The Adventures of Tintin

I ought to be more familiar with Tintin than I am. My local public library’s children’s section had hardbound volumes of all or most of the comics in the series as I was growing up. I could have gone through pretty much the whole run. But I first looked at them when I was still in first grade — perhaps just a bit too young for a series that was aimed more at teenagers. A couple books didn’t catch on with me for whatever reason, and I never went back to them. Instead, I wound up going over and reading a different Franco-Belgian classic comic, Asterix (also aimed at young adults, but more overtly funny to a youngster). I don’t regret reading the Asterix comics for a second (as an adult I can see how brilliant they are), but I do regret passing up on Tintin way back when.

This “almost but not quite” familiarity left me with an odd form of anticipation when Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg came out with The Adventures of Tintin in 2011. I knew what Tintin was, unlike most Americans, but I knew very little more. I knew the general tone of the stories, but not the specifics. I could recognize Tintin, Snowy, Captain Haddock, and Thompson and Thomson… but I didn’t know the characters. Seeing the previews was an odd mix of nostalgia and novelty at the same time. It became one of my most anticipated films of 2011… but as bad luck would have it, I didn’t manage to see it until now. That said, it was well worth the wait.

The Hunger Games

With the Harry Potter film franchise ending in 2011, it was only natural that Hollywood would start looking for the next young-adult sci-fi/fantasy franchise to exploit. Fortunately for them, there was already an heir apparent, with Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy already catching fire (if you’ll forgive the pun) with juvenile readers. Production started shortly before Harry Potter ended, and the first film debuted a little more than a year ago, in March 2012, under the directorship of Gary Ross.

Set in the future dystopia Panem, The Hunger Games starts with a brief explanation of what the world and the games are like. A civil war had erupted in Panem in the past, as different districts revolted against the capital. The rebels lost. Hard. As punishment, the Hunger Games were established. Once a year, a boy and a girl between the ages of 12 and 18 are selected from each of the 12 districts. These 24 youths are then made to compete against each other in the Games, a brutal battle royale in an environment that the capital gamesmen can manipulate. There can be only one survivor. By the time of the film, the televised games are now in their 74th year, and the capital presents them as if they’re a big show of unity and fun for all the districts. The children of the districts have a differing opinion, as might be expected. When her twelve-year-old sister’s name is drawn in her first year of eligibility, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) volunteers to be the female tribute for district 12 in her place.

Rock of Ages

Let it be known: I am something of a metalhead. And not just any old sort of metalhead, but a long-haired metalhead. I grew up in the 80s, and while my musical tastes absolutely include a lot of classic rock — as the term was defined then — there’s a big chunk of metal in my CD collection. Most of it’s a particular kind of metal. 80s metal. Hair metal. You tell me a film includes songs by Poison, Def Leppard, Twisted Sister and Scorpions, and at the very least, I’m ready to listen to the soundtrack.

Rock of Ages, released in 2012, is a film adaptation of a Broadway musical set to the hair metal, arena rock, and glam rock of the 1980s. It’s also set in 1987, and is about the hard rock scene. So I was predisposed to like it. But I have to say the film is more White Lion than Whitesnake.

Snow White and the Huntsman

When creating a new film based off a familiar folk tale, it’s important to put one’s own stamp on it. This is particularly true if there’s already a supremely famous film based on the tale, as with “Snow White”. And it’s even more true if Hollywood’s habit of dueling movies leads to there being more than one movie on the same story being released within months of each other. This was the situation in 2012, with Mirror, Mirror dueling it out with Snow White and the Huntsman. While the former was overtly a comedic take on the story, Snow White and the Huntsman took a darker and ostensibly more serious tone.

Starring Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth in the title roles, Snow White and the Huntsman is a modern fantasy-adventure movie. It’s a valid way to approach the source material, and a method that could easily produce a great film. Unfortunately, this is merely a mediocre one.

Logos

Logos is an independent film directed and co-written by first-time director Michael Sorokorensky. It’s a new film for 2013 — so new, in fact, that as of this writing I can’t even give it a star rating on its IMDb page. Its official video release date according to IMDb is June 11, but it has already been released on Amazon Instant Video and possibly other sources as well. The story concerns James Carroll (played by Sorokorensky’s co-writer Paul Hine), a computer science student who has become obsessed with finding a mathematical formula for certainty since his father’s death in the 9/11 terrorism attack.

Though the film is new for this year, the footage apparently is not. Reportedly Sorokorensky shot the film over the course of four months, and then spent nearly 10 years editing it, feeling that it was unwatchable in its original form and making digital alterations in post-production. I obviously can’t vouch for how the original footage looked, but I have to say the final result isn’t all that great either.

