The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (5/5 Stars)

Billions of Blistering Blue Barnacles!

When Steven Spielberg’s action-adventure classic “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark,” opened in France way back in 1981, plenty of the reviews kept on repeating an obscure word, Tintin. Curious as to what the French word meant, Spielberg asked for a translator to find out. It turns out the French critics were consistently comparing Indiana Jones with a long cherished French series of comic books by Herge named “The Adventures of Tintin.” Indiana and Tintin had plenty in common. They were both intrepid adventurers (Indiana an archeologist and Tintin a journalist) whose exploits brought them to exotic locales in search of mysterious artifacts or ancient treasure. Both stories employed a break neck pace of action adventure and situational humor, not to mention some classic colorful characters met along the way.  So it is no wonder that Spielberg (with much help from Peter Jackson) would be the perfect choice to adapt Tintin into a movie and apparently has been working on this one off and on for more than twenty five years. As one who has read almost every single Tintin comic book (they are great!) I can say that this movie could not have been done better. It is Tintin and everything that was great about it. I hope they make many sequels. If you were one of those that were disappointed by the last Indiana Jones movie, than you must go and see this one. It is exactly what you want from that type of movie.

The plotline of this movie takes elements from several great Tintin books, most noticeably “The Crab with the Golden Claws,” “Red Rackham’s Treasure,” and especially “The Secret of the Unicorn.” Tintin notices a model ship of the pirate Red Rackham’s 17^th century galleon at a flea market and pays a pound for it. Almost immediately other interested parties ask to buy the ship from him. They give him dire warnings. Tintin takes the boat home with his journalistic curiosity fired up. He does research on Red Rackham at the library and comes home to find his apartment ransacked. There is something about that boat that people want! Could it hold the secret to Red Rackham’s lost treasure! What follows is a series of holdups, secret messages, code-breaking, marvelous coincidences that lead to strange far off adventures, espionage, intrigue, and the like. Tintin (voiced by Jamie Bell) is accompanied by his faithful dog Snowy. Along the way he meets an alcoholic skipper named Archibald Haddock who has a tendency for swearing colorful phrases like “Billions of Blistering Blue Barnacles!” and happens to be one of the two last descendants of an age old feud between two pirates, Captain Haddock and Red Rackham. Captain Haddock is played by Andy Serkis, the best motion capture actor in the business (he also did Gollum, King Kong, and the Ape in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”). The last descendant of Red Rackham is played by Daniel Craig. There are also plenty of thugs with guns that like to capture and kidnap Tintin and to be outwitted by an escaping Tintin. We are also treated to two bumbling police officers named Thomson and Thompson. They are identical twins that wear the same black suits and bowler hats so try not to get them mixed up. They are voiced by the comedic duo of Nick Frost and Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz), an inspired choice of casting if there ever was one.

The Adventures of Tintin employs the best use of animated motion capture that I have ever seen. This is a particular type of animation that was pioneered by Peter Jackson for the character of Gollum in LOTR and made into entire movies by Robert Zemeckis. It is a poor substitute for live action in that the humans never quite escape the uncanny valley (this was one of my main dislikes with a movie such as Beowulf), but since Tintin is a comic strip, the characters make more sense inhabiting the uncanny valley than they would in the real live action world. The Tintin drawings themselves were rather simplistic. To search for an actor that looked exactly like Tintin would have resulted in finding a pretty weird looking actor. It is better this way.

Not to mention the control that animation gives the makers in constructing some ridiculously intricate action sequences. Take a look at the climatic chase scene that starts at a palatial villa and goes all the way down to the Oceanside through winding streetscapes while a tidal wave of water from the local dam gushes down right behind them. It is shown almost entirely in one shot without any edits or changes in camera angles. This is something that would be impossible to shoot in live action, but since it is animation we get to view a ridiculously intricate sequence that never cheats or confuses. The planning that must have gone into it was obviously extensive and the result is very good. Of course a movie that is live action like “Mission Impossible” will always be more effective thrills wise (you won’t get vertigo watching an animated film) but that doesn’t mean animation can’t be exciting or fun and Tintin is all of that.

The Adventures of Tintin should be a lock for the Oscar for Best Animated Picture. This should be the first time in many years that Pixar (Cars 2) does not come home with the trophy. 

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (5/5 Stars)

See Tom Run.

