Prometheus

Typically, when I see a movie, I jot down some thoughts and will probably blog it within a few days.  Unless I'm being lazy, which has been known to happen from time to time.  With Prometheus, though, I had a different problem.  I just wasn't sure how I felt about it.  So, I pondered and pondered, making sure to stay off the interwebs and work it out in my noggin.  The more I thought about Ridley Scott's kinda-sorta-not-really prequel to Alien, though, the more I realized that my take on the movie didn't fit my traditional review format.  So, first up is this review.  My next post will be "Prometheus: What the Hell Was That?" and I will try to explain what confused me so much about this film.

Prometheus is, at its core, the story of Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), and their quest for answers.  Shaw and Holloway are romantically-entwined archaeologists, and they have found the same star constellation in the primitive artwork of several ancient civilizations, separated by thousands of years and thousands of miles. 

"Is that...somebody playing jai-alai?"

That wouldn't be a big deal if the constellation was the Big Dipper, but this particular constellation is not visible with the naked eye.  In fact, human technology had to expand to an advanced degree before discovering it.  That fact, coupled with the inexplicable coincidence of societies that had no contact sharing the same image in their artwork, leads them to conclude that the constellation is a map.  A map to where, you may ask?  A map to a planet where humanity's predecessors (dubbed "Engineers" by Shaw and Holloway) came from --- humanity's cradle, if you will.  Their theory intrigues the aging corporate magnate Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) and he funds a space voyage (on the ship Prometheus) to investigate the planet.  Once the crew arrives, however, they find a barren world with only one empty base.  Well, maybe not exactly "empty."

Giant statue head with made-to-scale aspirin tablet statues

They also find a corpse of what they presume to be an Engineer.  But what could wipe out the Engineers?  Why did they come to Earth in the first place?  Can we still find out where humanity came from?  The last two questions, while good, are not nearly as important as the first. 

That looks vaguely familiar, doesn't it?

When you consider that question, the natural follow-up is this: how likely is the survival of a group who doesn't know what they are up against?  Hint: not very.  With every passing minute on this planet, it feels less and less like the cradle of humanity and more like a tomb.

Now, if you've seen the film and are wondering where all the buff Powder clones are, that's what I'm going to get into with "Prometheus: What the Hell Was That?"

While my synopsis may not indicate it, there are actually more than a couple of actors in Prometheus.  Noomi Rapace was good as the innocent who has to get tough, but she wasn't great.  I wanted to like her character more, but wound up being distracted by some other plot elements instead.  I will say that she conveyed pain and fear better than anyone else in the cast, at the very least.  Oh, and if you have any fears about pregnancy, she's in a scene that you may not want to watch.  Ever.

Logan Marshall-Green was a lot less sympathetic.  He did a fine job playing an overconfident prick, but I think that his character was intended for more, given the amount of quality screen time he had.  I did like Idris Elba as the captain of the Prometheus.  It was odd seeing a captain play such a passive role in a sci-fi flick, but I enjoyed his laid-back approach.  I would have liked to see more of his character, but he did a good job with what he had and his choices at the end of the film didn't feel completely out of left field.

The rest of his core crew --- Benedict Wong, Emun Elliott, and a few others --- were inconsequential to the overall acting quality of the film.  The character design for Sean Harris was a bit unusual for a geologist.  I expected him to be a guard or something, but he was a scientist.  So...there's that.

