The Man Cave scene: I'm going to start with one scene in the movie that I thought was freaking awesome. At one point in the movie the bad guys start breaking into the main characters house. Ethan Hawke goes down to his Man Cave, a collection of pinball games, pool tables, and various other Man things. So Ethan goes down into his Man Cave and fights three guys in Strangers masks with the contents of his Man Cave. This scene is amazingly stupid, doesn't flow with the tone of the rest of the film as its more focused on action. But this scene rocks. It is amazingly fun to just watch Ethan Hawke kill yuppies with a pinball machine, it just is.
Terrible character stupidity: One of the worst problems a horror movie can have is to have its characters make bad decisions. If your character acts stupid then it takes your audience out of the film and makes them less likely to be scared by it. This is one of the problems that absolutely destroys The Purge. Ethan Hawke has numerous chances to try and reason with the crazed maniacs outside, and try to get more time to give them what they want, and he never does. The villains also do this quite frequently, they never seem to do very thorough checks of the house to make sure that no one is still lurking about, and it gets them killed, a lot.
The Directing: Okay to once again stem the flow of hatred I do like the direction here. Shots during the scenes of characters wandering through the house are tight on the characters. It gives a sense of claustrophobia to the audience, as it restricts their field of vision down to something similar to the characters themselves. This would make the film very scary, even during jump scares if it weren't for one tiny little problem.
Predictability: This is one of the most predictable horror films ever made. Now just because an audience guesses that certain items in the background are going to be important later doesn't automatically become a knock on your film. What you are supposed to do in that situation is upend the audiences expectations, and use the item in a more interesting way. Once in the entire film does this happen, only once. In regards to one of the numerous foreshadowed items during the films overly winking first act, only one. Everything else plays out exactly as you would expect, right down to the final villains for the films "subversive" climax. But considering the films premise I think that the thing that pisses me off more is...
Complete lack of ambiguity: This is a film with a bunch of potential. The idea that once a year all crime is legal for 12 hours, allows for a number of different stories. The problem is that the movie doesn't have the balls to go to the dark places that a premise like this allows. The villains, even the final ones, are completely irredeemable monsters. They treat the homeless veteran that they are pursuing as nothing but a "swine" in their words. This makes it perfectly okay for you to root for Ethan Hawke to kill them. Hawke sells security for people during The Purge, so he's "part of the problem" and needs to be taught the error of his ways. The whole film is littered with pieces of 1% revenge material, especially in the films ending, which I won't spoil, which takes this to the only moments that feel like they live up to the premises promise.
This is the true killing blow for The Purge, how naively it perceives its own world. The overly predictable screenplay, the obnoxiously stupid characters, the constant foreshadowing in the prelude, much of it could be forgiven if the movie explored some of the themes that it brings up. The potential for economic stagnation in a world that kills off poorer and noncontributing members to society. The political motivations, or even party, of The New Founding Fathers. The parts of the country where the reverse to what we see in the film would be true. Places where the poor would rise up against the richer, or at least attempt to. The implications that The New Founding Fathers are the ones keeping The Purge around. What would happen if they were voted out? Are there now Pro-Purge and Non-Purge parties, again which ones? The film answers none of these questions, because it only sees things in black and white, and that is its real problem.
Conclusion: I wanted to like The Purge. It has an amazing premise that I want to see another movie use properly. It has some really fun moments, and some pretty good acting. It shows promise in certain things, like not focusing in on the homeless mans dog tags to try and evoke sympathy. But in the end the movie is too stupid to live up to its own potential.
2/5
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Sunday, June 2, 2013
After Earth: RAIGE against the Machine
Pointless Backstory: One thing that a lot of amateur filmmakers, and it really sucks to throw that label on the director of The Sixth Sense, get wrong is over thinking aspects of their movie. Take for example the Ursa. In After Earth the Ursa essentially acts as the final boss, its a big monster that hunts by sensing fear. So what is the films explanation for them? They are the foot soldiers of an alien race designed to kill us. Setting aside the fact that these things meant to kill us only showcase any kind of intelligence when the plot calls for it, and other times are as dumb as a rock, (even if it can no longer sense him, it should be pawing around his last known location, not rocks several feet away!) Why can they only sense fear? The movie states that they were bred to kill us, so why are these the final product? Why can they only smell this one pheromone? When Kitai meets up with the Ursa he hasn't bathed in several days, shouldn't that be enough?
