J.D. Hansel

2010s Movie Reviews

The Perks of Being a Wallflower Review

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Hi.  I’m J. D. Hansel.

Not the usual J. D. Hansel though – that is to say, not the J. D. who’s already seen the movie that he’s trying to review, and has had time to form an opinion about it.  I’m J. D. in the middle of watching the movie.  I am one hour, six minutes, and 39 seconds into The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and at this time I cannot say with certainty that I’ll be able to finish the film, because the protagonist has just been dared to do the unthinkable.  While I do not wish to give it away, I need to make one thing clear – this is my worst nightmare.  This movie is terribly horrific because it’s filled with my biggest social fears.  I don’t feel safe while watching this film.

I haven’t been this uncomfortable in ages.  What started as a seemingly innocent comedy has had me sweating in a cold room, and biting my fist to keep from yelling.  I had to stop the movie because I just couldn’t take it anymore.  I’ve gone to do some chores, and I’ve gone for a walk, but PowerDVD is still sitting in my taskbar, eager to move on, and I still can’t muster up the courage to see what’s going to happen next.  I even had to get the DVD case out of my sight, because just thinking about the film makes me shaky, queasy, and rather dehydrated.  I’m trying to stall by getting other things done, so I’m in the middle of typing up an email to a Muppeteer I admire at the moment, because even that doesn’t make me quite as anxious as what I think I’m about to see if I play the movie for just ten more seconds.  I might try to go play a video game to take my mind off of it, or perhaps I’ll do some packing to move back into my college dorm after spring break, but I still don’t know if I’ll be able to finish this nightmare.

It’s me again – the “normal” J. D. Hansel, under the influence of hindsight bias and time to overthink things, as usual.  I’m glad that I’m back, because looking back on this film (which I watched almost a month ago), I can appreciate it more now than I could at the time when I was watching it.  My problem, naturally, is that I cannot decide which opinion is more “true” or “pure” – the opinion formed while experiencing the film, or the opinion formed a little bit afterward while looking back at the whole.  For this particular movie, I think that the answer is the former.  Why?  Because, I just now took a look at this movie’s trailer (as I often do to refresh my memory), and immediately my senses have returned to the state depicted in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MnX1wT7BRU

So, in order to recover a little bit, pardon me for a moment while I bang my fists on the keyboard and scream at the ceiling.  SZAD.s.kaskssklksalaSZKLJsklkuhdkwkwqp’;wsikjnd9jhergpeehuefwmgwr,’l;wersdffeuhgdefrnklj4wert3pmoljmqhudf7yhegkmrergmk;vbdfidvbfzusdwf’l,ERT./dvslop;sdf.,lerg ,gert

In summery, this is one of the most important, absurd, genuine, horrible, amazing, beautiful, creative, bizarre, genius, unethical, idiotic, awesome, frustrating, glorious, deceitful, outstanding, terrifying, enlightening, enraging, cliche, original, heartfelt, heartbreaking, game-changing, life-changing, and stupefying works of art in the entire timeline of the galaxy.  My inability to process such a thing fills me with unspeakable frustration.  This is one of those rare films that will haunt me until I die.  I know this is rather late in the article to present a thesis statement, but I suspect this aggravation is mostly due to the fact that it should just be a stupid, meaningless, unoriginal teen dramedy, but instead, it uses the deepest fears that were meant to be left unspoken to an extent that Stephen King, Alfred Hitchcock, Rod Serling, and the original Snuffleupagus puppet combined could never parallel.

Since it seems impossible for me to figure out how many stars I ought to give this film, I’ll have to try to focus on some aspects other than the horror.  The author of the book, Stephen Lucifer Chbosky, directed this film, and this has both good and bad effects on the movie.  The good effect, of course, is that he knows how to tell the story, since it’s his story, and I firmly believe that the writing and directing of a film are generally best done by the same person.  This film serves as evidence for this theory of mine, because much of the story is expressed excellently in ways that any other director would probably not try.  Not to mention, one scene uses music even more powerfully than the average musical film in the scene featuring “Come on Eileen” – and this kind of perfection is what cinema was meant to be.  However, since his background is in writing more than directing, and since he had not yet directed a film on this scale, some of his work is technically lacking.  I’m specifically thinking of the scene towards the beginning in the bleachers (when Sam is introduced), because the editing is so unprofessional and awkward that I laughed so hard that I fell on the ground.

