Atlas Shrugged: Part 1

Alternate Title:  Triumph of the Will

One sentence synopsis:  Two industrialist billionaires fight the government's attempts to destroy their businesses.


Notes from Havoc:  This movie is one that my normal style of reviewing does not really apply to. I could, at need, cite things that I thought worked and things that did not, as is my custom in these reviews, but a movie of this sort defies the usual review style. The impact it made on me, and that which it will have on others is not based upon it being a good or a bad film, but its content and the style of those who have created it. As such, do bear with me as I explain what can be said for a film of this sort, before getting to the crux of the matter.



Things Havoc liked:  Low expectations are a given here. Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand's Magnum Opus, a sixteen hundred page polemical rant about the evils of collectivism, unionism, and pretty much every other 'ism' that is not naked Capitalism. I knew I was going to have to see this movie when I first heard about it, as I could not envision how one could possibly make a film out of it.

Well, they made one. Not a particularly good film, but a workable film nonetheless, and if I am to be honest, I must admit that it's not the worst thing I've ever seen, nor even the worst film I've seen all year. There are positives to speak of. One of them is Grant Bowler, last seen on True Blood, who plays Hank Rearden, one of the two billionaire-heroes of the movie. His character is weird and he plays it strangely and with an amoral gloss that's vaguely unsettling, but given that he's supposed to be this way, I can't fault his performance, which is honestly better than the film seems to deserve. The supporting cast in general, comprised mostly of unknowns (with a cameo by Armin Shimmerman!) does credibly well, and surprisingly, does not lapse into caricature when portraying the large numbers of "evil" liberals and "parasites" in the film (more on that later).

The direction, if a little inconsistent in its pacing, is decent and serviceable. Shots are well constructed and workmanlike, and the plot, byzantine and strange as it is, does move along nicely. The movie has the unenviable task of somehow explaining how freight/passenger trains are relevant again in this modern age, as well as setting up the appropriate economic setting for this near-future world (the book is set in the 50s, the movie in 2016). Surprisingly, it does both quite well upfront. Finally, the style of the film, as "creative" persons disappear progressively, leaving behind only the enigmatic "Who is John Galt?" question, is mined reasonably effectively for tension and mystery as the film progresses, with dateline-updates of missing persons that seem stolen from an FBI file. I have to admit that I found this method somewhat compelling.



Things Havoc disliked:   While Bowler does a good job, the other lead, played by Taylor Shilling, really doesn't. She doesn't seem amoral so much as frozen emotionally, and when the script calls for her to act with emotional resonance, she fails utterly. This is not helped by the fact that the writing for this film is uniformly terrible, and not in an interesting way. Every line is a clunker, every dialog scene a complete mess. Nobody, not even repressed billionaires obsessed with their work and creative vision, talks like the people in this film do. Great stretches of the film are taken up with scenery shots of Colorado, which is nice, I guess, but cuts the pacing of the movie entirely to ribbons. Overall however, there just isn't all that much that happens in this film, not enough to justify the running time at least. The plot seems laborious and slow. Characters have scenes wherein they say things to one another that are repeated over and over again, while other, more important information (such as just what the hell "Who is John Galt?" is supposed to mean) is glossed over or ignored. The overall result seems amateurish.


Final thoughts:  I've given you a breakdown on the pros and cons of this movie, but as I said initially, the pros and cons of a movie like this are almost beside the point. They certainly don't get to the core issues of the film as I saw it. Those I shall address now:

This is one of the most unsettling movies I've ever seen.

No, it's not filled with bile and polemical hatred for all Liberals (or rather, while it is, it's certainly not the most strident form I've ever seen). It's not packed with commands to kill people or commit terrible crimes (though one of the secondary heroes does cause a massive ecological catastrophe that will poison or kill thousands of people out of spite). What is unsettling is the mindset of the creators of this film, the way in which, unintentionally, it reveals the worldview under which they operate.

Let me explain what I mean. Consider the Turner Diaries.

The Turner Diaries, for those who are not in the know, is one of the most famous pieces of Neo-Nazi literature in the world, a spec-fiction/alternate history novel about an underground network of neo-nazis who rises up to conquer the world and destroy the Jewish-backed "System", annihilating everyone of non-white ancestry in a nuclear holocaust, as told from the ground level by one of its members in diary form. It is a noxious and vile book, but one that I have read several times nonetheless, for it has popped up in the decades since its publication in the hands of terrorists and racists beyond compare (including Timothy McVeigh). There is no shortage of neo-nazi literature in the world, yet this book, alone among the reams of the stuff one could find from Stormfront, is enduring, persistent, and, in the right circles, famous.

The reason for this, as I see it, is the mindset.