But this all ties back to the biggest question, why the weapon of an alien race? The aliens don't show up for the entire movie, and they really don't seem to be a threat, just the Ursas. So why couldn't the Ursa just be a native species to Nova Prime, that the humans only ran into once they had settled and colonized a section of the planet already and it would be too inconvenient to move. You can still use the same reasoning for why its on the ship, you can still use the stupid "ghosting" stuff, but you don't mention things in the first act that aren't important to the rest of the story.
Lackluster Aesthetic: At first I was going to put the awful direction down for this slot, but then I really thought about how generic the sets and creature design was. The sets are just generic greenery, generic chasm, generic waterfall location, Scotland, and volcano. There really isn't anything new or interesting in the way that Earth has evolved without us that makes it stand out. Or should I say that none of the new evolutions make any sense. Why, if the planet goes glacial every night, is there any plant life? How did plants evolve to survive this sudden temperature drop, the first two or so times it happened they should have all died. Why are birds and animals just bigger now? Evolution doesn't just add shit for no reason, it adapts creatures to a certain environment. If it did work that way then the Ass-Blasters from Tremors 3 wouldn't be stupid now would they?
Laughable Dialogue: One of the difficult aspects of a story like this, that focuses around the relationship between characters, is believable dialogue. You have to make it seem natural when the characters interact, or you suck the audience out of the experience. This is a problem that has constantly plagued late-period M. Night. The Happening became a cult-classic for its horrendous dialogue, and the expository nature of 99% of the cast of The Last Airbender was even more distracting than the dodgy effects. So I completely understand if people don't believe me when I say that After Earth has worse dialogue than either of them. Characters explain everything that they do, and all of the restrictions and effects of the incredibly convenient technology. But after that then all bets are off. One part in particular where Cypher Raige, yes that is Will Smith's character's name, asks his son to come back, is atrociously written. I swear its one of those moments where the actors seemed to skip a page in the script. The problem is that the dialogue isn't as funny-bad as it was in The Happening, largely because of...
Atrocious Acting: Again this is a problem that late-period M. Night has in every one of his movies. But this is part of what led The Happening to be so funny, the terribly over-the-top acting of Marky Mark just exacerbated the bad writing. On the other hand the terrible acting in Airbender was more stiff and unnatural, causing the films bad dialogue to just be terrible. This is one of those cases, where the absolute worst aspects of Shyamalan's screenplays come to the forefront. His late-period work is almost like the earlier work of Tarsem, where the style overruns the substance and the filmmaker seems to think that the audience is a stupid child who needs to be woken up with a loud noise every once and a while, and won't understand the "deepness" of your script.
Will Smith is playing things flat, completely the opposite of his normal persona. This seems like a stylistic choice to allow his kid a chance to shine, but it actually makes things more distracting. It actually makes him kind of miscast, Will Smith isn't a growling, raspy, military captain, he just isn't. Jaden was good in the remake Karate Kid, I say that to karmatically justify me calling him an untalented whelp in this movie. He seems to think that serious people pout constantly, which is pretty much his facial expression for the entire movie. He's unable to convey the wonder that the director seems to take in the changed Earth, instead he seems confused and half-asleep. And while this couldn't all be forgiven, some of it could be except for...
It's Boring: One of the worst things that you can say about a Fantasy movie or a Science Fiction movie is that it is boring. But that is the worst thing about this film, it is boring. This is partly because the film's sets are dull and uninspired as mentioned above, meaning that you don't have anything cool to look at. The two leads, who are the only actors in the movie for the entire second act, are being overly-serious and boring as tar. And it is exacerbated by the complete lack of transition shots of any kind. Instead when one scene ends the other just starts. This leads to several jarring shifts in location and several jarring shifts in time. In one moment Kitai could have just begun his journey, in the next scene, without any shots in-between, it is now nightfall and he has to find a checkpoint. Coupled with a lame final action scene, and boring half-resolution, and the fact that the movie just kind of stops, makes this the most boring movie I have seen all year.
Conclusion: I didn't think that I would see a film worse than Star Trek Into Darkness so soon. Barely two weeks have passed, and already its seat as one of the worst movies of the year has been overtaken. I wish that I could say that this was the nadir of filmmaking this year, or even this summer, but with Hangover III behind us and Despicable Me 2 ahead, I don't think that statement is completely true... yet.
