There once was a time when “3” was the magic number for movie series. If a film was successful, it likely would get a sequel. If it was very fortunate, it could get a third entry, rounding out the series into a trilogy.
Image property of Universal Studios
Many classic film stories were made into trilogies and concluded, with nary a thought of continuing into the unknown territory of “4.” Any series that did get a fourth entry, like Rocky, Lethal Weapon, or Police Academy, managed it by learning a formula and simply replicating the recipe with slightly different ingredients each time. There often was an air of desperation about the idea of a film series continuing past a trilogy and a derision of sorts from many audience members.
Such times, as long ago as the mid-‘90s, now seem antiquated. So far, 2012 has already brought us fourth entries in the Underworld and American Pie franchises. As this summer season brings audiences to the multiplex in droves, we’re also getting fourth Spider-Man, Ice Age, Step Up, and Bourne movies. Then, to close out the year, studios are giving us Paranormal Activity 4 and what many consider to be a fourth movie in the Peter Jackson-J.R.R. Tolkien partnership, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
How this phenomenon became such a common occurrence is a subject large enough for a whole other article on sequels, remakes, and brand names. Part of the answer, though, lies buried amidst the piles of sequels that now litter store shelves and dump bins.
In the ‘90s, movie series were still wrapping up in trilogies. As the decade began, Indy had just retired and the Exorcist series had redeemed itself in a fitting close. Halfway through the 1990s, Jack Ryan and John McClane both rode off into the sunset, with fitting bombastic dignity. As the 20th century gave way to the 21st, even post-‘80s series like Scream wrapped up into their own trilogies.
Image property of 20th Century Fox
Then something changed. The mentality of audiences became more forgiving of fourth entries. Embracing, even. Despite The Sum of All Fears failing to revive Jack Ryan and both Exorcist prequels bombing, audiences started clamouring to see their old favourites again. Series like Indiana Jones, The Terminator, Die Hard, and Jurassic Park all were being requested. Such fan-driven requests hadn’t ever been uncommon, but the emergence of the Internet in the new millennium suddenly gave these normally soft-spoken audience members a booming voice.
In the last five years alone, we’ve been given Hannibal Rising (the fifth entry, technically, but let’s put semantics aside), Live Free or Die Hard, TMNT, Rambo, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Terminator: Salvation, Scream 4, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and Spy Kids 4D: All the Time in the World. Three of those were from 2011 alone. 2012 has lined up eight, with more possibly to come. And let’s not forget the long-in-the-works Austin Powers 4, Beverly Hills Cop IV, and Jurassic Park IV, likely coming soon to a theatre near you.
To be fair, one major culprit for this that is often ignored (by sheer virtue of it being the fifth entry and not the fourth) is 2005’s Batman Begins. While the modern Batman movies had reached a total of four before the characters were abandoned post-Clooney, it was Batman Begins that showed there was an audience for once-thought stagnant characters and settings.
Because the tetralogy epidemic took hold in the last decade, one would think the central blame lies with a movie made since Y2K. Truthfully, though, the biggest cause of the boom of modern revisits came before the turn of the century, and it even just recently popped its head back out to survey what it begat and remind those paying attention: The Phantom Menace.
Image property of 20th Century Fox
There were fourth entries that had succeeded at the box office before Episode I – even fourth sci-fi entries, like 1997’s Alien: Resurrection – but none made the impact that George Lucas’s return to the Star Wars galaxy did in 1999.
As a double-whammy, the movie got generally mixed reviews, which taught studios that audiences would flock to theatres to see their favourite old-school franchises, regardless of whether the reheated product was any good. This lack of a need for quality control led to the reintroductions of John Connor and Indiana Jones being so scattershot and alternatingly bombastic and lacklustre.
The Phantom Menace, for better or for worse, changed the landscape of cinema and the box office by making franchises out of series that would otherwise have stayed as trilogies. Whether you think that’s a blessing or a curse probably depends on whether you rushed out two weekends ago to see American Reunion.
Regardless of how you may feel about them, “fourquels” aren’t going away anytime soon. As long as people are lining up to see Jack Sparrow’s next adventure on the high seas or Ethan Hunt’s next impossible mission, studios will keep churning them out.
In a few years, I wouldn’t even be surprised to see a trailer for The Godfather, Part IV. Myself, I’ll probably be sitting on my couch, re-watching Back to the Future, Part III. I may have already seen it and know what’s going to happen, but there’s just something much more satisfying about a “The End” than a “To Be Continued.”
The last time there was this kind of fervour for a film adaptation may have been over a decade ago, with the releases of the first films in the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings franchises. Even bestsellers like The Da Vinci Code or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo didn’t have the built-in anticipation and the drummed-up marketing that The Hunger Games has amassed for itself.
Perhaps the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings comparisons are more apt than I intended. All three book series are behemoths in the world of youth-read literature; all three depict young adults dealing with over-the-top circumstances in a very different world than ours; and the movie adaptations of all three have had to walk the tightrope of pleasing die-hard fans while also trying to serve the needs of the movie.
As wonderful as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was, it was too slavish to the source material at times, at the expense of creating the different pace and tone the latter half of the film needed. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring wonderfully tweaked and tinkered with Tolkien’s original book, hoping fans of the book would like it but caring more about serving the movie than the original writing.
The Hunger Games falls somewhere in between. Fans who have gotten upset at omissions of things like Tom Bombadil in LOTR or the origin of the Marauder’s Map in HP will surely balk at things that were changed or left out. To an extent, they’ll have a point to their umbrage, as a number of the tiny things excised from the story will be necessary in later films and could’ve been covered in mere seconds. (Avoxes, for instance, are only present in one scene, and never even explained to the audience.)
But what if you haven’t read Suzanne Collins’ dystopian novel? What are you in store for? Is the movie worth watching if you’re not a fan of the books?