Croissant de Triomphe

I subscribe to Disney Movie Rewards, as a means to ever-so-painfully-slowly work my way towards free movies from buying DVDs and movie tickets, and as part of this they also send me regular emails regarding other Disney related ephemera. Most of this is of little interest to me (I have no desire to throw a Disney Princess birthday party), but every so often something interesting turns up. In this case, that something was a “sneak peek” of a new Mickey Mouse cartoon, Croissant de Triomphe. I put “sneak peek” in quotes because it’s already everywhere on the web and hardly exclusive to people on Disney’s mailing list (you can view it here), but that’s not really important. What is important is that here is something I didn’t expect to see and which was at least potentially interesting. And after watching the short and reading up on it a bit, I have to say that potential interest is more on the lines of actual interest.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The first portion of The Hobbit‘s adaptation to film, An Unexpected Journey, was released to theatres this past December. By any objective measure, Peter Jackson’s return to Middle Earth must be considered a success. It is, after all, still going halfway through the month of March. In fact, my local first-run theatre’s last day for showing the film happens to be the same day as the film’s home video release. Thus, for one brief moment, at least some people will have the option of seeing The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in the first-run theatre, the second-run theatre, or their own homes, entirely at their own discretion.

When a film is held open for so long, it has to be considered a success at the box office. So the question, for a reviewer whose viewing was sadly rather delayed itself, is whether the film deserves the level of success it has achieved. For my part, I can only answer “yes”. While The Hobbit is not quite as magnificent as The Lord of the Rings, its first segment is nonetheless a worthy film in its own right.

Morbid Curiosity Files: Valentine’s Day

Today, if you’ve somehow avoided the annual advertising blitz, is Valentine’s Day. Throughout the day, hundreds of thousands of people, from grade schoolers to loving couples, will be giving each other gifts. At least some of those gifts are bound to be unwanted. I have my own unwanted gift to deal with, in the form of one of several free digital movies given me by VUDU: Garry Marshall’s 2010 romantic comedy, Valentine’s Day. I’d never seek this film out to watch it on my own initiative; even at a casual glance, it exhibits six of my Top 10 Warning Signs of a Bad Romantic Comedy. But I hate having an unwatched film in my collection, even if it isn’t one I selected for myself. And if nothing else, it’s certainly a film which is appropriate to review today.

The film is as difficult to stomach as I had feared. I find most rom-coms to be a bit saccharine anyway, but I suspect that even the most devoted fan of the genre would find Valentine’s Day to be excessively syrupy. With seven or eight criss-crossing storylines that all demonstrate the triumph of love against all odds, there’s the potential for an uplifting message, and Marshall clearly believes he’s delivered. But there’s no meat to it, no flavor. It’s the cinematic equivalent of fondant; it’s vaguely sweet, and it looks pretty, but it should not under any circumstances be construed as sustenance.

Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas

Let it not be said that I don’t give things a chance every now and then. I’ve made a few smart remarks before about the idea of an Ice Age Christmas special, and the series’s increasingly bizarre timeline. And I’m not the biggest fan of the series, having only watched the first two movies. But Christmas is a season for giving and forgiving, after all, so it’s only appropriate to give the special a chance on its own terms.

I wouldn’t say my skepticism about the special was completely unfounded. Certainly I couldn’t declare this a new classic for all ages. But it does have some good points.

Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie

I very nearly didn’t watch this movie. I was channel surfing, saw it was coming up on the Movie Channel, and saw it was a film released this year. I’d heard the name once or twice but couldn’t remember seeing any reviews on it. It was a comedy, from the description, and sounded like it might be vaguely amusing. So I changed the channel, and was immediately subjected to a promo for the movie, and the promo was sufficiently bad that I turned the TV off. But I reconsidered. I am well aware that TV station promos for comedies, especially cult comedies, are often poorly done, even on a relatively prestigious channel. And it was, after all, a film from this year, and I do enjoy the ability to be halfway topical on occasion. And worse come to worse, I figured that even if it was stupid, it’s still a comedy, there’s probably still some enjoyment in it.

I’ve written before about how one of the saddest things about watching movies is when they disappoint you. This is still true even when you don’t have high expectations for a film. But there’s another form of disappointment as well, the kind of disappointment where you think you’ve already gone through the worst of things. I had thought, when I watched Not Another Not Another Movie back in June, that I had seen the worst movie I would see all year. I was mistaken in that impression. Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie isn’t just the worst movie I’ve seen that was made in 2012, it’s the worst movie I’ve seen during 2012 as well — and as this is December, it doesn’t have a shortage of competition. It’s worse than the other new movies I’ve seen, it’s worse than all of the old movies I’ve seen. Yes, it’s even worse than Not Another Not Another Movie, and I have no idea how my life has gone so wrong that I’m able to say that.

I should have taken that promo at face value. That’s probably part of it.