Things in the Dark

Two new movies came across my bow this week - the action/adventure revenge flick John Wick and the Chris Nolan science-fiction epic Interstellar. What to see, what to see . . .

Seriously - wouldn't you kill for this dog?

 First - John Wick is surprisingly good. It's a film that knows what it is, makes no pretensions beyond that, and works within its parameters quite well. It's cliched (seriously, everything - everything - hinges on a cute beagle puppy named "Daisy" that was a gift to John Wick from his wife after her tragic death), but somehow it manages to make that work, possibly because the movie embraces the silliness of it. First time co-directors David Leith (who is best known for exceptional stunt work on movies such as V for Vendetta, 300, and the upcoming Jupiter Ascending) and Chad Stahelski (who has an equally deep resume on stunt work, including Whedon's Serenity) know what makes an action movie look good and there's nary a shaky hand-held shot in sight. (Thank you!) Keanu Reeves may have limited range as an actor, but here he's in his element (full disclosure - I like Keanu Reeves. There is story after story about him being a genuinely decent, nice guy (click here!) and I think that get shoved aside all too often. Besides, he was half of Bill & Ted, and that counts for something with me.)

John Wick is a revenge picture - Wick is a very talented hit man who got out of the game and lived a quiet, very comfortable life with his wife, who dies not from some other assassin's bullet, but from something as mundane as disease. She knew she was dying and arranged for a puppy to be delivered to her grieving husband after her death so he could have something to love and to help him heal. So far so good, until some piddling kid with a Russian mobster for a father tries to carjack Wick's ride and winds up staging a home invasion where the puppy - well, it's not graphic (wives and girlfriends usually get it worse in these sorts of pictures), but Wick is back in the game. The movie puts together a dark world that has rules, including hotels and clubs that cater to the dark underworld of hired killers and let me just say - awesome customer service! Not for children, but a solid action movie that understands how to film a gunfight so the audience actually knows what's going on in the frame. Tremendous, but highly violent, fun - and Ian McShane!

Interstellar, on the other hand, is less fun. I'm not going to quibble with the science - it's a feature film, not a documentary, and I allow a lot of leeway there, understanding that directors like Nolan are far more concerned with making it look good than making it strictly accurate.

But.

Bad design - way too much surface area
to get hit by debris, but hey! looks cool.

I know I'm going to be in the minority on this one - people love Nolan's movies, which I have often found to be disjointed, hinge on befuddling relationships, and rely far too much on bulk deliveries from the Plot Convenience Warehouse.* That said, Interstellar will be a wonderful movie to snark you way through and, at just under three hours, you'll have plenty of time to be clever. The core problem here is that Nolan is confusing intricacy of plot with depth. A tangled necklace chain can take some patient work to untangle, but then you have it sorted out in front of you. The plot to Interstellar is not worth nearly as much work, although I am gratified to know that there will apparently be no shortage of mascara in space. I could go on and on about the problems I have with this film (and there are many), but let me just hit on four.

1. We need some explanation as to how the "blight" destroying the crops has been able to leapfrog species.  And really - was it necessary to pick on okra?
2. Nolan's use of Ken Burns' Dust Bowl footage is an interesting use of misdirection to get us thinking that the folks being interviewed there are looking back and discussing the timeframe of the movie, not the 1920s and 1930s. You know, the Dust Bowl - the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history that really happened.
3. McConaughey's Cooper hasn't been a test pilot for at least a dozen years, yet he finds NORAD and within three days or so, he's in a spaceship.
4. Thank heavens Cooper didn't prefer a digital watch.

Scientists are weighing in on the hard science of Interstellar - click here  for that view and Vulture has compiled a list of "things in Interstellar that don't make sense" that's a fun read (click here!) if you want to get that point of view.

There's good in this film, too - particularly Mackenzie Foy, who plays the young Murph, Cooper's daughter who is left behind as he goes off to save the world.

