Movie review

Divergent Review

September 16, 2015 by JD Hansel

MINOR SPOILERS

It is easy for me to see why critics hated this film: it seems to ride on the success of other films in its genre without supplying sufficient creativity to rise above its clichés. To make matters worse, I could write a 20-page paper on the baffling inanity of the structure of this world – not just in terms of its government, but also the natural laws and human behaviors, such as the reluctance of the vast majority of the courageous Dauntless (even those raised in the faction) to jump into the hole before Tris. If the government of this world had been designed by an elite, aristocratic administration of some sort, as seen in The Hunger Games, it would be obvious why such a pathetic social structure would be contrived. In this film, however, there is no one who benefits from the system; everyone is trapped in one nation, under no one, divided, with liberty and justice for none. While this flick may have pulled in significant box office money by simply being fascinating, it is fatally flawed in that, much like other films that present fascinating new worlds, this one struggles to have any reality to it as soon as the viewer gives any aspect of it one moment of thought. I cannot help but yell at the people of the world in the screen for tolerating – nay – encouraging this kind of foolishness for so long.

The problem with having an unbelievable world (not necessarily in the sense that it contains elements of fantasy, but in the sense that its people do not respond to their circumstances in a way that real human beings would) is that the characters inevitably must behave in non-relatable ways in order to make the story function, as noted in the example of the hole above. For another example, since bravery does not necessarily entail resourcefulness, several people in Dauntless should have been able to fight their hallucinogenic fears by challenging their reality in the way Tris did, all without being considered Divergent. The issues go on and on, but at the heart of the picture are major flaws in the division of the factions:

The difference between the Factionless and the Divergents is unclear, as both exemplify those who do not fit into any particular group;
Dauntless is fundamentally idiotic because, when bravery is the only virtue, there is no place for ethics;
Both Abnegation and Amity are focused on caring and well-being, so separating them into two factions seems redundant – especially since those who grow the food are best fit to feed the Factionless;
Abnegation, Amity, and Candor are all focused on ethics, which is unnecessary because – while this may be a very counter-intuitive or controversial thing for me to propose – ethics lies in the domain of reason, and Erudite should naturally be the most ethical of all;
Within Erudite it is only logical that sub-factions would appear, as intellects are generally free-thinkers who will reach separate conclusions on the best way to live;
This whole franchise should clearly be about a battle between Erudite and Dauntless, but Erudite should be the heroes, not Dauntless, since Erudite could actually have virtues (other than bravery) to keep them ethical.

This list could be far more detailed, but I think I have made my point. For these reasons, it seems to me that the author started with dramatic scenes in which the characters (whom she’d meant to fully develop before it slipped her mind) confronted their darkest fears, and then the rest of the book was filled in with redressed portions of The Hunger Games and The Giver.

Yet somehow, in spite of the nonsensical details, I still enjoyed the film. I actually started watching Divergent many months ago, but had to stop because the disc was scratched, so it was skipping over important parts of the film. Remarkably, even having seen most of the movie already, I had a good time re-watching all of it. I truly believe that a movie can get away with making little or no sense at all so long as the audience is invested in the characters and the plot. After all, the Harry Potter franchise is widely praised as brilliant, even by critics, but Cinema Sins has amply displayed its lunacy on a number of occasions (for example, anyone who had a small amount of liquid luck could drink it while searching for the “extremely rare” ingredients required to produce liquid luck, and then he/she could have an infinitely growing supply, resulting in a perpetual monopoly on the stuff).

In all fairness, the character of Tris is rather uninteresting in a way, and I suspect it’s because she is a little too relatable to the average teen and is devoid of distinct characteristics from other heroines in the genre. However, she is always given dramatic decisions to make and always makes a surprising choice, which keeps the viewer watching her every move and captivated by her unique mind. The important lesson to be learned here is one that dates back to The Wizard of Oz: a film is not judged by how close it comes to perfection, but by how its characters, ideas, and stories captivate the audience in spite of the imperfections. When I think about Divergent this way, it is clear to me that I was constantly aware of the movie’s flaws – which admittedly was probably because I was watching much of it for a second time – but I was too genuinely amused by what the characters were experiencing to let that stop me from enjoying myself.

