Where the Wild Things Are

First Hit: Although I left the theater with questions about how dark the film was, I was more struck at the beauty and excellent execution of this story.

The question that haunts me days after seeing this film is about why the film didn’t invite me into it emotionally?

There was very little about this movie that touched my feeling realm directly. However, from an intellectual realm, it was extraordinary and asked me to view my feelings, but from a distance. It was more about watching a young boy exploring and dealing with his dark, lonely, angry and sorrow fill world and I was an observer.

It was like watching life from in an atrium. From this place, Spike Jonze created an adult view of a children’s fantasy. Max Records plays Max the young boy who has temper tantrums and can be sweet as can be. Sitting under his mother’s desk fiddling with her stocking feet telling her a story was very sweet, compelling and engaging.

However as much as that was incredibly sweet, only to be juxtaposed with his outburst, while standing on the dining table, yelling at the top of his lungs that he was going to bite his mother for serving frozen corn instead of fresh corn showed the other side of the story.

Max’s life is one filled with fantasy as represented by the forts he sets up in his room, and the hard dose of reality as he pro-actively owns up trashing his sister’s room because she didn’t protect or help him when he started a snowball fight with her friends. He runs away from home and ends up in a land Where the Wild Things Are.

In this fantasy land there are very large animals with human voices. Carol (voice by James Gandolfini) is seen trashing everyone one else’s homes because KW (voice by Lauren Ambrose) is off with other friends. Like Max, he cannot control his anger and is severely insecure.

Other wild things see Max and immediately want to eat him. But Carol stops the threatening attack and Max announces that he is a former king and defeated the Vikings. This impresses the Wild Things so they crown him their king.

However, they begin to see that he doesn’t have kingly ideas and when he suggests they get into a dirt clod fight because it will be fun, people get hurt and luster falls from his crown.

Records was powerful as Max, as was Gandolfini, Ambrose, Chris Cooper, Catherine O’Hara, Forest Whitaker, and Paul Dano as voices of the Wild Things. Jonze shot this film with a semi-documentary feeling in the camera movement and positions which were helpful to sharing the story.

Overall: As a children’s film it is too dark and intense, as an adult view of children finding their way home it was extraordinary.

Surrogates

First Hit: There is a hint of an interesting story in this film/script and it didn’t make it on to the screen.

If you want to see Bruce Willis as he might have looked 25 years ago with a really dated hair style see the beginning of this film. If you want to see Bruce as he actually looks today (before the beatings he takes to add scratches and blood stains to his face) watch the last 2/3 of the film.

The premise of this film is that with surrogates we all can live our fantasy life by sitting in a specially designed chair with a headset allowing us to control and experience what our mechanical surrogate is experiencing for us.

Our surrogates can look like anything we want and they can do anything we want them to do and aren't willing to do with our real bodies. There is a fail safe system which keeps the controllers from dying if the surrogate gets waxed while doing something dangerous. However, something happens to the son of the inventor of the surrogates after his surrogate is found electronically fried up and the son, himself, is found with liquefied brains. 

The FBI is called in and Willis, as Tom Greer, gets the call. Then more people die the same way and the intensity goes up a notch. The counter to this surrogate culture is a group of humans who believe that having surrogates is harmful to the human race and therefore the government has given them their own economic zones (much like the American Indians).

Tom Greer begins to see their point of view after his surrogate is destroyed and he is forced to live without a surrogate because the FBI suspects him of something wrong. He discovers that there is a plan to use this new weapon which liquifies the brains of the human controllers against the entire human race of surrogate users.

But in a twist of fate, Greer figures out how to do a mass killing of the surrogates but not their human controllers. Yea! Bruce saves the world again.

In both his surrogate form and human form, Willis is the big bad brave savior of the world he always is. If one thinks about the premise there are some interesting ideas that can come out of it. But this film isn’t really one of them. What would happen if we really lived only through surrogates? Would the world look like it does today but our interaction with each other be different? Would anyone get married? Would anyone create meaningful relationships? Would there be government control of how surrogates were made and how they acted? What would life really be like through surrogates? Would anyone not want to have a surrogate?

Overall: Conceptually there are some intriguing ideas available in this film, but they aren’t explored or engaged. This is a DVD rental on some lazy Sunday evening where walking away without hitting the pause button wouldn’t hurt.

Inglourious Basterds

First Hit: Well filmed, acted and directed and despite the graphic violence it was very entertaining.

Pulp Fiction was good, and Inglorious Basterds is better, a lot better because it's cohesive and flows very well.

Brad Pitt stars in this untrue story about WWII where, in one night, the Allies win the war. Pitt plays Lt. Aldo Raine a hillbilly kind of guy that has one thing on his mind, killing Nazis.

Raine is part Indian which sets up the reason his team scalps the Germans he kills. He puts together a group of Jewish soldiers and their goal is simply to kill as many Nazis as they can and they do this with gusto.

