Non-Movie Post

I thought this was pretty funny, so I'm linking to it. Jian BBQ is a Korean barbecue hotspot on Beverly Blvd. in West Hollywood. And apparently, they've got a thing or two to learn about customer service.

ADAM - A Romance with Asperger's

Saw ADAM last night, a quirky romance about a woman who falls for her neighbor with Asperger's. Probably wouldn't have seen it if the girlfriend didn't offer to treat me to a movie.

AN ASS-FULL OF SPOILERS BELOW

ADAM hit upon a unique premise. I can't recall a love story between a "normal" woman and someone suffering from Asperger's (basically a high-functioning form of autism where the sufferer has problems reading facial cues, knowing what people are thinking, and the inability to pick up on sarcasm, innuendo, irony, or any situation in which words have a connotation as well as a denotation).

It tells the story of Adam, a single electronics engineer with a fascination for space. Adam's father just died; his dad took care of him and helped ease his transition into the world. Without him, Adam's got some problems. His new neighbor Beth seems intrigued by Adam, but a little put off by Adam's rudeness. Eventually, she realizes he has Asperger's. The two date after Adam engages in a couple of romantic gestures -- dangling outside her window in a spacesuit to clean it and showing her a family of raccoons who took up residence inside Central Park. Beth's father faces a trial for some accounting irregularities at his business. And Adam, with his lack of social skills, grills him about possibly going to jail. When Adam gets a job offer in a new town and wants to move away with Beth, Beth's dad (now about to go to jail) tells Adam Beth can do better. Eventually, the two split and Adam makes the move on his own.

Despite some good performances and a realistic script that makes the action and characters feel believable, there are several problems with the film.

First, in any kind of romance-based movie, be it an action film, a drama, or a romantic comedy, if you don't buy that the romance is important, the movie doesn't work. It never seemed believable that gorgeous, rich, smart Beth (Rose Byrne) would date a high-functioning autistic. The film sets up that she went out with a rich asshole who cheated on her and so she's looking for something different. But isn't there a middle ground between rich asshole and almost-RAIN MAN?

The romantic gestures don't offer enough explanation for why Beth goes out with Adam either. She mentions she can't see outside her windows, so he dresses up in his space suit and dangles outside her windows to clean them. Or attempts to. Instead, startling her. Because this was random and ineffectual, it doesn't feel like a big deal or that impressive. In fact, he almost kills herself and doesn't even manage to clean the windows. This could have been remedied with a bit of dialogue about how her last boyfriend (the rich asshole) never listened to her or what she wanted. When she said she wanted tickets to a concert, he even got the wrong tickets. That's when she knew the relationship wouldn't work, long before the cheating. Then, Adam cleans her windows based on an off-handed comment she makes and she's smitten.

Since we don't buy these two would ever date, we don't really care that they break up eventually. That's a major problem, removing the stakes from the movie entirely.

Film also tries to set up Beth's father as a jerk. He tells her she can do better than Adam. But he happens to be right. Adam's not that great. He's nice when he's not freaking out and he knows a lot about space. But he can't hold a normal conversation or interact with her friends and family properly. And he tends to freak out in full-0n child tantrum mode. What's more, since Beth actually doesn't end up with Adam, her father is proven right in the world of the film. Also, this whole dynamic -- overbearing father who's in legal trouble and eventually goes to jail doesn't like her underachieving boyfriend -- seems ripped from SAY ANYTHING.

Finally, the film makes a really odd choice in having Adam go to California by himself for a new job. While there, he suddenly becomes non-autistic -- or way less so. Script shows Adam at the beginning and throughout not picking up on verbal cues (sarcasm about continuing to carry heavy bags by himself) and having severe social anxiety where he won't go out with work friends and fears going out with Beth's. But for some reason, when he gets to Cali, he's noticing a co-worker's face while carrying heavy boxes and he offers to help and he's suddenly going out to bars with his co-workers. This would be fine if this was a normal character arc -- a guy goes from awkward to socially integrated. But it's Asperger's syndrome. Not a character weakness that gets worked out through the plot of the film. The reason Adam has those problems is because his brain is wired differently. It's not like he has one relationship and all of a sudden he stops being a high-functioning autistic. That'd be like a dude with paraplegia moving cross-country after a failed relationship and suddenly starting to walk.