Absolutely. The Hunger Games, for all its tiny flaws, is a marvel of an adaptation and a fantastic thrill ride in its own right.
The story is one familiar to anyone who’s watched movies like The Running Man, The Most Dangerous Game, Battle Royale, or even The Condemned: a bunch of people compete in a live, televised battle-to-the-death. What makes The Hunger Games the best-filmed version of that concept is everything outside of the deathmatch itself.
The first half of the movie is all setup. It introduces us to the nation of Panem. At an indeterminate time in the past, there was a devastating war that destroyed most of the planet. Built on the razed remains of North America was Panem, a country of 13 districts. Following an uprising, the government struck down its revolting citizens and even obliterated one of the districts. To further establish control and keep its citizens in fear, the government of Panem, in the Capitol, made it law that every year, one teenage boy and one teenage girl from each of the remaining 12 districts would fight to the death, with the world forced to watch and cheer on their districts’ competitors.
Katniss Everdeen, the heroine of the story, is the girl chosen from the impoverished District 12. The beauty of Collins’ vision of the future is that while affluent districts of Panem look futuristic and dazzling, the lower districts look like something out of Little House on the Prairie. There are the occasional pieces of new technology in District 12, but even they look worn-out and decrepit, hand-me-downs from “more important” districts that have disposed of their tech for newer models.
Katniss is played by Jennifer Lawrence, in the type of role that is bound to define her for a long time to come, much as Daniel Radcliffe will be remembered as Harry Potter. Lawrence is perfectly cast, taking her Oscar-nominated performance in 2010’s Winter’s Bone and tweaking it with a tinge more humour and a healthy dose of humanity.
District 12’s male competitor is Peeta Mellark, played by the always-underrated Josh Hutcherson. Hutcherson has shown a natural acting talent since his early child-actor days almost a decade ago. In movies like Little Manhattan, Zathura, and more recent fare like The Kids are All Right, he’s often stolen scenes from actors far his senior. In Peeta, he, too, gets the role of a lifetime.
Hutcherson made a very public campaign to get himself cast in this movie, speaking effusively about the character of Peeta and how strongly he wished to have the opportunity to play him (long before a movie version had even been announced).
In many ways, Peeta is the most complex character of the book trilogy and surely the role that requires the most acting talent. Those who’ve read the sequels know the emotional pain he’ll have to endure in Catching Fire and the psychological depths he’ll plumb in what will surely be the star performance in Mockingjay. Fans can rest easy. Hutcherson proves himself more than capable of delivering both what is currently required of his character and what will be.
Image property of Lions Gate Entertainment
It takes a lot of skill to truthfully depict the excruciating pain of secret, unrequited love without being over-the-top; I’m not sure I could name another actor under 20 who could pull it off with such subtle nuance as Hutcherson does. Katniss may be the focus of the story, but Peeta has the largest trajectory of any character in the series. Based on what Hutcherson shows us here, we can likely expect to be blown away by his work in the sequels.
The supporting performances are, sadly, a little hit-and-miss. Some of the casting is genius (Donald Sutherland as the malevolent President Snow, Stanley Tucci as infectiously genial talk-show host Caesar Flickerman, Elizabeth Banks as the shrill and oblivious Effie).
Wes Bentley, in particular, is outstanding as the Games’ designer and producer, Seneca Crane. Bentley wowed the as the emo next-door neighbour in American Beauty, before falling off the map in lesser-profile films like Soul Survivors and The Four Feathers. Bentley does wonderful work as a man interested in putting on a great TV show above all else.
Other roles have been filled by actors who, while talented, never truly overcome their ill-fitting casting. Woody Harrelson does admirably as the perpetually drunk Haymitch, though the role is much more suited to an actor who can dig into darker territory, like Robert Downey, Jr. (who was a fan favourite before casting). Lenny Kravitz is also perfectly adequate as Cinna, Katniss’ assigned costume designer/makeup artist before the Games, although he’s not given much to do.
Given even less to do is Liam Hemsworth as Katniss’ childhood best friend, Gale. Worse still, even though Gale is relegated to a very minor role here, Hemsworth doesn’t seem to be able to bring anything to the character beyond a Tiger Beat smolder and the ability to stare silently across fields with a blank look on his face. I would have much preferred someone like Andrew Garfield in the role, who may not have attracted the teen-girl crowd but that will be capable of carrying the increasingly heavy load the character of Gale will have to in the future. Hopefully Hemsworth gets some acting tips from his older brother before the first sequel commences filming.
The first half of the film deals with the recruitment of the competitors for the 74th annual Hunger Games, including travelling to the Capitol, training athletically, acquiring sponsors, and all the politics involved in a national media event (albeit one in a dystopian future). The second half of the movie is the Games themselves. In a way, half the movie feels like build-up, which is both a compliment and a criticism. You may admittedly find yourself checking your watch around the one-hour mark, wondering when the real action will begin. Once it does, however, the thrills don’t let up until a few minutes before the credits roll.
Image property of Lions Gate Entertainment
I won’t get into any details beyond that basic framework, as readers already know that some of the best moments in the story come out of the blue. I will mention two things, though, that were mostly created for the movie and add an interesting perspective.
In the book, the Games themselves are told entirely through Katniss’ eyes. The reader follows her everywhere and doesn’t experience or witness anything she doesn’t. Ross’ movie, however, never loses sight of the fact that these children are participants in a televised event. Every so often, we, the audience, are withdrawn from the action within the arena and get to view some of the ongoing commentary that Flickerman and announcer Claudius Templesmith provide for TV viewers in Panem. These scenes, admittedly, don’t work very well; the exposition was so clunky a few times that it reeked of lack of trying to explain details expressed in the book.
There are other interjecting scenes, though, where Seneca presides from on high, producing the show in real-time and controlling the environment to steer the televised contestants toward different traps or plot developments. These scenes have the same feel as watching the gods in Clash of the Titans toy with mortals below, or watching Ed Harris’ character in The Truman Show creating sunrises and machinating devastations for helpless Jim Carrey below him.
