Movies gone by: the continuation of the continuation of etc.

Today I'll briefly discuss a few more movies I missed discussing in the past few months due to unfortunate circumstances, again. This task is made harder by the fact I still keep seeing new movies every week, but eventually I'll catch up and I'm back on schedule once more. Here's a few good movies for y'all.

Looper: ****/*****, or 7/10

Fairly imaginative Sci-Fi thriller. In the not too distant future, time travel allows crime bosses to send undesirables back in time to have them shot and cleaned up by 'loopers', hitmen of thirty years past specializing in taking out the future's trash. The catch: these assassins ultimately also have to take out their future selves and so 'close their loop'. A particularly efficient looper, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, one day fails to eliminate his older counterpart (Bruce Willis) and ends up on the run to stay out of his former friends' hands. Meanwhile, his almost doppelganger sets out on a scheme to kill the top crime lord of the future, still a kid in this time. Will the young looper team up with himself, or will he try to kill him after all to make up for his failure? A good premise but the movie fails to fully deliver on it in the second half of the film when things quiet down a little too much as JG-L arrives on a farm and falls in love with the mother of his future employer (Emily Blunt). Also thrown in the mix are this little boy's mutant telekinetic abilities, a fairly random feeling addition to overly complicate the plot further. Nevertheless, strong performances throughout (especially the boy (who is one of the finest child actors I've ever seen) and Gordon-Levitt seamlessly incorporating Willis' mannerisms to make for a more believable connection between the pair), some solid action scenes, a harrowing punishment scene (where another failed looper is slowly shown cut into pieces) and a typical but still effective mindfucking temporal conclusion make for a certainly decent watch.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: *****/*****, or 9/10

Ah, the big epic conclusion of the already splendid movie year 2012! I could easily write a 3,000 word review of this (and should have) but for now this little bit must suffice. I can safely say I haven't had this much fun since Return of the King in 2003. This is about as successful a return to Middle-Earth on Peter Jackson's part as we could have hoped for, and he more than makes up for his abysmal failure The Lovely Bones (2009). Still, this first installment of the Hobbit trilogy is not up to par with the superb Lord of the Rings trilogy, mostly due to a different tone, courtesy of the original novel. This does make for a more lighthearted and warm spirited film, which is not necessarily a bad thing since it does not make the film feel like a retreat of LotR and gives it an identity all its own. The story is known all too well of course. Carefree Hobbit Bilbo Baggins (excellent Martin Freeman) is suckered into setting out on a long journey by wizard Gandalf (excellent Sir Ian McKellen) to the Lonely Mountain Erebor to help a band of Dwarves, led by the noble Thorin Oakenshield (excellent Richard Armitage), reclaim their home and treasure from the giant dragon Smaug (only shown in bits and pieces in this film). On the way the group has to deal with Goblins, Elves, Trolls and Orcs: especially the latter, led by the giant warrior Azog, have no intention of making it easy on the brave travelers. A wonderful revisit of Tolkien's world in full cinematic glory, the movie encompasses old characters (Elrond, Galadriel, Saruman and most impressively of all, Gollum) and locations (the Shire, Rivendel) as well as many new ones. PJ and friends have added a lot of material taken from the appendices of the original LotR novels to get this new trilogy and the previous one more in sync with each other, which does make for longer movies (and even longer extended editions, yay!), but not necessarily worse results. Though the scenes created specifically for this film (Galadriel's relationship with Gandalf, the White Council meeting and such) prove somewhat lacking in terms of writing, it's more than agreeable to see such beloved familiar faces again, and it might prove to be worth it as these subplots are further developed in the next two films. In regard to look and feel, this movie is perfectly in line with the Middle-Earth we have loved for over a decade, also thanks to the contributions of all of PJ's old accomplices (including composer Howard Shore who again delivers a fine score). If the upcoming two Hobbit films are as decent as this one, we have little to worry about. Except maybe spiders.

