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Thursday, May 29, 2014

Maleficent






What makes a work of art?
Is it the motif, the way the colours blend to create the illusion of light?

Perhaps it is the story behind the painting, what the artist was trying to tell the observers.

What makes a true work of art is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, what you find shallow and ugly might mezmerise and intrigue someone else.


In the case of Maleficent, artistry definitley outweighed story. While the photography and music blended perfectly with the beautiful scenery, the story rarely made me care. It just wasn't told good enough. This could be blamed on the script itself, but since this is merely a re-imagening of a classic and very loved tale, it's failiure to capture my attention lies in the hands of first time director Robert Stromberg.

Having previously mainly worked with visual effects on such movies as Pans labyrinth and Pirates of the carribbean: At worlds end, it becomes clear that he is much more interested in the visual rather than the cerebral.

The first 20 minutes are amazing. We get to see the magical world of Maleficent in all its glory and it might be one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen.
As soon as the story kicks into gear though, the movie becomes slow, boring and highly derivative. Some scenes goes on way too long and it almost borders on the ridiculous.
The moral of the story is revealed very early on but The spin on the original story works good and it even managed to make me tear up at one point. The pacing is way off though and, for what sometimes felt like an eternity, I sat there wondering when the story would pick itself up again.
The second act is close to completely unnecessary. We get the same scene of Maleficent watching over baby Aurora again and again. There is some plot development but the movie, even at just under 100 minutes, is in need some serious trimming.

The actors doesn't help either. While most of them do a good enough job, especially Elle Fanning who brings a perfect youthful innocence to the role of Aurora, Stromberg forgets to restrain the actors when the script calls for it. This is very evident in the scenes with Sharlto copley who constantly overdoes it as the mad king Stefan.
His acting is all over the place and his scottish accent is horrible, it was funny in that one scene in The A-team but it doesn't work for an entire movie. He can be a brilliant actor (District 9)
but he needs a director who can show him the way to perfection, especially when he plays the bad guy.

Angelina Jolie is good as the titular Maleficent. She plays a very different role than what we are used to see her in, and most of the time it works. There are a few scenes where the acting is close to laughable but the good outweighs the bad. She is the center of attention for most of the film and is the only character who is given any sort of emotional depth. It would seem almost impossible to convincingly turn one of cinemas most evil villains into a hero, but Jolie manages to pull it off better than I thought most other actors could. On the visual side she definitely brings it, she is both hideous and beautiful at the same time, and manages to portray both the hero and the villain in the same character.

What it all boils down to is this, Maleficent is a beautiful piece of cinema. The camerawork and visual effects creates some of the most stunning pictures I have ever seen, but the direction, writing and to some degree the acting work against the beauty and turns it into something mundane.


In the end it's all just pretty pictures. Very, very pretty pictures...



Tuesday, May 27, 2014

The timeparadox, or why Days of future past didn't make sense






Before we begin, I would like to say that this article is just for the laughs. Do not take it to seriously since it will have some plotholes and inconsistensies.


X-men: Days of future past was a good movie. It was very entertaining and well made, except for one thing. The script.

Normally, if the script is as bad as it was here, I would hate the movie with every fibre of my being, but DoFP was so good I almost managed to look past the horrible plotholes.
Most people online agree that the movie was awesome, some of them acknowledge the plotholes, but no one has even mentioned the one thing that really perplexed me.

How can Trask be alive in 2006 if he died in 1973?

I can already hear people screaming obscenities about how ignorant I am, but just hear me out.

Let's begin in 1962. First class. Charles Xavier starts the school for gifted children. Erik Lensherr goes around the world killing nazis. Together they help the humans avert the Cuban missile crisis, but after that they go their separate ways.

1973. Having left Eriks band of mutant thugs, Mystique goes after a man called Bolivar Trask. He is building a robot that can target the mutant gene in anyone who has it. These "sentinels" are meant to help the humans against the mutant threat. Mystique finds Trask in Paris and shoots him dead. This fuels the anti-mutant movement and the sentinels are deployed in full force. For decades the sentinel hunt down almost every mutant on the planet, but then they start targeting humans who will give birth to a mutant.
By the year 2023 there is almost no humans or mutants left. Xavier, together with Lensherr, Logan, Ororo Monroe and a few other hatch a plan to end the sentinel threat and even undo all that has been. They send Logan back in time by projecting his 2023 concious into his 1973 body. There he has to find Xavier and together they will stop Mystique from sealing the fate of the world.

