A Rant: Films and Short Stories

District 9 has the same problem I have been noticing in a great many movies lately, in which the movies are just too long. Looking at what i have already seen 4 of the 20 movies I have seen that dragged on, and could have been better if edited down to the 90 minute mark. (Spider-man 3, Funny People, Avatar, and District 9) In the case of Funny People, I think the screenplay was at fault for the failure of Funny People's second half. The rest of these films are action packed thrill rides that just cannot awe me anymore.

Had the director, or the producers, edited these films and removed these excessive action sequences the movies would have been so much better, if only because the brevity would be a sweet relief.

Avatar would have been spectacular if everyone was killed when the tree burned down and the story ended there. Why? Because tragedy hits you harder than comedy does and we would not have had to endure the story for the next 45 minutes. It would be certainly less epic, but the world of Pandora (which was my favorite part of the film) would have been the obvious highlight instead of the drawn out super battle at the end.

That is just one example.

I want to finish this little rant on being concise by relating film to literature. Look at a novel. Films and novels are very similar. They both share stories but what we expect from each medium is different. A film is limited to at most three hours, because a film should be seen in one sitting. This means we have to be told a story in this time and we have to be engaged throughout it. A novel is different. Novels are fueled not only by the stories they tell but by the enjoyment of the words that form it. Very few novels can actually be finished in one sitting and the way they are made no one actually expects people to do that. Instead the novels are meant to be digested slowly at the digression of the viewer. This is why a 1000+ page novel is not a bad thing.

Now you might be wondering why I am ranting on about this and I'll tell you. My philosophy toward film is to not make it like a novel, where entire stories and motifs can be just forgotten and still be enjoyable. Instead movies should be made like short stories , with a microscope and a subtle attention to detail. Short stories are meant to be read in one sitting, like a movie should be seen in one sitting. Short stories are much more dependant on making each word count and each film should make every scene, and every shot count. Short stories cannot allow there to be filler.

What I am getting at is this: If you want to make a movie that is an epic 3 hour blockbuster, you had better make every minute count because every wasted minute is a failure.

Who wants seafood?

District 9

Day 20

Film 20

Hey look at that! I'm still on track for this whole thing. Sweet!

I walked into District 9 with a quizzical air. The huge marketing campaign and the small army of fan boys that appeared in its aftermath made me believe that this film was just too good to be true. I was not blown away by District 9. A good portion of it was the usual sci fi junk, filled with more explosions than character and using special effects to make us forget about its holes. District 9 did do some things to transcend its sci fi brothers. It tried its best to sell a deeper message than its Hollywood counterparts, and even if the message failed it should be respected for it.

District 9 builds a realistic world twenty years after first contact with a spaceship of alien refugees, the Prawns. These aliens serve as an allegory for other refugees and the first thirty or so minutes of the film do a spectacular job showing the squalor and crime built around desperate and unwanted people. The movie really shines in these scenes as the brutally true satire makes you squirm. It is kind of a shame Blomkamp did not decide to follow this theme the entire film, and as soon as our poor bureaucrat protagonist Wikus van de Merwe (Copley) is space gooed the movie starts to fall back into more mindless roots.

The rest of the film is filled with stereotype military goons, status quo alien research laboratories, and packed with action that would be boring had there not been some super cool alien weaponry to shake things up. It is not bad, but it all feels done before, which feels like a let down after District 9's amazing start. By about the 90 minute mark I was hoping for things to start cleaning themselves up.

My final verdict:

I was not blow away by District 9 but it is better than 90% of the crap out there. It is worth a viewing.

How many dick jokes can you count?

Funny People

Day 20

Film 19

To be honest I did not pay too much attention to Funny People. The Internet can be a very distracting thing. As the film went on I became more interested in it than I did about the Internet, and more specifically World of Warcraft. That does take a pretty good film when you think about it.

Funny People is a thinking man's comedy with just enough blunt humor to keep the lesser thinking types entertained. It looks at a successful comedian, George Simmons (Sandler,) who's success has deformed his personality into that of a child's. It is a tale of redemption and heartbreak as his assistant, opening act and best friend Ira Wright (Rogan,) teaches him how to be human again. The story is heavy hitting and not the type you expect from the two leading men, fueled by their more than respectable performances.

