Why My Sister Doesn't Like the Century Boulder

My sister sent me a message after my last post explaining why she doesn't like the Century Boulder. Turns out she and her husband hate the concession area. Here's what she said:

Did you get any food or drink? If you didn't than you have no idea. It is all self serve, except the popcorn. Imagine the giant clot that forms around ONE soda fountain machine before a big movie is about to begin, and then you still have to wait for your popcorm from one tiny counter and one guy serving it, and then you have to battle other people to grab your candy from a little shelf.

The rest of the place I have no problem with. But that concession stand is the worst I have ever seen.

Well that explains it. I didn't buy anything at the concessions, so I missed out on the "fun" she describes. I think what she said would apply to the Century Aurora as well.

Concessions is the aspect of the movie-going experience that I know the least about overall. It's rare for me to buy anything more than a ticket when I go to the movies. Mainly this is because I go to so many movies, and I want to spend as little as possible. From time to time, I'll buy popcorn, and I especially like the "Stimulus Tuesday" policy at the Carmike theaters, where you can get a small bag of popcorn for a dollar. But I don't drink soft drinks at all anymore, and I haven't bought candy for myself in years.

I did notice that Century in both Boulder and Aurora has Starbucks coffee (self serve, of course). This I like. I wish more theaters sold coffee, because sometimes I forget to caffienate before I go in, and wish I had.

Overall I've noticed that the Colorado corporate theaters lag behind the East Coast chains in terms of concessions. Even in down-and-out Worcester, Mass., they had the new-fangled "food court" style of concessions, with specialized counters for ice cream, etc. I've yet to see anything like that around here. On the other hand, Colorado is way head of the East Coast in terms of digital projection (common around here, much more rare in New England).

Where I endeavor to buy concessions on a regular basis is at independent theaters, but even then it depends on the price. Partly it's because I'm curious about the unique features of each theater, but also it's a good way to support these places.

The one place I always buy concession is when visiting drive-in theaters. At such places, I consider it mandatory, even if I wind up eating a crummy cheeseburger wrapped in foil and slurping down a HFCS-laden lemonade (the only thing I can stand to drink besides water).

But my curiosity is piqued. The next time I'm at the Century, either in Aurora or Boulder, I'll have to buy something, just for the experience. But since I usually go to matinees (again to save money) I am often the only person in line, so maybe it wouldn't count.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Seen at: Century Boulder, Thursday at 1:20 p.m.

My younger sister Anne, knowing that I'm trying to visit all the theaters in northern Colorado, has been asking me for sometime what I thought about the Century Boulder, a place I'd never visited. I'd been meaning to get down there for quite a while. After I let The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus slip in and out of Fort Collins, I got my chance, since it has been parked down in Boulder for the last three weeks. I made a special trip down on Thursday to catch the matinee.

My how things have changed in Boulder. I had known that they had torn down the old Crossroads Mall and replaced it with a contemporary lifestyle center, with interior roads and outdoor access to the shops, but I didn't know it was on this scale. It's the kind of place that makes someone from Fort Collins think, "Gee, I'd forgotten how much Boulder is always up to date on these things." It's the same old rivalry. But notice I don't live in Boulder.

Well, the shopping center is really nice, I have to say. Lots of easy parking in the underground garage, and a Pete's Coffee nearby where I killed an hour before the show reading. I often say I go to Starbucks because the natural light actually allows me to read. I wish there was a Pete's in the Fort, because I'd never have to go back to Starbucks again. Nice big windows.

My sister hates the Century multiplex there. I wasn't as adverse to it as her. It's a strange setting to be sure, with the entrance to the lobby right on the underground parking level. Among other things, I noticed (again) that the Century chain is really the Cinemark chain in disguise. I'd learned that in Aurora, at the Century there, which seems like a clone of the one in Boulder. The auditorium was small. That was about my only complaint. I'll have to ask her what she didn't like about the place. I've seen worse.

