Movie Recs: Awesome and Awesomer Edition
Tuesday, November 13th, 2012 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
retsukoWreck-It Ralph: I saw this in a theater full of adults, 90% of whom groaned as the requisite toy commercials played before the actual movie. One of them said, ruefully, "I guess we're just not the target audience for this." But the funny thing is, I left the theater thinking that we (adults) were indeed the target audience. Why else would there be all these visual references to games that most kids have never played and likely never will? (I mean, Tapper? What kid is going to want to run out and play that?) And why else would there be some very complicated themes about the construction of your identity, the nature of true love in several forms, and the salvation of the soul? If the previous sentence makes the movie sound heavy and exhausting, it's not at all, and therein lies its genius: Wreck-It Ralph is an eye-candy dream that, despite having a guy with freakishly huge hands as its hero, moves along in a fun, breezy manner, where the difficult themes are never overdone and the story is never in service to the toy-selling. The voice casting was top-notch and that really helped (although Sarah Silverman skated a very fine line between cute and annoying.) This is a movie that I look forward to showing my son, and is no waste of time for any grown-up with an open mind.
Skyfall: A LOT of spoilers are up ahead... I'm not kidding! Proceed at your own peril if you've not seen the movie.
Goods:
~Eve Moneypenny. I loved how cool and collected she was, no matter what was happening. I loved how she and James had this banter going of "Ha ha, I nearly killed you and could do it again!" "Ha ha, true that. I'm watching my back now." And I loved the reveal at the end, thus cleverly subverting the "I'm a powerless secretary in love with a man I can never have" nonsense trope.
~M. My new policy for parlimentary hearings is that anyone who quotes Tennyson wins by automatic coolness default. Also, I loved how matter of fact she was. This movie's M was the ultimate pragmatist, someone who doesn't worry about the ends because she's too busy juggling the means as best she can. And given who she is and what she's doing, it only shows more clearly how good she is at what she does, because she's willing to make the tough calls that no one else will. Her death scene was sad, but somewhat inevitable. I figured, when we saw how many rent-a-thugs Silva had amassed, that someone was going to die. Since it couldn't be Old Man Kincaid (we've only just met him, it wouldn't matter that as much as a major character), and it obviously couldn't be Bond, it had to be her, and the more I think about it, the more it makes sadly perfect sense. M represents an old school approach to spying (as the British government reps said SO MANY TIMES THAT I WAS LIKE, IF I HEAR ONCE MORE ABOUT HOW OLD SCHOOL MI-6 IS, I WILL FIND THE SCREENWRITER AND DO SOMETHING NASTY) and for the movies to keep evolving, we need to have a shift to new school paradigm of tech crime coupled with new-school spy stuff, and a new character heading MI-6 is the only way to go.
~Death by komodo dragon! OK, actually, I feel a little sorry for that rent-a-thug, but the moment those lizards appeared on screen, I thought, "someone will die by lizard!" It was very old-fashioned Bond, without getting too much onto the Austin Powers (sharks with frikkin' laser beams attached to their heads!) side of the equation. Other cool Bond shout-outs, like the car and the martini, of course, helped.
~The color scheme on the floating casino in Macau was so preeeettttyyyyy.
~Daniel Craig in a tux=ALWAYS GOOD.
~The opening sequence was my favorite of the modern Bond movies. Adele is such an amazing singer, and I loved that the images in this one were more like a bizarre nightmare than previous openings. I also like that the naked ladies (and their naked lady parts) weren't the focal point of the sequence. It was creepy without being over-the-top, and I liked how all the images came back into the story later, especially the stag, which was a very nice surprise.
~Q! So ruffled and adorkable. I think Ben Whishaw is one of the few actors who can pull off scientific genius in a believable way. I could totally see him as a computer programming genius, complete with the ego that goes with that.
~Javier Bardem's acting job was amazing, and when he pulled out the false teeth, I made a face like 0____o;;
~When Bond used that digger was a weapon, climbed onto the train car he'd just pulled in half, and adjusted his cuff links, I nearly died. James Bond: made of awesome!
Bads:
~I did not like the script's treatment of Severine, who personified damsel-in-distress syndrome, and whose death was utterly pointless, only to show just how evil and twisted Silva was. I mean, there are other ways to show that without just killing her for no apparent reason. (Also, what the hell was that scene in the boat where Bond slips into the shower with her? Had he phoned ahead? How did she know it was him? And how did she not react with surprise that he was there at all?) David and I also thought that it would have been nice to see Silva *doing* some of the computer stuff he was supposed to be so good at, because he didn't make very smart choices later on, and I had trouble thinking of him as some kind of criminal mastermind. His rent-a-thugs, in particular, were especially dumb. I guess the script was supposed to show that he was so unhinged he made simple mistakes?
~Speaking of the rent-a-thugs, man, were their tactics terrible! Even I, with no military experience, know that you don't assault a castle like that!
WTFs:
~The drinking contest. So if you tilt your hand too fast, the scorpion stings you? Or falls in your drink? I'm so confused.
