War

Rogue One Review

January 7, 2017 by JD Hansel

MINOR SPOILER WARNING

By the end of 2016, it seemed as though everyone on the Internet was in the mood to rant about how every movie Hollywood makes is a sequel, prequel, remake, reboot, or in-universe story. This, of course, is not true – just watch the previews before one of the big hit dramas out in theaters today or check the homepage of Rotten Tomatoes. Still, there is definitely a movement in cinema right now towards returning to the many stories it has told and trying to find something new here, to varying degrees of success. Instead of relying just on the genre system that guided Classical Hollywood, which was essentially a means for the studios to make money by telling the same story over and over again, the ’80s have given us a blockbuster and franchise system, which is now moving further from focusing on original stories and towards revisiting familiar stories. Perhaps the various modern twists on fairy tales are responsible for this obsession with re-visitation, and maybe Wicked is to blame for that trend, but regardless of the cause, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. This just means that audiences have to learn to approach stories differently, particularly when dealing with in-universe stories that aren’t focused on the main characters from the original franchise. This didn’t seem to be a problem for most people who saw Fantastic Beasts, but surprisingly, it has made Rogue One: A Star Wars Story a very divisive film.

I think it’s safe to say that there are very few other films in history that have been designed specifically to both contextualize and by contextualized by another film on the level that Rogue One is. This is very new for cinema, but it isn’t for Star Wars – they’ve had TV shows in this universe that were inspired by a single (almost insignificant) line of dialogue from New Hope, so this shouldn’t seem that strange to people. Yet, somehow, the lack of an opening crawl is too much for some people to handle. For me, it doesn’t matter whether or not it feels like a Star Wars movie, or even a Star Wars story, so long as I believe that it’s in the same universe as Star Wars and its story makes me look at the main films with greater understanding and appreciation of their context. This is all true for me, so any reservations I might have have been appeased, allowing me to focus just on enjoying the story.

So is it a good story? Well, at the very least it feels like an original story. This is one quality that other films in the franchise have not had, much to their detriment. The villains and side-characters are all great, but the two leads are fairly uninteresting. I will say that I understood the protagonist’s perspective throughout, rooted for her, and could tell that she was not one to be trifled with – she was fierce. Each of the characters serves his/her purpose, the drama is intense, the humor is hilarious, the action is more awesome and impactful that most of the action scenes I’ve ever seen, and the story plays with elements of the Star Wars universe well. (Also, Vader is amazing, his first appearance sending chills down my spine, and his second blowing me away.)

With all this in mind, I have a difficult time understanding why so many people I know have been so disappointed. This movie has the perfect balance of serious war themes and fun excitement. Just imagine if a good fan project was given a huge load of money and told to go crazy. That’s the feeling of this movie. Because of how much it seems like a fanatic’s passion project, it really feels like a victory for the fans. This is enough to make it satisfactory, but with the added bonuses of clever references to other characters and an amazing ending, it’s very pleasing. Sure some of the CGI is terrible, but I still see this as a film that is paving the way to great things in cinema’s future, and for that I greatly appreciate it.

Paths of Glory Review

October 13, 2016 by JD Hansel

I don’t like war movies.

I have no interest in wars. It is an embarrassment to the species that we still have them. I generally have no interest in stories that attempt to glorify wars, even if they do balance it out to a degree by showing much bloodshed to display how horrible war can be. At the end of the day, war movies (and arguably anti-war movies) make their money by appealing to the disgusting, aggressive, barbaric element of the human soul that just wants to watch people beat the crap out of other people – an element of the soul that our culture has particularly nurtured and groomed in men.

I also don’t like Stanley Kubrick.

2001: A Space Odyssey was the first (and I think only) movie to literally bore me to tears. Kubrick’s obnoxious art style is frankly too “up in your face” for his work to feel mature enough for my tastes. His intense focus on what I consider “mindless mindfulness” for hours on end with his hypnotic visuals is about as pseudo-intellectual as it gets. I have given him a hard time before for being too boring, and even though I liked Dr. Strangelove, it too felt rather slow and boring at times (as did Killer’s Kiss). I think this is because Kubrick has a particular gift – and I do mean this sincerely – for making human characters as distant and inhuman as possible, which is honestly a challenge. Personally, however, I get bored too easily when a film doesn’t have any real “human” characters in it, and when I’m not being drawn in to a specific emotional experience because of the characters.

Enter Paths of Glory.