Such moments in the control room of the Games telecast help continually remind us of the story’s scale, while also pushing us even more into Katniss’ corner by reminding us that there are countless people who could help her (as well as all the other unfortunate children), but purposely do not for the sake of entertainment. It adds to a dark undertone that didn’t truly emerge until the second book, but serves the story well by being imbued so early.
The big question is whether to see The Hunger Games if you haven’t read the books; if you have, you surely already made up your mind about seeing or not seeing it, and this review won’t sway you. To those who don’t know their mockingjay from their tracker jacker, however, I can proudly attest that this movie works for everyone. In fact, it is a practically perfect adaptation of the book. Any flaws it does have are mostly ones that were present in the book, as well, and that would cripple the story if removed or changed.
As far as the final result, the fact is that this is the best adaptation of The Hunger Games that could have been made. I may have some personal qualms with casting choices and plot omissions, but none of them are enough to prevent me from recommending it. The Hunger Games is timely, clever, patient, entertaining, and rewarding. And considering the first of the three books is the weakest one in the trilogy, if this is what Ross can do with The Hunger Games, my ticket for Catching Fire is as good as bought.
(Note: While The Hunger Games is rated PG-13, it is extremely intense. Other than The Dark Knight and the Lord of the Rings movies, I can't think of another PG-13 film so close to deserving an R rating. Much of the most brutal violence is depicted through such clever editing that you think you see more than you do, but that's not to say that there aren't still scenes of necks snapping, machetes slicing, and skin burning. While the movie has lots of good lessons to take away from it and upstanding role models in its young protagonists, The Hunger Games is not a child-appropriate movie. Be advised, it may be too intense for some pre-teens.)
(Now updated with the actual winners highlighted.)
Need last-minute ideas for your Oscar pool? Here are my predictions and my estimation of each movie's odds in their categories, if you find yourself struggling. Feel free to add your own predictions in the comments!
PICTURE
1. The Artist (WINNER)
2. The Descendants
3. Hugo
4. The Help
5. Moneyball
6. Midnight in Paris
7. The Tree of Life
8. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
9. War Horse
DIRECTOR
1. Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist) (WINNER)
2. Martin Scorsese (Hugo)
3. Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris)
4. Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life)
5. Alexander Payne (The Descendants)
ACTOR
1. George Clooney (The Descendants)
2. Jean Dujardin (The Artist) (WINNER)
3. Brad Pitt (Moneyball)
4. Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)
5. Demian Bichir (A Better Life)
ACTRESS
1. Viola Davis (The Help)
2. Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady) (WINNER)
3. Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs)
4. Michelle Williams (My Week with Marilyn)
5. Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
1. Christopher Plummer (Beginners) (WINNER)
2. Max von Sydow (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close)
3. Kenneth Branagh (My Week with Marilyn)
4. Jonah Hill (Moneyball)
5. Nick Nolte (Warrior)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
1. Octavia Spencer (The Help) (WINNER)
2. Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids)
3. Janet McTeer (Albert Nobbs)
4. Berenice Bejo (The Artist)
5. Jessica Chastain (The Help)
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
1. Midnight in Paris (WINNER)
2. A Separation
3. Bridesmaids
4. The Artist
5. Margin Call
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
1. The Descendants (WINNER)
2. Moneyball
3. Hugo
4. The Ides of March
5. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
ANIMATED FEATURE
1. Rango (WINNER)
2. Chico & Rita
3. A Cat in Paris
4. Kung Fu Panda 2
5. Puss in Boots
ART DIRECTION
1. Hugo (WINNER)
2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
3. The Artist
4. War Horse
5. Midnight in Paris
CINEMATOGRAPHY
1. The Tree of Life
2. War Horse
3. Hugo (WINNER)
4. The Artist
4. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
COSTUME DESIGN
1. The Artist (WINNER)
2. Hugo
3. Anonymous
4. Jane Eyre
5. W./E.
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
1. Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
2. If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front
3. Pina
4. Hell and Back Again
5. Undefeated (WINNER)
EDITING
1. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (WINNER)
2. The Artist
3. Moneyball
4. Hugo
5. The Descendants
FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM
1. A Separation (WINNER)
2. In Darkness
3. Bullhead
4. Footnote
5. Monsieur Lazhar
MAKEUP
1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
2. The Iron Lady (WINNER)
3. Albert Nobbs
SCORE
1. The Artist (WINNER)
2. War Horse
3. Hugo
4. The Adventures of Tintin
5. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
SONG
1. “Man or Muppet” (The Muppets) (WINNER)
2. “Real in Rio” (Rio)
SHORT (ANIMATED)
1. The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (WINNER)
2. La Luna
3. A Morning Stroll
4. Wild Life
5. Dimanche (Sunday)
SHORT (DOCUMENTARY)
1. The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom
2. Saving Face (WINNER)
3. God is the Bigger Elvis
4. Incident in New Baghdad
5. The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement
SHORT (LIVE-ACTION)
1. Tuba Atlantic
2. The Shore (WINNER)
3. Raju
4. Time Freak
5. Pentecost
SOUND EDITING
1. Hugo (WINNER)
2. War Horse
3. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
4. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
5. Drive
SOUND MIXING
1. Hugo (WINNER)
2. Moneyball
3. War Horse
4. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
5. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
VISUAL EFFECTS
1. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
3. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
4. Hugo (WINNER)
5. Real Steel
In summation, my predictions for the 84th Annual Academy Awards:
PICTURE: The Artist
DIRECTOR: Michel Hazanavicius
ACTOR: George Clooney (The Descendants)
ACTRESS: Viola Davis (The Help)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christopher Plummer (Beginners)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Octavia Spencer (The Help)
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Midnight in Paris
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: The Descendants
ANIMATED: Rango
ART DIRECTION: Hugo
CINEMATOGRAPHY: The Tree of Life
COSTUME DESIGN: The Artist
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
EDITING: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM: A Separation
MAKEUP: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
SCORE: The Artist
SONG: "Man or Muppet" (The Muppets)
SHORT (ANIMATED): The Fantastic Flying Books of...