Sometimes, even smart people get tattoos on their head

Rafe Spall's character was similarly odd.  He plays a biologist who shows zero interest in a dead alien and later acts like a complete jackass when encountering a new species.  Worst.  Biologist.  Ever.  I wasn't a big fan of either of those two.  Charlize Theron played a cold, calculating bitch in the background of scenes; I don't think Theron did a bad job acting here (her reaction post-flamethrower was pretty good), but her character felt like a waste of space to me, another bit of misdirection in a film jam-packed with it.  I have no idea why Guy Pearce was cast to play the elderly Peter Weyland; Pearce was fine and his makeup was good, but why cast a young man as an older man if you're not going to show him as a youth?  And, no, I don't count viral marketing as a good enough reason.  Maybe this means that Pearce will be showing up in a planned seuqel/prequel to Prometheus?  Whatever, it's not too important.  Similarly, I was surprised to see Patrick Wilson playing the incredibly bit part of Shaw's father in her dreams.  The most impressive actor in Prometheus, though, was definitely Michael Fassbender.  His work as the android David was fantastic.

Dare I say..."Fasstastic"?  No, probably not.

It takes a lot to play a character supposedly devoid of emotion and make him absolutely mesmerizing in every scene, but Fassbender accomplished it.  He was cold, manipulative and sneaky, but he didn't remind me of the other android characters from the Alien series; his character felt very unique.  He also had a viral ad that was pretty good, but it doesn't even hint at how much fun he was to watch as a quasi-villain.

The first thing I think of when I ponder Ridley Scott's direction in Prometheus is how incredibly gorgeous the movie looks.  The cinematography is sometimes breathtaking, the sets are impressive in both size and style, and the details of the Prometheus ship technology and the Engineer base are well beyond cool.  The imaginative visuals in this movie make it one of the most visually astounding science fiction films I have ever seen.

I'm not always an IMAX guy, but this looked amazing in IMAX

Scott obviously had a pretty good relationship with Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender, as they turned in good performances, but I was a little disappointed in the rest of the supporting cast.  There are a lot of characters in this film that make important decisions, but I felt that Scott made them seem more important to the overall story than they were, which made them feel overvalued and underdeveloped. 

Example number one

I wouldn't have minded that so terribly if the film wasn't so packed with subtext.  Prometheus is a dense movie that does not stop to explain itself to the likes of you, the audience, or hint at what details are going to be important later.  On the one hand, I respect that choice; more often than not, films err on the side of over-explaining themselves.  Prometheus, though, is absolutely unapologetically confusing.  Scott definitely gives enough hints to read into his intentions, but the fact that I feel compelled to write another blog post about those intentions should indicate that his storytelling is not as taut or clear as it could have been.

That's really the problem with Prometheus.  It has one truly impressive performance (Fassbender) and a good secondary performance (Rapace), a wonderfully developed universe, and an ambitious concept (humans seeking their makers).  What it doesn't have is good storytelling.  There are a few reveals in this film, but they are predictable and dull.  And then there is a twist, which is astounding because it appears to have no motivation.  For the first two-thirds of Prometheus, it is a slow-boiling sci-fi thriller with somewhat pretentious themes, and it looks like it's going to be great.  And then it suddenly becomes a horror movie, complete with psycho killers and monsters.  That just felt cheap to me.  I also didn't appreciate the bushels of questions (that is the proper term of measurement for questions, by the way) I was left with when the film finished.  Granted, it did get me to ponder the film for an entire week after seeing it --- which is quite a feat --- but I was left unsatisfied.  Prometheus is absolutely gorgeous and ambitious, it handles the creation of mankind so well that the existence of an alien Engineer race doesn't preclude the existence of God, and it is very, very impressive.  It is also purposefully obtuse and frustrating.  As much as I wanted to be blown away by this movie, the story and the unexplained subtext disappointed me.  Still, it is certainly worth seeing, if only for the spectacle and Fassbender.

By the by, I wanted to call out prometheus-movie.com as the source for all the cool pics I included in this post.  I don't know who's in charge of that site, but they are definitely the web's singular resource for all things --- pics, details, theories, whatever --- Prometheus.  And they appear to be pretty bright; after I jotted down my interpretations of what happened in this movie in my follow-up post, I went back to compare my take with theirs and I learned a few things.

