Dramedy

Mean Girls Review

September 29, 2015 by JD Hansel

First order of business: low pass filter. Maybe it was just the version of the film I happened to be watching – I watched it on Netflix – but there was a very high-pitch ringing sound that would appear in a few shots, seemingly from background noise that was not edited out by the sound editors. It became an annoyance because it was one of the very few things keeping me from really enjoying the film, and I suspect it probably could have been solved with a basic low pass filter. (The fact that my number one issue with the film is so minuscule and irrelevant is a good indicator that this is a good movie.) I think the sound is actually the worst part of the film, if sound includes the soundtrack, which does have some ugly tracks and some pathetic soundtrack clichés.

In fact, clichés are the film’s second-biggest problem, and even they are generally rather tame. It is clear that Mean Girls is trying to be smarter than the average high school girl movie, and with Tina Fey’s writing, it succeeds at doing so, but some of the same old scenes we’ve seen before in every other movie in the genre still find their way in throughout. Since I know I just wrote this in my Divergent review, I hate to repeat it so soon, but it is very relevant: a great film is not one that is without imperfections, but one that overcomes them with strong characters and stories that give the audience a good time. For me, between the cleverness of the story, the perfection of the cast, and the third point that I can’t think of but has to be included anyway because of the rule of threes, I had a good time.

Paper Towns Review

August 3, 2015 by JD Hansel

Alright, I think it’s time for us to have “the talk.”

As a proud cinema snob, this is tough for me to talk about openly, but we need to discuss the true implications of “the C word” – cliché. We critics have always assumed that it’s a Cinema Sin for a story to be cliché and/or stereotypical. Obviously, a film would ideally be entirely original, and would set itself apart from even its best imitators. On the other hand, while it might be disheartening to think that one of our favorite critiques to use against the mediocre could be a moot point, we may have to admit that rejecting the unoriginal can cheat a film that would be absolutely brilliant… had it only come out a few years earlier. Let’s really think about this: can an otherwise good movie be condemned solely for its inappropriate chronological placement?

Sometimes we do appreciate a film that reuses old ideas in better ways, and I think Doug and Rob Walker have extinguished Inside Out criticisms definitively on multiple occasions. The problem arises when a story is pleasant enough to be enjoyable, but it uses a stereotypical formula for its genre – without adding enough originality or twists to give it significance. For the “based on a book all the teenage girls and their mothers have read” genre, there is a trick to dodge this, namely built-in fill-in-the-blanks for unique character details, but is that enough to keep the audience from feeling like they’re watching the genre rather than a movie? In the case of Paper Towns, that is exactly the problem, and to drive the point home, I counted the number of clichés responsible for this effect that appear throughout the film.

It’s thirty five. That is scary.

To clarify the kind of clichés I’m talking about, I will further explain the concept of built-in fill-in-the-blanks. Please refer to the now infamous Tumblr post entitled “John Green’s writing process” by clicking here. This writing style, which seems rather common today, uses a Mad Lib formula to add bizarre little details and fun idiosyncrasies to each character, usually consisting of a curious mismatched adjective/noun pairing. This adds flavor to the story, but it can quickly grow stale, because one can only see so many combinations in the vein of Patrick’s cancerous balls in TFioS or Margo’s random capitalization in Paper Towns before it’s all the same. The most prominent combo of this nature in the film is the “black Santas,” which sounds so, so, so much like it comes from a Mad Lib that I’m starting to think John Green really does employ a dartboard in his writing process.

That being said, I’m limited in the extent to which I can criticize the film due to the other tricky dilemma that makes critics uncomfortable – adaptations have to stick to their source material, for better or for worse. Any problems I have with the film from a writing standpoint can really only take up about half of my review, and my problem with clichés should take up only a small portion of that, because I really don’t like shaming a film purely for its similarity to others in its genre (especially since the book came out a few years before all these clichés became so established). So, I guess the real question to ask about this movie is: did I have a good time experiencing it? I’d say I did. It’s a pleasant film that never fails to entertain with its lovable cast (particularly Jaz Sinclair, whose charm will take her far, I suspect) and its interesting plot, which was paced and stylized appropriately. The dynamic of the characters, particularly during the Pokémon scene, is enough to make the film quite pleasant to watch, and it leaves me wanting more… unless maybe I wanted more because the ending was anticlimactic, but let’s not think about that.

Pulp Fiction Review

March 25, 2015 by JD Hansel

So,there are some movies I’d recommend that people see without any knowledge of what the film is about, what’s going to happen, or who’s in the film. The Truman Show is a good example, as is Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Then there’s a movie like Pulp Fiction. I think I was only able to like it because I knew all about it going into it.

I knew the type of storytelling and approach. I knew it was a weird Tarantino film that would jump around, and I knew he had carefully structured everything so that he was ahead of the audience, and no one could ever predict where the story would go next. I knew he would use everything that the movies have trained us to expect to happen in a story against the audience to trick them. I knew to expect that I would never know what to expect, and most importantly, I knew better than to play The Movie Game.

