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IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie

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There is a difference, in my mind, between a request and a challenge. A request is somebody asking an artist to do something for a personal reason – they have a particular subject they want exalted, or a pet peeve they’re dying to see run into the ground. A challenge, on the other hand, is a sharing of misery. When I did my review of Rise: Blood Hunter, that was a request. What happened last night was the result of a challenge, issued during the Classholes Anonymous podcast a couple weeks ago. If you missed it, go click the ad in the sidebar of my blog. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

The gauntlet was clearly thrown. And I, like a moron, took it up, apparently just to repeatedly punch myself in the face.

I should have taken Black Eagle’s advice to find the abridged version. Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie doesn’t even get off to a good start. The opening narration, about an ancient ‘shadow game’ between Anubis, god of the underworld, and some nameless pharoah is redundant, dry and utter nonsense. “Not even eternity lasts forever.” Um, yes, it does. That’s the definition of eternity. Oh, and isn’t it a great sign when a kid’s movie begins with a scene of people being horribly buried alive?

Anyway, we cut to this little pipsqueak Yugi trying to solve this unsolvable Millenium Puzzle, an ancient Egyptian artifact that apparently hangs around your neck despite the fact it looks like it weight about five hundred pounds. When he solves it, he apparently becomes or is inhabited by the soul of the pharoah. I’m not entirely sure what the deal is, there. I have the feeling that if I’d suffered through the first few seasons of the horribly dubbed TV series I might have more of a clue, but I only have information from the movie to go on. And the movie doesn’t say shit about how this transformation of his actually works. Also, whenever the pharoah takes over Yugi’s body, he suddenly transforms from a shrimpy little kid into a tall young man with a much deeper voice and angrier hair. And nobody comments on the strangeness of this whatsoever.

The world has been taken over by this obsession with a collectible card game called Duel Monsters. It’s kind of like Magic: The Gathering, except that this game suffers from a problem of having its brain missing. Every single person who plays it doesn’t just carry a deck with them, they wear this retarded-looking gizmo on their arm. At all times. Now, if this were Hell’s Kitchen and these kids were carrying switchblades, I’d understand that. It’s a rough neighborhood. But, come on, you don’t have bags to carry this crap in? Are you that paranoid that a duel is going to break out at any moment? And while we’re on the subject of the gizmos, which are unnamed, if they project holographic images of the cards’ monsters and spells, the only way the images could do physical damage to the players – which apparently they do, judging by Yugi’s vocalizations when he is, among other things, brutally backstabbed (in a kid’s movie!) – is if they have the old Star Trek problem of the safeties being disabled. Or not having safties. What a great little toy for kids, huh? A card game where you can summon monsters to savagely beat your friends half to death during lunch hour. The PTA’s going to love it.

“Prepare to duel! FOR YOUR LUNCH MONEY!”

So the opening of the film and the premise for its battles are utter bullshit. The battles themselves should look cool at least, right? WRONG. Not only do the creatures in these duels look lackluster and almost entirely interchangable, as well as having needlessly complicated and similar names, the duelists make it a point to stop in the middle of their duels to explain what the card is and what it does. And this happens with every card. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Watching people play a CCG is boring enough as it is, but when this sort of crap is done every time a new card is played, complete with overly dramatic gestures and voice acting that is absolutely gut-wrenching in its amateur dramatics elocution, I have to believe the only adolescent audience really chomping at the bit to see this in theaters rode the short bus to school. Back when they had short buses.

When we’re not being thrown against the walls of our intelligence by this aggressive assault of stupid, the movie dumps exposition on the screen through the mouths of its characters with such utter blandness that I found myself almost wishing to be back in the middle of a duel. Not only is the exposition stupid, it contains perhaps the worst Egyptology lesson ever. Now, it’s not necessarily a bad thing to have super-powerful baddies resolving their conflicts through mundane games. Puzzle Quest proves that. But I couldn’t help but feel sorry for poor Anubis. The god of the afterlife who judged the souls of the dead, to my recollection, never set a plot in motion to bring about the utter destruction of the world. And I know this is probably a case of the dub making an already flimsy premise even more stupid, but if those cards Yugi has represent Egyptian gods, I’d love to find the part in the Book fo the Dead that refers to Slifer the Sky Dragon.

