Reviews – Page 6 – Blue Ink Alchemy

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Movie Review: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

It would be easy, far too easy at this point, for Marvel’s creative minds to just churn out one-note sequels to its successful movie franchises. Just rehash plot points, stick in named villains no matter how they’re written, and ride the wave of money all the way to the bank. But they tried that once, with Iron Man 2. And it backfired. Iron Man 2 is the worst movie of the set so far.

My point is that Marvel’s people had to get smarter about their stories, especially in the wake of The Avengers, and they did. Iron Man 3 is a character piece with expertly-timed comedy juxtaposed with an inward realignment on the part of Tony Stark. Thor: The Dark World lets Chris Hemsworth demonstrate true heroic gravitas and, I will reiterate, acts more like Superman than Superman does in Man of Steel. And now comes Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a very smart, very intense, very electric action-thriller about conspiracies, betrayals, secrets, and what happens when you drop the ultimate Boy Scout into a very deadly cloak-and-dagger scenario.

The scenario begins with Captain America working with SHIELD as part of a special ops strike team. He and Black Widow run covert operations to subvert things like hostage situations. However, when Captain Rogers realizes that his operations are getting ‘compartmentalized’ by Nick Fury, as in some of his guys follows his orders and others have different orders to follow, he gives SHIELD’s director a piece of his mind. In turn, Fury shows Rogers Project Insight, SHIELD’s new helicarriers meant to neutralize threats before they happen. Rogers, maintaining his stand on the moral high ground, raises his hackles even more, and Fury actually calls for Insight to be delayed. This was apparently an unpopular move, as both Fury and Rogers become targeted for assassination, specifically by the terrifying, heavily-armed spectre known only as the Winter Soldier.

For once, Marvel’s iconic heroes are in a situation that does not involve laser beams, magic hammers, or monsters of myth. This is a complete and total shift in tone, theme, and atmosphere from anything we’ve seen before in this cinematic universe. Superheroes stories always have their share of violence, perhaps more than their share given all the creatures and demigods and megalomaniacs who get punched in the face, but Captain America: The Winter Soldier goes down a different road. The violence is delivered through the entirely mundane and somehow more visceral means of blades, bombs, and bullets, and the victims of that violence are not always the bad guys. This is not a negative aspect of the movie, mind you – but it’s worth knowing beforehand so you know what you’re in for.

It’s very cool to meet someone who has a lot in common with Captain America despite the age gap.

Tales of intrigue, betrayal, secrets, and revelation have lasted for millenia, long before the advent of superheroism as we know it, as characters compromise themselves morally and legally to do what they feel is right. This is especially true in this modern, cloak-and-dagger world, where secrets are even better concealed by technology and businessmen and bankers lie as a matter of course. That said, Captain America is a completely straightforward, honest person living in a thoroughly dishonest world, but given his skills, notoriety, and fortitude, he’s in a position where he begins to unravel conspiracies just by being himself. For all of the film’s well-timed and well-executed reveals and double-crosses, when you drop Captain America into a story like this, the conspiracies start coming apart almost immediately.

The movie spends about two-thirds of its running time on this very tense, very visceral spy thriller, and then seques very easily into rather straightforward action for its final act. I’m trying to avoid hyperbole in the name of something resembling objectivity, but i just used the word ‘very’ three times in the last sentence – this film makes an impression. From the realistic bent of its firefights to the sharpness of its dialog, Captain America: The Winter Soldier makes it clear that no punches are going to be pulled. Thankfully, beneath the callbacks to the works of John LaCarre and Tom Clancy and cleanly shot, well choreographed fights, which would make this film stand alone as an above-average action thriller, there’s even more to enjoy.

He’s not only displaced in time, but out of his element.

Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow really steps out on her own here. While we’re still waiting for what is certain to be a fantastic solo outing, she and Chris Evans make a great double act especially throughout the middle of the movie. She always seems a step ahead, approaches her challenges with confidence, and lets the facade of cold, calculated confidence crack now and again to reveal the very human character beneath all of the flash and guile. Anthony Mackie is a breakout star, definitely feeling more like a supporting and necessary character than a sidekick, as Falcon often was in the comics. He’s a modern soldier, mostly courteous with just enough bravado to make him compelling and endearing at the same time, and his wing-suit is weaponized cool not seen since Iron Man. Samuel L. Jackson gives Nick Fury more depth and complexity than ever, and while I’m not sure how in the world a mainstay leading man like Robert Redford got into a Captain America movie, he does fantastic work and demonstrates that he is still one of the best in the business. As for our title roles, Chris Evans continues to impress as Captain America, simultaneously the sort of upstanding person you wish existed more often in real life and the kind of selfless hero that can’t help but inspire. Finally, the Winter Soldier doesn’t get as much screen time as you might expect given his name is in the title, but his role as the ultimate vector of the villainous plans afoot is superbly executed, and he has real on-screen menace and intensity when he’s around.

Over and above everything else, though, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is smart. Its ties to the rest of the Marvel Universe are more implied than explicit. If you’ve been along for the ride from the beginning, you’re going to pick up on a lot and be left wanting more. If you’re new, you’ll want to know more. Names, when dropped, feel a great deal more subtle than they have been in the past, we see more of SHIELD than we ever have before, and even the superscience bits have weight that don’t interfere with the drive of the narrative. I don’t think the tonal shift is for everyone, and some viewers may get turned off by the running time or the subject matter, as I mentioned before. But in terms of objective flaws, the movie has very few, so few that none are springing immediately to mind.

One of many perfectly executed ‘oh SHIT!’ moments.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is some of the best work Marvel has done to date. It’s gripping storytelling from start to finish. If this is any indication of how strong ‘Phase 2’ is going to continue being in relation to ‘Phase 1’, I am even more excited for Guardians of the Galaxy in August. It doesn’t have the all-ages appeal and pure fun factor of The Avengers or the truly deep and intimate character focus of Iron Man 3, but with its very strong cast, excellent writing, engrossing action, and monstrously influential implications for the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in spite of the 1200 or so words I’ve just written, there are no words with which I can recommend Captain American: The Winter Soldier any higher than this: It’s not the best superhero movie ever made… but it comes damn, damn, damn close.

Movie Review: Noah

April 3, 2014 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

Biblical epics are nothing new for Hollywood. One of the most well-known producer/directors of Hollywood’s past, Cecil B. Demille, worked with many such films, including The Sign of the Cross, Samson & Delilah, and of course The Ten Commandments. For a while, such spectacles have fallen out of favor, thanks to the rise of conservatism in the United States that lead to fundamentalist Christian audiences eschewing things like broad interpretation or the idea of the Bible as metaphor. The tide seems to be turning back, though, if Noah is any indication.

Ten generations after Adam and Eve walked in the Garden of Eden, Noah dreams of the destruction of the world. He goes to see his grandfather, Methuselah, who helps him understand that, according to his dream, he must build an ark to save the innocent animals of the world from the oncoming deluge. As he sets about his task, Noah is approached first by the Watchers, fallen angels cast out of Heaven for wishing to help mankind, and Tubal Cain, king of the rest of the world and its strip-mining industrial cities. Noah is dedicated to his task, but the question of what that dedication will compel him to do gets asked over and over again as the rain starts to fall.

Variations on this story exist all over the world. Long before the printing press was capable of putting copies of the Bible in the hands of multitudes, people have been passing on tales of floods, arks, and rainbows. Noah does borrow the bulk of its material from the Judeo-Christian tradition, but it doesn’t seem to have an agenda tied into that establishment. It refers to a “Creator” and at no point is a language other than English spoken, so Biblical purists will have a beef with the film long before the stone angels and magical snake skins show up.

The world is less Ten Commandments and more Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome

The thing of it is, some of Noah‘s source material comes from apocryphal texts such as the Book of Enoch and the Dead Sea Scrolls, which technically could be part of holy writ but no Bible printing is likely to include them. These texts speak of a world utterly unlike our own, where angels walked alongside men and miracles were worked by those tied closely to the Garden of Eden. Noah taps into this strangeness and these wonders the same way that Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings tapped into things like sentient tree-people and magic swords. In fact, director Darren Aronofsky approaches the Bible the same way Jackson approached Tolkien: there is deep respect and even love for the source material here, but there’s also a boldness that allows for expansions and cuts where you might not expect them.