The plot of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is ludicrous. There is this rogue Russian ex-general who has gone insane. We see about a 30 second newsreel footage of him giving a speech in parliament about the necessary weeding out a thermonuclear war would play in furthering the course of human evolution. Given that logic he has been attempting to steal nuclear launch codes and to start a full out war between Russia and the United States. To this end he succeeds in framing special agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and the IMF for the bombing of the Kremlin in Moscow. The crazy man, played by Michael Nyqvist, spends most of his time running away from Tom Cruise who is running away from the Russian police. He is an undeveloped bad guy that functions less as a real person and more as a MacGuffin which enables the plot to go from high stakes scenario to high stakes scenario. Halfway through the movie I stopped caring. What became obvious to me halfway through the movie was that I was watching some of the best and well-made action sequences since “The Bourne Ultimatum.” I’m not even sure I wanted the guy to get caught because that would have ended the movie, which was ceaselessly thrilling. A critic may rationalize any viewpoint but cannot ignore involuntary bodily functions. For example, all laughter during a comedy no matter how low or stupid the jokes are must be admitted. In this movie, I can report that my stomach churned several times in the same way it would if I were on a roller coaster at Magic Mountain. This is a great action movie and worth watching just for the thrills. Do not wait to see it on video. See it in a theater and try to see it in IMAX.

It makes sense that the director of “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” does not have any previous action movies under his belt. In fact he doesn’t have any live action movies under his belt. Instead the director Brad Bird is an alumnus from Pixar. He directed such animated movies like “The Incredibles” and “Ratatouille.” This becomes obvious because unlike so many action movie directors, he has put in the effort to competently storyboard, shoot, and edit his action sequences. Everything is super clear, the laws of physics are obeyed, and the action proceeds logically but not predictably. I hope that this movie makes a lot of money and inspires other action movie directors to try a bit harder at their craft. Or at least let it be shaming. They've been one-upped grandly by a cartoonist. 

The coup de grace sequence in this movie involves Tom Cruise (as special agent Ethan Hunt) scaling the side of the Burj Dubai (the tallest building in the world) with these special gloves that may or may not functionally work. I don’t know how they did it safely but what is on the screen is seriously freaky stuff. That of course, is only part of a movie that includes several car chases (one in a dust-storm), fistfights, and suspenseful spy stings replete with some seriously cool gadgetry and large explosions. All of this is done exceptionally well. 

In fact, it is shot in such a way, that it is obvious that the stars are doing actual stunts. For instance, Tom Cruise is clearly racking up some serious mileage running as fast as he can in plenty of scenes. And there he is doing the actual fight choreography in several fistfights. You can tell because the camera shots are far away enough and have long enough duration to tell. As far as the stunts on the Burj Dubai are concerned, well the producers made sure there were several featurettes online showing Tom Cruise on the outside of the building to quell any suspicions that it was some stuntman doing it or that it was shot in a green room and the outside added later. He really is there. I consider this as counting toward some top-notch acting. What's more is that Cruise and the other characters actually look scared, surprised, or concerned for their lives when really crazy shit starts to happen. I have seen too many movies where nobody seems to notice large explosions or machine gun fire. I find it far more effective (and dramatically correct) when characters notice just how dangerous something is. Case in point: Tom Cruise's face when he drives his car off a platform with a hundred 100 meter drop. Give that guy an Oscar Nomination. That's exactly the facial expression he should have. Let’s see Meryl Streep do that.

The IMF team works very well both as an action ensemble and in another degree as a comedy team. Tom Cruise gets the plum action jobs but that doesn’t mean that Jeremy Renner (from “The Hurt Locker”) doesn’t have some good scenes as well (a particularly good one involves him infiltrating a super computer by jumping into an oven hoping that some magnets work (it makes sense in the movie)). Paula Patton for her part lands the starring role in the movie's best fistfight with a lady baddie played by Ley Seydoux. Rounding out the group is Simon Pegg providing computer tech savvy and his usual humorous self. Most of the situations are so tightly wound that the comedy pitches thrown to Pegg are routinely knocked out of the park like softballed lobs. One of the best moments in the movie has Pegg walking into a room and saying, “That was not easy, but I did it.” This gets a huge laugh. That sort of reaction can only be accomplished by having one of the most death-defying stunts in the movie happen right before that. Pegg's humor cashes in on the suspense consistently. I would go so far as to say that this is the best Mission: Impossible movie that has been made. I'm glad they made it. 

One thing that is noticeably absent in this particular installment of “Mission Impossible” is any hint of sex. In this, it follows the trend in American action movies in particular. There once was a time when James Bond had a pretty swinging lifestyle. You can’t say that about the Daniel Craig incarnation. And when did Jason Bourne have any time for that sort of thing. In this movie, Tom Cruise gets as close as a longing glance from several blocks away. Just saying. 