It is not perfect. The film is a little long and the humor has a tendency to lull at points. It falls short as a piece of art lacking extra depth beyond the main plot. This are all small problems and can easily be forgiven.

My Final Verdict:

This is not the happiest comedy you can find and it is because of that this is a good film. It is bittersweet film that most people should enjoy at some level. I would recommend it.

For No One

(500) Days of Summer
Day 20

Film 18

I have wanted to see (500) Days of Summer for months now. The preview really got me hooked, on top of the high overall score at Rotten Tomatoes and the fist full of award nominations it had from the independent film circuit. That and I am a sucker for almost romance movies.

(500) Days of Summer is exactly the kind of movie I love the most. It takes chances. It plays with the medium and storytelling. It has Zooey Deschanel (who I did not know about before this film and I am absolutely in love with afterwards.) It takes all of these pieces to make an enjoyable, heaving hitting comedy.

(500) Days of Summer starts off by saying that it is not a love story, it is a story about a boy and a girl but they are not destined to be. It follows our lovable protagonist, Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt,) who is a man who believes in true love and is easily pulled every which way. In the beginning he has no spine and it is obvious. Summer (Deschanel) is a little more proactive and harbors a complete opposite view on love. It tears them apart. We knew this was going to happen, and the course of events that breaks them is very well put together. The interesting thing is where they go from what we know and twists it.

(500) does not end at the break up. It uses the scene to skyrocket it into an analysis of a broken heart and how someone can recover from it. I do not want to give anything away here, because it is all spectacular and I would hate to spoil it.

There are a couple motifs I almost want to hit on but I do not feel like I should. I doubt anyone really cares about them too terribly much and since I am still behind on the count I will save them for my own personal musings.

My final verdict:

I loved (500) Days of Summer, although it probably is not the perfect movie for every occasion. It makes you think, so be wary before watching it with a significant other. It is a great movie, my favorite so far and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys to chew through a film.

I want to leave you all with one of my favorite clip from this movie:

Humor under a black veil

Death at a Funeral

Day 20

Film 17

This is going to be short, I have a clutch of movies I have been procrastinating on. so lets get to it.

Death at a Funeral was a film I wanted to see if only because Alan Tudyk (who plays characters that always seem to die) would not die in the film. I could go into the few films I have seen him in but I won't because I'll start ranting about how Joss Whedon is bad at his job.

Death at a Funeral was a short, mostly entertaining romp through a funeral where everything has gone wrong. It has the quirk of being British, losing some humor in translation and it is a little slow, but building up speed as it nears its conclusion. It is farcical in its nature throwing in almost unreal situations that blend together to create a frantic hilarity that was very hit and miss for me.

The plot is that of most funerals. There are grievers, but most of them do not really show it or do not care enough about the dead. The family is there, grown up and estranged. If you were to take out a couple pieces that the humor relies on (most importantly the drugs Tudyk's character consumes and the gay dwarf that appears from nowhere demanding money from the family) you would be left with a somber, and boring as tar, look at a funeral.

I liked Death at a Funeral, and although I know i did enjoy it I do feel that saying that is a little bit too much. Overall it was an enjoyable movie, but it felt like a very average movie. The humor was good, but it did not have the same punch as In the Loop did. Humor is just as good as it attempts to be. Death at a Funeral takes a look at funerals and the things that happen there, but I have only been to one funeral, and I was not paying too much attention. If I was an older man I would like to think that some of the humor would hit a bit harder. That is only speculation.

Death at a Funeral was a fun movie, entirely worth renting if you are a fan of British humor. It is not a must see.

How can Pixar top this?

Up

Day 16

Film 16

I wanted to see Up in theaters and never got around to it. I saw it at Blockbuster last night and snatched it up immediately. Pixar has yet to let me down and Up is no exception.

