Growing up during the Cold War, I became a fan of many of the post-apocalyptic pop culture works it spawned, like the Mad Max and Terminator films. I often imagined myself moving down to a bomb shelter and living under the Earth for years after a nuclear holocaust (which, now that I think about it, would actually compel me to live underground for the remainder of my natural life).
The new film Dredd, which apart from the British comic book series it adapted bears no relation whatsoever to the 1995 fiasco Judge Dredd starring Sylvester Stallone as the title character, hearkened back to those years and was actually a pretty fun experience for me.
This new film, in which New Zealand-born actor Karl Urban (The Lord of the Rings films, Star Trek) dons the helmet and padded uniform of the British pop-culture icon, is set in a dystopian, but not entirely implausible future in which most of humanity lives in Mega Cities littered with high-rise slums and steeped in crime and chaos. In the midst of this chaos the Justice Department is the only source of order, and its agents, known as judges, serve as policemen, juries, judges and executioners all rolled into one. This is not a society that puts much stock in due process of law, in short.
In one such city, Mega City One, of particular concern is the spread of a new narcotic known as Slo-Mo, which causes the user's perception of reality to slow down to 1% of its normal speed. When the drug lord responsible for the manufacture and sale of this drug, former prostitute Madeline Madrigal (Lena Headey), or Ma-Ma for short, orders the brutal execution of three double-crossing pushers,Judge Dredd, the most feared of all judges, is called onto the scene, and he brings with him a judge-in-training, Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby). Anderson has only just failed her exams but the Justice Department is keen on giving her a second chance because of her psychic abilities, and Dredd is given the task of evaluating her. While they're in the area, Dredd and Anderson make a drug bust, with Anderson's abilities detecting the killer Kay (Wood Harris) among the perps. Rather than execute him on the spot, though, Dredd decides to take Kay, who happens to be one of Ma-Ma's top lieutenants, back to the department for questioning.
Because she has eyes and ears almost everywhere in the towering tenement, Ma-Ma, whose entire operation could be compromised if Kay talks, has the entire building shut down by sealing it with blast doors and gives the occupants of the entire building the order to kill the two judges. What ensues is about an hour of unbridled mayhem and gore as Dredd and Anderson fight for their very lives.
Presumably due to the terrible impression left by Stallone's 1995 flop, this movie has failed to light up the box-office in every market it's been released with the exception of Dredd's birthplace, the United Kingdom, and to me that's a shame because as action films go, this one was surprisingly intelligent. Director Pete Travis (Vantage Point), in my opinion, has plenty to be proud of, whatever the final receipts of this film may be.
It does call for a bit of viewer discretion because of the somewhat extreme nature of the violence depicted. The three murder victims in the beginning, for example, are skinned before they are flung to their deaths from near the top of the 200-storey building to the concrete below, and much of the violence is so brutal it's been quite noticeably cut by the distributor, acting presumably at the behest of the local review board. The violence isn't only visually extreme but thematically so as well; to show her resolve to kill the judges, Ma-Ma unleashes two miniguns on an entire row of apartments, showing no hesitation to blow away the innocent residents living there. It has to be said, though, that the violence feels oddly fitting in a story where the world has descended so far into madness that such lofty concepts as presumption of innocence and trial by jury are mere relics consigned to history.
It's in these themes that the film fascinated me most; the satirical, often humorous notion of a world where cops and judges were rolled into one, a world not actually very far removed from our own in terms of rampant criminality, was interesting to see onscreen, especially considering my experience as a lawyer with how slowly the wheels of justice often grind. Of course, none of the excesses of the Cursed Earth (which is how the world is referred to) would be permissible in any truly civilized society, but to those of us who have grown cynical watching powerful people exploit the intricacies of the justice system, watching this drastically simplified version of justice is intriguing in the most escapist sense. I laughed out loud when, before Dredd executed a rather heinous perpetrator after reading aloud the "charges," the perp blew smoke in his face, to which Dredd responded "defense noted." It's little gems like this that make screenwriter Alex Garland's script engaging enough to elevate this beyond standard shoot-'em-up fare.
