Fantastic Planet - Taking a Break From the Conventional

Blegh.

Blegh blegh blegh.

Some straight talk.  Last week wasn't a very good week for me.  I hit a whole lot of down spots, turned some self-loathing on myself for extended periods of time, and basically wasn't in a good mood for the vast majority of the week.  I'm doing a little better now, but the fact is that I missed Friday's review entirely.  This is, in a way, my fault.  I totally had time to do it Friday, but I opted not to because I'd spent most of the day in a negative haze, and decided once I came out of it that spending as much time with the comic book club as possible was better than spending a little time, then coming home to be by myself and write the review.  I got some comics to read, went to see Age of Ultron again, had fun with friends, felt better.

Now, I could have gotten around to the review Saturday, or maybe even Sunday if I was really pushing it, but I just don't feel like talking about this one.  My uncle watching Danger Mouse pulled up a bunch of shitty children's films on his account, and I rolled up Star Wars: The Clone Wars from it.  You know, the one that was the first four episodes of the TV show strung together in a movie and then released to theaters because someone really wanted to make money off of it.  The movie barely made an impression on me when I first saw it seven years ago, and it barely made an impression now.  It's just the pilot to a show I never got into and couldn't stick with before it got good (though I understand that when it did get good, it got REALLY good).  I'm normally not one to shirk from a review - hell, I gave Transformers and Melancholia a chance, didn't I? - but after a week of general downness, I just didn't feel like talking about it.

And I still don't.  I'm not in any kind of mood today to just faff about and go "Eh, s'alrgith, nothing special," and I don't want to take any gambles with Netflix and see if anything decent comes up.  So, instead, we're breaking formula to talk about a movie I'm actually interested in talking about, 1973's Fantastic Planet.  I grabbed it out of the school library last week, and it was really good, so we're gonna take a swing at it.  So here goes.

(Fair warning,  I might do this again Wednesday for Beasts of the Southern Wild.  Or maybe we'll go back to formula.  Who knows.)

Anyways, Fantastic Planet is an animated film from the mind of French director René Laloux.  A former psychiatric care worker, he got his start in animation by helping the inmates create their own short film as part of their therapy.  The early influences of non-neurotypical thinking on his work really shows in Fantastic Planet, which doesn't look like any kind of conventional animated film, even for a sci-fi picture.  Every aspect of the landscape, the creatures, the Traag culture, all of it looks and feels completely and utterly alien.  Seriously, just look at the trailer.  There's some real creativity at work here, and I think it's a great example of how animation and science fiction can expand our horizons of what's possible.

The animation style, too, is pretty damned unique.  There's a bit of sketchiness to it, but not in any way that looks cheap or rushed like many of Disney's films of the same era.  Instead, the cutout stop-motion lends the movie a slower pace that compliments the narrative, and a bit of an off-kilter aesthetic, one that adds to the alien sensibilities.  I don't want to say it's "dreamlike" because pretty much everyone and their mother says movies like these are "dreamlike," but it's most definitely fascinating to watch.

Speaking of the narrative, there's nothing too terribly groundbreaking about it, but it's told in a fairly captivating style.  In the distant future, Earth is largely uninhabitable, and most humans (now called Oms, a play on the French word for man) live on the planet Ygam as either pests or pets to the much larger blue-skinned Traags.  Traag science and culture is far in advance of anything we ever had on Earth, much less as the largely disenfranchised Oms - they're focused largely on the art of meditation and contemplation on the universe.  However, the increase in popularity of Oms as pets, as well as a rise in wild Om incursions into Traag territory, threatens their way of life in the eyes of the elders.  As such, the total extermination of the Oms is frequently on Traag lips.

The whole story is told by taking us through the life of Terr, an Om boy whose mother was killed while he was a baby, and was adopted by the young Traag girl Tiva.  Again, I wouldn't call any of the narrative new or groundbreaking - if you're at all familiar with these kind of sci-fi stories, the whole "human beings as pets slowly being abandoned by their owner and striking it on their own for a better chance at life" thing is well-worn.  But it's well-worn for a reason, and Fantastic Planet's slow pace and unique feel give it enough time to develop as its own story without feeling cliché.  I can recognize the common story in retrospect, but in the moment I'm completely caught up.

Tropes might get annoying at times, but if we didn't have 'em we'd be starting from scratch every time we tried to tell a story, and wouldn't ever get to the point where we need innovation.

I don't want to go giving the impression that Fantastic Planet is bad because the story isn't the most innovative, though.  There's some great thematic stuff going on regarding whether or not humanity can ever hope to achieve real peace with a higher alien power, or if the only compromise is through a show of force.  Given the movie's Czechoslovakian animation team, I've seen some people claim it's an extended metaphor for Czech occupation by the Soviets.  While there are mitigating factors that prove this isn't the intention (work on the film taking place mostly before the invasion started and the book it's based on well predating the occupation), it's always nice to see a sci-fi story with enough universality to it become applicable to real world events.  Good to have meat along with the potatoes every now and then, you know?

(Yeah, I know I'm haphazardly using metaphors, what are YOU gonna do about it?)

I really liked Fantastic Planet.  If I didn't, I would've rolled up a movie for tonight instead of tossing this blog's whole gimmick out the window in order to talk about it.  It's definitely a slow-burner, but it's one of those few movies where I feel compelled to pay attention to every second.  The soundtrack makes for some great studying music as I found out the other day.  And dammit, it's just a plain fun ride to go through.  The movie isn't on any of the streaming services as far as I'm aware, but it's definitely worth tracking it down and checking it out for yourself.

(Assorted thoughts:

- The version I watched was entirely in French with English subtitles.  That might have played a roll in why I felt the need to pay attention the whole way through, but  I like to think it would hold up even in the English dub.

- Speaking of the version I watched, it calls the aliens Traags, while most other translations and dubs apparently use Draag.  The original book calls them Traags too, but I'm only going with Traag because it's what I saw it as.

- I'm still trying to work out what the hell that weird lava lamp bit with the four Traags is.  It's clearly not meditation, and based on what we see in the movie adult Traags don't have much time or patience for recreation, so I'm not sure what function it serves.  But it certainly enhances the "this ain't Earth, buddy" aspect of the movie.

- Ygam's landscapes are some of my favorite backgrounds in an animated feature, now.)

For the record, I am doing better than I was earlier.  Last week just kinda hit me like a trainwreck.

Melancholia - Lars von Trier depresses me with planetary annihilation.

Amazon Insant's visually sumptuous category brings us today's flick...

You do realize that part of the reason I run this blog is to stave off depression, right?  Like, if I don't have something structured going on, I kinda fall into a rut and have a hard time getting out of it and alternatively consider killing myself and verbally lashing out at people, so I need something to do to occupy my time.  So I sit down, watch a movie, and then bang out my opinion on it to keep myself writing something and stave off the problems of my mental state until I can find a more permanent solution.  It's working out intermittently, but I think it's working.  All of this is a nice way of saying:

I DON'T NEED YOUR SHIT, LARS VON TRIER.

Backing up a bit.  From what I've read about him since I had reason to care about him as anything beyond the guy jokingly credited as the pie in Too Many Cooks, Lars von Trier is a bit of an eccentric film director who tends towards a minimalist style for his movies (so much so that he created Dogme 95, an entire movement dedicated to making movies with the barest of possible bones), and a really, really dark streak.  We're not talking super dark and edgy dark, we're talking "humanity is a blight on this planet and it'll be better off the second we're gone" dark.  I mean, emo kid grew up and refined his poetry into something compelling and meaningful without losing any of the original intention, downright, straight up bleak.  He also apparently makes jokes about Hitler that get him blacklisted at Cannes.

And boy howdy does that dark streak show in Melancholia.  I was a little bit worried going into this review, because I didn't pay the movie as much attention as I feel it deserved.  I had other stuff distracting me at the time, and the slow pace and quiet audio put me out of it for a little while.  What's more, I've actually known about this movie and been interested in seeing it ever since I caught a review in the paper back when it came out.  So I was feeling as if I'd just wasted a solid two and a quarter hours and wouldn't be able to say anything intelligent about the film without binging on Wikipedia and imdb in order to put together a half-coherent synopsis and a few small opinions.

But then something happened.  While walking to and from class today, I took some time to think about the film, reflect on what I remembered and piece it together that way.  And in doing so, I came to a conclusion, one that justifies the all-caps boldly italicized statement up there - I feel like I totally get this movie.

The set up this time around involves the wedding of Justine and Michael, two young lovers whose idyllic life isn't quite as idyllic as it seems.  Justine's parents have long since split apart, and her mother doesn't approve of her marriage in the slightest.  Her sister Claire and husband John act supportive, but John's liable to snap and give up on Claire's side of the family at the drop of a hat.  And worst of all, Justine suffers from clinical depression, which strikes her on the night of her reception.  These factors, along with a whole host of other mitigating conditions brought on by the other guests, causes the night to splinter apart - never quite breaking, but definitely destroying any illusion of a happy life.

The film's second half shifts to pay more attention to Justine and Clair's relationship, as well as up the focus on the oncoming collision with the giant planet Melancholia.  It's still as character oriented as the first act, but draws the characters in broader strokes and introduces a somewhat mystical element as the planet draws closer and closer.

Before I get into any of my analysis, I'd like to get a few things out of the way, including the one thing I think pretty much everyone who's reviewed this movie has gotten at - the opening sequence looks great.  Melancholia opens with a series of slow-motion, almost completely still images depicting key events from the movie in both literal and metaphorical terms.  At times I thought it WAS just a still image, until a planet blotted out a star's light, or someone's foot sank a solid six inches into the ground.  It's all very, VERY well shot, and culminates in an image of Melancholia impacting Earth, effectively setting up the movie's tone of depression-born inevitability.

It also serves as a good contrast to the movie afterwards.  In contrast to the opening sequence, largely made up of well-composed, slow moving stills, the rest of the film pulls in much closer and focuses in on characters with a slightly shaky camera.  None of it ever stops looking good (this was in the Visually Sumptuous category, after all), but it highlights Justine's uncomfortableness with the situation, likely born out of her depression.  As those of us who suffer from it and related mental disorders, it's not easy dealing with social situations, and von Trier uses the camerawork as an effective way of demonstrating this.  I'm sure it says something that the method is still employed in the second part, when the cast is cut down to just four people.