Case in point: the Watchers. When these angels chose to break the Creator’s command not to interfere with humanity, they fell to Earth and were covered in stone, preventing them from flying. The way these creatures move is disconcerting and otherworldly, which makes perfect sense: they spent millenia flying through the vastness of space, but now must trudge along one foot at a time. Noah makes tangible sense of the esoteric concept of a fallen angel. Likewise, when Noah tells his family the story of creation, it is juxtaposed with a fantastic montage of a visualization concerning both the Big Bang and Darwinian evolution, demonstrating be means of a major Hollywood production that yes, such Biblical texts can in fact be metaphors for demonstrable scientific theory. So much of Noah is fearless in its respectful interpretation, that things like actors’ performances and actual story points feel almost superfluous in comparison.

Noah’s wife and adopted daughter have major roles to play, nicely offsetting the male swagger.

However, that isn’t to say that Noah doesn’t have merits there, as well. While Russel Crowe and Ray Winstone are playing mostly to type as Noah and Tubal Cain respectively, they do turn in good performances and neither tries to over-complicate their characters with odd accents or strange affects. In a text and story mostly dominated by men, Jennifer Connolly and Emma Watson do a fantastic job standing on their own, demonstrating strength and bravery that arguably outshine the battle scenes. Darren Aronofsky is more than just a bold storyteller bringing us the cinematic version of a beloved tale, he’s also an adept and skilled director, and the man who brought us Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, and Black Swan continues to challenge our perception and our interpretation of events.

Outside of its context as a Biblical tale, Noah is a solid film with good character and world-building as well as fine performances and a well-paced story. Within context, it’s incredibly bold and unafraid of being as bizarre as the Old Testament could truly be, even in the mostly sanitized text that you’d find in most church pews. I can understand why it would make conservative viewers uncomfortable or even angry on the face of the visuals, but underneath the interpretation and metaphor is respect, which drives the narrative forward rather than holding it back. The fact that Noah even got made in a world of lackluster Kirk Cameron schlock and batshit Mel Gibson-style anti-Semitism is significant in and of itself, and the fact that it is this respectful, this bold, this bizarre, and this good is nothing short of its own miracle.

Movie Review: Frozen

March 26, 2014 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

It can be difficult to keep up when life throws things into upheaval. Most of the time it’s a matter of distractions or relaxation opportunities slipping away as we get pulled into one direction or another by so-called ‘adult responsibilities’. Sometimes the circumstances are a bit more tragic. And sometimes you just get born with a power over the elements that you can’t control and is tied closely to your emotions so things like insecurity and panic cause localized cataclysms.

You know, typical teenager problems.

Frozen comes to us from Disney, and instead of just one princess, they give us two this time around. Elsa and Anna are the daughters of the king and queen of the cold land of Arendelle. Elsa, the older daughter, was born with the aforementioned powers, in this case giving her dominion over snow and ice. At first, this is fine, and fun for Anna as this means the sisters can build snowmen and toboggan indoors. However, an accident leaves Anna without memory of her sister’s ability and Elsa without her freedom, locked away in the castle away from Anna. A tragedy leaves the sisters without their parents, which leads to Elsa needing to be crowned queen at a time when she is both emotionally vulnerable and reuniting with her sister in the midst of all sorts of ancillary drama. As you expect, this all goes swimmingly and nobody runs into any problems whatsoever.

I kid. The whole thing collapses like an awning buried in snow.

Disney continues to set the standard for visual impressiveness in animated features. Moving from hand-drawn animation to CGI has been greatly aided by the addition of Pixar to their stable, and the influence shows. The style skews more towards realistic humans in their proportions and structure, emulating the drawing styles of classics like Beauty and the Beast, but the computing power of the Pixar folks allows for some truly impressive snow and ice effects. It’s easy to believe that Elsa’s powers are truly magical when we see how she creates what she creates.

The characters feel very human despite their computerized construction.

I’m being deliberately vague and skimping on details, but that’s because Frozen surprised me, and if like me you’ve been hemmed in by winter already and haven’t gotten out to see the film yet, you should be surprised, too. It wasn’t a surprise in the style of a bait and switch, either. What pleasantly shocked me about Frozen was its whip-smart writing and its ability to present two very different female leads as both strong and empathetic. We understand Elsa’s struggle to both accept herself and present herself to the world, and we admire Anna’s upbeat attitude and the fact that she needs no permission to do what she feels is right. She’s more than willing to take things on all by herself, and her determination is inspiring.

