Because of Quantum
May. 11th, 2011 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinTwo movie reviews for you today:
THOR
I was lucky enough to see a test screening of this a couple of months ago. At that point about 80% of the effects were yet to be finished (which was very interesting to see, mind you) and I've heard it's been re-edited and some parts even re-shot since then, so I don't know quite how accurate my review still is, but I thought I should share anyway.
I came into it with very low expectations – I am not much of a comic book fan, and the whole premise of Thor, while objectively interesting, had never really grabbed my attention in any way. Muscly man smashing things with hammer? Meh. I was not expecting the film to be much more than that, and to be completely fair, it wasn't, but it was the way it went about it that won me over.
Thor is a big dumb hero action movie, there are no two ways about it. But it is a big dumb hero action movie made by smart people, and while I would struggle to point out specific empirical evidence of this, the whole thing seems to be suffused with a spirit of 'We know this is ridiculous, but just go with it, okay?' It never descends to self-mockery, but it is often squarely tongue-in-cheek, and the actors and director knowing they're being silly makes it okay somehow. If you let go and follow them you may have fun.
I'm not at all familiar with the Thor mythos (aside from a very basic grounding in Norse mythology, enough to tell when they were making a reference but not much past that) so I can't tell you how true to the comic it is. I can say that running the mythology through a sci-fi translator was very interesting – particularly the idea of Yggdrasil as a network of wormholes – so well done, Department of Pseudoscience. Most of the characters are pretty brazenly straight types, but they are played with charisma, and being more complex would just clash with the movie's tone. Thor is a big dumb hero but the actor playing him is more than a bag of muscles – most of the time there is a genuine spark of intelligence in his eye and he delivers some real corkers of lines with enough conviction and panache that the intent comes through the stilted dialogue. I don't know if he has Shakespearean training or if he just picked it up from Mr Branagh, but that's what Shakespeare can teach you to do, folks! Natalie Portman is also intelligent enough that she's convincing as a physics grad student who can say words like 'quantum' and know what they mean, rather than a pretty face mouthing science words she's just been taught to say. My favourite, though, which will surprise no one, is Tom Hiddleston: if it is possible to be hammy by under-acting, this man has it down. Every moment he was onscreen his microexpressions and sense of timing made him hugely entertaining, and he's now up there with Michael Sheen and Mark Gatiss as Actors I Love To Watch.
In nearly every area – writing, acting, cinematography, production design – I get the impression that if anyone so much as gestured in the direction of subtlety they had their hand cut off. As much as I dearly love some good subtlety, though, I think that's one reason this movie works: it's a ridiculous superhero epic, but it is what it is with conviction. If they had held back in any way at all, someone (heaven forbid) might be tempted to take it seriously, and if that happens the whole thing falls apart. This is especially apparent in production design – the look they seem to be going for is '80s Saturday Morning Fantasy Hero Cartoon,' and as much as I hate that style personally, I have to give them credit: they really pull it off. It surprises me, in retrospect, that no one's tried doing it before, given the generation that's buying movie tickets these days.
On the opposite end of the intellectual spectrum:
SOURCE CODE
I've been meaning to see this for a while, because anyone who brings me Moon has my loyalty for at least a few films, but I had been busy every weekend until they screened it at work, so I saw it today at lunch. It did not disappoint! My review for this one is, ironically, much less articulate or organized than Thor, but I hope it does not reflect badly on the film.
It took me a little while to get into this movie because I couldn't stop thinking the opening credits sequence looked like this in the script:
1. EXT. DAY
Train!
Chicago!
TRAIN!
CHICAGO!
TRAIN!
CHICAGO!
TRAAAAAIN!!
CHICAAAGOOOOO!!!
TRAAAAIIIIN!!!
CHIIICAA— you get the idea. Also, in one of the train shots, there's a waterfowl taking off from a pond, which the sound designer decided to accentuate with the sound of a duck when it is clearly a Canada goose. It's a stupid thing but it grated on my nerves, and of course this was the shot they kept coming back to to re-establish the train scenes.
But that's where my gripes with the movie end. Seriously, it's like the director went looking for something that could follow Moon, and ended up in a back hallway of the Writers' Guild, where he found a disused door marked 'Too Smart to Sell,' found the smartest script in the room, and ran with it. Much as with Moon the film was one or two steps ahead of me all the time* but in an inviting, beckoning sort of way. It juggled two main plots and several subplots exceptionally well, everyone was superbly well-acted, it was clear as day, the soundtrack was initially awesome and then effectively disappeared as a good soundtrack is supposed to do ... it was suspenseful, touching, perilous, dreadful, uplifting, everything you want out of a movie.** In my recent film class the teacher spend a good while exploring the idea of 'the final emotion' making or breaking a film. This one hit the nail on the head perfectly, and more than made up for the NO WANT TRAIN ESPLODEY stomach-knot I had for the first 30 minutes.
And to anyone who wants to gripe about whether the ending was logical or not, I say: It works because of quantum.3 So there.
*except the one time I totally predicted something but it managed to convince me I was wrong before finally proving me right
**unless you want a sack full of muscles, but for that you can go see Thor.
3This is a Pratchett line; his other one is '"quantum" just means "add another nought."' I'm not sure how the two work together, but it's probably something to do with quantum.
