Iron Man

Iron Man
an action movie
IMDb | Netflix | Amazon
Overall Rating: 7/10
Meets Expectations: +1 (which is amazing considering the hype)
Apparent Rating: 8/10

If there can be said to be long-time readers of a months’ old blog, let me say that long-time readers should know that I have an immense love for superhero movies. Iron Man is no exception. I really enjoyed it. I think the live action version is superior to the cartoon version I saw recently too.

So much of this movie is funny, like when the S.H.I.E.L.D. guy says the whole name every time and every time, the person says, “Ya needa new name!” and he says he gets that a lot. It’s one of those things that’s funny because of the repetition.

The Pepper Potts woman was less of a caricature than I expected, but still managed to hit all those character identifying notes that I’d expect from the woman who is the personal assistant to her playboy boss. It was a little less successful in terms of me believing she was really witty and really in love with him because the line about trash was a bit off-rhythm and  she was way more squicked about saving his life than grateful it had worked. Considering that the role was entirely a caricature in the original stories and in all previous versions, the actress did a tolerable job. But I didn’t feel her devotion or understand her rationale for it and that would have helped sell the movie to me.

Tony Stark was good. I think there could have been a bit more exposition, but we’re meant to think he’s shallow. That shallowness would have worked better if it hadn’t been played in a flashback after he’d gotten taken hostage, because I sort of felt like he deserved to have some fun after the hellish experience…. intellectually I realize the kidnapping was supposed to look like Karma, but because it was out of sequence…. I didn’t like how casually he dealt with the hostage situation. He’s got all that money and doesn’t think to go back for the pieces of his creation? The helper translator guy story bothered me and it seems like anyone who has gotten that far in life would not have just accepted it at face value. But what I did really like about Tony Stark is even in the midst of his shallow playboy lifestyle, it’s completely clear how brilliant he really is. He didn’t just inherit the company, he inherited the brains to make something of it.

Overall, I can’t say if the actor, Robert Downey Jr, was good in this role; I’ve read reviews saying he was, but I thought some of it looked like acting—especially the parts where he’s supposed to be brilliant. I remember him from the nightly news where they kept showing the perp walk when he’d been arrested on drugs use and drunk driving and some other things that show really bad judgment.  So when Tony Stark is driving like a maniac in a quarter-million dollar car through magically empty Los Angeles streets, I kept expecting DUI behavior. I think he was probably adequate and it really is unlikely that Hollywood has anyone who can seem brilliant, since being actually smart is such a taboo societally that even brilliant people can have no practice looking smart. It was still vastly superior to the “I’m like totally stoned right now!” performance from Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man. Comparatively, since they’re supposed to both be roles of brilliant men, RDjr turned in a much superior performance.

One thing I enjoyed, from a humorous angle, was that Tony Stark and Obadaiah Stane and several other people had beards. Normally one can discern the villain immediately because he is a blond man with a beard.

Some of the most amusing parts were the construction robots with the fire extinguishers.

I would really like to see sequels to Iron Man.  If they’re all of this quality, I could see a sequel beating out X-Men for my favorite superhero movie.

Miss Potter

Miss Potter
a docudrama movie
IMDb | Netflix | Amazon
Overall Rating: 7/10
Meets Expectations: +1
Apparent Rating: 8/10

Overall, I enjoyed Miss Potter. It is one of those docudrama movies where it is supposed to be historical and based on a real person’s life, but I don’t have any clue how much of it was true. I enjoyed all the costumes but I think what I liked about this was how Beatrix Potter toed the line of convention and her parents’ desires while carving out a life and freedoms for herself.

The movie says it has animation in it. The animation is light-handed and well integrated.

One of the most impressive things about this as a story is that it was easy to see how Miss Potter ended up where she did. Each step of her life’s journey makes sense. She draws because it pleases her to take after her father. She meets with publishers and expects the rounds of rejection. When one finally takes on her book, she is surprised and shrewd about it, but agrees. When she begins seeing her publisher, it is clear why because we have seen their courting in the guise of official business. In the end when she buys the farm, it feels like coming home, even to the viewer. Each and every step is clear and is the kind of decision the viewer would make in that situation.

I felt there could have been more detail in a number of areas of the story, but the plot pulls it along.

This was a rare case where a real person’s story was as interesting as one purely imagined by the author.

A Time To Kill

A Time To Kill
a movie
IMDb | Netflix | Amazon
Overall Rating: 7/10
Meets Expectations: +0
Apparent Rating: 7/10

I really enjoyed this movie. I thought there were a lot of great elements and some of the things I thought could have used more attention might have been included in the theatrical or DVD versions since movies are savaged when they are shown on TV.

