King Kong (1976)

I watched the 1976 version of King Kong. I'd never seen it before. I'm generally very forgiving of special effects of the time a film was made and don't let them detract from the movie. However, there was just something about the special effects that just didn't sit well with me.

The problem is that I don't think there's a way to make a man in a monster suit smashing a model not look silly. No matter how good the model may be, no matter how good the suit may be, it still looks like an actor in a suit breaking bits of plastic and cardboard. It draws attention to itself and breaks the suspension of disbelief, not because it doesn't look realistic but because it looks ridiculous. If Kong destroying a train, with people in it, makes me want to laugh because I can't take the image seriously, what's the point? Not to mention a man in an ape-suit fighting a big, fake snake. It looks cheap and dumb.

I also couldn't help but think about how rather rudimentary the special effects are. I watched the original King Kong a couple of weeks ago. While the stop-motion puppets certainly don't look realistic, I can at least look at them and appreciate that, for the time, how the live-action actors and puppets were mixed and blended together was sophisticated and would have been spectacular. Then you go forward 40 years and the best they can do is put an actor into an ape suit to stamp around and toss models? It was a fine suit, capable of some decent expression (though it mostly seems to pull a creepy, rape-vibe expression) through mechanics – the effects team did a good job on it and the cinematographer did a good job complimenting it. Still, it's a man in a suit and hardly highlights the advances in special-effects filmmaking.

How else could they have done it? That's the question I then have to ask myself. I'm not sure. I'm not sure, exactly, of the limitations of the time. But I'd look at something such as the Rancor scene in Return of the Jedi, released 7 years later. They initially considered using a man in a suit for the Rancor, but decided, instead, to use a stop motion puppet. With the use of blue screen, projection, mechanical arm, and the puppet, they made something that looks good and holds up well. This should have all been available to the filmmakers in 1976. It's the same principles used in the original movie, but with the benefit of improved technology and techniques it looks so much better. If used in the 1976 King Kong, the film would be less silly and it'd better show how effects had improved since 1933. Don't try to make a man in an ape-suit carry a movie – it should be a small part and never made to standalone, so that it wouldn't have to bear the burden of close scrutiny.

Psycho

One of the things that I like most about the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is the last shot – the camera slowly spinning and pulling away from Marion Crane's open, lifeless eye. It's extremely unsettling. It's a great way to cap that sequence off.

When characters die in movies, they often close their eyes or we don't see their eyes. Or, someone will do the decent and respectable thing by closing their eyes rather quickly. Here, Hitchcock lingers on her eye, as it stares off into nothing, seeing nothing. Her eye doesn't move or twitch. He makes us actually, kind of, confront death. It's so uncomfortable sitting there, being forced to look at this blank eye. It doesn't feel as though it's a movie death, as it would if she had closed her eyes or if her eyes remained hidden from, and unacknowledged by, the camera. It adds a sense and feeling of realism to the scene.

It also adds to the shock of it. She doesn't get the time to breathe her last few breaths and, sort of, peacefully go. No, she's attacked, has her last few moments and just collapses – splat – onto the floor. It's violent and sudden and brutal.

I don't think the scene would work as well without this shot. It's creepy and unsettling and uncomfortable.

Poltergeist

There are, obviously, a lot of things to like about the film Poltergeist because it is a great, classic movie. But there is one thing that I especially like about it – there are no experts in it. There's no one who has all the answers. It's a bit of a trope that there's always some character around who has read up, and knows all about, all sorts of paranormal and supernatural phenomenon and can say 'this is what's going on, this is what we need to do.' Here, all of the characters are clearly in over their heads.

The most Dr. Lesh and her crew have seen before is a toy move a few feet over several hours – what they're greeted with is a room with several objects flying around it. The Freeling family has more experience than the paranormal investigators at that point, having seen furniture move in seconds. The investigators haven't seen anything like this - after seeing the room with things spinning and flying around they still look for tricks when they see a coffee pot move across the table, this is their job but they can't believe what they're seeing. All the investigators can really do from there is collect data and evidence of the paranormal activities going on. They won't know what to do about any of it though.