And speaking of the cast, they all do great jobs.  Seeing Kiefer Sutherland here makes me want to get through Peace Walker faster so I can hear him do Big Boss in Ground Zeroes and the Phantom Pain, and seeing John Hurt here reminds me that I made a good decision in liking John Hurt.  I really don't have much to say about the rest of them, just that they did a good job and I figured the acting worthy of praise.  Sometimes I don't have much to say about something I want to work into the main review.  I'm not about to push central credited performances into the assorted thoughts section.

But anyways, that analysis I promised earlier.  As I said at the start, despite not strictly paying attention to every tiny bit of the movie, I still feel like I completely understand what von Trier was going for here.  Wikipedia's plot summary includes a whole bunch of stuff about characters standing in for the sins of mankind, and given some of the elements in the movie I can definitely see that.  Yet for the way my reading of the film works, it really only requires the characters who stick around for part 2.

See, the way I see it, Melancholia's central question is, "Does normal, run of the mill depression work any differently that completely apocalyptic depression?"  And over the course of the film, I think it comes to the conclusion that no, there is no central difference.  Justine never gets better throughout the course of the movie.  The inbound armageddon doesn't do anything to shake her out of her thought patterns, or convince her to rebuild ties with her family, or do anything but silently accept her oncoming death as she bathes naked in the planetlight.

In fact, Melancholia seems to argue that depression is the most logical, rational mindset one can take when faced with the inevitable.  Part two focuses more on Claire and how she deals with the inbound impact, believing whatever she's told for as long as possible before finding irrefutable proof that she, along with everything and everyone she's ever known, is doomed.  As the supposedly more rational sister, one would expect her to figure out some means of dealing with the situation.  But instead, she breaks down, completely out of places to hide, unable to accept that there's nothing she can do to stop it.

Central to all of this is a character I've neglected to mention until now, Claire's son.  Throughout the second half of the film, he's aware of Melancholia's approach, but never seems to fully comprehend its meaning.  Even when his father reassures him of their 100% assured survival, he doesn't seem to quite GET it.  By the time the ending rolls around (if I may indulge in spoilers for a moment) and his mother has placed herself and Justine in a magic cave to protect them from the planet, he seems to finally figure it out... and take Justine's side.  He's completely silent and acceptant of the inbound destruction, as if he's adopted her mindset and accepted what his mother cannot.  Maybe he has depression too or something.

You can probably see why I was reluctant to review this movie, even beyond my lack of attention given to it.  "Hey, extreme, pervasive depression is totally a valid thing for you to feel because the whole world's small and insignificant and you're going to die anyways, so why bother?" isn't exactly the sort of thing I want the movies I watch here telling me.

It is entirely possible that I've misread Melancholia entirely.  There's some crucial shots of Earth as small and dark and insignificant against Melancholia's grand blue magnificence, so it could just as easily be a call to rise beyond petty emotional strife and work to appreciate the beauty of the universe, with the depression aspect driving the difficulty of the task.  I'm not entirely certain.  What I am certain of is that this is a really good movie; thought provoking, well acted, VERY well shot, and an interesting introduction to Lars von Trier's work, Melancholia is a film I can heartily recommend to those of you who have Amazon Instant and think you can make it through the bleak runtime.

I'm just hoping Friday's movie is a mite bit less depressing.

(Assorted thoughts:

- Wikipedia's article on Dogme 95.  It's a pretty interesting concept, and I've occasionally wondered how one would go about making a movie under these restrictions.  Never really associated von Trier with it until now though, despite him founding the damn movement.

- It's another one of those movies where I know a bunch of people from superhero films and genre fiction.  Kirsten Dunst from Spider-Man, Stellan Skarsgård from the Thor movies, I know a bunch of John Hurt stuff but I know him best from Doctor Who, Kiefer Sutherland from Metal Gear...

- Is it weird that I was at a wedding on a golf course last week?  I know it doesn't mean anything, but it just feels odd that I go to one of those and then roll up this movie.

- "The brother-in-law who is an astronomer committing suicide rather than live to see the most awesome astronomical event ever, even if it was the last thing he would ever see. Makes no sense to me. You'd think that he would want to at least see it." Why do I go on TV Tropes.  Why.

- This movie is apparently part of a thematic depression trilogy von Trier was working on, starting with Antichrist and ending with the recent Nymphomaniac.  Antichrist is one of the Certified Weird movies over at 366WeirdMovies, so maybe I'll track down a way to see that at some point.

Anyways, small announcement here.  Elena has decided that the stresses of daily life are too much for her to be able to find the time to contribute articles, and will be leaving us.  I'm sad that she never got around to publishing a review, but I respect her decision to go, and wish her the best.  Not sure who's going to fill the Tuesday/Thursday slot, especially given the blog's small readerbase, but I'll manage.

Anastasia - The finest example of historical revisionism since Pocahontas!

We're on Netflix again today, my account, and the popular selections give us today's animated feature film...

S'kind of funny.  Last week we opened up by looking at a movie produced by Richard Rich, a disgraced Disney animator who's spent the rest of his feature film direction and production career endeavoring to prove to his old bosses that he could do just as well without them.  And this week, we're opening up with a film by Don Bluth, a disgraced Disney animator who oh wait.

The thing is, Don Bluth seems to have had a fair deal more success than Rich did.  After leaving Disney in the early 80s due to distaste with the company's current direction, he founded his own animation company and started making movies the way he thought they should be.  His early forays with his personal production company - notably The Secret of NIMH, An American Tale, and The Land Before Time, all of which achieved critical acclaim and are still touted as some of the best animated films, Disney or otherwise - and for a time seemed like a legitimate rival to the most famous animation company on the planet.  However, success for those who try to take on the House the Mouse Built usually doesn't last that long, and the early 90s weren't all that kind to Bluth.  His studio folded, his work with other companies failed to achieve success, and, probably most damning of all, all of his good films recieved crappy sequel after crappy sequel on DVD.  Not exactly his proudest hour.

Fortunately, Bluth was given another chance through 20th Century Fox, looking for a way to break into the animation scene and give Disney a run for their money in the same way the director had in the 80s.  So it was that Bluth partnered up with the burgeoning Fox Animation Studios to produced 1997's Anastasia.  The film was a reasonable success (140 million worldwide) and again it seemed for a while that Don Bluth would have a chance at squaring off against his old employers and potentially winning, especially given the state of Disney animation at the time.  Then they made a shitty direct to video sequel to the movie, Titan AE failed to recoup its budget, Fox Animation Studios folded, and Don Bluth never made a movie again.

So things go sometimes.

Although Bluth's 90s work isn't exactly fondly remembered, Anastasia seems well enough liked.  I rarely see too many bad words spared for it online, and the film often finds itself on "remember how great the 90s were?" lists, so maybe it's good.  Maybe not.  Who knows.  I do, seeing as I've seen the movie and I'm here to give you my opinion on it.  So opinion away with us.

The film's plot is basically revisionist history in order to get the kids in the audience involved.  It involves the Russian Communist Revolution and the fall of the Romanovs ACTUALLY being the result of an evil, reimagined as a wizard version of Rasputin just really, REALLY hating the royal family.  So all that stuff about a dissatisfied lower class and the rise of a communist system?  Didn't happen, evil wizard made everyone mad.  Anyways, in this alternate history, the young Anastasia is separated from her grandmother by the chaos of the revolution, and grows up in an orphanage, yearning to learn of her real past and identity.  Fortunately, as she's striking out, a young former servant boy, Dimitri, and his older former nobleman assistant, Vladimir, are searching for the real Anastasia to present to the older woman in order to claim the reward.  They get together, coalesce a plan, and strike out for Paris, all while under attack from the now-dead Rasputin, attempting to make sure the last of the Romanovs really IS dead.

First off, I really have to criticize the film for the whole evil wizard thing.  Christopher Lloyd does well enough as Rasputin, but he seems far too out of place.  The main conflict is strong enough without needing to say "a wizard did it," and Don Bluth's tendency towards dealing with darker subject material makes it seem really odd to me that he'd shy away from the realities of the Revolution for the kids.  Most of the historical violence is confined to the prologue anyways, so all the explanation does is weigh us down with scenes where evil green energy bats cause havoc every now and then, before a rather unsatisfying and unnecessary final battle at the end.  Maybe it was the studio imposing it on him in order to be more Disneyesque, but it just doesn't gel with the rest of the film.

The rest of the plot, though, isn't all that much better.  I can't say it's BAD by any measure, but it definitely is sort of cliched.  Anastasia fits the mold of the stereotypical 90s Disney princess far better than any of the actual princesses they pumped out during the decade - yearning for a new life, generally pretty, snarky in danger, helpless around the main bad guy, etcetera etcetera.  Dmitri and Vlad don't fall into the trap on their own too badly, but the romance subplot between Dmitri and Anastasia ticks off all the "no, no, see, DISNEY has romance subplots in their films, so..." boxes, which doesn't do the film any favors.  There is SOME interesting stuff when they're teaching her how to be the Grand Duchess, but beyond that there's not much here you haven't seen before.  Still competently executed (unlike some overly cliched films featured here...), but nothing special.

Fortunately, I don't have to bitch and moan for too terribly long, because there are elements to the film that I like.  The music, for example, is a pretty solid effort.  None of it is as instantly memorable as anything Disney pumps out (they were clearly trying to be like Disney in this movie, so yes I do think all the Disney comparisons are apt), but that's like saying the wire-fu isn't all that great because the Matrix did it better.  Some of the tunes, like Once Upon a December and In the Dark of the Night, are definitely catchy enough to warrant having around, and the big show-stopping crowd songs (Rumor in St Petersburg and Paris Holds the Key) seem like they'd work really well with a few more go-arounds.  I can't say it's a favorite soundtrack of mine, especially since it falls into the usual animated musical traps of not actually functioning as a musical - if the songs aren't the primary insight into the characters and plot points, why are we making a musical at all? - but it's solid enough.