So apparently Egyptian gods actually look like this.

Or… like this. I guess.

So far we’ve got a shitty plot, shitty battles, shitty animation and shitty mythology. Let’s see if we can find anything to even partially redeem this. At one point, the character of Kaiba climbs into a vehicle that I can only describe as a robot dragon. I have no idea where Kaiba got the resources to put this thing together, but it looks pretty badass. At first. Then the music comes in. Remember some of the incidental music from Transformers: The Movie? And I’m talking about the 80’s version, here, not Michael Bay’s somewhat bland explosionfest. The incidental songs were typical 80’s fare, but at least they were tolerable to listen to. This little song that plays while Kaiba flies up to see the fabulous Max Pegasus sounds like it was banged out by garage-dwelling wannabes that are trying way too hard to be Nickleback. If their aspirations begin and end with wanting to emulate the most unpleasant form of what can only tentatively be considered rock music, mission accomplished, I guess.

And while we’re on the subject of Kaiba, how the hell can he afford to build a highly complicated dome where he can test his deck against a simulations of Yugi’s? I know, I know, seasons of television in two countries, dubs suck compared to subs, online wikis, slashfics, derpy derpy doo. I am watching a movie, here, and am judging the movie based solely on what it provides its audience in terms of explanations and clarifications, i.e. none. Like Yugi’s inexplicable dual souls or the ways the holograms beat the crap out of the players, Kaiba’s fortune and resources go unexplained. We’re left with a hell of a lot more questions than answers. Why is Kaiba’s coat always billowing? If Kaiba’s really this interested in beating Yugi, why isn’t he doing it in a tournament setting where Yugi can be publically humiliated, instead of this private setting where he can cheat as much as he wants since there’s no oversight? And if Kaiba did win, who’d believe him? Couldn’t he at least have televised the event? Is anyone going to bother explaining the rules of this brain-damaged game? Why doesn’t Yugi’s grandfather have the hairstyle of an adult? And if this is a kid’s movie, what’s with all the fan service?

“Mommy? Why do my pants feel so tight?”

Just when you think it can’t get any worse, the plot goes from nearly non-existent to completely incomprehensible. In the final act, Yugi’s soul is sucked into this magical MacGuffin and forced to navigate an MC Escher painting. While the pharoah in Yugi’s much more adult body gets its ass kicked by Kaiba’s dickish cheating and topdecking, Yugi and his pals have to fight mummies. Apparently they’re not going to survive until the girl among them jumps in, saying that as long as they’re together, they can prevail. As if a lesson on the Power of Friendship wasn’t enough, they apparently drew a symbol while their hands were joined at some point in time before the movie that gives them super-powers. A reference to something incidental from the television series is, in a film, still a deus ex machina, and still sucks.

So the big climax happens when Anubis manages to manifest himself as a retarded-looking pro wrestler guy with super-powerful monsters and the ability to MAKE THE MONSTERS REAL! Wait. If the monsters weren’t real before, why did Yugi act like he was getting stabbed for real when he got stabbed by that creepy-ass clown? Anyway, an ass-pull happens, Anubis is destroyed or banished or sent to his room or whatever. Point is, the movie ended. And all of those questions I brought up? Never answered. Not a single one.

I know, Yugi. I know. It hurts me too.

Watching Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie is an experience in cinematic torture. It’s bland, stupid, ill-conceieved and shamelessly pandering all at the same time. American children frothing at the mouth for the next obsessive collection of things on which their parents will spend money just to shut them up might have been entertained. But I’m more and more of the opinion that American children, by and large, have yet to unlock their higher brain functions. Maybe the school system is holding them back, maybe they’re eating too much fast food, maybe there’s too much exposure to things like Twilight and Halo and Justin Beiber, but it’s a moot point. I’m not here to discuss those matters, I’m here to review a movie. And this movie sucks. It’s atrocious. It was shat out by a studio looking milk more dollars out of impressionable youths who will stampede to the stores to pick up the awesome cards they saw on-screen. Here’s where I pick up my walking stick and shake it at these bunch of brain-dead drooling perpetual disappointments.

