2013

Stephen reviews: Garden of Words (2013)

KRp4l9r Garden of Words [言の葉の庭 Kotonoha no Niwa] (2013)

Starring Miyu Irino, Kana Hanazawa, Fumi Hirano, Takeshi Maeda, Yuka Terasaki, Takanori Hoshino, Suguru Inoue, Megumi Han, Mikako Komatsu, Yuki Hayashi

Directed by Makoto Shinkai

After being disappointed by Children Who Chase Lost Voices, I was hopeful that Shinkai would return to the style he has been so good at before. With Garden of Words he did exactly that, so I am thankful, but he went back to a 5CM Per Second style of realistic romance. I really do wish he would go back to the intriguing science fiction premises that wound through his earlier films. Without that speculative side, Garden of Words becomes just another bittersweet tale of impossible love, which is what all of his films center around. This isn’t really a bad thing; it’s just that I prefer to have something beyond a simple romance story.

The film centers around a high school boy who likes the rain, and ditches class every time it rains. He hangs out in a park with a covered bench and enjoys the weather with a sketchbook in hand. His career goal is to become a women’s shoe designer. Now that may be odd, but at least he’s got dreams, right? One day he encounters an older woman also ditching work who seems to like the combination of beer and chocolate. They continue meeting every time it rains, and gradually grow closer to each other.

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall, Jon Favreau, Ben Kingsley, James Badge Dale, Stephanie Szostak, Paul Bettany, William Sadler, Dale Dickey, Ty Simpkins, Miguel Ferrer

Directed by Shane Black

Expectations: Moderate. I do like these Marvel movies, but I’ve heard mixed things.

It’s always good to see a movie for yourself to form your own opinion. If I had believed the majority of what I’d heard about Iron Man 3, I might have passed on it. Of course, I’m much too invested in Marvel’s cinematic universe experiment to quit now, but to illustrate a point let’s just say that I might have skipped it. In doing so, I would’ve skipped my favorite of the Iron Man films. Iron Man 3 is entertaining from start to finish, filled with humor and excitement and growth for the on-screen Tony Stark character that excites and satisfies completely. This is exactly what the Iron Man films needed after the fun, but ultimately forgettable Iron Man 2.

In the aftermath of the events of The Avengers, Tony Stark is shaken and unable to focus on anything but his work. He’s dealing with anxiety issues that he’s never had to contend with before and it frightens him. Meanwhile, a mysterious terrorist calling himself The Mandarin has arisen, giving Tony Stark a threat unlike anything he’s yet faced. For a summer blockbuster, it’s also strangely set at Christmas, but it isn’t just “colored lights in the window,” as this backdrop provides a depth that enhances the story’s resonance.

Side Effects (2013)

Starring Rooney Mara, Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Channing Tatum, Vinessa Shaw, Ann Dowd, Polly Draper, David Costabile, Mamie Gummer

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Expectations: High. I’m becoming quite the Soderbergh fan.

Side Effects is ultimately a thriller, but you’d never know it by the way the film sets itself up. Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara) is a depressed woman whose husband (Channing Tatum) has just been released from prison. He was locked up for insider trading, but now that he’s back on the right side of the bars, he’s trying his best to set their lives back on course. Meanwhile, Emily is having a hard time dealing with her mental issues, and one day while exiting a parking garage she decides to take the exit sign painted on the brick wall literally. She drives her car straight into it, and thus sets into motion the twisting that must occur for any thriller to be successful.

But those expecting a thriller right out of the gate will be disappointed by the slow, dramatic crawl towards the thriller content in Side Effects. It’s there, and it’s rather intriguing and interesting to unravel, but less patient viewers will definitely feel the urge to switch the film off before it gets there. Even acknowledging this fact, the film is a little slow in places, and the some of the second half isn’t as strong as it could be. Regardless, Side Effects is largely a successful film.

Mama (2013)

Starring Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Megan Charpentier, Isabelle Nélisse, Daniel Kash, Javier Botet, Jane Moffat, Morgan McGarry, David Fox, Dominic Cuzzocrea, Christopher Marren

Directed by Andrés Muschietti

Expectations: Moderate.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

If I were to judge movies solely on how much they entertained me, then Mama would rank pretty high. Not at the level of a favorite, or even a great experience, but one that simply does its job and delivers the fun supernatural thrills I’m looking for in a ghost story. The plot isn’t all that hard to figure out if you’ve seen any previous ghost story, but the creepy tactics it uses to sell itself were more than enough to win me over. I rarely get scared anymore during these kinds of films, but even after I had turned the lights back on after the movie I was still twisting my head to look behind me, convinced that Mama was there to swallow my soul.

