Guardians of the Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy is arguably Marvel Studios' biggest gamble to date. It's based on one of the more obscure teams of Marvel heroes, specifically an incarnation of the team that appeared in a series that only ran for two years, back in 2008. (Of course, Marvel revived the series in anticipation of this movie.) I imagine that when the film was first announced, I wasn't the only nerd who had to flock to Wikipedia to find out just exactly who or what the Guardians of the Galaxy even were.

Like many of my fellow nerds, I had faith that Marvel would deliver a solid movie. After all, Marvel Studios has had an unbroken string of hits worthy of Pixar, starting with Iron Man. (Not to be confused with properties Marvel licensed out to other studios, such as X-Men, or Spider-Man, which have certainly had their shares of hits and misses.) However, many were worried that Marvel was bound to stumble eventually, and that when it did, it would be with the crazy space-adventure movie, starring characters nobody ever heard of.

If Marvel does eventually stumble, it sure as hell isn't with Guardians. I'm not going to be so bold as to say that it's on par with a movie like Star Wars: A New Hope, but Guardians certainly captured the feel of A New Hope in ways that the prequel trilogy didn't. Guardians is full of the roguish space cowboy types that made Episodes 4-6 of Star Wars so enjoyable, and that were strangely lacking from Episodes 1-3.

The fact that Guardians worked so well as a movie is actually a bit surprising. On paper, it sounds like it should be a bomb. Of the five heroes, only one is human. Of the four non-human protagonists, one is a talking raccoon, and one is humanoid tree, capable of only saying the words "I am Groot." While the current trend of comic book movies is to tone down the more comic-booky aspects of the source material when adapting things for the big screen, such as dropping code names or costumes, Guardians fully embraces its comic book origins. Characters retain their names such as Drax the Destroyer and The Mad Titan Thanos. The story has the Guardians trying to stop a villain named Ronan the Accuser from trying to destroy the planet Xandar. This sounds like it should be the sort of movies nerds make fun of for years, as the worst possible idea anybody could come up with for a summer blockbuster, and yet it's proven to be one of the best ideas to come around in a long time.

Quite frankly, I'm sure that if this film had come out twenty years ago, it would have bombed in theatres, having been torn apart by 90's critics for it's wild and fun nature, and unabashed comic book feel, only to re-emerge as a cult classic after finding its audience on video. In other words, Guardians would have experienced the same treatment The Fifth Element received.

Yet, Guardians works as a movie, even if it doesn't sound like it should, because the filmmakers know when to play things for laughs, and when to play it straight. Despite the unquestionably sci-fi pulp nature of this film, the film never treats the story as being campy. It's loaded with (sometimes incredibly juvenile) humor, but treats its core story as earnestly as every other movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The cast they lined up for this film is perfect, and there are a few unexpected performances among them. Obviously, Zoe Saldana is great as Gamora, but having seen her in Star Trek, there's no reason to expect anything less. No, the bigger question was how Chris Pratt would do as the main character, Star Lord/Peter Quill. He's certainly developed a loyal fan base from his role as Andy Dwyer on Parks and Recreation, but aside from his voice-over work in The Lego Movie, he had yet to take on the leading role in a movie. Considering how much hoopla he's generated over getting in shape for this film, he better get used to sticking to that regimen because he's definitely proven he can helm a movie, and not just as a comedian.

The performances that really surprised me were from Karen Gillian and Dave Bautista. I had only seen Gillian as the kind natured Amy Pond on Doctor Who, so it caught me off guard how frightening and intimidating she was as the villain Nebula. As for Bautista, when I saw the trailer, I figured he'd been cast as Drax the Destroyer strictly for his size and muscle mass, but it turns out he's got a knack for delivering deadpan comedic lines, some of which make up the best moments in the movie.

Finally, there's Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser. I've been a fan of Pace ever since his roles in Pushing Daisies and The Fall (which is easily on my list of top 5 movies.) Personally, I think he's one of the most underrated actors out there right now. This film is unlikely to boost his standing, but only because he's heavily costumed and covered in makeup. As Ronan, he is perfect in the role, giving his all portraying a villainous force to contend with, but you can tell he's secretly reveling in playing the character.

It actually shocks me to say this, considering how 3D adverse I am, but this is actually a film worth seeing in 3D. The first time I saw Guardians, it occurred to me it might actually be worth watching in 3D. When I saw the film a second time (yes, it does warrant watching twice in cinemas,) I did not object when my friend wanted to catch a 3D showing, and it certainly made for a more enjoyable second viewing. Not only did the film have dazzling visuals and a brilliant color palate, but every shot was composed in a way that it was clear that director James Gunn wanted it to look good in 3D. Even though the film was originally shot in 2D, they did a great job converting it into 3D so that everything from the wide-angle shots of deep space to the close up shots are not only easy on the eyes, but add to the immersive experience.

(Originally, I was going to comment that either they did an impressive job converting Guardians to 3D, or I've just gotten used to watching 3D movies, but I saw Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in 3D over the weekend, and that is a terrible, terrible conversion job. So yes, I can safely say the conversion job in Guardians is well above average.)

Now I can't talk about Guardians of the Galaxy without mentioning it's soundtrack. It's one of the first things about this film that grabs you. In particular, the opening credits gets its hooks into you with a scene featuring Peter Quill trouncing about a barren planet to Redbone's hit, "Come and Get Your Love." The film makes heavy use of 70's pop hits, but every one of them is as perfectly selected and placed as if it were in a Quentin Tarantino film. So for any parents out there with young kids, get ready for them to develop a sudden interest in the music your mom and dad listened to growing up.