Here is a film that is extremely intense and intensely extreme, pulling the viewer into the deepest trenches of emotion and outrage. The hero (whom Kirk Douglas plays beautifully) is largely likable because he is the character who stands for that which is moral, but I would argue that the protagonist is not what makes the film so engaging. The emotional pull comes not from how much we like the protagonist, but how much we hate the people above him. He is surrounded by devils, and any notion the viewer may have had beforehand of the first World War being about “good guys vs. bad guys” is shattered – there are bad guys and worse guys. War is revealed to be a matter of politics, killing people to make a point and artificially form a narrative, making for an absolutely excellent anti-war movie.

Interestingly, I happened to follow my viewing of this film with the 1918 Charlie Chaplin comedy Shoulder Arms, which also takes place during World War I. It’s amazing to see how both a film that reduces the war to petty political games and a film that completely makes light of the war (both taking place in the French trenches specifically) could be very thoughtful, insightful, and entertaining films. It almost feels like practicing two separate religions, or supporting two opposing political candidates. What’s odd, however, is this: with how much of a comedy buff I am, I feel as though I ought to like the Chaplin comedy more – it is very, very clever, after all – but I am more drawn to Kubrick’s film.

What Kubrick captures here is not so much humanity as it is a different kind of inhumanity than I’m used to seeing from him: he offers us the chance to see the twisted monsters that lie in our souls, thus exposing how much of our humanity is actually made up of inhumanity. While Paths may have started off a little bit on the tedious side as I’d expected, I soon found myself on the edge of my seat as the cynic in me felt overwhelmed with orgasmic outrage and rapturous rage. I was far more invested in the political drama of this film than I get invested in most films in general, let alone dramas about war. I was sort of let down by the ending, but I eventually found that the ending was purposely underwhelming, giving the audience one final sting with the realization that no progress has been made, and everything will go on the same corrupt way until the war is over. It may not be a perfect film, but finally I see in Kubrick the cinematic master I’ve always heard he should be.

Dr. Strangelove Review

October 17, 2015 by JD Hansel

For October, I decided I would review only scary movies, or at least films with monstrous or otherwise Halloween-related themes. The problem is that I didn’t think of this until I’d already watched Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, a film that isn’t really about Dr. Strangelove, and that never explains how anyone learned to love any bombs. In a way, this is still fitting for a time focused on scary themes since the threat of being nuked was arguably the biggest scare of the twentieth century. For me, however, the most frightening element of the movie was knowing who directed it . . . Stanley Kubrick.

Kubrick and I have a history. Many years ago (actually it was about a year and a half ago, but that doesn’t sound as dramatic), I was taking a history of film class, when all of the sudden . . . Kubrick.

Evil Kubrick Devil — This image has been stolen from the good people at Channel Awesome, who used this graphic in this excellent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZAzHbUw5W8

When I expected a thoughtful science fiction film that would make me re-think life, humanity, and the universe, what I received was a headache. I expect it’s only a matter of time before I put together some sort of video, article, or other presentation on what it is about 2001: A Space Odyssey that I find terrible, but I’ll try to express it briefly here: if a work of media tries to talk about ideas for the audience to consider, it should use complete sentences. In other words, it should explicate the ideas thoughtfully rather than gesturing towards potential ideas and interpretations that an audience member might project onto the work. After all, if an artist’s work is ambiguous enough, it’ll have all the depth that the individual viewer chooses to see in it, but if the work is detailed enough, its depth will be undeniable. While 2001 is certainly visually detailed, its story is deliberately vague in all of the areas where it should be most expository, making the “storytelling” resemble interpretive dance more than it does narrative. My brain was desperately trying to find meaning throughout where there was none, and since I am not the type to put my own thoughts into the storyteller’s mouth, I found myself bored to tears (not figuratively – literally) and forever terrified of the Dumbfounding Devil.

Then, on one fateful night not so long ago, I dared to watch another of Kubrick’s films – this time the famous comedy Dr. Strangelove – and to my shock I found . . . it was okay. Strangelove is certainly no Python or Brooks film, but it has its moments that really do delight. I was a bit disappointed that there are no noticeable jokes (not in any conventional sense, that is) for the first 35 minutes, but the movie can get away with it because it keeps the audience in suspense concerning what’s going to happen with the bomb. I could still see the Dumbfounding Devil up to his usual tricks again though, including a tedious story, ignorance of the audience’s investment (or lack thereof) in the characters, and a somewhat ambiguous, unsatisfying ending. This isn’t even mentioning that the movie is centered around a fear that is largely intangible to viewers who did not experience the cold war, or the politics of the 1960s, which limits the film’s appeal severely by keeping it from being timeless.

As much as all that bothers me, I think I had a generally good experience watching Dr. Strangelove, and because of a few good laughs and some strong performances by Peter Sellers, I’ll concede that this movie is good. However, I must remain alert, because while Krubrick and I may have had peace this time, we’ll meet again . . . don’t know where, don’t know when. *Maniacal laugh.*