Darin and I are still trying to see every movie that comes down the pike and even during Oscar-bait season we sometimes still have a hard time finding one. And forthwith, a short review of what we’ve seen at the multiplex recently:
- Avatar: Blue indigenous people good, technological whitey bad. (Unless techie whitey is pretending to be one of the indigenous people, in which case he’s the best fucking indigenous person ever.) Go read this. Then this. And this. That’s how I feel about Avatar.
Walking out of the theater I said: “We’ll nuke it from space. It’s the only way to be sure.” Because technological whitey wants “unobtanium” a LOT. Also: I saw floating mountains in World of Warcraft three years ago.
Rated: Underwhelmed. - Sherlock Holmes: Ah, Robert Downey Jr. Seriously, he is currently the holder of the “Errol Flynn Memorial I-Can’t-Believe-I-Get-Paid-For-This” crown. I’m not sure what he’s doing is actually acting, but who cares? He’s having an awesome time. Some stuff happened in this movie, none of which I need to tell you about, other than Holmes and Watson exchanging banter. Not sure anything that happened was particularly Holmesian, but everyone appeared to enjoy themselves. I’m sure there will be a sequel and that you will not need to remember any of the plot points from this one.
Rated: Fun! - Invictus: Walking into the theater you know how this one is going to end, and it doesn’t matter: director Clint Eastwood is going to make you feel stirring emotions, dammit. Which he does, often and with no small doses. The combination of real-life drama, crowd scenes, and stirred emotions is enough to kill you during the before the opening credits sequence, so you can imagine how you feel by the climax. For me this was a must-see, because in my book Matt Damon can do no wrong, and once again he’s solid here. Darin said that Morgan Freeman’s Mandela was the best non-imitation interpretation of a real-life figure since Langella’s Nixon, and I think that’s about right. Bring hankies.
My question: Why has a sport as violent and in-you-face as rugby not made it here in America? N.B.: You do not need to understand or like rugby to enjoy this film.
Rated: Exciting! Inspiring! Exhausting! - The Princess and the Frog: Now, this is what I’m talking about for family entertainment. Great songs! Feisty heroine! Joy! Sadness! Musical numbers! We loved this movie, although there’s a sad bit toward the end that really bothered the 7-year-old.
Rated: Whoo! - Up in the Air: What you have to know is that I love George Clooney. I have no idea what the actual man is like, nor do I want to know. He is the current reigning holder of the “Cary Grant Memorial Of-Course-You-Want-To-Be-Me,-Even-I-Want-To-Be-Me” crown. And while I enjoyed him muchly in this film (as always), I think the film as a whole is deeply overrated. For one thing, it looked like TV—there was nothing that screamed “Major Motion Picture” about the story, the cinematography, or frankly the acting. For another thing, the story was nothing special. This movie has gotten so much love and so many accolades I’m wondering if we saw the wrong cut or something.
Rated: Unexceptional - Fantastic Mr. Fox: Again: the Clooney Meister wins. This is a really fun animated movie about anthropomorphic animals and their hijinks. It’s been a few weeks since we saw it, so I can’t remember anything in particular about the script or the story I liked, but I know that just thinking about it makes me smile, so there you go.
Rated: Foxy! - Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel: Yeah, we haven’t had a chance to catch this one.
Not yet rated
I love your movie round-ups, even when I disagree with you.
I was smitten by Avatar, but felt the last act was too conventional. I was taken by the liberal anti-war, pro-environment, pro-science theme wrapped up in a big, fantastic epic. But then… then the happy ending is the good guys declaring all-out war and some nonsense involving nature taking revenge and chanting ceremonies creating miracles. Shame.
I had heard the white guilt complaint before, and I think it’s a little silly. He’s only like us because we’re the largest target audience. The story would of worked the same if the protagonist was black or native. If anything you could say it was “industrial-age westerner guilt”. For some it’s a tough look in the mirror.
The repeated theme of the Westerner (ie, white guy) joining native tribe and becoming the leader is repeated often enough that it really grates. The two most often mentioned recently in conjunction with “Avatar” have been “Dances with Wolves” and “The Last Samurai.” (I’m sure with a little thought we could come up with a hundred more.) The idea is catnip to our self-image: not only are we adaptable and progressive enough to realize the inherent goodness of these people, but we’re awesome enough to learn their ways quickly and be better at it than they are.
I think it would have been worse had the lead been black or Native American or Asian, because of the history of stereotyping those races as being “natural” or “pure” (ie, unable to deal with our complex society). There’s too much opportunity to say, “Oh, he’s just going back to what he knows.” I think this story only works (such as it does) with a white guy.
re: rugby – there’s club teams around the Bay Area and in LA. There are no doubt more around. They have rugby matches at Stanford too… not sure what league though.
Undoubtedly the whole reason rugby never took off here is that, like soccer, there are no long stretches where players stand around, making it easier to schedule commercial breaks.
I had no idea there were so many teams around here though!
Hey,
Just wanted to say thanks for the shout out/link to my Avatar summary. I really like this site, it’s a lot of fun.
I think why I was so turned off by Avatar is that I had heard the plot was semi-colonialist and formulaic but the visuals were amazing. But the visuals weren’t more amazing than any number of video games I can think of, and in general lifted those visuals from them.
It was probably the best integration of CGI and non-CGI imagery, but that’s not enough to hang a movie on.