Featurette about "Cloud Atlas"

"Cloud Atlas" is an upcoming film by directors Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski.

It's a sci-fi drama that deals with how one's actions in a past life can impact future incarnations.

Here's a featurette about the making of the film.

"Looper" - Rian Johnson (2012)

At the very start of "Looper," we're treated to an assassination within a matter of seconds.  It's quite startling and goes a long way to establishing both the premise and tone of the film.

In the new sci-fi thriller, we're introduced to a future where time travel exists, but it's controlled by thugs.

 

Actually, in this future, time travel does not yet exist, but it will in the future-future.  That's right, hope you have your thinking caps on because the plot of this film is incredibly convoluted.

 

"Looper" takes place in 2044 in an unnamed town in Kansas.  A Looper is an assassin who kills people who are sent back in time to face their deaths.  That way, the bad guys in the future don't have any messy remains to dispose of.
Neat, huh?

 

And, of course, because the future criminal world doesn't like any loose ends, they have a habit of sending back old guys who used to be loopers to be executed by their younger selves.

And that's where our trouble starts.
Joseph Gordon Levitt plays Joe, an assassin who lives a charmed life filled with violence, drugs and sex, until he's expected to kill his future self, played by Bruce Willis.

The film also features Emily Blunt who plays a woman whose telekinetic son may or may not grow up to be a notorious mafia kingpin.

"Looper" reunites Levitt with director Rian Johnson, who collaborated on the sensitive but brutal high-school gumshoe film, "Brick," and this film has a similar, decidedly indie feel.

"Looper" is the best mainstream science fiction film since 1998's "Dark City."

It's brually violent and features a complicated, sordid and conflicted anti-hero.

"Looper" Featurette

Rian Johnson's "Looper" reunites the director with Joseph Gordon Levitt.

The film comes out this Friday, but here's a featurette about the problematic concept of time travel.

"Looper" Score Featurette

"Looper" once again teams up Joseph Gordon-Levitt with director Rian Johnson.  

I thought "Brick" was brilliant, so I'm excited.

This is a featurette about the score for the film.

"Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" - David Yates (2011)

I’ll break the suspense and just tell you right off the top the Harry Potter film franchise has ended on a fantastic note.

The film is paced perfectly. It makes perfect sense why the decision was made to split “Deathly Hallows” into two films. “Deathly Hallows: Part 2” is so different from its predecessor that it really is in an entirely different genre.

From the opening Warner Brothers’ logo, it’s clear “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” was storyboarded and shot with 3D technology in mind. I have never seen a film use 3D to express so much of its theme and emotions of its characters the way this one does.

When “Deathly Hallows: Part 2” opens, dementors patrol the perimeters of Hogwarts, surrounding the school like smoke. Students trudge through the yard like inmates at a concentration camp or masses trapped in a “1984” dimension.
With those images, David Yates not only sets the tone of the film, but makes an immediate statement about the nature of totalitarianism: it’s simply the absence of joy.

The imagery of the Holocaust is so ingrained into our collective consciousness that films dealing with the most monstrous acts of the 20th century are emotionally devastating to begin with. It was an evil so incomprehensible, but so close and recent we can still taste it. Diagon Alley looks like the Warsaw ghetto.
But to say “Deathly Hallows: Part 2” uses these themes as an easy shortcut to elicit that tangible dread from us would be an injustice.

Once the tone of the film is set, the story kicks in and it stays in gear for the duration of the film. Daniel Radcliffe said in an interview that “Deathly Hallows: Part 2” starts as a heist film and evolves into a war movie.
That just about sums it up.

Without taking your hand and walking you through the story, there are just a few points to touch on.
Ghosts of Goering, and Josef Mengele haunt the corridors of Hogwarts. When Harry, Ron and Hermione arrive at Hogwarts after months of chasing horcruxes, they are greeted by a visibly bruised and battered Neville Longbottom.

As an avid fan of the books, I adore Neville Longbottom’s story arc and one of my complaints about the Harry Potter films was that he has been largely ignored. “Deathly Hallows Part 2” finally gives Neville’s character the justice he deserves.

Other Hogwarts students from earlier films are there too, emaciated and beaten down, but ready to fight for the hope Harry brings with him when he arrives at the school.
Cho, Seamus, Lee Jordan and others are gaunt, but assemble for battle nevertheless.

What follows is very heavy on effects, but basic-looking. Again, the 3D technology serves the story and characters rather than just being there for the sake of itself. The ghost of Helena Ravenclaw is enraged when she talks of the evil Voldemort has used her family’s property for and it’s a mix of Kelly Macdonald’s skill as an actress and the effects that convey that fury.

Even the battle sequences, with a couple of flashy exceptions, abandon the bright colors coming from magic wands as wizards duel. The fighting here, magical as it is, is vicious, to the point of bestial.
Oddly enough, the 3D technology and animated effects serve the stripped down look well.

From the moment the battle starts, there are shots of dead students littering the background.
Rowling and Yates refuse to shy away from horrors like the mass murder of children, even in a mainstream film like this. They don’t flinch as Hogwarts burns and people Harry love die.

