Good writing tells a story about its characters. Great writing tells a story about its audience. Pan’s Labyrinth is a great movie. It is a movie that is not only interesting, engrossing, and entertaining, but also deeply introspective: it forces the viewer to step back and evaluate not only the movie itself, but also their own reaction to its themes.

Directed by Guillermo del Toro, Pan’s Labyrinth is an adult fantasy, a “fairy tale” for grown-ups. Like most fantasy, Pan’s Labyrinth is filled with strange creatures, magic, and new worlds, and like traditional fairy tales, Pan’s Labyrinth has a lesson to teach its viewers. However, just as the views and beliefs of an adult are more complex and subtle than the relatively simple worldview of a child, the messages and themes in Pan’s Labyrinth are far more subtle, complex, and interpretable than anything you would read in Mother Goose. Read the rest of this entry…

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I said on Twitter (http://twitter.com/thephatbunny) that I didn’t like the Watchmen movie as much as it deserved to be liked.

Here’s why.

Leave some comments and video responses! I’d love to hear what you think about the subject.

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The following is an article I wrote for my church newsletter. It’s a review of the movie Walk the Line from a Christian perspective.

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 Walk the Line is a movie about the life of Johnny Cash. The Man in Black is played by Joaquin Phoenix, and Reese Witherspoon plays the role of June Carter, Cash’s longtime touring mate, friend, and eventual wife. Johnny Cash’s life is a tale of success mixed with failure, accomplishments tainted by shortcomings. Beginning with his childhood, Johnny’s life is marked by inadequacy: in an early scene, Johnny asks his older brother Jack, who hopes to become a preacher, why he’s able to be “so good.” Johnny sees his own affinity for memorizing music from his mother’s hymnal as less valuable or meaningful than Jack’s love of the Word.

 

When Jack tragically dies in an accident with a saw while Johnny is off fishing, it becomes clear that Johnny’s father feels the same way. Johnny’s father is angry with God, demanding to know why Jack—the “better” one—was taken from him, instead of Johnny. This leads Johnny into deep-seated feelings of unworthiness, feelings which are intensified over the course of his life as he struggles with making a living as a door-to-door salesman and has difficulties in his first marriage.

Johnny tries to escape from his feelings of inadequacy by diving into music. Read the rest of this entry…

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I watched Death Race a few days ago, and it was pretty much what I expected it to be: an over-the-top, check-your-brain-at-the-door explosion fest with a thin plot and mediocre acting.

It was the kind of movie that Isaac Asimov used to go watch whenever he had written himself into a corner: apparently he used so little brain power while watching these movies that his subconscious was free to develop some of his most brilliant ideas in the meantime.

The great thing about this kind of movie is that none of its flaws really hurt it all that much, because everyone who comes to see the movie expects those flaws to be there. Honestly, if I had walked into Death Race and been confronted with a movie with genuine character development and solid, clever dialogue it would have just felt wrong.

So all in all, I was very happy with the movie. Of course, part of what made it so interesting to me may have been its stunning, nostalgic similarity to a little gem of a computer game from way back in 1996 called Death Rally. Published by 3DRealms, the makers of Duke Nukem 3D, the game allowed you to race around winding tracks while raking your opponents with chainguns, slamming into them with bumper-spikes, and liberally applying nitrous oxide to your fuel stream.

It was an awesome game, and you can still download the basic shareware version. I recommend you check it out, although, as with most games that old, if you don’t have any nostalgia for it you’ll probably find it unplayable. Your loss!

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I watched “Be Kind Rewind” on the weekend and, overall, I liked it. I wasn’t expecting to LOL my pants off or anything, but it was amusing and original and had some decent laughs and likeable characters.

Jack Black, as always, plays the Eccentric really well, and his blend of paranoia and childlike enthusiasm was entertaining, though not necessarily very original. Some of it was very typical Jack Black, doing what he always does (particularly in a brief scene near the beginning of the movie where he does a vocal impression of a bass guitar while “jamming” with some kids). He’s capability of a decent amount of versatility, as seen in movies like King Kong, but Be Kind Rewind is basically standard Jack Black fare and doesn’t really push him outside of his box. Which is fine; he’s good at what he does.

I’m a big fan of Mos Def and his unique way of conveying so much meaning with his facial expressions despite the fact that he barely moves his face at all. I didn’t like this character for him as much as I liked Ford Prefect in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but then again, the writing in H2G2 was far stronger than it was in this movie.

There were some really funny and creative parts near the beginning of the movie, especially the raid on the power plant (the camoflauge is brilliant!) and the part where Jack Black’s character, after becoming magnetized, gets sucked into a chain-link fence while walking away from Mos Def’s movie store in a huff.

Over the course of the movie fewer and fewer funny things happen, and as the plot kicks in the movie gets more of a sentimental drama and less of a comedy. It’s in the dramatic portions that the movie loses a lot of its real punch or meaningfulness, unfortunately. During the dramatic portions, it felt as if all the ingredients were there for me to feel really invested in and concerned about the characters, but for some reason I just didn’t so it got a bit tedious. And since the movie ends with a several-minute long sentimentalfest (I made up a word!), I went away from the movie with that unfulfilled feeling.

So I guess the lesson to be learned is that you should always try to end a movie on its strong point. “The Notebook” didn’t end with an action sequence or a pratfall: it ended with the heart-wrenching, yet deeply satisfying, death of its elderly protagonists. (Side-note: virtually every movie can be made better if the main character(s) die at the end. Why do you think Titanic was so successful?) In the same way, you shouldn’t end your comedy with a sentimentalfest (I used my word again!) if drama and character investment aren’t the strong points of the movie. If “Be Kind Rewind” had finished off with a joke, I think I would have liked it quite a bit more, but as it is, I found it a worthwhile but less-than-special comedy with an interesting basic concept.

Recommendation: If you don’t have another comedy in mind to watch, “Be Kind Rewind” is worth seeing, but don’t expect a masterpiece.

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