DVD Corner - FALLEN, SPEED, DIE HARD 3 - Thriller Time

Been watching a lot of thrillers lately as "research" for a thriller I'm starting. And some action movies that verge on thriller territory.

BOATLOADS OF SPOILERS BELOW

I'd never seen FALLEN. You'd think Nick Kazan script + Denzel Washington + great supporting cast (Elias Koteas, Donald Sutherland, John Goodman, Aida Turturro, James Gandolfini) + great premise (detective watches a serial killer he caught get put to death; serial killer is really a demon who can jump bodies; demon comes back and frames/torments detective) would equal a great movie. But it doesn't.

First, the film is horribly slow and boring. This thing drags. Directory Gregory Hoblit chooses to use a washed-out, shaky POV shot to represent Azazel, the demon. And he does it literally every time something happens with the demon. So you see this nauseating shot hundreds of times. The plot, as such, is underbaked. You'd think an immortal demon would really have it out for the man who's getting in his way and have a great way to annoy him or kill him. You'd also think the demon would have some sort of big plans after thousands of years. Nope. Apparently all he wants to do is sort of mildly annoy Denzel. Which he does by framing him for some murders. Which could've been good, if that was the first act break. Then you'd have an entire movie of Denzel trying to figure out what's going on (his enemy's really a demon!) all the while avoiding the cops and trying to clear his name. But that action doesn't come until the end of the film, which is too late. Also, Azazel literally has no plan or anything. He's not trying to spark the end of the world (although he does write "Apocalypse" in chunks on various bodies), he's not trying to rule the world, he's not trying to let Satan out of hell. Just annoy Denzel.

The rules are also unclear. Azazel can jump into any body he wants. Except Denzel at the beginning. But by the end of the movie he can get into Denzel for some reason. That'd be fine if Denzel was somehow corrupted and it was all part of Azazel's plan. But it's not setup that way, so it just feels random.

There's no arc for Denzel's character. The obvious one would be a man who lost his faith, and in encountering the supernatural, he gets it back. That would easily mesh with the "action" as it were.

Denzel's got a retarded brother for some reason, I guess so he seems like a good guy for taking care of him. And so Azazel can eventually kill him. Azazel doesn't even seem that evil. He kills a couple people and then Denzel's brother. The film could've upped the body count and made him more threatening.

Finally, there are some really silly beats. For example, Embeth Davidtz is being chased by Azazel in various forms through a crowded street. Instead of Azazel getting in a fast, strong body and running her down, he jumps from body to body. So you've got a "chase" scene where a girl's running and various strangers are touching each other down a line, with the demon body-swapping in serial. All accompanied by a cheesy "whoosh" sound. This isn't cool or threatening, it's just stupid. The demon inside a big, strong guy is possibly threatening; the demon inside an old lady, not so much.

On to SPEED...

I hadn't seen SPEED since the theater and didn't remember it being that great. It's got a fantastic premise and was competently directed. But that was all I could remember.

Well, I was wrong. SPEED is a very good action movie. The premise is just as great as ever, the bad guy's clever, and the obstacles and escalations are great. Keanu gets dropped in a shitstorm at the beginning and things just keep getting worse for him throughout.

There are perhaps two weaknesses in SPEED. Keanu's character (Jack Traven) has no arc to speak of. He's not a reckless guy who learns how to reign it in to keep others safe; he's not a do-er who figures out you should look before you leap.

