Movies - Live Free or Die Hard

There's not a lot to do when in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, so The Great Organiser and I took in a movie: Live Free or Die Hard. Despite being totally preposterous, it's honestly quite a lot of fun. The movie is supposed to be about John McClane, but he never really shows up. Bruce Willis gets called "John" throughout the film, but in truth Bruce is just Bruce and that's good enough for the purposes of an action film that pretends to be nothing else. In spite of a smattering of desultory gestures towards character development, Bruce is served up to the audience as a relatively complete package, bald head and all. The director, Len Wiseman, understands that Bruce is a known quantity; we know what we want from him and he gets down to business and delivers. It's not a perfect film by any measure, not nearly as perfect as the first Die Hard, which stands to this day as perhaps the definitive text-book action movie, but it meets its own expectations and even exceeds them. Pixel-driven special effects are ditched in favour of good ol' stunts and props and the script, despite being obviously written as a feature removed from the Die Hard oeuvre and later shoehorned into a vehicle for Bruiser, moves along at a decent clip. Think about it too much and it all falls apart but not to nearly the same extent as Transformers. In this instance it actually makes sense.

Ratatouille - Good Viewing

I took in Ratatouille on Sunday night and left the theatre a very satisfied movie goer.

Last year's Cars was the first Pixar movie I'd decided to dodge at the cinema—it looked a little too trite for my tastes, but I've since been told that it held up pretty well. Ratatouille, on the other hand, was not going to slip past me. The main reason for that is the director: Brad Bird.

The Incredibles was a masterful achievement, doing what Pixar does best by embedding relatively complex subtexts beneath a visually stunning layer of computer wizardry and well paced action. Moreover the script was polished to a gleam, and the characters evoked a genuine visceral engagement. It touched upon themes of exceptionalism—about how when everybody's special then nobody's special. It's a theme that Brad Bird has further built upon in Ratatouille, and much like The Incredibles he's done it with a deft hand that skillfully avoids the kind of violent message bludgeoning so often found in almost any other big budget animated film.

The choice of a rat as the protagonist is an interesting one. Rats are nearly universally reviled as the harbingers of death and disease (thank you, Black Death), so the use of a rat as both the main character and as an aspiring haute cuisine chef throws a prejudicial gauntlet down squarely in front of the audience. It's a direct challenge to the viewer's preconceptions of assigned stations and roles. Rats are horrible, pestilent creatures. Rats should never come near food or else they'll riddle it with their disease. Rats are borderline demonic and kept as pets by creeps and weirdos. To plonk one down in the middle of the kitchen of a schmicko restaurant is the ultimate heresy. We're just not culturally trained to readily accept a rat as a suitable subject for the kind of heartwarming anthropomorphism found in Ratatouille. And that's the film's primary genius. In order to accept Remy as a chef, so many of our other preconceived notions about how hereditary elements factor into our development in life are called into question. One of the main theses of film is that ultimately one's pedigree counts for nothing, and when all is said, done and counted it's the merits of the individual that really spell the difference between one who can cook and one who can be a celebrated chef. Linguini, despite being Gasteau's son, is an awful cook. Remy, despite being a rat, is an outstanding chef.

I'm digging too deep, I know.

There's an awful lot to say about this film—wet fur is evidently the latest effect that impressed the animators at Pixar the most; the character acting, especially by Skinner, is better than most living, breathing people; the commentary on the tension between personal limitations and aspirations is powerful yet not forceful—but it's more than space will allow. Just as with The Iron Giant and The Incredibles, Brad Bird and Pixar have delivered another near-perfect kids film that's more than suitable for the shorties, but serves up a whole lot more for the older set as well.

Update: Brad Bird and Patton Oswalt appeared on NPR's Fresh Air on 28 June. I was grateful to hear them discuss some of what I crapped on about in my post. It's also worth it for Patton's routine about Black Angus commercials. Check it out.

It's Probably Not Worth It

Were you considering watching Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End? If not then you've probably made the right choice. It makes even less sense than Spider-Man 3 and that's an achievement in itself. Characters switch allegiances based on motivations buried so deep in the frantic on-screen madness and mayhem that any attempt to keep track of it all just makes for a nasty headache. I gave up trying after the second apparent double cross, which supposedly wasn't a double-cross after all, or was it? I couldn't tell and more importantly I didn't care. By that stage I was content to settle back into a seat that, after about the one and a half hour mark, was slowly turning my bum numb and enjoy the spectacle. And Johnny Depp. Without him there'd be nothing to watch but a lot of genuinely amazing special effects. From a technical perspective the these Pirates films are masterpieces, but when judged as satisfying summer entertainment all but the first installment falls horribly short. No pun intended, but how did they run so far aground after such a fun start? Cynical, money-minded bean counters at Disney might have much to answer for, but realistically the blame probably falls at the feet of the producers who sought to over stuff the last two films in the franchise in order to create what they thought would be the consummate summer film extravaganza. Well kiddies, sometimes less is more.

Grindhouse: Thoughts

Julia and I caught Grindhouse last night and I feel compelled to offer a few comments. Firstly, Robert Rodriguez turned out a great effort with his guns-and-gore fest, Planet Terror. Robert's got a sound understanding of what makes trash cinema so enjoyable. Planet Terror dishes up the perfect measure of violence so over the top you have to laugh, comical, pustule-squirting gore and troubled, buxom women. I'd swear the cinema management was pumping the scent of tasty barbecue ribs into the theater in order to heighten the experience. I'm serious, the smell of barbecue. See the movie and you'll understand why it makes sense.

Then there's Tarantino's entrant, Death Proof. There's no question that Tarantino can make good films—Pulp Fiction; Reservoir Dogs; even Kill Bill; they're classics—but this time Quentin has let himself go to seed. The output of toils in this instance reflects the character he self-consciously plays in the film: sleazy, lecherous and altogether too self-impressed. Death Proof runs about 45 minutes too long—it's a 90 minute movie—due to forced attempts on Tarantino's behalf to jam in protracted scenes of his now-famous dialog and a general incoherence of the plot—what are the drivers motivations? Why should we care about Jungle Julia and her slutty cohorts? Ultimately Death Proof plays like a mildly amusing, and admittedly viscerally enjoyable, female revenge masturbation fantasy of a tired, old man. I expected more.