And I've seen worse movies than Imaginarium to be sure, but rarely ones so poignant in their failures. Of course you probably know the scoop about Terry Gilliam's latest movie, about how filming had to be suspended after Heath Ledger's death. The dilemma was: to reshoot the entire thing with a different actor (which would have deprived the world of Ledger's last performance) to come up with a gimmick. Gilliam went the gimmick route, and to be fair, it somewhat works, given that the movie has the same "two worlds" device as The Fisher King. So we see Ledger (mostly) in the real world, and substitute actors in the imaginary world. The gimmick is introduced via a minor character in the opening scenes in a rather confusing way, until you realize what is going on.

I can forgive the confusion here. I'm glad we got to see Ledger in the scenes they shot him in. What's harder to swallow about this story is the part that is pure Gilliam.

If you've seen The Fisher King, you probably know what I mean, in that Gilliam is enamored of the power of fantasy. That's all well and good. I thought the story would about the power of storytelling and narrative (something I think a lot about in writing this blog). But although it portrays itself as such (with a scene about "the story that sustains the universe"), it's really about the power of imagination. Narrative takes a back seat to chaotically wild fantastical images and scenarios, all of which are supposed to impress us by how weird they are.

The story creaks along this premise, mostly OK until the third act, when the story deficiencies catch up with it. In the last half hour it becomes a rather confusing mish-mash of wild events and settings (supposedly all taking place in a Wonderland beyond-the-looking-glass world inside one characters head). All of this wildness seems to obscure the lack of coherent plot line towards the end of the movie. The fantastical scenes simply don't add up to a real story that kept me interested.

To be fair, it might have made a little more sense had Ledger not died during filming. It would have kept me from being distracted by thoughts like "Is that Colin Farrel? Oh yes it is" just when I'd gotten used to Johnny Depp as the standin for Ledger in earlier scenes.

But it's not the fatal flaw of the movie. Instead it's that the story becomes a jumbled bag of absurd surreal scenes strung together towards a climax that seemed to have little to do with the first two acts of the movie. Moreover the ending of the movie is just a freaking depressing downer, one that strikes the wrong note after one has spent two hours thinking "Gosh it's a shame what happened to Heath."

In any case, it was perhaps the perfect Boulder movie to me---weird things coming at me in chaotic fashion, and leaving me with a deflated soul and a bad taste in my mouth. What it is about that place? I guess at heart I'll always be a hick from the Fort.

Oscar-nominated Animated Shorts

Seen at: Lyric Cinema Cafe, 4 pm on Wednesday.

Last year one of the highlights of my movie-going experiences was my three-day trip to New York City to stay with my cousin. I spent the entire time going to movie theaters in Harlem and lower Manhattan. Among my favorite places was the IFC in the West Village, where I saw the Oscar nominated animated shorts and live-action shorts. At the time I thought, "cool, this is something I could only do in New York or L.A."

Well, I didn't realize they had released these nationwide, and that this year I'd have the chance to see them in little old Larimer County on the High Plains, at my favorite local dry-cleaners-turned-independent-movie-house.

By now I've become pretty good friends with Ben, one of the owners and operators of the Lyric. We chat whenever I come in, and swap informal reviews. I dropped by the Lyric for an afternoon showing of the Oscar shorts, and I killed time telling him how bad Legion was, right up until I had to duck into the minute little auditorium, where I slumped onto one of the couches.

I like the idea of seeing shorts like this. I suits my attention span. I know I'm not going to be taxed by a godawful crummy narrative that will absorb two hours of my time. At worst, we get a new story every ten minutes or so.

The shorts were released in the same format as last year. Unlike last year, however, the ordering was different. First we got four of the Oscar-nominated animated shorts, and then we got a bunch of "highly commended" ones that weren't nominated. I'm thinking: aren't there five nominees? Where is the fifth one?

It out that they put the fifth nominee, called Logoland (from France) last, after the "highly commended" ones.
It was last partly because it contains profanity. It was also last because it blew away all the other ones. There is simply no contest this year.