Still, it is the characters and conflicts that make a movie more interesting than the technical side of things, so these are what I’ll prioritize.  The characters are largely likable when they’re supposed to be, and Charlie is as relatable as the author intended.  Each of the actors performed completely believably, although frequently I found I couldn’t quite believe Watson’s American accent – not that I could have done a better English accent, so perhaps I shouldn’t complain.  The characters and conflict had all been done in such a way that I couldn’t help but get really invested in the story, but I think this leads to my problem with the film.

One of the greatest sensations I have experienced is when I watch a movie or television program that uses the social anxiety of the audience to make a scene that is both terrifying and hilarious at the same time.  The awkwardness of the situations towards the end of Woody Allen’s Play It Again, Sam and the Next Gen. episode “Hollow Pursuits” can generate two very different emotional responses at the same time, one of which has me peeking through my fingers, and the other has me rolling with laughter.  What must be kept in mind is that this only works if the balance is kept just right, with the laughter serving as a spoon full of sugar.  In this film, it’s clear that the balance is off – I couldn’t laugh when I wanted to laugh because I felt far too uncomfortable; frankly, I felt violated.

I felt as though the movie had struck me right in the heart, and used my fears to destroy me.  Even now, over a month after I watched the movie, the anxiety it induced is still too strong to be considered wholly ethical.  Oddly, however, my problem with the film is not so much its attack on the audience, but the way it tries to make everything better with the ending.  The ending is when the movie tries to seem caring for its audience by putting a little Hello Kitty Band-Aid on the bloody slash it slit.  The happy ending is highly inappropriate, and is even deceitful, since the only friends he made in school (aside from the teacher) are only seen on occasion when they come to visit, meaning our protagonist logically should feel lonely and miserable during 90% of the school year.  The worst part is that it’s in the guise of a very cliche young adult novel dramedy, making it the kind of movie that’s not supposed to be a masterpiece, which just adds to the disrespect I feel the film is showing me.  If the movie is going to injure me this badly, it needs to finish me off, to put me out of my misery by making a depressing ending that will make the horrors I experienced worth something.  I’ve often considered how fun it would be for me to make the most depressing film of all time, so it could be used as a tool to show what it’s like to have depression, but to do that I would have the decency to go all the way and end the film with a thought that will make the viewers wish they were dead – with none of Chbosky’s false hope for consolation.

While I am exceedingly tempted to give this movie four and a half stars (part of me even demands five) for being so powerful, impacting, and unbelievably moving, I’m afraid that I must give this a low, low, low rating for its cruel abuse of the medium of cinema.  However, I must recommend it to everyone, and even tout it as a great achievement of cinema, because it’s a more elegant and beautiful abuse than I could have ever imagined.

103 The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Deadpool Review

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This is, first and foremost, a comic book movie.  I would not consider this to be a farcical comedy film that simply borrows elements from superhero stories, or that parodies comic books in the way that Holy Musical B@man does.  This is a comic book movie that borrows from the farcical comedy.  When looked at this way, it is a unique and very admirable film, which may even be ahead of its time.

I will address the issue that so many have had with this picture, which is its offensive nature.  It is deliberately as inappropriate for children as possible, and many consider it terribly “dirty” or immoral.  With as much as I may have been disgusted at times by some of the bloody and/or horrific images used, I do wish to respond to the complaints that it went too far with two main thoughts to consider.  The first of these points looks at it as comedy.  I very much appreciate Groucho Marx’s criticism of dirty comedy, but I do think that even the filthiest comedy can very good comedy – perhaps even intellectual comedy – if it is cleverly and creatively crafted (and I think even Groucho got a little risque on occasion).  In this movie, clearly the writers did put thought and care into the dirty comedy, and most importantly, they used it to ruin, taint, or disgrace the comic book movie, which is exactly the kind of thing that comedy should do.  My second point is that the reason why the film had to be this way is to make Deadpool a unique character.  He seems to me to be completely separate from both the usual kind of Marvel hero, and the kind of hero that appears in comedy projects based on more official heroes.

Not every little bit of the film is perfect, and far better critics than I have already done a fine job at expressing why/how this is, so I will not waste my time with it.  What I will say is that I am pleased that this year has introduced something new and original to cinema, which I think has the potential to make the movies a lot more fun.

102 Deadpool

The Peanuts Movie Review

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I am fairly certain that, in the world of comedy (if not the world in general), it is a sin for me to say that I have never been much of a Peanuts fan.  That’s not to say that I didn’t like the works of the Peanuts characters – I do enjoy their most famous Christmas special, among other staples of Schulz’ work – but I simply wasn’t exposed to them early enough in life to appreciate them the way so many others do.  The Peanuts specials and comics have a kind of humor that is generally rather slow and deliberately underwhelming, as it focuses on a mumbling failure who tends to dread living.  I certainly do identify with this kind of character, and I greatly appreciate Schulz’s approach to writing for the character, which is summed up in this simple, classic quote of his: “Most of us are much more acquainted with losing than winning.”  With this in mind, I can’t help but look at the 2015 Peanuts film as a perfect example of both what it is I love about the Peanuts, and what it is that I just don’t know how to appreciate.

