Submarine: If You Like Wes Anderson, Amelie, and Getting Caught in the Rain...

There are a handful of movies on my Netflix queue that I always happen to skip over for one reason or another. Bread and Tulips took me literally about two years to watch and then when I finally did I loved it. The same is true of Submarine, whose cover has intrigued me for years, but which I also suspected would end up being a lofty indie drama that I wouldn't like. Well, this is a quick thank you to the Netflix algorithms: for your patience and persistence. God bless you.

Submarine follows a boy named Oliver Tate (played by Craig Roberts), a teenager living in Wales (which is next to England/part of the UK, just sayin). Oliver has two main halves of his life that are constantly occupying all of his time. On the one hand, his parents (played by Sally Hawkins and Noah Taylor) are having marital issues, which have only worsened since his mother's high school sweetheart just moved in next door. On the other, he's just fallen in love with a girl named Jordana (played by Yasmin Page), and his relationship is a little bumpy as well. A well-intentioned kid, the movie follows Oliver as he tries to patch up his parents' marriage and pursue the girl of his dreams.

Too cool.

I'm a sucker for movies like this. What I was expecting was something along the lines of I Heart Huckabees or something equally stupid. But Submarine ends up being something like Amelie crossed with a Wes Anderson movie. The cinematography is gorgeous. Following Oliver's every mood, it can go from quick, clean, and observational to romanticized and warmly lit, to even upright absurd and almost avant garde at times. But every scene is meticulously thought out, and voiced over with Oliver's clever and overly adult insights. Really, visually, this movie was a treat. It's hard to pull off clever editing without falling into the trap of trying to copy another film auteur, but I thought that the pacing of this was original and downright beautiful. The chill, placid soundtrack is a great compliment to it as well.

Craaazy cool

Oliver is an extremely likeable character. Well-versed in Neitzsche, Salinger, and Shakespeare, he tries to help his parents, Jordana, and even more minor characters to resolve their problems. A fascinating mix of flat deadpan and touching sincerity, Oliver has trouble fitting in at school and doesn't have a ton of friends. But his relationship with Jordana proves to bring out his personality, which he hadn't fully tapped into before. And his overanalyzed and sweet approach to everything is extremely well played by Craig Roberts (who, IMDB tells me, was also recently in Neighbors and 22 Jump Street, whaaat...).

Lil obsessed..

Submarine is also subtly hilarious. From Oliver's ill attempts at being the "Best Boyfriend in the World" to the tiny idiosyncrasies of each character (He always types on a typewriter, his dad drinks hot water and lemon when he's in a funk, and Jordana is a mild pyromaniac.), there are a lot of quirks that the underplayed performances keep from being too zany.

Yup.

The story is extremely sweet, and hearkens to the teenage mindset without being angsty.

9 outa 10. Full disclosure: I watched it twice.

Is the Bible the New Comic Book? Hollywood's Growing Interest in the Old Testament

Anyone notice a certain trend in the movies lately? It has to do with God. And no, I'm not talking about those hyper-Christian heaven-is-for-real movies, because they've always been around. But Old Testament, heavy-hitting, weeeird story stuff.

Seriously. Murder, animal sacrifice, the discovery of alcohol,

and much, much more!

In a time where there is literally nothing new under the sun, Hollywood seems to be investing more and more into big Bible sagas. In the sea of sequels, prequels, and "re-imaginings" there is a growing force in movies like Noah (directed by Aronofsky) and upcoming flick Exodus: Gods and Kings (directed by Ridkley Scott), I feel like we're going to see a bunch more movies of this caliber on the horizon.

But why?

With the indie industry taking over the consumer demand for films that are different, quirky, and a little more edgy, Hollywood seems to be running out of formulas that work with a larger audience. I'm actually a bit astonished that it has taken Hollywood this long to discover their missing ingredient. Anyone who has ever read the Old Testament knows that the stories in there are straight-up crazy a good 70% of the time. Murder, war, floods, famine, plagues, and everything else that you can think of is covered in those beginning books -- and in every top grossing movie in the past several decades. You can do a disaster movie, you can do a drama, you can do an ethical movie, you can do a religious movie (obviously), and the list goes on and on. There's a ton of plot flexibility with the Bible and they should be taking advantage of it.