The animation works out pretty well too.  There are some elements I find distasteful, especially the way the leads' faces constantly look like they're scrunched up for no reasons, but the characters are designed well and move in a way that looks good to someone like me who has absolutely no formal education in the art form.  Unlike Alpha and Omega, there aren't any moments where I'm taken out of the film by ugly characters or poorly composed shots - in fact, there's some really neat animated camera work in places.  The scenes on the boat where they have what looks like a computer generated set rocking back and forth with the ocean, and this one shot where they swing around the front of a car both struck me as being really good.  Even if the studio folded due to a lack of financial success, you can't say they didn't know what they were doing.

It's a pretty alright film, all things considered.  I can't really say it washes over you like I have with other films I've used that phrase on.  Some bits might even count as really memorable to certain people.  But I just can't get past the revisionism at the start that saddles the movie with a pointless bad guy.  The drive to be like Disney is understandable, but most non-Disney animated films that found long lasting success did their best to not be like Disney, Bluth's included.  It feels like the studio saw their competitor floundering after the release of Pocahontas, and brought in the first guy they could to slap together all the traditional Disney elements into one movie in order to take advantage of an incoming vacuum.  As such, they needed a villain, because all the Disney films have an obvious villain, and we wound up with Rasputin bouncing around set every few scenes.

Gad, I hope this wasn't the result of studio interference.  A little reigning in is fine once in a while, but creators really need the room to breathe.  I'm guilty of liking stuff that winds up the way it is because of corporate mandate (cough Marvel Studios cough), but I really do think that a studio stepping in and telling the director what to do in order to increase profits is more likely to ruin a film than enhance it.  Short-term profits are important, sure (filmmaking is a business, after all), but there needs to be SOME consideration to whether or not the choices made will result in a good movie.

Personal digressions about creative freedom in the art world aside, I think I can recommend Anastasia.  It's not really to my personal tastes, but I can definitely see the appeal.  If you haven't seen it before, I think there's a solid chance you'll like it.  And if you have, then it's on Netflix and that's always a good place for revisiting childhood favorites.  I was surfing around earlier and saw they had Zathura, which I'm totally gonna watch later this week, so I feel you completely if that's what you wanna do.

(Assorted thoughts:

- So as a kid I had this toy that we got from Burger King or someplace of Batrok, the little white bat thing, and he had an eye clutched in his arms and legs, and you could pull it out and watch it slowly reel back into his grip.  It was a neat toy, and I never knew why he had an eye until I saw the movie today.  Turns out, there's a five second scene where they're playing with the fact that Rasputin's a walking corpse, and Batrok accidentally pulls his eye out of his head.  Bit of a morbid thing to base a Big Kid's Meal toy on, but if I'm gonna criticize the movie for not being grim enough for its creative team's reputation, then I suppose it's a good toy by that measure.

- I don't think Rasputin works as part of the movie as a whole, but the whole thing about him being a magical, falling apart corpse is pretty neat, and leads to some fun moments with body parts winding up in places they don't belong.

- I honestly don't understand why Batrok winds up with a lady bat at the end of the movie.

- There's this bit when they get to Paris where Anastasia just goes "SHOPPING!  IN PARIS!" and over dramatically swoons, and... look, it was the 90s, the world was still working on the whole "not all women are exactly the same person with different sized tits" thing.  We still are, but I'd like to think we've gotten better.

- Someone on the soundtrack for the movie is credited with "finger snapping."  I don't know why that interests me, but it does.

- The Incredible Hulk's early companion Rick Jones did voice work for this movie.

- Swiping directly from Wikipedia here: "Some of Anastasia's contemporary relatives also felt that the film was distasteful, but most Romanovs have come to accept the "repeated exploitation of Anastasia's romantic tale ... with equanimity.""  Imagine having to be these people and constantly have your legacy exploited because the version everyone's familiar with makes them feel better.  Imagine how fucking awful that must feel.

- Today I learned that Fox Animation Studios was based out of Phoenix.  I don't normally take part in any kind of state pride thing, but Arizona represent.

- Best part of the movie: Rasputin delivering the usual "NO ONE CAN SAVE YOU NOW!" line before Dmitri comes out of nowhere, goes "WANNA BET?" and decks him in the face.  It's completely ridiculous, and me and my roommates played it over like four times before getting back to the rest of the movie.)

Apologies for the lateness of the review.  I had some family stuff to take care of over the weekend, and got hit with a pretty bad bout of depression and bad luck on Sunday.  I'll try to make Wednesday's come a little earlier, but I don't have a holiday to fall back on this time, and tomorrow's open mic night, so I'm not gonna make any promises or anything.

Apocalypse Now

The following review, brought to us by Amazon Instant's military and war category, contains spoilers.

War has never been a huge factor in my life.  It has, of course, always served as a backdrop of sorts - the 9/11 attacks occurred only a few short years after I gained self-awareness, and the United States has been entangled in one overseas conflict after another in these last fourteen years.  However, it has always been a distant reality, never something I have ever needed to directly confront.  It has only ever served as news reports and discussions in classrooms.  No members of my immediate family who I identify closely with have served in the armed forces during my formative years, and I personally do not ever wish to see active combat, much less enlist for any reason whatsoever.  War, to me, is a nebulous thing, and one I hope to God I never have to confront.

Media, however, has played a major role in my life.  For years I replaced friendships in school with endless readings, both for schoolwork and pleasure.  My teenage years were heavily occupied with reading about stories I knew of and was completely unfamiliar with on various online sources.  More recently, much of my time is occupied with video games and movies, hence the reason for this blog's existence.  I am simply not a good people person, and directly facing the world unnerves me, so I turn to the cinema and world of fiction instead.

As such, my perception of war is shaped largely by what I encounter in various movies, books, and games.  For just one pertinent example, my opinion on boot camps was practically nonexistent until I saw Full Metal Jacket a few years back.  The depiction of R. Lee Ermey's gunnery sergeant as a relentless psychological abuser of a man clearly unsuited to military life, to the point of murder and suicide, cemented my distaste for the whole basic training process far more than any description from a soldier who experienced the same could.  Perhaps this speaks to something deeply wrong with me.  Personally, I think it does, and I should like to note, just for the comfort of people who I know frequent this blog, that I am aware of the issue and working to get more real world exposure to counter it.  But this receptiveness to movies has shaped who I am, and there is nothing I can do to change those past experiences.

Of all the military fiction I have consumed, the Metal Gear series of video games has influenced my perception on war and conflict more than any other single work or body of work.  I only hopped on the bandwagon this last February, but the past six months of playing and analyzing have proven some of the most enriching and rewarding experiences I have had with a story in quite some time.  For a series I started into because a meme I saw made me laugh, it has proven surprisingly impactive, especially on my views of how war should be.

Allow me to elaborate.  Much of the series centers around attempts to control the entire world to bring it into line with one's ideals, and the inevitable failure of these attempts.  A world controlled by iron-fisted power and military might can only slip away or shatter under the steel grip. In the end, it is the understanding ways of Solid Snake that save the world.  Unlike those before and around him, he fights not to eliminate an enemy and shape the world to his standards, but to remove a threat and allow the world to develop as each person living in it sees fit.  More importantly, while he will fight and do what is right to save the world and finish his mission, he endeavors to understand his enemies, and provide them the closure and understanding they did not receive in life.

There is a kind of purity to Snake's actions, a lack of judgement on the way his enemies operate.  Obviously they must be taken down, removed from the world so that they will not endanger it further, but their thoughts and feelings on how it should be matter just as much as anyone else's.  Their life stories deserve to be heard.  The failure to understand this principle, both in the series' primary villain as a concept, and by Snake as an active thought, drives much of the story's action and drama, and when the two of them reconcile in the final chronological game and at long last understand the need for that purity of judgement, it's incredibly beautiful.

I feel the need to mention all of this because in the final twenty minutes of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, I noticed some parallels to this idea.  Colonel Kurtz is portrayed as a man who fought for his country and did his homeland proud by enacting the worst of brutalities on those he was tasked to fight.  He rose as a man perfect in every way for a commanding position in an amoral, power drunk army that enjoyed the slaughter of innocents for a strategic position and a place to surf, reveled in the opportunity to rape the rare non-combatant women who came across their sights.  Another man in his position might have simply taken it and joined with the rabble, content to spend the rest of his days in a cozy general's armchair.

But Kurtz, for better or worse, was no ordinary man.  He could not stand the terrible deeds he had to perform in the name of victory, and had to find a way to understand it all, or else go completely mad.  While it is debatable whether or not he succeeded in avoiding madness, his speeches clearly show he found a way to make it through.  Upon seeing the arms of children he and his men inoculated hacked off by Vietnamese sticking to their principles, he found both the horrors of war and the way to navigate them.  It takes, again, a purity of judgement.  A conviction to do what you believe must be done, and ONLY what must be done.

It shapes Kurtz into the kind of man who won't even raise a finger against a fly as it buzzes all about his face and will take legions of the enemy under his wing as a divine figurehead - and will chop a man's head off and deposit it at the feet of his comrade if that man poses even the slightest threat to his beliefs and way of life, all without a hint of anger or regret.  Purity.  The enemy is who you judge them to be, and only they are worthy of the monstrosity war makes a man into.

Maybe Kurtz was right in his way of thinking.  Maybe it was just a philosophy he developed in order to survive.  With his limited screen-time and air of mystery, there's no way to know for sure.  But it is easy to say that his methods and philosophies had no place in the Vietnam War.  Being driven into madness and giving up one's ideals for the sake of victory, even if victory proved impossible, was the norm.  And so it is that Kurtz had to die.  Thankfully at the hand of a man who came to understand his mindset and brought him down in a manner he would have approved of, ritualistically and with the cold brutality of a monster; but he had to die regardless, and with his death the world lost any potential insight it could gain from his alternative take on the horrors, madness, and reality of war.

