Avatar

Has any movie been hyped as much in recent memory as Avatar has? Not likely. Film industry people raving about it being the future of film. Critics seem to be equally eager to hail it as a masterpiece. And the special effects are outstanding. And when you read about the innovations director James Cameron made in motion capture technology, they sound pretty fantastic...for filmmakers. The results on screen don't appear to be any different than anything else that's been released before. That really doesn't do anything for those of us who likely won't ever make a movie with digital characters or digital settings.

And, unfortunately, great special effects do not a great movie make. A great movie also requires a great story and great characters (it does not require great special effects). And, well, Avatar is missing those two aspects. The story is so extremely basic, it might as well be a paint-by-numbers drawing. (Insert evil corporation) seeks resource found only in (insert exotic location) inhabited by the peaceful (insert natives) who sends in (insert hero) to work from inside but falls in love with (insert native love interest) and turns against company and (insert battle). The story is unoriginal. James Cameron spent a decade on this film, apparently most of it was spent on the technology and not the story. Too bad.

And the characters are likewise uninspired. The corporate guy just sees everything as dollars, 'they're just trees!' The military man just wants to destroy everything and achieve his mission. The Na'vi are just innocent and good, though distrustful for good reasons. Nothing is really developed regarding any of the characters. The main character, Jake Sully, is a crippled former Marine, who is taking over the spot on the mission for his dead scientist brother. We never find out how he became crippled, how his brother died, and neither of these two facets of his character add anything to him or the story. He could just as well not be crippled and never have had a brother, it wouldn't change anything. These characters are pure walking, talking stereotypes. Characters with no depth work when they're robots (Cameron's Terminator) or malicious aliens (Cameron's Aliens), but people and humanoid aliens don't work so well without it.

And here is where you start to get into the argument that it's just escapist entertainment. But I've said it before and I'll say it again, that is never an excuse to not put any effort into creating a more original story or interesting characters. An original story and good characters will always make a film better, it doesn't have to be deep or thoughtful and make the audience think, but the filmmakers should put thought into it. And while there really are no truly original stories, there are new and interesting ways to tell them. And simply moving the story to an alien planet doesn't cut it.

The special effects are some of the best ever seen, no doubt. There's incredible amounts of detail. The alien planet, Pandora, looks amazing. But the characters still don't look quite as real as they want us to believe. The motion-capture work is great, their movements and facial expressions are excellent. But to me the eyes give it away, they look incredibly false still. And there's still just not enough details in the skin – there's millions of imperfections on our faces with pores, wrinkles, creases, etc, and they still haven't been able to re-create that. But these are nit-picky things.

Don't get me wrong, it's enjoyable and fun and the technical skill behind the making of it is almost unparalleled. But there are a lot of technically well-made, enjoyable, fun movies out there. I wanted something more from the story and characters (not in the sense that I want a sequel, but in the sense that it just wasn't good enough). And so there's really nothing setting this film apart from your average popcorn flick, when you get right down to it.

3 stars out of 5

The Fantastic Mr. Fox

No, I will not go with the obvious and use the word “fantastic” to describe Wes Anderson’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book The Fantastic Mr. Fox. But I will say that it’s fun, enjoyable, and excellent.

I have to say that I loved the look of the film – from the character design to the setting to the animation style. The look is very much in keeping with Wes Anderson’s other films and the rather rough animation (in contrast to the smoother, more polished look of Coraline, another stop-motion animated film from earlier this year) gives the film a certain charm. It gave the film the feel that this was something done for fun and helped bring the audience in to just really enjoy it and have fun as well.

Anderson does a good job of keeping the film friendly for kids but also enjoyable for the adults. It’s cute and fun, good for the kids. There’re a few dark moments – Mr. Fox getting his tail shot off and the villain wearing it as a tie – but I don’t think that it’s anything that can’t be handled by a kid, though of course, I only have hypothetical kids.

And I think Anderson and co-writer Noah Baumbach find a rather elegant way of dealing with the language, making it natural but safe for children. Instead of swear words, the characters say “cuss” as in “are you cussing me?” or “this is a cluster cuss.” It’s safe and gives a little chuckle for the adults who get the meaning. At first it’s a little confusing, you think to yourself ‘did they just say “cuss”?’ but then you get it.

I’ve seen some criticism of the way the film is shot – mostly using static, wide shots. Quite frankly, I didn’t even notice. I didn’t even realize until afterwards when I saw some comments regarding it and thought about it. I was too busy enjoying the movie to notice. And when you start reading into some of Anderson’s influences, it’s understandable why he’d shoot it this way – reminiscent of the old stop-motion animation specials of Rankin-Bass. It’s his way of paying homage to his influences. It’s not always necessary to use moving cameras and tracking shots and things of that nature all the time. There’s something nice about the simplicity. And as a friend of mine said, and I’ll steal it because it’s more elegant than anything I could think of – it gives it the feel of a diorama, which, in essence, it is. It’s a rapid series of dioramas.