War Horse (4/5 Stars)

Have you ever noticed in war movies just how lucky the main character always seems? Like for instance, if the army is charging into impending doom, than the people on the left may get shot and the people on the right may get shot, but the hero always seems to go unscathed. Bombs go off nearby but they never seem to hit their mark. At the end, the hero is surrounded by a sea of corpses, but he always is not dead, or if he does die, it always happens in the final battle, you know the one right before the movie ends. This may not be realistic but it is a basic necessity of storytelling. If you killed off the main character in the middle, then well, where does the story go from there? We aren’t all geniuses like Hitchcock.

“War Horse,” is an ingenious solution to that problem. In this movie, we follow a horse, not a person through the mire of World War I. The horse impossibly survives (as it must for storytelling reasons) but the various people that own it are still subject to the dangers of the War. In effect, because a horse is not much of a main character even though the story follows it, we are introduced to and say goodbye to a series of main characters that are not required by the storyline to have blindingly good luck. When they should die, they do. Moreover since the horse is not a person, it has the ability to be captured and switch sides in the war. The warhorse here does exactly that, starting off with the British, than being captured by the Germans, and back and forth again. Since everybody the horse meets is neither too cruel nor vicious, the movie, even though it takes place in a war, does not have a bad guy or evil side. So unlike other war movies where you would root for the good side because you don’t want the good guy to die or the bad guy to live, in this one you just want the war to end. As anti-war movie structures go, this particular one is rather ingenious.

The emotion and dialogue of this movie remind me of very old movies. There was less cynicism in those movies (perhaps because of the time or perhaps because the movies weren't very good) and that lent them a certain unapologetic sappiness. For that reason, this movie is kind of hard to get into, particularly in the beginning when there isn’t a war going on. The movie makes a big deal about the horse being able to plow a rocky field. An actual crowd of neighbors turns out to yell inspirational things as if they were in a Disney movie about an underdog sports team while the surly landlord becomes disgruntled because the farmers may actually be able to pay the rent and keep living on the land. It’s a bit too much for peacetime. When the war starts to pick up, the forthrightness and sincerity of the characters feels a bit more comfortable. In a life and death situation, a certain level of sappiness can be forgiven and even be appealing. The ending is ridiculously beautiful or plainly ridiculous depending on how you feel about group hugs and glorious sunsets that tint the entire landscape a golden hue of sepia. I liked it. I also like how we have apparently gotten to the point in special effects where we can manipulate the rate of snowfall to that exact point where it looks the most beautiful and not the least bit cold. The cinematographer of the movie, Janusz Kiminski, should be a shoo-in for an Oscar Nomination.

There is something that is rather weird about this movie. Look at the posters and the commercials and the unapologetic sappiness. This is being sold as a family movie and it is rated PG-13. At the same time, the director Steven Spielberg (same guy who directed such very R historical masterpieces like “Schindler’s List,” and “Saving Private Ryan.”) has once again done his homework. We see the arc of World War I, from the first fights on horseback to the stalemate of trench warfare. We are also treated to the murder of deserters; the horror of waiting for the artillery to maybe hit your part of the trench; the suicidal nature of a trench assault against machine guns; and to top it all off, a nerve gas attack. This is a PG-13 movie. The way Spielberg pulls this off is by a conspicuous lack of blood. We may see a line of men run into machine gun fire, but when they are hit with bullets, they merely scream out, crumple, and collapse.  There is however no blood. Even when the camera zooms out over the battlefield for a crane shot, we may see a field littered with corpses, but the kids should be unaffected because the corpses aren't leaking blood. And when a 14 year-old-boy is executed by a firing squad for deserting, for the sake of the children, the camera is conveniently located behind a rotating windmill. So we see the boy standing there with a firing squad in front of him. The windmill rotates and obscures the boy for a moment, the firing squad shoots their guns, the windmill moves again, and reveals the now dead corpse of the boy on the ground. Thank God for the kids that there is no blood. PG-13.

This is disconcerting for a couple of reasons. First of all, are we really fooling the kids? They aren’t stupid. If someone gets shot with a gun and dies, they have obviously violently died no matter how much blood is actually seen. And if we hear guns going off and see the dead corpse of a boy that was one moment before still alive, isn’t it obvious what happened whether a windmill partially obscured our view of the event or not. Secondly, isn’t it a bit disrespectful to the people who died in the war by pussyfooting around what actually happened? (Deserters were indeed shot in WWI.) At least that is what I thought was the very point Spielberg was making when he bluntly showed how people died in “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan.” There was something very noble about those movies. Spielberg made you look the characters in the eyes and recognize their humanity before they were brutally killed. It wasn’t glamorous and it wasn’t gratuitous. It just was. I’ve got nothing against family films and nothing against realistically violent war movies, but to combine the two harms both genres. This movie should have been rated R and there should have been blood. If you want to make a nice family movie, don't make it about the horrors World War I. 