And after the bus blows up, the movie keeps going for a half hour and gets a bit silly. Dennis Hopper's character is so smart and methodical with his planning of the elevator job and the bus caper that what happens after his plans are foiled seems a bit reckless. He thought far enough ahead to get money away from hundreds of cops and escape onto the subway with a hostage wired with a bomb, but because Traven's chasing him, he loses his shit and kills the subway driver? That doesn't make a lot of sense.

However, with the action, you don't really miss the arc. And there's almost a solid hour of bus stuff just getting worse and worse, so you tend to forgive the movie for the third act. (And Keanu's awful retort to Dennis Hopper after he knocks his head off with a subway light -- "I'm taller.")

DIE HARD 3 marked John McTiernan's return to the franchise. And a great idea in having Hans Gruber's brother come back for revenge on John McClane. And a cool premise with Jeremy Irons running McClane all over town on a scavenger hunt (under threat of blowing shit up) as a distraction to robbing the Federal Reserve.

There's plenty of great action. And screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh does a good job with the action beats, with plenty of smart twists and turns, like the heroes getting out of handcuffs using a metal scrap embedded in McClane's arm from an earlier slide down a fraying cable.

Where the film slips is that McClane has little to no arc -- just warming up to calling his wife whom he hasn't talked to in over a year. So Hensleigh tries to give one to Sam Jackson's Zeus, a racist who hates white folks. Except that Jackson doesn't really start to like white people. He just warms up to McClane a bit. If that situation was played out in reverse, with a racist white guy, people would find it patronizing.

Another problem is that Irons' plot falls apart when you look at it. The first task he gives McClane is to walk around Harlem with a sandwich board stating "I hate N-words" (it actually says the N-word, I'm just being polite). And McClane is nearly killed by a street gang; Zeus jumps in to save him. If Zeus didn't, McClane would die. Now, Irons wants McClane dead. But he needs him alive long enough to keep running goofy errands on the scavenger hunt and keep the police tied up so he can rob the reserve. He plans on killing McClane via sniper at Yankee Stadium at the end of the day. Irons clearly didn't plan on Zeus being there or helping out, so that's clearly a big plot hole.

Another silly bit is that the way McClane catches Irons is... Irons has McClane and Zeus tied up to a bomb on a ship. McClane asks for some aspirin -- Irons suffers from migraines -- and Irons tosses him a bottle. After our heroes get off the ship just ahead of the bomb, McClane looks at the aspirin bottle and it's stamped Nord de Lignes, a big truck stop north of the border in Canada.

Here's the several problems with this.

1) Generally, if someone suffers from migraines, they have prescription migraine medicine like topamax or imitrex. Aspirin and the like don't really help with migraines.

2) I've never known truck stops or any other store for that matter to stamp aspirin bottles with their name/location

3) McClane somehow gets to fly to Canada with his gun and shoot at the bad guys; the US has no jursidiction north of the border. And McClane is a New York City cop, so he has no jurisdiction outside of the city

4) This whole beat is convenient. If McClane didn't ask for aspirin and Irons toss him some and the bottle was stamped, etc., McClane never would have found him. If McClane had somehow tricked this information out of him, that would've been fine. That shows our hero being smart, rather than our hero relying on a happy coincidence to solve his problems.

5) How the hell did the good guys find the bad guys? Presumably this is a major area filled with shipping containers, trucks, etc. The bad guys could just hide out there.

And then you've got McClane shooting an electrical wire with two bullets and dropping it on a helicopter and then saying "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker." Sigh.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS - Wrong Spelling, Right Moviemaking

Not too much to say here, because I loved this film. Jews killing Nazis as brutally as possible? I'm in.

SCALPED SPOILERS BELOW

Basically, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is Tarantino's Jewish version of THE DIRTY DOZEN meets Spaghetti Westerns. It's funny, unique, and super-violent. And manages to string together the obvious influences along with a healthy dose of film history love. And for all its quirks, including slapping up a character's name in giant logo and a couple of asides hilariously narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, it pretty much works.