Oh, and they are.

The other thing is the fact that no one has really tackled anything other than a straight reading of the Bible in the past couple of decades. Epics like The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur are of course classics, but a little dated. In this day and age, when we can design an entire world from scratch via computer, the time has never been more ripe for a fresh imagined look at what the world looked ike at the beginning of recorded time. They definitely took advantage of this in Noah, where some pre-Ark creatures and scorched landscapes came into play, creating a world that this both familiar and alien. Hearkens back to films not unlike The Lord of the Rings saga or even like the series Game of Thrones.

Right?

That's the other cool thing about delving into the Bible for some new film fodder: it's both familiar and unfamiliar. The book is so old that in a lot of ways it can adapt to fantasy and space flicks that have become so popular as of late. The writing in the Old Testament can be incredibly sparse, which allows a lot of room for imagination. While most other books have to take into account a lot of naysaying superfans, the Old Testament has enough wiggle room to allow for some creative expression without pissing off the uber-religious. Since there isn't a lot of descriptive detail put into each book, there is a lot of room left for bulking up plot with fight scenes and internal battles (which I'm sure they will play to their advantage and, again, already have with the likes of Noah).

The only thing that bugs me a little about this big idea is the probability that they will choose to ignore or rule out important details in favor of upping the drama to these movies. To bring up Noah again, one of the things that drove me NUTS towards the end was the fact that Noah didn't allow his sons to bring wives onto the ark.

BUT HIS SONS ALREADY HAD WIVES, according to the Bible.*

Come on, people! Learn to read!!

Yeah, it would be pretty messed up to just go out and PICK a poor girl and be like, "Hey, you're my daughter-in-law now. Hope that's cool. Now let's get you on this giant boat where you'll be stuck with us for God-literally-only-knows how long! Good? Good!" But he didn't have to! And as a result, the movie ends on a kind of question mark as to how the hell everyone is supposed to repopulate the earth...

Although, to be fair, I'm pretty sure crazier things have happened

in the Old Testament. Book is all cray...

So, yeah. In conclusion: I'm down with Hollywood finding an outlet for their blockbuster market. Especially because it is an untapped market. It's nice to see that studios can get a little imaginative with old Bible tales without everyone getting up in arms and asking the Pope to burn the director with fire. And there's a lot of room for "ancient" to become the new "future."

That being said, studios, please don't play around with the little information that you have. You have SO MUCH ROOM for creativity, leave the bare bones of the tale and appease us old Sunday School kids. Kthanks.

*Yeah, I'll provide that verse. Bring it. Genesis 7:13 "On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark." Bam.

Dune: A Great Sci-Fi Flick (If You Can Understand What They're Talking About)

Woohoo! And happy to be a part of Forgotten Films's 1984 Blogathon! For my own 1984 review, I chose the movie Dune.

Now, Dune gets a bit of a bad rap. Unfortunately shadowed by a bunch of other fantastic blockbusters at the time (as per the whole reason for this blogathon haha), and hindered by director David Lynch's own qualms about it, Dune ended up being a bit of a box office bomb. It should also be noted that a lot of the terminology might be a little hard to get a handle on. But honestly, for a sci-fi flick of the early 1980s, it's not bad.

Woof. Okay. Let's dive into this thick plot.

The story is set in the year 10,191 and at this point in time, people across the galaxy are using a spice called melange that is essential to traveling through time and space. It is only mined in one place, the desert planet Arrakis, aka "Dune." We learn right off the bat that the emperor (of the galaxy? of the humans?) sensing a threat to spice production, decides to send the Duke Atreides to Dune where he will be ambushed by Atreides's long-time enemies the Harkonnens. The emperor is also ordered to kill Duke Atreide's son, Paul, but for reasons undisclosed.