One of the lasting legacies of Steven Spielberg is what he has done to the MPAA ratings system. No other single director has made such a big impression on it. The very reason we have a PG-13 at all is because Steven Spielberg somehow got “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” rated PG. Lots of parents took their little kids to see it and sort of thought that the whole tear-out-the-heart-for-a-human-sacrifice scene a bit too much. (By the way I love that movie.) Then with “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan” he introduced the rule that no level of violence would ever make a movie NC-17. Now he has again raised the bar for violence in a PG-13 movie by killing an untold amount of people of all ages. In his defense, Spielberg gets away with this because all of these movies are very good and basically respectful. The problem is that our rating system is objective, so if a movie director wanted to do something really disgusting on the PG-13 level, all he would have to do is point to “War Horse,” and say, “See, if this has already been done before why aren't you letting me do it.”

Oh well, maybe if we split PG-13 into PG-10 and PG-15.


 

A Dangerous Method (4/5 Stars)

I wonder how Carl Jung would react to this movie if he were still around to see it. There are some very private moments portrayed here. At one point the movie goes so far as to follow Jung and one of his patients into the bedroom for that most basic ritual of sadomasochistic sexual behavior. Part of me would think that Jung would be mortified that this would be up on a huge screen for everybody to see. But then another part of me reminds the other part of what exactly Jung was involved in. There is a fine comic moment in the film when Professor Sigmund Freud has Carl Jung over for dinner and politely explains to him that he should feel absolutely free to discuss anything and everything at the table. And there sitting at the table are all of Freud’s children, the majority of which are at or near very impressionable ages. This is based on a true anecdote. Freud’s children did indeed sit through many a dinner conversation that focused explicitly on sex, psychotic compulsions, and all sorts of other taboo conversational topics. So that part of me would not be surprised if Carl Jung would, instead of being totally embarrassed, actually take the stage at the end of the movie and ask the audience point blank what exactly they thought about it and please feel free to focus in on the kinky stuff.

The “dangerous” method refers to such behavior. Instead of repressing thoughts and conversation about sex, taboo, psychotic compulsions and the like, go ahead and talk about it and try to be as specific as possible as to why you feel and think the way you do. Such a therapeutic method was first suggested by Freud, but according to the movie was never experimented by him. Carl Jung apparently was the first and the patient he first tried it on was a young Russian woman named Sabina who came to his hospital in fits of hysteria. Jung puts her in a chair, sits behind her (presumably so she can’t see his reactions to her craziness and feel to shamed to speak more of it), and quietly asks her questions that would be very impolite in any regular conversation. Does it work? Yes, it seems to, at least in the sense that it grants the sort of relief one may feel after solving a complex riddle. The problem is still there, but at least now we know what it is. This movie work on the audience in the same way. We are presented with a person that is crazy. The seemingly random shrieks and fits are confusing and frightening. But we observe and listen and slowly achieve an understanding. Suddenly the person makes sense, her actions become predictable, and the fear and uneasiness that accompanied us dissipates. We feel relief.  The best of movies like psychoanalysis strive for that ecstatic “Aha!” moment. There is one such moment in this movie and if Keira Knightley gets a nomination for her performance (which is not unlikely), it will probably be that moment people are recognizing her for. (It should be said that bad movies work in the exact opposite way. Think of movies where the basic laws of physics are ignored, the characters act like aliens, or the repetitive use of cliché is foisted upon the audience. A sense of unease fills the viewer. I sometimes find myself getting mad.) 

Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud are played by Michael Fassbinder and Viggo Mortenson respectively. Now here are two actors with Presence. They are perfect choices for playing intellectual heavyweights. I’ve praised Mortenson before (see review of “Eastern Promises”) but I have yet had the chance of writing about Fassbinder as he has only this year started to take on starring roles. Most people probably know him as Magneto in this summer’s “X-Men: First Class.” I remember him being very striking in that as well. There is something very solid about his face/person/body. I think he would make a perfect Roman Emperor or at least a marble statue of one. The scenes with Freud and Jung talking, whether in agreement or in disagreement, are always stimulating and make the movies best scenes. In fact, some of the best lines are supposedly taken directly from the letters they wrote each other. Those two could really turn a phrase and when they meant the words to hurt, the phrases could be especially piercing. It is a disappointment then that this movie treats Freud as a truly supporting character. The main storyline is the affair between the married Jung and his patient Sabina. When Freud enters the picture, he serves that storyline. His character lacks his own conflict or overarching ambition. It is spoken by Freud that he has many enemies to himself, his profession, and psychology in general, but these enemies are not shown or battled with. Freud is seen either through Jung’s or Sabina’s experience or not at all.