There's no reason why anybody in particular should like a film in which the heroes mash heads with bats, scalp fallen foes, shoot unarmed prisoners, and in which hundreds of people are roasted, shot, and exploded. But you do anyway. Because it's so unusual and so much fun.

The film's strengths are:

Most of the characters are fully dimensionalized, or at least enough for us to like or understand them. Particularly well-rendered are Shoshanna and Col. Landa, the delightful villain. Others, like Stiglitz, you get enough to understand this guy hates Nazi officers and is bound to snap. Brad Pitt's Lt. Col. Aldo Rayne is a bit of an enigma; you know he hates Nazis and is a cruel bastard, but you're not sure entirely why. But Brad Pitt does him with such flair, you don't really card.

Tarantino sure knows how to turn a scene, particularly in assembling all the elements of suspense and then cranking the tension up with everyday dialogue. Whether it's an oncoming basement shootout, Landa interrogating a French dairy farmer hiding Jews under his floor, or Landa and Shoshana sitting in a restaurant eating strudel, these scenes are all super-tense. If and when the violence erupts, it's almost a relief.

And finally, perhaps the film's biggest asset is its uniqueness. For example, when Pitt and crew pose as Italians to inflitrate a Nazi film premiere... Most films would have Pitt and his buddies barely pulling off the masquerade. But Tarantino wisely has them speak atrocious Italian with their horrible accents, and Col. Landa is so aware of it that he laughs hysterically and exposes their plot. It's funny, it's tense, and it's a bold choice that works well.

Plus, you gotta love a film that has Jews killing the shit out of Hitler and the entire Nazi high command.

There is perhaps one minor flaw, but it's an editing decision, not a script problem. Because the film's so long, it seems as if QT cut some of the action for time. So we're treated to Pitt captured, and then he's in a truck with one of his men who wasn't at the premiere. We never find out how BJ Novak got captured or what happened to the rest of the Basterds. But it doesn't really affect anything, because the film's almost over at that point and sailing along delightfully under its own weird steam.

Video Corner - GIGANTIC, Gigantic Disappointment

Ah, the quirky indie romantic comedy. There've been good ones throughout film history (ANNIE HALL, THE GRADUATE, I even enjoyed most of GARDEN STATE). And then there are the ones that seem to just be quirky for quirky's sake (500 DAYS OF SUMMER). GIGANTIC falls squarely into the latter category.

BIG-ASS SPOILERS BELOW

GIGANTIC tells the tale of Paul Dano's Brian Weathersby. We're introduced to Dano visiting his friend doing experiments on rats in a lab. Then he gets the crap beaten out of him by a crazy homeless guy. Then he goes to his job, selling high-end mattresses, where obnoxious millionaire John Goodman comes in to buy one. Later, he sends his daughter, Happy (yes, happy) to pick up the mattress. She falls asleep on the bed for hours. Happy and Brian start dating, or more specifically, start having sex in odd places. Brian's dream since he was a little child was to adopt a Chinese baby, something he's on a waiting list for. He hangs out with his elderly father and brothers, taking mushrooms and gathering wild mushrooms in a field. He's shot at, then shot, by the homeless guy. He eats a fancy French dinner. He gets approved for a baby. He stabs and kills the homeless guy, who turns out to be a figment of his imagination. Happy gets freaked out and breaks up with him. And some more stuff happens.

This movie was highly annoying, despite the fact that Zooey Deschanel gets completely nude in it. I have no idea why anyone in it, including Deschanel, Goodman, Dano, even Ed Asner, wanted to be in it. It's just plain weird. The protagonist is an oddball, the love interest is an oddball, and there's absolutely nothing driving the movie. It's not the story of a guy who had a jacked-up family, so he has to do whatever he can to provide a home for his incoming baby. It's not about how a woman comes to find the man she loves in the most unexpected of ways and how she gets the family she's not looking for. Things just happen for no reason whatsoever.