Imagine a Quentin Tarantino-type violent cop movie but in a world in which everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) is made out of commercial logos. Michelin men cops shoot it out with an evil Ronald Mcdonald. Every frame in this movie is a world in which logos are everything. I can't tell you how cool this is. It must have taken the film makers years to gather all the corporate logs necessary to create this world. Some were downright obscure, but fun, as when the evil Ronald Mcdonald makes his escape on the motorcycle from the poster for Grease 2, complete with the little number 2 on the flag on the motorcycle.

Ben and I chatted on the way out. He agreed completely with my assessment. We both couldn't believe that Logoland was even made.

"There's no way they could have gotten permission for any of this," Ben said. "It's like they are daring all those companies to sue them."

Indeed. We're not talking lightweigts of trademark and copyright here. We're talking the heavies of corporate brand enforcement. For example, as we pull out over an earthquake devastated California, we see the Disney castle logo sinking in the sea.

"The only way this won't win the Oscar is if the voters get scared," I told Ben. "I hope they don't wuss out and give it to Wallace and Grommit short."

To be fair, the Wallace and Grommit short (the longest by far, at a half hour) was good, but it felt like an elaboration of the same kind of themes I see every week (namely that the only reason an attractive woman would pay attention to a timid Postmodern man is because she has some kind of evil design or plot to use him---yawn).

One thing I noticed: except for Logoland, which felt life-affirming despite its violent theme, and the other French entry (about a man in an awkward situation in a restaurant), the nominees featured strong images and themes of death.

Even cartoons are bleak this year.

Legion

Seen at: Carmike 5 in Greeley, Colorado, 4:05 p.m last Tuesday.

The slog continues through the end times. Last year it was Holocaust movies. This year it has been the apocalypse. How many times do I have see the end of the world being played out on screen. This has certainly been the bleakest stretch of Hollywood cinema of all time, thematically speaking.

For this particular entry, I journeyed over to Greeley to the Carmike there, finally plugging the last hole in the theaters of northern Colorado. The Carmike 5, I learned, is definitely the oldest theater in Larimer or Weld county, and it shows by its shabbiness. But the staff was friendly, and dutifully filled up a bag of popcorn for me for a dollar, being that Carmike has "stimulus Tuesday" with reduced concession prices.

Are movies so bleak because of the Great Recession, which began about the time this latest crop would have been in production? I think not. Readers of my reviews will remember that I am huge fan of movies from the early and and mid 1930s---horrible economic times---and that Busby Berkeley is at the top of my list of favorite directors. Movies from that era are bursting with life and optimism, even as they display a consciousness of how hard things are for most people.

Something else is at work to produce this bleakness, and to create this new genre in which every month it seems, we get to see civilization, or sometimes the entire Earth, destroyed. Where can it go from here?

Legion is perhaps the most ham-fisted of this new genre, with a laughable and at times downright pathetic literal interpretation of Biblical mythology (on par with Percy Jackson's Zeus creating lightning with his thunderbolt). In this case, it's angels---familiar ones, like Michael and Gabriel.

God, it seems, is a demiurge who has come to hate humanity and now wants to destroy us (a lovely thought). He has commanded the angels to wipe us out. Only one angel (Michael) disobeys him, and wishes to help humanity survive, against the onslaught of all the other angels.

When I realized this in the movie theater, it took me back to thinking about Milton's Paradise Lost. In elaborated Christian mythology, the angel who disobeys God is of course Satan. Thus the movie puts Michael in the role of Satan. But Satan here is portrayed as good, and as the protector of mankind because of his rebellion.

I'd like to make something Blakean out of this, but I don't think the writers and director were aware of anything I said in the last paragraph---or only dimly aware of it.

There are some good performances here, as they are in almost any Hollywood movie. Acting is not where the industry is lacking lately. But the acting is wasted in stupidity.

The characters are stuck in what could be called "Baghdad Cafe in Zombieland." To take a bunch of actors out into the desert and shoot the entire movie in one locale screams of low budget constraints. I can forgive that.