Of course, Garland's script and Pete Travis' direction would have been for naught if they did not have a solid performance from their lead actor, and Urban, who, notably, never removes his helmet, delivers on this front. He channels Clint Eastwood and sounds a lot more intimidating than Christian Bale did as Batman. It's a pretty difficult performance considering something like sixty percent of his face is obscured, and while I don't see Urban hoisting up any Oscars or Golden Globes because of it, he certainly deserves the accolades reviewers have heaped on him for what he's managed to do. Olivia Thirlby, looking a little less jail-baity here than she did in her breakout movie Juno, brings some much needed humanity to the proceedings and shows pretty clearly that it's not easy to have absolute power over who lives and who dies.
On an artistic level the film's grungy, unrelentingly dark look is a perfect fit for the story, and nods to cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (Slumdog Millionaire) and production designer Mark Digby and his crew are definitely in order. Seeing the characters standing in the Peach Trees slum one really feels as if one is among the dregs of humanity.
It must be said, however, that by and large the filmmakers waste the 3-D format in which they reportedly shot the film. Apart from the visualization of the effects of "Slo-Mo" and a couple of scenes involving bullets, broken glass and drops of blood flying around, there is very little benefit offered by the format. The fact that there were plenty of shots of the dizzying heights of the Peach Trees tenement only highlights this shortcoming; there was plenty of opportunity for vertigo-inducing shots involving the building's atrium that could have played with depth perception, but they were quite simply never used. Even the post-production-converted Avengers, which featured an elevator descending, bothered to showcase a depth illusion. One consolation I took was that, at least, there was no unusual darkening of the image due to the 3-D. That much, at least, they got right.
There was also a story gaffe which I feel was never adequately explained; because he is engaged in a firefight with dozens of armed men Dredd finds himself running low on ammunition. The simple question that then arises is: why on earth doesn't Dredd pick up the guns of any of the dozens of men he wipes out in the course of the movie? Anderson picks up and uses a thug's gun late in the movie and this decision doesn't seem to have any ill effect on her. The notion that Dredd would only fight with his standard-issue firearm seems a little silly when weighed against a basic need to survive a highly dangerous situation.
Flaws notwithstanding, this was actually a rather solid movie, though not one I'd recommend spending a premium on for a 3-D screening. I had not actually intended to watch it in any format, but I had time to kill, and the 3-D presentation was the only one available where I was. Good thing, then, that 3-D screenings are a lot cheaper in SM Davao than they are in SM Manila (P250 as opposed to about P300). For anyone with a little time on their hands and a stomach for extreme violence, this is actually worth a look.
4/5
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Movie Politics Makes Hilarious Bedfellows: A Review of The Campaign
I have enjoyed watching comedian Will Ferrell make a fool of himself since 1998, when I first saw him and Chris Kattan bobbing their heads to rave music in A Night at the Roxbury. In fact, when I watched Ben Stiller's sendup of male models, Zoolander in 2001, it irked me that Ferrell, the film's bad guy, did not get as much screen time as I would have wanted him to have. As it turns out, I needn't have waited very long for Ferrell's star to take off; two years later he made quite a splash in Old School, and later that year starred in his first bona fide blockbuster, Jon Favreau's Elf.
Nine years later, Will Ferrell has treated moviegoers to dollops of his deliciously irreverent, sometimes borderline distasteful humor in several movies, such as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and Blades of Glory, among others, and this year, he's at it again with the political farce The Campaign. This time, he's brought Zach Galifianikis ( of The Hangover movies) along for the ride.