Killing with this fervor and style, endows this group with the name of Inglourious Basterds (and we're never in control of what others call us, are we).

Although Pitt is the marquee star in this film he is not the central story. The central story is about Shosanna Dreyfus (played by Melanie Laurent) a Jewish woman who, as a young girl, escaped the clutches of Nazi Col. Hans Landa (played by Christoph Waltz) chief Jew hunter and executioner in France.

This is a story about her having the opportunity to plot a revenge on the Nazi commanders. The story is played out in chapters which are titled and provide an easy context to the next set of scenes in the story.

Often, obvious chapter headings such as these can detract from a film, but here, just like the three languages spoken with subtitles, all of this adds to the feeling of the movie.

As the film plays out it becomes apparent that stereotypes are played to the hilt which add depth to the characters because most of the actors mine these stereotypes finding their origination in a truth of sorts. Watch Waltz as Landa to see the best example of this.

Lastly the scenes are beautifully decorated and highlighted in a meticulous fashion which, along with the music, kept this film smoking through its 2 hours and 32 minute running time.

Pitt’s performance was good and entertaining but didn’t match the level and depth of others such as Waltz. Waltz’s performance was incredible. He pushed the SS stereo type all the way and added enormous depth and intelligence. The very first scene sets him up as a major player in this film. Laurent was very effective as a woman with a false identity and never forgetting about what was done to her family. Her revenge is wonderfully orchestrated. Quentin Tarantino’s direction was extraordinary as he orchestrated his own script by pulling powerful performances out of the entire cast. One of the things I noted was how some scenes were left to expand and evolve while others were quick and to the point - beautiful.

Overall: The best Tarantino film yet and if you can get through the graphic violence, I say go see it.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

First Hit: Long, dark, and boring with virtually nothing in it to make it interesting.

A series of films on a particular subject or character have a general rule over time, they get worse unless someone really creates a new story line with a unique view or character.

The Batman series was failing until Batman Begins came along which put a new fresh light on the character.

By the 3rd film in the Star Wars series the franchise was headed downhill despite being produced by one of the best producers ever.

Star Trek became a joke after hitting its zenith with The Wrath of Khan and then came the 2009 film Star Trek which was spot on perfect and will do wonders to revitalize the series. Harry Potter is suffering greatly from this malaise and with this latest offering hasn’t found any new life yet.

Half-Blood Prince is a title looking for a story; a film looking for something to shoot. 

The film begins with Rampaging Death Eaters? Who are these things and why do they exist? Nothing in the film gives us any background about what and why they are; although I did enjoy Helena Bonham Carter because she brought some fun, charisma and focus to these death eaters. 

Lastly, why did Dumbledore have to keep asking Harry to trust him? Jeez they’ve been together for years now and if that trust wasn’t already established then what the hell are these characters about?

Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint reprise their roles of Harry, Hermione and Ron respectively. All of these actors appeared to be unpracticed and unrehearsed in roles which they should be familiar with because this is there 6th film together in the same roles. The actors which stand out in this film are Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange and Alan Rickman as Professor Snape. Rickman commands you watch him in his scenes and makes good on his practice to deliver. Director David Yates got little or nothing out of the rest of his actors but maybe it simply because it was a bad script looking for an interesting story.

Overall: Every film needs to stand on its own and shouldn't require seeing previous films or, in this case, the reading J.K. Rowling's books on which they are based. I’ve not read the books but I’ve seen all the films and this one is the worst one yet.

Race to Witch Mountain

First Hit: A very poorly constructed film with little to give it any credence in reality.

I certainly don’t mind science fiction adventures; and count many of them on my favorite film list.

This film won’t make it to my top 100 science fiction adventure films and I'm not sure I’ll ever see that many. I didn’t see the predecessors to this film, “Escape to Witch Mountain” and “Return From Witch Mountain”, but due to their popularity I thought this one might be worth seeing.

The film is basically about two extraterrestrial kids who want to get back to their spaceship which is being kept by the US Government in the bowels of Witch Mountain. Once they get to the ship they want to go back home. The kids have learned to not trust humans and therefore part of the story is in the interaction with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Carla Gugino which help these young terrestrials see the good side of humans.

Johnson as a down on his luck cab driver never really seems down on his luck. There is only one scene to set up him being down on his luck and that's when he is in his residential hotel room. Gugino plays a scientist who has been kicked out of 3 universities because of her strange beliefs. The kids played by AnnaSophia Robb as Sara and Alexander Ludwig as Seth didn’t give any indication they were extraterrestrial other than the occasional tricks of levitation and molecular decomposition.

Overall: This movie felt a lot longer than it was and had very little to create any interest of any sort. The young man sitting next, who was about 12, kept fidgeting, and seemed uninterested in what was on the screen, I felt the same way, except I don’t fidget.