![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Movies
I saw two movies on Saturday to make up for all the days I couldn't travel due to the snow.
The first was Up In The Air George Clooney's new rom-com. Now, y'all know that I think romantic comedies are usually neither romantic nor funny, and this is no exception. But I did kind of enjoy it. Mostly because of Anna Kendrick, who played Clooney's young sidekick. I checked her IMDB and she hasn't done a lot of work yet, but I really hope she does in future, because I've totally fallen for her. In a fairly bland movie, she has a personality that just pops; her character is incredibly irritating, but she really had me feeling for the girl. Okay, I admit I'm not a huge Clooney fan, but it says something that she is what I remember from this movie, not him.
Oh, the plot? It's a rom-com, they don't have plots. Clooney plays a guy who flies all around the world informing people they've been made redundant. He also does 'inspirational' speaking engagements about how to fit a house into a backpack, or something equally absurd. Basically he's the guy with no life except flying and hotels. And he loves it. Enter Anna Kendrick as a young, ambitious gal in the same company, who figures to save the company a fortune by keeping everyone in the office and firing people by videolink instead. For reasons not entirely made clear, the bosses (who think this is a fab idea) make her apprentice to Clooney's character, flying places and firing people. Clooney bristles and has sex with some other woman; Kendrick stays perky and quits her job; nothing much happens.
But it's a mildly entertaining 'nothing much': essentially a movie-long montage of an utterly irrelevant lifestyle. The one incident that could have brought some sincere emotion into it - the suicide of a woman the (un)dynamic duo fired - takes place almost entirely offscreen, which I found disappointing. But at least I learned to never queue behind old people or parents when going through airport security. Catch it on DVD when you're too tired to watch a movie that will require you to think.
My second movie of Saturday was Daybreakers. This was...um. I want to say it was good, because I did enjoy it until the last 20 minutes or so. But really...not so good. For some reason reviewers have been comparing it to The Matrix. I have no clue why. I couldn't see anything they have in common except the brief shot of humans being farmed for blood looking a lot like the human batteries of said Trilogy.
The thing is, the movie has a fantastic premise and a cast that should have been brilliant. But it felt as though someone had taken a thoughtful and nuanced script and just cut out all the bits they thought would be too hard for the target American audience (i.e. morons) to understand. Then they filled in the holes with gunfights and bam! You have this movie.
The premise is the perfect setup for a really disturbing film. Vampirism has spread like a plague among humanity, turning about 95% of the population into amber-eyed bloodsuckers who are allergic to daylight. Trouble is, that leaves some serious shortages of, well, actual human blood, which is all they can live on. The setup of the film does a great job of showing a once-human society and how it's adapted: coffee shops serving their lattes "with 20% blood", the glass corridors between skyscrapers with sun-blocking materials lining the glass, the high tech "daylight mode" driving with screens and a webcam. And, of course, the plight of the poorest vampires who can't afford the rising cost of blood.
Sam Neill plays the head of the premier blood supply company, and he's in a position to know just how short the supply really is. Ethan Hawk (and who better to play a vampire, with those cheekbones!) is a scientist working for his company, attempting to develop a synthetic blood substitute. At no point does anyone explain why animal blood is no good, but the failure of the experiment with the syntho stuff is pretty darn spectacular. Hawk's character dislikes having to live on blood and refuses to drink it. Clearly, getting this syntho blood right is important to him.
A chance encounter with a group of humans leads him to a guy who has an actual cure for vampirism, but who needs a scientist to help him figure out how to use that cure for others. (Given how much effort they've taken to make the whole vampirism thing seem plausible, the "cure" is so unscientific it's laughable. But it doesn't seem to matter.) For Hawk's character, this is like the holy grail and he agrees to help out. Meanwhile, the bad guy who (again, for reasons never made clear) apparently controls the military as well as a multi-billion dollar company, is set on rounding up the rest of the humans to secure his monopoly on the supply of blood.
At this point the plot mostly descends into chase scenes and gunfights, but there are a few profound moments mixed in, and the relationship between Ethan Hawk and his jarhead brother is at least as slashy as Sam and Dean Winchester. (Seriously. If you swing that way, the film is worth watching for them alone.) At the end, just as all seems lost, the "real" cure is discovered...and this is the part where that hypothetical thoughful and nuanced script was really, badly needed. Because the cure is something with truly horrific -and predictable - consequences and it really needed for the impact of that on the character to be shown (Hawk is a good actor; he could have pulled it off). He's started this chain reaction, and it's a good thing, but the cost is going to be devastating. But almost none of this emotional impact is seen on screen; instead we get lots of blood and guts and an ironically hopeful ending that's clearly angling for a sequel.