I know that many, many people are loving this movie and finding profound questions in it regarding time, space, and love. I'm just not one of them. I've often said that science fiction is the genre that is perhaps best suited to asking those big questions - but no, Interstellar is not a film that does that, preferring to skim the surface, muddy the waters, and direct the audience in how to feel when. Plus, I think it owes an apology to the estate of Dylan Thomas for the heavy overuse of "Do Not Go Gentle." Last bit of snark - could someone PLEASE tell Hans Zimmer that the soundtrack doesn't always have to go to eleven? It makes the dialogue hard to hear, although now that I think about it . . . nevermind.



*I allow that Memento and The Prestige are exceptions to this - both are strong Nolan films that I enjoyed, even as I had to work to unravel the plots.

Coming Down with Something

Due to a touch of the late-winter bug (I won't bore you with details), I've gotten behind on reporting on my movie-going activities.  Thankfully, Meet Me at the Movies on TV19 is forgiving.  But we're back this week with a review on the new Bryan Singer directed Jack the Giant Slayer, which has the dubious honor of being dubbed 2013's first bomb.  Jack cost in the neighborhood of $200-plus million to make and market and its opening numbers were (to be polite) subpar.  So is it really that awful?  I have a rule that says I'll go see anything with Stanley Tucci (who plays the villain Roderick), so off I went.  And I can report . . . 

. . . it's not.

Mind you, I prefer my Slayers of the Buffy variety and Jack is trying a little too hard in places, but no, it's not  awful.  The story hangs together (even if it's feels a little long), you have some nice effects, and the actors are clearly having a very fine time.  So why isn't it a smashing success?

Think of it this way.  I have a sweet tooth - I'm pretty much a candyfreak.  While others want to discover how a creative barman can mix pomegranate juice with various alcohols, I'm way more curious about what it's like to dip the somewhat-exotic seeds in dark chocolate.  I'm a card-carrying member of the Lindt chocolate club, but I can also be quite happy in the dollar store by the movie candy.  But you can have too much of a good thing - European truffles and Sugar Babies and red hots and Now 'n' Laters and caramel creams - well, that's just Not Good.

That's the problem with Jack.  I don't know if Bryan Singer (who directed the flat-out brilliant Usual Suspects, as well as three X-Men movies and the upcoming Days of Future Past installment of that franchise) had Suits poking their noses into his production or what, but there's just too much.  It's like me in a candy store with low blood sugar and a credit card - everything seems like a good idea!  Not just one giant - a whole country of them! Not just one beanstalk - how about seven or so?  A farmboy and a princess who share the same taste in bedtime stories!  Magic beans!  Monks! (Monks?)  Don't get those beans wet - wait, are we in Gremlins all of a sudden? Political intrigue! A magic crown!

 Nicholas Hoult (who was Beast in Singer's X-Men: First Class and with his turn in Warm Bodies has become one of my Young Ones to Watch) is Jack and this "Farm Boy" is very much cut in the form of Westley from Princess Bride.  Well, if you're going to crib, pick the good ones, I say.  There's more than one touch of Princess Bride in Jack, including the use of a voice-over story as a framing device.  However, these giants are not nearly as gentle as Fezzik.  The giants are gross, slobbering monsters who have a low cunning, but not much in the way of actual intelligence.  I daresay kids would be entranced by the fun the movie has with scale - full-grown men come up to about knee-level on these giants and the beanstalk is fantastic - and yes, beanstalks work both ways as chlorophyll staircases.

Look, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, and Ian McShane (now with 75% less cussing than in Deadwood!) are all having so much fun chewing the scenery that they need to floss plywood from their molars.  Not much for the women-folk to do here  - and being a giant seems to be a male-only sort of thing.  Princess Isabelle wants to have adventures, but is basically a prop to be rescued and won.  (By the way - golden armor?  Really?  Face it, princess, it looks pretty, but won't stop a butter knife.)  Then again, not every fairy tale can be Brave.