It's a horrible, horrible outlook to take on the world, but I can't help but feel there's an element of truth to both perspectives.  Understanding one's enemies, as in the Metal Gear model, serves to humanize them and offers deeper insight into why war shouldn't be waged, for the sake of the human condition.  But cutting through the hatred and bloodlust to operate as a distant, high-minded killing machine may very well be the only way to preserve one's principles during a war one has no way out of.  Attempting to stop the horror of battle and sympathizing with the enemy is all well and good, but if brass tacks come to brass tacks, taming the monster and unleashing it at will on those you feel deserve it is quite possibly the only way to stay sane.

Maybe that's what war's about.  Maybe I'm completely off-base and have misread the film in the worst manner possible.  I need more time to digest, but I have a feeling Colonel Kurtz's methods and ideologies will play some major part in the way I view war from now on.

Apocalypse Now has deeply impacted me as a viewer, but I am not quite certain how to process it just yet.  I have a wedding to attend tomorrow (I'm writing this review on a Thursday night), so I'll have to clear my thoughts of anything to do with the darkness of the human condition and the horrors of war for the sake of being able to function properly.  However, this means I will not be able to condense my impressions of the movie into a more coherent form before Saturday rolls around.  Since this blog exists primarily to keep me on a schedule, I'd rather not miss my day long deadline because I'm trying to figure out if my thoughts on the movie make sense or not.

As such, the above serves as a look into the parts of my reaction that I feel best reflect my overall impression of the film and potentially add a new take to the discourse.  It is, of course, an incredible film (one you should all see wherever and whenever possible), and while I found myself fading in parts, the ending more than makes up for any fears I had of not liking the movie and having to write even a word of negative criticism.  Anything I have to say about the overall story, characters, filming style, or cultural impact would be moot by this point, given its status as one of the most critically acclaimed and deeply analyzed films of all time.  Giving you my raw, immediate thoughts, however incoherent and potentially off the mark, feels like the right thing to do.

After all, this is the sort of film that encourages deep thinking about its overall plots and themes.  Colonel Kurtz's appearance in the final half hour put me in mind of my analysis of the Metal Gear series and the way media has impacted my perception of the world around me, and so those are the thoughts I have chosen to share with you, as I feel they are not likely to have come up much in discussion of the film.  With any amount of luck, it's coherent and accurate enough to serve as a thought-provoking and engaging read.  If not... oh well, I suppose.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go find something to do that's not so fucking BLEAK for the rest of the night.  I'll add some assorted thoughts and try to keep this from being "Gilbert Raves About Why The World Is Terrible When Really He Don't Know Nothin': The Article" in the morning.  Good night, and thanks for reading.

(Assorted thoughts:

- Marlon Brando may have been one hell of a bastard to work with at this point in his career, but damn if he doesn't deserve his recognition as one of the greats.

- Reading the story about making this movie's like reading through a fucking comedy of errors, except people are actually nearly dying and attempting suicide.

- That scene with the dog, man.  Almost broke my water bottle in two clenching it so tight, and it's made out of rubber, so that oughta tell you something.

- Robert Duvall: Second best part of the movie.  Agreed?  Agreed.)

Without a Paddle - At least the creek isn't full of what you'd expect.

In what is becoming something of a trend on this blog, we once again have action adventure chosen from Netflix, this time my account, as the category from which today's film hails.

As cathartic as it is to tear down a movie in a negative review from time to time, I really wouldn't want it to be the ONLY thing I do on this blog.  Having to write a bad review means I have to watch a bad movie, and that's only fun if it's bad in an entertaining and interesting way.  If it's just dull and poorly made, like Alpha and Omega, then all I'm doing is subjecting myself to an unwatchable film I can't recommend.  And I really do want to recommend films here - find interesting stuff to write about and hope other people want to watch it based on my write-up.  If every film I watch is Alpha and Omega, I'd quickly fall into a pattern of "don't watch this" and "stay away from that."  It'd get boring and depressing real damn quick.

I had all the above in mind when I rolled up Without A Paddle for today.  Based on the Netflix rating and various reactions online, it didn't seem like a fun ride.  Seth Green's a good actor, and I liked him in Buffy, but otherwise it struck me as nothing but another mediocre mid-2000s comedy film nobody had heard of.  Hitting play, I fully expected a massive piece of shit movie full of stoner references and piss and shit jokes, the sort of thing you can only get into with a few buddies and excessive amounts of alcohol.

With the movie done now, I can happily say it's OK.  Not a great comedy, not a bad one, not really offensive in any way, just OK.  It happens for around an hour and a half, delivers some good laughs, and it's over without any pain or lasting memory.  I don't regret watching it, even though it's not anything special, so there we are.  If you'd like a little more detail than that, read on.

Three grown-up friends from back in the 80s - neurotic doctor Dan (Green), mild jackass Tom (Dax Shepard) and character trait I don't remember Jerry (Matthew Lillard) - meet up again after their friend Billy dies, and find a treasure map he left for their planned childhood adventure to find DB Cooper's lost treasure.  Dissatisfied with their lives for one reason or another, they decided to go out on a journey in Billy's memory and have one last childlike adventure together before giving into the pressures of adulthood.  Naturally, anything and everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and the trio must fight to survive in the Washington wilderness in what I can only describe a series of "wacky hijinks," eventually learning several valuable lessons about life.

You've seen the story before.  I've seen the story before.  I don't even watch all that many films of this sort and I've seen this story a million times before, mostly in cartoons. It's not in any way an original or interesting plot, but I can't fault the movie for it.  There's around four or five major sequences in the film involving a bear attack, pot farming hillbilly murderers, some hippie all-natural girls in a tree, and...

Before I go on, can I just take a moment to talk about the hillbillies for a moment?  I'm only bringing it up in its own paragraph because I JUST did Tucker and Dale vs. Evil last week, and this is exactly the sort of "haw haw all hillbillies are evil freaks" thing that movie was against.  They both even go so far as to reference Deliverance, which popularized the trope.  I know this one was made six years before Tucker and Dale, but having seen both now, I totally get how quickly the joke wears really fucking old.  Even though there's a bit at the end explaining why they act the way they do, the movie still has an air about it implying that yep, all backwoods country folk are just over-the-top murderous bastards.  Stay away from 'em, city folk!  Don't wanna end up man-raped scare quotes go here, do ya?!?

Sorry about the interruption.  Anyways, back to the review.

...a southern sheriff who lives in Washington state for some reason, and none of them are really bad.  They land a few jokes here and there, and the best most of the rest get are a slightly amused smile.  It all functions about as well as you can expect a comedy film without any major ambitions to function, so it's hard to say it fails on any level.

The characters, too, are largely stock, but they're at least endearing.  They play off of one another well-enough to form the sense we're watching lifelong friends, and pull the right "Oh come ON" faces when called to.  I personally think Green gives the best performance of the three, but that's really only because he's the only actor I know and have reason to like prior to watching this (Burt Reynolds has a small roll towards the end, but I didn't realize it until looking it up - probably because I know jack dick about Burt Reynolds).  All the side characters play their parts without any special flair, but still do a good enough job - yes, even the hillbillies - to pass muster.  Special mention to Bart the Bear 2 as the bear.

(Yeah, Wikipedia pages for two bear actors.  I'm as surprised as you.)

If I had to fault the film for anything, it'd mostly be for a few jokes I personally find distasteful.  Some stuff with pissing and bear shit, but nothing I can really hate on too much.  Outside those two bits (which are at the beginning and end of the film) and the hillbilly characters, there's nothing much in this film that aims to shock or offend anyone.  I suppose the half-naked huddling in the rain bit, or the jokes about being able to see the hippie girls' downstairs might not play well with some, but I didn't mind them much while watching.  It's not a clean comedy film by any means, but it's not intentionally offensive or disgusting beyond a few elements, so...

It's just an alright film, is what it is.  There's an appropriate level of 80s nostalgia sprinkled here and there, they use their soundtrack songs well, and it's got a good message about treasuring what you have rather than chasing something you can never get.  The whole thing is by the numbers comedy with the right amount of effort put in to get you to laugh maybe a dozen times throughout the whole thing.  I really wish I had more to say, but I just don't.  Without A Paddle occupied my attention throughout its running time and made me smile a little, and that's the highest praise I can bestow upon it.

Consider this another one of those "if what I just described sounds like a good time to you, check it out" movies.  Otherwise, I don't think you'd be hurt by giving this one a miss.  Sorry for the brevity, but that's all I have to say without stretching and trying to figure out the true pain behind Dan's obsession with a C-3PO figure.

(Assorted thoughts:

- I've never smoked pot in my life, and I have no intention of doing so, but I am fairly certain based on what I know that it does not make you hallucinate.  And I'm only slightly less certain that dogs inhaling marijuana smoke are gonna die rather than get stoned.

- If all of the bear's scenes are an actual bear, and if all the main actors did the majority of their stunts, then Seth Green's still one ballsy guy for letting a live bear pick him up in its mouth and carry him off.

- DB Cooper's Wikipedia page, just in case anyone's interested in learning about the guy.  Stole a bunch of money, jumped out of a plane, vanished without a trace. S'pretty interesting.)

Not really a whole lot to say down here.  Short review, few busy days, no big thing.  I'll try to make Friday's review a touch longer.

Alpha and Omega - Is Balto good? I heard Balto's good.

My uncle's Netflix account takes us to the family features category, one full of disasters and one providing us with the disaster that is today's movie...

Y'know, funny thing, I was actually reading a little bit about this movie just last week.  In particular, I was looking at information about Disney films, and found the career of the guy who directed The Black Cauldron somewhat fascinating.  Together with long-time veteran Ted Berman, Richard Rich (no relation to the infamous Harvey Comics character) directed what many consider Disney's absolute worst theatrical animated film, and certainly one of its biggest flops at the box office.  I don't think it's all that bad, questionable choices regarding the bustiness of the witches aside, but going off of his IMDB page, its bombing probably cost Rich a job with Disney.  The vast, vast majority of his work since then has been direct-to-video short animations based off of various parts of the Bible or the lives of prominent historical figures, but what little work he's done on the film side of things since makes me think he's spent the last 30 or so years trying to prove to Disney that he can do what they do just as well and on his own.