For a summer that's felt like it's lacked a solid, knock-it-out-of-the-ballpark hit, Guardians of the Galaxy is the movie that should have been the anchor for the July 4th weekend. It may have been an audacious move on behalf of the marketing team to give this film the tagline, "You're welcome," but the film backs that tagline up, as well as prompting me to say, "Thank you, Marvel."

Pacific Rim

Man, it had been way too long since we've seen something from Guillermo del Toro. Between 2001 and 2008, he'd been churning out quality movies at a pretty consistent pace. They were a mix of comic book movies, such as Blade II and the Hellboy movies, and character-driven pieces such as Pan's Labyrinth. Then for a while he stepped into the background. He was producing movies, but not directing them. His name was attached to many projects that have yet to come to light, such as an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness." But at last, after a five year drought, we have an actual completed film by del Toro, and it shows he hasn't lost his stride.

When you first hear about it, Pacific Rim sounds like it's going to be just a mash-up of two staples of Japanese sci-fi: Giant monsters, (a.k.a kaiju), and giant mechas. Lets be honest, those two genres have only worked moderately well in the hands of Hollywood filmmakers. Roland Emmerich's take on Godzilla has its most climactic moments half an hour into the movie, and wastes another two hours trying to come up with something close to being as exciting for the finale. Michael Bay's Transformers movies have a few explosions too many, not to mention robots that look like scrap metal slapped together, and prone to racist caricatures.

Perhaps putting together monsters and mechas works in Pacific Rim because the movie is helmed by a guy who understands that you need to put characters before concepts. The battle scenes look pretty incredible in this movie, but they only work because the characters inside the mech suits are developed well enough that the audience will care what happens to them. Yes, as crazy as it sounds, Pacific Rim is a character driven movie that's less about how monsters are destroying the world, and more about the people who are trying to save the day.

The concept of this film is pretty ambitious. I think the prologue for this movie ran about ten minutes long, just setting up the main story. However, it is a well paced prologue that feels like a mini-documentary being played before the film. Basically what happens is an inter-dimensional rift opens in the Pacific Ocean and kaiju (giant monsters) start coming out of it. Governments of the world respond by building jagers, mech suits the size of skyscrapers that are operated by two pilots. At first the jagers are able to beat back the kaiju, but as the years go on, bigger kaiju start coming out of the ocean, and with more frequency. The jagers start losing the battles, and the governments drop support of the program, choosing instead to focus on just building a massive wall around the Pacific. When the wall fails, the few remaining jagers make one last ditch effort to stop the monsters, once and for all.

No, seriously. The bulk of that paragraph takes place in the first ten minutes of the movie, and it makes for one hell of an opening. Its the kind of opening that makes you even more excited about the movie you've just sat down to watch.

As for the rest of the story, it's fun and lighthearted in the way a proper summer movie should be. It doesn't revel in scenes of mass destruction the way Man of Steel did. Instead it really focuses on the development of the characters. I'll admit, Pacific Rim recycles a lot of old action movie tropes. There's the inexperienced rookie who's brought into battle without training. The hot shot hero who doesn't get along with the new guy. The seasoned veteran who gives the big inspiring speech right before the last battle, and so on.

The thing is, it doesn't feel like a rehash of things we've seen before in movies. That's probably because it's surrounded so many things that feel fresh and new. For one thing, this is one of the few action movies I've seen in a while where the female lead is not a damsel in distress, a sex kitten, or just a love interest for the male lead, but is actually a character who gets a story arc as well developed as the male characters.

Also, the way the jagers operate is by having two pilots meld their minds, then controlling the machine as two hemispheres of one brain. It's a unique concept that leads to some of the best storytelling moments in the movie.

It may have the premise of a pulp sci-fi movie, but there's plenty in Pacific Rim to remind you that writer/director Guillermo Del Toro is the same mad genius that made Pan's Labyrinth an Oscar winning film.   

Pacific Rim may not have any A-Listers in its cast, but it has a talented crew of actors you might know from their other roles. There's Rinko Kikuchi, who gave an Oscar nominated performance in Babel and played Bang Bang in The Brothers Bloom. Idris Elba, star of Luther, is the commander of the jagers. Trust me. It's not going to be long before Idris Elba starts getting top billing in movies. It's Always Sunny's Charlie Day even has a role, and it's so good to see him play a character other than the absolutely weird and crazy Charlie Kelly from Sunny. He's still hilarious, but in this movie he's more "nerd" funny than "weird" funny. (And I mean realistic nerd funny. Not the "I can't tell if they're laughing with us or at us" version of nerds from Big Bang Theory.)

It's also a great movie to take the kids to. There's not really much in the way of gore, besides neon goop dripping out of interdimensional monsters. No awkward sexual innuendo. I'm just throwing it out there for anybody out there who are parents that are tired of hoping you enjoy the movie you're taking your kids to see, and instead want your kids to be able to enjoy a movie you want to see.

This is also one of those movies you really do want to see on a big screen. Solid characters aside, the jager/kaiju fights are something really best enjoyed on a screen the size of your house. People complain that the movies coming out every year are either sequels or remakes, so when something this fresh and original comes along, you owe it to yourself to see it.

One last note: When you do see it, just make sure you stick around through the first batch of end credits.

Cloud Atlas, Makeup and the Oscars

There's already much that's been written about the 2013 Oscars. Of course, there was talk about Seth MacFarlane as host, (I thought he did a good job, personally,) and there was talk about the excess of musical numbers from movies that came out years ago, (which also resulted in the exclusion of performances for two of the songs that were actually nominated,) but I want to take a moment to call attention to one of the often overlooked categories.