SHORT (DOCUMENTARY): The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom
This is the first in a new series of columns I’ll be occasionally writing. Each time, I’m going to defend a movie that is often derided and explain why it deserves more respect. Perhaps if I get bold enough, I may also go after a few “classics” I consider to be quite overrated. Keeping things recent, though, I’ll turn my focus back just a few years to begin.
Image property of Paramount Pictures
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is not the best Indiana Jones movie. No one would claim it is. Hell, even Shia LaBeouf said in a 2010 interview with the Los Angeles Times that he felt they “dropped the ball” with it.
It’s better than people gave it credit for, though, in the same way and for the same reasons that The Phantom Menace is. When both movies were released, people had such adoration for the original trilogies and had over a decade of anticipation and expectations to live up to, which is a burden no film series is strong enough to overcome.
What is unfair to those movies, though, is that audiences appropriated Lucas’ characters for themselves. People believe that once a movie character exists and is loved, that person belongs to everyone and not just the character’s creator. The truth of that thinking is debateable in and of itself, but it has a caustic side effect, which is that audiences can forget the actual reason for a character’s existence. That’s what happened with Indiana Jones.
Before I get into what I mean, let me stress that there are many things in the movie which I won’t defend. Some parts, like the CGI vine-swinging and the airborne refrigerator, will get no defense from me. So don’t think I’m in love with the movie. But if you’ve read this far, that means you’re obviously open to at least hearing why I think it’s underrated and unappreciated, so let me ask you a question: What is Indiana Jones’ purpose as a character?
By that, I mean literally, within the script and as a conception in 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, what does his character represent? Why, in the movie that introduced him to us all, was he chasing down Nazis and traversing jungles and recovering Christian artefacts?
Many people don’t know the truth. Because Indiana Jones was doing those things in the first three movies, audiences assumed incorrectly (though understandably) that the character, as conceived by George Lucas, was a professor-slash-archaeologist forever locked into the 1930s and forever in battle with Nazis. But he wasn’t. He was never meant to be anything that simple.
In that Los Angeles Time article, there were a number of statements LaBeouf made about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that set chatboards and entertainment news shows ablaze, but his most insightful comment was largely ignored: “We need to be able to satiate the [audience’s] appetite. I think we just misinterpreted what we were trying to satiate.”
What does he mean? What is he referring to? For that, you need to know what Indiana Jones, as a character, truly is and always has been: an homage.
Many people nowadays don’t know what movie serials are/were. The only remnants left these days are the occasional Looney Tunes shorts that may precede a kids’ movie or the short cartoons Pixar shows before their films. Serial were hugely popular up until the 1950s, though, preceding many, if not most, theatrical releases.
Unlike the sporadic and scarce serials of today, serial films close to a century ago told continuing, serialized stories (hence the term). They often ended in cliffhangers, during the climax of an action scene, with the audience unsure if the hero would survive. (The only way to find out would be to return the next week and see the following instalment.)
Before George Lucas came up with the fleshed-out character in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana was more concept than character. The ideas and motifs people came to associate with the first three Indy movies were not the effect of Lucas’ inspiration, they was the cause.
Lucas wanted to pay tribute to serial films with Indiana Jones. Because the most prevalent themes of 1930s serials were adventure, exploring, jungles, native tribes, and treasure-seeking, that’s what Indiana Jones dealt with. That’s even why the first three movies all took place in the ‘30s. (Did you ever wonder about that?)
Even Lucas, though, is bound by the marching of time. The first three Indiana Jones movies, made in an eight-year period, all took place in the ‘30s. Between 1981 and 1989, Ford didn’t age much, so Spielberg and Lucas could afford to leave Indy in the same decade for the second and third movies. By the mid-‘00s, however, there would just be no believing a sexagenarian Harrison Ford playing Indiana Jones in the 1930s.
By the time Ford, Spielberg, and Lucas all lined their ducks in a row for a fourth adventure with Indy, almost two decades had passed since Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade had been released. As such, we meet up with Dr. Jones 19 years after the events in his third movie. What was a logical timeline decision, though, led to a script choice that alienated many audience members (pun partially intended).
If you don’t know by now that the fourth Indiana Jones movie features aliens, then you probably care so little about Indy that I’m not spoiling anything for you. Many, many people were outraged that sci-fi elements would dare be shoehorned into their favourite archaeologist’s universe. Trey Parker and Matt Stone memorably went so far as to depict the movie as two hours of Spielberg and Lucas literally raping Indiana Jones.
People’s outrage seemed to have two facets, similar though arguably different: that having aliens made the series seem hokey and ridiculous, and that aliens did not belong in an Indiana Jones movie.
On the former front, I attribute a large part of that complaint to people’s nostalgia-fuelled revisionism. The first three Indy movies are filled with scenes and plot cruxes that don’t just embrace but downright require an absolute suspension of disbelief. A cult with the power to keep a sacrifice alive after removing that person’s heart? A knight who has been alive around 900 years, living in a sealed cave? Even the brilliant Raiders of the Lost Ark hinged on a chest of religious powers capable of melting people’s faces off (as long as you didn’t know the complex trick of closing your eyes). Maybe it’s just me, but aliens don’t seem any more far-fetched than any of those plot devices or characters. The real issue is people’s feelings that aliens don’t belong in the world Spielberg and Lucas created.
The question behind whether those feelings are justified is, at heart, one that has existed before even cinema itself: Does a character belong to its creator or its fans? Moreover, is a creator’s obligation to do their character justice as it was originally envisioned or to embrace aspects audiences unexpectedly used to define the character?
