Winter Movie Preview

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (December 15): In the eighth episode of the Skywalker saga, Rey undergoes training with Luke, while Finn teams up with a Resistance mechanic named Rose for a separate adventure. It’s also noteworthy that this is the late Carrie Fisher’s final appearance as Leia.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (December 22): Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, and Jack Black lead the cast of this “reboot-quel”, in which four teenagers are sucked into the world of a Jumanji video game, take the form of their video game avatars, and discover the world that Robin William’s character had left twenty years earlier.

Pitch Perfect 3 (December 22): The now-graduated Bardem Bellas reunite for an overseas United Services Organizations tour. Wacky hijinks and catchy a cappella tunes are sure to ensue.

Insidious: The Last Key (January 5): The fourth installment of the Insidious franchise follows a parapsychologist investigating a haunting in her own childhood home. This could be the winter’s spookiest film.

Maze Runner: The Death Cure (January 26): Closing out the Maze Runner trilogy, The Death Cure sees young hero, Thomas, searching for a cure to a deadly disease known as “the flare”. Hollywood will surely now be taking ideas for the next big young adult franchise after this.

Fifty Shades Freed (February 9): The most successful movie series to be based on erotic Twilight fan-fiction is coming to end. The film will focus on Anastasia marrying Christian Grey and all of the kinkiness that follows such a betrothal.

Black Panther (February 16): After his appearance in Captain America: Civil War, T’Challa (also known as the Black Panther) gets his own movie in which he returns to his home of Wakanda to take his rightful place as king. Unfortunately for him, there are some who would keep him from claiming the throne.

From action to comedy to horror, there is something for everyone this winter at the movies.

True Grit Analysis

Joel and Ethan Coen have been nominated for six Oscars for their writing alone. One of those nominations was for their 2010 adaptation of True Grit. The film’s main character, Mattie Ross (played by Hailee Steinfeld), is a wonderfully written character. Though only fourteen years old, Mattie speaks far more eloquently than most of the adults surrounding her. Her polished prose stuns U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) and infuriates Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon). She’s also a shrewd barter and well-versed in the bible. From all this, we can infer that Mattie is well educated, and her father must have taught her how to hold her own against those in positions of authority and power.

Near the end of the film, Mattie is bitten by a rattlesnake, and the infected arm must be removed. When Mattie is shown as a grown, one-armed woman, we see that the missing arm is symbolic of the price one must pay to earn “true grit”. Mattie began the movie wide-eyed and with a certain amount of innocence, even if she had also been tenacious and hard-headed. By the film’s end, the innocence is gone, but she carries on with pride even with only one arm. Like the one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, Mattie is now defined by her grit rather than her handicap.

It is also through Mattie’s eyes that the story is told. Her grown self narrates the film while her adolescent self guides the audience through the harsh realities of the Wild West. The audience grows with her. We go into the movie perhaps with a romanticized view of the Old West, and come out of it hardened. If the film had been told through Cogburn’s eyes (or rather, his eye),  it perhaps would have glorified the brutality of the West and shown few consequences for killing. Had LaBoeuf narrated, the story would have probably focused on the dignity of the West, even if one must drink water from muddy bootprints every now and then. Yet with Mattie at the helm of the story, we get a coming of age story about how life, much like the West, can be hard and, yes, even gritty.

Thor: Ragnarok Review

Thor: Ragnarok easily clears the not-that-high bar set by its predecessors to become Thor’s best movie yet. It’s a gloriously goofy and campy thrill ride with laugh-out-loud jokes and some awesome action set-pieces.

Ragnarok finds Thor (Chris Hemsworth) returning to his home of Asgard only to discover his trickster brother, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has been reigning by impersonating their father and king, Odin (Anthony Hopkins). When Thor and Loki search for their father, they meet their older sister, Hela (Cate Blanchett), Goddess of Death, who has returned to destroy Asgard.

Unfortunately, Thor and Loki end up stranded on Sakaar, a swanky planet ruled by the charismatic Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum). Thor is sold into a gladiatorial competition by a disillusioned Asgardian named Valkyrie (Tess Thompson) and is pitted against his fellow Avenger, the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo).

It’s a race against time for Thor to survive the arena, put together a team, and return to Asgard to defeat Hela before she brings about “Ragnarok”, or the end of all things.