As the Oscars were going on, a friend pointed out that not only did Cloud Atlas not win for Best Makeup, it wasn't even nominated. I found this surprising, as the extensive makeup and prosthetics were one of the most talked about aspects of the film. In fact, of all the films to come out last year, Cloud Atlas was the only film I could think of where there was anything particular notable about the makeup at all.

If you haven't seen the film, Cloud Atlas has six interwoven storylines, each set in different eras and parts of the world. As a way of uniting the storylines, the same core cast is used in each timeline. However, since the stories are set in such varied locales such as a 19th century merchant ship, modern times, a futuristic Korea and a post apocalyptic Hawaii, the actors appearances had to be changed dramatically for each setting.

Although the makeup team's talent was quite evident with Hugh Grant's characters, as he was practically unrecognizable in all six of his roles, what make their work really stand out was the transformation of the British actor Jim Sturgess to a Korean character for the Neo Seoul scenes. The work was so convincing, that if nobody told you about the prosthetic work in advance, it would be easy to assume that Jim Sturgess's role had in fact been played by a Korean actor.

I have two theories about why Cloud Atlas was snubbed. One theory is that not enough Academy members even saw the movie to even consider it for a nomination. The other theory is that the Academy wanted to avoid the controversy about having white actors made-up to look like non-whites. It's a controversy that started to build on the internet before the movie's release, but I think it died down once people who saw the movie realized that prosthetic work didn't just involve putting whites in non-white roles. Black and Asian actors starring in the film also underwent prosthetic makeup jobs to portray characters of different races. Also, Sturgess (whose race-swapping was most prominent in the film,) didn't pander to the sort of negative stereotypes commonly associated with white actors playing other races. In other words, we're not talking about Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's. 

Unfortunately, this leads me to conclude that it didn't get nominated simply because not enough people saw it, which is a shame, because it suggests that much of the pre-awards season lobbying actually is necessary to be nominated for awards. However, for the life of me, I'm still not going to understand how the movie that did win, Les Miserables, beat out the other nominees in the category. Les Miserables was up against The Hobbit, a movie that transformed a crew of actors into goblins, dwarves and Hobbits, and Hitchcock a movie that transformed the famous faced Anthony Hopkins into the famous director. The makeup in Les Miserables, simply involved dirtying up some actors faces and cleaning up the others. It's not that they didn't do a good job at it, but there was nothing terribly stand-out about the makeup in that film at all, at least compared to other period pieces. 

Dredd

Lets get one thing out of the way first. Dredd is not a remake of the 1995 Sylvester Stallone movie, Judge Dredd. They are both based off of the same comic book character, but they are two different interpretations of the material. In essence, it's like Tim Burton's Batman versus Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins.

Regardless of whether or not you liked the '95 version of Judge Dredd, the new Dredd is significantly better. It's like HBO's The Wire mashed up with Die Hard. The film takes place in a bleak future where wars have left the earth largely uninhabitable, except for in places like Megacity One, a massive city that spreads from Boston to Washington D.C. However, the story itself primarily takes places in Peachtree Tower, a 200 story housing block controlled by a drug kingpin named Ma-Ma.

In this future, crime is rampant, and law enforcement is done by judges, a police force that also acts as judge, jury and executioner. When Judge Dredd and a rookie named Anderson go to Peachtree to investigate a triple homicide, they find themselves trapped in the building by Ma-Ma, who doesn't want them uncovering her massive drug operation. Cut off from all backup, Dredd and Anderson have to battle their way through the tower.

Despite the potentially campy nature of the lead character, Dredd is actually a fairly camp free movie. There's no groan-worthy one-liners. No zippy comic relief sidekick. Most importantly, none of the characters run around trying to convince the audience that they're a total badass. A lot of that may be thanks to actor Karl Urban, who plays the grizzled Judge Dredd. (You may also know him as Bones from Star Trek.) Despite the fact that Judge Dredd is perpetually scowling and never once is seen without his helmet, (a fact that fans of the comic were particularly adamant about for this version,) he doesn't come off as some sort of two-dimensional archetype. Thankfully, even though most of his lines are delivered in a deep, menacing voice, it sounds like nuanced acting compared to the REALLY INTIMIDATING GROWLING used by Christian Bale as Batman.

I say the movie is fairly free of camp, but not entirely free, because there is plenty of spectacular displays of violence. People in this movie get killed in all sorts of unpleasant ways, such as explosions, being skinned, being cut down by all sorts of machine guns, and there is a higher than average amount of people being thrown off a building to their deaths. Still, even the most over-the-top deaths manage to restrain themselves from being cartoonish.

I suppose that on the surface, Dredd does seem like it's primarily a guy's movie, but if there's been one good trend to emerge out of sci-fi action movies over the last ten years, it's the continued emergence of strong female characters who aren't there just for eye candy. Dredd sports two such characters. There's Judge Anderson, played by Olivia Thirlby, and Ma-Ma, played by Lena Headey. As Ma-Ma, Headey is pretty damn terrifying and remorseless. She's more than a match for Judge Dredd and gives him a run for his money right up until the end.

More importantly, Judge Anderson feels like a breakthrough character for the genre. For one thing, it's actually kind of refreshing to see a gun-toting heroine who isn't stuffed into some skin-tight outfit designed to make her cleavage pop out. Her character may be a rookie, but by the end of the movie, she proves to be able to hold her ground just as well as Dredd. On a side note, Thirlby, in her judge's armor, kind of resembles Samus Aran, for anybody who might be considering casting a Metroid movie any time soon.