What I can't forgive is that the movie was a complete let down in terms of the moral order of character. We are supposed to be able to figure out which characters will survive and which will die based on their actions, in a moral cause-and-effect relation. Here we get the most nihilistic version of that. Characters die based on no rhyme or reason. They just die, except for the obvious ones that must survive.

The narrative devolves into an utter ripoff of Terminator (baby boy must survive to lead humanity in rebellion). I couldn't wait for this movie to be over.

There were some downright bizarre and offensive stances about guns in this movie. On the one hand, it is portrayed as good and normal that the white cafe owner has guns to defend himself. I'm cool with that, being a 2nd amendment supporter myself.

On the other hand, when the young black man from the city shows he has a pistol, several characters independently give him crap about it, asking why he would need such a thing. Uh, maybe to defend himself against thugs? If anyone should be carrying a weapon to defend himself, it is him. And did I mention that he might need to kill zombies and death angels too? I hate this kind of bullshit progressive double-standard moralizing. To top it off, the character dies heroically, but we don't even see him dead. I kept expecting him to come back.

Legion is so sad and dumb that I barely muster up much energy to criticize it. But I have to. Movies like this just shouldn't be made.

And for the the record, God is love. Just my opinion.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: the Lightning Thief

Seen at: Carmike 10, yesterday at 4:15 pm

The one thing that I really like about the Harry Potter series is that it is anti-eugenics. In the Potter series, the witches do not form a "blood" race per se, but can spring from any genetic combination. This issue is at the center of much of the controversy in the series.

What if you remade the Potter series but stripped this fact out, and made all the witches related by blood (as Malfoy in Potter wanted). Genetics becomes soley what determines whether or not you are extraordinary person. Your bloodline and birth are your destiny completely.

Well, this is Percy Jackson in a nutshell to me, a sad and ridiculous new entry into the "kids just want a cool adult mentor and a training academy" genre. It has all the charm and subtely of Nazi ideology (which too was based entirely on blood, and endeavored to embody the attitudes of the Pagan Olympian gods in modern society).

When this hit me, about forty minutes into the movie, it was all I could do not to walk out in protest. But wanting to see how the story turned out compelled me to stay. Besides I don't want to get in that habit.

The movie was an absolute disaster from the first scene, between Poseidon and Zeus. These are Greek gods? I know they were petty in the Iliad, but have they made no progress in the last several thousand years beyond this level of discourse.

And who gives a crap about the all-important magic lightning bolt, the macguffin of the story that is thrust into the plot gratuitously in the opening scene? You're really asking me to buy that all lightning in storms is created by Zeus with a magic light saber tool? I nearly fell out of my seat with derisive laughter at that point. It has been two hundred years since Ben Franklin's kite experiment. You have to do way better than this, at least if you want to have ancient mythology in a contemporary setting for a story (unless you want it to play it as a farce).

On a story level, it was just a failure. We surely needed a set-up to the theft of of the bolt, seen its power in action, and seen it being stolen without seeing by whom. All this could have been done in three minutes at the beginning of the movie. but there was zero---ZERO---set up of the essential mystery that drives the plot, or is supposed to drive it.

Instead the plot degenerates into something that reads like the instruction manual to a tired Nintendo game. The goal of the youthful heroic band of fighters becomes to find missing magic pearls hidden across the United States using a magic map that tells them where to find the next one.

In fulfiling this quest, the demigod heroes seem completely oblivious to any destruction they cause. Not surprisingly there are severe instances of the Law of Destruction of Museums and Monuments here. In particular we get to see the partial destruction of the Parthenon in Nashville, Tenn, as well as (get this) the Empire State Building. But it's all for a good story purpose, you see! I guess 9/11 really is history now. You can go back to wantonly smashing NYC skyscrapers, so long as you're the son of a god!

Here is Postmodern heroism in its glory: one's ability is determined completely by one's genetics. Moreover, you as the hero no longer risk life and limb to rescue your true love. That's offensive and unrealistic, and degrading to women to suggest a woman would ever need rescuing by a man. Instead you as the hero lust for the most powerful female warrior (cough, Avatar, cough). The female ideal is Super-Xena. She kicks your ass to earn your respect (somehow this makes her attracted to you, seeing you defeated) and you and she team up to go on a quest to save your mother.

