1986 young adult sci-fi novel by Orson Scott Card, clocks in at about 108 minutes, once you factor in opening titles and the credits, and you walk away from it with the impression that you really could have used the extra time. Characters like Alai, Petra, and Bean, essential not only to the novel but to the narrative of the film, are given so few character beats that it is impossible to say why they are invested in the life and story of Ender, played by Hugo's Asa Butterfield.

My Week in Brief: This Week in Pop Culture as Experienced by Dave

There has been a lot of news this week, obviously. The Court came down 5-4 in favor of marriage equality, upheld ACA subsidies, and let Alito write an opinion on the death penalty (a decision roughly akin to letting a Golden Retriever drive a car, he was so excited by the wind in his face he forgot that he was supposed to be performing a complex task and people will inevitably be hurt). I was also on the road, visiting my grandfather in Wichita, Kansas. Consequently, I didn't end up writing anything for this site. Today, to make up the difference, I'll do a week in brief, a rundown of notable things that I watched, read, or listened to in the last week!

Movie Review: Pixar’s Inside Out

It says something about the depth of the new Pixar animated feature Inside Out, that when I sat down to write this review the first thing that came to my mind as a way to start was with a quote from Descartes’ Second Meditation. But since that’s a terribly ponderous way to begin a review of a movie that was so much fun, let me instead start with a comment about color.

Pixar has painted some beautiful pictures for us over the years. I believe that the outer space dance between Wall-E and Eva in Wall-E may rank towards the top of the list of the most moving sights I’ve seen on the screen, all the artistic power of Fantasia combined with the narrative heft of a love story that is more human than many involving actual humans (Wall-E eats The Notebook and The Fault in Our Stars for lunch, and uses the picked over bones of Twilight to clean its teeth afterwards). I think that the initial montage in Up, following the lives of Carl and Ellie from childhood through to bereavement is one of the great silent films ever made, a story told only in pictures. I hold close to my heart the opinion that Woody, Buzz, and the rest of the toys holding hands as they slide towards the incinerator at the end of Toy Story 3 is gorgeously terrifying. And yet, I can’t remember ever seeing something like Inside Out’s use of color. Color is everywhere, bright color, vibrant color, so vivid and articulated that the characters themselves are built upwards from the foundation of their coloring (yellow for Joy, blue for Sadness, purple for Fear, red for Anger, and green for Disgust). There is no moment when looking at Inside Out is anything but a pleasure.

The story itself has already garnered plaudits for its breathtaking trip through the mind of Riley Anderson, an 11 year old girl whose family moves to San Francisco from Minnesota. We watch, from inside the headquarters of her own mind as she attempts to process this transition (which is, short of losing a parent, probably the largest that a child of her age can undergo). At this point I can do very little besides adding my own voice to the chorus of praise. During the process of the move, Joy and Sadness (voiced by Amy Pohler and Phyllis Smith respectively) are launched out of the headquarters of Riley’s mind in what can only be described as a workplace accident. Without them, Anger, Fear, and Disgust are left in charge of Riley’s mind, and we see her change from a happy, well-adjusted child, into a moody and temperamental adolescent. The ultimate danger, of course, is that without the philosophical powers of Joy and Sadness to balance the gut impulses of Anger, Fear, and Disgust Riley will be left in a place where she can feel very little at all. By moving the action of the film inside Riley’s mind, and by characterizing her emotions, the disillusionment of this one child is given apocalyptic stakes (which is, fundamentally, a more humane vision of the human condition than many of the apocalypses we have seen on the big screen this summer).

I cried more than once during the roughly 120 minutes that the movie ran, and laughed more times than I could reasonably be expected to track. To say that this film represents a return to form for Pixar after a relative down period does not do it justice. Inside Out is one of the very best Pixar films, and belongs on the upper shelf next to Up, Toy Story, and Wall-E. It is a titanic accomplishment, and one of my favorite films of the year so far.

Rating: 4 / 4

Movie Review: Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles

This year I taught back to back semesters of Introduction to Film, and each semester left me with the same essential conundrum. How do I explain, to students who are only barely older than the 21^st century, why Citizen Kane is such an important film? The lessons and techniques that Kane gave to filmmakers have become so totally enmeshed into the production of films that it is often difficult to explain to students that these techniques had to be invented. You mean films didn’t always have depth of field? So what if you could see the ceilings, ceilings are all over the place, this room has a ceiling… I die a little every time.

Movie Review: Jurassic World

There is some level of difficulty in deciding how to approach a film like Jurassic World. Part of the problem lies in the fact that it is, on the most basic level, more than just a performed narrative. It is an essential component of a multi-billion dollar entertainment empire. It is also a comment on the nature of the blockbuster climate that we have created for ourselves, and the diminishing returns of wonder which that system propagates. It is also a sequel, which is itself the platform for more sequels yet to come. Each of these facets of its nature demand, and deserve, a different model of evaluation.