Disney films in this vein are famous for their songs, and Frozen has got some good ones. There’s a reason ‘Let It Go’ has been so prominent for so long. However, the film feels front-loaded with its singing numbers. They come and go somewhat quickly, almost as if the film is in a hurry to get them out of the way so we can focus more on character and plot development. With characters and writing this good, it’s somewhat understandable, and it doesn’t really hurt the movie in any way. It just struck me as odd that the balance across the running time seemed off.

There are great lighting and weather effects, too.

Frozen feels confident. Much like its leads, the film is going to say what it needs to say regardless of how it’s received, and it’s admirable for that. The film itself is quite good, and young girls especially should be seeing it. While its overall quality doesn’t quite match the wit, pace, heart, and pure fun of The LEGO Movie, and its Pixar-esque qualities also invite comparisons to the superior Wall-E and Up, Frozen is by no means a film to be missed. The characters are fantastic, the songs are memorable, it doesn’t overstay its welcome, and its message is one that deserves to be shouted from the balcony of any ice castle anywhere. If you have a family with young ladies, or just want to see what female empowerment looks like within the ‘princess’ genre, Frozen is right up your alley.

500 Words On Gravity

March 14, 2014 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

I finally got around to seeing Gravity, one of the most lauded films of last year. In fact, I’ve seen it twice. The first time I saw it was at a friend’s who has a 3-D television, and I have to say I’m a little sorry I missed seeing the film in IMAX. I don’t miss the fact that I saved on the IMAX markup, to be sure, but the visuals in Gravity are absolutely breathtaking, even in 2-D.

If you’ve followed my blog for any amount of time, you know what a stickler I am for story and character. I do make some exceptions for guilty pleasures (Flash Gordon for example), but for the most part, a cinematic storyline usually has no excuse for skimping on these important elements. Pacific Rim has a somewhat simple story and some of the characters are a bit arch, but their presentation and informing the audience through action and emotion rather than wordy exposition overshadows those aforementioned potential drawbacks.

Gravity isn’t quite that lucky. As good as the performances are, our two leads are barely more than sketches of characters. And the story, despite taking place in the unique arena of outer space (we’ll get to that), couldn’t be more watered down. Gravity is a survival film. It’s the last half of Titanic, or the entirety of The Poseidon Adventure or The Grey, just in space. It shatters a seemingly peaceful scene with a disaster and narrows the field of players to one, who must survive and evade an oncoming calamity – water in the boat movies, wolves in The Grey, space in general in Gravity. As tense as Gravity is, in the back of my mind my inner critic was saying, “Space is still trying to kill Sandra Bullock. Somehow, all of space is still trying to murder Sandra Bullock.”

Okay, enough belly-aching, let’s get to the good stuff. This is one of the hardest sci-fi movies I’ve seen in a long time. It’s up there with Moon and 2001: A Space Odyssey in terms of its depictions of outer space. Instead of classical music, exterior shots are accompanied by a haunting and driving soundtrack. Some of these shots are utterly amazing in their length and composition. The silence adds to the tension and pulls us into the plight of the survivors. It’s paced very well, and arch as the characters are, they’re likable enough that we don’t want to see bad things happen to them. This film somehow accomplishes the feat of invoking both agoraphobia and claustrophobia at the same time. Space can be a scary place, and Gravity drives that home without a single laser blast or monster.

All in all, I really enjoy Gravity, and while its narrative and characters are not as strong as Moon and its impact won’t match that of 2001: A Space Odyssey, I would still recommend it for any sci-fi fan or folks interested in tales of the human spirit triumphant.

I need to see The Grey.

Film Review: Mr. Peabody & Sherman

March 12, 2014 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

When I was young, between daily corrals of mammoths and making-fire-with-rocks lessons, my mother introduced me to The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. As amused as I was by the antics of the moose & squirrel, the segments that stuck with me the most would have to be Peabody’s Improbable History. I can’t recall exactly, but I think I was introduced to the singular genius dog Mr. Peabody, and his boy Sherman, long before I read The Time Machine or saw my first episode of Doctor Who. It’s entirely possible that these short tales of historical fiction and education were my first exposure to time travel. Many years and several stories later, Dreamworks has set about the task of bringing Mr. Peabody & Sherman forward to our time, before sending them back to the past on more adventures of a modern audience.