Most polemical works, particularly fringe polemical works like Mein Kampf or Imperium, are really rants, usually screaming rants, about the evils of one thing or another. Two thirds of Mein Kampf consists of barely legible tirades about how the Jews, Communists, and countless others are evil monsters out to destroy Germanic culture who all must be annihilated. What's so unique about the Turner Diaries is that it is not a strident polemic, indeed it's not a polemic at all. Most Nazi literature goes to great lengths to explain to everyone and sundry why it is vitally necessary for the salvation of the human race to slaughter giant swatches of the population. The Turner Diaries does not. It contains practically no racial epithets, no political rants, few tirades about what is wrong with the world. The tone is basic and pedestrian, no screaming lectures, no attempt to convert the unconverted. Killing Jews is nowhere justified, it is simply assumed to be the proper course of action. There is no need to justify it because the novel holds the slaughter of the non-white races to be a self-evident necessity, whose utility and purpose are so obvious as to not require explanation. The hero of the story does not explain why he kills Jews. He simply kills them. And we the readers are obviously expected to identify with this hero because he is slaughtering Jews.

Atlas Shrugged, for all the moral bankruptcy of its political philosophy, is not Neo-Nazi literature. It does not advocate the slaughter of anyone, and I am not comparing it to the Turner Diaries for the purposes of invoking Goodwin's Law. Its proponents, creators, and enthusiasts are not Nazis, and it is not my intention to describe them as such. What I am attempting to say though, is that like the Turner Diaries, this movie dispenses entirely with polemical tirades designed to convince the viewers of the right of Objectivism and private enterprise. It does not go to any lengths to show why the Liberals that the heroes are pitted against are wrong. It assumes that we as viewers will believe that they are wrong and evil, simply because they are Liberals.

There is a scene, for example, wherein the brother of one of the main characters bursts angrily into the hero's office and demands to know why she has abandoned an entire rail line in Mexico. When the hero explains that she did so because she believed it would profit the company, the brother explodes into an impassioned speech. He tells her that the rail line in question was the cornerstone of the area's infrastructure and economy, that hundreds of thousands of people depended on it, and that by doing this, she will annihilate the fragile economic prosperity of the entire region, casting untold masses of people into abject poverty at a stroke. I had expected the film to give the hero an impassioned speech of her own defending her decision, castigating her brother's weak-willed idealism, and explaining her Objectivist principles. Such a defense could be made. Yet the movie has her contemptuously walk out of the room without so much as an answer for these arguments. The reason it has her do this is because, to the mindset of the filmmakers (and presumably their intended audience), such an argument does not require an answer. It is a Liberal argument, and thus self-evidently wrong.

I said before that the Liberals in this movie are not, by and large, portrayed as caricatures. That was not a decision made in the interests of fairness. Liberals, of which there are many in the film, are by and large allowed to behave as real Liberals, making arguments against Monopolies, in favor of regulation and sane taxation, and of the social cost of the "successes" that the industrialists trumpet. Of course, they are also conniving and scheming, out to 'get' our heroes constantly, but in every case, the arguments they make are not refuted, because they are not considered worthy of the effort of refutation. In this, the movie (not the book) reminds me of the Turner Diaries, where the world-view of the heroes is considered to be so obviously "right" as to obviate the need to convince anyone of its rightness. It is as though the heroes stood for the continuation of life, and Liberals for enforced mass suicide, or something equally mad.

In the movie's final scene (spoiler alert), our heroine looks over an oil field that has detonated and exploded, blackening the sky and filling land with flame from horizon to horizon. Countless thousands must be dead, hundreds of thousands of others are going to die or be poisoned from its toxic effects. Yet when she cries out in pain and anger, it is not because of these effects, but because the perpetrator of this disaster (the owner of the oilfield) has committed this act of sabotage against his own oilfield as a petulant slap back at the government who was attempting to regulate his business. She is crying, not because of the tens of thousands that are dead, but because the visionary oilman who did this has left, and vanished to join John Galt in some hideaway at the ends of the Earth, thus depriving her and the rest of the world of his incomparable genius.

And we, as watchers of the movie, are expected to agree with her.

There is a mindset at work in the creation of this film with which I am entirely unfamiliar, even among the actual real Objectivists that I know. Never before, save in the Turner Diaries, have I encountered its like, and the experience is one I will not soon forget.

This movie languished in Development Hell for over 40 years.  If only it had stayed there.

Final Score:  3.5/10

Super

Alternate Title:  It's a Bird!  It's a Plane!  It's Psychoman!

One sentence synopsis:  A short-order cook loser becomes a superhero to rescue his wife from a drug dealer.


