J.D. Hansel

Four Stars

Contact Review

by

Please, please read this review.

I don’t think the star rating is an accurate picture of what I think of this movie.  It is an absolutely brilliant drama, clearly showing off the storytelling skills of Carl Sagan, Robert Zemeckis, and Alan Silvestri at their finest.  At the same time, I don’t think this review is adequate either.  I sort of have a hatred for this film.  It’s one of those movies that I want to either give a very high rating or a very low rating, but I can’t decide which.  What makes the movie so difficult for me to process is this: Carl Sagan – one of the greatest champions of scientific, skeptical thinking – gave the world a story that makes a case for faith, and seems to make the case against skepticism itself.

This feels like an abominable treachery from one of the last men I would ever expect to be a turncoat in the movement for scientific reasoning.  While the very, very end of the movie seems to suggest that skepticism isn’t a bad thing, the conclusion of the movie essentially does.  The viewer is put in the position of assuming that the protagonist’s experience, for which she has no evidence, is entirely real, and not at all of her own imagination.  The skeptics, however, decide that her experience must be considered invalid.  We see the believers with their signs outside the courthouse claiming that she really did “contact” alien life, but these people (whom we are led to believe are correct) have no good evidence for their stance.  They are right by happenstance – because their unwarranted belief just so happened to be true – and that is not a healthy way to think.  The messages that this film promotes and the way in which it promotes them may be detrimental to the intellectual safety of anyone who takes this film seriously, which is a prospect that I frankly find horrifying and enraging.

The worst part of all this is that the film is perfect up until the ending.  It is one of the most thoughtful, provocative, intellectual, creative, realistic, imaginative, clever, emotional, smart, gripping, fun, and serious films I have ever seen.  It looks at the idea of alien contact in a way that makes it seem very, very real – both intellectually and emotionally.  I was completely sucked in, on the edge of my seat with my jaw on the floor for most of the film, and I was overwhelmingly impressed with perfect marriage of the screenplay Sagan and his wife had fashioned and the cinematic craftsmanship of Zemeckis.  When one considers that this is a drama, which I see as a genre that is generally intellectually inferior to comedy, it is amazing that its first two acts won me over to the extent that they did.  All it needed to do to be one of my top 25 favorite films of all time was show that the beauty of scientific discovery is directly linked to the beauty of skepticism, but instead its ending turned the film into the same drivel that most sappy dramedies end with: “no matter what anyone says, all that matters is that you believe in yourself.”  No, that’s not an actual quote from the film, but frankly it would have been fitting for the closing credits to feature this exact address from one of the Care Bears.

I will need to consider the film further and read more about Sagan’s view of skepticism, but from what I’ve read in interviews and articles thus far, he lacks a basic understanding of what skepticism is, what atheism is, and how to think with rationality about matters of faith in general.  I must concede, however, that the film is deserving of much praise for being incredibly well-made, and I would have to rate it fairly well.  At least it can be seen as inspirational to young women and girls who may leave this film with an eagerness to go into the scientific field, and whom I sincerely hope will learn for themselves just how beautiful true skepticism really is.

132-contact

Masters of the Universe Review

by

Yes, I know this movie is crap, but hear me out.

There are times in life when we need a certain kind of movie to deliver a certain kind of experience.  Very often for me, the experience I’m seeking is a movie that consistently bounces back and forth between being excellent . . . and being so bad it’s good.  The area in the middle is obviously dangerous territory – that’s where all the bad movies live.  But once in a blue moon, there’s a film that has many very strong elements, but its weak elements are so laughable that they don’t harm the movie at all; instead, they add to the film’s charm by being silly and dated.  I seem to have the easiest time finding this experience with cheesy ’80s movies, and I picked up Masters of the Universe from the library because it looked like a fairly standard example of an ’80s movie.  As luck would have it, this movie is the most ’80s movie I have ever seen – in all the best and worst ways – which makes it the perfect example of a movie that prances gracefully across the valley of mediocrity, leaping right from excellence to nanar and back again.