The film is dry and witty, which is to be expected from Anderson who has made his career in that style. If you like that sort of humor, then you should enjoy this film. If not, then you should probably skip it because you’ll probably just be annoyed at the dryness and wit and not try to enjoy anything else the film has to offer. And kids shouldn’t and, from what I’ve seen and heard, been bothered by it. And, oh, ok…the film is pretty fantastic.

4 out of 5

I Love You, Beth Cooper

Now, I Love You, Beth Cooper was never intending to be an extraordinary movie. And it’s not. It’s very ordinary. It’s exceedingly ordinary. It’s neither good nor bad. It just is. It’s the kind of movie you don’t love and you don’t hate. There are some decent moments in there, but nothing to stick with you longer than a couple minutes afterwards.

It’s a fairly standard square gets caught up with a free-spirit and craziness ensues story. And it’s not bad. But it doesn’t really add anything to the table to make it interesting or stand out. Earlier this year we had I Love You, Man which had a similar square meets free-spirit type premise but just worked better - it gave the story a different twist and interesting, good characters. The characters here are paper thin and we have no real reason to be attached to them.

The movie also fails to really be funny. It’s not painfully unfunny, but there’s no real laugh out loud moments. There are just a few chuckles here and there. And it doesn’t seem to really put too much effort into trying to make you laugh. I can’t really think of anything that felt like it was supposed to be a joke or make me laugh hysterically but just missed or fell flat. And this is supposed to be a comedy, isn’t it?

The only thing that felt as though it was meant to be a running joke is that apparently everyone can see that the main character’s (Denis) best friend (Rich) is gay and implores him to admit it, but he refuses. The thing is…he doesn’t really do anything or say anything or even act in any way to make you think he is. So when people look at him and tell him it’s ok if he’s gay, it feels weird because, aside from a flashback to something he said years ago, it seems like you’re missing something. While it’s good that they don’t make him a stereotype that makes you go ‘he is so gay,’ they fail to even give subtle hints – no sidelong glances, no Freudian slips. Apparently, the fact that he’s in drama club and quotes movies is a sign that he’s gay because, you know…no heterosexual male quotes movies compulsively. Movies like Easy Rider and Scarface. Not chick flicks and he doesn’t sing show tunes. So it feels like this is supposed to be a running joke, they just forgot the joke. If you’re going to make a point of this, make sure there’s a point.

The best moments are when Beth begins to realize that her life, as she knows it, is over. She never looked past high school, she never gave any thought to what she would do afterwards. While Denis, the class valedictorian, will be going to Stanford and, very obviously, has his best days still ahead of him, she’s looking forward to a life in which, it’s quite possible, her best days have just ended. These are the best moments because they feel the most real and heartfelt. It’s this honesty that’s missing from every other part of the movie and keeps the audience from connecting and feeling anything.

It’s not a bad movie. It’s not good. It’s enjoyable to some degree, but not a huge degree. I don’t think director Chris Columbus (of Home Alone, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and the first two Harry Potter movies) has the storytelling chops to do something a little more mature like this justice. There’s no edge to give the movie flavor or make it stand out, when there should be. I think in the end, that’s what keeps it from being something better. I can’t say to avoid this movie, but I’d suggest looking for something else.

2 out of 5

The Fourth Kind

The Fourth Kind has a promising idea. It also has an interesting storytelling concept. The film purports to have actual case-study footage regarding alien abductions which it interweaves with the dramatic “re-enactment” of the events - sounds good so far. However, in the end, the promise isn’t paid off and the concept doesn’t work.

The problem is that the credibility of the “case-study footage” gets undercut by the dramatic re-enactments. I’d imagine the idea is for the “case-study footage” to add credibility to the dramatic re-enactment. Your ability to believe this, since this is presented as a true story, is greatly diminished by the dramatic re-enactments because we are conditioned to treat them as fake. Even in movies which we know to be based on true stories, we know that the movie itself is, more often than not, not so much true.

The movie is also hurt by the fact that, unfortunately, it’s just not that interesting. It should be. It very well could be. This idea, this material, should be loaded. Instead, it’s dull – painfully so. The shocks that are supposed to be there do not come. We don’t see anything. We get distorted, unwatchable video when we should be seeing something to freak us out of our skin. That may be the greatest fear of filmmakers, but it doesn’t do anything for us, the audience.

These two problems are fatal to the film. And if the filmmakers were smart, they should’ve been able to see this coming. These could easily be taken care of early on in the process of making this. It’d be so very easy for the filmmakers to make this a better, more effective movie. So, they either couldn’t figure out that these would be problems or just didn’t care.

The fact that we don’t see any aliens is not a problem. That’s about the one thing the filmmakers do right with this movie. If they had shown the aliens, it’d likely just be a cheap gimmick. The film is merely supposed to be objectively portraying the “facts” of the case, if none of the characters see aliens (and they don’t) then we shouldn’t either. At least they get something right.

Some of these problems could be overlooked if the film were actually scary. There is nothing scary, nothing that freaks you out (except that the woman playing the ‘real’ Abigail Tyler looks, herself, an awful lot like an alien, but I doubt that’s the kind of freak out they intended). There’s very little tension. There’s certainly no real connection or empathy with these characters. There’s just nothing to make us care about anything here, unless they think that we will just because we’re supposed to.