I loved how there was a love interest in this movie and how that worked out with all the relationships. I saw a biography of Cary Grant (who had always gotten the girl, even when he was 60 and the girls were 17 in the movies… so in his final movie someone else gets the girl because he insisted. But there was still that love interest even so. And that opened my eyes to how the expected love interest angle was played in everything.)

I completely missed that this was set in the approximately now that the movie was made. They’re talking about American Death Eaters, (and I’m not even going to reference them here by their abbreviation, but we all know that evil lurks under full-face hoods, whether they be black or white.) So I assumed it was horse and carriage times. That went with the lack of air conditioning shown in the movie by hosing down the actors before putting them on screen. But apparently they were talking 1995 or so. If that is what The South is like, then no one who lives there should be allowed to vote in elections for the rest of the country and no one from the rest of the country should go there. The whole region should be under quarantine lest the nutjobs contaminate the rest of us. I hope it was exaggerated, but suspect not since there are still cross burnings in this century.

The plot of this movie was good, but I didn’t need all the violence. I think this would have been an interesting movie without it being focused upon the blockbuster “set it on fire!” faction winning so many points.

The actors in this were pretty good. Sandra Bullock was mediocre, but better than sometimes. The leading guy, Matthew McConaughey, was practically perfect. Most of the supporting roles were excellently done. I really like Oliver Platt in many of his parts. Donald Sutherland was good. The guy who was The Prisoner was in this; that was cool. Ashley Judd got her name in the summary but she was barely in this and was not convincing. Samuel L. Jackson was so good in this that I wouldn’t have thought he was acting had I not just had the Jumper movie to compare him to.

Well done story story, good pacing, good acting, and something that was worth watching overall. If you can watch it with someone who can translate the bizarre Southern customs, that might really help. I got really annoyed by how everyone was called by two names. I got really annoyed that the really adept woman was shunted aside verbally and by being ignored whenever possible. It could have used subtitles because some of the accents are thick.

But it was a nicely done movie.

Arabian Nights

Arabian Nights
a movie
IMDb | Netflix | Amazon
Overall Rating: 7/10
Meets Expectations: -1
Apparent Rating: 6/10

Arabian Nights is a much more classical version of the story than my previous exposure. But the movie was uneven. I should say that this was flagged as television, and it definitely smacks of “made for TV”.

There were three stories told inside a framework of reality. The first story was really good, the Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves one. The second story was supposed to be funny but I am not so good with humor and tend to be rather appalled. The third story was the Aladdin one and really managed to be both dull and rather offensive. The framework story, of a sultan who thinks he should kill his wife before she kills him because all women are monstrous… that started to get interesting toward the end and I really enjoyed its conclusion. It seemed like fantasy and reality were competing in this and as reality developed texture and color beyond paranoia, the fantasy started to lose strength.

The acting in this is bad. It’s comical and done in the style of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. It’s supposed to look a bit jarring and off-kilter because the audience is supposed to think the actors don’t take this seriously. It’s supposed to add a dimension by breaking the fourth wall. To me it always looks unprofessional and childish.

So, there’s a made-for-TV movie, with that kind of production values and budget, which used great source material and dumbed it down so it fits between commercial breaks. There were some modern references that I found really disruptive. Genie of the Ring says, “You wouldn’t hit a man wearing whatever these are, right?” he points to his face where he’s wearing glasses. That’s not funny, it causes my suspension of disbelief to completely falter.

There were no subtitles. I enjoyed this, but not as much as I would have if the people involved in making it had actually done their jobs. Given how much I enjoyed the reality framework story and the Ali Baba story, it seems like this could have been a 10/10 movie. To my mind, there should be a penalty for doing a mediocre job with a great idea, thus wasting the idea.

Jumper

Jumper
a movie
IMDb | Netflix | Amazon
Overall Rating: 7/10
Meets Expectations: +1
Apparent Rating: 8/10

The book by Steven Gould was one of my favorites. I had not heard anything about the movie until it was in theaters and being derided by critics. I am not really sure what their problem was. It’s an action movie starring a troubled superpowered teen. But I guess the critics gave similar reviews to X-Men, Spiderman, and just about every other superhero type movie.