Good start, good ideas, fairly poor execution.
So. How was your weekend?
The first was Up In The Air George Clooney's new rom-com. Now, y'all know that I think romantic comedies are usually neither romantic nor funny, and this is no exception. But I did kind of enjoy it. Mostly because of Anna Kendrick, who played Clooney's young sidekick. I checked her IMDB and she hasn't done a lot of work yet, but I really hope she does in future, because I've totally fallen for her. In a fairly bland movie, she has a personality that just pops; her character is incredibly irritating, but she really had me feeling for the girl. Okay, I admit I'm not a huge Clooney fan, but it says something that she is what I remember from this movie, not him.
Oh, the plot? It's a rom-com, they don't have plots. Clooney plays a guy who flies all around the world informing people they've been made redundant. He also does 'inspirational' speaking engagements about how to fit a house into a backpack, or something equally absurd. Basically he's the guy with no life except flying and hotels. And he loves it. Enter Anna Kendrick as a young, ambitious gal in the same company, who figures to save the company a fortune by keeping everyone in the office and firing people by videolink instead. For reasons not entirely made clear, the bosses (who think this is a fab idea) make her apprentice to Clooney's character, flying places and firing people. Clooney bristles and has sex with some other woman; Kendrick stays perky and quits her job; nothing much happens.
But it's a mildly entertaining 'nothing much': essentially a movie-long montage of an utterly irrelevant lifestyle. The one incident that could have brought some sincere emotion into it - the suicide of a woman the (un)dynamic duo fired - takes place almost entirely offscreen, which I found disappointing. But at least I learned to never queue behind old people or parents when going through airport security. Catch it on DVD when you're too tired to watch a movie that will require you to think.
My second movie of Saturday was Daybreakers. This was...um. I want to say it was good, because I did enjoy it until the last 20 minutes or so. But really...not so good. For some reason reviewers have been comparing it to The Matrix. I have no clue why. I couldn't see anything they have in common except the brief shot of humans being farmed for blood looking a lot like the human batteries of said Trilogy.
The thing is, the movie has a fantastic premise and a cast that should have been brilliant. But it felt as though someone had taken a thoughtful and nuanced script and just cut out all the bits they thought would be too hard for the target American audience (i.e. morons) to understand. Then they filled in the holes with gunfights and bam! You have this movie.
The premise is the perfect setup for a really disturbing film. Vampirism has spread like a plague among humanity, turning about 95% of the population into amber-eyed bloodsuckers who are allergic to daylight. Trouble is, that leaves some serious shortages of, well, actual human blood, which is all they can live on. The setup of the film does a great job of showing a once-human society and how it's adapted: coffee shops serving their lattes "with 20% blood", the glass corridors between skyscrapers with sun-blocking materials lining the glass, the high tech "daylight mode" driving with screens and a webcam. And, of course, the plight of the poorest vampires who can't afford the rising cost of blood.
Sam Neill plays the head of the premier blood supply company, and he's in a position to know just how short the supply really is. Ethan Hawk (and who better to play a vampire, with those cheekbones!) is a scientist working for his company, attempting to develop a synthetic blood substitute. At no point does anyone explain why animal blood is no good, but the failure of the experiment with the syntho stuff is pretty darn spectacular. Hawk's character dislikes having to live on blood and refuses to drink it. Clearly, getting this syntho blood right is important to him.
A chance encounter with a group of humans leads him to a guy who has an actual cure for vampirism, but who needs a scientist to help him figure out how to use that cure for others. (Given how much effort they've taken to make the whole vampirism thing seem plausible, the "cure" is so unscientific it's laughable. But it doesn't seem to matter.) For Hawk's character, this is like the holy grail and he agrees to help out. Meanwhile, the bad guy who (again, for reasons never made clear) apparently controls the military as well as a multi-billion dollar company, is set on rounding up the rest of the humans to secure his monopoly on the supply of blood.
At this point the plot mostly descends into chase scenes and gunfights, but there are a few profound moments mixed in, and the relationship between Ethan Hawk and his jarhead brother is at least as slashy as Sam and Dean Winchester. (Seriously. If you swing that way, the film is worth watching for them alone.) At the end, just as all seems lost, the "real" cure is discovered...and this is the part where that hypothetical thoughful and nuanced script was really, badly needed. Because the cure is something with truly horrific -and predictable - consequences and it really needed for the impact of that on the character to be shown (Hawk is a good actor; he could have pulled it off). He's started this chain reaction, and it's a good thing, but the cost is going to be devastating. But almost none of this emotional impact is seen on screen; instead we get lots of blood and guts and an ironically hopeful ending that's clearly angling for a sequel.
Good start, good ideas, fairly poor execution.
So. How was your weekend?