They manage to stop Mystique. Human-mutant relations are shaky but at least there won't be any sentinels. Xavier continues with the school for gifted children and soon forms the first X-men. All is relatively calm until the beginning of the second millenia. Senator Kelly, staunch anti-mutant, proposes that since the mutants are rapidly growing in numbers, a mutant registry should be put to use. This is not something that Lensherr is particularly fond of, given his time in the Nazi concentration camp. He decides that senator kelly should have a taste of hus own medicine, so he simply kodnaps the senator and...well you know the rest.

What I am getting at here is that the 2023 we see in Days of future past is actually the first timeline, the original if you will, that begins with first class and Trask being shot. When Xavier and Logan stops Mystique from killing Trask in 1973 Logan wakes up in a 2023 where the Sentinels never got activated and everything was peachy until 2000 when Senator Kelly...well you know.

All this time we have been watching the outcome of Logan timetraveling in Days of future past. We have been watching the alternate timeline ever since the first X-men movie.

Of course this isn't a 100% airtight theory. If it was then at least Jean Grey and Scott Summers should still be dead at the end of Days of future past, Xavier could be alive since we see someone talking with Xaviers voice in the end of The last stand.

Another plothole would be that we see glimpses of the "alternate" timeline when the 1973 Xavier reads Logans mind, but the only thing we actually see that could work against this theory is when he kills Phoenix.

What they should have done was to show the sentinels killing everybody throughout the years. It could have been a great montage set in the 70:s, 80:s and 90:s. That would have been the perfect way to set this movie apart from the first three but still not ereasing them from history. Xavier says to Logan that they have a lot of catching up to do at the end and that's when he tells Logan about the first three movies.

So there you have it, my interpretation of the Days of future past. It's not meant to be taken seriously, just as a fun excersise of your imagination.



I should point out that X-men Apocalypse is not accounted for in this theory, we'll have to wait another two years to see how that one fucks up everything by being set in the 80:s

Friday, May 23, 2014

X-men: Days of future past






In order to review this movie with any kind justice, I will have to spoil some details. Trying not to reveal to much of the plot of course, but if you're very particular about details I would recomend you watch the movie before reading this.

SPOILERS AHEAD. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.


In the future, robots, called sentinels, have taken over. They began by targeting all humans with the mutant gene, then they started killing people who carried the gene without having any powers. All hope seemed lost. Only a few X-men are still alive. Among them are Professor Xavier (miraculously alive after being obliterated in The last stand) who have one last idea that could save the world from the sentinels taking over completely.

By sending Wolverine back into time, or at least his concious, to stop a man from being killed, he can reverse history and change the future...

So, before we go into what I actually thought of the movie, I have to adress the faults or at least what I found faulty.

The script was horrible. No, horrible is to strong. The script was good, just full of plot holes and inconsistensies.

First of all, how can Xavier be alive?
He was turned to dust back in The last stand. Of course we have the post credit scene in The last stand that sort of explains him being alive, but that is a very weak explanation.
To base the resurgence of a main character on a hidden on a post credit scene is mot a valid decision by the screenwriters. How many people take the time to sit through the entire credit roll? I actually didn't see it until this week when I re-watched them all.
Shouldn't his resurrection have been better explained in this movie? Why do they just assume that everyone saw that scene?

And then there is the case of the sentinels. Where do they come from, why are they never mentioned in the earlier films? Acording to the story they tell you in Days of future past, the sentinels were created after Bolivar Trask, the man who invented them, was killed by Mystique. This was in 1973. Now, we know that the first X-men movie takes place in the not too distant future. This was in 2000 so the not to distant future must be 2005 something?
The last stand takes place a couple of years later, around 2006-7 maybe?

Then we have The Wolverine, the 2013 stand alone that ended with a tie in to Days of future past. There we see Professor X and Magneto meeting up with Wolverine some time in 2013. In that scene they seem to know something, they hint at what we see Days of future past.