Things Havoc liked:  I love most of the cast of this film. Ellen Page has been awesome in largely everything I've seen her in from Juno to Inception. Kevin Bacon is good in good movies and even better in terrible movies and here plays a sleazy, slimy, awesome drug dealing scumbag effortlessly. Nathan Fillion, it is well known, exists on this earth for the sole purpose of gallivanting about while being awesome. And Michael Rooker is one of my favorite recognizable-but-not-nameable character actors around. All four of the above cited actors do excellent (if demented) jobs in this film. Bacon's drug dealer is hilarious and slimy in equal measure. Fillion plays some kind of Christian Superhero on TV in sequences of shameless hammyness. Rooker goes through the entire movie acting like the only sane person at a convention of the mad. Page's character is simply and convincingly off-her-meds insane.

Rainn Wilson, the main character, better known from the Office TV show, is not really in these people's leagues (and neither is his wife, played by Liv Tyler), but he does a credible enough job. The movie requires that he play a repressed, overweight loser with a semi-hidden streak of quasi-incoherent rage run through him, suppressed only with difficulty. He does this. Indeed, weirdly for a movie that is supposed to be a sort of screwball dark comedy, Wilson plays this guy like an axe murderer waiting to happen, perfectly straight without any comedic overtones. The effect is unsettling. There is a scene near the end of the film where he has cornered one of the bad guys and is screaming into his face about "The Rules" and why one simply doesn't violate them by dealing drugs or kidnapping people, and one senses palpable, intense, and largely unfocused hate that seems both very real and oddly effective, though perhaps better suited for a film other than this one.



Things Havoc disliked:   That really is the problem in fact. The tone of this movie is all over the map. There are scenes that play as farce, and others, often right next to them, that seem to be dredged up out of American History X, and then back to comedy without a second thought. It doesn't really work. Wilson's character is pathetic all right, and frustrated, and repressing what is obviously seething, boiling anger at the frustrations of society, but it doesn't feel comedic or exaggerated, it feels real. This poses two problems. First it makes the film overall go from hilarious to just... icky at parts, particularly as the film never shies away from gory, graphic shots of the actual results of the violence it portrays (beating someone to death against a tile floor or breaking their skull with a pipe wrench are not clean activities). I don't object to gore, nor to realistic violence, but there is a time and a place for it, and this movie does not set out to create that time and place. Second, as largely everyone but Wilson are playing characters straight out of a farce, it feels all the more jarring that he is attempting to play this intensely driven maniac.


Final thoughts:  It is, of course, inevitable that this movie will be compared to Kick Ass, given the subject matter. Unfortunately, it does not stack up well in the comparison. Kick Ass was an excellent film, funny, riotous, violent, farcical, and generally awesome in pretty much all respects. This movie can't pull the same weight. Kick Ass' protagonist was a nerdy loser, but he was likable, believable, and most importantly, not a psycho. The kid sidekick in Kickass, who was a psycho, was still a likable psycho, partly due to being a young kid, a thin pastiche of superheroes in general. The one in this movie is a deranged, almost squicky woman afflicted with obvious and violent pathologies who does not care overmuch what or who she kills. The violence in Kick Ass rapidly became so over the top as to be hilarious and awesome, and was directed towards targets that we felt were deserving of it. That of this film is gruesome and gritty, and the recipients of it are often wholly arbitrary (there is a scene where our hero beats a man and his wife unconscious with a pipe wrench for cutting in line at the movie theater), which spoils the fun of the movie entirely, and hits us periodically with wholly off-color (if unexpected) moments and scenes. Kevin Bacon redeems much of the film with his sliminess, Nathan Fillion is hilarious to watch, and the rest of the cast turn in decent performances, albeit ones better suited to a completely different movie.

This movie opened in limited release with little fanfare.  As with Kill the Irishman, I feel that I now know why.

Final Score:  5/10

Sucker Punch

Alternate Title:  Dancers in the Dark

One sentence synopsis:  A traumatized girl imagines herself into various fictional worlds with her friends while concocting a plan to escape their imprisonment.



Things Havoc liked:     I was not going to see this movie at all, as I thought it looked stupid. The previews and the "Behind the scenes" look I saw at various other films I've gone to see were all idiotic. Zack Snyder is obsessed at the best of times with his own style, and it's one that gets old pretty damn fast. In my own defense, I will simply say that I was talked into seeing it by a combination of an entreaty from a friend of mine, and the fact that I simply couldn't find any other damn thing to see. After Tron and Kill the Irishman, I was very much not looking forward to this, but I sucked it up and sat down.

...

...

... so I'm just gonna come out and say it. This is the best movie I've seen all year.

...

No, this is not a joke.

Trust me, I'm as stunned by this as anyone reading this review. I sat through the entire credits of this film in a daze, not because I wanted to see them, but because I could not believe what had just happened. This movie, which looked so terrible in the previews, which has gotten excoriated by largely every major reviewer I know of, which should have been godawful in every way, this movie, was awesome.