Draco learns, as does Jeffrey Beaumont in David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” that evil is not glamorous. When its allure is stripped away, it comes down to human suffering. Evil is appealing, but you don’t see how it hurts until you’re sucked in. I don’t think most people understand the statement Rowling is making about the fashion of evil, the glamorization of monsters in our society.

Again, the point here is more than helped along through the use of animated effects. With each horcrux destroyed, Voldemort’s appearance actually changes. He looks frailer each time one is finished off.
Ultimately, when we see the soul of the Great Lord Voldemort, we are faced with a creature that elicits pity and revulsion in equal parts.

If you’ve read the book, you know what I’m talking about and if you haven’t, you’ll know what I’m talking about when you see it. It’s an animated creature brought to pathetic life better than my imagination did itself when reading the book. By the way, managing to pull off something sadder and more grotesque than something that’s already in my head is quite an accomplishment.

The film climaxes with a dizzying one-on-one duel between Harry and Voldemort (it’s an incredibly nice touch when Harry simply calls his enemy “Tom”) and features a couple of deaths you must see in 3D.

It feels like I’m biting off more than I can chew, talking about all these different components in one post, but when you sit down and see the joyless Hogwarts castle for the first time, you’ll see exactly what I mean when I talk about 3D technology and animated effects fusing perfectly together with a film’s theme, tone and character development.

And Professor McGonagall is worth the price of admission alone, because watching an old lady just throw down is awesome.

Paul – Greg Mottola (2011)

“Paul” reunites “Shaun of the Dead’s” Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and teams them up with an animated alien voiced by Seth Rogan.

Fair warning, the film is filled with vulgarity and potty-mouthed humor.

But it's highly recommended.

And check out thetop10blog.com for a feature from your Resident Film Snob.

"Never Let Me Go" Video Review

Never Let Me Go - Mark Romanek (2010)

When life hands you a delightful surprise, sometimes you just say, "Thank you," and move on.



Like Franz Kafka's "Metamorphosis," Katsuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" might be an un-filmable novel, but hell if Romanek's adaptation isn't ambitious.

I'll just say it flat out. I adored this movie.

And my hopes were not high.

I worship this novel and I have to say, "One Hour Photo" was just an awful film.

I mean just terrible. It was a caricature of a psychological thriller.

I really thought Romanek was just a moron. Seriously.And "Never Let Me Go" is easily one of the greatest novels of the past decade.

So I braced myself for disappointment.

But oh my God, what a wonderful film.

It is so elegant.

I know that sounds pretentious, but I can't think of a better word.

Now if we could just get David Cronenberg to go ahead make his version of "The Metamorphosis," the universe will be whole.

Here's my video review.

9 – Shane Acker (2009)

First, what this movie has going for it. It has atmosphere oozing out its eyeballs. The look and tone of the film is wonderful. Every frame, every shadow has this wonderful texture to it.



I think my favorite visual might be 7’s bird-mask.


Visually, I was reminded of so many other films. And that’s not necessarily a slam, because the diversity of the sources "9" pulls its inspiration from is staggering. I saw bits of "Blade Runner," "2001," "Dead Space" (the video game), and "Robocop."

At one point I could almost hear Dick Jones’ ED-209 snarling in his robot voice, ‘you now have 20 seconds to comply!’ Oh, there’s no flashback like a murderous rampaging boardroom robot flashback.

And there’s a moment when 9 tells 5 not to look the machine in the eyes. It’s very reminiscent of “Marian, keep your eyes shut!”
And of course, there’s the unmistakable look of ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas."

The group of 9 look like a bunch of mini-Oogie-Boogies.

Now to the meat of the film.


I have always disagreed with the notion that books and films with Artificial Intelligence protagonists lack emotional poignancy.

Just in the medium of cinema alone, there’s the aforementioned "Blade Runner" and "Robocop" plus, there’s "A.I.," "Edward Scissorhands," "Frankenstein," "Pinocchio," "C-3PO & R2-D2" and "Battlestar Galactica."

There are people who just can’t get past the fact that these are man-made characters and therefore, they don’t matter or count.


Why not?

We matter, why?

Is it because we were made by God, in His image?

If angels had a hand in our creation, if God had their assistance, would that negate any meaning we have?

So why would life that was created through man not be just as real, just as profound?

Life, by definition can not be artificial.

It’s odd that I just watched Duncan Jones’ "Moon" which could be a companion piece as it really tackles a lot of the same issues as "9" and "Blade Runner."

Back to “9” specifically. At the beginning of the film these characters are more or less uniform. 5 is the exception.

He is interesting and funny and more sympathetic than your average cowardly sidekick.


9 also develops a kind of courage. He becomes a character that embodies kind of what the popular myth of Winston Churchill is.

He has that whole “evil must be stood up to” uncompromising belief that you can’t help but admire.

Another recent film I reviewed here recently, “Glorious 39” featured a couple of characters like that, played by David Tennant and Romola Garai respectively.



There’s this kind of bizarre beauty as they call out each others’ number like names and it gets more and more touching as the film progressing.