Days of future past have a pretty clear date when it takes place, 2023. So somewhere between 2013 and 2020 sort of, the Sentinels appear and starts killing everyone.
The project have been in progress since the 70:s though and back then they already had working prototypes. How could the sentinels just come from nowhere and take over in a matter of years? What happened between 2013 and 2020?

They could have explained this but instead they gloss over it by simply saying, the sentinels came and took shit over and now they rule the world.
Then they do something that I really can't get a grip on. In the last stand, a man called Trask is sitting around being a typical government man. He is played by Bill Duke and is alive and well in 2006-ish.
In the Days of future past, Bolivar Trask is played by Peter Dinklage. One could aegue that this is only a change of actors, nothing to take notice of, but the Peter Dinklage Trask is killed in 1973.

At this time, one would assume that the screenwriters are ignoring The last stand. They have Xavier alive and Trask is dead, but then we se flashes of Wolverines past. We see him in WWII and we also se him killing Phoenix, wich happened in The last stand. This means that the events of The last stand happened and are part of history, so how can Trask be alive in 2006 but dead in 1973?
This creates a very interesting time paradox, wich is way to complex to discuss now. I will however write an article about this on the not to distant future (haha!)

These are huge plotholes. Not something that they could just ignore. Trask may be a small role in The last stand, but he was still there, they mention his name several times.

These things annoy me.
I am sitting there marveling at the acting, the directing, the action, the setpieces, all of it is borderline spectacular. James MacAvoy really shines as a broken man only trying to forget the past. Jennifer Lawrence takes her rendition of Mystique to new heights, adding a lot of emotions to a previously one dimensional character. Evan Peters stands out as newcomer Peter"Quicksilver"Maximof though. For the brief moments he is in the movie, he owns the screen.

Despite all these great performances, the script keeps ruining every scene for me. The plotholes won't let go of me and they stop me from enjoying the movie too the fullest.

I rarely feel so torn about a movie. Often a film is good, the script is good, acting, photography, everything. If the movie is bad, it is often bad across the board.
Days of future past is a great movie...except for the script, wich really doesn't hold up at all to the level of quality the rest of the movie displays.


After spending the entire week trying to pump myself up to like this movie. I am now left in a position where I can't decide wether it was a complete failiure or a good way to spend two hours. I ask myself, why I do this? The worst part is that I will probably do it all over when X-men Apocalypse comes out in a couple of years.
For some reason I keep coming back to these movies, even though they keep dissapointing me.

Weird...

Thursday, May 22, 2014

X-men: First class






Prequels. Everybody who knows me will call me a hypocrite after this, but I'm not going to lie 100%, just a little bit.

I hate prequels, not all prequels but most of them

You sit there and look at these pictures of stuff you already know, because they discussed all of this in the earlier movies.

A perfect example is Terminator: salvation. For three movies we were told about the war between man and machine and how the machines were losing so they sent a terminator back in time to kill the human leader before he was even born. He, the leader,finds out about this and sends back the man who will become his father to stop this terminator. Very confusing but they spend a considerable amount of time to explain this in the first three movies.

We know exactly how the war went and we know how it began and how it ended, so why make a movie about it? Many will argue that the same can be said about the star wars prequels and they are right...but it's Fucking star wars man,even if I wish the second one wasn't.

So here I sit and talk about things totally unrelated to First class
Let's discuss why I don't like that one instead.

Unlike many prequels First class actually tells us a story we haven't heard before, and it does so with great effort. Top notch actors, a great retro feel and spectacular action scenes. Still, there is something not right about all this. A lot of details doesn't make sense. Like the fact that Mystique and Xavier are surrogate siblings.

Now, keep in mind that I have not read the comics
I am basing my knowledge solely on the movies and there this doesn't make sense.

And all these other mutants that are in this movie, they are never mentioned in the original trilogy, so it's easy to assume that they will die quite soon.