Heroic quests to save mothers are, as far as I know, completely absent in classical mythology but seem to be becoming the standard fare for the Postmodern boy-man-hero (at least after the Star Wars prequels). I think this goes hand in hand with the destruction I mentioned before. A child seeking his mommy doesn't care whom he hurts, or what he breaks, to get back to her.

Manifestly this overworn theme (in this movie and in others like it) is all about the healing of the broken Postmodern family and home. In this case the forlorn and well-fed demigod children pine simply for a glimpse of their parents, sniff sniff. The whining got nauseating by the end. The human mother is of course rescued from Hades, but more importantly she throws out her abusive boyfriend whom she pretended to tolerate and love all these years only because of his powerful stench (I kid you not, this is exactly what happens).

The only part of the movie I enjoyed was a fun contemporary take on Medusa by Uma Thurman. Pierce Brosnan (one of the best actors in Hollywood for my money) also pulls his weight as a centaur, as best he can. Otherwise it was waste of screen time. Much of the cliche-ridden dialog seems to come right out of popular songs, e.g. "War is not the answer!" There were several other lines as bad as that, and I kept a running list during the movie, but somehow I've blocked them all out after leaving the theater.

I can only hope, as in the case with the Cirque du Freak: Vampire's Assistant last fall, that the first installment of this literary series is a sufficient flop to discourage sequels. I simply do not want to see another Percy Jackson movie again.

We have come so far from the classical Hollywood idea of democratic ability, in which bloodlines and genetics were always shown to be poor indicators of ability. This was invariably the message in classic Hollywood movies. Now (thanks again to George Lucas in part) most people won't even recognize eugenics propaganda when it hits them in the face, as in this movie.

Worst moment in the movie: when one of the characters implies that Barack Obama is the son of an Olympian god (at least that was the implication I got from the line). What awesome bloodlines our leader has, to do what he does, and be what he is! Perhaps we should change the Constitution to permanently give power to this race of benevolent elites?

So sad---a sickening waste of classical mythology on film. Bring on the new Clash of the Titans. Same hero, but in a true classical setting (where much more can be forgiven). But for god's (gods'?) sake, please let Perseus rescue Andromeda. I don't care whom it offends!

Shutter Island

Seen at: Carmike 10, 4 pm today

I'm jumping this one up in the queue. Just saw it. Need to talk about it.

I was really looking forward to this movie. Standing inline for the matinee on the day of release somehow took me back to movie experiences as a kid, in Iowa. Back then I usually didn't know anything about a movie before I saw it, just like today, going into Shutter Island, even though I'd seen the trailer multiple times. No reviews had yet reached me.

On the way in, I chatted with the manager, then took a seat in the third row in front of some teenagers. It was auditorium 6, which is the best one at the Carmike. The house was nearly full.

For the first twenty minutes I loved this movie. Scorcese making a tight tense thriller? Suprise me by going minimal-classical?

No such luck. By the mid-point of this movie I was incredibly disgusted. At point I was thinking: "how wrong I was, to think that Tarantino's historical revision about World War II would be only a one-movie trend. Now Scorcese is joining that budding genre."

But it got even worse. For one thing, this turns out to be a Holocaust movie. None of the trailers tipped me off, but I'm spilling it here. It's a Holocaust movie. Not that that's bad by itself, but the way it does the Holocaust here is just well...interesting. It basically says it was all our fault somehow (don't ask me who the "our" refers to, because I don't know).

It's also a denialism movie. It says that to believe that Nazi doctors conducted mind control experiments in the U.S. in the 1950s under U.S. government authorization is a fantasy of the diseased mind. I kid you not. This is exactly what the movie suggests.

Well, kudos for at least bringing up the real history of postwar America, Marty, even if you have to dismiss it as lunatic ramblings. Just getting it on screen is important for now. It must be damn hard to make movies lately that tell the truth about anything at all.