~Product placement. I couldn't decide if the VW Beetles were there on purpose or not. Range Rover, of course, on purpose, as was the Omega watch, and the much-vaunted Heineken, which didn't end up bothering me as much as I thought it would. But the Vaio computers... not so great, especially for an intelligence analyst (at least, in Yebisu's estimation.)
tl;dr version: I really enjoyed it, despite its shortcomings. It's nice to see a Bond movie that knows when to take a cue from the Bourne films, but keeps the inherent Bond-ness to the whole affair intact.
Skyfall: A LOT of spoilers are up ahead... I'm not kidding! Proceed at your own peril if you've not seen the movie.
Goods:
~Eve Moneypenny. I loved how cool and collected she was, no matter what was happening. I loved how she and James had this banter going of "Ha ha, I nearly killed you and could do it again!" "Ha ha, true that. I'm watching my back now." And I loved the reveal at the end, thus cleverly subverting the "I'm a powerless secretary in love with a man I can never have" nonsense trope.
~M. My new policy for parlimentary hearings is that anyone who quotes Tennyson wins by automatic coolness default. Also, I loved how matter of fact she was. This movie's M was the ultimate pragmatist, someone who doesn't worry about the ends because she's too busy juggling the means as best she can. And given who she is and what she's doing, it only shows more clearly how good she is at what she does, because she's willing to make the tough calls that no one else will. Her death scene was sad, but somewhat inevitable. I figured, when we saw how many rent-a-thugs Silva had amassed, that someone was going to die. Since it couldn't be Old Man Kincaid (we've only just met him, it wouldn't matter that as much as a major character), and it obviously couldn't be Bond, it had to be her, and the more I think about it, the more it makes sadly perfect sense. M represents an old school approach to spying (as the British government reps said SO MANY TIMES THAT I WAS LIKE, IF I HEAR ONCE MORE ABOUT HOW OLD SCHOOL MI-6 IS, I WILL FIND THE SCREENWRITER AND DO SOMETHING NASTY) and for the movies to keep evolving, we need to have a shift to new school paradigm of tech crime coupled with new-school spy stuff, and a new character heading MI-6 is the only way to go.
~Death by komodo dragon! OK, actually, I feel a little sorry for that rent-a-thug, but the moment those lizards appeared on screen, I thought, "someone will die by lizard!" It was very old-fashioned Bond, without getting too much onto the Austin Powers (sharks with frikkin' laser beams attached to their heads!) side of the equation. Other cool Bond shout-outs, like the car and the martini, of course, helped.
~The color scheme on the floating casino in Macau was so preeeettttyyyyy.
~Daniel Craig in a tux=ALWAYS GOOD.
~The opening sequence was my favorite of the modern Bond movies. Adele is such an amazing singer, and I loved that the images in this one were more like a bizarre nightmare than previous openings. I also like that the naked ladies (and their naked lady parts) weren't the focal point of the sequence. It was creepy without being over-the-top, and I liked how all the images came back into the story later, especially the stag, which was a very nice surprise.
~Q! So ruffled and adorkable. I think Ben Whishaw is one of the few actors who can pull off scientific genius in a believable way. I could totally see him as a computer programming genius, complete with the ego that goes with that.
~Javier Bardem's acting job was amazing, and when he pulled out the false teeth, I made a face like 0____o;;
~When Bond used that digger was a weapon, climbed onto the train car he'd just pulled in half, and adjusted his cuff links, I nearly died. James Bond: made of awesome!
Bads:
~I did not like the script's treatment of Severine, who personified damsel-in-distress syndrome, and whose death was utterly pointless, only to show just how evil and twisted Silva was. I mean, there are other ways to show that without just killing her for no apparent reason. (Also, what the hell was that scene in the boat where Bond slips into the shower with her? Had he phoned ahead? How did she know it was him? And how did she not react with surprise that he was there at all?) David and I also thought that it would have been nice to see Silva *doing* some of the computer stuff he was supposed to be so good at, because he didn't make very smart choices later on, and I had trouble thinking of him as some kind of criminal mastermind. His rent-a-thugs, in particular, were especially dumb. I guess the script was supposed to show that he was so unhinged he made simple mistakes?
~Speaking of the rent-a-thugs, man, were their tactics terrible! Even I, with no military experience, know that you don't assault a castle like that!
WTFs:
~The drinking contest. So if you tilt your hand too fast, the scorpion stings you? Or falls in your drink? I'm so confused.
~Product placement. I couldn't decide if the VW Beetles were there on purpose or not. Range Rover, of course, on purpose, as was the Omega watch, and the much-vaunted Heineken, which didn't end up bothering me as much as I thought it would. But the Vaio computers... not so great, especially for an intelligence analyst (at least, in Yebisu's estimation.)
tl;dr version: I really enjoyed it, despite its shortcomings. It's nice to see a Bond movie that knows when to take a cue from the Bourne films, but keeps the inherent Bond-ness to the whole affair intact.
