Category Archives: Movie Expectations

Review: Wreck-It Ralph (3 1/2 Stars)

Posted by Charlie Truong on

Toy Story for a New Generation

Expectations

I was pretty excited going into the movie.  The initial reviews were highly positive, and the overall concept spoke to me.  I am a huge video game fan, so imagining a Toy Story-like movie with cameos from classic games fueled my anticipation.

Review

The student has become the master.  Disney Animation one-ups Pixar with the best animated movie of the year.  Wreck-it Ralph has a heartwarming story that will create lots of nostalgia for video game lovers.

Wreck-it Ralph is set in an arcade where the video game characters, like in Toy Story, come to life after the users leave for the night.  The characters can interact across games by traveling via the electrical cords.  The main character Ralph is the villain of his game Fix-it Felix, a fictional game inspired by Donkey King; however, Ralph wants to be more than a villain.  He wants to be the hero who wins a medal and accolades.  So, since he cannot be the hero in his own game, he jumps games to succeed elsewhere.

The highest points in the film happen when Ralph interacts with “real” video game characters with which fans are familiar.  I felt bad seeing Q-bert down on his luck because his game was unplugged.  The support group for video game villains is just hilarious.  I am surprised at how many characters they were able to get, especially the Street Fighter ones.  Zangief easily steals the show even though he was only briefly seen.

It’s unfortunate we were not able to spend more time with the actual video game characters.  A good part of the movie is spent in fictitious game settings created for the express purpose of the film.  Still, Wreck-it Ralph is very enjoyable without the cameos.  Ralph himself is very likable as a character.  You will be cheering for him in the end.  A central part of the story is his relationship with another misfit, Vanellope, who is a character in a cart racer.  Their interaction is hilarious as Vanellope enjoys poking fun at Ralph.  The bond they develop through the course of the movie is touching.

With video games’ vast history, the possibilities for sequels are endless.  The filmmakers need to consider switching the setting to perhaps the characters inhabiting a console instead of the arcade.  The arcade will limit the types of games with which the characters can interact.  Perhaps Wreck-it Ralph and Sugar Rush are downloaded as classic games on someone’s Xbox?  Regardless, I am eagerly awaiting the next movie.

Review: Cloud Atlas (2 Stars)

Posted by Charlie Truong on

An ambitious but highly flawed movie

Expectations

Cloud Atlas looked to be a fun, high-concept movie.  I have heard several comments praising the book with its unique story structure and theme.  So, I was definitely wanting to enjoy the movie more than I did.

Review

Unfortunately, the movie fails to execute its concept, unable to effectively juggle its various stories and characters.  I learned later that the movie deviates heavily from the book’s structure, and it would have been better served as an anthology of stories instead of attempting to simultaneously weave the stories together.

Cloud Atlas follows six stories, each set in a different time period with two even going into the future.  The movie uses a company of actors to play different characters in each time period.  The implication is that the characters may share the same souls across time, sometimes crisscrossing with each other again and again.  The six tales center on the themes of freedom and love.

As I mentioned, the movie attempts to tell each of the stories at the same time.  However, this leads to the movie feeling very disjointed.  I was able to follow the story well enough, yet the editing was not well done.  There are a few scenes that naturally transition into one another.  The rest of the cuts feel highly arbitrary though.  Literally, there might be one sentence said or a few seconds of a scene, and then we are off into another timeline.  It is just a mess.  I wonder if there was a different cut of the movie that mirrors the more chapter-based book structure.

Each moviegoer will find different stories more appealing.  I enjoyed only a few of them, namely the ones set in the future.  And the movie’s structure becomes frustrating since it will cutaway just as things become interesting.

Having the same actors play different characters might have worked better on a stage instead of the big screen.  The make-up between the characters is sometimes absurd including an oddly-looking Asian Jim Sturgess or a female Hugo Weaving.  It’s very distracting to the story.

It is not a terrible movie.  Everyone can find something to like in this movie.  As a whole though, it is ultimately disappointing.  Cloud Atlas seems like it should have been a HBO mini-series.  That would give each story its due without the overall story being bloated.  In fact, it would not have been impossible to get these same actors for such a project.

Argo (4 stars)

Posted by Dustin Monk on

Expectations:

I loved both Gone Baby Gone and The Town, the first two films directed by Ben Affleck (though I still think Gone Baby Gone is the stronger of the two), and from the previews I’d seen of Argo, it looked like another win for Former Bennifer. It’s also a piece of history I’m interested in – the Iran hostage crisis – and that, as a wee pup undergrad, did a paper on (sort of: the paper was actually on Ronald Reagan, but I did some research into Jimmy Carter’s presidency to understand the elections of 1980 and read then about the overthrowing of the Shah government, etc.).  So, to say I was excited for this film is perhaps a bit of understatement. I expect it to sate all my senses.

 

Review:

Argo is a smart, intense film based on a nugget of history classified until 1997. After the Shah government is overthrown in Iran and the American Embassy in Tehran is stormed, Tony Mendez – a CIA specialist – is called in to help get six Americans who escaped to the Canadian Embassy out. Mendez’s idea? Go in as a Canadian film crew making a fake Sci-Fi movie – the six Americans would fly out as part of the film crew. As Bryan Cranston (who, for the first time this year, isn’t hamming it) says, “This is the best bad idea we’ve got.”

The film certainly mixes some of that tried-and-true Hollywood dramatic license over historical accuracy, but what makes Argo engaging - beyond the fact that this actually happened - is its exploration of character. In particular, Tony Mendez – whether elements were fictionalized or not – is a complex study: here he is working to save six people he doesn’t know with, in true CIA fashion, one helluva WTF idea, while at the same time going through a separation with his wife and missing his son’s birthday. There is a moment on an airplane when Mendez is looking out the window and you feel all of that – it’s moving.

The six Americans who escaped the Embassy and are now hiding under the Canadian flag are also interesting studies of people under intense stress and fear for their lives. How each of them react toward the situation – again, whether fictionalized or not – is engaging to watch. The crisis also takes a toll on the Canadian ambassador and his wife, though both handle handle themselves and their affairs with grace and courage.

Argo missed an opportunity, however, to explore the conflicted nature of Sahar, an Iranian woman employed by the Canadian Embassy. Despite a clear love and loyalty for her people and to the Revolution, she continues helping hide the escapees  and even puts her own life in danger – but for reasons unexplained. After the graphic-novel-like opening of the film – which tells the atrocities committed by the Shah regime who had been placed there by the American government several years earlier – it is not difficult to understand Iranians’ outrage and the Islamic Revolution and therefore makes Sahar’s decisions all the more complex.

If Argo falters at all, it is when it decides to go Hollywood. There is a chase scene near the end of the film that is right out of a cliched action movie. Thankfully, however, the chase is anticlimactic and, for that reason perhaps, isn’t as awful or cliche as it could’ve been. Argo also suffers from Too Many Endings Syndrome (TMES): the airplane, the press conference, the return home, Sam Gamgee at his door, “I’m back.” Although there were a lot of submerged FEELINGS about his wife and son and leaving them, etc. that layered Mendez’s character with some depth, there was a lack of actual son and actual wife in the film; what happens at the end of the film doesn’t really matter to viewer because that wasn’t the story you were invested in.

Still, Argo illuminates an interesting (and, at the time, horrifying) moment in American and Iranian history. It also shows that two governments – in this case, the American and Canadian - can work together to a successful conclusion. It is also, in its way, a critique of American interventionism in that part of the world, relevant and worth taking a closer at especially after the recent attack on the American Embassy in Benghazi.