While it may be Thor’s third solo adventure and the seventeenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Ragnarok feels as fresh and fun as any superhero movie can. While Thor was a self-serious stiff saddled with dull plots in his first two films, here he’s a wisecracking everyman who brings the audience along on a wild ride.

Ragnarok’s offbeat humor is one of its greatest strengths. Director Taika Waititi infuses the film with fun and weirdness, even going so far as to cast himself as a hilariously easygoing rock monster named Korg who befriends Thor on Sakaar.

The film is so funny, in fact, that it can often feel more like a comedy than an action blockbuster. When action does come into play, though, there’s some pretty dang cool stuff. Thor’s arena match against the Hulk is amazing, as is the final showdown against Hela, ingeniously set to Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”.

If Ragnarok has any weaknesses, the villain is the biggest. While Blanchett clearly enjoys the role, Hela doesn’t have enough to do. Her relationships to Odin, Thor, and/or Loki all could have been mined for emotional resonance but are left unexplored. This author also personally hoped for a connection to be set up between Hela and Thanos, villain of the next two Avengers films, but it didn’t happen.
All in all, though, Thor: Ragnarok is an exciting and fun addition to Marvel canon, and its success (it earned $121 million in its domestic opening weekend) bodes well for more fun Marvel movies to come. 

Jaws Analysis

Steven Spielberg is one of- if not the- most successful filmmakers of all time. His first big hit (and the original “summer blockbuster”), Jaws, provides ample evidence for why Spielberg is such a master of his craft. In its opening scene, a young girl coaxes a young man into chasing her into the ocean. She excitedly runs up the beach, undressing as she bounds through the sand. The boy staggers behind her, eager to keep up with this attractive girl, but is struggling. He stumbles and calls for her to slow down. When he tries to pull his shirt off, he tumbles down a hill. From this we learn that the boy is clearly drunken (even though he tells the girl that he isn’t), though he’s excited for the opportunity to skinny dip with a pretty girl. The girl is excited too and is reveling somewhat in letting the boy chase her. It’s a fast paced and frenetic scene.

How and where the camera moves tells us a lot. As the camera cuts between shots of the girl and the boy, it moves quickly along with them via tracking shots, adding to the exciting pace. The camera moves left to right, giving a false feeling of safety. However, the camera is behind a fence. The fence not only separates the camera from the young couple, but from the ocean and the dangers lurking within it. When the young man rolls down the hill, a tilting shot is used to highlight his fall. The camera follows the man’s drop from the upper right side of the screen to the lower left. This right-to-left approaches subtly implies that danger is on its way. These techniques are just a couple small reasons why Spielberg is a leading creative force in Hollywood.

It Review

It made a killing at the box office in “its” opening weekend, but does “it” live up to the hype? It is spooky and fun enough but not without “its” flaws.

It is based on Stephen King’s 1986 novel of the same name, and covers roughly half of the original book. Taking place in the summer of 1989, the film is based in the town of Derry, Maine, which carries an unusually high amount of disappearances, especially of children. When a group of bullied friends are terrorized one by one by a shape-shifting, demonic entity referred to as “It”,  the kids decide to find the monster and bring It down themselves.

The main attraction in It is, of course, Pennywise the Dancing Clown (played by Bill Skarsgard), the demon’s favorite form to take. Pennywise is predictably the highlight of the film, and Skarsgard plays him with flair and ferocity. He could be even scarier, however, had director Andy Muschietti relied less on jump scares and more on slow-burning creepiness and dread.

The cast of children is probably the biggest mixed bag of the film. While they all have an obvious and mostly enjoyable camaraderie, at least a couple of the kids come off as annoying and even unnecessary to the plot. Surely the movie has such a large child-cast because the book did, but it wouldn’t have hurt to cut a couple out and tone down the obnoxious jokes.

Regardless of its imperfections, It has already broken box office records. According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, It earned $123 million domestically from September 8-10, giving it the biggest opening weekend ever for both September movies and the horror genre. With word of mouth growing, It stands to become one of the highest grossing R-rated films of all time.

As a movie, It is mostly decent but could be improved. As a cultural phenomenon, It is taking the country by storm and will go down as one of the most successful films of 2017.

 

BoJack Horseman

I’m currently halfway through Season 3 of Netflix’s wonderful original series, BoJack Horseman. Take a look at the show right here.