Crimson Peak (2015)

Sometimes it's easy to figure out why you don't like a movie. I often don't like lazy characterization or a lack of female characters. When I didn't like Black Mass last month, I didn't like it because the centre didn't hold. It didn't make sense to me that anyone -- anyone at all in that movie -- would be loyal to a guy like Jimmy. Despite excellent performances across the board, Johnny Depp wasn't as magnetic or as menacing as he needed to be to develop the kind of over-the-top loyalty that, say, John Connolly (Joel Edgerton) displayed. And, if you can't buy that, what can you buy about the rest of the movie? (Benedict Cumberbatch making eggs, as it turns out).

But not liking Crimson Peak ... that's been a little harder to put my finger on. 

I didn't like Guillermo del Toro's last outing, either. Of course, I don't remember all the much about Pacific Rim or why I didn't like it. The only thing that really stands out to me two years on is that all the fight scenes took place at night in the rain, and I couldn't tell the aliens and the humans apart. We kept cutting back to the boring people (so boring) swooping their arms around in the Jaegers, and I was like, "My kingdom for a daylight fight!" 

My initial reaction was to label Crimson Peak as shallow. Everyone's motivations are on the surface, and it takes nanoseconds to figure out what's "really" going on (hint: exactly what you think). 

I started to compare it to The Woman in Black in my mind (a movie which starred Daniel Radcliffe's sad eyes and some shadows), and then I realized what I really didn't like about Crimson Peak: it's not a haunted house movie.

Bear with me because I know that sounds like a YP. BUT! The movie's called Crimson Peak and the ghosts are all like, "Beware of Crimson Peak", and Tom Hiddleston warns that the house "starts holding onto things... keeping them alive when they shouldn't be", so you'd think that the very place presents a clear and present danger. 

I am here to tell you: it does not. 

Sure, there are ghosts, but they aren't even malevolent ghosts. Despite being black or bloody skeletons whose clothes go up in evaporating wisps (make no mistake - this movie looks wicked cool), those ghosts are simply trying to save Mia Wasikowska from getting her silly self murdered. Which makes them Caspar's creepy cousins. 

So even though the house is -- and again this is visually stunning -- oozing blood from the walls, the house is actually just a house. Jessica Chastain is a crazy killer, and Tom Hiddleston is her somewhat unwilling accomplice, and there you go. Run away, Mia! Run away!

Here's what I imagined, though: that Jessica Chastain and Tom Hiddleston were, in fact, centuries-old supernatural beings that are kept alive by ritually sacrificing young girls to their spooky demon house. But with the advent of, I don't know, modern detection, it's getting harder and harder to marry ladies, take them away, and kill them every couple of years. Jessica Chastain thinks they should just keep going, Louise, but Tom Hiddleston -- 'cause he actually likes Mia Wasikowska -- thinks they should just throw in the towel. Mia, however, has other plans (agency!). She's been having encounters with ghosts her entire life, and she is not about to leave these poor tormented souls trapped in this hell house. She's going to put them to rest!

Not to get all choose your own adventure (although they do, briefly, discuss choose your own adventure books), but that five minute treatment I just dreamed up is easily more entertaining that the movie I saw. 

Fun alternative: Hiddleston is so anemic looking in this movie that you can pretend he's still Adam from Only Lovers Left Alive and is mere seconds away from biting these ladies, then writing an opera about it.   

Dare to dream, self. Dare to dream.

UPDATE: I just realized that, like the story Edith is initially peddling, this isn't a ghost story, but a story that happens to have ghosts. Nicely done, del Toro, but also no.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Christian Bale

© Warner Bros Pictures

I've already written 1000 words on this picture, so I don't think I have it in me to craft anything resembling a complete essay with a narrative though-line. I do, however, have a lot more thoughts and reactions to the movie as a whole, which will now take the form of bullet points. This probably goes without saying but, just in case it doesn't, SPOILERS.

• I must be the only person alive who loves Hans Zimmer's score. I love the tribal beat of Bane's theme and the way it goes crashing up against Batman's bombastic horns. I love the sneaky switcheroo when you realize that Bane's theme is like Bane himself -- not at all who you (or even he) thought but something entirely different. Above all, I love that when Bane and Batman come head to head for the first time, there is no score whatsoever. Just bone crunching and breathless anticipation in one of the most knock-down, drag-out fights I have ever seen on screen.
  
• My best friend's already made remarks to the extent that she is over Christian Bale, but I think he's my mafia: just when I think I'm out, he pulls me back in. It's not just the streaks of grey hair, the hollows under his eyes, or the fact that he is visibly thinner and more fragile than previous incarnations that break my heart to realize that he may have "aged-out" of the role he defined for himself. It's the way his voice softens when he's speaking with Alfred about Rachel. There's not only sorrow in that voice but innocence, like Alfred is a time machine that brings Bruce back to a moment when he was truly himself. It's the way you can tell, even at first blush, that there's no way Bruce/Batman could ever be more interested in Miranda Tate (though Marion Cotillard has never been more luminous) than he is in the Cat/Selina Kyle. It's not just the challenge that thrills him but the possibility of finding a single human being who may also understand.
  