Back in MY day, when Magic: the Gathering was the only card game in town, we didn’t need a TV series or a shitty movie to get us to buy the cards. You know why? That game is good. There’s balance (more or less), clear rules (for the most part), fantastic card art (until anything potentially satanic gets edited out)… okay, it’s not a great game, but my point is people picked up the game, played it, and bought more cards to play more on the merits of the game itself. The card game born out of Yu-Gi-Oh is, as far as I can tell, every bit a product of the show and, if this film is any indication, it’s completely and utterly worthless. Do not go anywhere near this title. The series, the movie, the game, the other merchandise which includes those retarded things you wear on your arm because tables just aren’t cool enough – it’s all designed to make you stupid. It feeds on your intelligence. Avoid it at all costs. My deepest hope is that, since little to nothing has been said or heard about this franchise for years, it’s finally on its way to the same yawning abyss that has claimed Beyblades and those absolutely craptastic Go-Bots.

As for my “friends” Kona Kona and Chan… well, there’s a reason they put friendly fire in Alien Swarm, ya bastards.

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Kick-Ass

August 6, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 1 Comment

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A lot of production companies, investors and even film-makers like to assume that we, as a movie-going audience, are stupid. They think we can’t handle movies with deep characters, complex plots or themes that transcend a work and try to tell us something about ourselves. So more often than not, a movie about giant fighting robots or girls with guy trouble or unlikely partners solving crimes tend to be watered down in such a way that they’re palatable to the blandest, lowest common denominator of palate out there. Thankfully, some other projects aren’t afraid to take a chance on something smart, to take conventions we as an audience might take for granted and flip things around just to see what happens. Kick-Ass falls into the latter category, not only in that it adapts one of those comic books that looks at super-heroes from a completely different perspective as most mainstream IPs, but also in that this adaptation differs quite a bit from the book. I wouldn’t know, since I haven’t read the books myself, so I’ll be cribbing notes from critics far better (or at least better known) than myself.

Dr. Punchy Wright can hunt me down later and break my face if it really becomes an issue.

Taking cues from the Spider-Man movies back when they were still good, Kick-Ass introduces us to a teenage high school loser who is both a social outcast and an unashamed nerd. He does well enough in school to not be in the slacker crowd, he certainly isn’t a jock, he’s practically invisible to girls (which he claims is his “only real superpower”) and among his friends, to paraphrase his own words, he’s not the funny one. And yet, it’s living this kind of mediocre existence that leads him to buy a dopey-looking wetsuit, pick up a baton and start fighting crime. Or trying to. Mostly, he gets the crap beaten out of him. However, somebody with a camera phone tosses his exploits at the Internet, and WHAM, he’s a star. He’s a super-hero. And he’s getting pulled bodily into an escalating confrontation between a sadistic mob boss who’s also a family man, and a devoted father/endearing daughter team who are also sadistic costumed vigilantes.

Kick-Ass, as a comic, seems to be in the same vein as Watchmen or Wanted, taking a more cynical view of the world of super-heroism and trying to inject a dose of realism or humanity into the characters involved. Of the three, Watchmen weathered the transition to the screen the most intact, with its themes and nuances preserved in a nearly immaculate fashion. It’s a haunting commentary on the human condition couched in the deconstruction of super-heroes in general. Wanted was changed almost entirely from its comic book roots, which is a shame because a lot of the fun in that work comes from the way its protagonists behave given that they have super powers but none of the constraints of being ‘heroes’. Read the book if you want to know what I’m talking about, but what Wanted got right was the theme of doing something with your life that gets you out of the mundane things that you know in your mind are slowly killing you, but you do them anyway because it’s easier to get paid for that crap than it is to try something new and potentially dangerous. Kick-Ass also changes, ejecting as it does a lot of the cynicism from the printed page and opting for a more balanced moralistic stance. Sure, some of the stuff on screen is dark and a jab is taken at the audience’s expectations once or twice, but on the whole, part of what makes the experience so good is that it’s more interested in having fun than pointing out how pathetic you are.

