Chronicle
Chronicle
is the story of how three relatively normal teenage boys gain superpowers.
Andrew, played by Dane DeHaan, is shy and introverted, frequently bullied both
at school and by his unemployed, alcoholic father. His cousin Matt (Alex
Russell) is a stoner with a fondness for pretentious philosophy, but is still
able to fit in much better than Andrew. Matt’s friend Stephen (Michael B.
Jordan, of The Wire and Friday Night Lights) is an extroverted
golden boy, good at seemingly anything he tries and an aspiring politician. One
night at a rave that Matt convinces Andrew to attend, the three find a
mysterious meteorite (or something….) that grants them the power of telekinesis.
As the boys use their powers, they grow stronger and stronger, eventually
allowing the boys to fly, lift cars, and more. But although the three become
fast friends, all is not well with Andrew, who remains lonely and isolated.
First time director Josh Trank
elected to approach the story through the “found-footage” route—Andrew begins
the movie by starting to record his life, perhaps out of some sort of quirk or
perhaps to try and stop his father’s abuse. While occasionally there are
moments where it strains credulity that Andrew would be filming, for the most
part the presentation is a great choice. Not only does it help freshen the
overdone superhero origin story, but it also does a great job of bringing a
sense of reality to the proceedings*. Things get considerably easier once
Andrew gets his powers (and the ability to levitate the camera), and eventually
the film incorporates other recording devices, such as security footage and
cell phone cameras**.
*This
is why the found footage approach is so popular with horror filmmakers; the
immediacy it brings has a lot of potential to be quite frightening.
**The film never explains who exactly stitches all of the footage—from
two of Andrew’s cameras, one of which is lost early in the film, as well as the
other various recording devices—together. However, there are hints that the
government may know more than anyone lets on, and perhaps they are the ones to
edit the film together. Or maybe I’m thinking about it too much.
The format, as well as the tight and
efficient screenplay, also helps to establish the characters—both the main trio
and the supporting players—in a fairly limited amount of screentime. The first
act sets up the trio, especially Andrew (who is, after all, the one shooting
the film at the beginning) quite nicely, establishing three dimensional and
well-motivated characters. The second act, during which the trio experiments
with their powers, is probably the most entertaining (certainly it has the most
moments in the trailers for the film). The boys do almost exactly what you’d
think for three ordinary kids given telekinesis—they play mostly harmless
pranks on people in a toy store, play football in the sky, flip up a girl’s
skirt, and so on. It’s convincing on both an effects level and a character
level. No one watching the film is going to be able to sit through it without
imagining what they might do with similar powers—I particularly laughed when
Stephen uses his telekinesis to flip a bunch of Pringles into his mouth. The
verisimilitude and affability that the film establishes goes a long way in
making the third act—which is considerably
darker—effective and believable. I also quite enjoyed the havoc wreaked on
Seattle during the movie’s climax
The acting, done by professional but
little-known actors—is quite good. DeHaan is given the most to do and nails
Andrew, a kid who is awkward and lonely but quite fun-loving when given a
chance. Michael Kelley, as his father Richard, is good as one of the more
disturbingly realistic abusive parents shown on screen recently. Jordan is
given the least screentime of the main trio, which is a shame, and we never get
to see him out of the context of the other two. As a result, he is the least
well-drawn. We see more of Matt because his girlfriend (an underwritten
character) is doing some filming of her own for her blog, and as a result his
character arc is almost as convincing as Andrew’s.
With a fresh approach to the
superhero origin story, Chronicle is
an effective use of the “found-footage” genre of filmmaking, and makes me
interested to see what director Trank does for his next project (Chronicle allows for but hardly demands
a sequel). A few characters (mostly Stephen and Matt’s girlfriend Casey) are
somewhat underdeveloped, but overall the movie works surprisingly well as a
character piece. It’s a worthy effort, and quite a good little movie.
7 Good. B.
Men in Black III
The original Men in Black (MiB from here out) was a fun diversion, a sci-fi/spy
comedy largely fueled by the chemistry between Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.
The film had great franchise potential, which is why it was such a disappointment
that the sequel was so bad. Ten year later, the crew comes together for a third
go-around. While still short of the bar set by the first film (which is no
masterpiece itself), at least this movie is basically competent, something that
could not be said of its immediate predecessor.