The Movie Game is my term for when the audience member tries to figure out where the plot is going, and what will resolve everything, with the understanding that the movie has to set up its twists and turns ahead of time, and the story will follow the standard structure. This is partially based on a great quote from screenwriter Terry Rossio: “You know that the audience will try to guess where you’re going with the story. It’s a given. It’s fun. After all, they’re sitting there virtually motionless in the dark for two hours, with nothing better to do but second-guess you.” When The Movie Game is too easy, it’s a boring game, so it’s a bad movie. I played a great game with The LEGO Movie, and the movie won. I beat Frozen, but it was still a good game, and therefore a good film.

Naturally, when I get most upset by a movie is when I feel cheated, particularly because the movie doesn’t follow any normal structure, so I don’t get to play my favorite game. The way to avoid feeling cheated is simply to know what game the movie is playing before going in, rather than assuming it’s playing the same game as I am. What game is Pulp Fiction playing? I have no flippin’ clue, but it’s not quite as fun as The Movie Game.

It’s nice, every once in a while, to see a movie that does storytelling really differently. However, because of how different the storytelling is from what I’d ever seen in a movie before, and because I didn’t get to play the game, it didn’t feel like a real movie to me. It felt like a crazy Tarantino art project. I happened to find out that Tarantino felt the same way about it when it first came out. I respect it since so much in the film is impressive, but it didn’t feel quite like I was watching a movie, nor was it quite as entertaining as a more ordinary film. The entertainment value is lost to some extent when the movie doesn’t build in any normal sense, so some scenes are essentially pointless. Again, they may be impressivescenes, but they serve no purpose other than displaying themselves because the director feels like showing these scenes to the audience because they mean something to him, even though they mean nothing, in some cases, to an overarching story.

I don’t identify with the characters, so they are not my favorites, but they are strong. The dialogue is perhaps more profane than it needs to be, which I generally view as a Cinema Sin of sorts because that generally means the writer is either going for shock value, or simply can’t think of anything meaningful or interesting to write. However, the writing is very, very impressive – Tarantino is pretty darn good at dialogue. The way he interwove the three main stories was clever. The soundtrack is nice overall, and the visuals, while sometimes more bloody than I like, were overall very well done as well.

So, in the end, I really like this movie for what it is, but I don’t know that I like it much as a movie. When I don’t get to play The Movie Game, I feel a little like I’ve been invited over to a friend’s house to play a game with him, but he’s just playing it by himself and encouraging me to watch him; I don’t feel included, and that’s just boring. I think I’ve certainly learned a lot about film, storytelling, and myself from watching it, which means it has good reason to be considered a classic. So, I like it. It’s good. But give up on The Game before it begins, because he just isn’t playing along.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles Review

December 1, 2014 by JD Hansel

Boy, is this a tricky one to review. I saw this movie for my first time this past Thanksgiving night on Netflix, and I had no idea it was a Thanksgiving movie until I started watching! I love coincidences like that, but in movies, coincidences have to be handled very carefully (segue, segue, segue). Planes, Trains, and Automobiles does a remarkable job at playing up the absurdities of its continuous coincidences, and making the disastrous circumstances as funny as possible. From a writing standpoint, it is a very well-built film, which is uncommon for a movie that is essentially a series of things going awry. The acting from Steve Martin and John Candy, who were on top of their game in this film, is perfect. The film also has some great attention to detail, cool shots, fun cameos, and a very nice ending.

The problem that I have with it, however, is that it requires laughing at the suffering of the protagonist. One could argue that laughing at the pain of others is the essence of comedy, but as Mel Brooks said, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger; comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” In other words, if something bad happens to you, it’s tragic from your perspective, but funny from mine. Similarly, in television, film, and other media, it is easier to laugh at the suffering of those with whom we do not identify. Since this movie made me empathize with the main characters, it was difficult for me to laugh when they were suffering because I “felt their pain.” So, I found the movie kind of uncomfortable.

Regardless, I am impressed with the film and its ability to take a rather common kind of comedy story, and make a special one of a very high caliber. It’s just what one would expect from John Hughes.

God’s Not Dead Review

September 14, 2014 by JD Hansel

Or, The Epitome of Disrespectful Film-Making

This is it – this is the movie that I can call my least favorite film without reservation. It is the perfect example of disrespectful film-making that slaps its viewers right in the face, and its audience falls for its tricks, applauds it, and brings the whole family for a second viewing. From a technical perspective, this film is not too horrendous, but if it were, it would be “so bad it’s good,” which is not the case here. What I mean to say is, it is not shot, lit, or edited too poorly, though it is shot/lit/edited in the most emotional way possible. Why? Because this is an extremely emotional movie that tricks its audience into thinking that it is intellectual. What really makes this movie disgusting is that it is offensive to atheists, Muslims, Christians, and humans everywhere.