As a character, Kick-Ass is aware of how pathetic he is but he doesn’t let that stop him. He’s determined to at least try to make a difference, and it leads to him being extremely endearing and a true underdog of a hero. I think that some people might overlook Aaron Johnson’s work entirely but I can’t do that in good conscience. This is a solid leading role and as much as the movie is almost stolen entirely from his character, Johnson still comes through on the other side with a performance that is one of the best I’ve seen in a movie like this since the first two Spider-Man films.

In fact, Kick-Ass is, in terms of being endearing and realistic, almost a better Spider-Man than Spider-Man was. This film made me miss those early days of Tobey Maguire getting to know his powers and trying like hell to win Mary Jane’s heart. Both his Spider-Man and Aaron Johnson’s Kick-Ass have as their core power, not radioactive webbing or gamma rays or a magical MacGuffin, but real heart and a never-say-die attitude. If Kick-Ass as a film were a more cynical work, the optimism that fuels the teenage hero would have him dead in the 89th minute, the camera pulling back from his broken and lifeless body before cutting to black as some ironically upbeat music plays.

The film isn’t without some delicious soundtrack dissonance, however, and when it comes to that sort of thing, I will be hard-pressed to name a better example than Hit-Girl going to town on bad guys with bladed weapons to the music of the Banana Splits. Chloe Moretz completely owns both this role and pretty much any time she’s on screen. She’s the Comedian from Watchmen only 11 years old and wearing pig-tails: completely aware of how damn depraved her actions are but not giving a shit because she’s slaying bad guys. She knows that what she does shocks onlookers and will leave the cops who show up at the scene speechless, and that’s the whole point. If this is what she does to folks who break the law, what chance have you got? Better put down the cocaine and turn yourself in before you end up with a balisong in the throat, boss.

A lot of critics cried out in dismay at the very notion of this little girl perpetuating and, even worse, being the target of this level of high-energy, unabashed and completely bone-crunching violence. They seem to think that sick thrills or cheap laughs would be derived from the end result. It’s like the outcry that emerged when BioWare advertised Mass Effect included sex: completely uninformed and totally wrong. No, Hit-Girl’s exploits are not played for laughs. The way this girl has been brought up is entirely backwards. She knows it, her father knows it, and the audience knows it, too. However, she makes the most of what she’s got, because railing against her father’s vendetta is only going to make things worse. She wants her father to be happy, and the most expedient way to do that is to cut a bloody swath through the people who made his life miserable. Hit-Girl is a smart, dedicated and deep down very compassionate character, even if she is violent, cruel, foul-mouthed and maybe a little cracked. She’s got more complexity than most female characters in films today, and I for one am glad that the makers of Kick-Ass didn’t pull a single punch when it came to putting her through her paces.

Speaking of Hit-Girl’s upbringing, another strong performance in Kick-Ass is Nicholas Cage as Big Daddy. His costume, performance and methodology are clearly a send-up of Batman, but his character is unconstrained by Batman’s one rule of not killing his opponents. If Batman did ever eschew that rule, it would look a lot like this. As a result, Big Daddy might be one of the best depictions of Batman ever, if that makes any sense. Cage does some things with the character that are at once fantastic and downright strange, and it’s a testament to his capabilities as an actor that are sometimes undercut by a bland concept or bad screenwriting, like National Treasure, Next or Ghost Rider. In fact, I’m going to say this right now, and I don’t care who knows it: I like Nicholas Cage. I think he’s talented and I enjoy watching him on-screen, even if I’m laughing at his ass. Half the crap he does isn’t necessarily his fault, and even when he’s off, he’s still memorable. I like him. There. I said it.

In terms of the rest of the production, Christopher Mintz-Plasse may surprise some of the fans of McLovin in his turn as a fellow comic-book fan donning a costume and calling himself Red Mist. It’s part of a plot that works very well and hums along without losing the audience, bolstered by the musical choices in both soundtrack and score. The film isn’t perfect, as the low budget shows in places and sometimes the film seems to have a bit of filler here and there, but it never gets in the way of the movie being fun. I get the feeling that a lot of the look and feel of the movie comes right out of the comics, and as much as the blacker portions of the story and theme have been left behind, the result still manages to take a jab at us as the audience as much as it puts its characters through the wringer. Like the changes made to Watchmen, my suspicion is that Matthew Vaughn and company kept to the spirit of the work while changing things up a bit to make the story a bit more suited for the silver screen.