Zach Snyder is known for over-the-top stylized action sequences. See 300 for details. It gets old after a while watching him speed up and slow down and speed up some more as his invincible heroes slaughter defenseless mooks. Or at least that's what I thought. Snyder here presents action scenes that simply boil over with energy and life. No shakycam, no camera obscura, no bullshit. This is a man who knows how to create gorgeous action spectacles, and presents them to you relentlessly and with verve and vigor. Every single action sequence in this film could easily serve as the centerpiece of any major big budget action movie, and yet they just keep coming. We go from steampunk WWI to Robo-Samurai duels to a fire-breathing dragon chasing a B-17 through the air and on and on and on it goes. You'd think that after a while, battle fatigue would set in, and yet, for me at least, it never does (okay the last one did go on a bit long, but still). The surreal style of the action, which is not something I'm usually fond of (Sky Captain anyone?) fits here so well, and the fighting never seems sterile or uninteresting, the way that a lot of effects-laden action sequences often are (Star Wars Prequels anyone?)

On the level of a stupid action film, this movie works and works brilliantly, and yet to my surprise that's not the only level it works on. The acting is, even in the non-surreal sequences, almost entirely excellent, with the lion's share of the props going to the villain, played by Guatamalan actor Oscar Isaac. I've seen him before in a thing or two, but I've never been impressed before. Here he delivers a performance that's just spectacular. He's menacing and witty, erudite and slimy, incredibly threatening and also wormlike and toadish when he needs to be. The girls are generally very good, particularly Abbie Cornish, another actor I've seen before but never really noticed, and Carla Gugino, who seems to be doing a sendup to Nathasha Fatale. Scott Glenn, who is always a pleasure to watch, is plainly having fun this time around, and does a terrific (if not terribly demanding) job.

The soundtrack rocks. I don't notice that sort of thing usually, but it was done so brilliantly well this time. The entire opening scene of the film is told with no dialogue or words at all, just the music and the pictures. It remains uniformly kick ass throughout the entire film. Who would have thought that Bjork goes well with swordfighting?

The plot is perhaps nothing to write home about, it's a fairly simple story, after all, but told with great care and skill by the director. Moreover, for those who think they've seen the entire film in the previews, you could not be more wrong. This movie managed to surprise me more than once. It's not Inception, but it does have some twists to take you on, more than one might expect from a movie of this sort. I was impressed.



Things Havoc disliked:   Sadly, the only weak link in the cast is Emily Browning, who unfortunately plays the main character. She's not terrible certainly, she sells the action scenes perfectly well, and it's actually her music on the aforementioned rocking soundtrack more than once. But her acting is too wooden for this part, and frankly, her makeup is ridiculous. Her character's name is Babydoll, and she is made to look the part, complete with too much blush and pigtails. It just looks absurd on a girl her age. Compared to the other actors, especially Isaac, she just doesn't have the firepower to compete in the tense or dramatic scenes. Still, one can't have everything.

Everything else I could object to is nothing but nitpicks. The last action scene does drag on a bit, and is probably the least inventive of all four, which is a great shame. The color palate is all browns and sepias in the fighting scenes, though that is much less of an issue in this film because the scenes in reality are usually in vibrant color, providing an effective contrast. The plot is fairly simple and the some of the characters aren't terribly... well... characterized, but not enough to be really offputting. The movie is not perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination. But I would be lying if I said that there was more than ten seconds where I was consciously aware of any flaws while I was watching it.


Final thoughts:   I'm at a loss for words here. This movie should have been terrible. In fact, I have a sneaky suspicion that it was terrible, and that I am insane. Every single major film critic I know, every one without exception, hated this film. I've seen it called "The Last Airbender with Bustiers". I read these reviews and I question what movie it was that these reviewers saw. This movie is a triumph of style and directorial skill, gorgeous and satisfying and astonishingly competent, not merely in action, but in acting and dramatic tension. It is badass when it needs to be, coy when it needs to be, tense when it needs to be, and completely off-the-wall when it needs to be.

I am not a man who indulges in stupid action flicks by and large, unless they are done with wit and skill (or are from the 80s). I hated Shoot Em Up, loathed the Blade films (other than the first one), and despised Tron Legacy (as you all know). Yet this movie sold me in a way that I did not believe I could be sold. The closest comparison I have for it is the Kill Bill films, movies I loved, and yet others who are aficionados of the genre hated.

There is no more defense that I can make here. I do not know what else to say. Every critic in the country who saw this film hated it. Many of them are erudite film scholars who can and do defend their opinion at length. I cannot ask you in good conscience to believe that all of them are crazy, and that I am right, and yet it is what I am ultimately saying. The year is still young, but this movie is the best one I have seen so far, and I give it my highest possible recommendation.