Anchorman 2 Review

September 12, 2015 by JD Hansel

I oddly don’t know what to say about this film. Parts of it were funny, and nearly all of it was strangely fun, although I’m generally not a fan of the brand of humor Ferrell and Carrell tend to do. In the first Anchorman movie, there was just something about the film’s “devil may care” attitude with doing whatever felt fun, no matter how little sense it made, that gave it a bizarre charm; there is still some of that present in this one. The simple problem is that the movie has a classic case of “sequelitis”: it can’t emulate its predecessor without rehashing old material, and it can’t do anything new without diverging from whatever worked well for the first film. This “sequelitis” really makes this a much weaker movie – although the first wasn’t exactly the greatest comedy of all time – but I still basically enjoyed watching it. I knew going in that I wasn’t about to see anything brilliant, so when something legitimately clever and entertaining happened, I experienced the benefits of living by Great Grandpa Hansel’s old mantra: “Expect nothing and you’ll never be disappointed.” In some ways Anchorman 2 may be underwhelming, and sometimes it feels like the whole thing is forced, but the characters and story are generally fascinating enough to keep me invested, so I’m satisfied.

Hotel Transylvania Review

September 9, 2015 by JD Hansel

This is the first of a few films I’m going to review this month that are at the very least passable on the grounds that, in spite of their clichés and shortcomings, they unfailingly hold a grip on my enjoyment simply by being so strangely interesting. Hotel Transylvania is, by all means, a stereotypical CG animated film, with shameless repetition of embarrassing tropes, as I can easily explain by summing up the film. An overprotective widowed father (see Finding Nemo) whose “innocently villainous” demeanor makes him a bizarre parental figure (see Despicable Me) lives in a world populated with monsters (see Monsters Inc.) and runs a hotel to provide solitude the legendary figures (the film’s primary, if not only, defining feature) in order to protect his daughter from the dangers of the outside world (see Tangled). The stupid teenage protagonist gets a crush on the girl who’s voiced by a pop star (see The Lorax) and finds that she wants her freedom (see Brave), and now the protagonist has to avoid being caught for deceiving everyone (see A Bug’s Life) while the couple hopes they can fulfill her dreams of going to paradise (see Up). This isn’t even mentioning the fact that it ends in a random musical number set to a pop song, making it even more reminiscent of Despicable Me, or the running gag concerning an awkward old lady doing something inappropriate while uttering a catchphrase with an odd accent, which in this case is the monster who eats things and says, “I dint do that,” but it’s basically “bad kitty” from Madagascar.

While the whole film feels too familiar, these are merely the ugly little details that fill the gaps between the beautiful experiences of seeing such great, strong characters trying to figure out how to handle the protagonist’s incredibly difficult situation whilst navigating through this frighteningly inventive world. The way that the characters – and other magical/mythical elements – are consistently used in ways I never would have considered. The movie is silly, smart, and surprising, which makes it a good family movie to share with anyone. I can almost forgive the horrendous cliché of the part when the loud party music comes to a halt just as someone is yelling something personal to someone else, creating a very “CG family film” scene that’s both awkward and sad. That being said, the only reason why that scene alone hasn’t earned this film a terrible rating from me is this: I already miss the film’s delightful characters, and I’m eager to join them again when the sequel arrives.

The Ten Commandments (1956) Review

August 19, 2015 by JD Hansel

It’s hard to keep a long movie interesting. After all, some movies that are only 90 minutes long struggle to hold my attention, so when a movie goes over two and a half hours, that’s risky. (It is, however, understandable in many cases, because the length must be determined by what the story requires.) While I’ve never been able to make it all the way through any of the Lord of the Rings movies, I did enjoy the 1996 Hamlet, which has a running time of 242 minutes – about four hours. Little did I know when I picked up The Ten Commandments that it was almost as long, or that the experience I had yet to face would take days to complete.