This guy.

Paul escapes the planned ambush, which otherwise kills the majority of the Atreides people, with his mother. They find refuge with the Fremen, the indigenous people of Dune, and little by little learn more about what the spice is, how to fight back against the Harkonnens, who Paul really is, and why he is such a threat to the rest of the galaxy.

So, yeah, lots and lots of tricky terms in this movie. Apparently when the movie first came out they had to give out cheat sheets that gave a list of terms for the audience members unfamiliar with it. I confess that I had to watch it with the subtitles on because of the number of words that are completely alien (ha).

But once you get past the jargon of the film, it's actually pretty cool. Main character Paul (played by David Lynch's boy crush, Kyle MacLachlan) is an intriguing one, and likeable right away. You can tell that he's smart, and the fact that the emperor of the galaxy wants to destroy him makes you wonder why he's so dangerous. As things begin to happen on the planet Dune, Paul really gets a handle on being a badass. Knowing things that he perhaps shouldn't know and having visions about things that are going to happen, he starts to teach the Fremen how to use sound as a weapon, gathering information about sandworms (the only things that live on Dune besides the Fremen), and learning how to lead a resistance against the nasty Harkonnens.

Actually nasty.

The whole aesthetic of the movie, also, is fascinating. While I now have Jodorowsky's Dune on my Netflix queue, it's always nice to see how sci-fi movies lay out their worlds. Dune has its own feel separate from the likes of Star Wars or Star Trek. The lush costumes of the beginning almost makes it feel like a medeival movie at times, with harsh, angular sets bringing it back to a modern scope. And the rock opera-esque soundtrack kind of echoes that feel. Sweeping orchestral themes intercut with electric guitar at times. Nice dichotomy, and different for this type of movie.

The only thing that tripped me up about this movie (besides the jargon) was that it felt rushed. Dune, the novel, by Frank Herbert weighs in at about 900 pgs, and in today's timeline of stretching 200-page novels into 3-film franchises (ahem, The Hobbit), that's simply not enough time. The film therefore relies heavily on characters' inner monologue to get quick points across where they would've otherwise injected information into a dialogue. Additionally, things that the audience finds so foreign should get a bit more of an explanation sometimes. And while the introduction of the first five minutes helps to move the film along and get us acquainted with the planets, you can't really zone out at any point in this film, because you'll miss something important.

Kind of wish one of these had been in the DVD jacket...

Additionally, while I was surprised to find myself liking Paul Atreides (nothing against Kyle MacLachlan, but I wouldn't peg him for an action hero), I felt the acting overall in this film was a little stiff. Maybe because there is a LOT going on (and because this IS David Lynch) the acting falls to the wayside in favor of bigger-picture plot points, but in contrast to the huge possibility that Paul Atreides is this big messiah, everyone seems a little too accepting too fast, and a little too...glib.

Sandworms, eh? Huh.

Honestly, I was so proud of myself for understanding the plot by the end of this movie, and so charged up by all of the things that Paul ends up doing, that I have to say I really liked it. But complexities and rushed plot might exasperate some.

6 outa 10. Would love to see this one remade.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Why the Hype is Right

Everyone else hear a trillion good things about Guardians of the Galaxy? Good. Because the rumors are true, friends. This is a gem of a film.

The plot revolves around Peter Quill, a man with a history as an outlaw and thief, who makes a living selling the things he steals. After having stolen a mysterious orb from a deserted planet, however, Quill finds himself a bit more wanted than usual. After being attacked from all sides by different (alien) people, he learns that this orb is perhaps a little more precious than he had originally supposed. We come to find out that the orb holds a precious, and extremely powerful stone, that can give the owner of it power enough to destroy the entire galaxy. Working against these miscreants, however, is a radical overlord named Ronan. Pissed off at a peace treaty that has criminalized fighting between his race and their ancient foes, Ronan has it in his head to pick up the orb and use it as he pleases. Determined to keep the universe intact, and being the only ones who know of his plan, Quill bands together with Ronan's ex-lackey Gamora, two bounty hunters named Groot and Rocket, and an ex-con named Drax, to form...(wait for it)....The Guardians of the Galaxy.