• Speaking of Anne Hathaway, could she be any more killer in this movie? Sure, her first scene with Bruce when she flips from ingenue to seductress to criminal and right on out that window is gangbusters, but so is the moment in that scene when she hikes her skirt from just under her knee to just over her knee so she can climb (no one would wear those tights or the shoes to cater a party). Her dancing body can go from purring to ready to pounce in nanoseconds, but it's never campy. Above all, she gets to go through Harvey Dent's arc in reverse -- from apathetic to finally having some skin in the game. It was never really a matter of which side she would chose. It was just a question of how long it would take her to get there.
  
• If it weren't for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, I think I would have fainted right out of my seat when Blake told Bruce he knew Bruce's secret identity 'cause he was also Batman (essentially). Mind you, it highlights the essential difference between them and further makes my point that you have to be a fuckin' weirdo to not become a cop or a prosecutor or the world's most dedicated lobbyist, but it also really smartly sets up the whole structures becoming shackles stuff and the way the movie lets you imagine that Blake just knew Bruce would leave him a little something special in his will. Of course, what I would really like to see is the "Becoming Batman" journal that would go along with it, full of handy tips like Lucius Fox's direct line, the best way to appear out of a shadow, and a guide to better growling.
  
• Actually, I'm also probably the only person who doesn't hate the Batman growl. On PCHH Glen Weldon posited that the movies could be a solid 10% better if it weren't for that growl, but whatever. He's got to disguise his voice somehow. Maybe he should have sunk some money into those Mission: Impossible voice patches.
  
• For that matter, I don't mind Tom Hardy's lilting based-on-an-Irish-Romani-'cause-he's-that-guy voice either. It took me right out of the movie the first time, I started to groove on it the second go 'round. It's just on border of being too silly, but, when you introduce a voice like that and follow it up with an impossibly menacing* hostile plane takeover, you start to see the character behind it. You see it in Bane's strut. You hear it in lines like, "What a lovely, lovely voice," followed immediately by mass murder and destruction. In fact, when you hear his voice for the first time, it's overwhelming loud - not just coming from behind you but in front of you and below you and in the seat next to you. Unnerving. 
  
• I don't really get Talia's point -- she hates her dad for disowning her protector but decided to follow through on his plan to destroy Gotham because his murder liberated her from her hate? That's pretty much what she said, I know, but I just don't understand. Why not enjoy the freedom to make your own decisions or reform the League of Shadows or use philanthropy to save the world like you've been pretending to anyway?
  
• To the nit-pickers who want to know how Bruce gets from the unspecified prison location and back to a secured Gotham in an unspecified amount of time, I say, "Did you not watch Batman Begins?" He spent seven years figuring out how to get from A to B without any money or notice. I'm sure he had it in the bag.
  
• How weird is it to see Batman in the daylight, though, right? It's a testament to both how broken the city is yet how accustomed they are to his presence that there are no double takes during that climactic showdown at City Hall. Gotham's just like Bruce in that regard -- they take Batman for granted.
  
• The song/video that inspired my article title.
  
  
  
  
• Besides the above, I think this is my favourite image that I came across in my research:
  

  

  Christopher Nolan

  © Warner Bros Pictures

A touch too long and a touch too reliant on Michael Caine's moist eyes to carry the emotional beats, but otherwise a near masterpiece. A-

 *I was going to say "badass" here but decided against it in part because I think the term is overused, in part because I don't want to associate any positive connotations of the term with the character, and in part because I heard a very convincing argument against the very character of Bane (in that he is a less product of storytelling needs and more of a need in the 80s and 90s for more "badasses" in comics).

Weekend update: The Amazing Spider-Man and Cosmopolis

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

© Columbia Pictures

Shortly after I saw The Amazing Spider-Man, a friend asked me how I would rate it. I gave her the letter grade, which she didn't get (she went to a school that didn't use them, apparently), so I gave her a percentage instead. She was shocked by my answer. First I tried to explain it away as the movie starting at a deficit with me because 1) I love Spider-Man and 2) I love the Sam Raimi Spider-Mans. That doesn't really explain it, though, and it's not really fair. It's more like this.

Anything other than the acting in this movie kind of sucks.

It has all the right elements: Peter developing the webs 'cause he's such a super-smarty, Gwen Stacy as his first love, Curt Connors doing wrong by trying to do right. All of those things work because the people playing them are so phenomenally well-cast (if you weren't already in love with Andrew Garfield, I don't know how much longer you will be able to hold out). It's all as it should be: Peter realizes a little something about himself and about growing up, and it gives him a confidence he never knew was always waiting inside him. But he's still a spaz who has to bury his head in his hands because what did he just say. And that Footloose-esqe moment of discovery . . . man, oh man.