They start speaking the numbers with meaning and passion where at the start, the tone of voice when they would speak the number of the others, the purpose was only to identify.

The personality in these faces is astounding.

Putting such character into burlap bags with lenses has me standing in awe of this level of artistry.

The way that 5 looks at you with this noble and terrified and courageous look shows the mark of an incredibly gifted and rare artist who understands the psychology behind aesthetics.

The nature of the beast is intriguing.

There’s this kind of symbolism when 1 sacrifices himself for the good of the collective and allows the machine to absorb him.

I don’t know if this was a spiritual or political statement or both, but it was clear without being too obvious.

And that is a fine line.

I have not cried since the 4th grade. I remember it very well. But every once in a while, a moment in a film will get me and I realize that if I were capable of tears, I’d be crying my eyes out.

“Pan’s Labyrinth” is the most recent example that comes to mind. But when one of these burlap characters perished, my heart just absolutely broke. I was crushed.

There is a very good reason why each of the burlaps, or whatever we’ll call these little guys, have their own solitary dominant trait.

To wax on about these would mean spoiling a couple of key revelations that come at the end of the film. And I know that just pisses some people off.

Suffice it to say that the creator of these 9 survivors had to have been both shaman and scientist in equal parts.


“9” has gotten a lot of mediocre reviews and that doesn’t really surprise me. It’s not an obvious film and most film critics just aren’t that smart.

“9” ranks up there with “Blade Runner,” “Minority Report” and “The Day the Earth Stood Still” in the realm of philosophical sci-fi.

Anybody who tells you “9” was all atmosphere and no substance simply wasn’t paying close enough attention.

Doctor Who - The Eleventh Hour

Okay, I must admit Matt Smith wasn't the horrible douche I thought he was going to be.

The story was brilliant and I already like Amy Pond better than Margaret or Donna.

I still miss David Tennant, though.

Robocop - Paul Verhoeven (1987) The Most Effective Form of Subversive Social Criticism

Okay, yesterday I watched and had my mind a little blown by Robocop.

First, I love this movie and always have. The first time I saw it, I was 13 or 14 and it remains one of the most violent and funny action films ever.


Also, Kurtwood Smith as Clarence Boddicker might just be my favorite movie villain ever.

But what really stuck with me when I watched it yesterday was just how accurate the prophecies of this film turned out to be.

Slyly Marxist both in tone and philosophy, this film is essentially about greed and the privatization of the government.

It’s a world where police forces and the military are run, not by the government, but by corporations.

And there is a sharp warning in here about what happens when those running public services as enterprises find themselves on top with one motivation: making money.


I kept thinking about the last eight years and how much of Verhoeven’s twisted premonition has actually come true.

It might sound odd, but Robocop is kind of a continuation of Eisenhower’s cautionary farewell address.

It’s cheering when you find some of the smartest social criticism in the least expected places, like an ultra violent action film like Robocop or in the political commentary disguised as lowest-common-denominator potty humor of South Park.

Seriously, go watch Robocop and think about Blackwater & Halliburton and get back to me.

I promise you’ll be just a little freaked out.

District 9 - Neill Blomkamp (2009) - An Indictment on the Foreign Policy of the West

Frankly, the most amazing thing about this film is just the simple fact that it exists. Frankly, I am amazed this movie ever found financing.

I can picture an upstart of a filmmaker coming into my office (assuming I was an investor or producer or whatever) and said, "Okay hear me out, this movie is gonna be genius. It's like 'War of the Worlds' meets 'Schindler's List.'"

I would have said, "Get out of my office! No, wait, don't move first I have to come out from around my desk, come over there and slap you with my dick. Not because I enjoy slapping people with my dick, even though I do, but I think you just need to be slapped with a dick as a matter of principle. 'War of the Worlds' meets 'Schindler's List,' what the hell is the matter with you? Get out! No, wait, I almost forgot about the dick-slapping!"

But, I would have been wrong.

From the very beginning, this film unravels slowly, showing you just a little bit at a time to keep you wondering who's got the upper hand on who.

First, the obvious. I loved this film's protagonist. He moves from pocket-protector-wearing nerd to bureaucratic bully to victim and finally to badass alien/robot hybrid thingy seamlessly.

Watching this doofus just throw down in the third act of the movie was nothing short of priceless.

What really sells this movie is that it is one of those rare science fiction films that truly understands the craft of social criticism.

Coming off of eight years of some of the worst abuses of power in American history, District 9 might have arrived a few years late, but hell, you can't have everything.

What the film captures so distinctly is the absolute hubris of what we call civilized society.

In District 9, we encounter a society who we know has mastered both intergalactic travel and bio-weaponry so advanced, you have to have the right DNA just to fire their guns. Yet the political and military leaders are convinced that this society is lazy and stupid.

And that's the single treasure of this film. It says more about human arrogance in its 100 or so minutes than could ever be said in a million op-ed pieces.

So, I’m just immensely grateful that whoever green-lit this film did so which just proves the old adage:

Measure twice, slap with a dick once.