Man, I gots to get better at writing down my thoughts about films quicker. I saw Avatar on Monday and Synecdoche New York on... Saturday(?) and Ninja Assassin on Thursday.
Let's start with Ninja Assassin first. It is a very bloody movie. Which is kind of a good thing, I guess. But most of the gore looks super fake. It was all added in later by computers. That's like cheating or something. The story is not at all complex but is more complicated than it needed to be. The acting was. Yup.
Some of the shots were quite nice, there was some neat-o ninja action; ninjas emerging from shadows (overused in this movie but still cool), ninjas flitting in and out of view, a fuck tonne of throwing stars, a somewhat confusingly shot fight on a busy speedway. But there was also some blandly staged action.
It was a very hit or miss film. More misses than hits, but the hits were super bloody.
I have no idea what to say about Synecdoche New York. Mainly because I have no idea what it was about. No, that's not true, I just wanted to write it. The film is about a lot of things. A lot of important things.
All of Charlie Kaufman's films have been about important things. They have all been very interesting explorations of ideas. This film is as well, but disappears up its own ass. Which is kind of the point. It is about (but not just about) the importance and triviality of creative endeavors.
There are some great bits of dialogue, some cringe inducing exchanges, some wonderful bits of angst and anguish and despair and a few bits of hope sprinkled in as well. Just for flavour.
There was a lot going on.
There was also a lot going on in Avatar. Visually, of course. The story is simple and simply told. And some people are saying this is a bad thing. These people should watch the Star Wars prequels and the movies based on toys of the last few years. Simple stories simply told are so much better than needlessly complex stories poorly told or stupid stories incompetently told.
Cameron is what Lucas has been falsely accused of: a spinner of myths. There are heroes and there are villains. Daring deeds are done. It has worked as a story since words worked as words. Not everything need to be innovative, especially when the visuals are.
Cameron the writer knew what Cameron the director wanted to do and the story plays to that. The emphasis is less on the hero's journey than on where this journey takes place. This film is about Pandora. And good god is Pandora worth all the attention. There is a specificity here that is startling. The thought given to the world, its inhabitants and the interrelationship between the two boggles my mind.
And the Na'avi. Perfect. One day, maybe, we will get computer generated people that are indistinguishable from real ones (ignoring why we would ever want such a thing). But we ain't there yet. But humanoid blue cat alien thingees? The time is now. The elongated limbs, the over sized eyes, the expressiveness of the ears and tails, this all adds up to make the aliens seem real. Everything has to be slightly overdone to seem natural. You could take stills from just about any scene involving the Na'avi and they would all look ridiculous, but in motion they are pitch perfect.
I really liked this film. I liked it more than I thought I would, and I knew that I was going to like it. Cameron, for all of his technical prowess, has never forgotten how to structure a film. Something Lucas and Spielberg seem to have forgotten.
I could go on, but let's just bring it on home.
Ninja Assassin is as forgettable as it is bloody.
Synecdoche New York is a film to think on.
Avatar is a film to drink in.
4 comments:
Sorry, dude, I can't just let that pass like it ain't no thing. Cameron never forgot how to structure a film?? Seriously? I mean, Avatar has a textbook 3 act structure, but that's about it. We have a hero who goes from pure pro-earthian to pure pro-pandorian without more than a hint of internal conflict, huge gaps in the story pasted over with pretty graphics, and one-dimensional bad guys whose evil plot makes no sense at all. There's no character development and zero suspense. Compare the structure of Avatar to T2, Titanic, or even Aliens.
In the meantime, Spielberg made Minority Report, The Terminal, Catch Me If You Can and Munich, some of which are good and some not so good, but even the not-so-good ones are not flawed because of their story structure. (Crystal Skull kind of falls apart, though, and War of the Worlds is so simple it makes Avatar look like Tarantino.)
Fair enough. I've let my standards be lowered by crappy toy based movies.
But I can't let you use Minority Report to belittle Avatar. Minority Report is one of the most schizophrenic films I've ever seen, and for no good reason. Eye transplants played for laughs? Crazy plant lady?
I prefer War of the Worlds because it is so simple. I'd rather things stay simple if complications bring nothing to the table but complications.
Nothing against War of the Worlds. I think it's really underrated. I just wouldn't cite it as particularly strong on the story front -- it's a showcase for Spielberg's talent as a director of set-pieces and not much else.
Also, I might be reading too much into it, but I thought the plant lady in MR was a nod to the totally bad-ass creepy General in The Big Sleep, and the whole movie was basically a sci-fi take on Raymond Chandler which is why it's so convoluted and tonally uneven (not my own idea, but it makes sense).
That does make sense. But the written word can be a lot more uneven, I find because it's all in your mind. The same mind that has a dream about going shopping with your gramma but its not actually your gramma it an old black man who's green and you're not shopping, you're swimming in the moon. The mind's elasticity and adaptability can handle tonal changes a lot better than any director can. Save maybe Herzog.
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