Let me be more specific about what makes it so bad (which I think paradoxically makes it delightful).  First of all, this is immensely cliché, to the point that they even stole elements of their story from Spaceballs (as was pointed out in the Nostalgia Critic review) and made all of the villain’s soldiers look just like Darth Vader.  The actors don’t give great performances for the most part, and everything feels scripted and rehearsed.  At times it feels almost as though they were trying to make the movie as underwhelming as possible, by moving the plot from a fantasy world to friggin’ New Jersey suburbs.  The logic of the film also makes no sense, as there are several occasions when the people of New Jersey should have noticed the crazy magic going on around them – and don’t even get me started on how ridiculously illogical that ending is.  (I mean, the ignorance of the obvious “grandfather paradox” problems makes the ending almost unbearable in a way.)

On the other hand, this movie looks gorgeous.  It’s one of the best looking I’ve seen because of its perfectly ’80s use of light, color, makeup, and old-fashioned special effects.  The movie fully embraces how ridiculous it is, and offers plenty of over-the-top performances, which only get better when James Tolkan (Mr. Strickland from Back to the Future) arrives on scene, making the movie even more ’80s.  The villain is so perfectly extravagant, and gives a wonderfully satisfying post-credits scene.  The story is also very focused on music, particularly from synthesizers, so at this point I think I might be overdosing on ’80s nostalgia.  And did I mention how awesome the color looks?

However, at the end of the day, I can understand why someone wouldn’t like this movie.  I can especially understand why a fan of the original TV series would hate this movie.  On the other hand, for those who want to inject deadly amounts of retro, nostalgic ’80s fantasy into their eyeballs, this movie delivers.  Enjoy responsibly; don’t drive while high on ’80s.

129 Masters of the Universe

Romancing the Stone Review

by

I’m a little conflicted.  This movie is loaded with clichés.  I generally don’t like it when a film is very cliché, but this movie is different.  First of all, it’s from the early ’80s, so many of these things that seem cliche today may have been totally original at the time.  Secondly, the fact that the movie is cliché does not mean it’s boring – it’s actually very exciting.

I’m not a fan of action for action’s sake, but the action in this film works well.  I’m very impressed by the way that what would traditionally be considered a “man’s action flick” that makes up one part of the story and the “chick flick” that makes the rest of it are integrated excellently to make a rounded film that anyone can enjoy.  It’s a very ’80s movie with a fun adventure, good performances, interesting twists, enjoyable romance, and one heck of a theme song.  It’s no surprise that this team-up of director Robert Zemeckis and composer Alan Silvestri soon led to Back to the Future, but let’s not let the magnificence of the BttF franchise overshadow the delightful movie that launched Zemeckis in the beginning.

125 Romancing the Stone

Now You See Me 2 Review

by

Oh, shut up.

Why is it that everyone (encompassing the world’s audiences, the world’s critics, and the world’s John Olivers) is acting as though this movie is worthless?  Well, I think there’s a certain psychological effect – I’ll call it “Sequel Blindness” – at work here.  I remember being stunned by the reviews that Muppets Most Wanted received, because the movie was getting hammered for problems that were worse in its universally acclaimed predecessor: the overuse of fourth-wall jokes, the cliché plot, and the “kiddie” vibes.  Somehow, the critics were willing to overlook these flaws in the first film because that was the Muppets’ comeback to cinema after a twelve-year hiatus, but once they were used to Muppets being in movies again, they could suddenly see all of the problems that they missed before, but they only saw them when they came to the franchise for a second time.  This is the effect of Sequel Blindness: when a sequel makes critics rethink the franchise by bringing them back to it after time to reflect on the predecessor, allowing flaws in the franchise to become more noticeable, prompting them to erroneously attribute the flaws to the sequel.  While the original Now You See Me got very mixed reviews, I still think this is what happened with Now You See Me 2.

