Iron Man (2008)

This was written back in July, but I'm just getting around to posting it. Oh well:

Pretty much as good as a superhero movie can be nowadays. Spiderman 3 kind of fizzled out that franchise. Fantastic 4, X-Men 3, The Punisher and Ghost Rider were all kind of duds in an oversaturated dud market, so it's good we have a couple of Iron Man movies to look forward to. That and Batman. And Hellboy also. Anyway, this was directed by co-Swinger Jon Favreau, which seems weird since his few directing credits (Elf, Zathura) wouldn't naturally lead to mega-budget action films. Maybe Zathura was mega-budget action. Who knows, I don't think anyone saw it.

Half of this movie was the set up for how Tony Stark becomes Iron Man, but not knowing anything about Iron Man, or comic books in general, I could have sworn the movie was thinking about ending right there in the middle of Afghanistan or wherever they were. But it takes a couple breaths and ratchets back up for an awesome 2nd half.

What made this movie so great for me is the mixture of special effects (there were over 300 animators) and droll humor. Robert Downey Jr. seems like he's almost improvising at times, just riffing and having fun being there, and the scenes between he and Jeff Bridges (especially the pizza scene) are loose and natural. And I mean, is there no actor looser than Jeff Bridges? Iron Man was kind of like Ghostbusters in this way for me, really effects heavy action paired with off the cuff, dry comedy (the line "It's like Operation!"). I'd imagine the atmosphere on the set was really conducive to that kind of stuff, with Favreau and game actors like these guys who just seems like they're having a blast. And during the final showdown between Bridges' Ironmonger (at this point very un-"dude" like) and Iron Man, I was having so much fun, I had forgotten about the plot contrivances that had got them into this battle in the first place: like, why does Obadiah Stane want to kill Iron Man anyway? It wasn't quite clear how much of a threat Stark's newfound pacifism was to his company, and the reason Obadiah hires the Ten Rings in the first place got lost in the whole reveal. Really. It seems obvious, but after thinking about it later, I realize it didn't make sense.

Thankfully the Black Sabbath song was never used in the film. Instead there was a slightly reminiscent, nu-metal-ly theme every time homeboy puts on the iron suit, which seemed more appropriate. And then only the guitar solo from the Sabbath song was used during end credits, also cool. AND per my friend Bill's advice, we stayed past the end credits to see Nick Fury set us up for The Avengers movie.

Dracula (1931)

Finally saw this and was struck by how quiet it was. For whatever reason, I expected to hear a lot of dark, gloomy music during the Transylvania scenes and really creepy stuff for when Dracula bites necks. But no, just about every scene without dialogue just plays out silently, and sometimes all you hear is wind, and maybe the floorboards creaking as Dracula slowly walks across a room staring at someone, which seemed to be happening constantly in this movie. This lack of music was really chilling.

Even though it's a total cinematic cliche by now, Bela Lugosi's performance truly is great. There's no need to describe it. He's the Count from Sesame Street, only scarier, less purple, and has his OCD under control. There's not much dialogue in this movie, but Dracula talks less than anyone, he just sort of lurks behind people while they're chatting at a table or something. And then when he does talk, it's always something about being an undead vampire, like "there are far worse things awaiting man than death.", and everyone looks at each other awkwardly. A lot of this movie is about how hanging out with Dracula is a huge buzzkill.

Anyway, this was filmed simultaneously alongside a Spanish version: same sets and production crew, different actors and language. I'll have to look out for that sometime. I've heard more than once that it's actually better than the Lugosi version. For me, though, I don't think anything tops Nosferatu in terms of classic vampire films.

My Blueberry Nights (2008)

Caught this at the Charles a few weeks ago with a friend who's also a big Wong Kar Wai fan. So we were both pretty excited for the director's first english language outing. Some foreign directors score big time with english debuts (Wim Wenders' The American Friend) and some don't (John Woo's Hard Boiled?) This was somewhere in between for me. My bud liked it and I was just kind of okay with it.

Something seemed off, and a lot of it was the dialogue between Jeremy (Jude Law) and Elizabeth (Norah Jones), which felt too self-consciously metaphorical. Like when he tells her that at the end of every night the apple and peach pies are totally eaten, but there's always an entire blueberry pie left. "There's nothing wrong with the blueberry pie. Just... people make other choices. You can't blame the blueberry pie, just... no one wants it.", Jeremy says. A lot of conversations were like that, hammering us over the head with introspect and symbolism. I liked it better when these kind of ideas were treated more playfully, as in Chungking Express and Happy Together.

But it could also be that Wong Kar Wai's dialogue feels better, like more poetic, when subtitled as in his other films. It didn't seem to have the same effect on me hearing it in English. The lines sort of felt incongruous to the character's mannerisms and actions, especially the David Straitharn/Rachel Weisz section. They played the parts to a T, but the script kept those scenes from being completely believable for me.

I liked all the acting, except for Norah Jones, who was pretty flat. There's also just something really wrong with watching Norah Jones make out with a guy while a Norah Jones song is playing in the background. Throw one more Norah Jones in there and we're in, like, some tunnel that leads to Norah Jones' brain or something.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

I purposefully lowered my expectations before going into this. I actually spent some time during the day mentally preparing for it to suck, like I tried to think of the ways they could screw it up: too much reliance on CGI, George Lucas being allowed to write dialogue, etc... So into the theater my Dad and I went, fingers crossed, me expecting the worst, and lo and behold, my plan worked. I think I saw a pretty terrible movie that was lifted up by the grading curve in my mind.

The Movie Blog has a thread on the review of this movie about 200 posts long, and I'd say 85% of them are rightfully critical. I read something on there that summed up this whole Indiana Jones thing, which was basically like, "Don't compare anything to Raiders, because there's nothing like it. Raiders was a freak of a movie." I can get with that.

