Why Is This Movie Called Oblivion?

The first thing to say about Oblivion is that it is essentially a bad movie that is gorgeously designed, beautifully scored, and acted with enough energy and commitment to make it watchable.

Tom Cruise is a guy living on Earth in the future with his partner. They are living on a planet decimated by an alien invasion (or something) and are now harvesting all of the ocean water off of Earth in order to move to the moon Titan in Saturn's orbit (or something like that). But Tom Cruise is plagued by memories of another woman, and also feels a longing, a nostalgia for Earth that seems somehow inexplicable for a man who has had his memory wiped for "security reasons".

Anyway, Tom Cruise basically fixes droids and flies around in a really, really cool helicopter thing until a USAmerican spaceship lands and on it is the woman who haunts his dreams/memories. The rest is the mystery of the plot. And Oblivion functions like a mystery, unfolding slowly and revealing to the audience more and more of what actually happened before the movie started.

Did I mention that all of this is sort of cheesy and laughable? It sounds less silly here as I type it out, so let me elaborate. Oblivion is interested in the sort of anti-technology/love-the-earth/grow-your-own-tomatoes politics that so many films about the future find interesting (WALL·E, for example). In the midst of all of this technology, Tom Cruise loves books (well, looking at them, anyway: he appears not to have time to actually read any of them) and sleeping on the grass, and he changes into flannel and a Yankees cap whenever he gets the chance, because he's, like, longing to be real, see, and all of this futuristic stuff is really just getting in the way.

But if those are Oblivion's politics, it traffics in exactly the opposite belief. In other words, what is cool about the movie is the absolutely awesome production design. Aside from the badass helicopter, Tom and his partner live on this station/outpost thing high in the sky where they have an enormous glass-bottomed swimming pool that is illuminated at night. The computers look sleek and innovative, like something Apple will design soon, and at one point Tom hops onto a motorcycle, which is also quite cool (with further echoes of Joseph Kosinki's previous film, Tron: Legacy).

The best line in the movie: Tom looks at Melissa Leo and with pitch-perfect delivery says... "Fuck you, Sally".

The costumes are great, as well, especially the ones worn by Andrea Riseborough (Tom's partner). Marlene Stewart has her decked out in all manner of muted, Stepford-Wife outfits accented with various metallic elements. And if she always looks the same or looks over designed or just a little too put together, she also looks totally fabulous.

So the film is selling one thing (badass video-game-style technologies) while telling us it values something else altogether (playing catch next to a lake with your kid). It wants us to think that flannel and tattered baseball caps are the things we should value the most in the world, but it lingers over Marlene Stewart's beautiful, futuristic costumes. Oblivion wants to tell us to value playing records on the old phonograph, but its score is by M83. And, in truth, all of Oblivion's "values" sort of fail, while all of its design elements all really succeed. The future wins again.

In a lot of ways, Oblivion is really just a repeat of Tron: Legacy. And if you found Tron: Legacy basically inoffensive and enjoyable, it seems likely that you'll feel the same way about Oblivion.

John Carter... of Mars

I don't need to tell you John Carter, Disney's 275-million-dollar epic is bad. I am sure you know it's bad, and I'm sure you also know that everyone else knows it's bad (there were, I think, a few people in the multiplex in Tallahassee that had no idea, but I'll leave that for now).

The film is directed by Andrew Stanton, who is best known for the animated films Finding Nemo, A Bug's Life, and WALL·E. Carter is his live-action debut and he kinda has no idea what he's doing.

At one point I literally turned to my companions and said "I have no idea what's going on," (obviously a bad thing for a film aimed at a demographic much younger than me) and more than once my companions and I asked aloud: "but why doesn't she just...?" or "why wouldn't he...?" In one of the film's sequences, the villain (Dominic West from The Wire), offers up his life to the film's heroine (a gorgeous Lynn Collins). "Kill me," he says. "You have the power." But she doesn't. She swings the sword at his neck and stops before cutting his head off. She hates him and knows that if she doesn't kill him she will have to marry him. She also knows that marrying him means the downfall of her planet. He gives her the power to kill him and she doesn't take it, even though later she will interrupt her own wedding swords a-blazing (do swords blaze?) to stop the marriage. Nonsense.