God help us all.

Final Score:  8/10

Kill the Irishman

Alternate Title:  More Reasons to Avoid Cleveland

One sentence synopsis:  An Irish gangster moves up the ranks of organized crime while waging war on rival Mafiosos.


Things Havoc liked:    There is a certain cast one rather automatically turns to when it comes time to make a gangster movie. Some of them are occasionally in other films, but not most. They play almost exclusively gangsters, and they are so good at these typecast roles that they could do so with their eyes closed. This movie has almost all of them.

Christopher Walken, Paul Sorvino, Vinnie Jones, Tony Lo Bianco, Bob Gunton, I love watching all these guys. They could do this movie in their sleep, and it's a lot of fun watching them do it. Walken acts like he isn't entirely sure what movie he's in, but then it's Walken. He can get away with that. The rest of them play (surprise!) gangsters of various sorts, who shoot and blow up and beat the crap out of one another in all the right ways. I could watch these guys all day...


Things Havoc disliked:   ... and in fact I'd have much preferred to watch them all day instead of the main character.

I loved Ray Stevenson in Rome (then again, I loved everything in Rome). I even liked him in both Punisher Warzone, and King Arthur, both of which were terrible films. But here he was just awful. Not only did I not even recognize him (I had to look up who he was online), but he was stiff and wooden the entire time he was onscreen. Even his Irish accent was terrible (Ray Stevenson is Irish, how the hell is that even possible?!). When he's not overacting (the opening scene, good lord...), he's sounding like a complete prat, assing about spewing thoughtless bullet points and pretending to be some kind of semi-secular saint.

I really shouldn't blame Stevenson for this. He was badass and awesome in Rome, and thus I turn my attention to the writers of this hopeless film. What they think they are doing here is completely beyond me, but there are sections of this movie where I literally cringed. At one point, Stevenson is at a backyard barbeque with his working class buddies, and makes a speech wherein he complains about the fact that there aren't enough vegetables and low cholesterol foods on offer, declares that he is in opposition to the Vietnam war, lambasts deficit spending as something that will destroy the US economy, argues in favor of the Gold Standard, and declares that his friends don't read enough philosophy. He does all this in ten seconds, all in a movie where he is supposed to be a working class guy that is set in 1968! It plays like a shopping list of "good political bullet points" meant to establish his character as a thoughtful and properly liberal guy. Later on he claims that he's a "celtic warrior-prince" from the old days of Ireland, but that he doesn't drink because he respects women too much.

This is a movie about a working class Irish gangster boss from Cleveland, not Saint Patrick. The effect is to make the movie sound completely fake, as though the screenwriters, conscious of the fact that the material wasn't selling itself, decided to "spice up" the fact that we're supposed to like this guy by ad-libbing in everything they imagined "people should like". Not only is it totally out of place, even laughable in a movie supposedly about a hard-boiled gangster who fought a mob war with the Genovesse Family, but it's borderline insulting to the audience. You don't drop the Gold Standard (which I doubt most people even understand) or cholesterol in a throwaway line without any establishment or explanation. And even if the real gangster in question (this movie's based on a real person) was a teetotaler, I need some explanation as to why this Irish Celtic Warrior doesn't drink!

Oh, and whoever keeps putting Vincent D'Onofrio in movies that require him to be a badass (as opposed to simply crazy), should really have his casting license revoked. When not playing Private Pyle, the man has all the on-screen intimidation factor of a bowl of wet noodles. This was true in Law & Order, and it is true here. His voice breaks while trying to threaten people, for god's sake. Nobody could find a better take of that scene? There was no time for ADR?


Final thoughts:   When Christopher Walken, Paul Sorvino, and everyone else I mentioned initially can't save a movie collectively, you know something went horribly wrong. I blame the screenwriters and the casting director, who twice made me want to leave the theater rather than listen to the claptrap they called dialogue. It's a shame, really, because the movie isn't totally terrible, and has sections, even entire sequences, that are actually fairly well done. This movie came out of nowhere for me, didn't get a wide release, and generally seemed to be slipping in under the radar. Now I know why.

Final Score:  3.5/10

Black Swan

Alternate Title:  Crazy Bitch

One sentence synopsis:  A crazy ballerina gets the lead in Swan Lake and tries to meet its requirements while going more crazy.


Things Havoc liked:   I know nothing of ballet, in essence, but I do know at least of Swan Lake, which is considered to be the most difficult role in existence for a starring ballerina. Though artsy bullshit does tend to bore me, this movie gets across why that is very well. It's not ballet torture porn, but it does quite effectively portray just what makes ballet so difficult, both on an artistic and a physical level.