Overall I thought the action was good. I thought the filming and directing and editing of the movie was good… considering it’s a movie about people who can jump instantly from one place to the next, I was expecting something closer to a music video played back double-time. I don’t remember the book accurately enough to know if it was well-adapted, but I enjoyed the story portrayed. I thought the story had a good plot with some unexpected twists, which is pretty amazing for an action film since those are usually low-brow, though it could have been a bit more shocking.

The actors in this were not very good. I thought the Jamie Bell role, Griffin, was decent because all it needed was rough and angry. Plus it was comparatively short. I thought Samuel L. Jackson was good because I hated his character. The father, who was the main villain in the book as far as I remember, wasn’t scary at all, that could have been played up a lot more to my mind. David Rice, played by Hayden Christiansen, was awful. Keanu Reeves’s stereotype has nothing on this guy. He’s dark and broody and gets a double-handful of people killed because he chose a girl at seeming-random from his past? The movie indicates that he’s loved her for a long time, but there is no emotion there. There’s nothing to show why he ruins his whole life for that girl. The girl herself is standard cardboard screechy teen girl who demands answers while people are shooting at them. All I was left with about their relationship was wondering whether David Rice regretted going back for her.

I really enjoyed the aspect of the story that was introduced in the movie, about the Paladins who kill Jumpers. I loved how the evil people went around spouting that they were doing “God’s Work”. I was ecstatic about how they killed Jumpers while saying “Only God should have that power!” but I wonder sometimes if other people see the irony. I expect there are a lot of people who honestly believe that to be the case, that special people detract from “the all-mighty” and it is right to kill them so they do not profane by their very existence. It would explain why smart children are derided and then bullied and then beaten to a pulp in public schools. Anyway, it’s a movie that indicates the inherent hypocrisy of Christianity where they kill people while saying “Only God can judge.” So I liked that.

I think it’s too bad they hired a bad actor to star in the movie. There are a number of other talented actors who deserved a shot and we’ve seen Anakin Skywalker supposedly so in love that he destroyed the known universe but looking like a pyjama model mannequin at Sears.

The Italian Job

The Italian Job
Netflix | Amazon
Overall Rating: 7/10
Meets Expectations: +1
Apparent Rating: 8/10

When it has been on TV, I have seen various parts of The Italian Job. I never managed to watch all of it straight through though. (This review refers to the 2003 movie with Mark Wahlberg, Edward Norton, Charlize Theron, Seth Green, Donald Sutherland, and others.) I enjoyed the parts I watched enough to add the movie to my Netflix queue. I was pleasantly surprised that the whole movie was good.

I enjoyed this throughout, with the complicated caper, the double-crossing, the vengeance, the complicated plans, the way modern technology was used. All the actors were good. The final epilogue bit they did was good. It was just really nice throughout.

I had thought I didn’t like Charlize Theron, but it appears I have her confused with someone else, Uma Thurman. This woman did not have a mouth wide enough to use her head as a Muppet. We are not constantly told she is attractive, though there is evidence the male characters think so. But unlike Uma Thurman, when there is a man looking at Charlize Theron’s body, I’m not having the wheels fall off the brain in my head because I’m mentally picturing Grover’s purple fake-fur body and hinged face.

The whole mini-Cooper thing is kind of stupid, but it was also kind of cute. The explanation as to why they chose those cars makes a lot more sense when the movie isn’t edited to fit in the time allotted.

I like really well written and well done action movies. The Italian Job was one.

Spook Country — William Gibson (sff)

Spook Country
a book by William Gibson
Wiki | Amazon
Overall Rating: 7/10
Meets Expectations: -2
Apparent Rating: 5/10

In my opinion, William Gibson’s novels vary, sometimes one book will be amazing and really resonate then the next (whether a sequel or no) might be mediocre. I doubt Mr. Gibson considers Spook Country to be a sequel to Pattern Recognition but a number of similar entities occur, namely “Blue Ant” which appears to be some sort of hyper-real PR firm that creates trends even doing R&D on them.

In Spook Country, there is that common cyberpunk technique (which was adopted by most science fiction writers) of multi-threaded plots. What I mean by that is one chapter has a character experiencing some aspect of the story, the next chapter will have a different character experiencing a disjoint part of the story— without any knowledge of the first character. At some later climactic point, these threads converge in some manner, usually bringing the various characters in contact with one another. This book has a handful of these threads and the reader is jarred sequentially through them in endless repetition so none of the characters becomes familiar and the end of the chapter is something to be dreaded. The transitions in this book are harsh.