I wish this movie were made by more capable filmmakers because it could’ve been very good. Or, at least, it could’ve been a decent enough scary flick. But it tried too hard to be something it isn’t (thought provoking, scary, serious, documentary, drama) that it failed massively to do any of it. And that’s too bad.

1 out of 5

Zombieland

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Zombieland going into it – it seemed as though it could either be very funny or intensely dumb. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. It was not only very funny, but also actually pretty well-made.

Zombieland succeeds because it’s not just a movie about a couple of people trying to survive a zombie apocalypse, and oh-ah there are zombies popping up everywhere. Rather, it’s about PEOPLE; people just trying to live and be people, while also trying to survive. And no matter what the genre, when a movie is actually about people, it goes a long way towards being successful.

And what’s more, the characters are actually likeable and interesting. They give us glimpses into the character’s lives before the zombie virus spread. It really helps us to connect to the characters and make them endearing, though the loners finding each other dynamic is a cliché, it works well. Aside from that, the movie does well to avoid zombie movie clichés.

The filmmakers were also smart enough to know what type of movie they were making – comedy. They didn’t feel that just because it involves zombies that they must also try to make it scary. If they had taken that course, it most likely wouldn’t have succeeded at doing either, as films tend to do when they try that. It’s bloody and violent and a little gross, but it’s not really over the top and remarkably shows some restraint (Woody Harrelson’s character, Tallahassee, goes at a zombie with a pair of hedge clippers and they just show us a bloody pair of clippers being thrown to the floor). Again, they knew what they were going for and knew what would achieve that and what would distract from that. It really is smart filmmaking.

There’s not really much to say in regards to the acting, it’s not that type of movie. All of the actors pull off their characters very well. And they work well together. It’s wholly believable as the characters grow together, and to like each other, despite them all being the cliché (not that it’s a bad thing, it works in this case) virulent loners. It’d be very easy for Woody Harrelson to take Tallahassee way out there and just totally over the top, and that’d probably a rather attractive option, but he doesn’t; he keeps the character firmly grounded. Jesse Eisenberg is extremely likeable as Columbus. It wouldn’t be hard to play that type of character as a sort of whiny, annoying, loser; but Eisenberg doesn’t do that, he’s sweet and endearing.

So basically, this isn’t your average zombie movie, as it’s not really so much a zombie movie. It’s like the characters of some other, more character-driven, comedy got lost and wound up in a zombie movie. It works more as the setting than the plot. Good on the filmmakers.

3 ½ out of 5

Where The Wild Things Are

The most important thing to know going into Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are is that it really straddles the line being between a kid’s movie and being an adult movie about being a kid. The movie is fine for kids, but it’s honest in how it deals with emotions – it doesn’t cater to kids or patronize them and it isn’t sentimental. Don’t go in expecting it to be happy-go-lucky, fun and cheerful as kid’s movies typically are.

That’s not to say it isn’t fun – it is a lot of fun. There are a lot of moments that are absolutely fun and joyous, but they get counterbalanced, immediately, by more serious moments. That serves to make those moments feel even more fun and joyous. It helps to make it real and powerful, much more so than if it had kept it very light and superficial as kid’s movies usually do. And this is what will most likely make most parents leave the theater unhappy that it wasn’t kiddy enough. But I think most kids can handle it. There’s enough in there for them to like. And as they get older, they will also appreciate the emotional content of it.

I don’t think there are very many adults who see it who can’t connect with Max and understand what he’s going through. He’s a raging rollercoaster of emotions and he doesn’t yet know how to process, understand or control them. When he tries to get his mother to play with him and she can’t because she’s talking with her boyfriend, his reaction is to act out to get her attention. Instead, she gets angry and he runs away physically and mentally. Max uses his imagination to run away to a place he thinks is better. But he also uses his imagination to try and process his emotions as the Wild Things’ emotions are as hair trigger and wild as his. By dealing with them in his imagination, he is able to see and understand better what he feels, how it affects others when he goes wild, and what others go through in dealing with him.

Jonze and co-writer Dave Eggers did a terrific job in creating a full-length movie out of a ten sentence children’s book. The characters, and how they interact with each other, are superb. Even though Catherine Keener is only in the movie for a few minutes as Max’s mother, we are able to see that she does love him very much. There’s a very sweet, touching scene where she asks him to tell her a story after a rather disappointing work-related phone call. He lies under her desk, playing with her stocking, telling her a story, and as he does, she types it onto the computer. It’s very short, but through the writing and Keener’s acting (the way she looks at him in this scene is so incredibly moving), we are able to know everything we need to know.

Credit must be given to Jonze for his use of actors in puppet suits as the Wild Things, rather than deciding to create CG characters, as most filmmakers would likely do in today’s day and age (only the faces of the Wild Things are CG). It helps add to the reality and feeling of the film. The film most likely just wouldn’t be, or feel, the same otherwise. The visual style is stunning. Max Records is amazing as Max. The puppets from Jim Henson’s Puppet Shop are excellent. And this is simply an outstanding film.

4 1/2 stars out of 5