There is plenty of psychological talk about egos and sex instincts and the death instincts and the like. Some of it you may find familiar. Other topics not so much. The movie does a commendable job of not holding discussions back to a standard level of education. This may make some of the conversations inaccessible to understanding but not unentertaining. All the characters are especially intelligent and the screenplay puts up no obstacles to them expressing themselves at the peak of their intelligence. If you are a huge psychology buff, this movie will not disappoint. If like me, you know some things and not others, and are not entirely sure of the accuracy or usefulness of the whole thing, it is at least never annoying. In some ways it is rather comic. Psychology then (and now) is very new. Freud admits as much and goes on to say that he is probably wrong about everything being about sex and surely theories will be revised when more research is done. In the meantime he is just describing his scientific experiences as he observes them. I especially liked a conversation in which Jung describes one of Sabina’s childhood recollections about a preferable way to defecate. Freud nods his head and diagnoses her as anal-retentive and predicts that she is probably also especially fastidious, clean, organized, and the like. No, says Jung, actually she is quite the opposite. Hmm, says Freud, oh well maybe it’s a Russian thing. (Freud is very subtly funny in this movie. In real life he apparently was subtly funny as well. I am a huge fan of his book on jokes. When I write of comedy on this blog, it is mainly his ideas that I am espousing.)

Of course the basic problem with psychology is not that it is incorrect but that it has a tendency to be too vague and broad to be incorrect. It is not hard to find sexual motives or childhood neuroses as a part of any action we take. They are there. But that doesn't mean that it is the only reason why people do things. Really there are probably a thousand reasons why people do things and those only include the reasons we can think of. And that still ignores the possibility that people may indeed not have a reason for doing things. I am reminded of an anecdote from the comedian Louis C.K. about how he loaded the dishwasher one night and then didn’t turn on the wash. His wife scolded him and asked, “Why did you do that?” Louis relates to the audience, “Why did I do that? Do you understand what that question assumes? That I had a reason for not putting on the wash, like I had a thought process about it. Like I didn’t because I wanted to be a total dick and piss her off, which would really be the only reason not to run the dishwasher. Why can’t I just be stupid? Why didn’t I put the wash on? Because I am a total dumbass, that’s why.” I think this possibility is something rather thoughtful people like Jung, Freud, or Sabina tend to not think about, and I think it is because they spend so much time thinking about why people do things that they forget that most people do not think as much as they do about why they do things. They probably don't get laid enough either. 

The Descendants (3/5 Stars)

Good Grief.

 I fear that my recent cycle of poverty is hurting my ability to empathize with the problems of the super rich. And this is something that is brought up right away in director Alexander Payne's new movie "The Descendants." The main character, a man named Matt King, confides to us in voiceover that people think his life is paradise simply because he lives in Hawaii. But he says that he has the same screwed up family problems as anybody else and they hurt all the same. True, this is true, I guess. Matt King's wife has just been in a boating accident and now lies in a coma in the hospital. The doctor tells him that she is not going to make it. His daughters aren't taking it very well. His father-in-law blames him. He finds out that she was having an affair. Screwed up stuff. But Matt King, unlike regular people, is also the descendant of Hawaiian royalty and is the sole trustee of a some of the last pristine area of Hawaiian real estate. When it is sold, it will be sold for many millions. He has a successful law practice and has the ability to send his daughters to private schools. He looks like George Clooney. So the whole wife thing, that sucks, it does. But I figure this guy will do just fine.