Regardless of all of that, Kick-Ass kicks ass. Provided you’re a fan of super-heroes and not put off by the sort of hyper-realized violence that would be right at home in a Sam Peckinpah or Paul Verhoven flick, it belongs on your Netflix queue if not your DVD shelf. It’s a brutal, no-holds-barred, steel-toed-boot-to-the-crotch-while-laughing-all-the-while action comedy that has no fear, no hesitation and no limits. It’s a roller coaster through a demented carnival of bright costumes and gushing blood that occasionally smacks you in the face with a water balloon with profanity scribbled all over it in Sharpie.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Um… I don’t get it.

August 5, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 2 Comments

Inception Poster, courtesy Screen Junkies

Brace yourselves.

There’s something I don’t get regarding Inception.

I was able to follow the plot. I understood the characters and their motivations (if most of them are indeed real, which is a matter of some debate). I even followed the logic and rules of dreams as explained within the movie.

I don’t get why people think it’s so damn confusing.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Christopher Nolan’s films are confusing. I think that’s the wrong word to use. I’d be tempted to call them complex, instead. I think the confusion some people are experiencing is due to Inception being an entirely different animal than a lot of the stuff that ends up in cinemas. There’s a big difference between a movie like Inception and something like Revenge of the Fallen. Let me see if I can illustrate.

The basis for pretty much any of the Transformers boils down to “Dude! Remember that really good cartoon from the 80s with all of those toys that made boatloads of cash? Let’s do that, only live-action! And 3-D!!” Other than that, there isn’t a whole of thought involved. Most of the lean tissue burned to bring you the adventures of Shia LeBouf and Megan Fox is in rendering the Transformers themselves, rather than giving them something interesting to do or even noticing that most of the cartoons that I grew up with had little to nothing to do with the humans. It was all about the giant robots beating each other up. While you do have that in RotF, it’s shot so poorly with such loud sound effects and obnoxious humans as window dressing, turning what could have been epic throwdowns into a muddled mess. A little thought would have gone a long way.

Inception is, to paraphrase MovieBob, the notion of Freddy Krueger being James Bond. Considering dreams, and dreams within dreams to boot, are the basis for the film’s action and plot, a lot of thought is put into their construction, the characters’ interaction with them as an environment, rules for getting into and out of various dream states and myriad ways in which things can go horribly, horribly wrong. On top of this already complex construction, we have the character of Cobb, his motivations and all of his baggage. It’s all carefully woven together, and the end result is shot and cut in a way that’s never confusing in and of itself. You don’t need trick photography and glitzy CGI when the story, characters and themes are this deep and thought-provoking.

See the difference? Transformers is pretty mindless entertainment, as airy and essentially empty as the popcorn the audience is shoving into their mouths. Now, I don’t mind switching my brain off from time to time. I think it’s necessary, as the damn thing tends to overheat. But I have ways of finding mindless entertainment on the cheap. I have the Internet, after all. Hell, a lot of World of Warcraft is pretty mindless.

But WoW costs me $15 US a month. A movie costs me around that per show, once pop and snacks are factored in. When I go out of my way to leave my cave, making sure I don’t stink and possibly getting shoved into a tiny seat next to somebody twice my size, I want to get my money’s worth. I want a good story, relatable characters, maybe an underlying theme or two and the notion that the movie’s about something other than special effects and sex appeal. I don’t mind special effects and sex appeal, but again, I have the Internet.

The more of those things I see in a movie at the cinema – story, characters, themes, etc – the more I enjoy myself, the more I feel I got my money’s worth and I might even feel inclined to spend money again to repeat the experience or get more out of it. I like being challenged to think while I’m being entertained. Challenging movies are complex ones.