Musicals based off of traditional fairy-tale material worked out?  How about The Swan Princess?  Wackier, less than family friendly fare gets an adaptation in the late 90s?  Here's The King And I, what'd you think of that?  Religious stuff coming out of Disney's new big competitor gets success with The Prince of Egypt?  I've totally got religious stuff, try Muhammad: The Last Prophet.  And sequel after sequel after sequel to any of his ventures that make even the slightest little bit of money at the box office, including four sequels to today's film.

And today's film, for those of you who don't read the URL or the title for some ungodly reason, is Alpha and Omega, or as I like to call it: Richard Rich Desperately Tries To Make Dreamworks Rip-Offs Work For Him After Disney and Dreamworks Copycatting Failed.  It is, without a doubt, a pretty awful movie, and this is coming from someone who willingly went to see Open Season when it was in theaters and liked it.  In short, it's just another attempt to do a CGI cartoon and ride the wave of Dreamworks' success - or, like I noted up there, the wave of crappy Dreamworks wannabes who think vulgar and pointless is the formula for success.  I didn't like it, but as per usual I'm obliged to actually write a review here, so what're you gonna do?

The film's story supposedly concerns two packs of wolves in the Canadian tundra at odds against one another over which pack gets to hunt the caribou herd in their valley, and the tensions that arise when an important member of one pack goes missing just before a wolf marriage type thing that would unite the packs.  With tensions rising, it's a race against time before bloodshed begins and the two packs tear each other apart.  It's not a terribly original story, but something of interest could come out of normally sociable animals going feral.

Too bad the ACTUAL plot of the movie involves alpha wolf Kate and omega wolf Humphrey enacting out the same no-stakes high-class loves low-class story for the billionth time, except with even less to bring to the tired story than most other iterations.  The two of them are the exact same overconfident teenage girl and cock empty-headed teenage boy you get in every story of this type, hauled off to a new park in Idaho to repopulate and get thrust into an epic journey back home.  Again, might be interesting stuff, if the two of them had any kind of chemistry or if the journey back was any kind of epic.  As it stands, it's bland, boring, and uneventful.

None of the characters really stand out unless they're badly designed, like the golfing goose who pops in to give Kate and Humphrey advice on the way home.  If they're not hard to look at, they're all just wolves with grey-black or gold-brown fur - a few characters who I think were meant to look different but all just wind up looking the same.  The environments are northwestern forests designed to the barest minimum of functionality, and despite some cursory efforts to throw in an action scene or two, it simply isn't fun or engaging to look at.  I am by no means an expert on animation or visual design, but if I don't want to look at it for the whole length of the film, or even just a fraction of the length, then it's a failure.

Beyond the twin failures of the story and look of the film, the choices made for the comedy also fall flat.  It's all butt and thinly-veiled sex jokes.  I wish I was joking here, but I'm not.  There's a few jokes about the goose's nationality, and beyond that it's all either "howling together is totally like sex," or butt jokes.  It's incredibly odd coming from a film produced by a man who directed a whole plethora of watered-down, family-friendly Bible stories.  You'd expect even the tiniest bit of less than pure humor to be beyond his reach, and yet...  "Shove his tail up his butt."  "I'm gonna pretend mosquitos bit my butt so I can shove dirt in this guy's face."  "Get your butt out of my face."  "Oh no, I'm about to ram into a caribou's butt."  "There's one moon I don't want to howl at."  All butt jokes, none of them funny, none of them inventive, just... butts.

It's weird.  I don't subscribe to the notion that Shrek's success with off-color comedy and a less than serious story absolutely ruined animation - I think some of the best stuff the medium has ever seen, indeed, the best mainstream stuff, has come out SINCE Shrek - but at the same time, the films that achieve mainstream success that aren't good films seem to have gotten worse.  Maybe it's because when you try to copy the low-brow without understanding what makes it work, you really don't have anywhere to go but down, but the sort of crap most non-Disney and Dreamworks studios try to pass as kids films because kids supposedly aren't as discerning just feels crappier than ever.  I'm certain there were bad animated kids films before Shrek, and I'm all but certain a fair deal of them were worse than shit like Alpha and Omega due to the general lack of respect animation was afforded after the failure of Fantasia.  Yet some part of me just can't help but feel like we're in an era with both the best of the best and the worst of the worst.

Blegh.  Sorry.  I'm talking out of line again.  My area of study is supposed to be the cognitive-behavioral aspect of human psychology and how to treat mental problems and everyday issues using an understanding of said aspects, not the history of animation and family entertainment.  I watch and read the work of people who have a lot more meaningful stuff to say about these things - my job here is just to say if a movie I picked at random is any good or not.

And Alpha and Omega isn't good.  It's not blatantly or deliberately offensive (even the constant butt jokes have more an air of someone laughing at a naughty word than an attempt to shock or offend), but that's about the best I can say for it.  It introduces its main character to me by having him bobsledding down a rocky mountain in a log, mess up, get launched out, and bump into his love interest for a midair dead eyed loving stare.  There aren't any attempts to make me care about him, or think he's someone I should laugh at, or look at him as a cypher for other, more interesting characters.  He, along with every other character and event in the movie, fails to interest me, and looks ugly and unappealing while doing so to boot.

I wish I could end this review by saying the movie at least doesn't waste any potentially interesting new ideas - the two tribes with mounting tensions plot might have been interesting, but it's definitely been done before - yet even on that merit the film fails.  For some of its howling as sex scenes, it plays around with the notion of wolves howling as a means of conveying music.  The only time I can think of this being explored before is in Twilight Princess, and here the filmmakers had an opportunity to work with the concept beyond just rehashing old Zelda tunes as howls.  But nope, it's just somewhat melodic howling set to what I was tempted to call a pop song I don't know before finding out the film has an entirely original score.  Yet another potentially interesting idea completely squandered.

Alpha and Omega is outright bad, and yet somehow it has four direct-to-video sequels, with three more on the way.  I can't understand for the life of me who keeps shelling out enough money for these things.  I'm tempted to say furries based on the sheer length of the TV Tropes pages on these films, but I'd like to think the furry community has more integrity than that.  Whoever keeps buying these and showing them to their children, I just don't understand you.  I might not have the life experience to fully GET what trying to raise a child can be like, but I understand it's wearying and really, really hard.  That's no excuse for not exposing your child to better material.  Even the Scooby-Doo film that came out the same year would be better than this.

(Assorted thoughts:

- The film ends with a dedication to to Dennis Hopper, who died shortly after completing his voice work, and I can't help but feel it's more a slap in the face than an honorable dedication.

- Near as I can tell, the biggest thing the guy who voiced Humphrey did aside from this was the Mac in Apples I'm A Mac And I'm A PC commercials.  Doesn't really say a lot of great things about career trajectory.

- What kind of name is Humphrey for a wolf anyways?

- The film has no less than four logsledding sequences, and they all use what looks like the exact same camera-work for the first-person shots.

- There was also a subplot about the other pack's young male alpha and Kate's best friend falling in love, but I don't give a shit about it, so this is all the mention it gets.)

School's starting this week, so don't be surprised if updates get a little hazier as I try to work out a schedule and find some steady work.

Repo! The Genetic Opera - Fifty-two songs is a bit excessive, don't you think?

Due to moving conditions and general laziness preventing me from rolling a film this week, I took a friend's suggestion for a film on Netflix, which I'd been putting off for months.

So guess who slept through part of Thursday and spent most of the day either lazing about watching his uncle's movies or shopping for stuff for university?  And guess who spent most of Friday moving into his dorm and taking care of financial situations.  If you guessed Gilbert, then you'd be right, although I am slightly concerned about how you managed to guess in such an exact manner.  Since I'm a lazy bastard, I've decided that rather than squeeze in a film once I'm all moved in and frantically try to type out a review late at night, I'll just watch a movie a friend recommended to me and squeeze out a review late at night anyways.  It's not a perfect system, but it's what we're rolling with.

Besides, I've been meaning to set up a reader recommendation thing if this blog ever got popular enough to have readers aside from my dad and Adept, so consider this the first one of those.

Anyways, the film Foehammer's been pushing me towards seeing for months on end now was Repo! The Genetic Opera, a recent cult film about organ harvesting intrigue set to the sort of music Meat Loaf rejects from Jim Steinman for being too over the top.   It's designed as an incredibly stylized, gory film, and carries the air of wanting to pass itself as SOMETHING YOU'VE NVER SEEN BEFORE, unintentional misspelling included.  Seeing as I don't exactly indulge in splatterhouse musicals too terribly often, I can't really tell you if it succeeds in doing so, but I can at least tell you if I enjoyed the result or not.  So let's do that and see if I did.

The set-up involves a world completely consumed by the twin plagues of an organ failure epidemic and the inability to stop singing for two minutes.  Although the second curse has no cure, a company known as GeneCo offers up organ transplants for the whole world, making it not only necessary, but trendy and fashionable to get a new heart or face.  Of course, this all goes upsides down and backwards when GeneCo pushes for laws allowing organ repossession from supposed deadbeats who couldn't pay for their surgery.  Now, with half the populace terrorized by the slasher villain-like Repo Men and the other half addicted to a painkiller extracted from corpses, GeneCo's top exec must figure out how to make the system run after he's gone.

All of this is told in a sliding comic book panel style, which is interesting enough, but doesn't show up often enough for my tastes.  The film's aesthetic puts me in mind of Sin City, with a few sets that certainly look completely digital and deliberately designed after comic art, so a few more pop-ups throughout the film couldn't have hurt.  As it stands, the panel style only shows up to open and close the movie, and provide a few flashbacks regarding the same story from three perspectives early on in the film.  I'd have preferred they work as transition shots, but what are you gonna do?

Anyways, the actual plot of the film revolves around Shilo Wallace, a girl locked away in her room by her father Nathan (played by Anthony Stewart Head, in a surprise appearance that I only parsed after about fifteen minutes of him being onscreen - I'm used to him doing a British accent for Buffy).  Nathan has locked Shilo up due to a rare incurable blood disease that took her mother, and to prevent her from discovering his real work as a Repo Man.  However, as is wont to happen with teenage girls in fiction, Shilo wants more out of life, and sneaks out at night, resulting in her stumbling upon a conspiracy involving her favorite GeneCo pop star, pain killer addiction on the streets, and a dark secret in her family's past.