The story goes that Mr. Peabody was born in a pound, like many dogs, but had a hard time finding a home. Apparently people don’t like having a dog that talks back, especially about things like particle physics and differential calculus. But rather than let such things get him down, this extraordinary canine devoted himself to intellectual and physical perfection, eventually becoming such a player on the world stage that, instead of a boy adopting him, he instead adopts a boy. To educate the orphan, named Sherman, Peabody invents a machine he dubs the WABAC (pronounced ‘Wayback’) to introduce his boy to historical periods in the past and the figures prominent in them. But when Sherman tries to go to public school, things go awry, and Peabody must show that his home is exemplary, even as Sherman seeks to use the machine to impress a fellow student.

There were a lot of fears that the creators of Mr. Peabody & Sherman would miss the point of the original animation. This is a fear founded in some of the frankly deplorable adaptations of the works of Doctor Seuss and other franchises of yesteryear. Thankfully, despite what seems to be at first a purely aesthetic connection to the source material, within the first few minutes of the film’s opening it’s clear that the writers and animators did more than glance at a few pictures from the original show.

There are some great gags and visuals here.

Not long after the movie opens, the first trip back in time happens, and it easily could have been lifted from the old show. While the look and feel of things has gotten an update, the ‘DNA’ of the core concept is very much intact. Peabody and Sherman learn about where they are and who they’re around, the situation escalates, hijinks occur, and Peabody cracks at least one pun. Even after that, the movie has a consistent tone. Peabody is well-meaning but high-minded, Sherman isn’t the best student in the world even if he is good-natured, and the two of them really do need and compliment one another. What’s interesting is that around the usual space-time shenanigans, we get to see how the world reacts to Peabody. It’s cute, to be sure, and it does feel loyal to the tone of the original shorts.

There’s also plenty of slapstick as our heroes stumble across historical figures doing what made them famous. While Mr. Peabody & Sherman does not fall into the trap of repeating the same gag over and over again for its running time, it does seem that the slapstick outweighs the puns and ‘dad jokes’. It’s definitely helpful to keep the attention of the kids, but it does take something away from the core concept and the interplay of the characters. The gags are funny in the moment, but in retrospect there might have been time for another historical stop if some of the antics had been cut. Then again, the third act of the movie kicks off with a very interesting take on the nature of time travel paradoxes, which I couldn’t help but appreciate.

The relationship is very cute, organic, and endearing.

This is a film that definitely relies on the chemistry between the leads, rather than leaning entirely on its jokes or conceits. In addition to their arch characterizations, the interplay between Mr. Peabody and Sherman is geared in such a way that both characters are equally sympathetic and equally central. Mr. Peabody’s dilemma with Sherman is born out of genuine affection, even if he can’t always fully articulate it, and Sherman’s actions are framed in that same affection being reciprocated, even if the boy doesn’t think his plans all the way through. This relationship feels organic and natural, a feeling backed up by excellent voice work and animation that preserves the general tone of the original material but is most definitely modern and geared towards making use of the overabundance of 3-D.

It’s hard to come away from Mr. Peabody & Sherman and not feel a sense of satisfaction. While it lacks the seemingly boundless energy of The LEGO Movie, and the true emotional punch and poignancy of WALL-E or Up, the film is an utter and unquestionable success in how it modernizes the cartoon shorts on which it’s based. It can be difficult to simultaneously educate and entertain, and while the education merit of the film is somewhat pushed aside by the time the third act begins, the hope seems to be that kids will at least ask questions and hit up Wikipedia after they see the movie. The writing’s smart, the characters are very well presented, the action is slick and inventive and doesn’t feel repetitious, and there are a few gags and jokes clearly aimed at older audience members that don’t feel pandering or out of place. Its tone is consistent and light, it honors and exalts its heritage, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome. Overall, I’d recommend Mr. Peabody & Sherman, especially if you were a fan of the cartoon growing up. It’s nice to know that not all reworked concepts in family entertainment are going to the dogs.