There's also some weird thing in the movie about the planets aligning and light shining in a powerful beam and a ninth gate, but I had no idea what any of that was about except that one person wasn't supposed to know about it and everyone else needed to keep her from knowing about it. I honestly kept trying to figure this out in the movie, but I don't think it actually makes sense in any realm of logic.

I'm just gonna stop right there. I didn't totally dislike this movie, so I'll just stop criticizing it. Some good things:

The movie is quite funny in its early sequences. All of the stuff with John Carter back in Arizona in 1868 is great fun, expertly timed, beautifully edited.

I love me some Willem Dafoe. He appears as a green Martian king (they call them jeddaks on Mars). And his daughter is voiced by the lovely Samantha Morton. The entire movie involved a shirtless Taylor Kitsch running around in the desert, as well.

This is what that looked like:

...and let me tell you, that was fine with me.

There is also this very cool little reptile/dog beast, who runs around really quickly and follows Taylor Kitsch everywhere. He is good for lots of laughs in the film and is, frankly, adorable. I want one for my house.

I also complain a lot on this blog about how movies with lots of technology and giant robots just end up punching each other during fight sequences (cf. Iron Man, Transformers, Real Steel, etc.) but one thing John Carter has going for it is a cool technology that runs on human or martian energy somehow. The film doesn't bother explaining how it works, but we get to see a giant structure built out of these machines, and plenty of weapons. There is a superb sequence where John Carter is held prisoner via a kind of remote that seems to control his blood stream and his posture. It looks really cool.

And the jumping. The jumping is cool. Carter's human gravity on Earth is different than it is on Mars, so he can jump really high and far, and he has a kind of super-strength. I mean, that's fun.

But ohmygoddon'tseeit. You'll just hate yourself.

2011's Nominees: Part 3 of 12

BLACK SWAN

5 Nominations:

  · Best Picture

  · Best Director: Darren Aronofsky

  · Best Actress: Natalie Portman (Closer)

  · Best Cinematography: Matthew Libatique

  · Best Editing: Andrew Weisblum

Director: Aronofsky
Cast: Portman, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Mila Kunis, Winona Ryder, Benjamin Millepied

 
This is my favorite film of the year, and I can't help but think that it should have done better here. But you know what? I have to be thankful for what I get. Black Swan is a very well made B-film and while I completely loved it, no one should be expecting the Academy to be as much in love with it as they are. Small victories. Still, most people were expecting a nomination for Mila Kunis here, as well as Visual effects and Sound nods (the Costume designers were deemed ineligible). Most people expect Portman to win Best Actress on the 27th.
Will Win: Actress
Might Also Win: N/A
My Rating: #1 out of 42

TOY STORY 3

5 Nominations:

  · Best Picture

  · Best Adapted Screenplay: Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine), John Lasseter (Toy Story), Andrew Stanton (Toy Story, Finding Nemo, WALL·E), Lee Unkrich

  · Best Animated Feature

  · Best Sound Editing

  · Best Song: Randy Newman (Ragtime, Parenthood, The Paper, Toy Story, Babe: Pig in the City, Toy Story 2, Meet the Parents, Monsters Inc., Cars, The Princess and the Frog)

Director: Unkrich
Cast: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty, Wallace Shawn, Don Rickles, Michael Keaton, Estelle Harris, John Ratzenberger, Laurie Metcalf

 
This movie is great and everyone knows it. If you have seen it you know. If you haven't seen it, the last fifteen minutes are so moving that I defy you not to cry. I mean, I know I cry at everything, but I saw it with eight other people and we all cried. Even the most cold-hearted of us.

Will Win: Animated Feature, Song
Might Win: N/A
My Rating: #16 out of 42

WINTER'S BONE

4 Nominations:

  · Best Picture

  · Best Adapted Screenplay: Debra Granik, Anne Rosellini

  · Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence

  · Best Supporting Actor: John Hawkes

Director: Granik
Cast: Lawrence, Hawkes, Dale Dickey, Garret Dillahunt, Shelley Waggener

 
I was so bored by this film I don't know how to talk about it without getting cranky. None of my friends in California liked this either. At any rate, to my complete and utter bafflement everyone seems to love it, the critics and the Academy.
Will Win: N/A
Might Win: N/A
My Rating: #32 out of 42

When You're Too Drunk to Know What You're Saying

Michael: Hey, has anyone by any chance heard of this kid's movie called Finding Nemo?
Walter: ...
Geoff: ...
Susan: ...
Bryce: ...
Aaron: Are you serious?