The acting is generally excellent. Natelie Portman spends half the movie bound up like a straitjacket and the other half batshit crazy. She won an oscar for this one, an award she probably deserves for sheer insanity if nothing else. Vincent Cassel (who I love, but I often see in shit movies) is hilariously sleazy without being a complete cariacature of a jackass. He clearly wants to lord power over the ballerinas, and yet wants to make great art even more. Barbara Hershey is devilishly good as Portman's also-crazy possessive mother. She and Portman do this crazy one-upping dance throughout the movie where you constantly re-evaluate who is the crazier.

But really, the acting is just a vehicle, if not an excuse, for the psychodrama. I'm not usually fond of psychodrama, but this was supposed to be oscar-calibre psychodrama, so I figured why not. Well I don't really know if I'd call this psycho-stuff oscar calibre, but it's pretty damn good, I have to admit. The movie makes no attempt to play the "is she crazy or not" game. She is plainly, obviously crazy, and the game becomes sorting through her insanity to determine what is actually going on. If that sounds annoying, I must report that it never becomes so, a tribute to skillful direction, writing, and editing.

The imagery in this movie is fucked up. Granted, my tastes in such things are distinctly weird. I don't go in for horror movies, particularly the crazy kinds. I'm not saying the movie is scary or horrifying, but it is unsettling in the extreme. The overall psychological thriller style of the film makes these weird fantastical elements starker. Several scenes in particular, or rather images from those scenes, stand out even now, several weeks after the fact. Any movie that leaves such an impression can't be doing everything wrong.


Things Havoc disliked:   The pacing in this film sucks. Entire sections of it were added, in my opinion, just to make the thing long enough to qualify as a feature film. The entire nightclub sequence was un-necessary, and while yes, I enjoyed watching Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis having lesbian sex (I am human), I wish it was actually associated in some way with the actual film.

Speaking of Mila Kunis, you might have noticed that I left her out of my listing of how awesome the cast was. There's a reason for that. In a movie where everyone else is top form, it would be nice if she had played a character that was from the same planet as everyone else. I don't know that it's her fault, but 'who gives a crap' California irreverence doesn't work all that well when you're trying to portray ballet as a hotbed of insanity and dark passions. She seems stupid, and consequently Portman seems stupid for alternately being attracted to her or resenting her. Yes, Portman is crazy, but crazy and stupid are two very different things, and she pushes us towards the latter.


Final thoughts:   Someone asked me what I thought of this movie when I first saw it. I said that I was going to write this review in the following manner:

Things Havoc Liked: ?????????

Things Havoc Disliked: Pickles.

Like and dislike really don't enter into this one in the way that I assumed, when I started doing this, that all movies would. This movie was weird, not in an artsy theater-of-the-absurd way, nor in a fuck-with-the-audience way, neither of which I care for. It was weird in that time-honored manner, in which a movie is populated with weird characters in the reasonable expectation that weird shit will happen. It isn't precisely a dark film, though it is very dark in parts, nor a thriller, though it is very tense. It isn't really anything specific, and I left the theater completely baffled by what I actually thought of it. Even now, after several weeks to think it over, all I get when I think of the movie is a few striking images and a deep sense of unease. Perhaps that's a testament to a good and well-made film. Perhaps it's a complete mess. I really don't know what to say otherwise.

Final Score:  6.5/10

The Adjustment Bureau

Alternate Title:  Would the Junior Senator from New York please cease fucking up reality?

One sentence synopsis:  A congressman running for Senate meets the girl of his dreams, only to find that a shadowy organization that secretly runs the world needs to keep them seperated because of the 'plan'.


Things Havoc liked:  I've mentioned before (in True Grit) that I'm not a big fan of Matt Damon. Most of the time, when I watch him, I find myself watching Matt Damon, not his character. While he's had good performances before, I have never found them to be as good as most people thought. I have to say though that in this movie, as well as in True Grit, I had no such trouble. Damon plays his congressman like a guy who is smart, driven, rational, and who never crosses the line into cariacature. If not an outstanding job, it is at least a very very good one. The same can be said for Emily Blunt, whom I've seen before but am not as familiar with. Both of them sell their roles well, and don't dive into overacting hysterics, even when the script would nudge them that way.

But the real surprise for me in this film was the plot, the style and the villains. The trailers for this film indicated (to me at least) that this was going to be some kind of high-speed chase thriller movie, and more specifically, an incredibly generic high-speed chase thriller movie. Already tepid in my enthusiasm for Matt Damon starring vehicles, I could not have been less interested in seeing what appeared to be "Jason Bourne vs. the Illuminati". Yet to my surprise, the film was nothing of the sort. The pacing in this movie is slow and deliberate and takes its time to let the characters act reasonably towards one another and towards the audience. The chase sequences, which are obligatory of course, are more than just people running/driving away from other people. They resemble less a typical car chase and more of a running game of chess, particularly one about halfway through the movie where we see Matt Damon trying through wit and ingenuity to get somewhere while two Adjustment Agents try, through equally careful wit and ingenuity, to stop him. There's no stupid distractions of stunts driving or parcours to get in the way. Both participants are smart people trying to outsmart one another in the heat of the moment. They don't stop for kung fu brawls or gunfights, and even talk to one another, civilly, along the way. When one person wins the race, the other does not scream to the heavens or swear eternal revenge. He takes stock and decides what to do now.