Agent J and Agent K (Smith and
Jones, respectively) are back, still laconically protecting earth from
omnipresent aliens. This time the threat comes in the form of Boris the Animal
(or as he prefers, just Boris, played
by an unrecognizable Jermaine Clement of Flight
of the Concords). Boris is the last member of the dangerous Boglodites,
whose invasion was foiled by K forty years before. Seeking revenge on K for
this and the loss of his arm, Boris escapes a lunar prison (in a scene so
wrought with nonsensical moments that its best not to think about it too much),
finds a time travel device, and hops back to 1969 to kill K. To prevent K’s
death, and the Boglodite invasion, J must also go back…to the future! Crap,
wrong movie. Anyway, hijinks ensue when J arrives in 1969 and promptly meets
young K, played with gusto by Josh Brolin.
It must be said that some aspects of
this movie feel tired. The humor seems forced, and there is more than one scene
in which Will Smith is clearly trying too hard to capture his basic Will
Smith-ishness. The chemistry between Smith and Jones (who is in the movie for a
surprisingly brief period; at least 2/3 of the film takes place in the past,
with Brolin) is sagging though not gone entirely. The action is largely
perfunctory, and the effects work not great. The character of Agent O (played
in the present by Emma Thompson, and in the past by Alice Eve), who is set up
as a sort of love interest for K, is annoyingly underserved, given perhaps two
dozen lines in the past and present combined. MiB III is not as worn out as
many recent third installments of tentpole franchises (Spider-Man, X-Men, Pirates
of the Caribbean, and Shrek all come to mind), but there is more than a little
redundancy.
Still, all is not bad. The movie has
some fun with its time-travel premise*, and its vision of the late 60s is
entertaining (with an especially fun cameo by Bill Hader as Andy Warhol).
Jermaine Clement does a good job making Boris genuinely creepy, although the
climactic encounter with him is disappointing—as a villain he’s a step down
from the Bug from the first MiB and several steps up from Lara Flynn Boyle from
the sequel. The worms and Frank the pug—so annoyingly prominent in the second
movie—are mercifully absent (save for a couple of seconds). However, the
highlight is Michael Stulhbarg as Griffin, and eccentric alien with a sort of
precognition*—he experiences all potential timelines at once, like a
non-omnipotent Dr. Manhattan, which he acknowledges is “a pain in the ass”.
Stuhlbarg plays him beautifully, and the movie does a great job of presenting
his abilities (he can see how things might
play out, but cannot know for sure until they actually do).
*Though
the film is almost entirely unconcerned with thinking about the more
subtle/challenging/interesting consequences and paradoxes of time travel. Donnie
Darko this is not.
*
And a proclivity for multiple layers of ill-fitting clothing. Griffin is
basically what Larry Gopnik from A Serious Man would be like if he became homeless—a distinct possibility considering
where that movie ended.
All told, MiB III is a perfectly
average, forgettable summer popcorn movie. While ideally the movie would
rediscover the stuff that made the first so memorable, it does manage to avoid
the missteps that made the sequel equally memorable, if for entirely different
reasons. At this point, I think I’ll take “forgettable”.
6 Decent. C.
Cars 2
From the release of Toy Story in 1995 until 2011, Pixar
managed an incredible streak of both creative and commercial success (discussed
in a previous post). The only blip was 2006’s Cars, a movie that I (like many critics and audiences) was not
nearly as enamored of as Pixar’s other offerings. Although overall I found it
fairly dull, with far less interesting characters than most Pixar movies and
little plot, it had its redeeming features. The lengthy second act, during
which Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) learns to take things slow in the
gorgeously pastoral Radiator Springs, is nicely staid, and the relationship
between McQueen and the older racecar Doc Hudson (Paul Newman) was well-done.
It was hardly a bad movie, and indeed probably above average overall—it was
just bad relative to Pixar’s absurd standards. So what happens when the studio
inexplicably* revisited its worst film, then takes out all of the parts that
made it decent while simultaneously focusing attention on the movie’s most
annoying character? Well, you get Cars 2.
*Or
not—apparently merchandise related to Cars sold like gangbusters, so from a financial perspective it was an
obvious choice to revisit.
