April 25th, 2010 by Jim Davenport
Okay, I think I’ve made it quite clear that I’m a comic book junkie and a comic book movie junkie. So the trailers for Kick-Ass looked pretty interesting. Take a kid in our world who wonders why no one becomes a superhero. Give him a run-in with muggers and the hood of a car that leaves him with metal plates in half his body and a lot of screwed up nerve endings. That’s a super as he gets, physically. His ability? The ability to get beat up a lot and keep going. He runs into other new super heroes and attracts the attention of a real bad guy, a drug lord hiding behind a lumber company as his front.
I read a couple of the comics before the movie, but I didn’t read the graphic novel (which sits on my shelf waiting to be read) before going to the movie. I wasn’t totally surprised that the movie put in the amount of violence, blood, and gore that it did, but just pretty disappointed. I know they were “staying true to the comic book” but it was like watching Quentin Tarantino as a teenager trying to make a movie. It was just over the top. I guess maybe the same people who can sit through Hostel and Saw would probably not have a problem with Kick Ass, but in my doddering opinion, it just wasn’t necessary. Effort put into having people’s heads blow up in your face might have been put in giving any of the characters some heart or depth. Only Nicholas Cage’s whack-job of an obsessed father (Big Daddy) had you caring what happened to him. The rest had the emotional investment of characters in a teenage sex farce.
I wanted the movie to be good. I always want the movie to be good. I watch movies looking for the good stuff. But some movies bring so much of the bad that even the stuff they do well gets lost. There was a good movie to be made here, but director Matthew Vaughn’s third attempt at directing falls far short. (But looking him up on imdb explains a lot… he was a producer for two of Guy Ritchie’s British gang films: Snatch; and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. He directed a wannabe Guy Ritchie film called Layer Cake which didn’t live up to the promise. Shoulda cribbed more notes from Guy.)
February 21st, 2010 by Jim Davenport
I just saw the Batman movie that Guy Ritchie made. It really nailed some of the aspects that no other Batman flick ever got right…
Of course, I’m talking about “Sherlock Holmes”, which is a silly alias to hide his work from DC Comics’ lawyers. Okay, what am I blathering about? Well, he got some of the Holmes and Watson stuff right, the CGI was excellent for that period of London, the case was suitably mysterious with overtones of dark magic and the fall of the British government. The parts that seemed quite Batman-ish were as follows.
- The Fellow Can Take a Punch: This version of Sherlock Holmes, through his intense study of human anatomy and physics, is a remarkable hand to hand fighter. He’s also quite well-muscled and strong. There is a dose of James Bond in there as he battles one unnaturally strong and durable henchman of the villain.
- The Most Brilliant Mind: Although the style is a bit different, the same supremely analytical mind is present in both Sherlock Holmes and Batman, the same way of investigating a crime scene and detecting the faintest aroma of a rare chemical only used in the manufacture of a certain thing in a certain place in a certain time… and the encyclopedic knowledge to readily recognize it.
- Catwoman: Okay, in this movie, they call her Irene Adler but I assume that is an anagram for Selina Kyle, though I haven’t cracked that one yet. The consummate thief and female criminal, Irene is the one Sherlock failed to catch, twice. She seems to be the only match for him and the attraction between the two is palpable, though they remain restrained and un-united so the attraction doesn’t catch the screen on fire.
- Watson = Robin+Alfred: Okay, he’s Sherlock’s investigation partner and combat ally in all his melees which is Robin, but he’s got the military background and skills of a doctor, hence Alfred’s role. He’s there to give Sherlock someone to explain things to so we, the audience, ‘get it’. Robin and Alfred serve the same role, otherwise Batman would nearly never speak and we’d have no idea what he was doing and how he solved the case.
- Drama, Drama, Drama: It’s a big budget, action-thriller so it has to have drama. A fight high atop the unfinished London Bridge… the villain falling to his death not by our hero’s hand but by fate… A convoluted plot involving a bomb which has to be deactivated with only moments to spare… I could go on, but the movie delivers the plot devices required to make all this relevant.
Overall, I enjoyed the film. I’d been conditioned that it was a “bad” Sherlock Holmes film so my expectations were low. Yes, he diverted from classic Holmes, but not in any way that I found distasteful. Moriarty raises his sinister head, and Sherlock has ample opportunity to display his famous ‘eye for detail’. I am not a huge Holmes aficionado but I think most people would enjoy the movie.
Grade: B
February 6th, 2010 by Jim Davenport
Just got back from a screening of “The Book of Eli”, a post-apocalyptic drama starring Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis, Ray Stevenson, and Jennifer Beals. The story is set in a world 30 years after a war “tore a hole in the sky, let the sun came down and burned the earth.” The devastated, near black and white landscape hosts a smattering of thugs, refugees, cannibals, bandits, and wanderers. Things from the “time before” are prized, from bullets and books to handi-wipes. Water is very scarce and those who control clean water control people.
Eli is one of those wanderers with an almost supernatural ability to defend himself. Here the movie is very explicit in the violence: cutting off hands, shooting people in heads, cutting off heads, etc. It is not for kids (though sadly I saw several families with small children in the audience). It isn’t as over-the-top gore as say a Tarantino flick, but they show you the battle and then let it rest.
The setup feels very much like a “western”. The lone wanderer comes into a town, becomes a threat to the boss, and is targeted by a long string of thugs and soldiers. The source of the conflict is a book that Eli is carrying, sent on a divine mission by a voice in his head. The boss wants the book to reinforce his hold over his people and expand to more towns.
One Easter Egg in the film that I enjoyed was a movie poster for “A Boy and His Dog” (1975, Don Johnson as the lead) set in a very, very similar post-apocalyptic future.
Overall, the movie was satisfying and it certainly gave me a lot of ideas for running a post-apocalyptic game. I’m thinking of writing a “Gaming the Movies” column based on this film.
Grade: B+