Don’t get me wrong – the movie has its flaws and its fair share of scenes that make no sense, so I wouldn’t call it an excellent film.  It is, however, a good film, that feels like it’s allowed to make no sense since the first one didn’t make sense.  In the original Now You See Me, the “girl Horseman” walks into a bubble and starts floating around in it, which is followed by flashlights changing the numbers on pieces of paper in perfect synchronicity with the magicians’ act.  This impossibility is presented because the filmmakers wanted to do a movie that showcased the tricks that might become possible to pull off at some point in the future, but when the sequel contains equally implausible feats, critics complain that there’s no point in asking how the tricks were done (even though that was never the point of the franchise).

I do wish the reviews would focus more on the ways in which this movie improves on its predecessor.  It has more emotion and heart, and in a way that I actually think was done acceptably.  It has better comedy – particularly in one of Daniel Radcliffe’s scenes that made me laugh hysterically.  It has a better “girl Horseman” by far, and I’d happily watch Lizzy Caplan’s character in her own spin-off.  So stop complaining about the movie.  It’s stupid in many ways, I must admit, but it’s a fun kind of stupid, so just enjoy it.

Now You See Me 2 Review

Captain America: Civil War Review

by

What can I say that hasn’t already been said?  Well, okay, here’s one thing that no one else has said: I didn’t go into this movie taking a side.  I did declare myself as Team Cap or Team Iron Man at any time, because I tend to be on Team Shut Up and Talk Like Civilized People, but I suppose that wouldn’t make for as interesting of a movie.  It’s challenging for a movie like this to make the audience very understanding of both sides, and then turn around and make us want to see everyone we love in this franchise beating the snot out of each other.  Remarkably, the movie not only accomplishes this daring feat, but also puts the characters on the wrong sides (without making the audience bat an eye at it).  Allow me to briefly explain what I mean.

Please, consider the following: Captain America is the one who would ordinarily want to work with the government, especially since his roots are with the U. S. military, and Stark is the type of person who would never want to give control over himself to anyone else, since it would hurt his ego to be the U. N.’s puppet; and let’s not forget that Romanoff has weirdly decided to fight against Cap’s team, at least for the most part.  In the end though, I think the most impressive thing about this is that, in the midst of all this drama, the movie is a heck of a lot of fun.  It may be rather awkward at some points and tedious at others, but between the creative action sequences, the perfect cast, the smart dialogue, the surprising twists, the bizarre inclusion of Ant Man, and the spectacular Spider-Man, Civil War hits all the right spots.  It’s one of Marvel’s finest films – quite possibly its best to date.

121 Captain America - Civil War

The Outrage Review

by

In my last review, I was bothered by how the 2016 Jungle Book film had little to add to the original Disney classic, and how it did not hold up as well in comparison.  Fortunately, not every remake is a bad one, and I’d like to briefly use a film I saw recently called The Outrage as and example of that.  It wasn’t too long ago that I posted my review of Rashomon on this website, and shortly after that, I wrote a paper that compared that film to other movies using similar techniques.  When I found out that there was an American remake of Rashomon that had notable actors in it (including a young William Shatner) I knew I had to see it.  This remake of Rashomon is, of course, The Outrage, and it’s a very impressive film.

The Outrage must have been difficult to make because it had the difficult task of remaking a great film in such a way that new elements are added to interest the American market, but the elements that made the original film remain in tact.  In my opinion, this movie really succeeded at that.  I’ve never been one for Westerns, as I’ve explained before in previous reviews, but next to Blazing Saddles, I think this is the most I’ve liked a Western in my whole life.  The change of genre didn’t hurt the story in the slightest, and even with scenes that seemed like they couldn’t be adapted to the Western genre successfully (such as the channeling of the dead husband through a medium), The Outrage manages to convert it to a Western equivalent smoothly.  While the original film had some cool stylistic elements that the remake unfortunately did not keep in tact, like the way we never see or hear the judge in Kurosawa’s court scenes, the visual style of Outrage overall is just as good if not better, and some minor changes to the characters and story actually improved the film overall – particularly with the way the colonel dies.  All in all, The Outrage is a great example of how to adapt without subtracting, and without letting the audience get bored with material they’ve seen before, which is why I would recommend watching both of these movies to anyone who enjoys comparing films even a fraction of as much as I do.

119 The Outrage