There may still be time for Cube to regain his street cred. After all, you can't fault the man for trying.
Where the last film reached a hand into teenage realism and mystery, this film landed squarely on teenage awkwardness and hilarity. This is the funniest of the Potter films, and Newell made it feel effortless. At the same time, it's the most frightening, with direct V-man battling. Only took four books/movies, so it's about time.
A little light on the Quidditch, but then you can't ride that broom forever (Oh look, another roller-coaster ride in which Harry ultimately triumphs, either in sports by grabbing that snitch, or in life by moral fortitude). Also, I missed our evil Dursleys. Voldemort may be the perfect embodiment of black evil, but it's so fun to watch wicked humans get their comeuppance.
The FX are better, the Dragons nicely weighty and threatening. It's less cartoony than the first two, especially. I don't think that Chris Columbus gave up the films out of altruism, but I hope he keeps his distance for the next few. He's puts together an animatronic ride that include people. Cuarón, and now Newell, gave us more human characters who are more scared, more brave and more fallible. Much more fun to root for in the end.
My first memory of Truman Capote--the real Capote, that is--was filmic. It was for his 1976 supporting role in the sublimely ridiculous Murder by Death, as the owner of the house that lived at the address of 22 Twain.
By this time a famous alcoholic that had alienated his closest friends and one time champions, the filmed Capote made an impression on me with his sneering lisp, despite my youthful naiveté of his infamy, as if he despised you so much that you didn't deserve correct pronunciation.
Fun to have the starring roles be of the literati. A young Harper Lee attending to, and then tolerating, Truman during his moods, and watching him seduce his subjects into trust and openness.
I found the relationship with the killer subtly treated. The whole film was a study in Capote's glances (including the eyes darting back and forth as his eagerness got the best of him) and expressions, which Phillip Seymour Hoffman played magnificently with great restraint, despite the grandness of his studies lack of same.
Of course, this film tells the story of the events that made him and broke him. It's a classical story in that the character changes and achieves more than he could ever hope, but in doing so lays himself on the road to ruin.
The story is faustian. Capote did indeed invent a new genre, and his writing reached long fingers into many sub genres that popped up, from Gonzo to music writing. Is losing yourself to alcohol and bitterness worth it? Only Capote knows--and the director is too smart to have him answer posthumously.
A movie about fictions, mostly personal ones, and how we represent them to the people around us. Two of the main characters present the fictions, and the other two tend to read them quizzically, not quite understanding what they're trying to say. Not surprisingly, the two writing the fictions rarely actually listen to themselves, so it seems that nobody is really hearing what they have to say.
It's a nicely made movie--shot effectively on video. Good characters that border on cartoon without actually crossing the border into cartoon.
It's another in a line of modern films (Me and You and Everyone We Know being another) that deal with actual children instead of idealized children. That means they're messy, confused, sexually curious but misguided, and caught up in their own world of strange associations. I'm personally tired of the prescient little boy/girl who surprises everybody with their mature outlook on adult situations. Why not let kids be kids, and let childhood be represented for the minefield it really is?
Daniels is very nice as the currently failing writer who once had great praise heaped on him. Like people you see from your high-school who 20 years later still dress the same, his character seems to have a self-image forged from his moment in the limelight and unchanging afterwards. His disregard for other writers, people and events is so complete that he lives inside his prism of absolute opinion, rather than a world of sensory events.
The film is more clever than deep, with two strong metaphors--the title metaphor, about fear, and the Pink Floyd metaphor, which is a little more obvious. But a whole auditorium of high school kids in the 80s who don't know The Wall inside and out? To paraphrase Wayne, that album was standard issue in America from it's debut in the 70s up through the late 80s. I would have believed it more if he had played "Answering Machine" off of the Replacement's Let It Be.
A movie with no easy answers. A movie with inevitability inside of its deliberate action.
Every man, or most every man anyhow, has inside him the reluctant hero. As a boy, we make weapons out of sticks not because we're preprogrammed to war, as our concerned mothers worry about, but because we're pre-programmed to dominance games. We're a pecking order society, and that flushes every man. It's inherited through money and class, race and privilege, and just plain doggedness and especially through violence. Boys need righteous heroes because they want to be their heros. If their heroes are not righteous, than the men they grow into not righteous either.
A former friend, who screwed me over more than once, when I asked him why he was such an asshole told me that all of the people he admired were assholes. Despite the fact that they barely knew him, he was working awfully hard to impress them.
When confronted with violence or situations we find unfair, the first impulse is to fight it, but that impulse is tempered by our life-long pecking order training. You can sum it up with the oft used phrase "Can I take this guy?" If you can, and you do, you can be a hero. If you can, and you don't you're a pussy. If you can't and you do, you're brave for trying, but should learn your place. If you can't, and you don't you're frustrated and impotent.
Which is why video games are cathartic, just as movies are. Men can step into the heroes shoes and show, briefly, that they are the toughest motherfucker around. In the Darwinian pecking order, albeit fake gore and fragging, they live on the top. Which is why superhero comics are so beloved by adolescent males, living the hero life by proxy. Which is why smart women understand that male pride is not an annoying secondhand trait, but a complex weaving of his individual history, his failures and successes. It's the core of his identity (although, granted, often overwrought, in need of check, and especially annoying).
I'm a peaceful guy. I've never been in a fight. Literally. My whole life. I feel like I don't back down from conflict, but I've been lucky in my own confrontations of violence. I've had times where I had to pick whether I wanted to fight or walk, and I've walked. I've had times where I could have pushed the situation a bit more, but I don't like violence. I don't like conflict.
That said, how the hell would I react if attacked? I would like to think I'd do one thing, but the proof is in the pudding, and that's pudding I ain't likely to go seeking. But then, just because I've never fought doesn't mean that I've never been angry, or even violent myself. I've channeled it into other venues than hurting people (loud music, mostly), but I understand the rage. I think every man alive understands that.
So when Tom Stall has to defend his diner, we understand. And when he has to defend his family, we understand. And when he has to go face his brother, we understand. It's inevitable, no matter how little we like it. If he wants to be the person he chooses to be, he has to face fully the person he was. We understand and we hope that our family would offer us again the place at the table if we, through no fault of our own, showed them that we're reluctant heroes too.
Bullet points about the movie that contain spoilers, but you probably shouldn't care because the movie pretty much blows.
* Aliens have absolutely no regard for scientific method. They use the term "experiment" very brazenly
* Then again, that may be an earth-centric assumption that presupposes aliens subscribe to our ethics. These experiments could be taking place in four dimensions.
* Like the fourth dimension of suck...
* Like the literal sucking of the only cool effect in the movie.
* But still, I'm disappointed in our new alien overlords, and their callous disregard for the term experiment. Isn't an experiment something in which one watches for observational effects and notes them, and not one where someone manipulates the subject to break their will? Is this the Stanford Alien Experiment?
* And what the heck is going on that the massive airplane hanger that they are in has columns in rows every ten feet or so. Is it like an art installation where buildings are made that cannot be used for their intended purpose? Is this for wingless airplanes with fuselages of less than 10 feet in diameter?
* When the main alien gets rebuked by his superiors, it shows not only that their experiments are bad science, but the administrators are totally harsh.
* "Zardox, one more mishap on the puny human experiment, and we're pulling your license and turning on the sky vacuum."
* Lessons learned from the film: the bond between mother and child is spiritual, unbreakable, and precious, and science is bad. I think the script might have a purpose driven message.