The movie, as a standalone piece, is great. A great piece of action cinema, but as a part of the cinematic X-men universe it is very derivative. It is setting up a bunch of plots that we already know the end to, and it gives us characters we can't get attached to because we know they will be disposed of. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh, but that is why I don't like prequels, when if they are very good


Wednesday, May 21, 2014

X-men: The last stand





MAJOR SPOILER AHEAD. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED



In the scene where Wolverine stands in front of Xaviers monument, and Phoenix starts messing with his head, there is a bug crawling on his jacket. That bug is a perfect metaphor for how I feel about this movie. Something is wrong, creeping around inside and all over this movie but I can't quite put my finger on it

It's not really such a terrible movie as people say it is. It's definitely the worst of the three, and much of that has to do with the change of director. Bryan Singer, the guy who directed the first two, grew along with the movie. The flaws he displayed as a director on the first one were the strenghts of the second. If he would have been the one directing The last stand, it would have been the culmination of an ending six years in the making, but instead they chose Bret Ratner.

Not only was he a novice when it came to comic book movie, he was also notorious for ruining franchises. He made a mess of Red dragon, even if that is still an ok movie and he even ruined his own franchise, Rush hour. The first one was a good Jackie Chan vehicle, but the second and third were complete trainwrecks.

Why on earth would you hire a director that is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be bad at directing to finish your very well recieved trilogy?

The writers were also moved around. David Hayter who was mainly responsible for the screenplays of the first two, was left out and instead Zak Penn and Simon Kinberg (the latter also being the main writer on Days of future past) take over.

Once again, the movie isn't being handled with the kind of respect you would expect for such a hype machine.

So what is it that is actually bad about the movie? Well, first and foremost, Brett Ratners style does not suit an action movie. He moves everything way to slow and sometimes feel uninterested in the characters. Making Wolverine cry twice and run from a fight goes directly against the very nature of the character.

Then the script takes way to many liberties with the intellectual property. I know this was supposed to be the end, but that does not justify killing main characters of screen even if it's just Cyclops. Once again he iss swooped to the side and for good reason, James Marsden really can't act or at least not in these movies.

But for all it's faults it gets one thing right. The whole plot sorrounding the "cure".
While most of the mutants disagree with the idea of calling their mutation a "disease" I fully understand why some would want to be cured. A perfect example is made of Rouge and her love triangle sub plot with Bobby and, former one scene appearence and now fully fledged character, Kitty Pride.

Rouge is having a tough time coping with the fact that she can't even touch the one she loves. Bobby, who for some reason becomes the target of her anger despite him saying in the last movie that he was ok with it and still is in the third, becomes somewhat enamored with Kitty. Rouge sees this and it realise what she has to do.

In the case of Rouge, her mutation isn't what I would call a gift. Everyone tells her it is, but what benefits has it given her? None. It has only made her feel left out, and it is physically stopping her from ever touching a human being. Why would she want to keep such a curse, out of pride? Principle? No, in my eyes her life would be vastly improved by her being "cured".

This is an important point that the script wants to stress more, but it gets a bit sweeped under the carpet to make place for the final battle scene. A gigantic battlefield full of mutants, and somehow Ratner manages to make that scene boring as well.

In all honesty, The last stand isn't the worst movie ever. It does get hampered by some really horrible direction and some of the worst character treatment in the trilogy. What little it gets right is overshadowed by the force of a director that doesn't care and writers on a powertrip.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

X2 (X-men 2)






Sequels are always a gamble. The chance that you mess up and tarnish the reputation of your predecessor is huge, and in most cases that is...the case I guess. At the same time, there are a number of sequels who not only manages to equal the original, but also surpass it.

The dark knight, Skyfall, The empire strikes back, The godfather part II, Back to the future part II are just a few. X2, or X-men 2, also fall into that category.

X2 is vastly superior over X-men. It feels like the movie Bryan Singer, the director of both 1 and 2, wanted to make from the beginning.
Almost all of the characters have a reason to be on the movie this time. They are less like plot devices and more like real persons this time around, even if some of them are gravely under developed still.
In X2 we actually get to know the characters and by doing that, we care more about them. Rouge and Bobby (the guy who was in two scenes in the first movie) are on a relationship, but how do you...do that?
as Wolverine so elegantly puts it, causes some tension between the two and we get some much needed "un-super" plot in a story filled with way to much spectacular. Jean Grey is having trouble controlling her powers and is worried that as they grow, her powers will take over. We also get some insight into Wolverines origin as a person from his past makes an appearance.
Storm and Cyclops, however iconic they are, still feels like they have no place in the movie. Something that the screenwriters partly acknowledge by writing Cyclops out of the movie for an extended period of time. The action is also vastly improved in this one. More awesome setpieces and some truly spectacular scenes involving the new character called Kurt Wagner, but in the Munich circus he was known as the incredible nightcrawler...