Indiana Jones was, as I mentioned, always meant to be an homage to serial films. The original three movies referenced ‘30s serials, which dealt with jungles, adventures, and artefacts. Since Ford had aged two decades since the earlier movies, Indy had to have as well, so the fourth movie was set in the 1950s.
Since Indiana Jones was created to pay tribute to serial movies, and the new film took place in the ‘50s, it was constructed as an homage to ‘50s serials. Care to take a guess as to what that decade’s serials dealt with? That's right, spacemen, Martians, flying saucers, giant ants, and visitors from outer space. (That’s even why Russians are the villains the fourth time around.)
The trouble is, people had appropriated the character based on the ‘30s-set films’ characteristics. Most people weren’t aware that Indiana Jones was a tributary homage, not a true action hero. The fault could be placed on Spielberg for doing his job too well. Just as movies like The Princess Bride and Shaun of the Dead serve as both tributes to their genres and self-respecting examples of them, the first three Indiana Jones movies function perfectly as both tribute to (serial) action films and as action films in their own rights. Most people, though, only ever watched them on their superficial level, as action entertainment. They didn’t care about the homage elements, if they even were aware of them.
The main “fault” of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull lies squarely in George Lucas’ hands. He’s the one who decided to shift the tribute-paying aspect from ‘30s serials to ‘50s serials. It was a perfectly logical decision, since he was staying true to the very reason he had created the character and world of Indiana Jones. In fact, in fairness to him, I would have done the same thing. And I can’t think of a way around it that wouldn’t have made an even worse movie.
Unfortunately, though, Lucas didn’t seem to realize that the character as Lucas meant him to be was not what the character truly was to audiences. To most moviegoers, Indy is someone seemingly forever trapped in the ‘30s, always just ahead of a Nazi’s Luger or a native’s spear, ever on the quest for the next religious antiquity. In LaBeouf’s words, Lucas misinterpreted what he was trying to satiate.
When the film was released and fans didn’t get what they expected or perhaps wanted, they revolted. Everybody trashed the film in whole and all the parts within, whether deserving of their vitriol or not.
There is much to admire in the movie, if you do revisit it. The score is quite good, with John Williams playfully teasing the memorable motifs of Indy’s theme throughout the movie at quite amusing moments. A number of the action scenes are really well staged and shot, like the motorcycle chase through Barnett College or the opening scenes in Area 51 (although even I can’t defend that damn flying fridge scene). And Harrison Ford gave his best performance since at least the mid’-90s, adding a beautiful sardonicism that fit an older, wizened Indiana perfectly.
All in all, it’s certainly not the best Indiana Jones movie. Despite what people have said and despite what you may remember about it, though, it’s not the worst, either. It’s not even half-bad. Mostly, it’s just not what people wanted it to be. If you go back and check it out some time, knowing what you’re in store for now and perhaps with a new perspective, you may just find Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a noticeably better movie than you remember it being.
Before I begin, honourable mentions go to the following movies from 2011 that are worth seeing, but that there just wasn’t room for this year:
13 ASSASSINS (an epic martial arts actioner that’s two parts Seven Samurai and one part Home Alone)
BEAUTIFUL BOY (a drama that examines the effect a school shooting has on the blind-sided parents of the shooter)
THE INTERRUPTERS (a documentary about three “interrupters,” former gang members who now devote themselves to intervening and defusing shootings and gang retaliations)
As well, it should be mentioned that I have not been able yet to see Bill Cunningham New York, Certified Copy, Coriolanus, The Guard, La Havre, Like Crazy, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Meek's Cutoff, The Mill and the Cross, Project Nim, Rampart, Senna, We Need to Talk about Kevin, or Weekend. It is possible one or some of them would be on here if I had been able to see them.
On that topic, one final thing before I get to this year’s movies: there are few titles that were unjustly not included in my list last year, as I hadn’t been able to see them in time. They are: Barney’s Version, I Love You Philip Morris, Ip Man, The Switch, Tangled, and The Trotsky. I’d especially like to call out The Trotsky, as it ended up being one of the five best movies of 2010. Don’t let the weird title dissuade you; if you enjoy laugh-out-loud comedies, check it out.
One of the most individual and truly unique animated movies of the last decade, Rango doesn’t try to get you to like it. It has a very off-kilter sense of humour, it spins a complicated tale of dynastic corruption harking back to both ‘60s Westerns and Chinatown, and its characters are downright butt-ugly. But all those things, which at first seem like flaws, prove to be what elevates this into the realm of amazing animated films.
The first Ip Man came out of nowhere with a bold, refreshing style for a martial arts movie, while looking to the past in subject and tone. It also had some of the best martial arts fighting this side of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. While Ip Man 2: Legend of the Grandmaster is just a notch below the first film in overall quality, it's certainly the best martial arts movie of the year. Not only that, but its fight sequences are even more impressive than those in the original.
There tends to only be one great horror movie a year. For 2011, it was Insidious. At its heart, it’s just another suburban haunted house movie. Originality isn’t necessarily vital in horror, though, as long as there is style and tension to make up for it, which is certainly the case here. The ending was a tad weaker than the rest of the movie, but at the end of the night, there are scares in this movie that are still haunting me a year later.
Not a sequel, really, despite the title. This is the third documentary Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky have made documenting the ongoing case of the West Memphis 3, three men who were sentenced to life in prison in the mid-‘90s for the deaths of three children despite there being no physical evidence. The first two movies showed without much shadow of a doubt that the men were wrongly convicted, but the judge continued to refuse to reopen the case. (The movie smartly covers the first two movies in the opening 20 minutes, so you need not have seen them to see this final one.) Over the last decade, their cause has gained supporters as varied as Johnny Depp and the Dixie Chicks, trying to get them freed. Due to this movie (and the first two), the West Memphis 3 were finally released last year, after 18 years in prison. This is a real-life Shawshank Redemption, made all the more powerful by the raw truth that the two filmmakers behind it freed three innocent men.