Tangina, the medium, takes it in stride and acts as though she knows what she's doing, but she doesn't – she's faking it. When Diane wants to go into the portal in the closet, Tangina tells her “You've never done this before,” to which Diane responds “Neither have you.” Tangina gets a look on her face as though she's thinking 'oh crap, that's right' then tells Diane to do it. She's prepared to tell the family what they want to hear and say a few words to the house, but when it comes to actually confronting a poltergeist? She's real quick to pass that off to someone else. Then when Diane reappears with Carol Anne, Tangina straightens her hair a bit, looks into the video camera Dr. Lesh's crew has, and declares, very self-satisfied, “this house is clean.” But we soon see that the house is not clean. So she doesn't know! She doesn't know what she's talking about – she just sees a chance at some glory, this will make her look good.

So what's my point? Well, it's much more frightening and unsettling when no one has the ready answers. This is added to the film being set in an average 1980s suburb development – there's probably houses and developments that resemble it in most areas. It's not some spooky looking house or area – it's brand-new, nice houses; nothing should go wrong or be out of the ordinary there. But things go very wrong and no one knows how to deal with it. In the end they don't defeat the poltergeist, they don't triumph over it – they escape, they run away from it. If it can happen there, to this average looking family, it can happen anywhere, to anyone – and there may be no one who knows what to do or has answers and the only thing you may be able to do is run. How frightening is that?

12 Years A Slave

12 Years A Slave is the true story of Solomon Northup, a free African-American man from New York. One day he comes across a friend who stops him and tells him he was just telling two gentlemen about him, as they are searching for a musician and he can play the violin well. After a discussion with them, he agrees to go to Washington, D.C. with them and play for their circus for a short time. At the end of his engagement with them, they all go out for a dinner and he has too much to drink. In the morning he wakes up chained in a room. From there he is transported to New Orleans where he is sold into slavery. He spends the next 12 years between three plantations before he is finally able to gain his freedom again.

The film can be tough to watch. It's good that it doesn't shy away from the violence visited upon the slaves, it's something that needs to be seen and dealt with. It doesn't get overly graphic though, which is also a good thing otherwise it could become unbearable to watch and/or diminish the film as possibly being sensationalized or over-the-top. It keeps a rather even-hand.

The grounding in Solomon makes the film easier to watch as his story is compelling. He learns quickly that speaking out will do no good, it will only bring worse treatment on himself. He struggles to keep himself from lashing out or speaking out, but he knows he has to in order to survive. There's a longing in him to say something that he must suppress. There are moments of hesitation as he has to consider what he's about to say and how much to say. He knows that revealing that he's educated and can read and write would be dangerous for him - for instance, he has to resist the instinct to read a grocery list he's given.

There's great joy when he is finally rescued and reunited with his family. Though it is tempered by the post-script that tells us that, though they were tried, the men who kidnapped him were not convicted as he was not able to testify against white men in Washington, D.C. The film remains grounded in this way. The film doesn't tread into sentimentality - it'd be easy to imagine this film with rousing speeches on the rights of man and denouncing slavery, slow-motion hugs as he sees his family, and a good 'they lived happily ever after' feeling and 'The End'. It doesn't do this because it acknowledges that it's just not that simple.

The film also doesn't turn the characters to stereotypes or cliches. Even Epps, the master Solomon spends the most time with, though he is a horrible person, is conflicted by feelings for his slave Patsey. His mistreatment of his slaves, in part at least, likely comes from him taking out that internal conflict on them. He's jealous. He's a bit trapped in his life. It certainly doesn't make him sympathetic, he's not, but it at least makes him a character with some depth where he could just be a mustache-twirling bad guy. Patsey attempts to keep her humanity by continuously crying and mourning the children that were taken away from her; Solomon tries to keep his humanity by trying to maintain a sort of professional attitude and doing the best he can at his work. Solomon's first master, Ford, who is much nicer to his slaves than Epps, is relatively kind to Solomon but refuses to listen to Solomon when he tries to explain that he is a free man who was abducted, because Ford is in debt to the slave trader he bought Solomon from and so cannot afford to set him free. It all creates realistic characters.

The film knows that it doesn't need to convince anyone that a wrong is being done, not only to Solomon but all of the slaves, so it doesn't grandstand or moralize. It keeps its feet firmly on the ground. And, really, any sentiment or grandstanding or moralizing would most likely undercut the impact of the film - it's more powerful because it feels more real. It's just concerned with telling the story.

The film is well-made, story is told well. The acting is, for the most part, very good. Hans Zimmer's score is, at times, perhaps a bit much or just doesn't quite fit the film as well as it could. It's clearly one of those 'important' films, but it's not pretentious or cloying. It doesn't try too hard to be something or make you feel something. It lets the story speak for itself. It's honest. It's an excellent film.

