Three and a Half Stars

Insurgent Review

January 14, 2016 by JD Hansel

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.

Birdman Review

November 22, 2015 by JD Hansel

I need to start with a spoiler warning since I don’t want to hold myself back from writing about whatever I find is most worth writing about, and this film has many interesting elements that I could focus on for much of the review if I chose to do so: it has a unique, seamless editing style that effectively creates the illusion of one continuous shot for the vast majority of the film (which eventually gets annoying since we humans need breaks in what we experience, but for most of the film it’s more of a spectacle than a burden), it has excellent performances from its superb cast, and its visuals are often very pleasing and impressive, but I think those who know my tastes well can guess that I want to talk about the ambiguity factor – after all, I am known for my issues with needless ambiguity, and this a perfect example, because, if given some thought, it becomes clear that either interpretation of the ending is stupid: either Keaton jumps to his death, meaning Stone has no reason to smile the way she does, or he randomly possesses the ability to magically fly like a bird for some reason; and to think, this all could have been avoided if not for the fact that critics love ambiguity, which makes sense in a way – it offers the viewer the chance to write a little portion of the film that makes it meaningful to him/her as an individual, but it relies on the erroneous assumption that the meaning the viewer projects onto the work of art actually matters, but here’s the catch – you, the viewer, don’t matter.

Your two cents are worthless.

If a work of art lacks definition and meaning to the extent that an observer can project his own meaning onto it without being right or wrong, it’s not deep.

It’s shallow, but with style. It gestures towards possible meanings, but does not commit to any of them.

I can best explain it this way: a film that challenges it audience intelligently says, “when life gives you lemons, should you give them to the poor and hungry?” An ambiguous film, on the other hand, just has a blind man hold up a coconut and say, “when life gives you melons,” and then it ends. The second film in my example may leave the viewer asking more questions, which creates an illusion of thoughtfulness, but I’d say the first film is more important.

In other words, no matter how amazing the visuals may be, how perfect the editing may be, how smart the writing may be, or how spot-on the performances may be, it is important for a film that wants to add to any discussion to use complete sentences, or else it isn’t much of a contribution, it’s just a

Zoolander Review

August 8, 2015 by JD Hansel

It’s a happy coincidence that I happened to come across Zoolander right around the time that the news of the sequel started spreading, and I’m hopeful that the coincidence could hand me an extra slice of attention for this review. What’s important for that to work, however, is that I have something new and interesting to say about this film. The problem is that I oddly have very little to say about it. It’s simple, passable, and done correctly.

If I may be honest, I generally don’t go for the brand(s) of humor developed by Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, and Owen Wilson, which generally involve(s) idiots shouting, or just over-the-top awkwardness. This film, however, seems to play its cards right, and it knows how to make a “correct” film. Its jokes are based on the interactions of its strong characters, with very appropriate cameos, and its moron protagonists are innocent enough to be likable. The biggest laugh for me is the nod to 2001, which is strangely perfect. The overall plot is clever, the visuals are appealing, and the soundtrack is a delight. While I may have my little gripes about a couple of things I’d have done differently, I can’t dis a film that makes the smart choices and strives to be “technically correct,” even if it has a deliberately incorrect comedy style.

I must wonder, however, if it could have been better had it worked out a clever way to be successfully incorrect. Perhaps this is what’s required for a good movie to be more than just a good movie.

History of the World – Part I Review

July 21, 2015 by JD Hansel

I absolutely love it when a film has such a strong creative essence that it immediately relays its muses to me, who inspire me to express the experience in a review (in much the same way that a songwriter might be overcome by the need to play the expression of his/her passion). At those moments, the essence of the film appears before me as a dream awaiting a poet’s articulation. Other films, however, leave me scratching my head (and leave my muses shrugging) as I try to figure out what to make of whatever I’ve just seen. These are the moments that make me look at Roger Ebert with jealousy, knowing that he could nearly always express exactly how he felt about a movie, no matter the film’s complexity. Unfortunately, History of the World – Part 1 is a puzzler for me, since I really want to love the film, but I just don’t think I do.

The film has its moments that hit home and are very strong, but it has a lot of moments that simply don’t do it for me. Unfortunately, the movie can’t decide whether it’s comprised of comedy sketches, vignettes, or (not very) short films. This inconsistency in length means that many scenes leave me thinking, “that’s it?” while others make me cry, “it’s still going?” I think that consistency – or, better yet, a narrative (or some focused structure) to tie everything together – would do the film some good. That being said, I love the “Inquisition” number, and I’m more moved by Mel’s take on 2001: A Space Odyssey than I am by the actual Kubrick film.