Insidious

Um...why is the "si" in "Insidious" highlighted in this poster?  Anyone...?  I'd really like to know, so leave a comment if you have an idea.  Insidious comes to us from the director of Saw and Death Sentence, the writer of the first Saw trilogy, and is produced by the guy who created Paranormal Activity.  While I hate the Saw series (seriously, don't get me started...), even I have to admit that this is a pretty high-profile pedigree for a new intellectual property.  In this world of sequels and rehashed movie ideas, though, that isn't always the best move.

Insidious starts with the Lambert family in a new home.  Apparently this is a family where mothers wear the same pajamas as their children, but that's not where this movie even begins to get creepy.

Am I the only one who was bothered by this?

Little Dalton (Ty Simpkins) claims to not like his new bedroom and, on a possibly unrelated note, wanders into the attic where he takes a spill and knocks his noggin.  The next morning, when his father, Josh (Patrick Wilson), goes to wake Dalton up, he gets no response.  Dalton is comatose.  Josh and his wife, Renai (Rose Byrne), take him to the hospital, but nobody knows why he won't wake up.  Three months later, Dalton is moved from the hospital to his home, still comatose and still an enigma.

If he was in college, his friends would probably have written "penis" on his forehead

That's when things start to get weird.  At night, the house's security alarm starts blaring because the front door has apparently opened of its own volition; even with Josh closing and locking the door and resetting the alarm, the door opens again almost immediately.  Renai starts seeing ghosts in Dalton's room, but pretty soon she is seeing and hearing things throughout the entire house; the creepiest is probably the one that sounds like a child at play, but the funniest is one who dances to Tiny Tim's "Tiptoe Through the Tulips."  Obviously, their new house is haunted.  In an unexpected horror movie move, the realistic father that doesn't believe in ghosts agrees to sell the house and move to a new home.  It doesn't work --- the ghosts follow them to their new home.  So what do you do if your wife insists that your family is being haunted?  You call in the experts.  Or, at the very least, some friends of your mom.

Divorce is also an option

The acting in Insidious is better than a movie from the makers of Saw deserves.  While I have never been a Patrick Wilson fan, he is completely adequate in this role.  He has the fairly thankless task of being the rational person in an irrational world, and he's not half bad.  Rose Byrne gets to freak out a bit more, and she still managed to not be annoying.  That makes two main characters in a horror movie that I didn't actively want to see die.  Not too shabby.  The kids were fine, neither too annoying nor too whiny. 

Lin Shaye had the difficult exorcist role, and she was pretty good, although not the scene-stealer that I think the part could have been.  Barbara Hershey was decent in a small supporting role, even if she primarily just provided exposition.


I was surprised to find that director James Wan was capable of using smaller scares effectively.  While that didn't translate into a film that was completely even, it was a pleasant surprise.  Wan is not the most delicate of directors, but he managed a solid cast and made a movie that was pretty close to being good.  Where Insidious really stands out is in the type of scares it provides.  You might think that this team of filmmakers would make a gory ghost story, or at least one filled with "gotcha" scares, but they actually do a pretty good job building and utilizing suspense.  For most of the film, the ghosts are rarely seen, but effectively used.

They're being haunted by a Sith Apprentice!

Half-glimpses can be very effective when used well, and Insidious does a pretty good job.  To be perfectly honest, I wasn't expecting much from this movie, but the first two-thirds of the movie genuinely impressed me.

The final act is a pretty huge problem, though.  After spending a lot of deliberate time and effort building an effective horror story built on suspense and mystery, the filmmakers take a left turn and spend the final act as a supernatural action movie.  Remember all those ghosts that were really creepy when you only saw them for a split-second?

Is this the Black Hole Sun music video?

They're not very scary when they actually get some screen time.  Especially when you can fight them off by yelling "Leave me alone."  And especially when Darth Maul is listening to "Tiptoe Through the Tulips."  It's not just the loss of impact that the ghosts have that brings the final third of the movie down, though.  The very premise of the movie seems to change.  I understand the concept of plot twists, but they should be...well, interesting.  The shift in tone away from subtle horror and toward silly science fiction really hurt Insidious.  I was prepared to see this as the prequel the world has always demanded to Road House, explaining exactly how Dalton got so awesome.