For a genre as frequently visited as "dystopian future," I was caught off guard by how impressive the overall look and feel of this movie was. Visually, this movie is bleak, and I don't mean the sort of faux bleak you usually see in sci-fi movies. The filmmakers used the right combination of location filming, sets and CGI to create a city of slums that feels way too real. There's also some incredible slow-motion shots throughout the movie, largely due to the drug that's at the center of all the violence, a drug that makes the brain perceive reality as happening at 1% of its normal speed. So there are these serene, dream-like sequences interspersed throughout the violence.

Overall, Dredd turned out to really exceed my expectations. The storyline was kept simple and clean so you could stay focused on the suspense, of which there is plenty in this movie. It's unlikely that this film will end up spawning a franchise, considering that it got completely spanked opening weekend, of all things, getting beaten by the latest unnecessary Resident Evil sequel. It also probably didn't help that this film was released primarily in 3D with minimal 2D showings. Still, at least if Dredd winds up being a stand alone movie, it's a damn good one.

10 Movies for a Hot Summer Night

For most of you reading this, summer no longer means the same sort of freedom it did when we were kids. It's no longer a three month long vacation, but at least it's a vacation from television. There are only really a handful of good shows on air over the summer. The rest are all either reruns or game shows that don't really require you to watch from start to finish. For all those nights when it's too hot out to be outside with friends, or you feel too lazy to catch up on those books you meant to read, here are ten movies you can enjoy even if your A/C isn't working. 


10. (500) Days of Summer
Just do be clear, I didn't put this movie on the list because it has "summer" in the title. It's on the list because summer is the time of year when we all kick back and make a point of enjoying all of the great things we love in life, and at its heart, that's what this movie is about. It just so happens to be told through a love story about a man who falls in love with the girl of his dreams and slowly has to deal with the realization that she doesn't quite feel the same way about him. Personally, I can't think of a movie that does as good a job as this does of capturing every aspect of what it's like to fall in love, ranging from the low points of trying to understand how somebody you love doesn't love you back, to the high points of wanting to dance in the street out of sheer joy.


9. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
This list would have felt a bit incomplete without a western on it, so I decided on one of the fun ones, instead of the stone cold serious ones. It came down to this and Back to the Future Part III, with that film losing out only because it's best watched as the climax to the trilogy. Butch Cassidy is perhaps one of the all time greatest buddy movies ever made. Plot-wise, it's nothing too complex. After the law gets on their tail one too many times, Butch and Sundance decide to flee to Bolivia. What it lacks in plot development, it more than makes up for with comedy. I actually bought this movie a few years ago, having never seen it before, and then wondered how I went so long having not seen it.

8. Panic Room
This is one of those great thrillers that manages to pay homage to Alfred Hitchcock, without ripping him off. (Well, if it does rip off Hitchcock, director David Fincher didn't do it in any obvious way.) I love how the premise of this movie is so simple, yet it provides so much suspense without feeling drawn out. Jodie Foster plays a mom who buys a new house with her daughter that happens to have a panic room in it. (Yes, her daughter is played by Kristen Stewart, but this was before she annoyed us by starring in all of those damn Twilight movies.) On their first night in the house, burglars break in driving mother and daughter to hide in the panic room. Unfortunately, the thing they came to steal just happens to be in the panic room, leading the burglars to try everything they can to draw them out.

7. Adventureland
I swear it's just a coincidence that this movie also happens to star Kristen Stewart. In fact, lets not focus on that. Lets focus on the rest of the cast, which includes Jesse Eisenberg, Ryan Reynolds, Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig. Then there's also the director, Greg Mottola, who also gave us Superbad as well as a few episodes of Arrested Development. The story centers around Jesse Eisenberg's character who just graduated from college to find that the only job he could land is at an amusement park. Odds are this film will make you feel a little nostalgic for that one summer you had where you were old enough to hit up bars with your friends, but young enough that you didn't have a real-world job yet.



6. The Brothers Bloom
If you're at all excited about the upcoming sci-fi flick, Looper, you should check out writer/director Rian Johnson's previous film, The Brothers Bloom. It's a con-artist movie, so not exactly the same genre as Looper, but it will give you a feel for his slightly quirky writing style. Oh, and it's also a pretty damn fun movie. Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo play Bloom and Stephen, brothers who pull off elaborate con jobs where everybody ends up feeling like they got what they wanted. When Bloom decide he wants out, Stephen talks him into one last con that involves an eccentric heiress played by Rachel Weisz, which turns into an epic globe-spanning adventure. However the scene stealer of this movie is the brothers' silent partner/explosives expert, Bang Bang, played by Rinko Kikuchi, who was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Babel.



5. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
I felt like a Wes Anderson movie belonged on here. I picked this one for the list because underlying this story of a father bonding with a son he never knew he had is a grand, albeit bizarre, sea adventure. This is probably the most ambitious out of all of Wes Anderson's movies because it mixes his usual dysfunctional family comedy/drama with plenty of special effects and a few big action scenes. It's sort of like a summer action movie for the art house crowd.

4. Rear Window
With the heat as unbearable as it's been this summer, it kind of makes one want to just stay indoors, even when you're not watching movies. Thus, it seems appropriate to include on this list a film about a man who has to stay indoors all summer because of a broken leg. This Hitchcock classic, starring Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly, shows off the director's skill as he's able to tell stories about several characters who share the same New York City courtyard, even though the camera never leaves Jimmy Stewart's apartment. It's all from the point of view of Jimmy Stewart's character, who spies on his neighbors out of boredom, and of course since it's a Hitchcock movie, he begins to suspect one of them of murdering his wife.