I generally wouldn’t hold a vignette-based film to my Pausibility Test (I measure a film by how content I am with pausing it and coming back to it in a few weeks) because the nature of such a film has built-in stopping points, which makes pausing natural. The problem with this film, however, is that I was content with pausing the movie mid-segment, and I suspect that’s because of the characters. Ebert helped clarify this for me by pointing out that we are presented with cardboard cut-outs of Jews, monks, etc., but there is not much detail added to make them funny or interesting. Instead, our interest in each character is dependent on the performers. While I didn’t necessarily “have a blast” watching the movie, I cannot be as hard on it as Ebert because I suspect that many scenes from it will stick with me for the rest of my life.

The Blues Brothers Review

June 21, 2015 by JD Hansel

I must confess that I’m a little disappointed in this one. Having heard such great things about it for so long, I was hoping for a very exciting comedy, but instead got a strangely-paced artsy musical. I enjoy musicals a lot, so I had a good time during the musical sequences, but the rest of the film felt kind of pointless. The story may not actually be as weak as it felt to me personally – it might just not be my kind of story – but something about the pace of the thing is certainly off, and there’s something else missing that kept the story from being interesting. Unfortunately, I can’t put my finger on what that missing element is.

I know I like the actors’ performances, and the characters were fine. The music was good, but the humor was lacking. I’m okay with a movie that’s lacking in humor, so long as it has good drama, like in The Graduate. I really love a great soundtrack, which is what makes it difficult for me to be as hard on this film as I think I ought. What my problem boils down to is the fact that I don’t believe a film should be considered great purely on the grounds of its visuals or music if the story is weak. (I even go so far as to argue with the saying that “film is a visual medium” – I say it’s a storytelling medium, and if the particular story being told requires the audio to lead and the visuals to follow, so be it.) So, am I willing to own up to my claims and condemn the film of mediocrity in spite of its soundtrack?

Well, the music isn’t the only thing I like about it. There’s a really neat atmosphere that I think is unique to the film, and Landis adds a special vibe somehow that creates a very “bluesy” feeling. Landis also shows off his Muppet fandom with a part played by Frank Oz, and a heck of a lot of Muppet merch in one scene, which I just adore. There is ample cleverness throughout in both the circumstances that arise and the way they’re handled, but I still get too much of a Pee Wee’s Big Adventure feeling from the writing. The fun cameos by great performers reminded me very much of my favorite movie, The Muppet Movie, which made this movie even more fascinating. The film really impressed me with its visuals, as I think it’s a very, very well-shot film, so I’d recommend it to anyone with an interest in cinematography.

Yes, there is a lot to like about it, but it somehow just didn’t quite grab me. (This may have something to do with the fact that, from what I’ve read, Aykroyd had written an unconventional, dysfunctional script that had to be reworked by Landis.) In the end, it was a movie I felt like I could just stop watching midway without missing much. Finishing it felt like a chore. That’s not a good sign. So, in spite of all its strengths, I can’t give this the high rating other critics/historians do because it fails at simply holding my attention.

Tomorrowland Review

June 5, 2015 by JD Hansel

When approximately 22 minutes had passed, the critics checked out. The first trailer for the film, which screamed with unwarranted mediocrity, instantly brewed a batch of immense apathy in the moviegoers’ heads. The marketing was dreadful, so the critics were eagerly awaiting the chance to convict the movie of being dreadful as well. They got their chance about 22 minutes in, when the film reaches the pinnacle of preachy. All of the teachers tell the high school students that doom is inevitable – the end is near – and while our optimistic protagonist raises her hand to argue, they all choose to ignore her. When she finally is given the chance to speak, she asks the obvious question, “Can we fix it?” The teacher is stumped by the question, because apparently everyone in this movie lives in a world where no one has bothered to ask what we can do to make the world better.