Answer: childhood coma caused by ghosts and demons

But no.  Sadly, the tension that was built so effectively gets wasted by adding a left-field plot element and having Josh's shouts of "Leave me alone" be effective weapons against the ghosts was very disappointing.  As for the twist after the twist...well, I think the less said about that, the better. 

"Leave me alone"?  Why didn't the kid think of that?

The twists in Insidious feel like the filmmakers were suddenly unsure of the direction they had taken the story in up to that point.  I would have loved to see the story follow that original tack and have a satisfying ending, but it was not to be.  For every dumb idea that should not have worked (the exorcist's gas mask) but was effective, there was a stupid plot point* that undermined the film's credibility.  Insidious isn't bad by any means --- my wife certainly won't be watching it anytime soon --- but I was  ultimately disappointed.

* Okay, so Patrick Wilson's character doesn't believe in the crap being peddled by the exorcist, right?  Of course not.  Then he goes into his son's room and notices Dalton's drawings plastered all over the wall.  Many of them support exorcist lady's claims!  Here's why that is stupid: this is a new house.  Dalton hasn't been putting up his own pictures on the wall.  "Maybe someone else put them up for him."  Fair enough, D. Advocate.  But these pictures are arranged in a haphazard fashion, all over the wall, spilling out from the bulletin board that was clearly designed to be the place for artwork.  I refuse to believe that any parent that has the option of arranging their child's room would choose to make it look sloppy.  And it's a little suspicious that every drawing Dalton drew apparently had a deeper meaning to it.  

Morning Glory (2010)

I don't know if "interesting" is how I would describe this.

I'm not a big fan of romantic comedies and, by "not a big fan," I mean that I would destroy them all, if only they hadn't hidden parts of their soul in a bunch of horcruxes.  Sorry, I've been re-watching wizard movies to amp up for the new Harry Potter this weekend.  Anyway, I dislike most comedies and hate most romantic comedies.  Morning Glory dips its toe in both waters, which sounds like a recipe for Brian-hatred.

Before I go on, I would like to point out that this movie appears to be the second film in recent years to reference the band Oasis.  Ryan Reynolds made Definitely, Maybe in 2008 (the band's 1994 debut had that title) and the early promotional posters for Morning Glory looked like this:

Oasis's second album is also called (What's the Story?) Morning Glory.  None of this is important, of course.  I just wanted to point out a small pattern before some moron decides to derail their career with a pompous, coked-out movie called Be Here Now.

Just because we can hear you doesn't mean we're listening.

Anyhoo, Morning Glory is about plucky morning news producer Becky Fuller (Rachel McAdams).  Becky lives and breathes for her job, but she is fired from her gig at a local station for unclear, corporate-related reasons.  She bounces back, though, by being hired by a network morning news show, DayBreak, that airs nationally.  That would be the best rebound in history, if DayBreak wasn't the consistent and definite last-place show in its time slot.  What's a plucky young businesswoman to do?  First, she weathers a harsh whirlwind of pre-preemptive criticism from one DayBreak co-host, Colleen (Diane Keaton).  Then she fires the other co-host (Ty Burrell) for work ethic and creepy sexual fetish-related reasons.  That leaves Becky with a last-place show that is short a co-host.  As luck would have it, the station has legendary news correspondent Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford) under contract, but no projects for him to do.  What luck!  As perfect as it would be to have Mike Pomeroy --- THE Mike Pomeroy, Mr. Serious Newscaster --- trade vacuous small talk with Joey Lawrence or whoever the hell else usually pops up on these programs, it turns out that Mike doesn't want to do anything except "real" news.  The animosity between Becky and Mike only gets worse when she starts having the cast do stunts, like broadcast the weather while on board a roller coaster.  Do you smell a conflict?  I smell a recipe for guffaws!

