Watchmen

To those who are needlessly fastidious: from here on out, i will refer to Watchmen the graphic novel as a "comic book".  If it makes you feel any better, i'm doing this specifically to piss you off.  Otherwise, stop taking things so seriously.

Watchmen is a super hero "comic book" deconstruction.  That is to say, it takes the superhero comic genre and substitutes in "real" human characteristics and attitudes.  These are almost always negative characteristics because, hey, superheroes already embody all the positive ones.  A deconstruction makes the characters more "identifiable", or at least that's the idea.  Like the Greek Tragedies of old (yes, it's THAT old), it shows that those we look up to are just as flawed as any one of us and emphasizes the tremendous "pressures" those we elevate as heroes are put under.  I only bring this up because it's important to understand what Watchmen is going for in order to truly appreciate it for what it is.  If you don't understand what "deconstruction" is, you can never appreciate what Watchmen is.

That being said, i didn't appreciate what Watchmen was attempting to go for.  So why'd i bring up all that deconstruction crap?  Because if i didn't, there will be some douchebag out there accusing me of "not getting it" or something.  I've heard it all before and quite frankly, it's just fanboy-speak for putting your fingers in your ears and screaming "i'm not listening!"

So, why don't i like Watchmen?  Well, firstly it reeks of formula.  My brother (who studies film) once told me that in order for a movie to be classified as an "action movie" it must have a fight scene for every 11 pages of dialogue.  With Watchmen that's exactly what you'll get - one action scene every 11 pages of dialogue.  I know that this is why they did it because the action sequences have no point.  None of them go anywhere, matter or seem to have any importance outside of the exact moment the action is occuring.  There is no fallout from any action sequence, no consequences beyond "badguys defeated" and no lead in beyond obvious cues of "here comes a fight".

Even the climactic battle at the end seemed to happen for no other reason than because it should.  The fight is broken up with periods of choppy dialogue that seem down right cordial at times.

Watchmen's story itself is just PAINFULLY predictable.  Even though it's a deconstruction, the story is ripped right from any comic book in the world wholesale without any hint of irony.  I'll try to be delicate, as usual, because the story is what people want to see, but i still want to put this in perspective.  That being said, I don't consider this to be a spoiler because its that fuckin' obviousness!  None the less, the film inexplicably treats this as spoiler-worthy, so i will as well.  If you're sensitive to this kinda stuff, skip to below this section.

"Spoiler" below

To show you how predictable this story is, let me set it up and see if you pick it up.

A law (by nixon) has outlawed vigilanteism and the old superhero group has mostly gone into "normal lives", except for a few who are either operating for the US government (Dr Manhattan) or illegally (Rorschach).  The story starts with one of the old Watchmen being killed: the Comedian.  Rorschach quickly figures out that it must be one of the old members of the team or a supervillain they used to fight because they were the only ones who knew the Comedian's secret identity.  Villains are barely mentioned, so the viewer knows it's a team member.  But who?  Well, let's run down the crew!

The Nite Owl II: a batman knockoff.
The Silk Spectre II: resident female character.  Yeah, you know what that means...
The Comedian: dead, so...
Rorschach: the "rebel" of the group.  Think "like wolverine" in the xmen, and you're close to his personality.  He's also the primary protagonist.
Dr Manhattan: the only really superpowered one.  His powers make him unto a god, but he's more concerned with trying to keep the world at peace.
Ozymandias: the "smartest man in the world".

And that's our character line up.  I don't really think i need to say anything more than this - it's literally that obvious.  The movie tries to throw some red herrings in and distract you with side plots, but it's done so poorly, i'm not sure if they're there for the audience only (in which case, they were badly done) or just for the characters (in which case, what's the point?).

At any rate, they certainly don't draw away any suspicions the audience has to who the real villain is and nobody (but the characters) are surprised when Ozymandias is revealed to be behind the murder and other goings-ons for reasons that are non-sensical to say the least.

This actually brings me to another point that's omnipresent in hollywood now and forever: anti-intellectualism.  Seriously, how often is the "smartest character" purely evil?  If not evil, bumbling?  Too fucking often!  Why is it that the only intelligent characters writers can write are blinded by ambition or so quixotic that they're oblivious to common sense?