The sequel takes place an
indeterminate amount of time after the first film. Beginning with a prologue
right out of a Bond movie (unfortunately, it misses a golden opportunity to end the scene through the scope of a tank gun), British Agent Finn McMissile (voiced, in a highlight of the film, by
Michael Cain—or at least someone doing a darn good impression. Steve Coogan?)
discovers a dastardly plot involving a giant oil field in the middle of the
ocean. After barely escaping, the film opens up with McQueen’s return to
Radiator Springs. However, instead of showing things through McQueen’s
perspective like in the first, we instead see things through the affably
ignorant eyes of our new protagonist, the formerly supporting Tow Mater (Larry
the Cable Guy). Soon McQueen is drawn into the elite World Grand Prix, hosted
by billionaire Miles Axelrod (Eddie Izzard), a former oil tycoon who is using
the event to premiere a new clean alternative fuel. However, dastardly Bond-ian
things are happening in the background, and Mater is drawn into helping
McMissile and rookie field agent Sally Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer) to foil them.
So…yeah. I hate to rag on Pixar, a
studio that I adore, but this movie is not just bad by their standards, it’s a
genuinely bad film. The new British cars are fun, the animation is
unsurprisingly top-notch (though not as good as Pixar’s other recent films—Wall-E, Up, and Toy Story 3 all look better), and I laughed a few times, mostly at
the admittedly clever names the writers thought of (one of the Grand Prix
announcers is Brent Mustangburger). Other than that, however, the film is close
to an unmitigated disaster.
The problems start with the premise.
The best parts of Cars involved its
laid-back sensibilities, a rarity in CG animated movies. As mentioned above,
the second act in Radiator Springs is the movie’s best. So what does the sequel
do? Take us on a grand, globe-trotting espionage spoof. I understand the
idea—you don’t want a sequel to be a retread of the original—but little of the
new material works. The Grand Prix isn’t exciting, probably because relatively
little time is spent on it, and the new McQueen rival (an Italian Formula 1
car) is too much of a jerkass to be sympathetic but not villainous enough to
despise—the dreaded Boring Zone. The newly added espionage elements also
largely fail; the parts that are played straight are clichéd and uninteresting
(I easily called the ultimate villain about two seconds after his/her
introduction, despite the identity being withheld until the climax), and the
parts played for spoof similarly fall flat. Other movies, from Austin Powers to Get Smart have done similar things much better.
The writers also had to deal with
the unfortunate passing of Paul Newman, and Doc Hudson (the source of much of
the pathos of Cars) was written out.
The other residents of Radiator Springs, including Bonnie Hunt’s Sally (who I
also enjoyed in the first film) have been reduced to little more than cameos.
The only exception, of course, is Tow Mater.
I understand that many people—especially
children, apparently—consider Mater (and, more broadly, Larry the Cable Guy) to
be a riot. Not me. In the first movie I found Mater to be irritating if largely
inoffensive by virtue of his limited screen time. No such luck here—he’s the
protagonist. Mater’s shtick of affable idiocy is incredibly irritating; his
ignorance, harmless in the context of small-town America, becomes borderline
offensive in the segments of the film set in Japan. The film tries to add
dimensions to Mater towards the end, but its attempts to give him moments of
self-reflection and realization, while appreciated, don’t really work. The film
tries to give Mater an arc not dissimilar to Buzz Lightyear’s from the first Toy Story, but succeeds about 10% as
well. If that.
The messages that the film tries to
get across are similarly lazy and annoying, and decidedly un-Pixar. The studio
has excelled at including mature subtext to its films—just look at Cars 2’s most immediate predecessor, Toy Story 3, which had all sorts of
nuanced and subtle examinations of growing up, friendship, and personal
responsibility and freedom. Cars 2
tries to have a message about the power and importance of friendship—McQueen
and Mater are, rather inexplicably, best buddies—but it’s a little
Saturday-morning-cartoonish, obvious and trite. The film also has something to
say about Big Oil and renewable resources, but whatever the movie is trying to
get across is muddled, simplistic, and stupid. I’d only be doing the moral of
film a very mild disservice in
comparing it to Captain Planet.
Here’s hoping Brave, which comes out about a month from this writing, is a
reversion back to the norm for Pixar. Or at least the mean.
5 Bad. D+
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