Was it worth sitting through the whole thing? Yes. Unlike some movies I know, this film actually filled its long running time with many interesting characters expressing very intriguing drama, so it’s easy to get through a lot of the film in one sitting. Based on what I knew of DeMille’s work before I watched the film, I was already expecting the gorgeous visuals to keep my eyes glued to the screen, but I had no idea that my ears would be enticed as well by the absolutely excellent dialogue throughout. This is the kind of writing that inspires me. (I should mention that my ears were also listening for the epic score by Elmer Bernstein.)

So, in the end, while I’m not sure the story itself is my kind of story, and the film may suffer a little from a lack of focus, it is an excellent masterpiece that I cannot help but respect. While I think of Egypt and the dessert to be visually bland settings for a movie (since I like colorful, theatrical visuals, rather than tan, brown, or sandy visuals) this movie has some of the best and most cinematic shots I have ever seen. It finds a way to make a nearly-four-hour biography into a dramatic experience that I could never forget.

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.

Lucy Review

July 30, 2015 by JD Hansel

This film seems to be, at least to some extent, emulating 2001: A Space Odyssey, so I’ll give it the same criticism I’d give to Kubrick: “If you’re going to contribute to the discussion of human evolution, all I ask is that you please use complete sentences.” Notice how that last sentence of mine was quite full, risking being overcrowded, but at least it got its whole point across in the best way possible. That is what I like. I like it when ideas are fully explicated, and it should show that the writer has cooked up some good food for thought, rather than just gesturing in the general direction of a kitchen saying, “make your own.” Don’t get me wrong – I’m perfectly capable of coming up with my own ideas, and inventing stories to describe them, but when a filmmaker concocts an idea only halfway with the intention of leaving the explaining to me, I get stuck with all of the tedious labor. This just makes the creator seem lazy. The key problem with Lucy is that it serves as a great prompt for someone to fully explicate its ideas in a more creative and interesting story, but a truly great film would have a hypothesis at its core, not a prompt.

Now I suppose I must explain what I mean when I say a prompt or a hypothesis. A prompt (according to my mental movie dictionary) says, “Here’s a thing that could happen.” A hypothesis says, “If this happened, here are some of the implications and conflicts that could arise.” This is the difference between “What if a teenager got a time machine?” and “If a teenager got a time machine, what would happen if he accidentally kept his parents from falling in love?” I wonder if the old adage “show, don’t tell” has taught filmmakers to show ideas rather than exploring their implications. The way that Lucy explores the idea of a person gaining access to 100% of the mind consists of the following: Dr. Exposition (Morgan Freeman) runs through a checklist of what would happen at a given percentage of access to the brain, in spite of the fact that he has no way of knowing this since it’s all guesswork, and then Lucy coincidentally displays that behavior at the exact same time. There are missed opportunities for good storytelling at every corner: the drama of her parents losing their daughter, the comedy of watching her clumsily try to use powers she hasn’t mastered, the sadness of the loss of her friendships, the confusion of figuring out where the powers came from, the arguments about what to do with the knowledge she has, the irony of a girl who flunked math suddenly being an expert, the heartbreak of her growing apart from her lover… okay, I got that last one from Her, but it would still work, if the writer had given her a decent boyfriend. Alas, the film is mostly interested in going through a laundry list of special effects, and the plots are secondary. Here’s the bizarre part: this movie held my interest.

I didn’t care all that much about Lucy as a character because the film puts a roadblock at any potential route to empathy. At the beginning of the film, she’s clearly not the type of person anyone with half a brain would want to befriend, and we haven’t learned enough about her to empathize yet. Then, she progressively becomes less and less human throughout the “story,” thus placing her in the mental category of “non-person,” and we humans have a hard time remembering to care about anything in that category. To make plot all the more futile, conflict is practically non-existent since there is no appropriate adversary for an omnipotent goddess, and it’s a given that she will inevitably succeed unharmed. My enjoyment of the film is relying almost entirely on my relationship with the director, who keeps tossing interesting ideas and visuals my way for me to enjoy. Sometimes he gets so pretentious it’s laughable, but I must admit that I was pretty entertained on the whole, and the film even passed my Pause Test. It tries to substitute drama with intensity, and it kind of pulls off this trick by being concise.

So, in the end, it may not be a brilliant masterpiece, but it keeps the viewer curious about what’s coming next, and it satisfies the curiosity adequately, making for a good cinematic experience.