3. Inside Man
Although he might not have thought of it that way, Inside Man was such a departure from the usual Spike Lee joint that the marketing for this film downplayed Lee's role as director of this film until after it was released and performed well at the box office. This film has a brilliant multi-layered plot that starts out with a bank heist that turns into a hostage situation, but as the story progresses, it becomes apparent that there is something more complicated than just a bank heist going on. Of course, being a Spike Lee movie, race relations is a subtext that runs throughout the movie, although oddly enough it's mainly used for comic relief to alleviate the tension.

2. City of God
This Brazilian film is quite possibly one of the greatest crime movies ever made, and if you haven't seen it yet, you have no idea what you're missing out on. It follows the story of two men who grow up in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. One becomes a photographer, and the other becomes a gang leader. Ze, the one who becomes the gangster, is definitely one of the more vicious characters of cinema. Not only is he terrifying when we see him as an adult, but he's also genuinely psychopathic when we see him as a kid. Rocket, the photographer, ends up becoming involved with the gangs as he covers them for the newspapers, and begins to gain their trust. It's a gritty film, but it's also filled with moments of characters enjoying life even though they're at the bottom of the ladder. In other words, it's a film that will move you, but it's not something heavy that will bring you down.



1. Die Hard: With a Vengeance
There really did have to be one big budget blockbuster movie on this list. I know a lot of people have already placed Die Hard on their list of movies to watch every Christmas, and I put the blizzard themed Die Hard 2 on my list of movies to watch in a snow storm. It only seemed right that there be a place for Die Hard: With a Vengeance on this list. Yes, it essentially just rehashes the same premise as the original Die Hard, except it takes place across a city instead of a skyscraper, but it's packaged in a way that it feels different enough. Probably because in this one we have Jeremy Irons leading John McClane around town chasing after riddles and clues. For the record, it does always bother me that they don't explain the water jug puzzle in its entirety. I know the solution, but since they skip past a few steps in the puzzle, every time I finish watching the movie, I end up reworking that puzzle just to remind myself what the solution is. 

CQ

Roman Coppola may be the most underrated of all the Coppolas. There's a good chance you're familiar with his work, even if you don't know it. He co-wrote The Darjeeling Limited, and Moonrise Kingdom and was a second unit director on some of Wes Anderson's films. He directed the music video for Wyclef Jean's "We Trying to Stay Alive."He was also was the man behind the eerie and theatrical special effects in Bram Stoker's Dracula, which his father directed. Despite this, it seems he's still a bit  obscure, except to the most die hard film aficionados.

Back in 2001, Roman wrote and directed a film called CQ. So far it's been the only film he's directed, although he is currently working on another one. CQ is a story about an American filmmaker named Paul, who lives in France in 1969, and is working as an editor on a film called Dragonfly, a sort of Barbarella-inspired spy movie. At the same time, he's working on a side project of his own, recording every aspect of his day-to-day life. On the one hand, Paul's career advances as the producers of Dragonfly start going through directors. On the other hand, his relationship with his girlfriend starts to fall apart because of his obsession with documenting his life instead of filming it.

Leading the cast as Paul is actor Jeremy Davies, who you might recognize as Daniel Faraday from Lost. (Now that I think of it, he spends most of his time in both roles wearing the same black tie and white button down shirt.) He's perfect for the role, capturing the vibe of a man swept up in the free spirit vibe of the 60's but who hasn't lost himself in it. This is in contrast to the actors playing the other directors for the film within the film. Gerard Depardieu plays a director more concerned with making a political statement than making a film that's profitable, and Jason Schwartzman more or less plays his own interpretation of Andy Warhol.



I'm a bit disappointed that in the years since this was released we haven't seen more of Angela Lindvall,  who does double duty performing as Valentine, the leading lady of Dragonfly, as well as performing in character as the spy Dragonfly. As Valentine, she comes off as a warm hearted girl next door, but as Dragonfly she's an absolute sexbomb. It's impressive how she creates a character that feels completely natural when she's supposed to be off set, but when she's supposed to be playing the spy it almost makes you wish they made an actual feature film out of Dragonfly.

One of my favorite things about this film is the visual aspect of it. Not content to just set the movie in the 60's, Roman Coppola gives this film the look and feel of a movie made in the 60's. I don't mean some cheezy homage to 60's cinema either. If it weren't for the copyright notice, you might honestly think this was shot around the same time as The Pink Panther or the Sean Connery James Bond movies. He absolutely nails the color and lighting. Complimenting the visuals is a score by French psychedelic band Mellow, that again, feel perfect for the era.

Roman Coppola plays around with blurring the line between reality and fantasy. Sometimes we the audience will be shown a scene from the film within the film, presented as a fully edited and scored work, only for it to abruptly transition to the crew working on the film. Other times, the audience gets to go along with Paul's daydreams as he ponders what he wants to do with the film, letting characters from the film mix with his real life. It lends itself to the sort of wackiness one might expect based on Coppola's collaborations with Wes Anderson, if the wackiness of a Wes Anderson movie were somehow contained to one character.

As I mentioned before, Dragonfly, the film being made by the characters in CQ, feels like it should be a stand alone move. Even though you only see about fifteen minutes of footage from Dragonfly within CQ, it's so well thought out you get the sense that somebody in the 60's made such a movie from start to finish. Knowing this, the producers threw in two cuts of the film as bonus features on the DVD. One is supposed to be Paul's version of the film, the other is supposed to be Gerard Depardieu's character's version.

All in all, CQ is a worthwhile movie checking out if you're at all a fan of The Darjeeling Limited, the Coppola family in general, or just movies with that 1960's mod vibe to them.

