Jestin' July, Alfred!

These monthly (well, not exactly but you get what I mean) movie posts are getting really old and stale. And not just in the sense that the movies I now write about were all shown a really long time ago. I need to shake things up a little - but how?

A question for another time.

The Happening
As with most Shyamalan flicks, the premise is interesting. And like most Shyamalan flicks, he fucks it up - only this time, he fucks it up way before the obligatory betcha-never-saw-that-comin' plot twist. The opening scenes are great, and there's one where construction workers jump off a building en masse that's terrific and terrifying. Then it quickly becomes simply terrible when nothing much really happens besides people standing around talking pseudo-scientific/religious gobbledygook and trying-very-hard-to-be-ominous shots of something that's patently non-ominous. Throw in one of the most ridiculous plot twists since the beginning of film and you get something that might work better as a comedy than a thriller, something that's quite frankly, not-happening (pardon the pun, it was begging for it).

Wanted
Compared to the self-important stylings of Shyamalan, this almost seems like a breath of fresh air. Almost. Normally you'd think that I'd hate dumb movies. And you wouldn't be wrong. But sometimes something comes along that's so utterly, thoroughly, spectacularly dumb and is so much fun because of it that I cannot help but have a good time. Now, I never read the comic book, but it's obvious here that every single person involved in the making of this movie knew they were making something completely ridiculous. So they simply decided to go all-out, balls to the wall, and make it as entertaining as they can. Hence we get bending of bullets, lots of gratuitous slo-mo violence, preposterous plot developments (including my personal favorite jaw-dropper of a plot twist - The Loom of Fate), Angeline Jolie strutting around dressed only in tattoos, among other such delightful idiocy. It's pure over-the-top dumb fun - and how gloriously dumb it is.

The Strangers
This home invasion thriller has got the scariest trailer I've ever seen - a real little masterpiece of perfect editing timed for maximum creepy effect. Such a stunning trailer, while luring audiences in, inevitably also disappoints, because the actual movie can't help but be a letdown in comparison. Thankfully, the degree of letdown is rather small in this case. There are some missteps here and there, particularly with an unnecessarily protracted ending and an at-times annoying score. But, like the trailer, it is scary, almost masterfully so. The control of tension and dread is fantastic, and really so much more effective than so many stupid movies out there with bigger stars and bigger budgets. Hooray for awesome B-movies.

The Dark Knight
In short: A Shakespearean tragedy/crime epic in the guise of a summer blockbuster, with an unbelievably menacing Ledger as the Joker. Hands down, the best comic book movie ever, bar none. I award it "Movie Of The Year". In long: Read my earlier post.

幫幫我愛神 (Help Me Eros)
Good Tsai Ming-Liang films, while boring and repetitive at times, still have a certain lyricism to them and compelling characters that somehow manage to transcend their onscreen banality to draw you into their sad lives. Bad Tsai Ming-Liang films are messy and incoherent and frankly, off-putting. And worst of all are the Tsai Ming-Liang copycats. These are sad, pathetic movies populated by sad, pathetic people going about their sad, pathetic lives in a sad, pathetic way. It's all of the negative descriptions above without any of the good ones. It's overlong and pretentious, filled with blatant motifs that scream out at you but are ultimately as hollow as the characters' lives. It's the cinematic equivalent of the performance studies undergraduate. It's a waste of celluloid, a waste of money, an even bigger waste of time. It's this movie.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Del Toro revisits the weird and wonderful world of Hellboy, which means that we get to ogle at lots and lots of his crazy creature creations. With probably a bigger budget for effects than for the entirety of Pan's Labyrinth, he really gets to indulge his imagination, and we get a veritable orgy of spectacular creature designs. But he knows enough to keep everything pacey and entertaining, and improves upon the first movie, delivering an enjoyable fantasy-action flick that's loads of fun while keeping some delicious quirks. My personal favorite example is the drunken singalong scene - you gotta love that, even if you don't like anything else.

Hancock
After the not-so-Happening, we get another wasted premise this month in Hancock, but at least this has a lead with more appeal in Will Smith. A drunk bum with superpowers? Sounds good to me. Unfortunately the screenplay suffers from multiple personality disorder and seems like a patchwork of wildly contradictory ideas stitched together. It tries to do so many things that it ends up not knowing what it is, straining both the seams of the story and the audience's credulity, as we're asked to swallow one world-changing revelation after another. If you thought I Am Legend was bad in that respect, well, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

赤壁 (Red Cliff)
What is this, the 69th Chinese war epic to hit theatres this year? Joking aside, while not exactly the most original concept, this is still better than most of the recent deluge of such films, despite needing a more vicious editor to trim out the fat. The war scenes are presented well, with minimal "artistic dirt" that seems to substitute for "realism" in these flicks, but with actual strategems and military movements that are really quite fascinating to watch. Compare that to the rampant stupidity and incoherence present in, say, Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon. The worst aspects are probably Woo's treating the audience like idiots, ramming his metaphors and points home repetitively.

Case in point: Before setting out on the climactic battle, the heroes go hunting - just like they're about to go hunting for the villain Cao Cao. OK, I'll bite, that's an acceptable metaphor. Then during the hunt, there's dialogue along the lines of, "Cao Cao is like a tiger. Vicious, cunning, etc. etc.". I groan and think, "Oh, I wish they hadn't done that." But wait, there's more. One of our heroes chases a tiger on foot and loses sight of it. Then it sneaks up on him. He hears a sound. Spins around, arrow at the ready. The tiger leaps - and John Woo fucking superimposes Cao Cao's face on the snarling face of the tiger.

Let me take you through that process again. After presenting the metaphor to us, he has the characters talk about it. Thereafter he fucking superimposes Cao Cao's face on the fucking face of the fucking tiger. What the fuck.

True, one doesn't go to a John Woo movie for subtlety, but I still wish he didn't lean quite so heavily in favor of the stupidly literal. We're not all fucking morons, you know. Despite all that bitching, I still think it's a decent movie. Really. Here's hoping the second act of this two-parter will be less... well, I'll just settle for less.