Are people seriously that afraid of intelligent people in real life?  Well, i guess so, since i've heard people argue in frankness that the Third Reich's scientists (like Mengele) did what they did for pure ambition and not out of racist maliciousness. 

At any rate, suffice it to say, that if this stereotype were to die tomorrow, it would be several decades too late.

"Spoilers" end here

So that's Watchmen.  A predictable, formulaic deconstruction of a superhero comic.  I know i'll be lynched by fanboys for saying that, but it's true.  Ultimately, Watchmen was a movie for the fans of the comic.  Everything it does has been done before and better, from all the stuff i spelled out in the spoiler tags to the ridiculously played out "society hates/fears superheroes" backdrop.

I could go on to tear apart what the movie thinks it's doing, but in all honesty, all that doesn't matter.  A movie's just a piece of fiction and fiction's there to entertain.  That being said, the harshest thing i can say about this movie was that it was unbelievably dull.  2.5 hours plus?  I can believe it.

I give this movie 3.6 boringly portrayed superheroes out of 6.  It's not the worst, but it's damned well not worth the 7.8 on www.imDb.com: C-.

9 (2009)

This movie's name is probably the most interesting part of it.  Sad, i know.

Another movie advertised off of the producer.  Probably something to be expected from our money lovin' society that the money lender gets higher billing than the creative artists involved.  I like Tim Burton's work, as a director, but to try and market every movie he even lent money to as a "Tim Burton" is just nauseating!  But this is a rant for another day.  What about the movie 9?

The movie takes place in a futuristic world after a war between machines and humans have all but destroyed it.  Yeah, we're doing that again, apparently.  The movie is about a group of mini-robots made out of gloves or something called the stitchpunks.  The titular 9 is the protagonist of the film (though not the leader).

The biggest selling point for this movie seems to be its animation quality.  Unfortunately, it's about 10 years too late for its CGI to be considered novel.  Even then, full CGI movies that were novel were brought to us by the likes of Pixar, who are masters of weaving good stories.  Remember when CGI was cool just because?  Yeah, me neither.

What's worse, 9 is one of those movies that pretends to have hidden depths.  Not has hidden depths - pretends to have.  Despite all the writers' attempts to the contrary, 9 is ultimately a very shallow piece of fiction.  What few depths it does have have been done a million times before a million times better.  And if you think that's hyperbolic, you just haven't seen the movie.  What story there is is so incredibly stupid, it's embarrassing!

Even the climax of this movie is embarrassingly shallow.  That warm feelings i got during the resolution were not of heartwarming, but of humiliation and embarrassment.  It was very much my hope that my fellow theatre goers didn't see me sitting in the theatre watching the movie with them (lest they think less of me).

As for the characters, there are a lot of words i could use to describe them but "annoying" generally sums it up.  A group of mostly cowards, the stitchpunks are not that interesting to watch.  The only non-cowards of the group just seem uninteresting.  They even seem to have this attitude about each other.  The most interesting one of the lot is 9 himself.  Even then, his most defining characteristic is his "niceness".  This is in the same vein as batman's most defining characteristic is his badass-ness.  So, yeah.

There are other characters, like the only female stitchpunk, 7 (yeah, you know what that means).  But by in large, the movie's not about them and they just serve to act as walking, talking plot devices.  Need 9 to be heroic?  Throw in a stitchpunk to be saved.  Need 9 to be a leader?  Throw in a stitchpunk to be lead.  Need 9 to be in a conflict?  Yup, there's a stitchpunk for that, too.  In fact, there's a stitchpunk for pretty much everything.

The one that bugged me the most was, by far, 7.  I'm not sure why, but i think a lot of it had to do with the assigned attribute of being "mysterious".  All the stitchpunks treat her like some kind of aloof loner, but nothing she does leads the viewer to believe this is what she's like.  Nothing, that is, except bailing on a moments notice (and she's the "warrior" of the group, people!).  What's worse is, there's quite literally only 9 forms of "life" on the planet that are friendly to the stitchpunks.  How is it they know nothing about her?  It doesn't make any sense!

The one saving grace of the movie is that it's mercifully short.  Unfortunately, it's still the longest hour and a half on record.