You'll notice I took the time to set up both the backstory and the actual story this time around.  I did so because I feel it's a bit necessary to emphasize how complicated the movie's story FEELS while watching it.  There's a huge amount of information you need to parse in order to follow the story and understand character motivations (a whole bunch of stuff regarding a three way, sexually charged sibling rivalry, and a Greek choir-like gravedigger are some of the things you'll need to pay attention to), and until the last twenty minutes, I had some trouble untangling it all beyond the most basic thread.  And by the end, with that understanding, I didn't feel there was anything deeper to the story.  It's a narrative presented as is, with no deeper themes or challenges or anything to be ABOUT.  Some people might not mind, especially since it's a horror-comedy musical, but I spent all that time trying to understand the story, so I might as well be rewarded for it.

However, a fair deal of my confusion may have come from the musical nature of the movie.  I am perfectly aware this is a somewhat popular cult film, and that what I'm about to say may be contentious for some, but the songs don't really do anything for me.  They're perfectly fine, presumedly well-composed songs, and I liked listening to them in the movie (nothing ever struck me as obnoxious or bad), but they sort of clutter up the film a bit.  According to Wikipedia, there are 54 distinct songs in this movie; even if some of them are only a few seconds long, that's a LOT of songs for one picture.  One song tends to start before another ends, and the rapid changes in tone and tempo between them make following things somewhat difficult for me.  Compounding the issue is a tendency towards incomprehensible lyrics, and a straight-up lack of anything memorable.  I like Seventeen and the gravedigger's song at the beginning, but in general the only songs I remember anything from are the ones where people move into a screaming, metal growl.

(This said, I do remember getting really into some of the songs while watching, even if I don't remember how they go or even which ones they were now, so give that to the movie.  For whatever it's worth.)

Although the songs muddle the story up a bit for me, I do enjoy the characters.  All the actors turn in perfectly good performances (Paris Hilton may have won the Razzie for her turn as one of the GeneCo heirs, but "vain and image obsessed" is what you expect out of her), and as someone who likes music but has no training in it, I can't identify any bad singing in the movie.  Hell, some of the vocal performances I'd go so far as to call great in places.  Additionally, they're all drawn out clearly enough in their roles and visual designs that it's easy to tell who is who and what they want out of life.  How they relate to one another is another thing entirely, but on their own, each character works as a functioning unit.  Special shout-out to Stewart Head for making both his fatherly facade and tormented grinning madman play equally well, and Terrance Zdunich for making the grave robber the right sort of creepy - and also for having an interesting last name.

Really, the film's look is what I like best about it.  It's all fluorescents and neons and black lights with a dark gothic take on the future, and like I said there's some comic book art influence running through it.  I don't want to say it makes the world look dreamlike or surreal, because the whole thing feels a little too... I'm inclined to say "grounded," but it's not the right term.  More like if a bunch of punk-goths decided to stage an opera in their local hang-out.  Like a stage play is the phrase I'm looking for.  Maybe.

I also enjoyed the costume design.  As I noted, the look of each character helps define who they are and make them easily identifiable, but even the background characters had good costumes created for them.  Nothing really memorable comes to mind (a recurring problem with this film, it seems) but while watching it they offer up a sense that this is a world completely obsessed with fashion.  Not just clothing or make-up, mind, but body modification and the latest trendy designer organs.  They add a little bit of believability to the backstory and make the world easier to get drawn into.

Overall, though, I just don't find the film terribly memorable.  There ARE plenty of elements I enjoyed, but once the film ended, I could only recall little bits and pieces of it.  Although enjoyability is an important aspect of any piece of media, I'd say memorable moments or beats or plot points are essential to any work actually STAYING with you.  Repo!  The Genetic Opera doesn't have those.  When the credits finished, I didn't remember much beyond what I've reported here, and felt no desire to watch it again.  That is, I'd argue, a huge blow against it for me.

However, it DOES make for quite an experience.  I'd be loath to say I HATED the first reader recommendation for the blog, and I'd also be a liar if I said so.  Repo!  is certainly an interesting film, and I can see where the cult status comes from, but I don't dislike it.  If anything, it simply doesn't do anything for me.  It's worth checking out if the phrase "horror-musical splatter comedy" appeals to you, but I wouldn't expect to have it stick with you for too long afterwards.  If you wind up liking it, though, I'd recommend giving it another go-around.  I've already started giving some of the songs a relisten, and I'm slowly coming around on the film.

Maybe I'll give it another look someday.

(Assorted thoughts:

- "DADDY'S GIRL'S A FUCKING MONSTER" and "It's my job... to steal, and rob.... GRAAAAAAAAAAAAVES!" are the two lines that stuck in my head, for the record.

- I just remembered the line "Tell me why oh why are my genetics such a bitch," and how it instantly put me to thinking of Shilo as Liquid Snake for a fair portion of the movie.

- Although I didn't remember any songs while writing up this review, I'm still gonna look up the soundtrack on YouTube and probably have some of the stuff I liked on rotation over the weekend.

- Joan Jett makes a cameo.  I think it's a neat one.

- The sibling with a face stretched over his face isn't too creepy during the live-action stuff, but the panel he gets at the end looks incredibly disturbing to me, and I don't know why.

- Any time the film makes good on the splatter part of its genre, it basically turns into Bye Body Part: The Movie.  Bye eyes.  Bye face.  Bye spine.  Etc.

- Some of the moments in the movie make it seem like everyone is actually singing all their lines and everyone around them is perfectly aware of that fact.  Especially a moment early on where the grave robber screams out one of his lines and alerts the authorities to his presence.

- Of some interest - Anthony Stewart Head singing Sweet Transvestite.  You're welcome.)

I'm really sorry this review got out so late.  Although I joked in the set-up about working on it late, I didn't really have any intention of ACTUALLY pushing it out with only two hours left in the day.  Either way, it's here, and I'm at my college now, so yay for both those things.  Now to try and get some ACTUAL work to support myself and not die, hopefully.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil - I'd be evil too if my name was Chad.

Random.org bestows on us my dad's Netflix account, which brings us to goofy comedies, which gives us today's feature...

No offense to my dad - really, no offense, especially since I know for a fact he reads every post I make on this blog when I link to them on Facebook - but he watches a lot of crackpot stuff on Netflix.  Not because he believes in any of it, mind you.  The reason he always gives is watching so he can argue properly with the crazies should he ever come across them personally.  Me, I don't follow the train of logic; most of the time you're not going to encounter the crazies, and when you do they're just straight-up not worth arguing on.  Not to mention the repetitiveness of it all.  You've seen one guy explain why his Chewbacca roar is really a Bigfoot cry, you've seen all five million.

He needs stuff to listen to while doing work at home, though, so I'm not gonna fault him for it.  I just don't hold with what he puts on.

Anyways, the reason I bring all this up is because while rolling through the options for today, I saw an awful lot of movies I'd REALLY prefer not to watch for today.  I'm not sure how I'd review a documentary on Chatsworth or Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Sightings, beyond just rolling my head on the keyboard to equal the amount of eloquence you'd get from a movie like that.  But, fortunately, the random number god brought me to Goofy Comedies, and graciously let me sidestep such schlock as Scary Movie Five and Bebe's Kids and gave me something at least interesting looking to watch: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil.  Also known as AskReddit's favorite quote-unquote "underrated" movie to recommend right behind Moon (1994).

Boy oh boy did they undersell it.  I largely mean in that every time reddit says something is underrated, I assume what they really mean is either something to the effect of "not underrated at all" or "the most horrific piece of shit you ever did see."  But either way, based off of reddit's constant parroting of this movie's name without giving any context whatsoever to why it's good, I wasn't expecting the film to ACTUALLY be good, much less get me right into it straight off the bat.

The film's basic plot concerns the usual "hillbillies killing sex-obsessed college kids" formula as seen in movies like Deliverance (look at me, name dropping all over the place today) turned on its head.  The hillbillies, stern but well-meaning Tucker and dim but good-hearted Dale, are just a pair of innocent young men looking to fix up their new vacation home and go fishing while just so happening to be born and raised hicks.  By contrast, the group of largely nameless college kids, led by Chad and Allison, are paranoid, distrusting of anyone different, and easily prodded towards violence - especially Chad, who's constantly itching to go hillbilly hunting.  When a series of misunderstandings lead to Tucker and Dale taking Allison to their shack to tend to her wounds, things quickly escalate into multiple violent deaths and constantly increasing tensions between the two sides.

Naturally, of course, this is all played for laughs.  It's a horror-comedy film, and it plays the deaths for all they're worth.  The comedy requires a bit of familiarity with standard horror movie tropes and cliches, but if you've seen even one "crazed backwoods maniac slaughters teens in the woods" movie, you'll basically have the idea downpat.  The sheer ridiculousness of the group's sudden leaps to conclusions and Tucker and Dale's complete obliviousness to what's going on around them are great on their own, but when you have people start jumping into wood chippers and getting nail boards straight through the skull, the bloody comedy's just fantastic.  I was chuckling throughout the whole runtime.

Of course, a movie that just repeats the same joke over and over without variation is gonna get old fast, so Tucker and Dale have much needed personalities and good human interactions.  The relationship between the two of them is nice enough - they movie never makes them out as anything but hardworking, thick-headed good ol' boys who care about each other, never stooping to the obvious "looks like a hick but is really cultured" joke - but what I really like is Dale's relationship with Allison.  Although he's not cultured or smart, Dale has brain problems that make him really good at remembering things and horrible at socializing and reasoning.  Allison, being a psychology student, eventually comes to empathize with him and treat him like a real person who needs help.  It's just really sweet watching the two of them warm up to each other and interact, and it leads to some scenes I'd say come close to being genuinely heartwarming.

(Course, as a bonus, it's nice seeing the psychology major represented as a level-headed, reasonable person whose methods only don't work because of the extremity and oddness of the situation, as opposed to just being straight-up crackpot.)