Shazam.

The freakin' amazing thing about this movie is how simple it is. I know this sounds incredibly reductive (especially considering how analytical I know I can get sometimes), but the great thing about Guardians is how much it doesn't explain. Need to know more about the alien races? No ya don't! Want to know more about the feud between Ronan and his foes? Nope! Want to know how the orb came to be? Shut up! Extraneous details that so many other sci-fi movies lately have been getting caught up in become cursory because--you guessed it!--they aren't freakin' important!! This gives Guardians the feel of being a sort of grown-up kid's movie. (I should know, I watch a lot of them. No shame.)

And you know if this guy's headlining, it's not going to be

anywhere near serious.

Additionally, whereas most of Marvel's fodder is pretty action-packed and adrenaline-pumped, Guardians gives us a chance to laugh at our main characters. Even though they're all pretty deadly by themselves (I mean, at one point they ALL are in jail), the misperceptions between their cultures create a hilarious backdrop to a typical save-the-world story structure. For example, Drax (played by Dave Bautista and my personal favorite character besides the obviously adorable Chris Pratt) comes from a planet where metaphors don't exist, creating extreme confusion between he and essentially every other character every five minutes.

"Nothing goes over my head...my reflexes are too quick."

Adding to the fun of the film, and going outside the usual parameters of movies like these, is the awesome soundtrack. Peter Quill's link to an Earth that we instantly recognize, the music is exclusively 70s pop hits that are delightfully out of place in the galactic, futuristic setting. I dare you to get "Hooked on a Feeling" by Blue Suede and "Cherry Bomb" by The Runaways out of your head. (Seriously, I had to download the soundtrack, it's gotten that bad.)

All in all, an extremely refreshing film from the overcrowded superhero genre. Nice to see a blockbuster worthy of the name.

9 outa 10. Very fun.

Lucy: Because She Got High.

Memorable quote upon leaving the theater: "I thought that bitch had superpowers--she was just high!"

And there you have it, folks.

But really, Lucy ended up being a pretty decent movie, ableit not the mind-blowing Matrix throwback I was hoping for.

Lemme essplain.

The plot revolves around young Lucy, a (grad?) student who is living in Taipei for some reason. We immediately kick off with her boyfriend asking her to deliver a package to the front desk of a hotel. She declines. He makes her. She ends up getting enrolled in a sick drug lord's scheme to be a mule for some new drug. After accidentally getting beaten up in transit, the drug begins to leak--and Lucy goes whack. We find out, after she gets the pouch removed from her lower stomach, that the drug is a synthetic form of a substance that mothers produce when they're pregnant. The hormone/chemical/whatever enables your brain to prep itself to learn all of the rudimentary tasks that you acquire as an infant. And Lucy's packing a good amount larger than the average. Consequently, she gets the gift of using a "higher capacity of her brain" than the rest of us do, and learns some insane tricks (please see: suspending humans in midair, putting crowds to sleep, time traveling, literally falling apart, and more!).

nbd, everyone can do that..

When I saw the premise for this movie I thought it looked crazy cool. Scarlett Johansson has more than earned her acting chops as a badass playing Black Widow in The Avengers, and I was intrigued to see which route they would end up taking with the whole concept itself. But what you get amped up for in the beginning tapers off as the movie plays, and it ends up being a little lackluster by the end.

First half of this film was totally on point. Interesting choices made with the editing sucked me in right off the bat. As Lucy talks to her boyfriend, her responses are intercut with stock film images of wildlife hunting, being entrapped, and generally being in danger. The cuts also give us some information about Lucy's beau and their partying habits. Interesting direction for a mass-audience studio film, and it was refreshing to see some playfulness in editing for a genre that is usually pretty one-note.