Redbox Review: The Boy Next Door

With Redbox Review it is my hope to answer a simple question, to wit: having decided not to see a particular movie in the theater, is it worth the $1.59 to rent that movie from your local Redbox? 

Watching the Jennifer Lopez vehicle The Boy Next Door, I am reminded of a line from Othello, delivered in the immediate aftermath of Othello’s murder of his wife in a state of demented jealousy. Upon realizing that he has been Iago’s dupe, he says to the assembled company “when you shall these unlucky deeds relate, speak of me as I am…one that loved not wisely but too well.”

Is Cameron Crowe good at making movies?

Cameron Crowe’s new movie Aloha comes out today, and if you paid any attention at all to the movie related content of the Sony hacks you’ll know that studio executives view the film as something of a dumpster fire.

Sadly this is not a total aberration. It has been four years since Crowe brought us We Bought a Zoo, the tale of one man’s inconceivably ill advised plan to purchase a house with a zoo in the backyard in the wake of his wife’s death. While the film made $120 million, on a budget of $50 million, it is hard to argue that it is anything other than risible. At best it is an argument in favor of the old adage that you shouldn’t make a major purchase for at least a year after a major life change (getting sober, losing a spouse, etc.), and at worst it is precisely the kind of schlocky pap that makes people fear for the future of films that feature characters not spawned from the pages of Marvel or D.C.

The Post-Apocalypse Top Ten

Mad Mad: Fury Road is, by far, the best film currently in the theater. It is an experience unlike any other you are likely to have at the movies. As wild and uproarious a celebration of the power of women as it is an indictment of the patriarchy that, in the words of Imperator Furiosa “broke the world.”

Set in a hellish desert ruled by a cultish strong man, it is the most recent example of the cinematic genre that was savaged by Tomorrowland’s bright insistence on optimism—the post-apocalyptic picture. But what are the best examples of this genre? My goal today is to outline my own person post-apocalyptic top ten.

Redbox Review: St. Vincent

With Redbox Review it is my hope to answer a simple question, to wit: having decided not to see a particular movie in the theater, is it worth the $1.50 to rent that movie from your local Redbox?

St. Vincent is Theodore Melfi’s first feature length film since 1999. In the interim he has resided mostly in the world of shorts. St. Vincent has the feel of a short film. The layout is simple. A bitter, broken old man befriends a young boy. Through that relationship the man is revealed to be something more than a solitary crank.

Movie Review: Tomorrowland

Disneys’s Tomorrowland announces its intentions from the jump. As the Disney theme swells and we expect to see Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, we instead see the skyline of the film’s titular genius enclave. Instead of a shooting star that crests the highest tower of the castle we see a figure flying a jetpack. Much has already been written about this film has hinged on its deliberate and explicit comparison to its forward looking contemporaries, films like Fury Road, which portray the future as wasteland, and while it is true that this is a film deeply (perhaps hopelessly) invested in a more whimsically optimistic future, it is as much a (pointed) meditation on the future of Disney as it is on the future of the Earth.

Movie Review: The Giver

A humanity problem sits at the heart of my dissatisfaction with the current string of dystopian YA films. This doesn’t really surprise me. By their nature dystopic visions extend contemporary concerns to their logical extreme. When Ray Bradbury is concerned that American culture is losing touch with the traditional literary canon he writes Fahrenheit 451. Anxieties about the dehumanizing effects of post-industrial capitalism fuel The Hunger Games, and similar concerns about the expansion of Marxism give rise to Atlas Shrugged (a more appropriately ambivalent gesture for such a deeply needless film cannot be imagined).

Redbox Review: Enemy

With Redbox Review it is my hope to answer a simple question, to wit: having decided not to see a particular movie in the theater, is it worth the $1.25 to rent that movie from your local Redbox?

In his 1973 monograph The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry the literary critic Harold Bloom hypothesized that in attempting to create a new work a poet must engage in a struggle with influence of those poets who have gone before. “Strong poets,” Bloom argues, are those who successfully create new and original work despite the influence of the past.

Redbox Review: Winter’s Tale

With Redbox Review it is my hope to answer a simple question, to wit: having decided not to see a particular movie in the theater, is it worth the $1.25 to rent that movie from your local Redbox? 

The hardest thing to explain to students in any intro to film class is the importance of editing.
Students generally understand the function of the screenwriter, the director, and the actors and actresses who populate the landscape of a film. There is an intuitive understanding that someone selects the costumes, that someone sets the lights, and that someone points the camera. But this intuition breaks down in the face of assembling a final product. There is a person, in a dark room, assembling the individual shots into the final product? Having read the script, couldn’t a monkey successfully patch the whole thing together? Well, no. Perhaps the most widely known piece of cinematic inside baseball is that editors are the ones who make films work, and perhaps the easiest way to demonstrate this point is to examine the flaming wreckage of a film that not only went off the rails, but that fell a thousand feet into a canyon and exploded.