On the other end of the spectrum, I think Chad makes for a great bad guy.  And no, I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying that - it's pretty damn obvious from his first prominent scene, wherein he tries to force himself on Allison that he's not exactly a good guy.  He's gung-ho to turn survival of the fittest from the very second Tucker and Dale strike him as even a mild threat, and his obsession with hillbilly murder just grows and grows and grows.  By the end of the film, he's just as much of a monster as Jason, creating a psycho axe-murderer from the same cloth said axe-murderers typically chop through to get at the young adult flesh underneath.  Jesse Moss plays a through and through bastard here, and I love every second of it.

From there, I can't think of much else to say about the movie without getting into spoiler territory.  There's not exactly much plot TO spoil, but there are some great bits I'd rather avoid talking about because they're too good to not leave fresh.  Plus there's the matter of me just not having too many other points to talk about.  The film has a good message about not judging other people for how they look and advocating listening to one another through Allison's psychology talk, and beyond that, it's simply a really good, really funny film with some great laughs, great kills, and a really nice emotional center to latch onto.

Out of all the films I've officially reviewed for the blog, I'd say it's the best so far.  It's on both Netflix and Amazon Instant, so give it a try sometime!

(Assorted thoughts:

- There's one scene early on where Tucker and Dale get stopped on the way to their campsite, and by a way of a poorly spilled beer and easily caught zipper, the police officer thinks Dale's sucking Tucker off.  I suppose it's a means of setting up the idea of misunderstandings later in the film, but it feels a little out of place and incongruous to me.

- Thank fucking god the dog lives.  I AM gonna spoil that cause it fucking sucks when the dog dies in movies.  But he makes it out OK in this one.  So there.

- I know I was implying earlier that Reddit always exaggerates, but after watching the movie I looked up the trailer for this film because they said it spoils everything and... well... it kinda does spoil almost every major joke and plot point in the movie.  In chronological order.  So maybe give the trailer a miss.

- The quip game is strong in this movie.  I'm talking Joss Whedon before he decided every line needs to be a quip strong.)

Anyways, mini-review here!  The night before watching Tucker and Dale, I saw another really, REALLY good movie on Netflix.  An animated film out of Ireland called The Secret of Kells.  It's a take on the story of how the Book of Kells (one of Ireland's oldest and most valued national treasures) was created, and it's designed to look like an old pre-perspective tapestry.  The characters are all really well designed, each with their own unique look and pose (I especially love the abbot's long, towering stoop), and the colors in the film are just... look at them.  There are a whole slew of strong emotional moments, and it gets really heavy towards the finish before having one of the most relieving and beautiful endings I've ever seen in an animated film.

So yeah, as a second recommendation for the day, go give Secret of Kells a look.  I personally promise that you're gonna love the hell out of it.

Transformers 4: Age of Extinction - Insert witty joke about careers going extinct here.

We rolled Netflix, which gave us action & adventure and led us into today's... film...

Blegh.  I'm really not a huge fan of giving out negative reviews.  I think there's a place for them, but in my experience reading criticism online, the trend is usually towards just dishing it out for negativity's sake, or to appease a certain audience.  Out and out saying a movie is bad and lacks any redeeming features strikes me as a really poor way to go about this, but... well... consider the film we're watching here.

The whole notion that modern films are nothing but giant explosions and mindless action and tits thrown in for fanservice is patently ridiculous.  Even the vast majority of action films at least make some attempt at a coherent plot and show a modicum of restraint.  But Michael Bay's Transformers films are, although I really hate to say this, representative of everything I find distasteful about modern film.  Constant, never-ending action, characters with no development or relatable traits, camerawork that's hard to follow, backgrounds your eyes just can't process, a plot that feels like it's going in ten different directions and ultimately goes nowhere... Age of Extinction is just a bad movie.

I wouldn't call it the WORST movie I've ever seen, per say - until Death Bed: The Bed That Eats and Serenity stop existing, I'm hesitant to hand out that particular title to anything.  If it weren't for the ability to pause and make fun of the dumber parts to my chat friends for as long as I like before resuming, I don't know if I'd've made it through the whole film.  It's not as offensive as 2 was, but when that's the highest praise I can offer, it's not saying much.  Give the damned thing a miss.

...

...still, I am ostensibly running a blog with the aim of roughly 2000 words on each film, so I might as well give it a shot.  I watched it all the way through and complained about it enough to friends during the runtime.  I can spare a few words for the blog.

The plot, insofar as it stands, involves the Transformers being on the run after some huge catastrophe from the last movie (which I haven't watched, for the record) turned public opinion against them.  The US military has sworn off all associations with the Autobots, but what I think is some rogue branch or a PMC or something has started working with the Deceptacons to kill off the Autobots and make them look like the bad guys, with the help of a new Transformer named Lockdown.  Meanwhile, Mark "My Character's Name Isn't Important Because You'll Just Be Calling Me Mark Wahlberg" Wahlberg's work as a down on his luck mechanic with a needlessly sexualized teenage daughter to take care of results in him discovering Optimus Prime in hiding.  He tries to befriend Prime, but it takes an attack by the militaryPMCwhatever unit to gain his trust and also pick up a boyfriend for the daughter, who constantly oscillates in and out of the Irish accent he's supposed to have because we really learned our lesson about making fun of minorities but not really.  Along the way, they uncover a plan by a Steve Jobs come lately character who plans to use mined Transformium to create rip-off Transformers and also My Little Pony plushies and Beats headphones.  However, he's also created an Optimus Prime rip-off that turns out to be Megatron, and Lockdown plans on stealing the Transformium and also Optimus so he can get his hands on a nuke that will coat the entire world in Transformium and turn everybody into living metal just like the dinosaurs who come up at the beginning except they never show up again but an entire different group of Dinobots show up and...

I don't know how any of this relates to one another.  It's generally possible follow each of the plot lines pretty well.  They're simple enough to understand.  But in trying to actually follow how everything actually relates to one another and, more importantly, why I should care about any of it, I've got nothing.  Everything is just stretched thinner and thinner and thinner throughout the movie's runtime, to the point where I just gave up by the very end.  I completely neglected to mention all of the stuff about the ancient conspiracy about the origins of the Transformers, and several characters who I feel like I should know but Wikipedia tells me are completely new to the movie.

Put another way - I kept up with all the twists and turns in Metal Gear Solid 2 just fine, and swallowed every hour-long dialogue in 4, but I simply could not keep pace with this movie.

The effort might at least be worth it if the action was good, but it's really not.  There's one or two little bits I like, such as the new longcoat Trasnformer (Crosshairs, I think) using dragshoots to fight Deceptacon dogs (?) in midair, or Hound's one-robot stand against the Deceptacons towards the end, but anyone who knows anything about these movies should know what the problem is by now.  Supposedly high-stakes, high-excitement scenes get brought down to no-stakes and no-excitement by a lack of attachment to the characters and a focus more on huge shots where everything in the world blows up at once and convoluted situations abound.  Everything's just so fucking loud and noisy, in both an audio AND a visual sense, so I can barely follow or get invested even when I want to.

Honestly, some of the set-pieces feel like parodies of what you'd expect in a decent Transformers film.  Like a bit where the human characters get to do all sorts of cool car stunts while just out of frame we see two Transformers going at each other's throats.  But no time for that, we've gotta use a randomly placed ramp in an abandoned building to jump down onto another perfectly placed ramp at the bottom.  Or how about the bit where Mark "Be Like Me If You Want To Have A Hot Daughter" Wahlberg has crashed a hijacked Deceptacon ship into someone's car, threatens to kill the guy for demanding an insurance statement, then takes a chug of Bud Lite and asks his daughter for his gun.  Could go with Optimus Prime talking about how he's all about freedom and liberty while beating several new recruits into the ground and peppering his speech with threats to kill them if they won't work with him.

Or, if we really want to go with my favorite incongruous moment, we could talk about a death early in the film.  The one where Mark "I Have Many Silly Nicknames Bestowed Upon Me In Quotation Marks In the Place Where My Middle Name Should Go" Wahlberg's overweight comedy sidekick business partner - who, up to this point, had done nothing but crack wise even as his home and all his possessions were destroyed in an attempt by the military to murder him - falls behind as the rest of the group runs away, resulting in him getting hit by a Transformium minibomb that completely disintegrates everything but his now metal skeleton.  They linger on this man's still-standing corpse for such a goddamn long time, acting all shocked and solemn over the fact that HEY A MAIN CHARACTER JUST DIED... despite the fact that we knew NOTHING about him.  Then the scene's over and we've gotta get back to "I'm only here to fuck your daughter" quips.

If I had to characterize the movie, and possibly the whole franchise, it would be with that scene.  Inaprorpiate light-heartedness during incomprehensible action scenes, followed by a really out of place moment (like a serious character death or a robot pissing on someone) before getting right back to status quo without any acknowledgement beyond the hope for an audience's laughter.  Business as usual isn't any fun to hang around with, what with all its Dutch angles and jokes made out of product placement, and it's just straight-up awkward to sit through the sudden shifts.

I wish I could at least say the special effects look good, but unfortunately, they don't.  The Transformers' transformation scenes still look serviceable, and I'm sure they're still technical marvels, but they still look ugly and don't read well at all, especially with their new more human faces.  When they're in "real" sets, the only way to distinguish them is by color pallet, and in all CGI environments, they all just fade into one slightly clunky design.  And, as a special point I really feel deserves particular mention; Galvatron's transformation sequence looks like ass.

Seriously, I do not know how a movie with so much money poured into it as a Transformers film got away with an effect like that.  Instead of the usual complex but followable transformations akin to the ones in the cartoons and toys, he and any Transformers like him just turn into a cloud of CG cubes, fly through the air, and then reform into their alternate shape.  They're not even GOOD CG cubes, because they don't look like they're made out of a truck or a robot, they just straight up look like CG cubes.  I wasn't even IN the movie for any of its running time, and somehow they still managed to yank me straight out.