The movie is obviously offensive to atheists, but not just because it counters their beliefs. What makes the movie offensive to them is the way that it portrays them, and the way that it portrays atheism as a concept. To say that all atheists had what I call a “Pure Flix tragedy” which caused them to hate God, leading to their atheism, is really silly. Think of how many people there are in the world who are never exposed to the god of the Bible, but are only exposed to other gods. They would assume that if there is a god, it would be whichever they thought was the “normal” god, which would be whichever god they had been exposed to previously. This video explains some things that atheists are frequently told about themselves that they find offensive, and as the fellow in the video pointed out in his own article about the film, it would seem that God’s Not Dead put just about all of them in the film.

The movie seems to try to say that the Muslims themselves are not necessarily that bad; they are just forced to be outcasts, hide any interest in other beliefs, and shun family members who disbelieve. First of all, people being kicked out of their homes for religious reasons happens in various religious households, and Christian ones are no exception. Secondly, this is to say that Islam is itself a prison that keeps its followers unhappy. It sure is good news that all those miserable Muslims can come to Jesus and be happy people!

Christians have two main reasons to be offended: the first is how the movie repeats the same old Christian movie clichés, thus insulting its audience’s intelligence, and the second is the bad influence this film can have on Christian youth. The movie almost seems to run through some sort of Christian movie cliché checklist. It has the annoying blonde girlfriend, who is a bad influence on the protagonist; the “atheistic” man (who is really an anti-theist of sorts) whose old female relative died tragically when he was just a boy; the stereotypical pastor and stereotypical African missionary; and it has a couple of Asians and a couple of African Americans so the audience will not notice that the vast majority of the cast is white. Though I must admit that that last one is kind of a Hollywood cliché too.

The movie is a bad influence because young Christians will think that all of these clichés and stereotypes are actually parts of life that they will probably encounter, and that they can use the arguments presented in the film to bring their classmates to Christ. Here is the problem with that: nobody uses those arguments anymore. This article from a Christian/creationist organization explains that an atheist with any knowledge of Christianity would be able to refute the arguments presented in the film because all of them are bad, and any Christian apologist who suggested using them would be laughed out of a Christian university in a day. What is especially bad about all this is that a Christian may lose his or her faith when these arguments fail, and said Christian would be very depressed, stressed, and confused. He/she would feel betrayed by God, when he/she should instead feel betrayed by the film. This movie will ultimately kill God for the Christian youth.

There are many ways that a film can be disrespectful to its viewers, including offending them, influencing them wrongly, and being too cliché. The greatest form of disrespect, however, is probably taking advantage of them. When a film knows that with good marketing it can make a poorly written film that will sell anyway, that is taking advantage of the audience, and that is exactly what this movie did. This suggests that the film thinks its audience is stupid, and it sadly makes the Christian community look bad for falling for the clever marketing and the seemingly harmless focus on faith. It tries to trick its audience into thinking that it is clever with its outdated arguments that win over the class, with its variety of subplots that are barely strung together, and its attempts at symbolism and foreshadowing. (I bet the director thought he was clever for putting the woman who listened to the song “Ones And Zeroes” in room 101010 in the hospital, but someone forgot to tell him that symbolism and foreshadowing are supposed to mean something.)

A lot of the acting is pretty bad, but what is far worse is the writing. The story has too many subplots that only connect due to odd coincidences, and this takes away time that it could be spending showing viewers the protagonist’s background, parents, friends, other classes, etc. The dialogue is ridiculous, and only stays somewhat conversational for a few seconds in each scene before it turns into a speech or sermon from one of the characters who for some reason has to share his/her beliefs. As I wrote in this article, the movie did such a bad job at defending Christianity that it ended up supporting its antagonist’s beliefs. In one scene, when the antagonist walks in from the back of the room slowly clapping for the protagonist to mock him, it made me fall out of my chair laughing. The idea that a professor could yell at and grab his student in the hallway for all to see, and then still keep his job, is possibly crazier than the idea of a professor who tells students to renounce their religious beliefs. The fact that all of this nonsense is in the film, and that it actually was successful, and that it influenced my friends and loved ones, makes it the movie that I hate above all others.

Matinee Review

July 7, 2014 by JD Hansel

In Universal’s 1993 film Matinee, I was not surprised that John Goodman seemed perfect for the part of Lawrence Woolsey, a filmmaker known for making cheesy/horrifying monster movies. However, I was surprised to see that much of this movie was focused on a bunch of kids, and even more surprising was that the child actors playing them were really quite good and believable. While the film starts off slow, and seems to struggle to establish all of its main characters in a fast but logical way, around 40 minutes in it gets really interesting and lots of fun.

It’s a shame that the film is not more appropriate for young kids since the kids in the movie are pretty much the main focus of the film. Sadly, there were not that many big laughs, but it was still delightful watching these great characters interact, and watching the way that this film brilliantly satires old monster movies. Overall, Matinee has good writing, good acting, good directing, and even good music. It’s simply fun.