April 18, 2012
Well kids, if you want to know what the 90s were like; The Cabin in the Woods isn’t a bad primer. People had a lot of fun, back in the 90s, with concepts like irony. The TV show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, became a touchstone for the smart/dumb paradigm, and the show’s creator, Joss Whedon, was revered like a king. Funnily enough, Joss Whedon is the writer of The Cabin in the Woods, so I’m not too surprised that the movie plays like a good episode of Buffy. All the Whedon trademarks are here: sexy girls, smart aleck quips, a hefty dose of meta-fiction, and a splodge of the macabre. The result feels like being pricked by a pair of inverted commas. While it might tickle you with its cleverness; irony never cuts too deep.
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Posted by jtatham
April 10, 2012
Flattery will get you anywhere, in a thriller. The whole genre is founded on subconscious bravado; the secret belief that, when faced with injustice, any Regular Joe could win a fight. “If I was mad enough…” you kid yourself. “If my loved ones were in danger…” you lie. The truth is: most of us couldn’t whip cream, let alone the “ass” of a man with a gun, who would most likely shoot you before you found your gumption. Thrillers understand that the audience is deluded; more Walter Mitty than John McClane. In a movie like The Cold Light of Day, the film-makers don’t even bother explaining how the civilian hero becomes Jason Bourne. He does so because he’s in a thriller. The rest is left to your cocky imagination.
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Posted by jtatham
March 25, 2012
This is the B-list movie everyone wants to see. It might be shallow, derivative and cheap-looking, but none of that matters: the fan-base is ravenous. For millions of teenage girls across America, The Hunger Games is the new Twilight. When the audience is hungry for a film, you’ve got a hit. Forget vampires and abstinence; fiction for Young Adults Young Women is all about dystopias now. It’s all set in ruined futures where teenage girls have to fend for themselves… against their hormones. The only hangover from Twilight is that cute boys still out-number the girls, by a libidinous margin of two-to-one. Really, what you’re looking at is Sex and the City, if Carrie Bradshaw had a bow and arrow, and two Mr. Bigs.
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Posted by jtatham
March 12, 2012
America is a no-good boyfriend to the world: sexy, dangerous, and narcissistic. America’s enemies are the world’s less attractive friends. And the U.N. is, I guess, yo’ momma. This helps explain why the world is in the state it’s in. We all know America is crazy; a nation of gun-nuts with blood on its hands. But that loose cannon persona is hot. There’s no denying it. Sensible countries, like Canada, don’t set the heart racing. You could marry Canada, but America will always be the country that turns heads. The new movie, This Means War, only makes sense because it’s American. Romance and violence don’t mix so well in other nations. In America, they’re inseparable. This is why loving America is so likely to get you hurt.
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Posted by jtatham
February 13, 2012
Jim Henson was like a father to me. He was everywhere in the 80s; a puppet didn’t appear on TV or in film without Henson’s imprimatur. My images of childhood are mostly foam or fur-covered, thanks to him. I’m eternally grateful that I grew up in the halcyon days before CGI, when puppets were king. The kind of wholesome anarchy Jim favoured was paradise for kids. He was Walt Disney without the evil. His most famous creations, The Muppets, didn’t have that weird, repressed quality you find in Mickey Mouse. They’re free-wheeling, loose-limbed, all-too-human. Kermit the Frog is wonderfully frayed. You can’t feel so tenderly about pixels, or a drawing. There’s a vacuum of sentiment. Jim Henson’s legacy is tactile.
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Posted by jtatham
February 7, 2012
It’s funny how so many sad films are labelled comedies. There’s a real gap in the movie lexicon under sad. You’ve got weepies, of course. And ubiquitous dramas. But both those end with either death or change. There isn’t a genre where the protagonist just stumbles on, helpless. Movies aren’t meant to be like life that way. Audiences don’t want to be told that loneliness and defeat can triumph. We can cope with death on-screen. A sad life is infinitely more hellish. Maybe that’s why movie marketing departments prefer the word comedy. Like Jason Reitman’s new comedy, Young Adult. It’s the saddest film of the year. Watching it, you come to realise: a woman without intuition is a heart-breaker, alright. But not in a good way.
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Posted by jtatham
January 29, 2012
There are ways of dying that shouldn’t exist anymore; like being shot with an arrow, or run over by a medieval siege tower. Being eaten by wild animals is right near the top of that list. I can never quite imagine how you break the news, when “Chet” (hypothetical web designer and Apple enthusiast) gets gobbled up mid-Tweet: Lotta growling round here LOL… And the next thing: Chet’s lunch. Death should keep pace with the times. You shouldn’t be able to buy an iPad in the same era when you can be eaten by wolves. Unfortunately, the majority of scary beasts don’t own a calendar. Whether it’s 2012 or the Bronze Age; to a wolf, we’re still man chow. We always have been. It’s only iPhones the wild animals can’t stomach.
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Posted by jtatham
January 22, 2012
Gina Carano could kick your ass. I don’t care who you are. This girl makes the boys from 300 look like a chorus line. She chokes Michael Fassbender with her thighs. She leaves Ewan McGregor to die under a rock. She even makes a Steven Soderbergh movie worth watching. You don’t need to suspend your disbelief when she launches into action. Unlike that string bean Angelina Jolie; Gina does all her own stunts. She’s a Mixed Martial Arts champion, from Dallas County, Texas. Her demeanour is soldierly, through and through. In Haywire, her mission is to beat the crap out of male movie stars. She does so with aplomb. As the tagline says, “They left her no choice.” This girl was born to get into fights.
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Posted by jtatham
January 15, 2012
As Steven Spielberg’s old pal George Lucas once said: “Emotionally involving the audience is easy. Anybody can do it blindfolded. Get a little kitten and have some guy wring its neck.” By my count, someone threatens the life of the horse (in War Horse) roughly every half an hour. That’s a lot of mortal jeopardy. Cynics will argue that Spielberg endangers the animal for the sake of the box office. But I don’t think cynics should be allowed to see this film. For while it may well be corn-fed sentimental hokum, every bit as contrived as Lassie Come Home, there’s something undeniably moving about War Horse. Spielberg is fascinated by our capacity for good. He might be a sap, but my God he knows how to make a movie.
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Posted by jtatham
December 22, 2011
This review is dedicated to Tom Wheeler.
Everyone in this movie is waiting for a sign. The Future is uncertain; it’s like a form of semiotics. How would a happy couple know each other if they forgot they were a couple? How do people who want sex attract the likeminded? How is it that a picture connects with a person? And what do we want people to understand about us? The signals are everywhere. But if we’re too ready, we risk picking up the wrong signals. If we’re unprepared, we risk sending no signal at all. We can be forgotten far more easily than we can be understood. In Miranda July’s sophomore effort as writer/director, everyone wants to communicate their innermost thoughts. The question is: how do we interpret this sincerity? As kitsch?
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Posted by jtatham