If not guffaws, then maybe a few senior moments?

The cast in Morning Glory is surprisingly (to me, anyway) solid.  Rachel McAdams is good as the hard-working and earnest lead.  I wouldn't say that she has great comic chops, but she is certainly likable --- and that's before she prances around in her panties.

Apparently, this is from a Morning Glory photo shoot.

Her romantic lead in the film is thankfully not Harrison Ford.  Instead, the part is played by Patrick Wilson, who always strikes me as a charisma-free version of Josh Lucas; he's fine here, but his character is almost comically understanding of Becky's work obsession for a character that is supposedly looking for a serious girlfriend.  Harrison Ford is the co-lead in the film, and he gets to frown and speak in a gravelly tone of voice.  I didn't particularly like his performance here --- I dislike when Ford tries to be gruff --- but it fit the character.  I didn't find him particularly funny, though.  Diane Keaton was underused for someone with her comedic film experience.

...but she did get to live out her lifelong dream on the set.

The rest of the supporting cast was all fine, but nobody really stood out, aside from Ty Burrell's ridiculous (and short) performance.  Jeff Goldblum did a good Jeff Goldblum impression as Becky's boss, John Pankow revealed what happened to his character from The Secret of My Success, and perennial TV and movie weenie Matt Malloy played a fairly weenie-ish weatherman. 

I didn't particularly like this movie, but it certainly wasn't the fault of the actors.  I just didn't like the story.  It felt obvious in parts and emotionally manipulative in others.  When Harrison Ford's character does something that seems odd and not at all mean, you can bet that the act will be revealed to have a deeper meaning at a crucial moment in the plot.  I normally wouldn't mind that too much, but this film is not terribly comedic, romantic, or insightful into the morning TV business.  It has moments where the movie could have focused on any one of those subjects, but it never really commits to any.  It also bothered me that Ford's character is spot-on when he accuses Becky of being a workaholic with no friends and daddy issues.  I don't think any of those problems are completely solved by the film's resolution, and that bugged me.  I blame director Roger Michell for making a movie that has some interesting plot ideas, but doesn't really take a stand.

Then again, it is entirely possible that this is just not my kind of movie.  My wife liked it and I didn't grit my teeth through it, so there should be something to say for that.  I don't think I would watch it again, but I didn't need to drown my memory in whiskey after seeing this, either.  Overall, I think this is a pleasantly inoffensive movie that disappointed me with a lackluster plot and a solid, if misused, cast.

The A-Team

Let's be honest...there was never a plan A, either.

My recollection of The A-Team television show is pretty vague, at best.  Knowing my parents, we probably didn't watch it, just because it was "beyond stupid."  I lost yet another valuable chapter of my childhood education and wasted it on reading using my imagination.  When will parents learn the error of their ways?  As I've aged, I have encountered a few random viewings of the television show, and wow...it's pretty rigoddamdiculous.  When this movie was announced, I was a little excited, because I do enjoy the occasional stupid action movie.  But then I saw the movie trailer.

Did that just show them carrying on a dogfight from a parachuting tank?  That is beyond ridiculous.  It's worse than stupid.  This is Ernest Goes to Rob Schneider's House Dumb: The Movie.  I didn't think I could bear to watch anything that stupid, and that is saying something, considering what I have reviewed.  But of course I couldn't stay away for long --- it looks so promising fun stupid!