But that’s not where the story really starts. Let’s start earlier, at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Yes, the film starts there, at what was perhaps the biggest display of optimism about the future in history. The movie starts (as more Disney films should) by getting us excited about the movie we’re starting to watch, and giving us a dose of nostalgia while playing great Sherman Brothers music is a really good way to do that. This is where audio-animatronics were revealed to the public, most notably in the attraction “It’s a Small World,” which is where audio-animatronic children can transport people to another dimension. … No, really, that’s the ride’s purpose according to this movie. It takes them to a dimension where cliché visions of the future are re-hashed with gray CGI, creating a world of half-hearted semi-wonder, with a side of Diet Whimsy. However, when viewed through the eyes of the child we’re following, Frank, there is some wonder to be found in it. Fortunately, there are a few clever details and touches that seem rather original – especially the magic floating swimming pools – which make the clichés far more bearable than one would expect from just watching the trailer.

This, however, is not the focus of the film. The focus of the film is Hugh Laurie’s speech at the end. The entirety of the film builds up to the moment when he finally explains what has been going on this whole time. Essentially, visions of what will happen at the end of the world have been subtly broadcast directly into the minds of the people of earth. This should obviously be a wake-up call to get to work on fixing the problem, but instead, humans acted like humans. They ate it up, they yelled and fussed and complained about it, they preached that the end was near, and in the end, it became an excuse. It became an excuse to act like they cared about what was important, while in reality they used what could have been a great chance to do some good as a chance to be lazy.

The cleverness of the film is that the whole movie builds up to the unveiling of a self-fulfilling prophecy machine (arguably a sci-fi equivalent to American cable news), and ultimately humankind is more to blame for the end of the world than any villain. The problem with the film is in the delivery of this great concept. The use of real people, places, and events creates the sense that Tomorrowland is trying to depict the real world somewhat accurately. This becomes a problem nine minutes in when “It’s a Small World” has a secret built-in tunnel to another dimension, at which point the suspension of disbelief is gone since not even Disney could pull of such a feat in the 1960s. However, this part of the movie was not absurdist enough to effectively communicate to the audience the message they needed to hear: “THIS IS NOT YOUR WORLD; it’s a silly caricature of it.”

But Disney wouldn’t be brave enough to say that, would they? Naturally, they think they must make the audience believe that it is the world we’re living in so that we’re shocked. Disney seems to think we won’t be invested in the film if what’s on screen is too surrealistic. Therein lies the irony – the movie itself becomes the machine it antagonizes by saying, “This is reality and it stinks,” rather than saying, “This could be reality.” (As if that isn’t bad enough, it commits an even worse crime by saying that our reality includes certain special people who inevitably improve the world. So if I, the viewer, don’t think I’m one of those people, why would I feel motivated to make the world a better place?) This could have been avoided had the film been an absurdist comedy, creating a world with obviously stupid caricatures of mankind, which takes away the preachy tone, while simultaneously allowing the filmmakers to scream to the world, “DON’T YOU DARE LET YOUR WORLD BE ANYTHING LIKE THIS LUDICROUS ONE.”

To be fair, there are other interesting elements of the film to discuss as well, such as the clever concept of a society where all the world’s geniuses got together in another dimension. In terms of characters, I find it hard to believe that the lead actress is a genius, but I suppose she at least does a decent job at making the character likable. Frank’s a pretty good character on the whole, and Hugh Laurie does a nice job with his part too, but none of them are as charming or impressive as Raffey Cassidy, who plays the little girl named “Athena.” She’s kind of amazing, and I really like this character, but I spent half the movie waiting for the writers to kill her off since I could tell they’d do it eventually. Her death was probably the most predictable part of the story though, as most of the film kept me wondering what was going to happen next. The movie surprisingly handles exposition well using the old trick of making the audience want answers, and then providing them, rather than explaining to the audience what we haven’t asked to have explained. Still, part of why the story took interesting and surprising turns that kept me wanting answers is the lack of any logic in the story whatsoever. I was constantly finding things that the robotic characters, being computers at heart, should have handled much more logically, so I felt more like I was watching a to-be-CinemaSins than a Disney classic – another issue that could have been dodged with a tongue-in-cheek approach.

Still, at the heart of the film is its message, and while the message seems straightforward, I don’t think the critics and I agree on what the message is. The message I choose to take from the film is that I need to get off my butt, roll up my sleeves, and get to work on making the world a better place, but I suspect that that resonated with me since I’ve already felt that way for so long. For the average viewer, I fear that this may not have been received the same way. There is always a danger in an optimistic message as such messages tend to ignore reality and substitute it with the way they’d like to see the world. This movie is, to some degree, guilty of ignoring reality, which does bother me. It does, however, use clever ideas, a fun story, and interesting characters to give the world the slap in the face it needs and say, “You have no excuse now – go get to work and make the world better.”