The whole beginning half, actually, draws you in because you don't know what to expect. Even immediately after the drugs take effect in her system and Lucy is semi-robotic, we see her making decisions with 20% of her brain that we usually only get to see in assassin flicks. And it's cool!

Girl on a mission.

The problem with the second half is just a matter of jumbliness. The drug lord is trying to hunt Lucy down, Lucy's trying to give info to these scientists, she befriends a French cop that we become momentarily invested in, and then we get to see a brief history of time itself. What I went in expecting was to see a bunch of crazy-cool things that she'd be able to do with a large portion of her brain. But with the way the movie plays, she ends up being so much bigger than humanity itself, that the plotline that we're all focusing on (the drug lord one), gets lost in Lucy's existential fog.

Basically, the main thing keeping you awake in the second half is simply wondering what happens when she reaches 100% of her brain's capacity (and by that point--I mean, good Lord, she can do a whole lot).

Like seeing cellular signals and weaving through them

like the air is a giant iPad screen.

I would've liked to see this one's beginning stretch a little more and have her doing much less transcendental nonsense by the end. If we can't comprehend it, then why are you showing it to us? I rest my case.

6.5 outa 10. Not half as crazy-awesome as I'd thought it would be, but I thoroughly enjoyed the first half. Good acting from Scarlett Johansson as well!

**EDIT** Also, it must be said, there is no evidence to support the claim that humans only use 10% of our mental capacity. That is all.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Ok, Seriously, Why Doesn't Anyone Call Them Monkeys?

Seriously, the word "monkey" maybe happens once. Why. Does anyone in real life ever actually use the term "ape???"

Anyway.

So, disclaimer going into this review: I saw this movie on about 4 hours of sleep and I've been seeing nothing but action movies lately, so my opinion may be slightly skewed. However, I've got to say that I wasn't crazy impressed by anything but the aesthetic of this movie and I don't understand why everyone is stopping the presses talking about how "AMAZINGG!!?@" it is.

I mean the poster art is cool and all but...

The movie basically picks up where the first (remake) left off. Sort of. In the time following the first movie's progress there has been an outbreak of what is called "simian flu" (people getting reeeal creative with all these various 'flus' popping up all over the film industry...). As a result, the human population is a mere fraction of what it once was. By contrast, when we meet up with our ole pal Caesar (voiced by Andy Serkis, the guy who made Gollum so famous..), his ape community is thriving. They've been living in the forest for upwards of 15 years and thriving as they develop ways to communicate via sign language as well as voice, albeit primitively in the case of the latter. Their world is shaken up, however, with the arrival of a human scouting group looking for an old dam that could provide electricity to their severely diminished city community. After the arrival of the humans, old prejudices arise and threaten human survival as well as peace between the apes.

Let's start with the good things about this thing: um, it's beautiful. The CGI effects are straight crazy. Straight. Crazy. Especially in the more villainous characters, who you can tell they had a grand ole time creating.

PS He's not real. He was made by a computer.

Just a small reminder in case you forgot.

The acting isn't bad either. Nice to see Keri Russell picking up a big role again and Gary Oldman is always fun to watch. New guy Jason Clarke is...eh okay.

But other than that I found this movie to be hugely predictable. From the overly-humanist (speciesist?) character that is all about shooting all of the apes down before they can hurt the human population to the apes that are basing all of their interactions with humans on their tortured lab days, we got nothing new under the sun here. It's a very basic "fear of the other" principle that meets its predictable conclusions at the end: wow, both humans and apes are neither wholly good nor wholly evil.

Yeah I'm bored.

I also found the usage of another pandemic in the film to be boring. From Resident Evil to I am Legend to Godzilla to Walking Dead, we've all seen the broken-down visages of cities that have experienced huge drops in population. Overrun with vines, dirty, lack of government, etc. etc... Seent it. Gimme something different.