Top 10 Scary Movies

I felt the need to throw my hat in the ring for a Top Scary Movies list because every year I come across lists that mention the same old movies that aren't really scary at all. Personally, I'm still trying to figure out why the original Wicker Man is on so many lists, because it's not suspenseful or terrifying, and it's not like there's anything frightening about Britt Ekland dancing about naked. Yes, I realize I omitted a few genuine classics, such as Alien, but I decided to shed a bit of light on one or two you may have missed out on.

10. Silent Hill
Okay, it is based on a video game, but unlike most other video game adaptations, this one came out pretty good. In Silent Hill a mother named Rose wakes up in an abandoned town after wrecking her car. The town is covered in ash that falls like snow, the road she drove in on now leads to a gaping void,  her daughter is missing and at first the only other person she can find is a police officer who doesn't seem to grasp of what's going on.

This movie comes in at number ten because I'll concede that it won't be everybody's cup of tea. It's twisted and surreal, and it gets very strange very quickly. The town of Silent Hill turns out to be populated by religious fanatics who think Rose's daughter is some sort of evil, and every now and then the world becomes a darker, more twisted form of itself and bizarre creatures come out of everywhere to kill anything in sight. The whole atmosphere of the movie is extremely unconventional, and the monsters are are uniquely designed. Instead of goblins or demons, the creatures are faceless perversions of humans. The result is that the film doesn't visually fall victim to the usual horror movie tropes, and instead looks like unfamiliar territory. For that reason it's probably the closest thing I've ever seen on film that depicts what a truly unbound nightmare is like.

9. Joyride
You may have passed up on this movie when it first came out because it stars Paul Walker. You should check it out because it's co-written by J.J. Abrams. Steve Zahn and Paul Walker play brothers driving cross country who decide to play a prank on a random truck driver they started talking to over a CB radio. The driver doesn't take too kindly to their little joke. After the brother's pick up Paul Walker's girlfriend, the trio finds themselves relentlessly hounded by the driver no matter where they go.

Once the action gets going, it maintains the tension straight through the end of the movie. It may toe the line of plausibility every now and then, but there's enough suspense to get you to suspend your disbelief. As an added bonus for film buffs, the DVD of Joyride includes not just an alternate ending, but an entire alternate final act for the movie. The theatrical version is the best one, but it is fun to check out a version of the story that hits the same plot points but in a different way.

8. Nightwatch (1997)
There's several movies out there named Nightwatch. The one I'm referring to is the 1997 film starring Ewan McGregor. McGregor plays a law student who takes a job as a night security guard at a morgue. As if that weren't enough to deal with, it turns out a serial killer is at large, and the lead investigator, played by Nick Nolte becomes convinced that McGregor is the killer. McGregor, in turn, starts to suspect it may be his best friend, played by Josh Brolin.

This film does a great job of establishing how unsettling an environment the morgue is by starting with a scene where McGregor is shown the rounds he will have to make each night. When begins his first round of duty, you get a feeling of dread and isolation as you watch him go room to room, doing his check ins.

I would have put this movie higher on the list if the film spent most of it's time in the morgue, which I honestly found to be a creepier environment than the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. Unfortunately, as the serial killer investigation moves closer to the forefront, more scenes take place in the outside world and the solitary, confined mood dissipates as a result. On the plus side, the suspense picks up after the atmosphere dies down.

7. The Mist
Sometimes a B-movie premise can result in a top notch film when in the hands of a the right creative team. In The Mist, a story about a small town besieged by monsters becomes an allegory for the darkness of humanity due to the creative vision of Frank Darabont, who was most recently the show runner for season one of The Walking Dead.

We watch as the occupants of a small grocery store find themselves trapped inside when a strange, impenetrable mist rolls through town, and a man runs screaming into the store claiming that something in the mist is killing people. The monsters, which range from giant insects to carnivorous tentacles, do provide their share of scares, but the real horror comes when some of the people in the store start convincing themselves that they are being subjected to the wrath of God, and that the sinners must be sacrificed to the things in the mist. As the people whip themselves into a frenzy, you get a sense of the worst of human nature, made more terrifying by how convincing it feels.

6. Dawn of the Dead (2004)
This list would have been incomplete without a zombie movie, and there were many good choices but Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead proved to be my winner. I almost picked 28 Days Later, but passed because that film's director, Danny Boyle, has another movie on this list. Shaun of the Dead was close as well, but while it's a great film, I wanted to go with one that was outright scary.

Zack Snyder's version of Dawn starts out with an intense scene of a zombie outbreak at its peak. It mellows out for a bit while the survivors hide out in a mall, but the threat of danger is always in the background. As the characters start to get too complacent in their hideout, all hell breaks loose. I'll admit it's more suspenseful than scary, but either way, at the end of this movie your pulse will be racing.

For purists who don't like the fact I picked this over George Romero's version, I'm sorry, but the remake had better pacing and a better balance of horror and humor. Also, it didn't have the heavy handed social commentary of the original. (Okay. Consumers are like zombies. We get it. Move on already.) As for those who thought I should have gone with Night of the Living Dead, just remember that Romero is more likely to get royalties from Zack Snyder's movie than the original Night. (Due to a legal technicality, the original Night is now in public domain.)

5. The Descent
The Descent is another example of a B-movie premise that turned out to be far better, and far scarier, than it had any right to be. A group of women go on a cave expedition only to find themselves hunted by a legion of subterranean creatures. It sounds like it should have "direct to video" written all over it, but writer/director Neil Marsall did a great job of crafting a thriller that slowly transitions from a tale of friends having a safe little adventure to one of everything going horribly wrong. It really plays upon the viewer's sense of claustrophobia, as the women realize they are hopelessly lost deep underground and are being slowly stalked by things they can't see. Like in the original Alien, the scares don't come as much from the monster attack themselves, but from knowing they're out there.

