From Justin to Kelly (Adventures in Atrocity)

In the spring of 2002, thousands of people lined up in the cities of Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, New York City, Atlanta, Dallas and Miami to audition for a hot new reality show called American Idol. The premise was simple. 10,000 wannabe singers enter, only one will be crowned the champion. Little did they know that they were auditioning to be on one of the great reality show sensations of all time, and they certainly didn't know every detail of what they were signing up for. Before any of these chanteurs and chanteuses could get on actual television, they had to put their signature on a contract that basically informed them they were now the property of American Idol so long as American Idol had any interest in having them. There were all the usual stipulations in there, including perhaps a requirement to donate an organ to Simon Fuller if he ever needed it, but there was one wrinkle that many may not have noticed. Fuller, the show’s creator, knew that at the end of this competition there would be two performers left standing. As such, he required that these two would be forced to star in a film with each other. American Idol was not meant simply to be a hit television show. This was to be a multimedia behemoth. It had the boob tube and music locked up. Fuller had dreams of next conquering the silver screen.

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

J.J. Abrams is not afraid of being compared to Steven Spielberg. In fact, he seems to invite it, and that was never more apparent than in his own Super 8 from 2011. When it wasn’t a straight-up homage/rip-off of Close Encounters and E.T., it was evoking Spielberg-produced films from the same era such as The Goonies. His latest film Star Trek Into Darkness, the sequel to his own 2009 original which rebooted the undying franchise, can perhaps best be described as his attempt to make the last hour of Raiders of the Lost Ark. As a franchise, Star Trek is known to be one of the more contemplative science fiction establishments, but that’s all thrown out the window here. One can attempt to pull out any number of themes or allegories from Into Darkness, but that may be giving Abrams a tad too much credit. At best they are brought up briefly and then quickly discarded. This is a two-hour guitar solo of a movie; a nonstop action scene that might be annoying if it weren’t so thrillingly effective. If Abrams was looking to make his Star Wars: Episode VII sizzle reel, he succeeded with flying colors.

Disconnect (2013)

One interesting trend in recent cinema has been the slow disappearance of the type of ensemble drama I like to call the “parade of misery.” These films often take one unifying theme, and then use that theme to tell several different stories at once that ultimately prove to be strenuously connected. This formula was able to fool audiences for a while, but eventually it became so recognizable that most of the joy in watching them disappeared. Parades of misery were almost insufferably bleak, and it isn't exactly a blast to watch a movie that does little but tell you how everything is terrible and you should feel bad. This type of filmmaking hit its apex in the mid-2000s with Paul Haggis’ über-divisive Crash and the work of Alejandro Gonzálex Iñárritu, but since then it’s been nothing but a downward spiral. People rightfully got sick of it, because these movies were often better at feigning thematic depth than actually creating it.

Trailer Trash (5/10/13)

Volume 41: Edgar Wright, Aliens & Alcohol

Spring Review Roundup/Blog Update

Hey, everyone! Glad you could stop by. In case you did not know, just this past weekend I graduated from college, so that (among other reasons) is why I’ve been even slower than usual when it comes to updating this thing. In fact, I’d like to apologize in general for the lack of writing that has been a problem dating back to last year. I used to crank posts out very frequently, but due to various… things my attention has frequently been elsewhere. But no longer! I am out of school and unemployed for the moment, and until an actual job comes a-knockin’ it’s just going to be you and me. I’ve got literally nothing going on. Isn’t that exciting? I give it a few days before I pull a Ben Wyatt and start getting interested in stop-motion animation.

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Few will deny that in order to adapt The Great Gatsby correctly, there is going to need to be a significant amount of style involved. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel has been filmed many times before for either film or television, but none of them have been able to strike just the right tone. These adaptations, for the most part, have been played right down the middle. They took the book and put it on the screen without taking very many chances. Because of this, Baz Luhrmann deserves a great deal of credit for sticking his neck out as much as he has with his take on The Great Gatsby. Not only does he lay on his signature Moulin Rouge!-type style as thick as possible, but he also comes to the conclusion that what this legendary piece of literature needed was a soundtrack that featured the likes of Jay-Z, Fergie, will.i.am, Lana Del Ray and more. Does his gambit pay off? The short answer: not really. The longer answer: while he is able to create some effectively slick moments, the emotion and thematics of The Great Gatsby only really come through when Luhrmann decides to strip all the extra stuff away and let the actors go to work. These scenes are a precious few, however, and too often it feels as if the spectacle and the story are working independently of each other.

Pain & Gain (2013)

There is no such thing as a truly personal Michael Bay film. He may describe Pain & Gain as his “smaller passion project,” but he can only allow himself to focus on the actual material for so long. Inevitably he must throw in a pointless poop or sex joke in order to appease his inner 12-year-old boy, and the actions scenes must be more anarchic than they are cohesive or intelligible. That said, Pain & Gain is the best Michael Bay film to be released in many years, and there are stretches of this movie where his considerable talents are actually being put to good use. He is working with actual substance here instead of taking the premise of “robots go boom” and stretching it out to 150-plus interminable minutes. When he gets down to business, he’s occasionally able to make Pain & Gain sing. The problem is the troubling way in which he chooses to color in the edges. This is a definite step forward for Bay as an actual filmmaker, but his assaultive and sophomoric style continues to irritate.

Upstream Color (2013)

A woman sits disoriented on a couch. A mysterious man walks in and places a pitcher of ice water on the table. It appears he is in control of her mind, or something. He tells her that his head is made of the same material as the sun. She is ordered to carry out a series of tasks over a few days, and then she is finally released from this trance when she finds herself at a farm and goes through some kind of strange procedure that involves transferring her blood—and the worm inside her body—to a squealing pig. What I’ve just described to you is the first half hour or so of Shane Carruth’s new film Upstream Color, and it is no doubt enough to make you wonder just what the heck I’m talking about. The thing is: this is probably as straightforward as the film gets. Over the course of 90 minutes, Carruth’s second feature takes us on a hypnotizing and singular journey that absolutely means something. What this meaning actually is will probably be debated for quite some time.

Oblivion (2013)

Tom Cruise is a constant. You know what you’re going to get out of him every time he's placed in front of a camera, and what you’re going to get is often tremendously entertaining. He is a Movie Star with a capital “M” and “S,” and what's so impressive is how effortlessly he goes about it. He belongs on a film set more than just about any of his contemporaries, and he is never more comfortable than when he is kicking bad guys to pieces and cracking wise in the face of certain death, all while being as inoffensive as possible. There is a disarming sincerity to what he does, and while his film choices the last few years haven’t exactly been bold, he is the kind of actor who elevates material far more often than he hurts it. He is what he is. It’s just up to the films around him to step up to the plate. His last few movies since the awesomeness of Ghost Protocol have been a bit too content with going right down the middle, and the new science fiction thriller Oblivion is no exception. It has its moments, but ultimately it never becomes more than precisely the film you think it is going to be.

To the Wonder (2013)

Terrence Malick movies can never be in just one place at one time. It must have its fingers in many different physical and temporal locations at once, and through these seemingly random and poetic leaps we are meant to infer some greater meaning. The good news is he usually makes this work, with the best example being The Tree of Life. There he took audiences on a journey through, oh, nothing more than the entire history of the universe and was able to create one of the most profound and ambitious films in recent memory. He normally does not truly craft his films until post production, and during principal photography he simply has his cast act out various scenes while the camera swirls around them. Only when all the footage is collected does he go fishing for something deeper.