0/5
But this all ties back to the biggest question, why the weapon of an alien race? The aliens don't show up for the entire movie, and they really don't seem to be a threat, just the Ursas. So why couldn't the Ursa just be a native species to Nova Prime, that the humans only ran into once they had settled and colonized a section of the planet already and it would be too inconvenient to move. You can still use the same reasoning for why its on the ship, you can still use the stupid "ghosting" stuff, but you don't mention things in the first act that aren't important to the rest of the story.
Lackluster Aesthetic: At first I was going to put the awful direction down for this slot, but then I really thought about how generic the sets and creature design was. The sets are just generic greenery, generic chasm, generic waterfall location, Scotland, and volcano. There really isn't anything new or interesting in the way that Earth has evolved without us that makes it stand out. Or should I say that none of the new evolutions make any sense. Why, if the planet goes glacial every night, is there any plant life? How did plants evolve to survive this sudden temperature drop, the first two or so times it happened they should have all died. Why are birds and animals just bigger now? Evolution doesn't just add shit for no reason, it adapts creatures to a certain environment. If it did work that way then the Ass-Blasters from Tremors 3 wouldn't be stupid now would they?
Laughable Dialogue: One of the difficult aspects of a story like this, that focuses around the relationship between characters, is believable dialogue. You have to make it seem natural when the characters interact, or you suck the audience out of the experience. This is a problem that has constantly plagued late-period M. Night. The Happening became a cult-classic for its horrendous dialogue, and the expository nature of 99% of the cast of The Last Airbender was even more distracting than the dodgy effects. So I completely understand if people don't believe me when I say that After Earth has worse dialogue than either of them. Characters explain everything that they do, and all of the restrictions and effects of the incredibly convenient technology. But after that then all bets are off. One part in particular where Cypher Raige, yes that is Will Smith's character's name, asks his son to come back, is atrociously written. I swear its one of those moments where the actors seemed to skip a page in the script. The problem is that the dialogue isn't as funny-bad as it was in The Happening, largely because of...
Atrocious Acting: Again this is a problem that late-period M. Night has in every one of his movies. But this is part of what led The Happening to be so funny, the terribly over-the-top acting of Marky Mark just exacerbated the bad writing. On the other hand the terrible acting in Airbender was more stiff and unnatural, causing the films bad dialogue to just be terrible. This is one of those cases, where the absolute worst aspects of Shyamalan's screenplays come to the forefront. His late-period work is almost like the earlier work of Tarsem, where the style overruns the substance and the filmmaker seems to think that the audience is a stupid child who needs to be woken up with a loud noise every once and a while, and won't understand the "deepness" of your script.
Will Smith is playing things flat, completely the opposite of his normal persona. This seems like a stylistic choice to allow his kid a chance to shine, but it actually makes things more distracting. It actually makes him kind of miscast, Will Smith isn't a growling, raspy, military captain, he just isn't. Jaden was good in the remake Karate Kid, I say that to karmatically justify me calling him an untalented whelp in this movie. He seems to think that serious people pout constantly, which is pretty much his facial expression for the entire movie. He's unable to convey the wonder that the director seems to take in the changed Earth, instead he seems confused and half-asleep. And while this couldn't all be forgiven, some of it could be except for...
It's Boring: One of the worst things that you can say about a Fantasy movie or a Science Fiction movie is that it is boring. But that is the worst thing about this film, it is boring. This is partly because the film's sets are dull and uninspired as mentioned above, meaning that you don't have anything cool to look at. The two leads, who are the only actors in the movie for the entire second act, are being overly-serious and boring as tar. And it is exacerbated by the complete lack of transition shots of any kind. Instead when one scene ends the other just starts. This leads to several jarring shifts in location and several jarring shifts in time. In one moment Kitai could have just begun his journey, in the next scene, without any shots in-between, it is now nightfall and he has to find a checkpoint. Coupled with a lame final action scene, and boring half-resolution, and the fact that the movie just kind of stops, makes this the most boring movie I have seen all year.
Conclusion: I didn't think that I would see a film worse than Star Trek Into Darkness so soon. Barely two weeks have passed, and already its seat as one of the worst movies of the year has been overtaken. I wish that I could say that this was the nadir of filmmaking this year, or even this summer, but with Hangover III behind us and Despicable Me 2 ahead, I don't think that statement is completely true... yet.
0/5
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