And that leads me to the biggest surprise, for me, which is the bad guys. Indeed, it's hard even to call them bad guys. For one thing, they're played with great charisma and screen presence by Anthony Ruivivar, John Slattery, and the always magnetic Terence Stamp. What they are (angels) is never explicitly stated (angels) but is broadly hinted at (angels) repeatedly (angels) and at length (angels) early in the film. The film takes great pains to portray them however as anything but the illuminati. The very first confrontation between the Adjustors and our hero results in the chief bad guy capturing the hero, taking stock of what he's done, and deciding on the spot to level with him completely and tell him the truth about everything that's happening. And then once they let him go, another bad guy stops by to answer the questions he undoubtedly has about what he's just been told. All without scenery chewing, without stupid villain tricks, and without even any real palpable malice.

Indeed, there's no malice in these guys at all, which I think is a brilliant move. We see Adjustors doing their jobs to the best of their abilities, warts and all (one of them oversleeps, and then gets hit by a car trying to fix his mistake). There are never any pretensions of omniscience for them. They react to circumstances as best they can, working out plans on the fly that sometimes fizzle unexpectedly, trying to fix the ever-expanding messes that result as best they can. When they fail, their reaction is not to execute the hero, but to file paperwork and call for backup. While there are handwaves in the direction of an "ultimate penalty" for those who transgress very seriously against the plan, their modus operandi is to prevent the issues from arising in the first place. Punishing the transgressor for violating the plan makes no sense, because the plan wasn't supposed to be transgressable in the first place. The Adjustors seem to take Damon's continued meddling as evidence that they're not doing their job properly, not as evidence that he needs to be silenced/liquidated/whatever. After all, killing Damon wasn't in the plan. When Damon's antics finally get his file pushed up to Stamp's level (A really senior official whose nickname is "the Hammer"), his strategy is not thunder and lightning, but sitting Damon down in a parking garage and reasoning with him.

I cannot insist enough on how refreshing this approach is. The Adjustors come across as Celestial Bureaucrats, and not necessarily indifferent ones. Even the "uncaring" ones are given lines and scenes that show how seriously and with what diligence they take their work, and how they deal with the inevitable thoughts of remorse or doubt about enacting a plan that most of them are not even party to. When Damon and Stamp discuss free will and predestination, Stamp's arguments are devastatingly effective and brilliantly written. He neither raises his voice nor makes threats, but efficiently and logically spells out just why he does what he does, not merely to justify himself or chew scenery, but to give real, moral reasons for the Adjustment Bureau itself. Most villains who bother to explain themselves in movies do so just so the audience can be spoonfed a parable about how "just following orders" or "ends justify the means" leads to disaster. It's rare to find a movie where you find yourself conceding that the villains are right because the movie is written well enough to permit them to be. When the movie finally ended, I found myself actually rooting for both sides.


Things Havoc disliked:   Seriously guys, magic hats?

Look, I don't mind non-standard mythology, and I don't require that everything be explained. The stuff with the doors (Adjustors are able to use doors to travel to anywhere else with a door, essentially) is fine. It works on solid mythological grounds, but more importantly, it's well within the suspension of disbelief and doesn't require explanation. But some of the mechanics of this world, such as the water stuff or the hats, are so transparently arbitrary as to render it impossible to accept, at least for me. While God may work in mysterious ways, he generally doesn't work in ones this absurd. What explanation goes into the magic hats only serves to make it worse, frankly. If you're using arbitrary magic, don't try and handwave it as though it wasn't.

The above is just a nitpick. What's more serious however is that the plot starts to disintegrate in the last third of the movie. The arbitrary rules that govern the world start having to get more arbitrary just to enable the plot to function. More unforgibably, the characters' behavior becomes more arbitrary as well, discarding the wit and intellect with which they had been acting previously. It doesn't totally throw it out the window, but there are several specific scenes wherein the characters act in a totally unrealistic manner because the plot requires it. Were this a lesser film with less well-drawn characters, it wouldn't be so obvious.

Finally, the ending, which I will not spoil, while it makes logical, and perhaps a degree of inevitable sense (and has a pretty neat camera trick to it as well), is somewhat unsatisfying. I can't really say more without giving the game away, but it felt... beneath the film somehow. Just a feeling.


