47 ronin

Man, it's been so long since I last posted a review here that the entire dashboard has changed and I am confused. What's with these new buttons? What is this thing you call "Publish"? I'm pretty sure when I last posted the option was "Chisel into stone". Anyway, with my beloved on school holidays we have manipulated many of our relations into babysitting for us and seen quite a few movies ("quite a few" in the way that parents of young children see nothing new unless they illegally download it and then watch it over three days over the periods where said kids are not throwing cornflakes on the floor or finding glasses of water to knock over.)

47 Ronin has received many terrible reviews. On Metacritic, its score was 29 (out of 100, for those sensible people who don't care about review sites that aren't, obviously, this amazing one right here.) I assumed it was going to be so awful that I would spend most of it composing mean tweets in my head, should I ever see it. And then I scored some free tickets, which meant that I could see it, with no guilt. Score!

Keanu Reeves plays Kai, a "half-breed" found almost dead in a river as a youth and brought up by the compassionate Lord Asano (Min Tanaka), though all around him treat him badly apart from Asano's daughter, Mika (Ko Shibasaki). The town they live in is visited by the Shogun, who is accompanied by a rival lord, the constantly smarmy Lord Kira (Tadanobu Asano). Kira has dire plans for the town, however, along with the magical, nameless shapeshifter played with absolute alarming creepiness by Rinko Kikuchi, whom I will love forever after being in Pacific Rim. After manipulating the event and causing Lord Asano to commit seppuku to restore his now-bad name, the town's army, left as ronin--masterless samurai--decide to fight for Asano's honour, despite the quest meaning certain death.

About halfway through I leaned over and whispered to Chris, "What is everyone talking about? This is a perfectly serviceable movie!" At the end, I cried. (Don't read the Wikipedia entry on the true story of the forty-seven ronin, it is spoiler central.) This is a movie that had a good pace, knew how long to make the action scenes without giving the viewer fight fatigue, was populated by a large amount of handsome male actors with long hair (swoon), and never once made me look impatiently at my watch. The acting was all marvellous--Keanu wooden as per usual but it works as a stoic samurai-type--and it even passed the Bechdel test, with both Rinko Kikuchi's witch and Ko Shibasaki's Mika princess tough as nails.

Of course it has flaws: it's a Japanese myth made by Hollywood, with Reeves as a half-breed when there was no such person in the original story. It's frustrating, because Hollywood is so obsessed with white people saving the day in every nation, and Reeves' closest tie with Asia is being one-quarter Chinese-Hawaiian (Hawaii having a large Japanese influence, however.) At least the rest of the cast were Japanese and not from a variety of unrelated Asian countries *cough*Crouching Tiger*cough*; also, Asano's 2IC, Oishi (Hiroyuki Sanada, my boyfriend from Sunshine) is just as much the hero, and mostly more useful, than Kai. The one ronin who is more big-boned than the rest supplies comic relief through his weight alone, which also feels out of place. The Japanese witchcraft doesn't add much to the tale, so could be done without; one frighteningly large silver samurai is mysterious right until it is unmysteriously dispatched but without an explanation for its origins. Also, that all-over-tattoo dude from the posters has like one line and ten seconds of screen time, would it have killed advertisers to put Sanada or Shibasaki on it? Jeez.

But kudos to the filmmakers for staying fairly close to the bones of the original story, for totally surpassing my low expectations, and for the most un-Hollywood ending I've seen in a long time. I give this 47 out of 70 Ronin.

las vegas for vegans, a s patric

Short stories, good short stories, take me a long time to read. When I read a novel I like, I barrel through it to get to the end, but in a collection of short stories, when they are wonderful, I take my time. I put the book away, physically reshelve it (as opposed to leaving it in the pile of books next to the couch, where all the crime books I review live) and wait until I need it another day. So it goes that reading a book of short stories can take me weeks, months, even years—I still haven’t finished Miranda July’s No One Belongs Here More Than You—because I have a choice about when I finish it. 

 Las Vegas for Vegans was given to me by the author back when it came out, late last year, and I started it straight away. About five months later, I finished it on my couch, the baby finally asleep in her room, an expanse of time in front of me that was exactly right for Las Vegas for Vegans. I went into the study, retrieved it from the shelf (don’t laugh, it is shelved under blue), and read the final third that I had been saving for good, like a literary front room. 

Even though I hadn’t read any of it for weeks, the first story I read today—The Bronze Cow—pulled me right back into the visceral world (or worlds, or dimensions) that he has created. They are enough that by the last sentence (and sometimes that is after ten pages, sometimes after a paragraph) you have already been as immersed in the story as you might have been by a full-length novel. They are all-encompassing, ethereal, grounded, amazing. I am not clever enough to know what is happening in all of them, but it doesn’t always matter. Some I read twice because the first time I was pulled along like a current and then it would end and I wasn’t sure what I had read. These stories are not always quite real, but they are really something, you know? Like when an old American man looks over a vista with the sun in his eyes and says, “That’s really something.” 