There's a fine amount of drama here floating about in vague meandering directions. It turns out that the wife has not been the best of people. So we have several scenes here where people get mad at a lifeless body. In one example, Matt King storms about the hospital room saying rather hurtful things at her. It is a frustrating thing to watch of course because the main impetus for the scene can't respond or defend herself in any way. So we don't really get both sides and don't really know what is going on. It is obvious that it is important though because people are wailing and yelling. But without explanations this feels more weird than dramatic. Perhaps flashbacks would have helped. A good deal of the rest of the movie involves Matt King telling family and friends that his wife will not wake up. It may seem cold of me to say that there were too many of these scenes, but I don't know anything about this person. There is no connection here. Things need to be explained a little bit more. (I have seen a movie which had a scene that worked involving a guy getting mad at his dead wife who had been cheating on him. That was Marlon Brando in "Last Tango in Paris," and it was one of the best and saddest scenes I have ever seen. The parallels in these two scenes make George Clooney's outburst pale in comparison. Watch both of them and compare the acting styles. I prefer Brando's. It is more intimate. It starts off softer. It builds. There is a crescendo of anger with denouement of true sadness. It has a rhythm to it like great music. Clooney is dramatically correct but all over the place.)

The humor in the movie basically consists of Matt King's daughters acting out and him telling them to watch their mouths and not do weird things. Along for the ride is Sid (played by Nick Krause) who says dumb surfer things. I've seen Alexander Payne movies that were much funnier. Something like "Sideways" for instance much more brilliantly blended intelligent drama with true action and true hilarity. We have here a lot of dramatic grief but very little comic relief. Even Shakespeare knew to throw in some ribald jokes here and there. The movie has moments yes, and some rather good scenes where Matt and his daughters track down and confront the guy his wife was having an affair with, but overall the movie lacks that extra nerve or zest that makes a great movie. I will be disappointed if this gets a lot of Oscar Nominations and something like Bridesmaids blanks. A wife in a coma and people crying about it does not automatically a great movie make.

 One more thing, the voiceover this movie employs. It is there for the first fifteen minutes of the movie and then it disappears for the last three fourths of it. Why? Is the narrator no longer speaking to us anymore? Have the rules of the storytelling changed a quarter of the way through the story? There are certain rules about voiceover that should be followed. For one, it should never be used to tell us what is going on. This is generally redundant and often lazy. Two, voiceovers should be consistent. Good examples of this are "Amadeus" which is voiceover via real time confession; "Forrest Gump" which is voiceover via real time storytelling. "Fight Club," which is voiceover via a brain thought process. A master of voiceover is Director Terrance Malick. See his movies "The Thin Red Line," "The New World," and "The Tree of Life." Voiceover there is used as poetry which floats over a scene in meditation. All of these examples have consistent voiceover. They are entwined into the very structure of the story. We know who is speaking and who they are speaking to if they are speaking to anybody. They don't simply cease happening or seem like they are switching from narration to private thoughts and back again. All of these rules are broken in "The Descendants," and then the voiceover disappears entirely. This is shoddy writing and again I hope it does not get nominated for Best Writing. There really is better stuff out there.

 

Hugo 3D (3/5 Stars)

I love movies that much is for sure. But my love is a love with certain limits. A good movie may change a man, it may mold the way he empathizes, teach him something new, or inspire him to his own adventures, but there is no truly special quality within a man that gives him the ability to make movies. In other words, the Academy Awards are nice to have because movies are culturally important, but the nominees and even winners do not deserve the heaps and heaps and heaps of idolatry and praise that they receive. The difference in importance between a world famous great actor and an obscure great accountant is negligible. They both require natural talent and learned skill. The difference is that one is on a big screen that lots and lots of people will see see while the other sits in an office and has but a few clients. Thus the actor’s importance is distorted to an obscene degree while the accountant goes shamelessly unnoticed. Actually, I take that back. It probably takes far more to be a great accountant. (I would also argue that people recognize the greatness of actors and athletes far more readily than scientists and doctors because the greatest of an actor or athlete is very easy to understand. You may need a PHD before you understand just why a particular doctor is great.) That’s why I am sad to say, I was not overwhelmed and enraptured as Martin Scorsese probably felt I should be by the presence of Director Georges Meliere on the screen of this movie, even though he did make some of the best movies at the dawn of cinema. There should be a rule that stops directors of movies from making movies about movie directors. (The same goes for writers that write books and screenplays about writers.) I say you are sipping the poison fame cocktail that distorts your importance and inflames your ego to an insufferably pretentious degree.