My prediction: in the future, historians will look back at Scorcese's later films as the perfect artistic expression of the denialism of our time. It is the denialism of America that cannot face what it has done in the war. It is an America that has started a war in which three million have died and which pretends that the war now is matter of hardly any consequence in our political debate anymore. We have more important things to discuss. This is the mirror of ugliness of falsehoods that Scorcese is holding up to us.

In The Departed, Scorcese gave us complete moral nihilism. Here he gave us complete psychological nihilism.

What next? I'm sure I'll be back in line to see. How can you not look at it?

I forgive Scorcese for making this movie. I'd love to see him do a non-nihilistic movie in the future.

update: it occurs to me that the entire movie was a ripoff of Twin Peaks.

update: the acting in the movie was superb. DiCaprio builds off his character in Revolutionary Road. Best performances were supporting roles, inlcuding ones by Max Von Sydow and Ted Levine (aka Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs, but now in authoritarian garb as a prison ward of an insane asylum). I swear that I really wanted hard to like this movie. Scorcese is a master as a director in the technical sense.

update: forgot to mention that I actually booed at the end of this movie (unusual for me), and then got a big laugh when right after Scorcese's name, up comes the title card for the screenwriter, who is someone that I knew back in Austin, and who was a friend of my ex-wife back then. Damn it, is that the way they told you write movies at UT, with that kind of ending? Really? FAIL. [imdb tells me she was nominated for a Razzie for Worst Screenplay in 2004 :( ]

The Book of Eli

Seen at: Carmike 10, at 7 pm on Jan. 22

The movie year 2010 got off to a late start with me, with this entry. It had been out a couple weeks already. I hadn't heard many reviews, except for my father, during a family gathering. "Have you seen Book of Eli? I heard it's the dumbest movie of all time."

That's like my dad---offer a strong opinion on a movie he had no intention of ever seeing.

"Haven't seen it yet," I said. As I've learned, the "dumbest movie of all time" tends to come along about every three weeks.

So having been cornered in my expectations already, I spent most of the movie trying to like it.

Here's what I liked about it: the post-apocalyptic world is well styled. It feels like post doomsday. The title character (Denzel Washington) is mysterious and sympathetic in this milieu.

The story worked mostly throughout. I didn't see why anyone thought it was "dumb" until the ending. In blunt terms, the movie is simply ruined by a plot revelation at the end that makes absolutely no sense at all, and calls into question the authenticity of the entire story up to that point.

Genre replacement has become one of my favorite subjects to think about, in regard to movies. That is, how have genres themselves changed over the decades, and into the Postmodern era.

Hollywood doesn't make classic westerns anymore, or rarely does (last true one was 2008's Appaloosa). Instead the post-apocalyptic genre has replaced it. That is, we no longer focus on an idealized American past in which individuals struggled to build society in the absence of external authority (old American self-reliance). Instead we focus on a negative idealized future (set in the same landscape), in which external authority is wiped out. Same situation, except one is hopeful whereas the other is mostly pessimistic. Instead of dust storms, we have nuclear winter. Instead of rustlers and Indians, we get cannibals.

And whew, they are making a lot of, uh, westerns lately. Makes you want to stock up on canned food.

Avatar 3-D

Seen at: Carmike 10, three weeks ago

Saw this under fun circumstances. Was out walking aimlessly in the early evening darkness, enjoying the cold air. Came back by the theater on the bike path. I detoured into the parking lot on a whim, popped up to the box office and resolved to see anything that was just about to start.

It was 8:20. The only movie that had recently started was Avatar, at 8:00. I knew the Carmike always has twenty minutes of trailers.

I asked the kid behind the glass, "Has Avatar started?"

He looked at the clock. Same thoughts as me. "It might have just started he said."

I thought a minute, then decided that such a movie requires seeing it from the first frame.

"Nah," I said, "I'll wait."

Without waiting, he replied, "You can go on in, and see."

I thought for moment. "If it's just now started as I walk in, can I pay you on the way out?"

"Sure," he said. I started to walk away to the door into the theater.