If there was one problem I forgot to mention in my previous review, it was that X-men had too many plots going on at the same time. In X2, there are not as many, and instead we get some character developmemt and a more focused main plot, and evwn if it's still kind of ridiculous at times, it feels a lot more mature this time.

This is not a perfect movie though, not by a long shot. The direction is still way to blunt at times and plot details that the audience coild have easily figured out for them selves gets thrown in our faces over and over. They are minor things but they still made me scoff.

When I sat down to watch this movie, I was almost afraid to press play. Just like with the first X-men I remembered X2 as beomg an awesome flick and one of the better comic book adaptations to date, but I had been so disenfranchised whit the first one that I was wondering if the second one would be as bad.

X2 may not have been as good as I remember, that will probably be a eunning theme here, but it was a hell of a lot better than the first. More action, better characters, better script and over all a sense of more quality. A sense of quality that not many comic book movies have, even today...

Monday, May 19, 2014

X-men






X-men is considered one of the first movies in the new wave of "serious comic book adaptations". It has always been viewed with a candid lens and is much revered by me and others as a fine example of a comic book movie.
Now, 14 years later, X-men is on of the longest running comic book movie franchises and the latest installment is about to hit the theaters worldwide. So I decided to take a stroll down the nostalgia lane and refresh my memory, since it's been quite some time since i saw it. Now, a couple of hours later, I am deeply regretting my decision...

Everybody knows the story of the X-men right? Humans who have developed superhuman abilities and have to face a world ho either fear them or hate them. The movie chooses to tell the story from the perspective of two characters, mainly. James "Logan" Howlett and Anna "Rouge" Marie. Rouge discovers her "power" early on in the story and becomes the Avatar for the audience, or at least we are led to believe so. The focus quickly lands on Wolverine, who knows he has powers but doesn't realize he is just one of many.

There is the first problem of the movie. By not focusing on the character whom the audience connects with at first and instead gives us this uncaring oaf who doesn't really feel like leading man material. Don't get me wrong, Hugh Jackmans portrayal of Wolverine is stellar and has been throughout all of the movies, but he is not the kind of person we can latch on to.
They do try and "humanise" him and he does become more sympathetic towards the end of the movie, nut this is just a small problem with this movie.

When watching it again, it is like I am watching it for the first time but with a new set of eyes. Granted, I am at least 10 years older than the last time I watched it, and I have developed a more analytic taste in movies during this time. I realize that this movie that I have been putting up on a pedestal for all these years is actually kind of crappy.

The script is filled with incredibly tacky dialogue and nonsensical plot points. Allow me to spoil a little, Its been out´there for over a decade so I'll risk it. When Jean grey explains to Magneto that his machine won't turn the UN officials into mutants, but instead only kill them and make humans fear mutants even more. The movie cuts to the next scene where Magneto doesn't seem to have been in the last scene and promptly starts the machine thinking he will turn all the people into mutants. I mean...what the hell?

Another thing that I never noticed before now is how bad the acting is from most of the actors. Ian McKellen really chews the scenery whenever he is on screen. He really plays the maniacal super bad guy all the way. James Marsden must be one of the most boring actor throughout history, and add that to the already way too uptight Cyclops and you have successfully created a Zombie. He stumbles through the movie without much to do (like most of the other characters as well) and have no chance to express any feelings with his face since his eyes is constantly covered up.
Halle Berry as Storm is criminally underused. She has basically no reason for being in the movie, other than the fact that she is a prominent character in the comics.

Patrick Stewart as the prolific Dr. Charles Xavier is one of the few actors who does well, but the character of Xavier is so one dimensional that the only purpose he fills is to tell Wolverine (i.e the audience) about mutations and human mutant relations, and to answer any questions that might come up during the movie.