Ferrell plays Cam Brady, the Congressman of a district in North Carolina who has been in office for so long he is about to enter his fifth term unopposed. When he leaves a somewhat salacious phone message intended for his mistress on the wrong answering machine his popularity plummets, prompting corrupt power brokers Glen and Wade Motch (played by John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd) to move to replace him with a new candidate, one they feel they can bend to their will, especially for the purpose of approving legislation involving the illegal sale of the district to China. They end up choosing Marty Huggins (Galifianikis) the effeminate son of one of their associates Raymond Huggins (Brian Cox). Marty runs a tour of his small town and is excited to run for Congress as he feels he has a lot to offer his district, which he describes as "a mess." Unfortunately, however, seasoned politician that Brady is, he is not about to make it easy for Marty. The Motch brothers, to give Marty a bit of an edge, hire a campaign manager every bit as unethical and ruthless as they are named Tim Wattley (Dylan McDermott), and the game, as they say, is on.
For me the funniest thing about Will Ferrell movies, especially the R-rated ones, is how the jokes, while they sometimes push the envelope of bad taste, are uniquely outrageous and sometimes totally random, like the unusual sexual request made by one of the characters in a pivotal scene as well as the infamous baby-punching scene which, thanks to the magic of computer-generated imagery, was actually shown. Some scenes are certainly funnier than others, but it's the willingness of Ferrell and his collaborators to go out on a creative limb in the name of their art that makes me willing to reward them time and again. Galifianikis seems to recycle the effeminate, annoying character he played in Todd Phillips' Due Date (alongside Robert Downey, Jr.) here, but he works well with Ferrell and with the comic material he's been given. Film trivia buffs may be interested to know that this film, by the way, marks Ferrell's first collaboration with director Jay Roach since the Austin Powers movies, in which Ferrell had a minor bad guy role.
I was a little disappointed to see comedian Jason Sudeikis, who played Brady's campaign manager, basically playing what is essentially a "straight man" role or a foil to Ferrell's zany Brady, but McDermott's hilariously over-the-top Tim Wattley more than made up for wasting Sudeikis' comic talent. The supporting actors bring a lot to the table, too; I loved Karen Murayama as the Asian housekeeper paid by Raymond Huggins to speak with a Southern accent, and was happy to see Jack McBrayer of 30 Rock in a cameo appearance as the father of the family whose answering machine receives Brady's obscene phone call by mistake.
This isn't quite up there with my favorite Ferrell films Blades of Glory and Old School, but for me it's definitely a worthy addition to his library of outrageously rude comedies.
4/5
Nine years later, Will Ferrell has treated moviegoers to dollops of his deliciously irreverent, sometimes borderline distasteful humor in several movies, such as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and Blades of Glory, among others, and this year, he's at it again with the political farce The Campaign. This time, he's brought Zach Galifianikis ( of The Hangover movies) along for the ride.
Ferrell plays Cam Brady, the Congressman of a district in North Carolina who has been in office for so long he is about to enter his fifth term unopposed. When he leaves a somewhat salacious phone message intended for his mistress on the wrong answering machine his popularity plummets, prompting corrupt power brokers Glen and Wade Motch (played by John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd) to move to replace him with a new candidate, one they feel they can bend to their will, especially for the purpose of approving legislation involving the illegal sale of the district to China. They end up choosing Marty Huggins (Galifianikis) the effeminate son of one of their associates Raymond Huggins (Brian Cox). Marty runs a tour of his small town and is excited to run for Congress as he feels he has a lot to offer his district, which he describes as "a mess." Unfortunately, however, seasoned politician that Brady is, he is not about to make it easy for Marty. The Motch brothers, to give Marty a bit of an edge, hire a campaign manager every bit as unethical and ruthless as they are named Tim Wattley (Dylan McDermott), and the game, as they say, is on.
For me the funniest thing about Will Ferrell movies, especially the R-rated ones, is how the jokes, while they sometimes push the envelope of bad taste, are uniquely outrageous and sometimes totally random, like the unusual sexual request made by one of the characters in a pivotal scene as well as the infamous baby-punching scene which, thanks to the magic of computer-generated imagery, was actually shown. Some scenes are certainly funnier than others, but it's the willingness of Ferrell and his collaborators to go out on a creative limb in the name of their art that makes me willing to reward them time and again. Galifianikis seems to recycle the effeminate, annoying character he played in Todd Phillips' Due Date (alongside Robert Downey, Jr.) here, but he works well with Ferrell and with the comic material he's been given. Film trivia buffs may be interested to know that this film, by the way, marks Ferrell's first collaboration with director Jay Roach since the Austin Powers movies, in which Ferrell had a minor bad guy role.
