| Fennec Film Review - Fantastic Mr Fox, Avatar, Sherlock Holmes |
[Dec. 28th, 2009|03:12 am] |
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So its been awhile since I've posted about any of the films that I've seen recently - and the reason for that is simply that I haven't seen all that many, as-of-late. However, some of them are fairly notable, and so I figured I'd just lump a few together. About two weeks ago I saw...
FANTASTIC MR FOX
... I honestly didn't have a very good feeling for the film, going into it. Unlike many other furs, who're less jaded than myself, apparently ... some went to see the film opening day. I didn't. In fact, I saw it at the "discount" theater close by, meaning that it already left the theater somewhere. My expectations were low, but I knew that I would judge it favorably due to the content: specifically, that its starring foxes. I felt that otherwise the film would not hold its own. I was wrong.
I saw the film with non-furs who I managed to talk into going to the film anyway. For the most part, I think they went because of the animation - which was almost entirely to be stop-motion. This dead art still hits a soft spot in some people ... including myself. We picked a late showing in order to minimize the number of screaming brats that were to be in attendance. To our pleasant surprise, not only were there no screaming brats, but we had the theater all to ourselves.
From the get-go I realized that the film was going to be different than I had expected. The opening scene with Foxy and his wife trying to steal chickens was just so full of great humorous dialog that my expectations suddenly lifted. This film is really really funny. Lots of puns, unexpected silly things, and "uncomfortable silence" humor (my favorite type). Its more adult-oriented than I had expected, with much more intelligent humor and less slapstick than is typical in what I would call a "kids movie". As for other merits, George Clooney's voice is perfect for this character.
However, I didn't feel that the voice acting was all that great for every character, and sometimes the animation didn't sync up with the mouths as well as I would have liked. Furthermore, the animation is only so-so. It's not Wallace and Grommet - more of a high-budget Robot Chicken. Lastly, and probably worst off, is that the plot progression isn't very good. Pinecone grenades and bullets that never seem to hit what they're aiming at, are among the notable "eyeroll" moments in the film, but they don't seriously detract from the overall film. By the end, I hardly remembered such cheesy devices were even used in the overall story - so they covered that well.
Overall, I give Fantastic Mr. Fox 2-ears-perked and will nominate it for the Best Picture for the Fennec's Choice Awards, even though I don't think it stands much of a chance against some of the other omnominees. I would recommend seeing this on the "big screen" because there's a lot of detail, and I'm not sure it would be easy to see what's going on from a home theater, but I don't think it needs to be seen in the big cinema. "Cheap-seats" are OK for this film. DVD might be OK too, if you have a big screen or sit close enough :)
AVATAR
For AVATAR, my expectations were fairly high, but unfortunately opening-night coincided with a concert in Boston that I wanted to see more. Unfortunately the concert wasn't spectacular, but conversely I'm glad I chose it over Avatar. Not to say that Avatar was bad, just that my expectations were virtually unreachably high, and Avatar didn't meet them.
I saw Avatar the way that I feel it has to be seen - in IMAX 3D. Anything less will do it no justice, and even IMAX 3D might not be spectacular enough for the visuals of Avatar... unfortunately its the best that we have currently, and so it will have to do. I saw the film on the Saturday of opening weekend, and like a fool amateur movie-watcher, I arrived at the theater with only 40 minutes before the movie was to begin. Opening weekend on such a blockbuster film ... I should have known better. I wound up about 100th in line. My friends and I had to choose between middle-row and being far from the screen. We chose to take middle-row, which meant that I had to turn my head to see from one side of the screen to the other. It wasn't as bad as I had expected, and didn't detract much from the film.
The first thing that should be noted about Avatar is that it is possibly the most competent use of 3D in any movie ever to date. Its definitely pioneering new ground and discovering new reaches of the art. The scene when the main character wakes up in the cryo-bed in zero G and slides out on a tray has so many layers, mixed 3D special effects and video footage so seamlessly that it's absolutely awe-inspiring. The level of detail throughout the film, for that matter, probably reflects James Cameron's devotion to the project, which took him somewhere in the neighborhood of five years dedicated-effort, including designing a new video camera for this project alone ... and it shows. One place in particular that it shows is the flying scenes, which have the most fantastic color palette I've ever seen in a "conventional" film. The color and contrast is so rich, and the detail levels are so profound that watching the movie is enjoyable from start to finish, and glosses over, at least initially, many of the film's shortcomings.
The acting is pretty decent... at least it is on the surface. I ended up watching the film again a second time last night (with GhostWolf), and got the best seats in the house. This allowed me to see it with a more uncorrupted eye, not-so-dazzled by the special effects, and I've gotta say that Sigourney Weaver's acting in the film is distinctly sub-par. Its not as bad as the Na'Vi, probably because Cameron can CG away anything he didn't like, but her "human" moments were not-good. Everyone else was great, however.
The real place where Avatar fails is in the story. The telling of the story is masterful, and the pacing is wonderful, but many scenes felt like they were forcing content in. Case-in-point, when they decide to move the science team to the "mountains", the geeky sidekick Avatar-driver says, in response to the query about the mountains "We're only going to the famous Floating Mountains of Pandora - ever heard of that??" This took me out of my suspension of disbelief, because ... well... a good storyteller will take care of all of the "suspension of disbelief" moments within the first 10 minutes of the story. The floating mountains were also, for the most part, irrelevant. The energy vortex that caused them as a phenomenon, was the only part that mattered. I felt that this was a "life imitating art" moment, where concept-artists drew floating mountains unbidden and Cameron said "Oooh I like those - lets do that". I got a lot of that "surprise! Lets do this now" feeling from the film. But other than these minor details, Avatar is a very "stock" film. There's nothing new here after the visual effects. Its all been done before - almost verbatim (check out "Battle for Terra" which came out last year. Its a terrible film, but similar in so many ways - even including the humans having to wear the oxygen-masks). Its almost like they have a movie-script-generator-computer in Hollywood that randomizes a few parameters and makes a story, then fills in the dialog. At the end, I couldn't help but feel that Cameron's efforts in advancing the technology of film was wasted on this picture. It's just not a worthwhile story... its been done before... there are no surprises, everything happens in typical Hollywood style.