Right from the start, this film was full of surprises.  The trailer alone stunned me with the distinction of its animation style, as it is probably the best use of CG animation I have seen since at least Inside Out, if not The Lego Movie.  Because of the purity of the style, the film had earned my respect before I had even seen it, but then again, I was unsure as to whether or not it would be worth seeing.  I am now glad that I did choose to see the film, because if I thought that the animation style was surprising, I was quite shocked to see how much I enjoyed the humor.  No Peanuts production or comic had ever made me laugh so hard, and I think this is largely due to the way most of the jokes relied on the animation style.  By doing this as a CG film rather than 2-D, this movie ensures that it does not appear to be a continuation of the old Peanuts specials, but rather an homage to the comedy and animation of older cartoons, making for an experience that’s easy to enjoy.  However, both the laughs and the surprises grew fewer and fewer as the movie progressed, and I was bothered to find myself losing interest.

This is the problem.  I eventually found myself playing a video game on the Wii U while the film was still on, because there was so little need to pay attention during most of the movie.  The plot was predictable enough, so I didn’t really need to keep a close eye out for much, and the overall storytelling approach didn’t interest me much at all.  Half of the movie seems to be spent on an irrelevant B-story taking place in Snoopy’s daydreams of chasing the Red Baron, which might have been worth including had they used the classic song, but even the superb sight gags towards the end of his fantasy aren’t quite enough of a pay-off to make it worth my time.  The main story, obviously focused on Charlie Brown, was cute and relatable, but was still a little lacking in substance, and could have been over with much quicker.  The ‘A’ story could have been a ‘B’ or ‘C’ story, and the Snoopy bits could have been two or three very brief scenes, which would have left room for a stronger ‘A’ story.

All that being said, this is a good movie.  It’s fun, clean, and has both the frustration with life and the delightful purity required to make it feel like a classic Peanuts production.  Getting a G-rated movie in 2015 was already miraculous, but it’s even more satisfying to find that it’s a good movie that adults can enjoy just as much (or maybe more) than children.  It has a lot of charm and heart, which are very hard to generate without being sappy, but this movie does the job just fine.  Forgive me for ending on such a cliché, low-hanging joke, but I can’t resist: “You’re a good movie, Charlie Brown.”

101 The Peanuts Movie

American Hustle Review

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I love my local library.  Its one problem is that I like it too much, so whenever I go in for just a short stop, I end up spending at least half an hour there.  Once I’m lost in the DVD section, there is only but one escape, and it is very rare: I have to find the movie that calls my name.  I need to hear the triumphant sound of the movie that is exactly what I need to watch that night, and it can take ages to succeed at such a quest.  One night, however, I found it – the movie that I had been longing to see for ages, and I could sense that it was finally time.  American Hustle had Jeff Lynne’s music all over it, which already gives it a leg up in the race to my top 50 favorite movies.  On top of that, the film stars actors that I like, and it’s written and directed by David O. Russell, whose film Silver Linings Playbook holds a very special place in my heart.  However, I had just heard that his new release, Joy, is a disappointment, so I hoped and prayed that this movie would be reminiscent of the previous film and not the latter.  Alas, it would seem God woke up on the wrong side of the bed that day, because American Hustle completely fell flat for me – and I’m starting to think I must not be in on the secret to enjoying it.

At this time of year, everyone’s talking about awards ceremonies that I don’t like.  We’ve seen time after time that the elite overlords behind such ceremonies, particularly the Academy, tend to embarrass themselves by making obviously nonsensical decisions.  The Oscars are being frowned upon right now for their lack of diversity among nominees, but they’ve been dropping the ball ever since they neglected to award Citizen Kane for Best Picture in favor of some flick called How Green Was My Valley.  They were mocked in 1979 for giving Best Original Song to “It Goes Like It Goes” – a song that was considered forgettable even at the time, let alone decades in the future – instead of the more obvious choice: “The Rainbow Connection.”  Don’t even get me started on The Lego Movie.  With my disdain for such inane awards as the Oscars, the Golden Globes, and the Grammy Awards, I have been greatly pleased by an excellent joke of Conan O’Brien’s that’s been trending: “At last night’s Golden Globes, the movie ‘The Martian’ won for Best Comedy or Musical.  In a related story, the Golden Globes won the prize for ‘Best Cop Drama or Best Latin Gospel Album.'”  The nominations have really never made much sense, but the most mind-boggling of them all is the notion that American Hustle is a great comedy.  I don’t see how it can be considered a great comedy when I honestly was unaware that it was a comedy until well after I’d finished watching it.