Rubber is about a car tire in the desert that suddenly comes to life and starts killing people psychokinetically (for reasons completely unexplained). And yet, despite there being no way to describe it sensibly or make it sound less-than-horrible, the fact is it’s one of the most genius movies you will ever watch. I fought my reservations and watched it because I kept hearing from others that is was inexplicably fantastic. I can’t stress how much better it is than it sounds. The trailer will give you a better idea, but still not completely. I won’t lie, if you need your movies to make complete sense, you’ll probably hate it. But if you’re able to admire meta/experimental/too-bizarre-to-appeal-to-the-masses films like Mulholland Drive, Gerry, or Primer, you’ll be blown away by how clever a movie Rubber is. Especially since it manages it with such a ridiculous premise.
Did I like The Tree of Life? No, I did not. As I often stress, though, a healthy movie-watcher should be able to distinguish between liking/disliking a film and judging a film to be good/bad. I didn’t care for The Tree of Life, but there’s no denying its sheer brilliance. I haven’t seen a movie with such a bold visual style and such a deliberate pace since the heyday of Stanley Kubrick. It starts at the beginning of time, and covers the entire history of the universe to present day, zooming as far back out in scope as is absolutely possible to give a mind-boggling perspective. This is the only movie that includes the Big Bang, dinosaurs, a ‘50s nuclear family, and Brad Pitt.
Many called this “the female Hangover,” but that’s a huge disservice to it. Funny is funny, regardless of whether a movie stars men, women, or both – and Bridesmaids is funny as hell. It’s not often that I have to watch a comedy a second time, because I was laughing so often and so loudly that I missed many of the jokes the first time, but that’s what happened with this ensemble comedy. (Extra props go to the much-applauded Melissa McCarthy, who gave the arguably the funniest performance since Sasha Baron Cohen in Borat.) As a pure comedy, there was nothing last year that came close.
The final film in the decade-long Harry Potter saga was everything it needed to be and everything audiences wanted it to be. Taken as one story told over 20 hours of film, the final Harry Potter movie is all climax. It hits the ground running from the very first scene and provides the most epic finale of a series since The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. After the first seven movies, the producers had earned everyone’s trust that they wouldn’t drop the ball with the last movie, but even so, it was a relief to see everything concluded practically perfectly. The final Harry Potter is a monumental achievement and ensures this series will go down as one of the greatest in the history of film.
Intelligent romantic comedies are rare. Much like good horror movies, good romantic comedies only come around once a year or so. The dreck that gets spun out the rest of the year under the label “romantic comedy” only makes it all the more refreshing when a great one come along. Partially, it’s because it’s become hip for romantic comedies to have multiple and intersecting storylines and to have a huge cast of recognizable faces – but for every Love, Actually that works there’s a Valentine’s Day, a He’s Just Not That Into You, and a New Year’s Eve that doesn’t. What made Love, Actually succeed are the same things the make Crazy, Stupid, Love. click: palpable chemistry, believable plot developments, likeable characters, appealing actors, and a lack of post-modern cynicism. In short, the best romantic comedies rise above the trappings that have stigmatized the term “romantic comedies”; Crazy, Stupid, Love. is one of those.
A movie about psychoanalysts a hundred years ago doesn’t sound like it would be very riveting, but A Dangerous Method is fuelled by such hypnotizing dialogue and powerful performances, I actually found myself wishing I was in the movie, just to be a part of the characters’ conversations. A Dangerous Method covers the initial acquaintance and mutual respect between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, as well as the devolution of their civil friendship into bitter rivalry. Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen, and Keira Knightley all deserved Oscar nominations for this, as did the screenplay. While the movie does end too abruptly for its own good – no matter how I look at it, the film felt anticlimactic – the spell the actors and screenwriter cast held me the entire time.
The most basic maxim of the stock market is “buy low, sell high.” For his debut, writer-director J.C. Chandor grabs lots of acting talent that hasn’t been very valued since the ‘90s (Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore) or that isn’t currently valued enough (Stanley Tucci, Zachary Quinto, Simon Baker, Paul Bettany) and fashions many of their best performances in a decade. The fact that the movie is itself about the stock market is deliciously appropriate icing on the cake. Margin Call sputtered out at the box office, as did Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and The Company Men before it, because people today still don’t really want to watch a movie about the very thing that destroyed countless people’s livelihoods. In a few years, though, when audiences are ready to watch a movie about the people responsible for the Great Recession, Margin Call is the likeliest to be recognized as a neglected masterpiece.
Older Westerns and war movies require modern audiences to turn off their cynicism and sardonicism to appreciate them. They have a susceptibility because of the honesty and openness that the stories were often best told with. War Horse is the same. It feels of a different period, and not just because it takes place before and during WWI; it feels like it was made half a century ago, in the heyday of directors like John Ford and David Lean. Told from the wordless point-of-view of a horse sold into the Army, as the farm boy who raised him concurrently enlists in the military to track him down, War Horse allows Steven Spielberg to use his war-movie skills and his family-drama skills to craft a classic family film that is destined to be appreciated by future audiences better than current ones. I can also say with all honestly than despite the beauty of films like The Tree of Life and Melancholia, no movie I saw in 2011 was more cinematically and visually awe-inspiring than War Horse.
Since leaving his sarcastic phase in the ‘90s, each Alexander Payne movie has gotten better. About Schmidt was good, but very flawed. Sideways was much better, although not quite superb as many claimed. The Descendants is Payne’s best movie yet. George Clooney gives the most layered performance of his career as a man who finds out his newly comatose wife had been having an affair. Despite the depressing premise, the movie is very light in tone and never misses an opportunity to mine laughs out of extreme situations, especially when it comes to how people “should” act. Filmed on the Hawaiian islands, the culture and temperament is almost a character itself, giving the movie a distinctive flavour. One character, a stoner/surfer caricature who serves no real purpose in the movie, holds The Descendants back from being perfect, but the movie’s strong enough that it doesn’t detract too much. If anything, it just leaves room for Payne’s next movie to be even better yet.