Final thoughts:    I really wasn't expecting to like this film at all. Hell, I originally opted to see Tron instead, which was not the best decision I've ever made. Maybe it was my lowered expectations, but this movie impressed me with its intelligence and compitancy. It wasn't a mind-bending movie like Inception, nor a tour-de-force, but it was a damn good little flick, and one that should teach me not to necessarily judge a film by its trailer.

Unless that film is Battle: Los Angeles. Fuck that noise.

Final Score:  7.5/10

Tron: Legacy

Alternate Title:  Abort.  Retry.  Ignore.

One sentence synopsis:  The son of the original Flynn goes back into the world of Tron to find his missing father.


Things Havoc liked:  I love Jeff Bridges, and I love Bruce Boxleitner. Seeing them in this film, even if Boxleitner wasn't used near enough, was fun for me, I have to admit. Boxleitner was almost unrecognizable to me, in fact for a second, I thought he was Rutger Hauer. As to Bridges, I have to admit, the age-reducing technology they used in this film was nigh-flawless. I was impressed when this stuff was rolled out back in X-men 3, but this time around I literally couldn't see any problems.

The movie does hit the notes that a sci fi action movie absolutely has to. The graphics were good, not great but good, and the soundtrack did rock, I have to say. I wasn't wild about some of the stylistic decisions made, I thought much of what was going on felt way to analogue for a Tron movie (Tron movies are supposed to be somewhat sterile, in my opinion), but it wasn't terribly distracting.


Things Havoc disliked:   You know you're in trouble when that's all I have to say for the good stuff.

The writing in this film was terrible, worse by far than the original, worse even by the standards of dumb action flicks. Every line grated, every piece of exposition was a clunker. I could almost picture the smug face of the "writer" behind this thing as he wrote the plodding, stupid sentences that he made his characters recite. The plot would be stupid if it weren't completely nonexistent. The original Tron was no Shakespeare, but it was innovative in many ways, and gained a cult following for a reason. This movie has no system of thought involved in its creation, an excuse to give us action scenes with bouncing disks and light cycles. You would think that a movie about entering into computer networks made in 2011 would have something to say about the minor alterations that have happened in the world of computers in the last twenty five years. Apparently you would think wrong.

But you know what? I get it. This is not supposed to be some kind of overwrought Matrixy philosophy movie, it's an action movie, right? Nerds like me need to stop whining on the internet about how it's "letting down the original" and just enjoy the action, right?

Okay, then answer me this, why does the action suck?

Oh BOY does it suck. The action in the first film was miles better than this crap. Needlessly complicated wire fu jiu-jitsu bullshit on the melee fighting, none of which is filmed with artistry, competency, or even real interest. Normally I get up in arms when someone uses Shaky-cam to completely obscure the action scene they have lovingly wrought, but there's no shaky-cam to blame it on this time. The action here sucks completely on its own bullshit merits. There's no sense of pacing to the fights, no cleverness, no spectacle, not even any moments of "awesome". It's nothing but boring, routine bullshit, not even to the level of gratuitously vapid spectacle action as in Equilibrium or Hitman. I've literally never seen action scenes this lifeless. They simply happen and are over and done with.

The lightcycles are particularly terrible. No, I don't mind that they shook the formula up a bit with a 3D grid, that's not the point. As with the melee fighting it has no sense of drama or mystery to it. It's simply a series of events that occur and then are over. Not even the participants seem to give a shit. Moreover, and I truly am at a loss as to how you can screw this up, Light Cycles are supposed to feel like a video game. There's a certain quality to the original that feels very gamelike, perhaps it's ineffable, I don't know. This version feels like stupid action tricks. I was bored to tears in even the "biggest" action scenes.

Finally, a word, please, on 3D. I have seen, to date, precisely one movie that warranted 3D, and that movie was the IMAX version of Avatar. Say what you will about Avatar's recycled plot and stupid characters, it was a spectacle to behold. Tron's 3D makes the film worse in every way. It makes the film murkier and harder to see, costs you the focus in even middle-foreground, and does nothing except distract from the movie itself. I actually took my glasses off about two thirds of the way through the movie and watched it, to greater effect, with my unaided eyes. This was nothing more than an attempt to extort four more dollars out of the viewing public.


Final thoughts:   Oh this movie is bad. Oh it is bad. The plot is absurd, the characters and action boring, the leads, male and female both, instantly forgettable and stupid. Jeff Bridges' original protagonist in the first movie was a nerd who was irreverent and interesting. This guy is as plain as paste and twice as boring. I could not wait for this damnable thing to end so that I could get up and leave the theater. I thought that at the very least, this movie would be an enjoyable mindless action film. One out of three ain't bad, I guess

Final Score:  2/10