Why does Brian sell weird mattresses? Why is he taking drugs with his family? Why does he want a Chinese baby (he's wanted one since he was 7 is not a good backstory or proper motivation)? About the only thing that happens that makes any sense is that Happy freaks out and breaks up with Brian because it's too much too fast. But then she comes around again later anyway, having seemingly changed her mind for no discernible reason.

The film's filled with some truly unique scenes and characters, but none of them are grounded in any sort of coherent reality. There's no throughline to the plot, just a bunch of stuff happening. And the whole subplot with the homeless guy and Brian's imagination is odd and jarring. If he's insane, this guy shouldn't have a baby.

It's one thing to do an unconventional take on a romantic comedy. New characters provide a new perspective, and interesting settings and plot turns can tweak stale genre tropes. But you can't just make a movie where everything's weird, there's no logic behind anything, and the film's just a collection of oddness slapped together on the editing table. Well, I guess you can, but what you get is GIGANTIC.

EAGLE EYE - Half-Blind

I'm working on a techno-thriller, and I never saw EAGLE EYE. Wanting to make sure I didn't repeat anything they did (it was a pretty big movie) and wanting to see it to boot, I finally rented it.

SPOILERS FOLLOW YOU BELOW





















EE has a truly great premise -- a 20-something loser suddenly finds $750,000 in his bank account, a room full of guns, military schematics, and bomb-making material, and gets a call from a mysterious woman telling him the FBI is about to arrest him. The loser, Jerry, doesn't listen and gets arrested. But the mysterious woman -- seemingly all-seeing and all-powerful -- contrives to break him out of custody with a crane and directs him on a series of errands, all the while the FBI and Air Force agents are hot on his tail. Meanwhile, a single mother finds herself in the same boat as the mysterious woman threatens her with the death of her son (who's on a field trip).

Okay. Great start. And we've got a character who hates authority and can't follow through on anything, so he's the worst guy to finish this task.

The film pretty much falls apart once it reveals what's going on, however. Turns out that:

• There's a Department of Defense computer Artificial Intelligence tasked with analyzing data and making decisions


• It's tied into pretty much every computer system (surveillance cameras, power grid, traffic lights, cell phones, etc.) imaginable


• It went rogue and wants to wipe out the entire US government minus the Secretary of Defense


• Jerry's twin brother worked on the project and put a voice lock keyed to his DNA on the computer so it can't go apeshit and kill everyone -- the computer needs Jerry to undo it


• It's plotting to decaptiate the US government by using a crystalline explosive cut into a necklace gem


• AND a frequency detonator stuck in the son's trumpet reed and keyed to vibrate when he hits the high "F" in "The Star Spangled Banner"

Um, okay. Here's the various problems with that.

One -- doesn't make any sense. Assuming we had the technological capability for the AI to exist and be tied into the systems it's tied into, the AI is making really stupid decisions. In the film, the computer recommends not killing a terrorist because it's not sure it really is the terrorist and there could be significant collateral damage. Turns out the computer was right, we blow up the wrong guy and terrorists around the world blow up Americans in response. But the computer decides the way to end this is by killing everyone in the US leadership except the SecDef. Nevermind that: A) This is extremely faulty logic in general B) Terrorists aren't apt to stop blowing folks up because a computer killed the leadership C) Why would the computer spare the SecDef (who tried to do what the computer recommended) but kill literally dozens of other cabinet officers below the President who presumably had no part in the decision? I doubt the Secretary of Transportation or Education had much of an opinion either way on whether we should try to take out an Afghani warlord.

I suppose the film could've explained this in some way if it wanted to -- like the computer blew a chip that regulated logic, or it was programmed by a crazy arch-conservative wackjob to do this kind of thing in the first place. As is though, it's nonsensical.