What I loved about Up is that it is the kind of movie that is sewn together with such tender loving care one cannot help but be blown away by it. The characters are complex and instantly lovable and their adventure is awe inspiring and imaginative. Pixar really knocked it out of the park with this short and sweet tale of age and never giving up on your dreams.

Thinking back on the movie I do not think I can find any holes in it. The movie is short at just over 90 minutes and because of it it feels more like a finely crafted poem. Every scene is put in the perfect place and it makes this wonderful gem of a movie that does not drag, but does not feel like you missed anything.

I could ramble on and on about how much I loved Up, because I did. But I will not, save for this last sentence. Up is a wonderful, powerful amazing piece of animation and you should go and see it right now if you have not.

Just Shiny Enough

Avatar

Day 16

Film 15

This one was going to happen at some point in the list. The hype for Avatar before it came out was just ridiculous! Avatar was supposed to revolutionize film!

I will say this, Avatar does not do that. I will be willing to accept that it changes special effects, but that is nothing new. Effects have been slowly building on each other slowly over the last couple decades. Avatar serves as multiple steps forward in this sense but beyond that is an over exaggeration. To change film making would be to change how we tell stories at a very basic level and Avatar falls short of that on every other level.

Before I tear into Avatar I will say this: Avatar is a good film. For every one of its flaws it is still a spectacle that should be watched.

I think for this specific movie I am just going to avoid the critical analysis if only because Avatar spoon feeds the audience the message and now that we understand that to the flaws:

Do we really need another Dances With Wolves?

This is the flaw everyone is attacking, and with good reason. If a movie is meant to revolutionize film then why would it retell a story already a million times told? It feels lazy for so much money and time to be spent making a breathtaking world to throw it away on a story we already know.

The argument against this feels like a cop out. Well the technology is just so new and the world so alien that any more experimental story would cause the audience to be lost. Cameron is here to make his 500+ million dollar budget back, there is no way he could make that kind of money if he were to make a more artsy film. We lose Avatar's true potential in the dregs of rehashed goo. It is a shame, but since when has Cameron ever gone beyond a popcorn structure?

Just in case you did not know, South Park beat everyone else to the punch.

How Alien is Pandora?

This kind of tore me out of the movie again and again. This might just be something that annoys me and only me, but for a movie that is supposed to be so amazingly alien and imaginative as Avatar it does feel like we are subjected to a world that is just too much like earth.

This rant will be short, as I feel it should be stated but not relished on. Looking at the science that makes life on earth work, based on the breaking down of sugars and the beautiful relationship of CO2 H2O and O2 in this it makes me wonder. Why would a world without oxygen be anything at all like Earth? Instead of being truly alien we are engulfed by a world of tweaked creatures and plants. It drove me out of the movie again and again and again.

It could be just me, but I feel like it should be said. Why? Because if this is the future of sci fi we are going to need to get beyond our world and find an entirely new one.

Can we end this already?

Avatar was painfully long. The end dragged, carried only by the powerful scenes that led up to it. It could be that I am so tired of climactic battles that last for a half hour. It could be that we did not need the bridge between the two battles. It could be that (SPOILER) Sigourney Weaver's death was just a waste of time, even if it was the emotional climax of the film (SPOILER END.) If Avatar was a shorter film it would have been so much better.

DEUS EX!? Really? Aw come on!

This really pissed me off. It is like slapping the protagonist in the face. If you cannot make the protagonist strong enough to overcome the forces that oppose them then you should aim to make the story a tragedy or make the forces less impossible to conquer. Using the hand of God to save the day just says 'well they're fucked anyway but you know we really need a happy ending so here you go.'

I guess with all of the complaints about the story this should not be too terribly startling.

I am still annoyed.

I kind of wonder what Avatar would have been if Cameron played the military industrial complex down and instead just built the story around a coming of age archetype inside an alien world. The best scenes were the ones immersed in the beauty of a not exploding Pandora. I could have used a whole lot more of that and less of the Hippies are good and the military is bad preaching.

With that I am going to end this post. Avatar is a great movie even with all of its flaws. I would recommend it, it is worth the money to see and you will not be disappointed.