The beginning of this movie is basically how the band comes together in the first place.  On a mission to do...something...to a corrupt Mexican general, Hannibal (Liam Neeson) and Face (Bradley Cooper) team up with a random mohawked black dude, B.A. (Quinton "Rampage" Jackson), and a crazy pilot, Murdock (Sharlto Copely, from District 9), to escape the mean general and blow him to Hell.  Why did their leader, Hannibal, choose these two strangers?  Because they were US Rangers, dammit!  "Eight years and eighty successful missions later," the group is known as a talented, if eccentric, group that specializes in impossible covert operations.  When CIA Agent Lynch (Patrick Wilson) tells Hannibal about some key counterfeiting plates that are making their way out of Iraq, Hannibal asks his friend, General Morrison (Gerald McRaney) for the go-ahead, and he gets a reluctant okay for an off-the-books mission.  Meanwhile, Captain Sosa (Jessica Biel) of the Department of Defense, wants the A-Team to butt out because...um...she wants to do it?  I don't know.  Oh, and there are some private security guys (obviously, a Blackwater analogue) there, too, lead by Pike (Brian Bloom), who is a meanie jerk-face.  The A-Team pulls off the job, but right before they can celebrate, General Morrison, the counterfeit plates, and a billion dollars in counterfeit money are blown up.  The Team has been framed!  They are all arrested and shipped to separate maximum security prisons and sentenced to ten years and a dishonorable discharge from the military.  How will they ever clear their names?  Well, according to Hannibal, "Give me a minute, I'm good. Give me an hour, I'm great. Give me six months, I'm unbeatable."  It is now six months after The A-Team was imprisoned.  It's time to be unbeatable and undoubtedly unbelievable.

There is no denying that this is a stupid movie.  If you need proof, B.A. has "Pity" and "Fool" tattooed on his knuckles.  If you want more proof, Murdock seasons his steak with antifreeze.  If you really, really, really need more proof, this movie has a scene where they play the shell game --- with a crane.  If you're okay with that, then you probably won't have any problems with this film.  If any of those examples gave you a nosebleed, just pinch your nose and sit this one out.

The acting in The A-Team is actually pretty enjoyable.  Quinton "Rampage" Jackson is still more of a MMA fighter than an actor, but aside from him, the cast is pretty solid.  Liam Neeson is more talented than the script shows, but he played up to the goofiness well.  I think it's pretty funny that he dyed his hair to look like Hannibal from the TV show, but when he disguises himself, he dyes his hair to look like Liam Neeson.  This is the first big role that Bradley Cooper signed on for after the surprise success of The Hangover.  I haven't really liked him much so far, but he was occasionally decent as Face.  I also enjoyed Sharlto Copely as the resident crazy character.  He wasn't fantastic, but he was certainly good enough for a movie like this.  I would like to point out that I am grading on a curve for these actors because of how stupid the movie is; their performances would have been awful in a more serious or comedic movie, but they're just about right for this mess.  The rest of the supporting cast was just there to be stooges that the A-Team makes look stupid, so I'm going to give Jessica Biel's per-faux-mence and Patrick Wilson's Josh Lucas impression free passes. 

This film was directed by Joe Carnahan, who you might recognize from his work on Smokin' Aces.  The A-Team isn't as absolutely random as that movie, but his quick camera cuts are still recognizable.  He captured things going boom pretty well and I thought the action scenes made as much sense as they did on the TV show.  I wouldn't say he did a good job, but it could have been much worse.

That actually sums up my feelings about this movie.  It could have been much worse.  I've heard people defend The A-Team by saying that it was true to the show, but that's the wrong stance to take.  The movie adaptation of any television show should always be better than a typical episode.  Yes, the explosions were bigger this time, and the automatic weapons managed to hit things that weren't just the tires of vehicles.  But the plot was bad, even by television standards.  I was surprised that the plot actually sets up the movie as a prequel of sorts to the show; this is the story of how these men became mercenaries, instead of them helping the helpless.  This is a dumb action movie that was decently fun.  It's better than I expected, but not as much fun as I had hoped.  Is it actually good?  Well, there are lots of explosions, lots of catch phrases, and more than enough action scenes.  If stupid fun doesn't bother you, then The A-Team should get (wait for it...) a C+.  I'd give it an A, but it's way too crappy for that.