"Wait," he said. "You'll need these." He handed me the three-d glasses.

As I got into the auditorium, the last seconds of the last trailer played, and the distributor card came up that starts the movie. I slid into an available seat in the second row, front and center. Most of the theater behind me was well-occupied.

I realized almost immediately that the box office would be closed on the way out. Thus I was comped, for Avatar 3-D. It felt nice.

The movie really overwhelmed me. Everything they say about the virtual reality part of this movie is spot on. It really takes you to another world. Everyone who loves movies should see it in the theater while they can. It's truly a movie spectacle.

It did make me nauseous at a few times. At least five times I had to remove the 3-D glasses, especially in any vertigo situation. Taking off the glasses seem to work, and allow me to re-orient.

The story was much better than people have been saying. Yes, it borrows liberally from previous movies, and certain parts of the script seem to write themselves for ten or fifteen minutes at a time, but the story has more than enough novelty to make it worthwhile.

The strength of the movie, as far as novelty in story, was Sigourney Weaver's character, which plays heavily on her roles in the Alien movies and Gorillas in the Midst. Weaver is one of several strong female characters in this story. In fact, one can look at the entire movie as a commentary on the emergence of female power in the Postmodern Postmillennial U.S.

And yet the theme of the movie is supposed to be how humans have defiled their "mother". How odd. This kind of mind-weirdness helps makes the movie interesting in an almost sick fascination sort of way, by way of the contradictions it seems to hold.

What sucked about the movie? The dialog. It was just plain stupid and awesome. Many people have pointed out the groan-worthiness of "unobtanium," but my eyes were rolling twenty minutes before that particular bad note.

Also there are indeed major huge plot problems. Yes, the story is interesting, but there are terrible, terrible plot holes. For example, it is obvious that the hero of the story, the cross-over human, actually *brings about* the destructive battle through his personal actions. This is a mindblowing huge hole, from a classical point of view. Also (I'm not the only one to notice this) after the final "victory" the humans are marched off, presumably to return (?) next month and maybe, oh, wipe out the entire planet. There is no logical follow through in Cameron's storytelling in this regard. It's as if the virtual reality has sucked up all the oxygen of creativity in his movie making.

I'm left in awe, and also saying WTF very loudly.

A landmark in film making, and movie storytelling. Not the best motion picture of the year, because of the story deficiencies. Or maybe it is. I'm leaning towards another choice. But we'll see. I've got two weeks to decide.

2012

Seen at: Cinema Saver 6, two weeks ago.

Finally I got around to seeing this. I kept putting off and putting it off. It wasn't that I was dreading seeing a movie about the total destruction of the Earth (the second one of 2009, after Knowing), but that everytime I thought about the run time (2:35), I would suddenly find another shorter movie more appealing that day.

Anything over two hours five minutes has come to seem long to me. Fortunately I've developed a new strategy, part of my new initiatives for the new year of 2010.

This new strategy emerged after a recent realization that watching so many trailers has really begin wearing me down. In some chains, like the Carmike, there are almost twenty minutes of trailers before the show starts.

It occurred to me that maybe one of the reasons I was having trouble keeping interest and attention during movies was because so much of my emotional energy was being sapped before the movie even started---by the trailers.

Drama, Aristotle teaches us, is about emotional release. This is why we go to see the spectacle. We achieve catharsis by doing so.

But maybe my catharsis quotient was feeling filled by all the little overwrought mini-stories before the feature, ones that I was seeing over and over, with booming sound that overwhelms you even more than the soundtrack of the feature itself?

So I decided to stop watching trailers as much as possible. It's not an obsession, just a rule of thumb. I avoid them when I can. I still arrive at the showtime to see a movie, but often now I hang around in the corridor inside the door to the auditorium, pretending to check a text message and letting people walk around me.

I don't mind hearing the trailers, but I wait until they are done playing, and then slip into the auditorium right as the distributor card is coming up for the feature. Sometimes I wind up having to sit down front because of this.