I liked Revenge of the Fallen about as much as some of the shorts I see on the Internet, through YouTube or what have you. It was amusing and kind of entertaining but I’m in no hurry to watch it again. Watching Inception, on the other hand, was an experience I deeply and thoroughly enjoyed, not just because of the cool gun fights and attractive stars and incredible special effects, but also because it made me think. It didn’t handwave my attempts to understand its philosophical or psychological basis, like the Matrix movies or Waking Life does. It didn’t try to shove my cognitive functions into a locker after taking its lunch money, like Revenge of the Fallen or Jumper did. It wants me to figure it out. It’s written as a labyrinthine puzzle with all of the pieces present but disconnected. It’s up to us to solve it.

I guess most movie-goers, especially the kind of folks who frequent College Humor for a daily guffaw, can’t be bothered to solve it. They just want their entertainment. They want to be pandered to by the likes of Michael Bay and Bungie. I don’t get the mentality, though. I don’t understand an unwillingness to be challenged. I can’t comprehend reluctance, or even outright refusal, to step outside of the expectations of mediocrity to experience something new and interesting, even if it’s complex. Is the mundane really that comfortable? Is the thought-provoking really that frightening? Is this what’s wrong with America?

I’m going to stop this line of thought before I verge into that forbidden zone of political posturing. Suffice it to say that I don’t get it. I don’t get the jokes. I don’t get the criticism. I don’t get the confusion.

I just don’t get it.

Maybe I’m just not stupid enough.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! Batman

July 30, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 2 Comments

[audio:http://www.blueinkalchemy.com/uploads/batman.mp3]

The right-hand column of my blog (you fine Escapist folks know where it is if you’re a follower of mine so I won’t reiterate its URL) haunts me. I put a few things on my Netflix queue that, for one reason or another, I think would be interesting to review. The recent remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 looks ripe for taking the piss out of, Tron needs to be seen with fresh eyes unmasked by the glasses of nostalgia, Kingdom of Heaven is reportedly much better in a Director’s Cut format, and so on. Ideally, I would be able to watch these films and formulate their reviews while also working on the revisions of my novel. Unfortunately, we can’t all be Yahtzee Croshaw, what with his cushy Escapist gig and his shiny new blog and his upcoming novel and legions of rabid fans. Some of us have to continue working day jobs. And live in a dystopian nation of backwards politics hopped up on its own hype. And can’t seem to shake a World of Warcraft addiction. And aren’t as good-looking.

*ahem*

So here’s a review of 1989’s Batman instead.

Batman, as it appeared at the hands of Tim Burton back when I was a young lad who hadn’t quite discovered the true joys of the female form yet, mixes the origin story of the Caped Crusader with that of his primary nemesis, the Joker. Gotham City is currently being run not by its long-suffering mayor but crime boss Carl Grissom, who seems to be getting away with it while Batman beats up muggers. It isn’t until Grissom’s “number one guy,” Jack Napier, gets shot in the face and takes a swim in a vat of chemicals to emerge as the Clown Prince of Crime that Batman goes after the syndicate. Batman, or rather Bruce Wayne, is himself being pursued by photojournalist Vicki Vale, who wants to know the truth behind the eccentric billionaire’s disappearances and behavior. Despite being rich, charming and charitable, there’s something a bit off about him, and she needs to find out what if she’s going to keep sleeping with him.

This was the first real attempt to make a celluloid Batman that’s more in the veins of Frank Miller than the camp that permeated the character in the 60’s. It was actually the work in the late 70’s Detective Comics that influence the gothic look and feel of Gotham City in Burton’s film. The soaring dark towers, flying buttresses and stoic sculptures would seep through this film into its first sequel and the animated series, which is still one of the best depictions of Batman to date. The story of Bruce Wayne’s never-ending quest for revenge and the villains that are drawn out by his particular form of mild sociopathy is quite dark, and Burton’s early filmmaking style underscores this darkness, as well as not having Johnny Depp or Helena Bonham Carter anywhere in sight.

Fighting crime is serious business.