That is the main problem with the movie. Every character has a purpose, but after fulfilling that purpose early on in the script, they wander aimlessly through the rest only functioning as a plot device from time to time. the movie quickly becomes very empty and repetitive and never picks it self up. It doesn't even have any big setpieces to talk about. Sure, you have the train, the statue of liberty and the big scene on the lawn with all the police but they are all very brief and doesn't bring much action to the story.
When comparing it to the action spectacles of today, it feels really slow and pointless, But maybe that's just it. It has aged, we have set the standards so high and have become spoiled when it comes to action movies. If you don't blow up half a country and have world war three in space, we are just not interested.

Still, Die hard came out 12 years before X-men and is still one of the best action movies ever made. Maybe it's just that the feeling of this new and exciting genre that X-men kind of started has become saturated with to many sequels and spin-offs and copy cats that have consistently upped the ante and left its forefathers in the dust? Will I dislike X-men 2 just as much, even though I liked it better than the first one?

Only time will tell...

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Godzilla (2014)






Unlike this movie, I will keep my review short and sweet.


I did not like Godzilla (2014).

To be honest, my hopes were not that high to begin with. When I first saw that trailer where they jump out of the plane, I thought they were holding back on the themes of the movie and only showing us a spectacle.
The more I watched and read though, the more excited did I become and this morning I was actually really looking forward to this movie.

Now, an hour after the movie ended, I regret spending all that money and time on such a boring movie.

So, why didn't I like it? Well, to begin with, Godzilla barely appears for the first 90 minutes. Instead we have to look at this weird M.U.T.O (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) thing that looks like the lovechild of Clover and one of those spider monsters from Starship troopers.

But, any good creature feature is never actually about the creatures, it's about the humans trying to survive. Too bad that all the characters were portrayed as bland, faceless clichés that had basicly no redeeming qualities. The only good actors were Juliet Binoche and Bryan Cranston, but they only get about 20 minutes of screentime...combined.

Well, so they failed with the human aspect, there is at least a lot of monster fightscenes to enjoy. Sorry, not really.
There is of course one big epic fight that takes place in a burning San Fransisco, but the camera constantly cuts away from the action and continues to focus on the stonefaced humans. It's like they are trying to make the movie out to be this epic drama about love and undying loyalty and therefore only using the monsters as some kind of deus ex machina to drive the story forward. That leaves us with a monster movie with very little monster action, and no human protagonist that we care about.

So what was good then?
The scope and scale of the movie was good. One of the first scenes show this massive quarry where thousands of little people scurry about and you get the feeling, right away, that this film is going to be big.
The monsters are also gigantic, and when they slam each other into buildings, it looks really cool. The sound however doesn't...sound at all.

When you think of Godzilla, the first thing that pops into your mind is booming footsteps and deafening roars. For a 300 feet lizard, Godzilla is an excelent sneaker. Rarely do the ground shake from his footsteps and when he roars you are not really blown away by the awesone force. Not even when all three monsters tear each other apart do we get a cacophany of screams and explosions. I don't know if the director was trying to go the realistic way and make all the sounds very distant, because there are scenes where Godzilla is right behind our hero and you can't hear a thing. It's almost as if they forgot to add the sound effects in some scenes.

I promised I would keep this short and sweet, and I am a man of my word.

All in all, Godzilla was a gigantic failiure on almost every point. To watch this movie is a waste of your time and money. You would get a lot better bang for your buck if you watch the original Godzilla or Cloverfield instead.


Godzilla? More like Borezilla.


Cloverfield






New York must be one of the most disaster stricken cities ever. King Kong, Several alien invasions, The green goblin, Magneto, warriors, Godzilla, Cosmo Kramer and of course the monster known only as Clover.

To say that Cloverfield is a better monstermovie than Godzilla (1954) is tantamount to blasphemy, but if I have to be honest, I have to say that I like Cloverfield more.

It is not because of the special effects or some age thing. Cloverfield wins purely pn pacing. Where Godzilla gets stuck for long periods of time in some kind of Story vacuum. The relationships between the characters becomes its own little movie within the monstermovie.

In Cloverfield, the relationship between the protagonist and the damsel in distress becomes the catalyst that keeps the movie going. The monster becomes this unbeatable force wich our hero is willing to cross paths With to save the one he loves.