I Miss Barbra.

The sad part about WALL·E's liberal quoting of Gene Kelly's Hello, Dolly! is that though the song "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" opens the movie and we hear Michael Crawford's clear, lovely tenor voice, the song fades out during all of the parts where Barbra Streisand sings in the song. In the copy of the soundtrack I have, Babs starts singing at the 1:15 mark. It looks like WALL·E's soundtrack (for sale everywhere) also omits Barbra, since the "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" track lasts only a minute and seventeen seconds.

Now, I'll admit that Hello, Dolly! is not the best musical in the world. In truth, it's probably not in too many people's top ten. And Gene Kelly's film is a problematic behemoth of a movie, as well. The fact that it stars Barbra Streisand in the first place is controversial (and perhaps not the best decision.) I should also mention that "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" is not exactly the best song Jerry Herman ever wrote, either.

But I really like Hello, Dolly! for all its faults and grandeur and silliness. It's warm and loveable and sweet, and Herman's music is infectious and fun if not necessarily groundbreaking. And my favorite part of the movie is Barbra herself. She is larger than life, and she's not exactly acting her heart out, but she's brassy and fabulous and clever. And that twinkle in her eye makes me fall in love with her.

I know, I know. This is the gayest post ever. But I am about to make it a little gayer because I want to talk some more about Andrew Stanton's WALL·E. I am still thinking about it because everyone on earth is talking about how much they love it. Now I love that WALL·E begins by quoting a movie every musical-loving queen will know. But one of the things that I really disliked about WALL·E is that the robots WALL·E and EVE have such clearly defined genders. Why do they have to be male and female? I mean, robots don't have genders. They don't have genitals for Chrissakes! And they don't have sex. Or children. Or societal norms. So it seems really heteronormative and unnecessary that WALL·E and EVE's genders are so obvious.

I could go on about how holding hands is a heteronormative obsession, too, but I guess I should probably stop being down on the feel-good movie of the summer.

This doesn't really have anything to do with Barbra Streisand, I guess. But all through WALL·E I kept waiting for Barbra to make an appearance, and when she didn't I was definitely disappointed.

A Not-so-brief Update

I am almost finished with my big project for the weekend, which was cataloguing all of my books into my home library database. It took me quite a while (I have a lot of books), but now I will be able to search all of my books to see whether I have something or not. This will also make referencing things much, much easier. I am going to be in school for another three years or so, so I needed to start this now before I amass another three years worth of books.

In other news, my second six-week summer session started today. I am teaching Introduction to Theatre for Non-majors with another grad student. We had 80 seats in the class and every single one of them filled up. I think the dean was expecting about fifty, but the class is evidently popular. It should be fun. It is mostly (i.e. 80%) filled with kids who will be freshmen in the Fall. They take a summer class before their first real semester and so they get acclimated to campus life and get a headstart on coursework. These kids are the best students ever. I had them last summer, too. They work hard and are on their best behavior. And they want to participate.

I've been watching a lot of movies, too. I just haven't felt like writing about them. I will be brief about most of them. Actually, for the less cinematically inclined among you, I will start with the high-interest stuff and move toward the obscure so you can tune out when you get bored:

Okay, so call me crazy (or cynical or bitter) (and maybe I need to see it again) but I was not head over heels for Andrew Stanton's WALL·E, the latest from Pixar. I know everyone else is nuts about it and all that, but... well. Let me start at the beginning. At the beginning, I loved it. The opening seconds are pure genius, with a shot of outer space and then Michael Crawford's voice ringing out loud and clear "Out There... there's a world outside of Yonkers!" I laughed out loud and couldn't stop. Why is this movie beginning with a clip from Hello, Dolly!? WALL·E is really sort of brilliant in that moment. It stays brilliant for a long time, too. But then our loveable robot takes a trip into space following his lady-love (do robots have genders? they do in this film). I started to get bored when the humans on the spaceship Axiom started to show up. They are these blobby humans living a Matrix-like existence, spending their whole lives tapped into the internet and laying around on moving recliners. The movie by this time became a kind of action movie that didn't have any more jokes left in it, only plot points. The movie's politics are questionable, too. I am not sure I even understand them. Does the film want us to all be farmers? Still, WALL·E is brilliant for at least half of its running time and its second half is harmless if less than stellar.