I didn't pay to see this movie (i used a free ticket given to me by a friend), but i still felt ripped off.  Unfortunately nothing i can say or do will ever bring back that free ticket...

Even though i used to be a fan of Tim Burton, his produce credit needs a lot of work now.

I give it, er... 4 and a half numbers out of 9.  D - D minus.  Really, i'm just being overly generous.

Picture: one of these days i'll have an original idea for the artwork.  And on that day, i shall draw it!

Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds... or however the hell it's misspelled... is Quintin Tarintino's (or however the hell that's spelled) latest bloodfest.  It's a wwii revenge movie, because sometimes (just sometimes) winning the war and instituting an unconditional surrender is just not enough of a kick in the balls to your long-since dead, discredited and completely historically dehumanized enemies.  Yup, sometimes a "revenge flick" is just what you need.

About the movie itself, it's not that bad.  There is a little less blood than i had expected given, well, it's tarintino.  Some of the atmosphere development goes on far too long and the build up becomes draggy.  The action that follows is typically high intensity but way too short lived for the preceding build up.

The characters are all over the place.  Brad Pitt's character seems to lack presence despite being the main character.  You get brief glimpses of him being... sadistic and psychotic, but that's about it.  He's said to be a brilliant leader and is known throughout nazi-germany (for his sadism, mostly), but you never really see him do anything.  The rest of the "Basterds" have less importance, still.

The best character in the film is, by far, the main villain: Hans Landa, the jew hunter.  Landa (Christoph Waltz) is nothing short of a brilliant villain.  Everything his character says and does just oozes with a kind of insidious creepiness.  Yet, Waltz plays Landa as a character who is sophisticated and brilliant all the same.  It's one of those roles that's definitely deserving of praise (an oscar, maybe?).  When an actor can make even eating a strudel seem like an act of evil, you know he's done a good job.

Sadly, the rest of the movie's villains are nothing but incredibly shallow stereotypes of all the worst nazi characteristics (just so ya know they're evil!).  This seems like an odd choice of characterizations because the only reason to use such stereotypes is to hammer home a heavy-handed point.  A practice that is almost wholy unnecessary when dealing with someone as infamous as Hitler.  It's not like anyone in the audience is going to mistake Hitler for a redeemable character or anything.

Yet Hitler, Gobbels and any other nazi you see is portrayed as a slobbering degenerate oaf who laughs at the death and misery of others (get it?  They're EVIL!).  They may as well have also said "and they're small in the pants" after every nazi introduction.

Now i'm not trying to defend nazi murderers, but let's face it.  Shallow villains is more of an insult to the viewer than who you're characterizing them after.  "I don't trust you to understand why this guy is evil, so i'll make it as obvious as posssible."  Just seemed kinda dumb to me.  Oh well, Waltz' character more than makes up for it.

Though i'd like to go on about other issues i had with the film, many more are very much plot significant, so i don't want to spoil them.  Suffice it to say, when you walk into a movie, there's a set of truthes you take to be universal and infallable.  There can be acceptable breaks from reality, even with these truthes, but you have to really really need it to be plot significant in order to pull it off nicely.  When a writer/director does it just because, it can be a little bit like a cold shower - uncomfortable, if not outright offensive.

Now, normally i avoid reading reviews of movies i'm planning on seeing since most reviewers just spoil the plot outright.  But because i waited several weeks to see this one, i inevitably saw a glimps of a review somewhere online (can't recall where).  This reviewer said Inglourious Basterds was basically a world war ii movie with the jews cast as nazis.  At the time i didn't understand what this meant, but after seeing Inglourious Basterds i think i know.

Ultimately, there are a lot of times little things i can pick at in this movie, some of them more glaring than others.  I'm not going to say the movie was bad, though, 'cause there were times i did overtly enjoy it.  There was the characteristic gore and violence, at least some decent atmosphere building (the opening scene comes to mind) and even some humourous scenes for good measure.  Definitely a good mix of elements.

All in all, i give this movie 4 and a half dead nazis out of 6.  Plain ol' B.

...

Hey, that's a good review!

*sorry about no pic... i'll put one up later if i can think of something clever.