Where Monsters was basicly a tragic love story with monsters in it, and Godzilla was a monstermovie with a love triangle in it, Cloverfield trancends genre perfectly and uses the monster to further the human story.

I also love the direction, specifically in the first act where they are all at the party. It is not often that a movie manages to involve the extras and make them feel like integral characters in the universe of these four main characters. The way our leads casually interacts with a core group of extras and how they are impemented into the procedings of the party makes it seem as though these people are more than just background.

If there is one thing I initially did not like, it eas the fact that the movie is a "found footage" movie. That medium had, at the time, been over saturated with bad movies and it felt like an easy way to lure in the crowd by saying "yeah, come see Cloverfield. We are just as cool as all those other movies". It felt loke they drank to much of the Hollywood Kool-aid, but in the end They use it to their advantage and it becomes one of the better "found footage movies" to date.

Cloverfield wasn't just a good movie though, it was a intriguing concept. The way they used viral marketing to build upon the mystery sorrounding the monster, months before the movie premiered.
There were the fictional company Tugrauto, who were suspected of awakening the monster with their deep sea exploration. Videoblogs, articles and rumors all created to build upon the mystery and made it almost as fleshed out as some world building fantasy novels.

All this, with the movie as its centerpiece, made Cloverfield become so much more than just 90 minutes of explosive fun. It became one of my favourite multimedia experiences ever.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Godzilla (1998)





14 years ago, a bolt of lightning cuts through the sky and we see a Japanese fishing vessel powering through the stormy sea. Something bleeps on the radar, the captain takes one look and sounds the alarm. Gojira is here.


The 1998 re-make/re-boot was the first Godzilla movie to be produced by an American studio. In fact, it was the first Godzilla to be produced by a non Japamese company ever, and the initial hype pointed towards something awesome.
Thus was the first Godzilla I ever saw and so I tend to get a little biased when talking about it, but I think we can all agree that this is not a good movie. Even I can say that after watching it yesterday for the first time in over 10 years.

Bad as it may be, it isn't the worst Godzilla movie I've ever seen, that prize goes to Godzilla vs Megalon.

The story actually have a few great points. Like the fact that Godzilla is not in New York to destroy it, he is looking for a good place to nest and we just happened to be in the way.
If the original Godzilla was natures way of getting back at humanity, this godzilla was a product of our arrogance against nature. That almost works better in some ways. He is a generally not aggeessive against humans unless we provoke him and the only reason we see him as a threat is because he is bigger than us.

In that way it plays better on our innate fear of what we cannot control than the original, but...

That is all it does well. The rest of the movie is more or less a disaster. Very fitting since it is the master of disaster himself who both wrote and directed it. None other than Roland Emerich.

The acting is flat and stiff from almost every major actor/actress, the only real exception is Doug Savant as the stuttering Sgt. O'neil and Hank Azaria as news camera man "Animal"

But the worst part of re-watching this debaucle was, except having your childhood beliefs smashed by your own adult sense of critisism, is seeing how badly it has aged. Where the effects in the original still had some dramatic impact, the 1998 version did not wow me at all. The monster looked downright horrible in some scenes.

It only makes it worse when you look at The lost world, a movie that came out the year before and still looks convincing today.

Godzilla 1998 was by all means a failiure, but it doesn't deserve all the hate it recieved. It wasn't the worst Godzilla ever and the franchise had by that time already started to fade away. There aren't that many good Godzilla movies at all if we're going to be brutally honest. The American just had the misfortune to give us false hope and therefore become a scape goat for past sins.

Monsters






Gareth Edwards. The man responsible for the rebirth of the king of monsters, has actually already made a monster movie. The aptly named "Monster".

It is based solely on that movie (since it was his directorial debut) that they placed their full trust in his hands, concerning the re-boot of this much beloved franchise. So, was this "Monsters" any good?


The short version. Naaaah...

The long version. In a movie called Monsters you would expect some monsters, but for the very brief 89 minutes this movie goes on, you get to see four monsters. What the hell man?

The title is a bit misleading though. It isn't reffering solely to monstrous creatures from space, it is trying to ask the question "who are the real monsters?"