Not that this movie is too insufferably pretentious. It is directed by Martin Scorsese with that subversively excessive amount of brilliant flair. It stars Asa Butterfield as a young boy named Hugo Cabret. Hugo’s father (Jude Law) dies in a fire one day and his uncle claude (Ray Winstone) adopts him into his work apartment at the Paris Grand Central Station and teaches him his job of winding all the clocks in the station. Then Uncle Claude goes AWOL on a drunken bender, leaving Hugo in the station alone. As long as he keeps the clocks in order though, nobody will check to see who is occupying his uncle’s apartment amongst the machines. When he needs food, he steals it. When he needs mechanical parts for the secret ??? he is building in his apartment, he steals it from the toy store run by a crusty old man (Ben Kingsley) who may just be the forgotten father of cinema Georges Meliere. Chasing the young thief in hope to catch him and send him to an orphanage is the imposing station inspector played wonderfully by Sacha Baron Cohen. Playing Meliere’s granddaughter is none other than Chole Grace Moretz, that girl of fourteen with such maturity her face could pass for twenty-five.  

The story is simple like all children’s stories and basically consists of Hugo's quest of fixing the secret ???? and getting old cranky Meliere to appreciate his past greatness all while outrunning the station inspector. The movie looks great, but don’t all movies nowadays. The camera moves deftly and in great long shots like other Scorsese movies, but these ones are obviously helped with special effects and other types of cheating so they do not have the same type of impact. The kids when going off on an adventures find themselves in libraries reading books or in movie theaters watching new movies (by that I mean very old movies. This is the twenties.)  Is that exciting? Uh, well, let’s get back to that a little bit later.

There needs first to be said something about the acting chops of children. I find that children act much better in movies opposite adults in scenes. Think of such great child acting movies like “The Road,” “Little Miss Sunshine,” “The Sixth Sense.” They all have kids interacting with adults.  When children act with each other it yields less fruitful results (because let’s face it, acting is reacting and children do not know what they are doing (perhaps we can make an exception of Jodie Foster and Dakota Fanning)). Chloe Grace Moretz in particular is not a very good actor. I can picture somebody on YouTube doing something rather funny with her line, “Don’t you just Love Books?!?” Asa Butterfield is forgettable. I wonder if Kodi Smit-McPhee was busy or something. I feel he could have done much better. Not to mention Kodi and Chole had already successfully worked together in “Let Me In.” Perhaps that might have helped.

The one that steals the show quite consistently is Sacha Baron Cohen. He has the vast majority of the movies laughs and delivers his scenes with that peculiar quality only a comically tall man can apply. Ben Kingsley as George Meliere for his part spends far too much time crying. He may have good reasons for it or not. All of this, and whether libraries and movie theaters are adventurous, hinges on whether one would think that Melieres is just the greatest thing since sliced bread. I would think only a couple of people in the audience (and most likely none) would have even heard of the guy. Well, I have heard of him. And I have seen his masterpiece: A Trip to the Moon. In fact, I have seen almost all of the old movies that are sampled in this movie from Harold Lloyd’s "Safety Last," to Buster Keaton’s “The General” to Louie Brooks in “Pandora’s Box,” to Charlie Chaplin. It is so common for critics to fawn all over these movies and say they are the best ever and that movies were never so good since. My opinion: These movies are generally okay but not great movies. The exception would be the average Buster Keaton movie, which I find works astonishingly well in the 21^st century. But overall, we make better movies today. We have a better idea of what we are doing, we have a century worth of trial and error knowledge, and we are armed with technology that makes what we want to create much more easier to accomplish with tightened budgets. George Meliere’s was a pioneer no doubt, but his sci-fi epics come off rather amateurish by today's standards. "A Trip to the Moon" had only one long distance camera shot. There was no acting or dialogue to speak of and absolutely no character development. The totally super famous shot in “A Trip to the Moon,” where the rocket lands into the moon’s face is well, iconic to say the very very most. It is worth seeing this movie like it is worth knowing who won WWI, but it does not a great movie make. And if like me, you think it isn’t all that worth hooting about, you will feel rather detached during “Hugo,” which treats that movie like it is so totally all that. It isn’t. Take my word for it. You wouldn’t want it too last much more than its running time of ten minutes.

By the way, this will be the last 3D movie I ever see. Not once did I feel I would be missing something if I paid five dollars less and saw the movie in 2D. If Scorsese can’t pull this technology off than nobody can. It doesn’t deserve to exist. Too dim, too distracting, too disturbing. Please stop.

A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas (4/5 Stars)

The weird thing about the duo of Harold and Kumar is that the two actors playing them, John Cho and Kal Penn respectively, haven’t really found greater success outside of the “White Castle,” movies. If these trio of stoner road-trip movies prove anything it is that these two can carry a movie with just enough warmth and gravity to allow an audience to forgive an absolutely ridiculous plot and plenty of material that should be offensive but somehow comes off as normal good fun. That should put them in demand one would think. Perhaps it really has to do with their ethnicity (John Cho is Korean and Kal Penn is Indian) even though these movies are a sort of debunking of whatever theory that belongs too. It couldn’t be more plain that the pair are 100% American. They have no accents, enjoy fast food and getting high, and constantly find themselves in road-trip movies, that most American of movie genres. But great success in movies these two have not had (actually Kal Penn now works for the White House. Success? Yes. In movies? No) so I suppose it was inevitable that they answered the call for another “Harold & Kumar” movie, this time in 3D because well, why not.