4. Fear(s) of the Dark
This movie might not be for everybody either, because it's heavy on the artsy side. In other words, it's French, animated and in black and white. Fear(s) is an compilation of short horror stories, interwoven with each other and is a film that almost certainly needs to be watched in the dark, alone, and late at night for maximum effect.

My one gripe with this movie is that they didn't re-dub the lines for the American release. Having to watch the movie with subtitles slightly ruins the creepy minimalism of some of the stories. However, some of the stories are so minimalist that there is no dialogue.

The stories range from very literal to very abstract, but none of them are about things jumping out at the viewer. Instead, you'll get a slow sense of dread that builds throughout the movie so that when the credits roll, you won't feel safe, but you can't put your finger on why.

3. Shallow Grave
As I mentioned before, I passed on including 28 Days Later on this list, only because director Danny Boyle's debut film was so much more intense. The first time I saw this, I had to double check that it wasn't a remake of a Hitchcock movie because I honestly didn't think any modern directors had it in them to make such an intense suspense thriller set in such a limited environment.

In Shallow Grave, a trio of roommates, two of them played by Ewan McGregor and Christopher Eccleston, decide to take on a fourth roommate. Not long after moving in, they find their new roommate dead with a suitcase full of money. Rather than going to the police, they decide to desecrate the body to hide his identity, bury him and keep the money. When it comes time to mutilate the corpse, they draw straws to decide who has to do the deed, and after the job is done, that lucky individual starts to lose it.

The tension buildup through this movie is slow, but unrelenting. Once the protagonists cross the line by getting rid of their new roommate's body, you as the viewer know that there will be consequences, but you don't know exactly what they will be. It's hard to describe the movie in too much detail without ruining its many twists and turns. The story doesn't rest on one big twist. Instead you watch the characters slowly descend into paranoia towards each other, causing them to behave in strange, unexpected ways. Shallow Grave may not exactly be a scary movie, but its suspense will definitely leave you on edge.

2. Session 9
Lets get this out of the way. Yes, this movie stars a pre-CSI: Miami David Caruso. Don't think that means Session 9 is at all anything corny. In fact, it's very much the opposite.

A team of asbestos removers gets a contract to clean out mental asylum in Maryland, but as they spend more time in the asylum their they start to unravel as individauls. In a way, Session 9 is a haunted house movie, but it isn't clear if there's anything supernatural at play. What is clear is that there is just something wrong about the asylum and that it's having an effect on the removal team.

Unlike the previously mentioned Nightwatch, this movie takes full advantage of its setting and keeps most of the action contained in the asylum, all of which builds up to a truly disturbing ending. It's worth mentioning that this film was actually filmed in a genuine abandoned asylum. The real life location has since been turned into a series of upscale apartments, which prompted one blogger to make a point of watching this cult horror movie in the building it was filmed in.

1. The Ring
The first time I saw this movie, I went in with little to no idea of what it was about. If you haven't seen it yet I almost don't want to reveal any of the plot to you so that you can go in completely unprepared. In my book, this is easily the most frightening movie to come out in the last decade.

I suppose what made this movie so terrifying is that it preys upon a fear that when you watch disturbing imagery, it won't just unsettle you. It can actually harm you. It definitely helps that the cinematography in this movie is simply incredible. Dreary, ordinary visuals are mixed with the surreal resulting in a movie that is both beautiful and haunting. Perhaps it's greatest strength is the way that it messes around with horror movie tropes, taking familiar scenarios and giving them unfamiliar twists.

What's most impressive about this film is that it manage to pull off genuinely scaring the hell out of the viewer with a PG-13 rating. It just proves that to be scary, a movie doesn't have to have buckets of gore.

Remaking Death at a Funeral

Too Soon?

I had originally meant to do an article about Frank Oz's 2007 comedy Death at a Funeral on my Overlooked Movies blog. It was a nice simple British farce that had the potential to be the sleeper hit of it's year, but never got the promotional push it needed. Simple premise. The patriarch of a slightly dysfunctional British family passes away. A funeral is held. Antics ensue.

Then I found out they had remade it. Let me restate that. The movie only came out in 2007, and there's a remake.

As much crap as people give studios over remakes, there are admittedly valid reasons for doing it: the movie is old, obscure, foreign or a director wants to re-interpret the original. It takes the right combination of these factors for a remake to work, but a movie being old is usually an important one. Audiences don't mind revisiting the same stories, just as long as the original isn't still fresh in their minds.

Foreign films get a bit more leeway. Sometimes the premise of a movie could be good, but it's so filled with local cultural references that American audiences wouldn't understand them. Or, since foreign movies tend to have a stigma as being "art house" movies, it's sometimes better to remake the movie and market it to a wider audience if a movie's premise is too mainstream to be considered "arty".

It's why there probably would probably be an uproar if a movie like Amelie were to be remade today. It may be almost a decade old, but it still resonates with the art house crowd. At the same time probably nobody raised a fuss when the Spanish horror film [Rec] was remade as Quarantine less than a year after the original's release, because it's the sort of lowbrow horror movie that doesn't work as well mired in subtitles.

While Death at a Funeral is technically a foreign movie, it was still in English. Not only that, but it was made to cater to as wild an audience as possible. Despite being a British movie, none of the actors' accents are too hard to understand for Americans, and there aren't any references that you have to be a BBC America aficionado to get. Hell they even cast American actor Alan Tudyk in a role.

Everybody loves Alan Tudyk.

It's not like the British version was an amateur production either. There might be a weak argument for remaking it so soon if the original was in some way unpolished, but Death at a Funeral was every bit a professional production as any Hollywood movie.

