In the next five mimutes I will think of a better storyline for TRON´s world that the one in the movie. Imagine that the son of the Dude needs to connect the old computer to the intranet of his company for some arbitrary reason, so you see the shoot of him putting the telephone cable into the thing. Then he gets sucked into the machine. Everything is as we remember from the 1980s, but then CLU finds that now he can extend his reign utilizing more resources thorugh the intranet, so the CGI becomes 21st Century. Then in the real world the managers put a new series of games online, and the games we see inside the machine would be justified. Dude´s son light-cycle could be controlled by Users, and we can crosscut from a frat-house of college boys playing online to the "reality" of the game in the machine. CLU attempts to invade the Internet as a whole like a virus, to impose "order" against peer-sharing and whatnot, and we see how something really bad happens in the real world (mmm, an airport going crazy, etc) and after meeting several characters (the Searcher Algoritm, always working for Google) that help the Dude´s Son, CLU is defeated, and as a bonus an OS composed of the best friendly programs is now freely available and the Net thrives. It took five minutes. I am a genious.
So, the movie itself is not worth of your precious time, but if you can fast-forward you can watch three sequences with some interest: Disc Wars, the light-cycles, and its airborne version at the end. The rest is suppossed profundity, and an attempt to generate a serious mitology where there is none. Well, if the trick worked for "Inception" why would not work here? The commitee doing this movie should have gone full-Nolan and put half an hour more of exposition and vacuous philosophy, maybe then the fanboys would consider it to be worthy of the herd.
One question: why Dude´s son is bleeding in the movie when he was converted into digital format by the laser? Another one: how can I use the spellchek function in Blogger? Enjoy my typos..
Friday, March 4, 2011
"Tangled", Nathan Greno, Byron Howard (2010)
Disney´s "Rapunzel" fails miserably to update that staple of the company: the teenager princess musical. The CGI animation is pretty good, but you can see all of the strings trying to pull you to feel something at the right moments. It does not work, we have seen this done better countless times.
The anachronistic dialogue is tuned to attract the pre-pubescent girlie crowd, but it is so obvious that takes the viewer outside the film. Dialogue can be snappy, but doesn´t need to be at odds with the surrounding world of the characters. It is marketing at its worst, thinking that the audience is so stupid that cannot understand classic dialogue without modern references on it. The musical part is mostly innocuous, a disservice to all great Disney musicals.
This Disney villain is not overtly evil, and the sudden ending to her predicament is not at all warranted. Lets see: an old woman, presented as a witch but that doesn´t have powers kidnaps a baby (Rapunzel) that has magical hair, that can make the old woman live forever young. So the baby grows up thinking about this woman as her mother. What this woman did is terrible, yet it is clear that Rapunzel cannot dismiss her as quickly as it happens here, and a half second shot of a futile attempt at salvation is not enough to clear Rapunzel morally. If the old lady did not try to kill one character, Rapunzel would be put in a very interesting spot: let her die or to maintain her young forever? The step-mother is not wrong, if Rapunzel gets out there everybody will want a piece of her hair, so she will be forever doomed to sing her days away.
In the end, is another Disney story about an American teenager fighting with her parents about going out to have fun, hardly classic material. It is fun as it is disposable, and for a movie so many years in the making, it is a shame and a travesty. (3/5).
IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0398286/
Armond White: http://www.nypress.com/article-21903-twisted-tale.html
AW sustains that this movie is a gimmick-machine. American cinema has his roots in vaudeville and the medium as a bag of tricks, and lately is the only clear aspect of lauded mainstream films. Movies as circus, but not even as moving, only the cheap magician, not even the clowns.
The anachronistic dialogue is tuned to attract the pre-pubescent girlie crowd, but it is so obvious that takes the viewer outside the film. Dialogue can be snappy, but doesn´t need to be at odds with the surrounding world of the characters. It is marketing at its worst, thinking that the audience is so stupid that cannot understand classic dialogue without modern references on it. The musical part is mostly innocuous, a disservice to all great Disney musicals.
This Disney villain is not overtly evil, and the sudden ending to her predicament is not at all warranted. Lets see: an old woman, presented as a witch but that doesn´t have powers kidnaps a baby (Rapunzel) that has magical hair, that can make the old woman live forever young. So the baby grows up thinking about this woman as her mother. What this woman did is terrible, yet it is clear that Rapunzel cannot dismiss her as quickly as it happens here, and a half second shot of a futile attempt at salvation is not enough to clear Rapunzel morally. If the old lady did not try to kill one character, Rapunzel would be put in a very interesting spot: let her die or to maintain her young forever? The step-mother is not wrong, if Rapunzel gets out there everybody will want a piece of her hair, so she will be forever doomed to sing her days away.
In the end, is another Disney story about an American teenager fighting with her parents about going out to have fun, hardly classic material. It is fun as it is disposable, and for a movie so many years in the making, it is a shame and a travesty. (3/5).
IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0398286/
Armond White: http://www.nypress.com/article-21903-twisted-tale.html
AW sustains that this movie is a gimmick-machine. American cinema has his roots in vaudeville and the medium as a bag of tricks, and lately is the only clear aspect of lauded mainstream films. Movies as circus, but not even as moving, only the cheap magician, not even the clowns.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
"Mother and Child", Rodrigo García (2010)
Excellent performances are hampered by some reactionary plot twists that overpowers the actors´efforts with the ideology of the writer-director. García punishes the most interesting character with a fate straight out of religious allegories, killing the movie in the process. (2/5)
The following reviewer put my thoughts online when the movie was released, and I agree with his words:
Slant magazine review by Andrew Schenker: http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/mother-and-child/4798
IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1121977/
The following reviewer put my thoughts online when the movie was released, and I agree with his words:
Slant magazine review by Andrew Schenker: http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/mother-and-child/4798
IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1121977/
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
"Carancho" (Vulture), Pablo Trapero (2010)
Pablo Trapero came from San Justo, a suburb in the south-west of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area. San Justo is dirty, corrupt and hopeless. Now it has a new shopping-mall, but it does not appear in "Carancho". In this movie the only thing that shines on the dark streets is one of the best actors of the world, the incredible Ricardo Darín, playing an ambulance-chaser ex-lawyer working for a shady organization which takes the cases of accident victims, wins them and pockets most of the money extracted from the insurance companies. All of this, of course, with the full knowledge of the local police and the local hospital authorities.
The movie has some tonal discrepancies, a shift from naturalism to gritty film-noir, and too much despair for my taste, but many scenes are good (even virtuous if predictable; you know what Trapero is doing, and you´re waiting for it as you wait for the serial killer in a horror movie). It makes for a good time at the cinema, if you can accept a couple of superfluous intimate scenes. The final shot is unwarranted, but Polanski did a lot worse this year, and if an old master can make mistakes, a young filmmaker can be forgiven (3+/5).
IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1542852
The movie has some tonal discrepancies, a shift from naturalism to gritty film-noir, and too much despair for my taste, but many scenes are good (even virtuous if predictable; you know what Trapero is doing, and you´re waiting for it as you wait for the serial killer in a horror movie). It makes for a good time at the cinema, if you can accept a couple of superfluous intimate scenes. The final shot is unwarranted, but Polanski did a lot worse this year, and if an old master can make mistakes, a young filmmaker can be forgiven (3+/5).
IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1542852
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
"The Ghost Writer", Roman Polanski (2010)
What a dissapointment! The movie is beautifully shot and has a menacing ambience, but the central mystery is innocuous and politically naive. The final shot of the film belongs in "Final Destination" and not here. There is more socially relevant info in the end credits of "The Other Guys" than in this political thriller that doesn´t have too much of both. Performances are excellent, and the central subject of the movie are the ghosts pulling the levers of the machine. Other than that, a simple toy for simple minds (2/5).
Rotten Tomatoes link: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10012063-ghost_writer/
Rotten Tomatoes link: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10012063-ghost_writer/
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
The Social Network (David Fincher), 2010
Some short thoughts:
Fincher and Sorkin have created a film that succesfully avoids to talk about the issues which are the center of said movie. It was not really a dissapointment, since I expected this feeble attempt to convert all plausible sociological and economic reasons for the rise of Facebook into a light psychological portrait of its creator. The glossy shots of young girls are welcomed, the rest is insulting to the intelligence. Other than nerd-hate for normal thinking girls, it is difficult to understand the reasons for Sorkin´s treatment of females. We are also told many times that money is not important, and then again flashed with impossible amounts of it. So it is important or not? It is not really the reason for this enterprise? Why is not discussed in the film the contribution of people to the site? Who are all those programmers in the background? Why Sorkin treats banal additions to Facebook ("the wall") as revolutionary contraptions that require intelligence to create? After all the appeal of FB initiated due to Harvard´s appeal, not the technology aspect of the site. The secret was in its simplicity in dealing with the desire of exclusiveness of some people. But in the movie this is treated as a given fact, as something obvious, as the right of Harvard kids to rule the Universe.
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/
Fincher and Sorkin have created a film that succesfully avoids to talk about the issues which are the center of said movie. It was not really a dissapointment, since I expected this feeble attempt to convert all plausible sociological and economic reasons for the rise of Facebook into a light psychological portrait of its creator. The glossy shots of young girls are welcomed, the rest is insulting to the intelligence. Other than nerd-hate for normal thinking girls, it is difficult to understand the reasons for Sorkin´s treatment of females. We are also told many times that money is not important, and then again flashed with impossible amounts of it. So it is important or not? It is not really the reason for this enterprise? Why is not discussed in the film the contribution of people to the site? Who are all those programmers in the background? Why Sorkin treats banal additions to Facebook ("the wall") as revolutionary contraptions that require intelligence to create? After all the appeal of FB initiated due to Harvard´s appeal, not the technology aspect of the site. The secret was in its simplicity in dealing with the desire of exclusiveness of some people. But in the movie this is treated as a given fact, as something obvious, as the right of Harvard kids to rule the Universe.
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/
Friday, October 1, 2010
Make Way For Tomorrow (1937) - Leo McCarey
Amazing film from the Great Depression era, relentlessly dissecting the treatment of old parents by their middle class children in the United States. As Orson Welles put it "it can make a stone cry", indeed.
There is not too much that I can add to the experience of watching this film, but to admire how it takes you from one point of view to another, from understanding the childrens´ motives to despise them. It contains several genial moments, subtle interactions, an acknowledgement of the viewer, some silently spoken lines that are suppossed to be too strong to be heard, and an ending that puts anybody in tears (5/5).
There is not too much that I can add to the experience of watching this film, but to admire how it takes you from one point of view to another, from understanding the childrens´ motives to despise them. It contains several genial moments, subtle interactions, an acknowledgement of the viewer, some silently spoken lines that are suppossed to be too strong to be heard, and an ending that puts anybody in tears (5/5).
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