Aaron Sorkin’s delightfully-written sitcom Sports Night was a sports show than had nothing to do with sports. His fantastic The Social Network was a computer-programming movie that had nothing to do with programming. With Moneyball, Sorkin has now written a brilliant baseball movie that has nothing to do with baseball. As much as Facebook was really just a background theme to the personal drama of the main characters in The Social Network, baseball is just used as flavouring to this true story of a down-and-out baseball manager who shakes things up by hiring a stats-obsessed economics graduate with revolutionary ideas of how to run a baseball team. Together, the real guys created a mathematical formula that resulted in one of the greatest comebacks in sports history and broke records with a 20-game winning streak. The big game, though, isn’t even really shown in the movie. Pitt’s character doesn’t even watch the game. After all, the movie isn’t really about baseball.
If you put 12 Monkeys and Groundhog Day in a blender, you’d get something close to Source Code. A man (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) awakens on an inbound Chicago train, eight minutes before the train explodes. After it does, he awakens again on that same train, another eight minutes before it explodes. The man is actually a soldier, being sent back in time (sort of – yet also not really) over and over, into someone else’s body, to try and prevent a terrorist attack. When he fails, he flashes briefly back to “the present,” then is re-inserted into the past – the mumbo-jumbo used to explain the technology used in this process provides the movie’s title – and ordered to try again. By tweaking Gyllenhaal’s actions and reactions each time, each eight-minute sequence plays differently and the movie rarely gets tiring. Director Duncan Jones also gave us 2009’s Moon, a brilliant head-trip that was criminally underseen. On the basis of Moon and now Source Code, Jones has already become the reigning king of confusing sci-fi thrillers.
Many films nowadays are polarizing to audiences. As more movies are made for specific audiences, there are more that cause some to adore them as much as others despise them. Drive is one of those movies, it would seem. There are some who say there is too little talking or too little action. My guess would be that these people went into the movie expecting a street-racing/nitrous-fuelled actioner and were so disappointed in not getting what they expected, they couldn’t appreciate it for what it was. Drive is a hypnotizing throwback to the “lone gunman” movies of Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood, when strong men rode into town, didn’t say much, helped people in distress, and rode off into the sunset. (I did find that the violence, while usually sudden and brief, was unnecessarily graphic, but that’s just me.) In essence, this movie is a Western, set to ‘80s synch music. It shouldn’t work, but the movie just has so much damn style, it holds your attention to the very last frame.
One of my favourite developments in cinema over the last few decades has been the growing number of family movies that, while successful when viewed by a child, truly bloom when watched as an adult. The trend was kick-started by E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial in the early ‘80s, but it’s become increasingly common just in the last few years, from WALL-E to The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Usually, such movies are animated. Hugo, instead, is a vivid, live-action love letter to silent cinema, told from the point of view of an orphan living in a giant train station clock. Cinephiles can play spot-the-movie-reference till the cows come home, but the film’s true power for most adults will involve the mystery and backstory behind Ben Kingsley’s character, a storeowner in the station with an astounding past. Children will enjoy the adventurous and puzzle-solving elements of the film, but adults will be able to appreciate fully this wondrously transporting tale about the universal magic of movies.
I didn’t care for the first Mission: Impossible. I hated the second. When I reluctantly watched the third, however, I loved it. (It actually made my Best of the Year list in 2006.) Now comes the fourth in the franchise and a groove has been found. While I always thought the series was sequential, like most sequels are, I finally realized with M:I – Ghost Protocol that each is a stand-alone action film, like the Bond movies, that requires no real knowledge of earlier films or even of characters. If the Mission: Impossible movies continue on the path they’re now on, this series will soon rival 007 himself – it’s become that good. If you gave up after the first two in the series, or if you’ve just never bothered with them at all, I highly suggest giving Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol a whirl. This is the one of the best action movies of the year.
Usually, movies that have laundry lists of actors use them as selling points. (See: New Year’s Eve.) (That’s just an expression. Please, don’t see New Year’s Eve.) Often, a movie is stuffed with a giant cast just to attract large audiences. The few that utilize them properly, like Confidence or Contagion, tend to not boast about it. As such, they sometimes slip under my radar, like The Conspirator did during its theatrical release; had I known at the time that it stars James McAvoy, Robin Wright, Kevin Kline, Tom Wilkinson, Danny Huston, Evan Rachel Wood, Justin Long, Alexis Bledel, Stephen Root, Colm Meaney, and Jonathan Groff, I doubt it would have. The beauty of this movie is that while it’s all about the aftermath of Lincoln’s assassination, The Conspirator is, essentially, a legal thriller. All too often, legal thrillers are interchangeable and predictable, but by virtue of this one taking place a century before cell phones, computers, DNA testing, or even cars, the tension is able to reach near-palpable levels.
Michael Shannon plays Curtis, a man who begins having dreams – or nightmares, rather – about a horrible storm coming. Not just a heavy torrent or a tornado, but a truly devastating tempest of destruction. He becomes convinced they’re visions. He can’t tell anyone about them, though, because heredity has a strong alibi against him: his mother is a paranoid schizophrenic. Not only that, but Curtis’s mom was diagnosed with it when she was the very age Curtis is now. Is Curtis prophetic? Or is he just crazy? The beauty of this movie is that it works both ways. Not only does the entire movie support either theory, depending on which answer you’re looking for evidence supporting, but the ending is bound to be debated, deconstructed, and argued over for years to come.
Few directors have such a specific style that their names have been commonly turned into adjectives; Spielberg is one such director. Often, though, movies that are described at Spielbergian only share basic traits in common, like backlighting or plots about fatherless boys. Super 8, however, is a marvel. It truly feels like someone unearthed a lost Spielberg movie from the ‘80s.