More recently I've developed the art of keeping my eyes closed all through the trailers, opening them only when the feature comes on.

In any case, it seems to have worked. I've noticed I have a lot more emotional stamina, and my "clock watching" during movies (actually looking at my cellphone of course) has drastically fallen off.

In the case of 2012, this strategy really worked. I found myself in the third row of the two-buck cinema to see this. But the length and the subject matter, with all its special effects, was not really that tiring.

This is despite the fact that the movie is really hokey and I didn't care about the characters very much. In fact, the whole thing in the end looked like a eugenics fantasy of the elite---if only we could wipe out most of the world, what a lovely place this planet could be. The last scene of the film, in which the survivors find their paradise is sickly nauseating in this regard.

Yes, the Earth is basically destroyed, but the enlightened elite, and the few minions who were allowed at the last minute to board the rescue arcs (no doubt to act as servants to the elite in the post-apocalypse) will thrive and prosper. Happy ending!

There are seem really groaners, as far as science lines, one that make an old physicist really laugh. My favorite: "the neutrinos are having a physical effect!" Instead of a spiritual one, eh?

In other words, this is a stupid disaster movie with a rotten message but with decent special effects. I can't imagine any reason to see this on DVD. The pleasure to be had was in sitting in the third row and being overwhelmed by the spectacle.

Enjoy it while you can. The world may end tomorrow, as it has in so many movies this pas year.

Best Apocalypse: 2012

Broken Embraces

Seen at: Lyric Cinema Cafe, two weeks ago.

I haven't seen enough Almodovar to know whether this film is "typical" Almodovar. On the whole, it was an enjoyable story with plenty of sumptious cinematography of Penelope Cruz in various stunning outifts, making it a very visually appealing movie.

The biggest knock against the movie I can make is that it is Postmodern in subject matter---following a movie director who (at the beginning of the movie) is no longer able to direct movies, and exploring the backstory of how he got that way.

Nevertheless for Euro-cinema, it had a strong story with solid tension to drive the narrative. The guitar soundtrack was haunting and provided a nice unity. I didn't feel particularly moved by this film on a deep level, but there was something enjoyable about it, like daydreaming while watching the cliffs by the sea on a bus trip through Spain.

Precious

Seen at: Lyric Cinema Cafe, a few weeks back.

Vivid characterizations are the strength of this movie. One definitely cares about the people involved. Storywise, it was less spectacular. It was as if the story was composed of small segments of narratives that gave us partial insights into particular characters, but never took any particular story arc to its fullest. The final act of the story seemed to lack a coherent way of bringing any particular arc to its close.

Monique is on everyone's list for Best Supporting Actress, and she certainly struck her note well and consistently here, but the person who really blew me away was Mariah Carey, whom I didn't even realize was in this movie, and who went right by me until I saw the credits. That woman is talented!

In the meantime, the 2009 awards parade rolls on.

Best urban drama: Precious
Best poverty drama: Precious

Possibly best New York City movie. Have to think about that one. But definitely not Best 1980s movie, since although it was set in 1987, it really felt like a movie about today.

A Pile of Tickets

I've fallen behind in my blogging, and now there's a pile of tickets in front of me. I need to catch up.

It's been an interesting two weeks---filled with very interesting movies, with an emphasis on end-of-the-world, apocalypse kind of things. I feel like I've been through the emotional wringer, cinematically speaking.

Let's see...I saw Precious and Brozen Embraces, as well the Book of Eli (my first 2010) movie. I saw 2012 (at last!) and, yes, Avatar (for which I don't have a ticket stub).

I had to take road trips to see Daybreakers, The Road, Youth in Revolt and the Spy Next Door. Locally I saw The Lovely Bones, To Save a Life, and Invictus. Finally I rounded it with Antichrist at the Lyric last week.

Whew that's a lot (twelve movies). I'll try to catch up fast with quick reviews of each.

In my stack, I've also got a ticket to the National Western Stock Show from two week ago. I got to see the longhorn halter show for the first time in years, but the highlight was seeing the "costume mule" competition with my nieces.