I found the message of the film to be embarrassingly naive, as well. It promoted tribalism over civilization - mysticism over commercialism - and I realize that there is a revival of that crap these days, but I hope that everybody who watches Avatar knows better and that the message that *I* felt goes unheeded - that we should go back to being "one with nature", which Avatar glorifies spectacularly. In reality, tribalism sucks. We created civilization to get away from that type of life because it was simply a terrible way to live. I do not want to go back to it. Also I find it hard to believe that the humans would have lost the war on Pandora. They could have dropped those bombs from 60,000 feet, rather than trying to fly under the mountains... and even if they couldn't, they have a 20-story bulldozer strip-miner tractor thing that nothing on that planet could have stopped (shown at the beginning of the movie).
I also didn't like how the Na'Vi were monsters. Thoughout the film, we're made to empathize with him. They're tall and slender and beautiful, but when next to a person (especially in the scene where the girl Na'Vi is trying to revive the suffocating Jake Sully), they appear to be horrible monsters. They have such huge heads! And their skin looks sorta gray with a human hand on it. -shiver!-
In the end, I felt that it was an entertaining film to watch, but not a particularly good film. It absolutely needs to be seen in IMAX 3D or the largest screen you can get to. I do recommend seeing it, but I am only going to give it one-ear-perked, one-ear-drooped because of the story. As stated above, the story is just a cut-out of any number of earlier films, merely with other needless crap taped-on (such as "Floating Mountains") to try and distinguish it... which, I believe fails. The only reason to see this film is the visuals.
Sherlock Holmes
I was not that interested to see Sherlock Holmes, but I ended up seeing it anyway because of the content. There aren't many big-budget action-films that I allow to slide through my grasp, and I've always had an affinity for Victorian-Era England, but that doesn't necessarily mean that those two things should be mixed, which is what Sherlock Holmes attempts to do. Sherlock Holmes, as a novel, is not a fast-paced action-thriller. Its mostly a mystery series... and from the trailer, I felt that this film was going to miss the point completely.
I was wrong, however. While action-packed, action is not the primary focus of the Sherlock Holmes movie, despite what the previews lead the viewer to believe.
My anticipation for the film peaked only hours before seeing the movie when I found out that Guy Richie, one of my favorite directors, was the director for this film. (You may remember him from such masterpieces as Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, and Rockinrolla), but moving away from the crime-comedy genre, was a mistake for Richie. He should stick to what he's good at. Even so, that didn't cause me to dismiss Sherlock Holmes (on the contrary - I am glad that the director of the film was a Brit!).
So... onward! The dialog is clever, but the accidents, especially the Americans who're trying to mimic a Brit accent, are sometimes difficult to understand because they're speaking very quickly. Also, I was a little bothered by the British characters who had American accents, and the American character with a British accent... but those are minor details. The acting is mediocre, for the most part.
The story is pretty bad. They wrap-up a lot of the lose ends towards the end of the film, and everything seems plausible enough. There's a bit of Deus Ex Machina in the final fight (never a good thing!) The highlight of the film (as with the books) is Sherlock Holmes' deductive reasoning capabilities and his acute sense of observation. This is very entertaining in the film when he analyzes his opponents' weaknesses in order to exploit them when entering a fight, as well as some of the times when he weasels embarrassing truths out of other characters, but most of the other important and interesting attributes of Holmes are lost... or perhaps "modernized" out of the original story. Being a bit of a purist, I do not believe that taking such artistic license is ever a good thing, and that they should stay true to the original story. Holmes fails in this regard in a number of places. First - this film is not based on a real Sherlock Holmes story (at least not one that I've heard of!), Second - Holmes has a major personality flaw in that he is addicted to opiates in the book. In the film, he seems to be more of a simple alcoholic. Third - Holmes in the books hates women, or is possibly even a homosexual. In the film, of course, it alludes to a female character as being a previous lover (although he doesn't seem romantically interested in her during the course of this film, which I consider to be a good thing).
Lastly, I should point out that the cinematography (other than the fight-scene cinematography) is not very good. There's a lot of head-jerking back-and-forth between scenes, and with all of the characters having similar clothing and looks, sometimes it can be hard to follow. Also, the speed of the film is far too fast for the mystery that they're trying to solve. Thankfully, the characters are distinct (perhaps even flamboyant) enough that the viewer doesn't get too confused as Holmes rattles off connections that he's deducted when he comes to revelations. I hope for the sake of the viewer that they are able to maintain this distinction in the sequel (a sequel is implied), in order to preserve the viewer's SANITY.
In the end, Sherlock Holmes gets two-ears-drooped. It really doesn't have anything going for it, except for some of the dialog, and Holmes' deductions, which can be better-served by simply reading the book. The Star Trek (Next Generation) Sherlock Holmes episodes are far better than this film. I wouldn't advise not to see it, if it peeks your curiosity, but don't get your hopes up! You might want just wait for DVD. There's no "big screen" moments in the film except for one fight-scene when they're battling at a shipyard.
Anyway, thanks for reading, and happy movie-watching! :p
- jaspian |
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jaspian's journal
Char ref!
moodyferret
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GAMER
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