Michael Keaton plays Wayne in a very particular way. Instead of making the dichotomy between the jet-set playboy and the haunted superhero obvious with voice affectations or mannerisms, we see the line between the two as somewhat blurred. Both Bruce and Batman are a little stiff, the former due to social awkwardness and the latter constrained by a rubber suit. Neither character is particularly wordy, and Keaton shows how the strange lifestyle of fighting crime by night permeates into one’s daytime activities with Wayne’s habits, mannerisms and speech patterns. He’s not my favorite Batman, but he’s close, and he’s one of the few who really focuses on the character’s inherent oddness.

Given that this is Batman, however, the title character isn’t quite the most interesting one. Jack Nicholson’s Joker is still held by many to be the best, harkening as he does to the days of Cesar Romero’s way of punctuating his lines with an insane laugh and dressing in bright colors. He’s quite joyful and there’s a lot to like in the way he approaches the darkness and deep psychosis of the “world’s first fully-functioning homicidal artist.” Some of his gags work very well, too – the boxing glove in particular. Not all of them do, however, and while he does dispatch innocents and henchmen alike with an amusing disdain, for me his performance somewhat lacks the cold razor’s edge that Mark Hamill occasionally unsheathes in his voice acting and that Heath Ledger wielded with the adroitness of a master fencer.

The Joker + Prince = winning combination.

The biggest surprise for me, however, was how much I ended up liking some of the less colorful supporting actors. Kim Basinger, while always nice to look at, wasn’t quite as interesting for me as Robert Wuhl’s dedicated reporter character of Alexander Knox. He’s convinced that the Batman exists despite all the denials of Commissioner Gordon and others in authority, and his pursuit of the truth is peppered with a few good jokes and the sort of newspaper tropes that make All the President’s Men and State of Play such great films. I was sorry he didn’t make it into the sequel – I thought that, after the public admission of Batman’s existence, he’d want to interview the hero in some sort of Gotham Globe exclusive. Sort of like Lois Lane trying to land an interview with Superman, but without trying to make it into a date, because that would be gay.

The late great Jack Palance chews up some of the scenery in a delightfully hammy way, Billy Dee Williams makes Harvey Dent a smooth-talking charming DA that makes me mourn what became of the character at the hands of Joel Schumacher, and Michael Gough brings us Alfred Pennyworth’s trademark grandfatherly concern and dry humor. The writing isn’t too terrible, the action’s decent and the special effects are practical effects that are aging somewhat gracefully so far. The soundtrack’s an odd but interesting mix of Danny Elfman and Prince. And as much as I like the Tumbler from Nolan’s Batman films, I’m always delighted to see a Batmobile that looks like a Goddamn Batmobile. Because when you’re the Goddamn Batman, it’s not too much to ask to have a little style in your Goddamn Batmobile.

It runs on jet fuel and awesome.

All in all, this is a decent comic book film that helped Hollywood realize that adaptations from that media to theirs was not only workable, but financially viable. Batman was the highest-grossing film of 1989, had a great deal of influence on future cinematic superhero works and inspired the animated series that launched the DC universe on the small screen. That’s undoubtedly a success, and it’s worth putting on your Netflix queue if you want to see where it all began, or if you like black and purple a lot. Even 20 years on, it’s echoes can still be felt in modern works dealing with dedicated and slightly crazy normal people who put on costumes to beat up criminals, which is something I’ll touch on when I review Kick-Ass next week.

I’ll see you fine folks then, provided I can fit the review in between the daily quests of my idiotic second job and my attempts to remind myself that my manuscript doesn’t completely suck.

Movie Review: Salt

July 25, 2010 / BlueInkAlchemist / 2 Comments

Thanks to my friends at Geekadelphia, my wife and I were able to enjoy an advance screening of Salt. We walked out of it wondering the same thing: why is a movie dealing with a villain put to bed twenty years ago coming out now?

Remember how Yahtzee equated the United States to a prize fighter who keeps yelling at his old rival Russia because they didn’t have a proper title match? “Last I checked, it hasn’t been 1979 for at least 10 years.” In that case he was talking about Battlefield Bad Company 2, but it seems this unfortunate backwards-looking form of inspiration has reached Hollywood as well. Despite the fact that there are all sorts of punching bags for an espionage thriller that’s also a vehicle for Angelina Jolie, Kurt Wimmer’s Salt manages the feat of bringing the Soviet Union’s labyrinthine intelligence plotting back from the dead as an engine to drive the film’s plot.