Super 8’s director, wunderkind J.J. Abrams (Lost, Mission: Impossible III, Star Trek), channels Spielberg in every way, while still adding his own inimitable spicing to the mix. Those who have called the ending saccharine and hokey are themselves just cynical and jaded. Let’s not forget, many classic Spielberg action movies (especially the model for this one, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial) had endings with emotion rather than explosion; Super 8 simply does the same.
It also is absolutely ingenious in its pacing and the way it introduces new information, only to distract you before you can process how that information will come into play later; you only recall it once Abrams wants you to recall it. When it comes to directing action movies, Abrams has conclusively shown himself to be second only to Spielberg himself. Speaking of whom...
Near the start of every decade, Spielberg makes an action masterpiece. In 1971, he made Duel. In 1981, he made Raiders of the Lost Ark. In 1993, he made Jurassic Park. In 2002, he made Minority Report. 2011’s The Adventures of Tintin keeps that tradition alive, and deserves being mentioned in the same company.
Much debate has gone on over whether it counts as an animated movie or not. Spielberg filmed it using motion-capture, just like James Cameron did for Avatar. While all the settings and background characters are rendered photorealistically – my friend and I left the theatre unsure whether some parts were even unanimated, the effects were so good – the main half-dozen or so characters are rendered with exaggerated, slightly larger-than-life features. (Think of the character design in The Incredibles for an idea of what I mean.)
So, some say it’s animated, like The Polar Express was, while others argue that it’s no more animated than the central two hours of Avatar. The bottom line either way, though, is that this is the best action movie of the year. It is a new masterpiece by the greatest living director, and everybody who enjoys movies should see it.
If there were justice in the world, Beginners would have been a runaway indie hit last summer, like (500) Days of Summer and Garden State before it. It cruelly was not. Even more cruelly, those who have heard of this movie but haven’t seen it know it only as “that one where Christopher Plummer plays an elderly, gay man.” While Plummer’s plot in the movie is beautiful and fantastic, it’s just one facet of this movie and to define it just by that is akin to referring to Pulp Fiction only as “that John Travolta comeback movie.”
Beginners is a story of learning to show people who you truly are and conquering the inner demons and insecurities that try and stop us. Ewan McGregor plays the lead character, a man in his 30s who has closed himself off from people after being hurt. He meets a woman at a costume party he is reluctantly dragged to, and she begins to get him to open himself up to the possibility of love. Meanwhile, McGregor’s 75-year-old father announces that he is gay and does not want to hide it anymore. It’s tough for an old dog to learn new tricks, but he wants to at least be free to try.
As well, speaking of dogs, due to plot circumstances, McGregor adopts his father’s dog and they share a fascinating bond. (In one of the movie’s most delightful quirks, McGregor talks to the dog a lot and the dog wordlessly responds in the subtitles of what McGregor imagines him saying.) All three relationships are examinations of new beginnings, each of the characters in this beautifully touching and honest look at love being the titular beginners.
Three things right off the bat. Yes, it is black-and-white. Yes, it is a silent movie. And yes, you will love it. The Artist is a movie that reminds us why we love movies in the first place. The biggest hurdle the average person will have with it is simply giving it a chance. There’s the prevalent notion in our post-post-modern society that we don’t have the attention span for silent movies, or that black-and-white movies are boring, or that a black-and-white silent movie just couldn’t be that entertaining. This is really a gigantic falsehood, on every count. Most of our present-day exposure to black-and-white or silent films these days is through parodies in films or TV shows, which inherently poke fun at the format. However, such parodies are ridiculing bad silent, black-and-white films.
It’s a collective idea we’ve adopted that we’re “beyond” movies like that, that they’re somehow inferior to our sensibilities just because they’re old and arguably antiquated formats. There are really no grounds to it, though. When you watch a truly great black-and-white movie, like It’s a Wonderful Life or Casablanca, does it matter that it’s not in colour? And as for the silent-comedy aspect of it, if your favourite parts of the Ice Age movies are with Scrat futilely trying to get the acorn or if you used to enjoy watching Mr. Bean in the ‘90s, then I hate to break it to you, but you like silent comedy.
In the end, The Artist is a fantastically easy movie to love. It combines elements of A Star is Born and Singin’ in the Rain; features recognizable faces like John Goodman, Malcolm McDowell, Missi Pyle, and James Cromwell; has one of the funniest performances by a dog in cinema; and delivers thrills, tears, mystery, tragedy, scares, joy, and most of all, comedy. I walked out of theatre feeling happier than I had after watching any movie last year.
(Note: If at all possible, see it in the theatre. The experience of watching an old-fashioned silent comedy in a theatre setting with an audience will make you feel magically transported to the 1920s, if just for 90 minutes.)
A Separation is one of those movies where a small number of people are involved in a battle against each other, with the stakes no higher than their very livelihoods. The best movies like that make you empathize with each character. Changing Lanes is a great example of that kind of concept, where Ben Affleck’s and Samuel L. Jackson’s characters are decent men who end up are pitted against each other not due to fault or blame so much as simply accident. A Separation is the same kind of idea, except it involves six characters instead of two, all involved in a tapestry of misunderstandings, lies, pride, devotion, presumptions, coincidences, and kneejerk reactions.
The ultimate power of the film is that every main character – the husband, the wife, the daughter, the caretaker, and the caretaker’s hot-headed husband – is portrayed not just realistically, but sympathetically. We can relate to each character and understand why they say and do each thing that digs them all even deeper into their situation, even if we feel we wouldn’t necessarily have done the same. As well, even though the whole picture is slowly revealed to the audience, you usually have one or two jigsaw pieces more than any of the characters, so you’re burdened with knowing information the characters need to make the right decision, and you’re forced to watch them make the wrong ones, unable to warn them. Truthfully, I could keep going on and on about this movie, but I’ll quit the hyperbole and let its final position speak for itself. A Separation is the best movie of 2011.
