Film Review: CLOUD ATLAS

Oh boy, where can I begin? Reviews have been mixed, and for a good reason; Cloud Atlas is a love it or hate it movie. I do not expect to find a middle ground. The great thing about movies like this is that they get people talking, debating, and thinking. So even if you are on the hate it crowd, this movie affected you in someway or other. Generally speaking, I’d say this is a good thing in any art form. Luckily for me, I am in the LOVE IT crowd. 

Cloud Atlas tells six stories interwoven to various degrees, all with the same thematic elements: primarily the search for freedom and the human desire to be together. Individually each piece is engaging enough, it would have made a good short story. But the editing turns all six into a thematic concerto that only film as an art medium can provide. To think that the novel was considered “un-filmable” means there is a lack of creativity out there. If anything Cloud Atlas proves the vast versatility of film as a story telling medium.

The six stories that we see are:

Review: THE PAPERBOY

Popular trash movies are sometimes compared to fast-food; they are manufactured to provide immediate satisfaction without little to no concern about the consumer’s health. The Paperboy is trash, but is has more in common with the juicy mess of grease cheese that fills the street-cart burrito you have at 4am in the morning after a long night of drinking than a McBurger cooked up in a sterilized kitchen. Like the burrito, this film has no care, no substance, and no shame but every single moment of it is delicious, rich in texture, and a unique experience.

Review: Looper

Any conversation dealing with time travel it can easily become an endless debate  about the technicalities, ethics, paradoxes and impossibilities of practicing time travel. Time travel is messy and because of this it is a bit of a cheat when used as a literary device. It can get the writers into very tricky situations when the impossibilities begin to pile up, or it can be used to completely wipe a slate and start anew. Few writers have ever gotten it right, but when they do it is usually beautiful. Rian Johnson’s Looper gets it right within its own world. Unlike most time travel stories, Looper embraces the paradoxes. But more surprisingly it wipes them away in a rather clever - and intense - conclusion.

Review: BEATS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

“Daddy says the people who built the levees are afraid of the water”, the fierce and wild six year-old girl named Hushpuppy (Quevanzhené Wallis) explains. “Daddy says we live in the prettiest place on Earth”. This is a swamp-island off the coast of New Orleans that the locals, fittingly, call The Bathtub. Isolated from the world by the levees the keep New Orleans from sinking, the inhabitants of The Bathtub live as close to the earth as possible, existing on their own terms, and surviving from the seafood the floods the landlubbers fear provide. They might be poor by suburban standards but the floods and swamp are abundant enough for them not to starve to spend their days enjoying life. 

Review: PROMETHEUS

If a Facehugger from the Alien franchise ever face-raped 2001: A Space Odyssey, the resulting Xenomorph bastard would not be unlike Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s long awaited return to the genre many claim he revolutionized. Prometheus is an ambitious science-fiction film with the lofty goal of presenting questions about the origins of life. Like all great science-fiction literature, it is a blend of thoughtful speculation, great story, awe-inspiring effects, and wonder. And because the Alien franchise is its predecessor the package also includes chilling rape allegories, a nauseating birth scene, and a good amount fetal imagery. All in the name of brilliant filmmaking. 

Review: THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL

If you are broke and looking for retirement look no further; The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for the Elderly and Beautiful is -well- it is supposed to be a retirement center in Jaipur, where Westerners can outsource their elderly; the latest venture of the young entrepreneur Sonny Kapoor (Dev Patel). Sonny inherited the shabby inn from his father; against his mother’s wishes, and without any previous experiences Sonny reopens it. But this is not the story of Sonny; this is the story of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’s guests, seven elderly english-folks who found themselves retired in Jaipur for some reason or other. If you can’t see where this is going, then you need to get out more.

Review: THE AVENGERS

So, by now it's safe to say that half the world (and then some) has seen The Avengers. And it is easy to see why: up until now every superhero movie has tried to bank-off audience’s inner child and repressed id. Broad emotions and large explosions are fun to watch; it is the same root emotion with which children bash action figures, have snowball fights, and play with NERF guns. However, no film has yet captured the childish enjoyment of bashing action figures against each other in the way The Avengers does. Long awaited, since Samuel L. Jackson’s cameo at the end of Iron Man, The Avengers assembles a good array of Marvel characters into one film: Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye and Nick Fury; it gives them a worthy villain: Loki and the Chitauri, and then proceeds to wreck havoc over a CGI Midtown Manhattan. What more can we ask for?

Review: LIFE IN A DAY

Perhaps “The Artist” was doomed by the high hopes handed down to me. Perhaps it was the hope that a non-traditional film would walk off with the grand prize on Oscar Night. Could this be the first, again mostly, silent film to be nominated for Best Picture in the last 80 years? The foreign-language “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” was a note-worthy nomination. As was “Beauty and Beast.” Perhaps now we’ve reached a time to nominate a truly extraordinary film this year. A film unique not just in genre but in content and context, scope and intimacy. I want to argue the best film of 2011 was not the remake of “Footloose” (close one, I know) but was actually the documentary “Life in a Day.”

Review: THE DESCENDANTS

This is my favorite of all of George Clooney's characters. In The Descendants, Clooney is not awesome. He is not a badass. He doesn't have a charming smile (mostly because I don't think he smiles once in this movie). In The Descendants, George Clooney plays a character. And for The Descendants, he deserves an Oscar.

Review: THE MUPPETS

Sometimes, movies are just done right. Everything about this movie is done right. The casting is right. The music is right. The story is right, and the heart is right. The Muppets is just right.