More power to them for trying to make a bigger message out of an enormously predictable plot. (I mean...we ALL know that the apes eventually win.) But it's such a tired, used, plot that the movie ends up being kind of...-sigh-...boring...

It's only been like 15 years. Even Chernobyl doesn't look this run-down...good lord...

I dunno. Maybe I'm jaded from watching too many action movies lately, or else I'm spoiled by having watched a bunch of futuristic dystopian movies that have been way more impressive, but I found Planet of the Apes to be a little lackluster.

Conclusion: 6.5 outa 10. Shmeh. Didn't hate it but still can't understand what the huge reaction to it has been. Obviously none of those people saw any of The Hobbit films...

Snowpiercer: Because Bastille Day.

For those of you who may not be aware, Bastille Day is basically the French equivalent of Independence Day. So called over here (in France they just call it July 14th Day, much like our Fourth of July) because of the storming of the Bastille that set off the whole French Revolution, it commemorates France's political switch from monarchy--woo!

So what better day to watch a revolutionary tale than Bastille Day?

Snowpiercer is the tale of a train. In a post-apocolyptic world, the train is the only thing holding the remnants of the world's population. After humans released a chemical into the atmosphere to remedy global warming, the plan backfired and sent the world into another ice age. The train is all that is left.

Circling the world on a series of interconnected tracks, it is kept running by one thing and one thing only: "the eternal engine." But all is not so well on the Snowpiercer. Passengers living at the tail of the train are having a hard time surviving, and have been for the 18 years that the train has been running. Fed protein bars by the regulators of the train, they are not allowed beyond their caboose car,  are perpetually filthy, and are essentially treated like prisoners. Rising up against the hierarchy of the train is Curtis (Chris Evans) and his band of misfits. Tired of the unfair treatment they receive, he embarks on a mission to take over the engine at the front of the train and to win better conditions for his co-passengers.

Assisted by security specialist (and one of my favorite Korean actors)

Namgoong Minsoo (Kang-ho Song)

I was immediately intrigued after seeing the trailer for this. It seemed hugely different than the majority of the films out right now and with a star-studded cast--what more could you want!?

I was NOT prepared, however, for the massive amount of violence that greeted me in the theater. Good lord. So many deaths. And I mean, I guess I should've seen it coming. No revolution set up in earnest ever really worked without a huge amount of sacrifice--but still. Lots of battles.

And they use axes, for God's sake.

AXES.

I will say, though, that the fascinating thing about the battles on the Snowpiercer is that they must take place within a confined space, and that they must be mindful of doing the train damage. (I mean, come on, it's their entire life source. If the train dies, no one wins.) Consequently, there are a bunch of wild card battle scenes that take you totally by surprise simply by the way that they are fought.

Apart from their revolution strategy, what I liked about this one is that the general plot of the movie is hugely original. The concept of living in a thousand-car train is thought-provoking in and of itself, not to mention the problems that one would encounter in regards to class equality. To be fair, the movie is based on a 1980s French graphic novel called Le Transperceneige, so it's not completely original. (Fun fact: "perceneige" en francais means "snowdrop," like the flower.) But still, as the movie plods on and you move up and up in class and rank, you begin to see the horrendous contrast between the squalor and inhumanity in the last car and the pointless excess of comfort in the first classes. And should you forget, there is a damn memorable tale told by Curtis in one of the final scenes that makes you just...woah. Nothing anyone has ever done could merit the conditions of the lowest class. And having that sort of class contrast wrapped up in something as compact and simple as a train is pretty genius.

It's a greenhouse.

Jk lolz, it's a train.

The train itself is pretty memorable as well. On the journey throughout the train, you go from a car that resembles a shanty town of bunks and rags to an elementary school car to a high-luxury car that houses people in the lap of luxury. Throughout the train you see things such as how they recycle water, sustain plant life, feed the people, and survive.

All in all, this movie was pretty great. Different, refreshing, smart, and chilling. Highly recommend if you're in the mood for an intense ride.

8 outa 10.