The beginning of “A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas in 3D,” begins the duo split up. Harold has become a well-to-do wall street worker newly married to Maria from the 1^st movie. Kumar still lives in the same apartment as before and gets just as high as before. His girlfriend just left him over two months ago and the place looks like he hasn’t bothered to clean it since. Impending maturity knocks on the door when his girlfriend comes over to tell him that she is pregnant. There is also a slight problem in that Harold is throwing a Christmas party and has not invited Kumar. It is to the movie’s credit that it takes these problems semi-seriously because it adds some realistic weight to another completely ridiculous plot involving guys now in their thirties.

The humor in this movie is all over the place and though not all of the jokes hit home, there are enough of them for the movie to be truly funny. In addition, the road trip plot is segmented in such a way that new characters and situations easily come in, have their moment, and exit. New to the series is Danny Trejo, perhaps a name you don’t recall but a face you have definitely seen somewhere, who plays Harold’s father-in-law. Here is a guy on the level of a Christopher Walken or a Sam Rockwell that makes me smile simply by showing up. He sets the plot in motion by letting Harold know that it is a crime against Christmas to decorate a faux tree instead of a real one and sharing how his mother was killed by a Korean street gang while walking home with Christmas tree decorations. Harold better have a real tree to decorate by the time everybody gets back from midnight mass, or else! For the record, we get to see all of Danny Trejo’s tattoos and they are still super bad-ass. Then, of course, stopping in for a musical number and to save the day is the actor Neil Patrick Harris as Neil Patrick Harris, the actor. This calls for an explanation because as you may recall NPH was shotgunned to death while escaping from a Texan whorehouse in the second movie. If he can be believed, he is back on Earth via some sort of divine cockblock. I’m not explaining that any further as it might spoil the outrageous of it all, but will mention that it is hilarious.

There is something rather special about NPH’s performances in these movies. The big joke is that he is playing “himself.” So when we see him snorting cocaine and employing hookers, he is basically winking at the camera and saying that he, NPH of Doogie Houser M.D. fame, does all of that in “real life.” It is his “reputation” that he is bravely throwing under the bus for our amusement, sort of. One of the more outrageous things about NPH is that he is simply pretending to be a homosexual in public in order to sexually harass women. He does this by inviting the actresses he works with into his dressing room to rehearse scenes, remarking how tense they look, offering a massage to loosen them up, and innocently remarking that he is just one of the “girls” when things start getting weird. According to him, most publicly “gay” guys do this and Clay Aiken is the worst. All of this is done with such a gleeful and brazen smugness that it somehow completely obliterates the line of what should probably be very offensive. The sexual harassment is funny not because sexual harassment is funny. It’s funny because the “real” NPH would never do that, and we “know” that he is only “pretending” to be a sex fiend even though up on the screen is NPH is playing NPH, “himself,” as a sex fiend. It is a brilliant piece of comic misdirection, which makes NPH’s entire performance feel like it is getting away with something (which he is!). It’s on the level with Robert Downey Jr. getting away with wearing blackface in “Tropic Thunder.” As Mel Brooks would say, “It rises below vulgarity.” It’s a great character and performance and NPH should get an Oscar Nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Other jokes that perhaps they only sort of get away with are all the ethnic stereotypes. I say sort of because the variety of stereotypes make them okay simply because everybody (White, Asian, Indian, Jewish, Russian, Black) is being targeted. However, there are still plenty of these jokes that fall flat because they are just old. A general rule of humor is that jokes should never be told twice. I have heard the “All Asians look alike,” joke about a thousand times. The one in this movie I saw coming miles away. Saying Asians all look the same is a lazy joke nowadays. It’s time we came up with a new way to make fun of Asian people.

Finally the 3D employed in the movie is probably how 3D should be used: and by that I mean, as a joke. 3D generally speaking is more distracting than engrossing and as such should be used to break the 4^th wall, not to simply supplement a story. There are plenty of 3D jokes in this movie. Some are better than others. On the whole though, it is not worth the extra money to see a 3D movie in a theater. You would have as much fun with this one if you saw it streaming on Netflix.