The plot introduces us to Evelyn Salt, a CIA operative married to an arachnid expert. She’s getting ready to enjoy her anniversary when a Russian defector walks into her office claiming to have vital information. Placed in an interrogation room with Salt, the defector reveals that he has knowledge of a presidential assassination plot going down in New York City in 24 hours. He even knows the name of the assassin: Evelyn Salt. Pointed out as a possible mole, unable to reach her husband and trapped in her own office building, Salt needs to facilitate an escape and find a way to prove her innocence. Or carry out her role in the assassination plot. Or go on vacation. Or get her nails done. The question I asked myself while actually watching Salt was, “What the hell is she up to?” he desire to see what exactly her plan was kept me going all the way to the end credits.

A lot is made of the identity of Evelyn Salt, and to the credit of Wimmer’s script, Philip Noyce’s direction and Angelina Jolie’s acting, we’re never quite sure who’s side she’s on. She conveys emotion when she has to and turns it off when it’s time to kick ass – par for the course from the creator of Equilibrium. The film seems aware of the fact that it’s a vehicle for Jolie, and never really gets in her way. We’re never out of sight from our leading lady for more than a minute. Her performance here is definitely more in the vein of Wanted than Changeling, but she’s at least somewhat interesting to watch.

In fact, the cast isn’t uninteresting and does rather well all around. None of the performances feel forced, none of the actors gnaw on the scenery and they’re given interesting stuff to do. Liev Schreiber has quickly grown on me as a supporting actor, with a quiet intensity and growling voice that isn’t overshadowed by Angelina’s presence. Chiwetel Ejiofor isn’t bad, either, channeling a bit of the drive that informed his performance as the Operative in Serenity. The script is fine, never going into camp territory or stopping to wink at the audience. The action is at least somewhat inventive in places and it’s shot well by Noyce, never becoming too confusing or too loud, a tip some other directors could take. In fact, all of these elements make it a more-than-decent thriller, and a thrill ride besides.

But the best writing and acting in the world can’t overcome a bad premise. It’s like building a brilliantly designed and carefully constructed house on a beach with bricks of sand as your foundation. It’s not going to end well. Salt never completely collapses, but the idea that the spectre of Soviet aggression would rise up from the shadows of the past to seek revenge on America for a war that never got to the shooting stages and resolved itself almost two decades ago is pretty preposterous. I can think of at least a few people who will see this film, take it as at least partial fact, and use it as just another thing that we should be afraid of, in addition to terrorism, socialist medicine, communist market oversight and fascist environmental controls. BE AFRAID. WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT. OBEY US.

Dammit, there I go getting political again. I told my ~~controller~~ ~~therapist~~ very patient readers I wouldn’t do that any more.

*twitch*

Since posting this review on the Escapist the night I saw it, I’ve gotten some stick for apparently being ‘naive’ and ignoring the threat that Russia presents to America. The thing is, though, I know we’re going to get spied on. Espionage does not automatically mean open conflict. In fact, if it gets to the point of a car chase or a gunfight, the espionage has failed. So, when the US busted that Russian spy ring recently, was I surprised? Not really. I’m sure the US has spies all over the world as we speak. I do see the point made to me about not being naive in terms of espionage happening right now, but I have to opine the idea that espionage inevitably leads to open conflict is very far-fetched. To anticipate that sort of hostility is to live in perpetual fear, and that is something I refuse to do.

Stuff I Liked: Decent script, well-shot action and a brisk pace.
Stuff I Didn’t Like: Dammit, leave Russia alone. The war’s over.
Stuff I Loved: If I loved anything, it was seeing Angelina kicking ass and seeing how creatively she was dealing with the people she didn’t kill.

Bottom Line: It’s not a bad movie. It’s a decent little espionage thriller that suffers from the aforementioned idiotic premise. You’d be okay if you wait for it to come out on video. There are other movies out there that deserve to be seen in a cinema. Like Inception.

Tag: films (page 13 of 26)

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Movie Review: Salt

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