Just... ugh, it's a really bad movie.  Again, not the worst I've ever seen, but certainly boring and lifeless, and that's bad enough on its own.  I'm sure someone could make a GOOD Transformers movie - maybe one exploring Optimus' struggles as his friends and people are cut down by the very species they're trying to protect, with the temptation to give into his diametric opposite's ideology growing ever stronger (as opposed to the usual "OPTIMUS ANGRY" schtick) - but it seems almost impossible at this point.  Normally, I do everything I can to respect others' choices in the media they consume, but with Age of Extinction  and all the other films in the series, I just have to wonder why they choose to do this to themselves.

I'm gonna stop here before the relentless negativity gets to me, and just write down my assorted thoughts.

(Assorted thoughts:

-It's really weird that, out of all the franchises getting cinematic universes nowadays, Paramount hasn't tried to make one out of Transformers.  They've got so many characters that, if the TF wiki is believed, could easily carry their own film, but they're still sticking to the old formula of announcing one sequel after the last one succeeds and leaving it at that.  Maybe they'd have to show some restraint if they didn't pour so much money into every installment.

-Lockdown had a gun for a face, so that's kinda cool, I guess.

- "It's the MOVIES nowadays that's a problem.  Sequels and remakes, all that crap." You don't get to make that joke.

- Apparently this was a soft reboot of the franchise, but aside from the absence of a certain actual cannibal, I didn't notice.

- Obama HOPE posters, but with Optimus Prime and HATE.  They're only on screen for a second, but it's the definition of trying too hard.

- Why does Mark Wahlberg's robot dog make Transformers transformation sound effects, but not the Transformers themselves?

- On the matter of needlessly dark subject matter, I'm sure the best way to engender a positive audience response is by having the first Transformer you show be a fan favorite, and then brutally slaughtering him.

- I apparently called Mark Wahlberg's character Yaegherberg at one point.  I don't know why I thought it was funny or worth noting here.

- "What kind of man trades his flesh and blood brethren for metal?"  "The trouble with loyalty to a cause is the cause always betrays you."  "I do not know if we will meet again, but every time you look to the stars, think of one of them as my soul."  "I know you have a conscience because you're an inventor like me."   There were a lot of meaningless meaningful quotes in this movie, weren't there?

- Do you think Galvatron constantly looking like Megatron has something to do with you keeping Megatron's head in the room, Mister Inventor Guy?

- Maybe it would have helped if they'd stuck to their "OUR TRANSFORMERS ARE BETTER IN EVERY WAY" mission statement and called him Optimal Prime instead of Galvatron.

- No "Me, Grimlock" = Bad choice.  I barely know anything about Transformers, and even I know that.

-Basically I spent the entirety of the running time wanting to watch George Clooney use a jackhammer to rapidly stake vampires again.  From Dusk Till Dawn, 10/10, highly recommend, watch that instead.)

Although I was complaining all throughout the post, I do find now all the complaining helped.  I haven't had the best day the last few days, so getting to bash on an out and out shitty movie helped a little.  Still, I'm heading up to university in a few days, so here's to hoping I get a good movie for Wednesday and Friday.

Another Woman - Maybe I should have watched Annie Hall first.

We go from Hulu to new releases to recent movies to our pick for the day, which doesn't fit the category, but...

T'be perfectly honest, Hulu isn't the best streaming service for movies.  It's certainly great for catching up on recent TV shows, and depending on what they have at the time, I'd say their backlog of shows is better than Netflix's.  But they don't have the sheer variety of popular and big name movies you can buy or rent or stream for free on Amazon, or the lesser known but still solid films as Netflix.  They've certainly got a lot of movies, but beyond their entries from the Criterion Collection, Hulu's selection is mostly comprised of low-budget, low-effort schlock films that nobody's likely to have ever seen, and even less likely to have enjoyed.

And really, their sorting system is a little weird.  I'm not entirely certain how today's film, Another Woman wound up under "recent movies".  Maybe it had a rerelease on DVD in the last few years and they decided to stick it there, or maybe whatever algorithm they use to sort all their films just messed up and stuck it there.  Either way, I don't really think a 1988 Woody Allen production belongs under the category.  I was expecting to hit a cheerleader zombie movie, not a slow drama film about a midlife crisis.

That's really going to be a sticking point with this review.  Another Woman is an older movie, aimed at an older audience, with radically different tastes in their dramas than me.  I was able to make it through The Cider House Rules because it played by rules I'm more familiar with (constantly advancing story structure, actors I know from other sources, a few more bombastic scenes to break up the understated acting), but this was a difficult one for me.  It's a very slow, sort of nebulous film where the events do tie together, but more with their relation to the character than in any kind of traditional structure.  I suspect it is a good film, but only if these kind of movies are to your taste, and only if you're already familiar with the works of Woody Allen.

I'm just at a loss of things to say that wouldn't make me out as being disingenuous towards the film.  I don't want to say if it's good or bad or even just mediocre -  it's just sort've not to my tastes.  Still, I watched it, and I feel some obligation to give it a summary and something of a review, so just stick with me while I do my best to give my opinion.

Marion Post has recently started work on a new novel in a private office in upstate New York, and is reasonably happy with her lot in life and the choices she's made.  This quickly changes, however, when she discovers she can hear patients in the psychiatrist's office next door through the wall, particularly one woman named Hope, who is suicidally depressed.  Her confessions cause Marion to start reevaluating her own life as a series of reunions, divorces, and generally unpleasant conflicts occur amongst her friends and family.  As the story progresses, so too does Marion's realization that she's lived a cold, emotionless life, and may not have time to change her course.

The way I worded the last sentence there makes this sound like an incredibly dark movie, but it's more laid-back than you'd expect.  That might not be the right term, but it's the best I've been able to think of.  Characters have strong emotional reactions to old spouses showing up at a gathering and causing a scene, or being confronted about their regrettable love lives, but for the most part Marion and her peers take it all in stride.  These are mature adults in their forties and fifties who have their own lives to manage - they'll bend when necessary so they don't wind up breaking at the wrong time.  It's a more mature means of dealing with conflict than I usually see in fiction, and for a while it is nice to watch.

But there is that - "for a while."  Another Woman lost me around the halfway point when it became clear it wasn't following a traditional narrative pattern where one event leads naturally into another.  Incidents take place, Marion reflects on her life and listens to Hope, on to the next scene.  She's the driving force of the film, and most of the events focused on are chosen for their ability to break her down and force her to confront her life.  This is, of course, a perfectly valid and legitimate means of telling a story, and insofar as I'm able to tell, it's done rather well.  Someone who connects to Marion and empathize with her struggles might get a fair deal of insight out of the film on how to deal with their own challenges and crises.

Unfortunately, I don't empathize with Marion.  Not because I don't care about her or her struggles or those in real life who must bear what she bears; rather, I don't empathize because her character, much like the movie's tone and pace, are rather alien to me.  Much as the actual film's slower pace and character focused narrative aren't elements I have much experience with, so too are Marion's ordeals and philosophical struggles unfamiliar.  The movie feels like it's aimed at an audience who is much more familiar with her midlife regrets and are more likely to nod along and conclude that yes, they HAVE had similar struggles in their life, and it's so very nice to see them put on the big screen.  A demographic less personally familiar with those trials and tribulations doesn't seem to be in consideration.  Fair enough.  Folks deserve to experience stories they can relate to at all points in life, and growing old is no excuse to stop having content produced for you.

It's just not for me.

Blegh.  I feel like I'm being too negative here and outing myself as a know-nothing.  This is two films now where I've complained about slower pacing and understated acting and called them bad qualities for a movie to work with.  The film more than likely does work on its own merits, I'm just not qualified to judge it by those.  I'm too young to properly appreciate this film, is all.

Maybe I should just focus on a few things I did enjoy before wrapping up and keeping this one short.  No point in constantly digging myself into a hole if I can openly admit I'm digging myself into a hole, after all.  The acting was fairly good - I liked several of the characters, and found it easy to believe their struggles.  It's always nice to see familiar faces, and Ian Holm did a fairly good turn as Marion's husband.  Some of the dream sequences were also nice to watch, and gave the film a good injection of intrigue during the latter half where it started to lose me.  And...

...well, that's about it.  Again, I'm not the right person to be writing this review.  The movie by and large washed over me and didn't leave much of a mark, and it's nobody's fault but my own.  The only complaint I can think to raise against is how the ending never shows Marion working to better her life.  She's largely broken down, starts to make peace with people in her life, and the film ends on a resolve to do better.  It goes against my tastes, but again, it's just that - my tastes.  I prefer to see a character built up again after being broken down, and while it's a reasonable direction to take a story (especially if the overall goal is just to examine their psychology during the break), it's not one I like.  Not a legitimate complaint, just a matter of taste.

Another Woman is probably a good movie, but also one I more than likely should have worked my way towards watching.  If I'd given some of Woody Allen's previous, more critically acclaimed films a watch first, maybe I would've had some appreciation for his style of direction and storytelling and been better equipped to tackle this.  As it stands, I jumped straight in, found myself wanting, and have nobody to blame but myself.  Give it a look if the ramblings above sound appealing to you, even though I just can't recommend it based on my experience watching.

(Assorted thoughts:

- OK, one thing that DID stand out to me was a bit in the second half where Marion walks into the psychiatrist's office and stands there in the doorway listening to Hope talk about her problems for a while before the doctor dismisses her.  The doctor then proceeds to ask Marion what SHE thinks is wrong with Hope, and openly divulges that she's suicidal and might be a lost cause.  He takes his next patient, who happens to be Marion's father.  Her father hobbles on past her, sits down, and starts talking about all his regrets in life without acknowledging anyone else is even there.  The next scene is part of a dream sequence, but the way the movie leads into the bit with the psychiatrist certainly makes it SEEM like it's supposed to be reality, and, well...

- DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT PATIENT CONFIDENTIALITY IS, YOU FUCKING QUACK?

- Sorry, that's the psychology major talking, not the armature movie reviewer.  But still.

-Gene Hackman was apparently in this and I didn't even notice him.

-I don't know much about Woody Allen, but from what I do know, conversations about having sex on the floor are completely expected out of his films.)

Quick update here, some shit came up in Elena's life and she just wasn't able to get to a review this week.  Not sure if she'll be updating next week or anything, but I do know she's still interested in contributing, so just keep following and I'll keep you posted.