Review: HUGO

So, Scorsese decided to direct a kid’s movie… when I first saw the trailer for Hugo I wasn’t quite sure what to think of this fact. It looked like a Spielberg movie, a big budget, techno-family epic, and in 3D!!! What was Marty, the Gangster Priest, the King of Gritty, the man with more four-letter words in his movies than an entire season of South Park combined doing? Was he back on coke perhaps? Amazingly the result was a film very different from any of his previous films, and yet very much like them at the same time; this is not a children’s movie by Scorsese but a Scorsese movie for children.

Review: THE ARTIST

I went into The Artist expecting a gimmicky art piece, after all who would dare make a silent film in 2011; it has to be at least 70-something years since the last silent movie, excluding Mel Brooks’ parody Silent Movie. But man was I surprised when The Artist turned out not to be a pretentious piece of art, but a legitimate crowd-pleaser. For all intents and purposes this film could have been any commercial film made in 1929, if it weren’t for its self-reflexivity about the times. It is an innocent tribute to the magic of cinema, one of the best films I’ve seen this year, and a good reminder of why I love movies so much.

Review: THE SKIN I LIVE IN

Let me put it this way; even if you have seen all the films by Pedro Almodovar you will not see this one coming. Like most of Almodovar’s films, The Skin I Live invokes what is perhaps the boldest form storytelling as he slowly unfolds a plot that can only be described as devious and dark perversion of the soul. And I mean that as a compliment. Almodovar likes to play with his audience; he pushes the limits of the viewer until he experiences revolting pleasure.

And we are afraid of feeling this… mostly, because we like it but do not know how to deal with it.

Review: MONEYBALL

Moneyball totally took me by surprise and I couldn’t be happier. Yes, that’s right. I am declaring a big budget studio feature about baseball starring Brad Pitt a huge, wonderful success. I dare you to tell me you don’t like this movie.

Between Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill and the script, this film is rock solid. And what a relief to say that! I don’t need to mention brilliant visuals or alluring starlets. I don’t have to justify recycled excuses for why I enjoyed this film. There aren’t flashy action sequences or dazzling special effects. There is no 3D or IMAX to melt our brains. There are no gimmicks!

Review: TUCKER & DALE VS EVIL

Sometimes all the necessary things for a great movie to come into existence line up; it is the holy alliance or a fresh idea, a great script, and good acting comming together. If you have this it is quite unlikely for any filmmaker to screw it up. Eli Craig was blessed with this trifecta on his directorial debut, Tucker & Dale vs Evil, a warm parody of the teenage slasher classics (if we can call them classics). The film is what the Scream and Scary Movie franchises could have been had they not lacked, a fresh idea, a good script to tie down that idea, and good acting to make that idea come to life. And yet while those movies make millions Tucker & Dale vs Evil has sat on a shelf for two years, mostly because studios increasingly refuse to believe newcomers can be bankable filmmakers.

Review: SUPER 8

After I first saw the trailer for Super 8, I thought to myself, "Classic case of JJ Abrams trailer." All the trailers for Abrams' projects have always been phenomenal, and then I've been supremely let down by his films. In fact, I've never really loved anything Abrams has ever done. Keep in mind - he's had very, very little to do with LOST, though most people attribute it to him. Damon Lindelof is the genius behind that.

Review: EXPORTING RAYMOND

            It is a widely accepted fact that comedy is a very localized phenomenon and as a consequence one of the hardest genres to export. Today most Hollywood movies are made with the international market in mind; it is not unusual for movies to make most of their money outside their country of origin (Hollywood or not). Comedy remains as the exception. However this hasn’t stopped the business from trying to adapt its most successful sitcoms for audiences abroad. Exporting Raymond is the story of Phil Rosenstal, the show runner of Everybody Loves Raymond, traveling to Russia to help a team of Russian writers adapt the sitcom into their own Everybody Loves Kostya. And in the process he makes the attempt to argue that comedy in is most specific form is in fact a universally relatable genre. It is a bold undertaking but Rosenthal makes an incredibly persuasive argument.

Review: HANNA

            Hanna is one of those movies that remind me why I love the craft of filmmaking. Technically it is flawless, but it also an eerie thriller grounded in reality and filled interesting characters, which you as a viewer care about. It proves that action can be an artful genre and it really makes you wonder why anyone ever considered making G.I. Joe Rise of Cobra. At its heart Hanna is a Hollywood action movie, but it is done with such grit and passion for the craft that you might confuse it for some European Art Film.

Review: RANGO

           In today’s Hollywood there is a tendency for movies to try and find the widest audience possible. This is a reasonable; the wider your target audience the more likely you will be at finding one and thus making bank. The problem is that the easiest way for movies to achieve this is to dumb them down. In this environment, Rango is some kind of silent revolution. It achieves this not by dumbing itself down but by being clever on how it goes about doing it. Rango manages to be: a legit a western as The Man With No Name trilogy, and at the same time family film that is fun and fit for kids and adults alike. This is a lot to tackle in a single film somehow Rango manages to juggle it all.

Review: HAPPYTHANKYOUMOREPLEASE

            HappyThankyYouMorePlease begins with the staple mark of almost every Indy/student/amateur film, someone getting up from bed after a one-night-stand. Lo-and-behold the movie is about one of the two people involved in the previous night’s rump-a-hump and he happens to be late for a meeting. HappyThankyYouMorePlease is not very different from any other American Indy film, a style that has matured into its own genre, but it highlights all the reasons why I love American Indy. It is genre that makes you smile because you recognize yourself or a friend in every character and situation within the film.