4 1/2 out of 5

Oz The Great And Powerful

Oz The Great and Powerful has a really good idea – how did the Wizard, of The Wizard of Oz, get to Oz? Who is the Wizard? And it starts well. But...well...

It starts, as the classic The Wizard of Oz, does – in sepia-toned Kansas. A nice visual touch, along with the sepia-tone, is using the Academy aspect ratio in this section (this is the more square picture films were shot in up until the early 1950s, like The Wizard of Oz). So, clearly, they're trying to connect it to the 1939 film. In this part we're introduced to a sideshow magician who dreams of being something greater. Cool. They establish the character. They set the table. It starts well.

They perhaps hit the notes here a little too hard, as though they don't trust that you can put the pieces together yourself on where this is going without hitting you with a “I want to be a great man” sledgehammer. In the 1939 film they show you Dorothy's motivation – she feels out of place and picked on, “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” suggests her desire to leave, she runs away but quickly comes back. Here, they tell you, then tell you again, and tell you again just in case you missed it.

Then the twister comes. Oz takes to his hot-air balloon in order to escape a jealous husband (Oz is a bit of a rake) only to get up caught up in the cyclone. And they started losing me here. The cyclone becomes an action scene with things flying at the camera (in the laziest, least inventive use of 3D – and if you see it in 2D, as I did, then it's just horribly out of place and annoying). No visions of his friends or people he's wronged by being a fraud. No, that'd be character – we need action! He's almost stabbed by flying posts! A hole is ripped in the carriage and he falls! But he's saved by the updraft of the cyclone! More flying stuff! Heaven forbid we're actually made to feel and sense something deeply.

When he gets to Oz, the film switches to color and the picture widens out to widescreen. It looks bright and beautiful. But it feels sort of hollow, as again they toss stuff at the camera for 3D, we don't get to so much take it in and be awed as we are cheaply distracted by 'woah, look at this! And this! Look out here comes this!' And, really, the whole rest of the film goes like this – action scenes and superficial spectacle with little focus on character and story. The story, for what it's worth, is essentially the same as the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland from a few years ago, which was produced by the same people as this movie – the people of this land need to be saved from a cruel ruler, and they can only be saved by this one person which leads to a big climatic battle.

As he makes his way through the Land of Oz, he is accompanied by a talking monkey and a china doll girl. The monkey is his assistant from his magic act and the china doll girl is a girl who was unable to walk and went to his act, believing him to be a real magician, to ask to heal her (in the way the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion were the men from the farm in The Wizard of Oz, except here done digitally, not with makeup). Yet, all they really provide is attitude and wisecracks. There's nothing deeper to their presence – I mean, his assistant wants to help and feels bound to, like the monkey is because Oz saved him, and when Oz finds the china doll girl her legs are broken off, so he fixes them so she can walk again, like he wanted to do with the girl at his show, but there doesn't seem to be any recognition of this by Oz.

They don't help him grow. The monkey knows he's not a real wizard, but aside from the first few scenes after Oz tells him, he doesn't really seem to have a problem with it – imagine if he felt conflicted about helping a man he knows is a fraud, imagine if he struggled with not telling people, it'd create conflict and drama and tension. The china doll girl doesn't know and so she joins him and helps and everything is fine – imagine, again, if Oz saw in her the little girl who he couldn't help, it'd create a deeper character as he tries to be a better man; imagine if she believed in him and found out he wasn't a real wizard, again it'd create drama and tension. But, alas, they keep everything superficial and light.

It's an entertaining and fun movie, no doubt. And, obviously, there's nothing wrong with being an entertaining and fun movie. But it stands in a pretty tall shadow. And they clearly took some measures to try and embrace it. Unfortunately, not much. I feel as though, knowing this, they'd take greater steps to live up to it by creating a great story and developing great characters. Those are the things that make the 1939 The Wizard of Oz one of the greatest and most-loved movies of all time – it's well-made with characters we care about and have genuine interest in plus it looks beautiful with great costumes and make-up (for the time) and sets and effects (for the time). Here they seem satisfied hitting the effects and beautiful-looking notes. And it really is beautiful looking; it's a gorgeous film. On my own personal note I would've liked greater use of actual sets (as opposed to what you know was likely just a bit of yellow road with a couple trees on a giant green set – it seems to be a lot harder, at least for me, to be wowed and blown-away by a CG-landscape as opposed to a real set) and practical make-up and effects.

