Actors: Will Ferrell, Steve Carell
Director: Adam McKay
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is the It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World for our generation - get a bunch of the era's funniest people together in a movie that is supposed to be 'funny' but is not. The film's humor lies mostly in recognition - 'I recognize that cameo!' 'I recognize that joke - it's from the previous movie!' I guess I shouldn't've expected different. The film also decides that Steve Carell's character needed more lines and more time on screen. It's not like this film lacks inventiveness - some of its new bits are inspired, absurd comedy. It's just dragged down by all the other stuff. The Ron Burgundy character's obliviousness barely survived one film, but here it reaches tedium.
Friday, December 26, 2014
Blue Ruin - 2013 - 3½ Stars
Actors: Macon Blair, Devin Ratray
Director: Jeremy Saulnier
Note: Minor Spoilers Ahead
Perhaps it's watching Indie Game that has me thinking this way, but Blue Ruin is a film with clear video game logic. Our main character doesn't seem to be making choices - he appears to be programmed. His world has a few stark options, but he is not given free motion. He picks up and discards certain objects. Critical information is given to him by other people which assists him on his quest. It's not hard to imagine Blue Ruin: The Video Game and it could be rather interesting. It's a good movie, but it's limited by the fact that everything that drives the action happened off-screen to characters we never meet. I suppose that's suggestive of something about the way that life works, but how life works doesn't always make for great movies.
Director: Jeremy Saulnier
Note: Minor Spoilers Ahead
Perhaps it's watching Indie Game that has me thinking this way, but Blue Ruin is a film with clear video game logic. Our main character doesn't seem to be making choices - he appears to be programmed. His world has a few stark options, but he is not given free motion. He picks up and discards certain objects. Critical information is given to him by other people which assists him on his quest. It's not hard to imagine Blue Ruin: The Video Game and it could be rather interesting. It's a good movie, but it's limited by the fact that everything that drives the action happened off-screen to characters we never meet. I suppose that's suggestive of something about the way that life works, but how life works doesn't always make for great movies.
Drinking Buddies - 2013 - 3 Stars
Actors: Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson
Director: Joe Swanberg
I've not seen a Joe Swanberg film before - I do know they have a reputation for being improvisational and talky and mumblecore-y and whatever words you want to throw on it. The film definitely meanders, but sometimes a film needs to meander in order to hit the notes it's going for. Relationships - romantic or otherwise - are generally unspoken agreements, and this film explores what happens when people try to say as little about those relationships as possible. I suspect the main criticism of this film is that none of the characters are likable, but I also think that for the film to exist in the space that it does, they can't be likable.
Director: Joe Swanberg
I've not seen a Joe Swanberg film before - I do know they have a reputation for being improvisational and talky and mumblecore-y and whatever words you want to throw on it. The film definitely meanders, but sometimes a film needs to meander in order to hit the notes it's going for. Relationships - romantic or otherwise - are generally unspoken agreements, and this film explores what happens when people try to say as little about those relationships as possible. I suspect the main criticism of this film is that none of the characters are likable, but I also think that for the film to exist in the space that it does, they can't be likable.
Indie Game - 2012 - No Rating
Subject: Video game designers who make 'auteur' games outside of the confining system of corporate video games.
Director: Lisanne Pajot, James Swirsky
I don't really play video games made after 1998. It's not a 'holier-than-thou' stance on gaming, I just lost interest in the medium and when it came time for me to possibly return to gaming, I found the idea boring. Indie Game makes me think there are people out there who still have the idea I do about games, they just happen to love them and program them. We've seen plenty of films about people who make art for a living - video games are an even trickier business, I think, because they have to be programmed properly (i.e. without bugs) and they have to be 'fun'. How can someone tell after spending years on a project if it's still fun anymore? What do we ultimately want out of a game as a consumer? I didn't expect a documentary on video game designers to remind me of Andrei Rublev, but here we are.
Director: Lisanne Pajot, James Swirsky
I don't really play video games made after 1998. It's not a 'holier-than-thou' stance on gaming, I just lost interest in the medium and when it came time for me to possibly return to gaming, I found the idea boring. Indie Game makes me think there are people out there who still have the idea I do about games, they just happen to love them and program them. We've seen plenty of films about people who make art for a living - video games are an even trickier business, I think, because they have to be programmed properly (i.e. without bugs) and they have to be 'fun'. How can someone tell after spending years on a project if it's still fun anymore? What do we ultimately want out of a game as a consumer? I didn't expect a documentary on video game designers to remind me of Andrei Rublev, but here we are.
Stardust Memories - 1980 - 3½ Stars
Actors: Woody Allen, Charlotte Rampling
Director: Woody Allen
Stardust Memories is the kind of film that picks you up and shakes you by the lapels (and assumes you are wearing lapels). It's Woody Allen screaming 'Can't you see?! Don't you get it?' And yes - this film principally exists as an apologia for his turn away from outright farce into more dramatic territory. It's hard not to read authorial intent into this film, but it also seems to think that Allen's turn into dramatic territory is also funny, just on a cosmic level rather than a Three Stooges level. His apartment having a blown up picture of the famous picture of a man being shot in Vietnam is just as funny to me as having a famous Marx Brothers scene. Stardust Memories also pounds us over the head with its examination of fame's downside - indeed, we see it conferring almost no advantages on Allen's character, as even his chaffeured Rolls Royce becomes a burden. This would make a solid double feature piece with The King of Comedy, but then again, just about anything would.
Director: Woody Allen
Stardust Memories is the kind of film that picks you up and shakes you by the lapels (and assumes you are wearing lapels). It's Woody Allen screaming 'Can't you see?! Don't you get it?' And yes - this film principally exists as an apologia for his turn away from outright farce into more dramatic territory. It's hard not to read authorial intent into this film, but it also seems to think that Allen's turn into dramatic territory is also funny, just on a cosmic level rather than a Three Stooges level. His apartment having a blown up picture of the famous picture of a man being shot in Vietnam is just as funny to me as having a famous Marx Brothers scene. Stardust Memories also pounds us over the head with its examination of fame's downside - indeed, we see it conferring almost no advantages on Allen's character, as even his chaffeured Rolls Royce becomes a burden. This would make a solid double feature piece with The King of Comedy, but then again, just about anything would.
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