I was a little disappointed to see comedian Jason Sudeikis, who played Brady's campaign manager, basically playing what is essentially a "straight man" role or a foil to Ferrell's zany Brady, but McDermott's hilariously over-the-top Tim Wattley more than made up for wasting Sudeikis' comic talent. The supporting actors bring a lot to the table, too; I loved Karen Murayama as the Asian housekeeper paid by Raymond Huggins to speak with a Southern accent, and was happy to see Jack McBrayer of 30 Rock in a cameo appearance as the father of the family whose answering machine receives Brady's obscene phone call by mistake.
This isn't quite up there with my favorite Ferrell films Blades of Glory and Old School, but for me it's definitely a worthy addition to his library of outrageously rude comedies.
4/5
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Brave
After disappointing critics and audiences with last year's sequel Cars 2 (which holds the dubious distinction of being the only Pixar movie snubbed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences when they nominated films for Best Animated Feature earlier this year), Pixar Studios has bounced back nicely with the fairy tale Brave.
Set in medieval Scotland, Brave is the story of Princess Merida (Kelly MacDonald) a free-spirited princess who is doted on by her father King Fergus (Billy Connolly) and kept on a very short leash by her mother Queen Elinore(Emma Thompson). It is Merida's relationship with the latter that primarily drives the story.
The story begins during Merida's childhood, when the King, the Queen, and their very young princess are on a picnic, during which the young Merida encounters a will o' the wisp, and during which a monstrous bear attacks them, leaving King Fergus without one of his legs.
As she grows older, Merida finds herself annoyed by her mother's constant attention to her, which consists mostly of lessons on what a princess should be or do. Considering that pretty much all she wants to do is ride around the countryside and shoot her bow, which she has had since childhood and with which she is quite handy, she is basically in complete opposition to what her mother wants for her. When Queen Elinore arranges for Merida's betrothal to any of the princes of the neighboring Scottish clans, this proves to be the last straw for Merida, and after outshining her various suitors in the archery competition in which they were supposed to win her hand in marriage (by virtue of which she wins "her own hand") she engages in extensive verbal sparring with her mother and runs off into the forest, where she meets a witch who, she comes to believe, holds the answer to her problems.
She then asks the witch to concoct a potion that will change her mother, and what she gets is something completely unlike anything she expected.
Like Merida, I found myself watching something I had not expected.
My curiosity was not particularly piqued by the trailers; the "independent girl" theme they seemed to suggest seemed a little quaint by Pixar standards, especially considering the recent film by rival Dreamworks, How to Train Your Dragon, featured highly empowered female characters. I was willing to forego that, but when the early reviews seemed unusually negative for a Pixar film I feared that they still had not snapped out of the funk they had fallen into with the disastrous Cars 2.
Upon watching the movie, though, I confess I found myself disagreeing with the haters. Apart from a little crude humor involving male nudity that looked more like it belonged in a movie by one of Pixar's rivals than one of theirs, it displayed a good deal of Pixar's signature charm, and the heart that has distinguished Pixar as the gold standard in animated filmmaking today.
Plucky Merida, for example, is as memorable as any of the characters that have trotted out of the studio that John Lasseter and Steve Jobs founded, and it's easy to relate to her, especially when the film turns out to be about how parent-child relationships can often be. Apart from Queen Elinore, though, the supporting characters, while not nearly as engaging as Pixar's cast of characters usually are, such as the fish in the dentist's fish tank in Finding Nemo, or The Incredibles' Edna Mode, were good for a lot of laughs, especially Merida's three younger brothers who might as well have been named Huey, Dewey and Louie.