The contrast with the relatively mono-focused Pattern Recognition book, where the more lyrical tendencies Mr. Gibson has available is tremendous. Oft times while reading Pattern Recognition, I found myself nodding while reading something insightful, like the main character’s belief that jet lag is caused by the soul’s inability to be carried via airplane and the body feels disconnected in the new place, not because of the time change, but because the soul is missing. Regardless of spiritual beliefs, that explanation makes a lot more sense to me than it being about the time change, since it is possible to rearrange one’s schedule in advance but this does not stave off jet lag very well.

At several points in Spook Country, the currently focal character was in deadly peril and my reaction was extremely negative… “Just kill [him/her] already. They’re obviously not important enough to star in a whole book.” I admit that there were some lyrical moments, but my irritation with the storytelling style tended to overwhelm them before they could sink in. I did not recognize any of them as profound. I was annoyed by the constant transitions. Partially because of inept technique, but partially because they seemed so unnecessary. We see lots of detail for innocuous characters’ lives, making them seem disproportionately important.

In discussing this with others, the common complaint was a wish for an electronic version which could be sorted by character’s POV/thread. The chronological approach, where every chapter break really needs to start with, “Meanwhile, back at the ranch….” but just drops the reader into a new pot of soup, that made me want to hand the author 600,000 Scrabble tiles and claim to have found a plagiarized copy of his novel. I doubt Mr. Gibson would understand from that, that I think the story was ruined by a lack of appropriate organization. In further thinking, I am not certain that 4/5 of the threads were important at all. I think it would have been better served as a book if it had been told with some sort of omniscient overseer for the plot and had a single character stumbling through the plot and discovering the hidden aspects of the story.

If I had to do it again, I would not read Spook Country, I would reread Pattern Recognition, but I do not think my disappointment is an accurate reflection of the quality of the second novel in this particular world setting. I really think it was probably an average book, unless you were comparing it to something which had been more personally satisfying.

Charlie Wilson’s War

Charlie Wilson’s War
Netflix | Amazon
Overall Rating: 7/10
Meets Expectations: +2
Apparent Rating: 9/10

Again this was a movie where I queued it but did not think it was going to be worth watching. I rarely like movies that are based on real events. The usual way a “real story” is put into a movie is designed to make people cry and cry and cry, because nothing that isn’t miserable and painful is “real” to filmmakers out for an Oscar. Charlie Wilson’s War was surprisingly funny for a movie about a covert war.

There were scenes where the spy guy, Gus, was telling Charlie Wilson that a sex scandal is a good thing because the press sees sex in the left hand and you can hide a tank in the right hand. (Paraphrased, but you get the idea.) That was funny.

Tom Hanks was very good. He’s played so many “I’m the good guy!” roles that I wondered if he could pull off being a skeevy dude. He did. You totally believe that he loves being a politician but has no moral qualms about the freely offered sex of the 70s.

I really enjoyed the tension between the spy guy and Julia Roberts’ character who is the prissy churchy Texas lady with the money who was the impetus behind the original idea. I like it when the god-ridden are told to simmer down. I love it when a movie manages to portray the god-ridden as effracking insane and only nominally tolerated by thinking people, the same way any other kind of clinical madness would be if it wasn’t dangerous and the person had obscene amounts of money.

I did not like, however, the way the whole movie was done as an enormous flashback. I would have preferred them omitting the opening scene with the award.

I really enjoyed the discussion of the endgame after the covert war and how that has sabotaged our entire middle-east diplomatic mission ever since.

Overall, I considered it a mildly educational movie, with good acting, excellent writing, that told a story, which happened to be true (but would have made a good story regardless.) If you were a fan of The West Wing, the movie is written by Aaron Sorrenson who was the big guy behind that. If you like that kind of political drama writing, this movie should get kicked up to the top of your list.

The Jane Austen Book Club

The Jane Austen Book Club
Netflix | Amazon
Overall Rating: 7/10
Meets Expectations: +1
Apparent Rating: 8/10

My expectations for The Jane Austen Book Club were more than met, despite the completely unbelievable premise that all people will adore and bond over Jane Austen’s works. The story is flat-out, completely a woman’s fantasy world. It is, frankly, mental pornography.

In a number of really strange ways, this movie reminded me of The Breakfast Club because of its caricatures of personality and the way those characters try to rebel against those stereotypes by passing along behaviors as if the meeting was some sort of white elephant “secret santa” exchange. But The Breakfast Club was one of my favorite movies from the 1980s just because it admitted that there were other kinds of people beyond the popular types, The Jane Austen Book Club manages to talk about people who seem real.