But I loved Tarsem Singh's new movie The Fall. Tarsem previously made the bizarre but visually stunning film The Cell. Remember that? If you do remember it, you remember that the film's subject matter was dark and dirty, but the art direction was eye-popping and unforgettable. The Fall is just as stunning, maybe more so. The story is told from the point of view of a little girl (Catinca Untaru) in a Los Angeles hospital in the 1920s. She befriends a movie star (Lee Pace) who has lost feeling in his feet because of a mysterious fall. The beautiful cinematic pictures that Tarsem creates are products of the young girl's imgination as the hospitalized man tells a story. It's an extraordinary film with tons of heart, but it's also very, very smart. The people in the film are real characters with faults and unhappinesses. I found it incredibly moving and astoundingly beautiful. Young Catinca Untaru is the cutest thing ever and the relationship between the young girl and the injured man becomes really powerful.

I also really liked David Schwimmer's silly comedy Run Fatboy Run. It's not very smart, but it's quite funny. It's another in the long line of men-who-learn-how-to-grow-up films for which Judd Apatow is now so famous. Still, Schwimmer's touch is light and the humor is often dry and clever rather than overtly silly. Best of all, Run Fatboy Run doesn't need to get cheap laughs from puke jokes or disability humor. Run Fatboy Run is totally worth watching. And I love that Simon Pegg.

So is it ridiculous that I've never seen James Cameron's 1984 movie The Terminator? Yes, yes it is. I haven't seen Part 2, either, but it is on its way from Netflix. Well, I ought to be forgiven for this oversight since I was very heavily into church at the time the movie came out and had no time for Linda Hamilton or killers from the future or naked men who travel through time. Anyway, I quite liked the movie, of course. It's really fun in a kind of horror-film-meets-sci-fi-film-meets-action-film kind of way. I am excited for Part 2.

I also really liked Grigori Chukhrai's 1959 film Ballad of a Soldier, which follows a nineteen-year-old Russian soldier in World War II as he travels back to his mother on a six-day leave. On his way he meets all sort of people and sees the effect of the war on the people of the Soviet Union. It's a beautiful, heartbreaking film, and the young man who plays the lead and the young lady who plays his girlfriend are truly lovely to watch.

John Ford's Arrowsmith (from 1931) has a lot of problems. It is one of the first films to portray black people in roles other than slave or servant roles, but it's still not a very good film. The movie stars Ronald Colman and Helen Hayes. Netflix says that it also stars Myrna Loy, but don't believe them. She is in it for about three minutes altogether. Arrowsmith follows a doctor named (conveniently) Arrowsmith and his wife as Arrowsmith invents and experiments and tries to cure cancer. He doesn't (naturally) but he does come up with some pretty good antibacterial stuff, and then he travels to the Caribbean to help people there who are suffering from the plague. Still, there isn't much to this movie, and it isn't very well made, either, although one can see the germs of what will be John Ford's greatness in some of the photography on the island.

We don't really need to talk about Walter Lang's Can-Can, either. It stars Frank Sinatra, Shirley Maclaine, Maurice Chevalier and Louis Jourdan and I quite liked it, but it is a fluffy musical with very cute costumes but not much for either memorable music or memorable characters.

What else? I thought Tony Richardson's film The Entertainer, based on the play by John Osborne, was quite good. I know I am often hard on Laurence Olivier and his boring Shakespeare performances, but he is great in this film.

I also really liked Hal Ashby's biopic of folk singer Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory. David Carradine is the film's star and he's quite compelling as Guthrie. I dug the film's politics and its free spirit, too.

Lastly, I just watched the Hong Kong musical (which is more of a Hollywood film than anything else) Perhaps Love. All I can say is Perhaps Not. I rented this film, of course, because it stars the most gorgeous creature to ever walk on two legs: Takeshi Kaneshiro, but the film is a total mess. It operates on three levels. The present: on the film set of a big Honk Kong musical; in fantasy: in the musical itself; and in the past of the film's stars. Kaneshiro is beautiful, but the movie doesn't work at all and I was awfully bored. Perhaps Love was also never released in theatres in the U.S. and this shows in the subtitles used for the DVD release I watched. The English has obviously never been tried on English-speakers before. I don't speak Mandarin, but the English used for the subtitles was at times incomprehensible. This may be one of the reasons I liked this movie so little, but mostly I think it's because the movie was boring.