THOR
I was lucky enough to see a test screening of this a couple of months ago. At that point about 80% of the effects were yet to be finished (which was very interesting to see, mind you) and I've heard it's been re-edited and some parts even re-shot since then, so I don't know quite how accurate my review still is, but I thought I should share anyway.
I came into it with very low expectations – I am not much of a comic book fan, and the whole premise of Thor, while objectively interesting, had never really grabbed my attention in any way. Muscly man smashing things with hammer? Meh. I was not expecting the film to be much more than that, and to be completely fair, it wasn't, but it was the way it went about it that won me over.
Thor is a big dumb hero action movie, there are no two ways about it. But it is a big dumb hero action movie made by smart people, and while I would struggle to point out specific empirical evidence of this, the whole thing seems to be suffused with a spirit of 'We know this is ridiculous, but just go with it, okay?' It never descends to self-mockery, but it is often squarely tongue-in-cheek, and the actors and director knowing they're being silly makes it okay somehow. If you let go and follow them you may have fun.
I'm not at all familiar with the Thor mythos (aside from a very basic grounding in Norse mythology, enough to tell when they were making a reference but not much past that) so I can't tell you how true to the comic it is. I can say that running the mythology through a sci-fi translator was very interesting – particularly the idea of Yggdrasil as a network of wormholes – so well done, Department of Pseudoscience. Most of the characters are pretty brazenly straight types, but they are played with charisma, and being more complex would just clash with the movie's tone. Thor is a big dumb hero but the actor playing him is more than a bag of muscles – most of the time there is a genuine spark of intelligence in his eye and he delivers some real corkers of lines with enough conviction and panache that the intent comes through the stilted dialogue. I don't know if he has Shakespearean training or if he just picked it up from Mr Branagh, but that's what Shakespeare can teach you to do, folks! Natalie Portman is also intelligent enough that she's convincing as a physics grad student who can say words like 'quantum' and know what they mean, rather than a pretty face mouthing science words she's just been taught to say. My favourite, though, which will surprise no one, is Tom Hiddleston: if it is possible to be hammy by under-acting, this man has it down. Every moment he was onscreen his microexpressions and sense of timing made him hugely entertaining, and he's now up there with Michael Sheen and Mark Gatiss as Actors I Love To Watch.
In nearly every area – writing, acting, cinematography, production design – I get the impression that if anyone so much as gestured in the direction of subtlety they had their hand cut off. As much as I dearly love some good subtlety, though, I think that's one reason this movie works: it's a ridiculous superhero epic, but it is what it is with conviction. If they had held back in any way at all, someone (heaven forbid) might be tempted to take it seriously, and if that happens the whole thing falls apart. This is especially apparent in production design – the look they seem to be going for is '80s Saturday Morning Fantasy Hero Cartoon,' and as much as I hate that style personally, I have to give them credit: they really pull it off. It surprises me, in retrospect, that no one's tried doing it before, given the generation that's buying movie tickets these days.
On the opposite end of the intellectual spectrum:
SOURCE CODE
I've been meaning to see this for a while, because anyone who brings me Moon has my loyalty for at least a few films, but I had been busy every weekend until they screened it at work, so I saw it today at lunch. It did not disappoint! My review for this one is, ironically, much less articulate or organized than Thor, but I hope it does not reflect badly on the film.
It took me a little while to get into this movie because I couldn't stop thinking the opening credits sequence looked like this in the script:
1. EXT. DAY
Train!
Chicago!
TRAIN!
CHICAGO!
TRAIN!
CHICAGO!
TRAAAAAIN!!
CHICAAAGOOOOO!!!
TRAAAAIIIIN!!!
CHIIICAA— you get the idea. Also, in one of the train shots, there's a waterfowl taking off from a pond, which the sound designer decided to accentuate with the sound of a duck when it is clearly a Canada goose. It's a stupid thing but it grated on my nerves, and of course this was the shot they kept coming back to to re-establish the train scenes.
But that's where my gripes with the movie end. Seriously, it's like the director went looking for something that could follow Moon, and ended up in a back hallway of the Writers' Guild, where he found a disused door marked 'Too Smart to Sell,' found the smartest script in the room, and ran with it. Much as with Moon the film was one or two steps ahead of me all the time* but in an inviting, beckoning sort of way. It juggled two main plots and several subplots exceptionally well, everyone was superbly well-acted, it was clear as day, the soundtrack was initially awesome and then effectively disappeared as a good soundtrack is supposed to do ... it was suspenseful, touching, perilous, dreadful, uplifting, everything you want out of a movie.** In my recent film class the teacher spend a good while exploring the idea of 'the final emotion' making or breaking a film. This one hit the nail on the head perfectly, and more than made up for the NO WANT TRAIN ESPLODEY stomach-knot I had for the first 30 minutes.
And to anyone who wants to gripe about whether the ending was logical or not, I say: It works because of quantum.3 So there.
*except the one time I totally predicted something but it managed to convince me I was wrong before finally proving me right
**unless you want a sack full of muscles, but for that you can go see Thor.
3This is a Pratchett line; his other one is '"quantum" just means "add another nought."' I'm not sure how the two work together, but it's probably something to do with quantum.