The film opens during the 2008 financial crisis that swept the US, and one man affected by it has snapped. He kills his wife and drives away on icy, dangerous roads with his two young daughters. Their car goes over an embankment, but they survive and seek refuge in an old cabin in the woods. He clearly isn’t a horror movie fan, as you know as well as I do that you should generally turn around if you encounter a creepy old cabin in the middle of nowhere. Ah, but if they did, we wouldn’t have a film! From here, the story goes into an unexpected but fun direction, but I will say no more. In a film that hits a lot of the same notes as many other ghost stories, you need to know the least amount possible so that the film is able to play with all the cards in its deck.

Evil Dead (2013)

Starring Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas, Elizabeth Blackmore, Phoenix Connolly, Jim McLarty, Sian Davis

Directed by Fede Alvarez

Expectations: I don’t know. High but also low.

As a die-hard fan of the original films:

Realistically:

The 2013 version of Evil Dead is everything I feared it would be. Instead of encapsulating that rebel, low-budget spirit of the original, it feels incredibly mainstream and not the least bit fresh. I suppose that’s to be expected of a mainstream remake of a genre classic, but I had hopes that with Robert Tapert, Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell on-board as producers they’d make sure that they did justice to the legacy of Evil Dead.

What makes Evil Dead a hard one for me to write about is that I can see both sides of the argument. Purists think this should never exist (like most remakes), but modern viewers unwilling to venture into low-budget territory have come to this one in droves. I’m firmly in the purist camp, but I do think they got one thing perfect. This Evil Dead isn’t so much a remake of the original as it is a similar situation with entirely new characters and a lot of cherry-picked elements and shots from the Raimi films. This is definitely the way to go to avoid people like myself bitching about how “the new Ash isn’t as good as Bruce Campbell,” and other such unwinnable arguments. So now there’s no Ash at all. Which is exactly how this movie should be. Ash and Bruce Campbell are inseparable.

Unlucky Charms (2013)

Starring Tiffany Thornton, Nathan Phillips, Jeryl Prescott, Nikki Leigh, Seth Peterson, Charlie O’Connell, Masuimi Max, Alex Rose Wiesel, Anna Sophia Berglund, Peter Donald Badalamenti II

Directed by Charles Band

Expectations: Low.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

In terms of Charles Band’s output in the last few years, Unlucky Charms is at or near the top of the heap. While most people would definitely argue with me if I called this a good movie, I found Unlucky Charms to be very entertaining. There are also thin layers of social commentary and pathos, which don’t work as well as they might in a “real movie,” but they add a charm otherwise missing in many of Band’s films from the last few years.

The film’s surreal opening hints at there being more under the surface than there actually is, as Unlucky Charms is another in a long line of “someone’s playing with dark magic for selfish reasons and they don’t care who it affects” horror movies. But the intro shows us the leprechaun Farr Darrig (Nathan Phillips), AKA The Red Man, sitting on a park bench watching children at play on a swing set. A small child sits with him, and Farr Darrig is unable to understand why she smiles knowing the current state of the world. Whoa! Is this really a Full Moon movie?

Elysium (2013)

Starring Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, Diego Luna, Wagner Moura, William Fichtner, Brandon Auret, Josh Blacker, Emma Tremblay, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Maxwell Perry Cotton, Faran Tahir

Directed by Neill Blomkamp

Expectations: Very high.

I don’t know about you, but I LOVE District 9. Elysium is definitely no District 9, but it’s kind of unfair to even compare them, as Elysium is a much more ambitious film. Due to this, it’s also a more disappointing film because it doesn’t always hit the marks it strives for. At the same time, it features so many great ideas and awesome moments that it would be hard to walk away from Elysium without a smile. If nothing else, it’s got fantastic design work throughout, and the future Earth dystopia/utopia presented in the film is a pretty spot-on extrapolation from the current state of economic inequality in the US.

Elysium is a very simple story at its heart, but it’s also a multilayered story that deals with multiple characters and tells their stories simultaneously until they all converge. The basic kernel is that after Earth became too overpopulated and polluted, the rich people built a space station called Elysium where they could enjoy their money in the peace of space, along with virtually neverending life thanks to their revolutionary med-bays that can identify and cure any ailment. Back on the surface of Earth, Max (Matt Damon) is an orphan who has always dreamed of going to Elysium, and because this is a movie, we enter his life as he’s thrust into a situation that might make that dream a reality.