I wanted to like this movie, I really did. It looked like it would be good. But, the best I can say is it's a beautiful-looking, superficial fun movie.

2 out of 5

Zero Dark Thirty

So, Zero Dark Thirty is the movie about the search for Osama bin Laden. Kathryn Bigelow had already been working on a film, they were ready to begin filming, when the news broke that Osama bin Laden had been found and killed, so she and screenwriter Mark Boal changed their focus and basically started over. It covers the 10 years from the attacks on September 11, 2001 to the raid that killed bin Laden.

I felt as though the first hour and a half went a bit slow. It's very procedural. While the work that goes on behind the scenes of something like this operation is very interesting, it just seemed to be presented without any sort of personality. It has a sort of journalistic detachment, where the filmmakers set out to simply present this story without interjecting themselves. And, that's fine, to a point – they're not trying to drum up drama unnecessarily, they're not trying to force a particular point-of-view or opinion on events. It's just that, for this first hour and a half, they don't make a lot of progress in their search. So it's 90 minutes of watching men get tortured and asked questions with no real answers and nothing really to break it up. For me, it made those 90 minutes drag.

The last hour, though, picks up and is really quite excellent. It's in this portion where they finally start to close in on bin Laden and then, finally, make the decision to do the raid and get him. Here the film was interesting as well as entertaining. And the raid section was absolutely outstanding filmmaking. It's tense and fascinating. That last half hour makes the film.

When it comes to the depiction of torture, I think this is where the detached, journalistic route they take works in its favor. I didn't feel as though they took a stance on torture, rather just acknowledged that it happened in the interest of being honest. What are they supposed to do? Pretend it didn't happen? Have a character grandstand and moralize and lecture about how torture is wrong? The film would become suspect then. You'd be aware that it's trying to make a point, not just tell a story in an honest manner. Likewise, when Barack Obama says he'll stop the use of torture, the characters acknowledge it'll change how they do things, but they don't lament it as the only way, or best way, for them to work or get info. I'll say this – in the film, they do not get any real or useful information from any one while torturing them. Just seemed to be something I noticed. I think, ultimately, whether it condones torture or not, or overplays its importance, is something that will depend on the person viewing it because I think they chose to not really take a stance.

The detached nature also works because the film never devolves into sentimental ploys. It doesn't prey on emotions. There's no patriotic chest-thumping. It never goes cheap. And I like that. There's no agenda but to tell the story. Though, of course, this is a dramatization, not the actual true story, so the detachment lends the story an air of creditability it, maybe, shouldn't have. And it also leads to the problems I mentioned above. So it has positives and negatives.

It's a very well-made film, though there are some issues with the way the story is presented. It's very interesting, but not necessarily always gripping or entertaining. It's definitely worth seeing, it's that type of film. The last 30 minutes are so well-done that it makes the film worth it.

3 1/2 out of 5

Jack Reacher

Gonna keep this quick and short. I was pleasantly surprised by Jack Reacher. The trailers and commercials made it look as though it were just some action movie – all car chase and butt-kicking. It was nice to see that there was actually more to it than that. It's not great cinema by any means, but it's a solid, entertaining flick.

A sniper sets up and shoots five people. The cops pull a fingerprint off a quarter in the parking meter where the gunman parked and arrest the suspect. While being interrogated, he tells the police to get Jack Reacher. No one can find Jack Reacher, he's gone way off the grid. But he sees a report on the news that they're looking for him in connection with this shooter, so he goes to them. Jack had investigated the alleged shooter in the Army for going on a shooting spree, which he got off for because the men he shot happened to be under investigation for major crimes. Jack doesn't want this guy to go free again. However, he becomes suspicious of the events when he sees how neat the evidence is and this man, having been trained for this, would know better and not leave that evidence. So he starts to dig deeper.

I've read that, in the books, the Jack Reacher character is supposed to be something like 6'6'' and 250 pounds, or something along those lines. Basically to be this intimidating figure, I guess. As we all know, Tom Cruise, who plays the character in the movie, does not fit that description. But, you know, I had no problem believing Tom Cruise in this role. So he doesn't tower over everyone. Big deal. He's somewhat unassuming rather than intimidating. For me, that works. Tom Cruise looks as though he can take care of himself, so this isn't a stretch to believe.

It's not a revolutionary story or anything – it's basically a pulp, genre story. But it's capably told. The action scenes are exciting – I dug the car chase. There's a good mix of drama and humor. There's not much to say or get into about it. It's a pretty good piece of entertainment.

3 out of 5