Okay,
So I've been lazy and have had a bunch of half written articles lying around. I still don't feel like finishing any of them, so I'm going to write a couple of mini review nuggets.
First, my thoughts about District 9... I liked it a lot, definitely a solid 8.5/10. I knew 2 things going in:
#1. It was about aliens and discrimination
#2. The aliens lived in the slums of South Africa
The acting was pretty amazing, especially the main character played by Shartlo Copley who I had never seen before. I actually didn't recognize ANYONE from the cast which made it seem a lot more real and less Hollywood. The movie had a respectable $30 million budget all of which went to the effects, which were pretty astounding. It also leaves room for a sequel while pretty neatly wrapping up its own story which to me is fairly hard to do. After watching the incoherent mess of Transformers 2's action scenes, I really honestly appreciated the action scenes in District 9 a lot more. The action here is messy, chaotic, and frenetic, but well shot and edited so you can really see and understand what's going on.
The director, Neill Blomkamp, has a background in visual effects and animation, and based the movie out of his childhood in South Africa (hopefully the parts without the aliens). Normally such an unusual movie wouldn't get the release it did, but Peter Jackson gave Blomkamp the $30 mil for a movie project of his choice (this came about after the Halo movie fell through which Jackson would have produced and Blomkamp would have directed).
So anyhow, if you are a fan of action sci fi with some social commentary melted in, definitely worth your time.
The other movie I want to talk a bit about is Jennifer's Body. Everyone who knows me probably thinks I really loved this movie. You have a super hot Megan Fox and award winning screenwriter Diablo Cody together in a horror comedy (a genre I really love) which should be amazing. Unfortunately, a good idea on paper turns into a fairly blah movie, I'd give it a 4.5/10. I'm going to break it down into 3 areas of disappointment.
First, Megan Fox can't act... at all... As a token hot character with little or no dialogue, this isn't a problem (I'd have loved to see her die in the opening scene of the Friday the 13th or the upcoming Nightmare on Elm Street remakes) As Jessica Simpson, Pamela Anderson, and other "hot celebrity of the year" have found, its tough to be extremely successful as a lead only relying on physical and not acting 'talents.' Amanda Seyfried (from the horrific Mamma Mia remake) isn't believable to me at all as the nerdy friend (the classic "she's really hot but she has glasses" nerd that a lot of teen movies would make fun of). And the guy that plays Seyfried's boyfriend pretty much sucks too. To me, the only really redeeming actors are Adam Brody (from the OC and a small funny part in Thank You for Smoking) and J.K. Simmons (spiderman's boss, juno's dad, in about every 3rd movie these days). Sadly, neither has a lot of screentime and both play fairly one note characters, but compared to Fox and Seyfried, both look like best supporting actor contenders.
Second, Diablo Cody... I really do like Juno a lot, I know there's some backlash about the level of Cody's talent, I'm not going to completely rip her apart. The success of Juno was a combination of Cody's writing, brilliant performances by Ellen Page, Jason Bateman, and the aforementioned Simmons, the music by Kimya Dawson, and the direction of Jason Reitman. Unique among a lot of modern day movie makers, Cody is only a screenwriter. I say 'only' because a lot of the directors I like (Tarantino, Rodriguez, los Coens, etc.) also do screenwriting, producing, etc. So Cody's impact on a movie is only through clever, witty dialogue. She is really good at said dialogue, however, to me it doesn't completely work as well in this movie as it did in Juno. Sure, there are some catchy one liners (the "evil, not just high school evil" zinger that's in the trailer) but as a excellent, coherent screenplay... it sounded too much like Juno... There's a reason why Kevin Smith has never attempted an English period drama or why Tarantino has never done a family film... that's the same reason why Diablo Cody's writing doesn't work quite as well in a horror piece as it did in a teen dramedy.
As for horror comedy... There aren't a lot of great ones, (Gremlins, Shaun of the Dead, American Werewolf in London) there are quite a few flawed, but fun ones (Arachnophobia, Tremors, Slither) and some bad ones (Idle Hands, Urban Legends, All About Steve... well Sandra Bullock was scary enough in that one to make it all out horror for me). A final problem with Jennifer's Body is that it isn't very funny and it isn't particularly that scary either. There's a really fine line to balance and the movie falls short on both sides. The horror aspect, although fairly gory at times, never really even made me jump at all (compare this to a similar movie from last year, Drag Me to Hell, completely ridiculous yet there is still some pretty tense scenes). The hot chick killing guys, its been done before (Species for the mainstream folks and Teeth for the more indy folks), and the sarcastic high school angle played out like maybe Scream or even parts of the Faculty. There just seemed a lot of missed opportunities for humor or scares throughout (like when Fox's character gets in 'poor shape', it just looks like she isn't wearing makeup, compare this to AWolfIL... you might understand if you watch the movie). Finally... this is another movie with a wraparound story told in flashback. I really loathe this storytelling device for the most part because it makes the ending superobvious (except for in Fraility or High Tension, but those are two amazing exceptions). Basically if you are familiar with the horror genre at all you will know exactly what happens to the characters. The final nail is the pointless annoying scene during/after the credits. Comedic outtakes, excerpts from the soundtrack, these are things that are acceptable in the end credits, not extraneous scenes from the movie (I don't know who started this trend, but boo!).
So for now, that's all I have to say about that...
Patricks
No comments:
Post a Comment