Today's News, and HFR

Posted this little bit of news on MovieScene the other day, so of course it was bound to appear here as well. Note: it got edited, and the glaring spelling error in Jim Carrey's name is not mine:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/143774/foto_jim_carrey_in_kick-ass_2




Yup, that's right: Jim Carrey is playing a character (named Colonel Stars and Stripes, an obvious reference to the renowned super-patriot Captain America) in Kick-Ass 2. And why not? He's no stranger to comicbook movies, having done Batman Forever and The Mask in the past. With such a track record, you can of course doubt he's a stranger to good comicbook movies, but for now I have full faith in Kick-Ass 2, considering all the old favorites (minus Nicolas Cage's character Big Daddy) are back with a vengeance. There's just little than can go wrong with this movie, which is still being based around a fairly simple premise: ordinary people take to the streets in silly costumes and beat up bad guys. Or so they think. It worked fine the last time around. Naturally there is the danger of the film feeling redundant due to repetition, or the presence of a new director (Jeff Wadlow) who has yet to fully prove his competence in the chair, but so far no really awkward news has reached my ears about this project (except maybe for Matthew Vaughn not returning as director, but at least he will still produce). Judging from this single picture (which is much too little to make a truly based judgment about the whole film) Kick-Ass 2 is simply continuing what Kick-Ass started, meaning we'll get more wacky characters in doubtful mental conditions fighting crime in overly outrageous and no doubt excessively violent manner. Plus more Hit Girl. What's not to like?!

I also, finally, got to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in IMAX 3D HFR, now that the Christmas break has ended and there's finally some showings of the film that are not sold out. Of course I had already seen the movie in the regular 3D version - which I mentioned before was fucking awesome, an opinion I'll stick by - so I got to focus a bit more on the technology behind the film's projection than on the actual movie itself. I must say, HFR is not as bad as I feared it would be. I had already had a few sneak peeks through the projection booth's windows, at which point I was not wearing glasses so it looked absolutely hideous, due to the motion of the camera and characters which seemed cranked up a little too much, making it feel unnatural. As it turns out, HFR is indeed a tool in service of 3D projection. The image looks a lot more quieted down and smooth when wearing the necessary glasses, and it's indeed tremendously sharp to behold. There was only a handful of scenes, mostly concerning fast paced action or close-ups of characters's hands and objects, where you were made aware the film was indeed shot at 48 frames per second, and in those few instances it did indeed momentarily make the projection technology draw attention to itself: this had to be expected, since all the fuss about HFR should warrant the occasional feeling of a different viewing experience, positive or negative.

The sharpness of the imagery does make the job of the visual FX teams creating the movie's vast array of digital effects more difficult. Digital effects stand out more in 48fps, being exposed for the pixels they are. It was clear the FX teams worked overtimes to make their computer generated wizardry appear photorealistic, and for the most part, they succeeded. Gollum was the absolute highlight, looking about as real as he could ever hope to get and, also thanks to Andy Serkis' input of course, giving a totally compelling performance. That said, several shots of charging Wargs and vicious Goblins looked less convincing, but never truly bad. It's clear movies that will be shot in HFR better have the budget to make their VFX look good, since if they fail in this regard, lousy digital imagery will destroy the spectator's viewing experience by exposing the cinematic trickery for what it is.



The question now of course remains: where does HFR go from here? So far the reception of Peter Jackson's new preferred way of shooting a movie has been lukewarm in Hollywood. Which is not surprising, since basically HFR at this point is a gimmick in a gimmick: it looks good in 3D, but has yet to prove visually pleasing in the regular 2D-format, which is still (fortunately) the dominant way of film projection. Though James Cameron has expressed interest in the technology, it'll be years before we see HFR applied to other movies than the upcoming pair of Hobbit sequels. And if the recent evolution of the current 3D-format is any indication, greedy producers hoping to cash in on the phenomenon's hype will quickly apply a cheaper type of HFR to things like low budget horror movies, all too easily satiating the market and ruining HFR's name in the process by not convincing the audience of the need for the format. It can of course be argued there is no particular need for HFR at all. After all, the regular 3D version of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey already was fully engaging as a marvelously pleasing visual presentation, and few audience members complained about image blurring during action sequences. Mostly, viewers were too busy focusing on the movie itself, the story, the characters, the things that still remain, and for that matter will always remain, the most important ingredients for making a good film. At least Peter Jackson still understood that part of moviemaking too.