The idea is a classic zombie movie idea, you know. In a zombie invasion, your worst enemy is not the zombies, but the humans around you. It is a very good premise for a monster movie but very little is ever said about either human or monster in this. There are a few short scenes where the humans are depicted as kind of bossy and empirical, but not more than in real life. And the monsters are barely in the movie, so, building an opinion as to wether or not they are the bad guys becomes impossible.

Something tells me that this was a short film from the beginning. The script simply doesn't stretch far enough to keep you watching for 90 minutes and that is very sad, because Monsters show so much potential. It has a well thought out backstory and some very beautiful photography. The script, however, focuses on the lovestory between the two protagonists. It is always to get the focus of the main plot for a while and develop the characters, but in this one, focus is completely taken of the plot and placed on the character for the entire movie. The few times they actually discuss the monsters, and the governments way of controlling the situation, it becomes slightly askew. Since either person doesn't seem interested in the politics sorrounding the monsters it gets a little unnatural to hear the talk about it.

The love story is good though. A woman who is not sure if she is still in love with the man she is about to marry. The man who has a son but he can't tell him he is his father, these two character travel through the jungle and get to know each other and digs deeper into their on soul as the journey takes them deeper into "the quarantine zone".

The monsters, what monsters? Oh yeah, there are som creatures in the quarantine zone, but they aren't important.

Like I said in the beginning, a movie called Monsters should have a lot more monsters in it. This could might have been a story of two people traveling through a war torn Irak. The creatures become deriviative, and the charaters become derivative as well, since all you do is wait for that monster to appear.

Monday, May 12, 2014

Godzilla (1954)






Godzilla is a prehistoric monster Asleep on the bottom of the sea, he/she is awakened by mans desire for power and infuriated by our love for pyrotechnics.

Re-watching the Japanese original, this isn't just the explanation as to where Godzilla comes from, but also a perfect metaphor for the excsistence of the entire franchise.

Now that a new Godzilla movie is here, I Take a look at the movies that led to this moment and What we can learn from the past.


The sea is stirring. A fishingboat Cuts theough the waves. On deck, the mood is good, the sailors play games and sings. Then, something happens. A bbright light appeares beneath the surface and in a matter of seconds, the boat is engulfed in flames.

More and more boats get attacked and soon it becomes clear that this is not something natural. Then, something happens on the island of Odo. A giant monster appears, the elders call it Godzilla...

To watch the original Godzilla today is kind of bittersweet. It is a wonderful movie that tackles the issue of nuclear weapons with little to no discretion, much like the original Scarface went after organised crime.
While the message and moral of the story is still pretty easy to re-shape and attach to any major issue to day, the same can't be said about the pacing of the movie. It takes the better part of an hour before we even get to glimpse the monster, and then it is ever so slightly that if you blink you will miss it. The first proper "Godzilla walks in and fucks everything up" Scene happens when there is less than 30 minutes left. In todays movies we are used to a slow burn, because the movies of today are almoat always over two hours long. There are however limits to the exposition, Lone Ranger for instance. Two hours of practicly nothing and then a finale with less excitement than a funeral. But I'm getting sidetracked here, what I'm saying is that the tempo of 1950:s cinema was completely different than it is today and that is Godzillas one major drawback.

The same cannot be said about the special effects. Sure, they look very aged and a guy in a rubber suit feels more comedic than terrifying, but at the same time I found my self saying Things like "wow" and "damn". The scenes of a burning Tokyo with Godzillas sillhouette against the flames is very effective and still looks awesome.

When re-watching any old movie it always comes down to how well it has aged. Some movies are timeless and never age, like The Evil dead and A shot in the dark, that probably never will grow old, and then there are movies that are almost unwhatchable. The original The hills have eyes is a perfect example of a movie that hasn't aged well at all.
Godzilla falls somewhere in between, the story is still some what relevant and the special effects work, more on the symbolistic plane than on the technical one, but the pacing and directing falls shprt and the movie gets bogged down by lengthy scenes of people looking at monitors and talking into radios. Plus the love triangle sidestory does not transfer into modern times, not because we don't have those today but because is slows down an already slow movie. But just like the titular Kaiju, Godzilla is an immortal force that we will never be able to destroy, and 60 years from now, Godzilla will still be the king of monsters.