The visuals, as can be expected from Pixar, are breathtaking, especially with the Scottish Highlands are the film's backdrop. I skipped the 3-D presentation, having been badly burned on my first and only 3-D experience from Pixar (Toy Story 3), but I'm glad to have enjoyed such vibrant colors on the screen. There were also a few missed opportunities, in my opinion, as the magical aspect of the storytelling was limited to the will o' the wisps, and a little witchcraft, though the latter proved to be transformative in more ways than one. Still, the story proceeded at just the right pace.
Though Brave does not rate among my favorite Pixar films, it's memorable in its own right and is a worthy addition to their library. It may have played a little more like a Dreamworks movie than Pixar's usual fare, but it was still something I think I managed to enjoy as much as my kids did, and something I will happily recommend, though by now people will have to wait to catch it on DVD.
4/5
Set in medieval Scotland, Brave is the story of Princess Merida (Kelly MacDonald) a free-spirited princess who is doted on by her father King Fergus (Billy Connolly) and kept on a very short leash by her mother Queen Elinore(Emma Thompson). It is Merida's relationship with the latter that primarily drives the story.
The story begins during Merida's childhood, when the King, the Queen, and their very young princess are on a picnic, during which the young Merida encounters a will o' the wisp, and during which a monstrous bear attacks them, leaving King Fergus without one of his legs.
As she grows older, Merida finds herself annoyed by her mother's constant attention to her, which consists mostly of lessons on what a princess should be or do. Considering that pretty much all she wants to do is ride around the countryside and shoot her bow, which she has had since childhood and with which she is quite handy, she is basically in complete opposition to what her mother wants for her. When Queen Elinore arranges for Merida's betrothal to any of the princes of the neighboring Scottish clans, this proves to be the last straw for Merida, and after outshining her various suitors in the archery competition in which they were supposed to win her hand in marriage (by virtue of which she wins "her own hand") she engages in extensive verbal sparring with her mother and runs off into the forest, where she meets a witch who, she comes to believe, holds the answer to her problems.
She then asks the witch to concoct a potion that will change her mother, and what she gets is something completely unlike anything she expected.
Like Merida, I found myself watching something I had not expected.
My curiosity was not particularly piqued by the trailers; the "independent girl" theme they seemed to suggest seemed a little quaint by Pixar standards, especially considering the recent film by rival Dreamworks, How to Train Your Dragon, featured highly empowered female characters. I was willing to forego that, but when the early reviews seemed unusually negative for a Pixar film I feared that they still had not snapped out of the funk they had fallen into with the disastrous Cars 2.
Upon watching the movie, though, I confess I found myself disagreeing with the haters. Apart from a little crude humor involving male nudity that looked more like it belonged in a movie by one of Pixar's rivals than one of theirs, it displayed a good deal of Pixar's signature charm, and the heart that has distinguished Pixar as the gold standard in animated filmmaking today.
Plucky Merida, for example, is as memorable as any of the characters that have trotted out of the studio that John Lasseter and Steve Jobs founded, and it's easy to relate to her, especially when the film turns out to be about how parent-child relationships can often be. Apart from Queen Elinore, though, the supporting characters, while not nearly as engaging as Pixar's cast of characters usually are, such as the fish in the dentist's fish tank in Finding Nemo, or The Incredibles' Edna Mode, were good for a lot of laughs, especially Merida's three younger brothers who might as well have been named Huey, Dewey and Louie.
The visuals, as can be expected from Pixar, are breathtaking, especially with the Scottish Highlands are the film's backdrop. I skipped the 3-D presentation, having been badly burned on my first and only 3-D experience from Pixar (Toy Story 3), but I'm glad to have enjoyed such vibrant colors on the screen. There were also a few missed opportunities, in my opinion, as the magical aspect of the storytelling was limited to the will o' the wisps, and a little witchcraft, though the latter proved to be transformative in more ways than one. Still, the story proceeded at just the right pace.
Though Brave does not rate among my favorite Pixar films, it's memorable in its own right and is a worthy addition to their library. It may have played a little more like a Dreamworks movie than Pixar's usual fare, but it was still something I think I managed to enjoy as much as my kids did, and something I will happily recommend, though by now people will have to wait to catch it on DVD.
4/5
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