It’s no surprise that I had to look up the movie online to learn that it was a comedy (and learn why people found it enjoyable) if I consider the brutally realistic style.  The comedy of the film fluctuates between muted colors of humor that offer no punches, or harshness that goes far over the top in all the wrong directions.  I’ll address the hard-hitting humor first, and then I’ll spend a little longer on the weak humor.  There is a scene between Bradlee Cooper and Not Funny Louis C- nope.  I can’t finish typing it; it’s just too depressing to think of Louis C. K. as unfunny.  In short, he savagely beats Louis over the head with a telephone, and the scene uses awkward editing in an attempt to make the unwarranted violent abuse comical.  The problem, of course, is that it’s not over-the-top enough to be funny – there is no indication in the scene, to my memory at least, that this is not meant to be taken seriously.  I was watching an ugly beating, so I felt bad for the victim – and empathetic investment is the enemy of comedy.

In my searches through the inter-webs for why people got a laugh out of this film, I found very, very few reasons given, even though its description on Rotten Tomatoes starts with the words “Riotously funny….”  One of the few jokes cited as a source of enjoyability was Cooper’s silly haircut.  Because this film is a period piece about the ’70s, a stupid haircut is merely an inevitable part of making the movie feel realistic, so I’ll need something better than that to come even close to a smile.  As I thought back on it, I recalled another scene that was an attempt at humor.  It’s pretty simple: Unattractive Jennifer La- no, I can’t bring myself to say that either, so let’s just say “the wife” swears in front of her little boy, and the little boy repeats the profanity in a way that’s accidentally quite offensive.  Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to read the words that I, J. D. Hansel, never imagined would be written about an iconic Oscar winner, but here they are: Anchorman 2 did this joke better.  That, my friends, is a travesty.

Let’s take another look at Jennifer Lawrence’s character.  She reminds me of “the pen squeaker.”  Yes, I’m talking about that guy in high school who had that pen which happened to make an annoying squeaking sound when it was twisted, and he would twist it frequently just to bug people.  If the intent was to annoy the girls sitting directly in front of the squeaker, I really enjoyed watching the pen squeaker make them squirm and yell for no good reason, but if the intent was to annoy me, it was not enjoyable in the least.  So I suspect that, if the audience understands that how much of an annoyance Lawrence is to everyone else is supposed to be funny , then the audience enjoys her, but personally, I felt like I was the victim of her excruciating irritability.  While Lawrence did play the character perfectly, the character will always stand out to me as a horrible reminder of how annoying my little siblings are when they scream and fuss all day.  I spent the last third of the film hoping that someone would just punch her out to end it all, but no such consolation was offered.

This is, in my view, one of the most overrated films of all time, right alongside Cabaret, but there are elements of it that I like.  The soundtrack is, as I expected, quite excellent.  Jeff Lynne’s contributions are naturally strong, but the other songs are really fun too.  The actors are clearly giving these performances their all, and they succeed at making me believe in their characters.  As far as cinematography goes, it would seem as through Russell found an Instagram filter for “Oscar bait” and used it for the entirety of the film, but within the constraints of the Oscar bait look, it is shot and edited well.  The best part, however, is the ending.  While I will not reveal all of the details, it’s nice to see that there was, in fact, an interesting and clever hustle being set up this whole time that makes the movie feel more purposeful.

However, for me it always boils down to the characters, the world, and the story.  If those three elements work together just right, it’s a great movie; if one of those elements is off, particularly the first, then we have a problem.  This movie did not work for me because the world felt too real for anything to pop, the story felt too unfocused and messy for it to hold my attention, and the characters made me want to run over the DVD with my car.  In the few days since I watched it, I’ve already forgotten much of the story, and I really don’t know how matters of such little importance took up so much screen time.  This movie is not so much about telling a good story as it is about showing off impressive directorial skills and a brilliant cast, making it such a narcissistic piece that I couldn’t help but roll my eyes even if they were sewn in place.   I am not surprised if people who appreciate films very differently than I do find themselves enjoying American Hustle, but for a film of this nature, one can only look at what it offers to each individual, and for me, it didn’t offer nearly enough.

89 American Hustle

Insurgent Review

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SPOILER ALERT

With a bad Italian accent a la The Amanda Show, say it with me: “This is better – much better!”