Two - The computer's plan is needlessly complicated (and stupid when you think about it). The computer really needs to do two things. One, get Jerry to it so he can log in and take off the voice block preventing it from activating its mission to kill the US leadership. Two -- kill the US leadership. The film makes a big point of having the computer point out Jerry's antisocial tendencies and problems with authority; it tells him the only way to motivate him is through coercion. But why make Jerry go all over the country, fake that he's a terrorist, put him in the custody of the FBI (who eventually help stop the computer solely because they're investigating Jerry), and have him do dozens of things including stealing experimental drugs? Why not threaten Jerry by killing a couple of close people, then get him right to the Pentagon where he can remove the voice block? The computer's basically omnipotent and can get anyone it wants to comply by threatening them with death or the death of loved ones. It doesn't need all this other b.s. The b.s. helps make the movie exciting. But it doesn't hold up to any scrutiny. And the computer could easily have called in an airline ticket for Jerry and a visitor's pass and had someone escort him down to its mainframe.

On the same note -- why does the computer go through this elaborate process to get hex crystal/detonator/Star Spangled Banner going to kill everyone? We've seen it kill through traffic accidents and power lines. And it can track thousands of people simultaneously. So just find where the leadership is in separate locations and have separate "accidents." Or, much like it can take over subway cars, cranes, and jets -- do that to something with missiles and just blow everyone up.

MOON - Little Zowie Bowie Grows Up

MOON is an indie Sci-Fi film directed by Duncan Jones. Jones is David Bowie's son, and was born Zowie Bowie. He smartly changed his name, which probably resulted in a lot more people taking him seriously (he had the double whammy of a famous last name and a ridiculous, rhymey first name).

Like DISTRICT 9, MOON Is a smart, small film.

SPOILERS FROM THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON BELOW



















It tells the tale of astronaut Sam Bell, who works alone on a base on the dark side of the moon, overseeing Helium-3 harvesting. Nearing the end of a three-year contract and getting ready to return to earth to his wife and young daughter, Sam's going a little stir crazy. He has no one to talk to except a Hal-like robot, Gerty, nicely voiced by Kevin Spacey. And he starts seeing things. After crashing a moon rover, Sam wakes up with some gaps in his memory and Gerty acting strangely. Although the moonbase's antenna is supposedly broken, he catches Gerty having a live conversation with earth. And Gerty's under strict orders to keep Sam inside.

Sam finagles his way outside and to the crashed rover, where he finds himself still injured inside the vehicle. He brings himself back to the moonbase and things start getting weirder from there. Eventually, injured Sam and a younger, angrier Sam discover that the base is surrounded by jamming antennae blocking their live communications signals from getting back to earth. Sam also discovers that the "return vehicle" set to bring him back home at the end of his contract is an incinerator. That his body starts to decompose after three years. That he and the other Sam are clones. That there's a whole secret room filled with hundreds of other, non-activated clones. And that this whole process has been repeated over and over again for decades.

Sam manages to escape back to earth by sacrificing a version of himself in the crashed rover to confuse a "rescue" mission and then hiding out in a Helium-3 launch vehicle.

The whole thing is done rather subtly and creepily, playing out slowly. There are some nice moments, such as Gerty helping Sam out by giving him the password to his video log (so he can see that this process has happened again and again), and Sam and Sam getting into a violent fight.

There's really only one misstep in the entire film and that's at the very end. We're given snatches of voiceover dialogue as Sam's launch vehicle enters earth atmosphere; they explain that one of his clones is testifying against the corporation that hired/imprisoned him. Then there's a snatch of radio talk show call-in dialogue, I guess meant to be a joke, in which a caller says that the clone Sam is either a liar or an illegal alien. Not only is this unnecessary, but it's out of character with the rest of the film. And since it's the very last thing we hear, it has the effect of like dining out at a fancy, wonderful French restaurant, and finishing off your meal of endive salad, foie gras, boeuf bourginon, and tarte tatin with an undercooked McDonald's cheeseburger.

But it's not enough to ruin the movie. It just shouldn't be in there.

And Sam Rockwell proves he's an awesome actor, too. In case anyone still doubted that.