Aside from the bizarre and unbelievable premise, the movie was surprisingly realistic-seeming in how the characters were portrayed. I like movies that talk about older people, where things are funny because they’re funny, not just because someone thinks there needs to be a joke there. I loved the scene where the man from the divorced couple shows up at his ex-wife’s house (their formerly shared home) and tries to mow her lawn. That was fundamentally funny to me. Jimmy Smits was really excellent as the ex-husband who gets a clue.

The lesbian daughter was interesting, but didn’t seem real. Her relationships did though.

Their friend who raises dogs and set them all up together, that was weird. And the way she constantly resists the guy who is perfect for her, well, Emma is my least favorite Austen book and that character got Emma in my nose like overly chlorinated pool water.

The man she brings, the quintessential Californian tech geek. I loved that stereotype. I was surprised they managed to portray it well since this was clearly a Hollywood movie and it was set in Sacramento— and Hollywood is never kind to geeks. He was just always a comic relief and seemed sort of conscious of his role in the group. I thought he was really ill-served by getting the Emma-like woman.

The French teacher who’s never been to France and whose husband has forgotten to try to compromise to her wishes because he can’t be an intellectual— he actively tries to hurt her feelings because he feels inadequate. That was really a neat person to bring in as the loner who hadn’t been part of the group before. I didn’t like how because the husband is forced to read a single page of Persuasion, he falls in love with Austen and thereby his wife. What?

My favorite part of this was how the older woman who has been around the block but still knows how to sprint for the goal found the French teacher woman when she was waiting in a queue for the Mansfield Park movie. I really adored how that relationship was built in subtle gestures and interactions. It seemed like such a beautiful friendship.

There was a lot of really nice stuff in this movie. Really nice stuff. The ham-fisted forcing people to line up with Austen main characters just sucked. The way that “Jane Austen makes everything better!” attitude was spoonfed was repulsive. And the whole fantastic premise bothered me. But those are things I could suspend disbelief over. I knew the movie was going to have those things and it surpassed them. But in terms of my enjoyment, they might as well have made the movie about people who all have red hair, or all like trumpet-jazz, or who wish Thai restaurants didn’t have so many mirrors plastered all over everything.

Sydney White

Sydney White
Netflix | Amazon
Overall Rating: 7/10
Met Expectations: -1
Apparent Rating: 6/10

I heard about Sydney White via a knitting blog. The post described the movie as being for teens and indicated a low-level of suckage. I found that this was relatively accurate.

I had expected a somewhat smarter-seeming main character and somewhat better handling of the “fairy tale” aspect. Sydney White… Snow White. A lot of the parallels were ham-handed. It could have been funny, but since the overall story didn’t seem particularly related, the allusions seemed mocking instead of humorous. I think there’s a difference between something I’m not supposed to take seriously and something that’s actually funny. But perhaps today’s teens are less sophisticated intellectually?

The main evil is with Rachel Witchburn. The love interest is Tyler Prince. One of the plot points is Sydney White’s computer gets a virus; her computer is a Mac laptop with the “bite out of the apple” logo; the tech says, “That’s one poisoned apple.” She moves into a house with 7 guys; one who sleeps all the time, one with allergies, one who picks fights with everyone, one who’s really really smart, one who is very shy, etc.

Stars Amanda Bynes. I have seen several of her movies and she does a good job in her niche roles. Just like she does here.

Many teen movies rely on a shared sense of humor that I don’t share. I didn’t think any of this movie was funny except the allusions to the Snow White story and it wasn’t until 2 days after I returned the DVD to Netflix that I realized why those struck me laughing. Whenever a movie makes you laugh in all the wrong places but seems to under-utilize the dramatic plot aspects, you have to wonder if you weren’t supposed to be watching this. That was my problem with the movie. I thought it would have been fine if it was played as a straight up drama. I thought it could have been funnier. I thought it could have drawn that fairy tale linkage more clearly no matter which way it went. In the end, I thought it was a half-assed drama with a few humorous moments that detracted from the story.

The plot itself is about how college fraternities and sororities band together to exclude everyone else from campus activities and interests. (They make the entire school about themselves even though they are a minority. And they aren’t interested in their education because they know life-after-college is about who you know.) But how someone who originally thought being a sorority member would be terrific decides to fight against them after they snub her.

It could have been much better than it was. But what it was isn’t terrible. It’s probably a good movie for age-appropriate children since there isn’t any cursing or adult situations. There was hazing and implied nudity.