So instead of writing paragraphs on the bad things about "Crystal Skull" (i.e. CGI monkeys, Karen Allen's apparent vicodin haze, the entire 2nd half...), here are the things I liked:

* The first 30 minutes. The opening credits. The magnetic box that's pulling all the metal in the room as they lift it up. I have to admit that had my heart going. The action sequence that followed was tight, choreographed perfectly, and if they had only taken out one shot of those stupid prairie dogs, would have held it's own against any of the other film's openings. Also the entire A-bomb test scene was brilliant, the way he realizes what he's stepped into.

* The motorcycle chase that follows the diner scene. It reminded me of the lighter, more playful chase scenes in Last Crusade. And the way they crash into the school library, and as they speed off, Jones yells out, "if you want to be an archeologist, get out of the library!" Spielberg was on point there.

* Shia LaBeaouf. Never saw him in anything else. Thought I would hate him simply because I thought they wanted another Short Round. Turned out he was really good in this. Some of the things that come out of his mouth are pretty dumb, but he elevates it with perfect smart-aleck greaser attitude.

* Harrison Ford. Again, some of the dialogue was off (Indiana seemed too snippy too often, "Oh Marion, you had to go and get yourself kidnapped") but he's still the man for the job. Great to see him running, climbing, doing his own stunt work at 65.

Unforgiven (1992)

This movie kind of blew me away. I had always seen the cover of this on those lists like the AFI's GREATEST MOVIES or TOP 20 OSCAR WINNERS and put it mentally in the same category as Driving Miss Daisy or Forrest Gump: big budget Hollywood oscar winners that were beloved in the early 90's, but then lost flavor over time. Now I personally like Driving Miss Daisy, but dadgummit if Unforgiven ain't miles above it in every aspect. I read a review somewhere that stated Unforgiven is "a funeral for the western." Indeed it is. I suppose Dead Man gave the genre some more esoteric, smaller-level subverting a few years later, but Unforgiven really focuses its intentions and gives the western a proper burial.

Eastwood plays Bill Munny, essentially a washed up version of The Man With No Name, from the "Dollars trilogy", except this character is mean, amoral, or at least was...he's given up "the drink on account of his wife" and become a pig farmer with his two young children, leaving his bankrobbing, murdering years behind him. He's talked into doing one more job, though, by a kid who wants more than anything to be like those romanticized caricatures of gunslingers that Eastwood has embodied in countless movies.

So the movie's plot follows thusly, and is really straightforward, but it's the dialogue and depth of the characters that makes it so compelling. Stereotypes are inverted, and morality gets pretty murky. The bad guy in Unforgiven would be the good guy in any typical western, and vice versa. Little Bill Daggett, played ruthlessly by Gene Hackman (two years before he played a very similar character in The Quick and The Dead, in some ways the antithesis of Unforgiven), represents the death of the old ways of the west, in which thieves and killers roamed free and pillaged towns as they pleased. He used to be one of these outlaws himself, but now, as the town sherriff, he's determined to keep his town free of crime, albeit through intimidation and fear. And Eastwood's Bill Munny is the dying spirit of those old ways, a man whose time has come and gone, but who has to gather that gunslinging, lawless spirit in the face of injustice. Morgan Freeman plays Ned, Munny's former partner-in-crime, and the two of them have amazing onscreen chemistry as they struggle to get back on the saddle (literally) for this last stand.

The film chugs along confidently, exploring and debunking the cliches that the old Hollywood westerns thrived on, and finally we arrive at the final shootout, which I had to watch twice because it was so awesome. Seriously, one of the most badass endings of all time. I had to show my girlfriend the clip on YouTube a couple hours later. The ending of this movie is right up there with the endings of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest or Rocky for me, in terms of pure emotional impact. It's the moment I was hoping throughout the movie. It's so simple and predictable, yet so effective. And the dialogue makes it clear that everything that's been said in a scene like this has been repeated so much it's lost meaning:

"I'll see you in hell, William Munny."
"Yeah."

Bill Munny has responded to that cliche so many times, he no longer has anything to say besides "yeah."

Black Sheep (2007)

My good friend Al recommended this knowing I was a big fan of splatter-era Peter Jackson, and it did not disappoint. In fact, it did more than live up to expectations. I was really struck by simply how good the movie LOOKED. It was shot on 35mmm, had some really great photography of the New Zealand coastline, farmlands, etc, and overall was really slick. The director, Jonathan King, apparently wrote the script for The Tattooist, which I'm interested in checking out, even though it doesn't look very fun like Black Sheep was.

But on top of all that stuff, it kicked ass. There was quite a bit of gore, though nothing compared to Jackson's early stuff, and most of the gruesome moments came from people mutating into giant sheep, one limb at a time. There was one moment however that made me wince hard, and that was the offal pit, filled with rotting pig guts, and of course into which the characters fall and have to wade through to get back to safety. That reminded me of the scene in Phenomena when Jennifer Connelly falls into the pool of corpses, and I shuddered big time during that.

There was such a playful tone in the "sheep attack" scenes, which were essentially close-ups of handpuppets (kind of like Lamb Chop's demented cousins or something) chomping away at someone screaming, and then cut to a wide shot of common sheep standing in a field, casually gnawing at fake human limbs, heads, etc...and nothing beats menacing violins screeching underneath a bunch of sheep heading over a hill in our direction. Also, besides "Get the flock outta here!", another tagline was "Get ready for the Violence of the Lambs."

Collision Course (1989)

Collision Course!

Jay Leno. Mr. Miyagi.

END OF REVIEW.