If anything, doing a remake so quickly after the original is like telling the cast and crew, "Good job, but we're going to hire some more famous people to do it better than you did." Actually, there's one exception. They did cast the Peter Dinklage in both films as the father's secret midget lover. So either the producers of the American version really liked his performance in the original or there's only one short person in Hollywood.

There is no reason for remaking an English language movie this soon. It took them 12 years to turn the comedy The Dinner Game into the upcoming film Dinner for Schmucks, and the original was in French. They could have just translated the dialogue directly and pushed it out a year after the original's release, but it got the intermediary time it deserved.

I really hope that the instant remake doesn't catch on as a new trend in Hollywood. The Onion once joked that a bigger budget remake of Mr. & Mrs. Smith was in the works just a year after it's release. Now I can't help but wonder if producers have their eyes on remaking American indie films. Does it really seem that far fetched anymore that some producer might be thinking about making Whip It again, except this time with Miley Cyrus in the lead role?

Some movies need more time to find their audiences than others; a fact that studios seem to overlook in their apparent rush to get two good weeks out of a movie in theaters before it's forgotten until it resurfaces on home video. If this formula was used in the past we probably wouldn't have heard of movies like Shawshank Redemption, a movie that famously didn't become the classic it is today until well after its DVD release. Instead of remaking movies, maybe Hollywood should work on fostering audience the movies that have already been made after they've been released on DVD.

Overlooked Movies: Little Nemo

So one thing I decided I’d do when I started this blog was to shed some light on movies that never really made it into the public consciousness, despite being thoughtfully crafted, and just plain enjoyable to watch. Today, I thought I’d cover the anime film Little Nemo, seeing as how I finally got to watch it over the weekend. If you want to see a trailer for it, click here.

Odds are that if you remember this film at all, it’s probably in the form of a half remembered advertisement you saw as a kid for one of those “non-Disney” cartoons we all shied away from. It never did get what one would call a major release, and even in the days of where old anime classics experienced a revival on DVD as anime became more popular in America, this film never got caught up in the hubbub.

For those unfamiliar with the character, Little Nemo began as a comic strip created by Winsor McCay in the early 20^th century. The strip chronicled Nemo’s journeys through a fantastical realm known as Slumberland, and each strip usually ended with him waking up and falling out of bed. The strip was also notable for it’s brilliant colors and surrealistic imagery. Generally, they took up an entire page of the comic pages. (On a side note, supposedly one of the reasons Bill Waterson retired from writing Calvin & Hobbes was because he wanted to draw his comic in the style of Little Nemo, but newspapers wanted something smaller and with panels that could be more easily rearranged.)

The movie was produced by Japanese anime studio Tokyo Movie Shinsha, but was largely worked on by American talents such as Ray Bradbury, Chris Columbus (famous for Home Alone and the first two Harry Potter movies) and the Sherman Brothers, who previously worked on music for several Disney films. Despite being made in 1989, it didn’t make its way stateside until 1992. Strangely enough, the video game adaptation made its way stateside before that.

As for the plot of the movie, I’m going to be honest. It’s not exactly Disney. Even when Disney was in its pre-Little Mermaid slump, it was putting out stuff with more character development than this. The story is pretty simple. One night Nemo is visited in his bed by the personal entourage of Morpheus, the King of Dreams. The king requests that he comes to Slumberland to be his daughter’s playmate. He doesn’t explore Slumberland too long before a mischievous character named Flip accidentally gets Nemo to unleash an evil known as the Nightmare, and naturally Nemo’s the one who has to stop it.

I say it’s a simple story because there’s never really any motivation given for the characters actions. Morpheus’s invitation to Nemo is completely arbitrary (not to mention the level of responsibility he gets entrusted with) and there’s no reason given for why Flip creates the amount of havoc he does, other than it helps move the story along.

What the film lacks in story, it certainly makes up in style. The film manages to effortlessly toe the line of depicting a world that is strange and surreal, without confusing the viewer. The world in which the story is set frequently transforms into something completely different in a way that perfectly mimics the non sequitur nature of dreams. For example, the opening sequence has Nemo wake up in his bed, discovering he can fly it out the window. He flies around the city, but suddenly finds himself among unfamiliar ruins, hounded by a speeding train.

Even the non-surreal visuals are incredible. Slumberland, as depicted in the movie, is a world that resembles the most extravagant palaces of Europe if they were the size of entire cities. Then there’s the animation itself. Like many anime movies, everything is drawn with such fluid detail that even the way smoke is animated, it seems to have character.

Despite it’s simple story, the whole package is overall pretty enjoyable. I suspect that had I seen it as a kid, this movie would have been something I watched over and over. Although it’s clearly targeted for younger audiences, this movie is a good example of how to make a family film parents can enjoy that doesn’t involve slyly sneaking in “adult” references, or tries to hock some product to kids. Aside from a scene halfway through the movie where the Nightmare breaks into Slumberland, it’s as family friendly as one could ask for. Granted that scene in question is a bit freaky and I’m sure it would have given me bad dreams as a kid. In fact, I think they cut it out of the initial American release, but it’s not that bad.

Unfortunately, Little Nemo is still a bit hard to find, so unless you use Netflix, Blockbuster.com, or your local library has a good inter-library loan system, it’s going to be a hard one to track down. On the plus side, it’s pretty cheap to buy, as Amazon.com has it listed for about $8. Yes, that’s twice the cost of a rental, but if you’re an anime fan or a parent looking for a quality family film, it’s worth owning.

Hopefully in upcoming years this movie will gain some level of notoriety and be easier to find.