But it's not right. Marc Webb's an excellent people director, but he doesn't have the visual elegance to craft an action sequence worth following. The score is horrendously distracting (really, James Horner, banging on the piano keys? Have you grown bored?). The plot is sketchy and oddly suggests that we really need to know Flash's back story. Flash! I live Chris Zylka and wish him well, post-Secret Circle, but c'mon. Forget about Richard Parker's amazing scientific discoveries and his dun Dun DUN!

It's like this -- if you don't put a crocodile snout on The Lizard, he risks looking like a turtle without his shell. B-

And, quite frankly, Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire own the New York Subway. Don't even go there. 

Cosmopolis (2012)

It's probably not a good sign when you start to wonder, "Why is this happening? Why is this happening to me?" while watching a movie. It's happening because I paid for it to happen. It's possible that I'm a masochist.

I'd be lying if I pretended that anything other than morbid curiosity drew me to this project. Von Pattinson? Cronenberg? Are we flipping maps again because that is some topsy-turvy shit.

I'll never fully fail a Cronenberg movie because I can't argue with the man's technical gifts or high level of commitment to the messages of his products. But beyond that, man. If I wanted to watch a movie that required so much work and delivered so little pay off, I'd probably watch Haneke again. D

The Avengers (2012)

Thor and Captain America

© Marvel

I gave The Avengers a second chance.

Yeah, that's right: second. I thought it was merely okay the first time around, but some smart people convinced me that I was missing something, so I did it again. Verdict? It's very good, but I wouldn't go further than that in part because you basically don't have the space to develop that many distinct characters in an ensemble piece whose main goal is kicking ass and in part because some characters, no matter who you get to play them, will never lend themselves to character development (yes, Hulk, we're talking about you). I'm going to skip talking about all the delicious Whedon-verse-ism, though, because that's been done, and better, in about 1 million other places.

I was, however, thoroughly enthralled by what they had going on with Captain America, right down to the make-up and wardrobe choices. He's so alien to them; so different in his approach to how and Why We Fight that ends up standing out far more than the actual aliens. If he seemed (intentionally, I would wager) flat in Captain America, then he comes into sharp relief here. He never needed as much push as the rest of them to do the right thing, but he needs a lot of help to figure out what the right thing is these days (or if it even matters). Plus he gets to be part of one of my fave visual gags. Well played, Chris Evans.

Well played to . . . pretty much everyone, let's be honest. I love The Hemsworth (though I seriously considered calling in a Wig Cop on that thing) (also, he got to deliver what might have been my actual favourite joke of the movie, so good for him); I love The Buffalo and his Peter Falk impersonation; I love, love, love Robert Downey Jr. (especially as Tony Stark); I don't understand why people have a problem with ScarJo in the role; I especially don't understand why people have a problem with Jeremy Renner (it's not his fault his character was in a coma for half the running time). Besides, if anyone was having a breakout movie, it was Tom Hiddleston, so clearly relishing the narrow pettiness of his particular goal. Will we ever not fall for that? Solid B+.

P.S. I do feel bad for Cobie Smoulders, as I don't think anyone had a kind word to say about her in the role or even about the role's existence. Probably because it was flatter than flat.

P.P.S Those aren't shawarmas.

X-Men: First Class (2011)

© 20th Century Fox

Though he may have directed the lackluster Kick-Ass, Michael Vaughn was also responsible for Layer Cake, and it's hard not to imagine he had creating the next Bond in mind while polyglot Michael Fassbender slinks through exotic locales, his impeccably tailored ensembles never quite concealing the malice in his movements. X-Men: First Class isn't quite the Magneto movie we were once promised, but it's awfully close.

Of course, Erik Lehnsherr isn't the only character whose origins we must explore this time around. Charles Xavier as able-bodied womanizer gets play, too, and James McAvoy is having a helluva time doing it. His delight in his fellow mutant is as genuine as it is joyful, and none makes him more so than his new bestie.

But since this movie isn't X-Men: Besties, Erik and Charles have to pick up a few friends along the way. Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) and Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) acquit themselves well (particularly Hoult, whose American accent is flawless), but the rest threaten to disappear into a two dimensional melting pot of "ooo, look, powers!" (Is Riptide mute?) Combined with a slightly too long running time and a bizarrely paced trilogy,* the flaws keep the superb performances from transcending the movie. B+

*SPOILER ALERT Here's what I mean by bizarrely-paced trilogy: EVERYTHING happens in this movie. Magneto branches off on his own, Charles loses the use of his legs, Hank turns blue . . . it just makes me wonder what's left. Wouldn't you have the Charles/Erik relationship dissolve in part 2 and come to a head in part 3?

Also, and this is unrelated, hiding out at your own house is pretty obvious. Where ever will they look?

UPDATE: I meant to say that I also saw The Hangover Part II this weekend and can tell you with near-certainty that you would be far better off renting The Hangover than paying to see that garbage in the theatre.