As we all should know because I’m super important, I have my issues with Divergent.  This world and its people are entirely nonsensical, and I had such a hard time taking it all halfway seriously.  Fortunately, this film is just the game-changer that the franchise required.  Never in a million years could I believe that these “founding fathers” thought it would be wise to separate the people into factions like this.  However, I’d totally buy that a bunch of people who’ve been driven to insanity by a terrible war decided to throw a bunch of people in a pen, separate them by their primary skills, and see who gets killed.  Furthermore, the experiment shows that Divergents can arise even in a world of just singularly skilled people.  The only way they could improve on this to clear up any other logical issues is if they explain that the premise of Divergent was actually just a table top game, but the experimenters got drunk and decided to make a government out of it.

With the structural mess out of the way, I can finally address everything else in this movie.  The score and soundtrack are drab as usual, and much of the screenplay is regrettably predictable, but aside from that, it’s a pretty decent flick.  Apparently, most critics thought this was a step back for the franchise, and the reviews for this film are much worse than those of the first.  I disagree, in part because I just like stories that serve as a bridge from the first story in the franchise to the climax (meaning there’s less exposition and more mystery and hype), but also because the plot simply gets more interesting.  One of the best things a story can do to add hype is make sure its characters on the run from a ticking time bomb of sorts, and they have to beat the clock.  While the Hunger Games films have an element of this, the games themselves don’t start until at least halfway through the movies, whereas Insurgent (knowing its characters aren’t quite compelling enough to pull off an hour of characters just hanging out, shooting promo videos, impressing sponsors, resting on trains, etc.) puts Tris on the run right from the get-go, and it’s only a matter of time until the powers that be track her down.

This movie also plays around with character dynamics a lot, which adds a touch more dimension to the characters that have been largely flat thus far.  Can Four’s mother be trusted, or is he right to suspect her of evil intentions?  Is Tris going to be able to keep from revealing that she killed her best friend’s brother?  Is Peter a good guy, a bad guy, or still figuring it out?  How much can Caleb trust that Jeanine won’t be too inhumane to his sister?  Can Four bring himself to shoot Eric?  And what do the founding fathers have to tell the people of the future?  Regardless of how predictable many parts of this movie may be, the lives of these characters get wonderfully messier, and things do take bigger and better turns and twists that make sure the audience is having a heck of a time.

88 Insurgent

Star Wars – The Force Awakens Review

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I love home video.  I absolutely adore it.  I get nostalgic about VHS tapes, I collect DVDs, I obsess over digital copies, and I drool at the majesty of a beautiful Blu-Ray on an HD screen.  I must emphasize this because I’m about to say something a wee bit unfavorable about home video: it may have ruined cinema.  Not completely, of course, but I think that we’ve lost something special about the movie theater experience.

Because home video has been so prominent since before I was born, I don’t know personally what going to the movies was like at the time, but I’ve heard the stories.  I’ve heard how the crowd cheered in joyous support at the premiere of Muppet Christmas Carol when the dedication to Jim Henson and Richard Hunt appeared on screen.  I’ve heard how the boys let out a snide “oooOOOooh…” in unison in the bedroom scene in 1968’s Romeo and Juliet.  I’ve heard how the test audience for Ghostbusters went wild when they saw “scene missing” as a placeholder for a shot that had yet to be composed.  I’ve heard how they edited silent pauses after the Marx Brothers’ jokes because the audience would laugh so long and loudly.  I’ve heard how much more of a community experience it used to be back before we got used to watching movies in private – before we trained ourselves to take no involvement in a collective movie experience.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens made the movie theater into the big, loud, excited, delighted, happy family it was meant to be.  There was applause for the Star Wars logo, applause for the Lucasfilm logo, and even for a spaceship.  Everybody could feel the immense joy in the room when a familiar face came on screen.  The jokes hit home with everyone.  The twists had us all on the edge of our seats.  Seeing this film was one of the best experiences of my life because, for the first time in a long while, I was truly experiencing a film rather than just looking at a film.  Not to mention, the movie itself floored me.

I felt like a child again, even though I didn’t watch Star Wars films much growing up.  This movie actually made me into a bigger Star Wars fan than I have ever been in my life.  I was simply reverted to a time when watching a movie was joyous and exciting, getting more delightful by the minute, and I couldn’t have been more excited.  When I remembered to use my grown up brain to analyze the film, I was impressed by the effects, the acting, the visuals, the score, the dialogue, the story structure – everything about it.  This is the kind of experience that the movies are all about, and I feel privileged to live in such a historic moment when the event of a lifetime is on big screens everywhere.

86 Star Wars - The Force Awakens v2