It is the kind of collection that makes you rethink how words fit together and how stories are told. Some I didn’t like. Some made me sad. (And it isn’t a recommended travel guide for traveling vegans at all.) I have folded down so many corners for turns of phrase or scenes that struck me in some way that to put them in here would probably violate copyright and have me arrested. My only regret—and I know reviewers write this type of thing all the time but I am nothing if not unoriginal—is that I’ve now read them all, that the next time I have this quiet sleeping hour free, I won’t be able to read them fresh. I’ll just have to read them again.

bachelorette

Movies like Bachelorette, The Hangover and Bridesmaids make me feel like getting married is a complete lapse of judgement that will end with you in some kind of physical or emotional pain on what is touted as the best day of your life. I also am beginning to think that I have a very rare thing in my life: friends who are not assholes. Is it really that hard not to be an asshole? Bachelorette says: apparently it is very hard. 

Becky (Rebel Wilson) tells her dear friend Regan (Kirsten Dunst) that she is engaged to her high school sweetheart, Dale (Hayes MacArthur). Despite this piece of apparent good news, Regan calls their mutual friends Katie (Isla Fisher) and Gena (Lizzy Kaplan, who also starred in a previous mean girl movie called Mean Girls) to immediately anguish over the fact her boyfriend hasn’t proposed to her (because in Hollywood, relationships aren’t real unless you’re married), and why does Becky deserve a decent husband anyway? 

Then the movie fast forwards to the day before the wedding. Regan, as maid of honour, has declared herself in charge of the wedding and is cruel to the help. Katie assists by bringing a vast amount of cocaine. Gena is pouting because her ex Clyde (Adam Scott) will be there and she has Unfinished Angst about him. Together, the girls ruin Becky’s bachelorette party with an obnoxious stripper, get told by Becky to grow up, and proceed to Become Mature People by laughing about how they can fit two people in Becky’s wedding dress, which they then tear. Can they fix it in time to not ruin Becky’s wedding? Will they encounter handsome men? Will they all die at the end in a fiery explosion? WE CAN ONLY HOPE SO. 

Bachelorette fails because the cast is so vehemently unlikeable. Regan does nothing but shout, and when she whines about not getting proposed to, you assume it’s because she’s a monster. Katie is painted as the ditz and really is so ridiculously stupid, which she exacerbates by being almost constantly high, that she is entirely unrelatable. Gena is the one I think the audience is supposed to bond with, and harbours a fairly grim secret with Clyde which adds some romantic tension in a sea of pricks (see: Dale’s friend Trevor, played with jerky abandon by James Franco) and needs to move on with her life and perhaps not be so horrible. But lord, you just don’t care about what happens to them. You wish for them to succeed because Becky seems like a nice person who suffered through high school and who clearly isn’t great at picking acquaintances, but otherwise, just...sigh. Many of the characters (Regan, Katie to an extent, most of the men) don’t get enough backstory to connect with the viewer, and some of the lessons—like, bulimia saves lives!—will make you shake your head. 

There are some great lines, Adam Scott is totally a babe who does one of the best wedding speeches you’ll ever hear, it passes the Bechdel Test easily and I’m super pleased Rebel Wilson is getting famous. Also, she kills with the line: “People think I’m too fat for Dale.” Regan’s response is good, but Becky is right. Her friends are horrible. That is the only lesson to take away from this. 

I give it three out of six bridesmaids. And even those three bridesmaids are wearing dresses that they will never wear again.

ruby sparks

In a plotline that feeds into the fantasies of 90% of people who work in cafes, an author defeats writer’s block by writing about a woman he dreams of, who then comes to life and is able to be controlled by said author’s typing. I mean, this guy—Calvin, nearing thirty, played by Paul Dano—had already written a bestseller at age 19, and lives off his writing. This is more unrealistic than bringing a girl to life with your mind, but is strangely not the topic of the movie. 

Calvin is moping about, friendless, dateless, and not writing but being harassed about it, when he dreams of a girl and they have a nice conversation without any usual weird dream things like it being in your old bedroom but actually on Mars or anything. Inspired by that and his therapist Dr Rosenthal (Elliot Gould), he writes about her, and thus Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan, also the writer and one of the producers) springs to life one morning as Calvin runs about panicking about being late. Reacting perfectly to the presence of a strange woman in his house by hiding from her and freaking out, it takes a while for him to comprehend that she is real, really real and wonderful and fun and just the girl for him. Which is grand, until their relationship hits a few minor speed bumps and Calvin, in a panic, gets back onto his typewriter and changes her course. 

What are the ethics of controlling someone, even when they’re not entirely real? What about if you think it’s for their own good, to make them happy? What would you do in the same situation? (We discussed it while we were watching: write them a huge trust fund and a bright red convertible Cadillac.) What is behind Calvin’s need for control over those in his life? Ruby Sparks is thrown around as a lightweight comedy but has a lot of depth and seriousness; you won’t always be laughing, and everyone is not perfect. While it outright discusses (without the name) Manic Pixie Dream Girls and how they are not practical as human beings, it raises other questions, for me anyway: why are men compelled to write women with sexually turbulent pasts? Did it not pass the Bechdel Test on purpose to make a point about women being idealised? 

Well now that serious contemplation is out of the way, I will say that it’s a great movie: the acting is sincere, the characters bounce off each other well—Calvin’s much more normal brother Harry (Chris Messina) is a good straight logical man without coming across as boring because of it; Annette Bening and Antonio Banderas (sigh) as Calvin’s mother and stepfather are an interesting look into Calvin’s psyche; Calvin’s dog Scotty is suitably fuzzy—and make it a believable situation in a believable world. When Calvin tries to alter Ruby’s personality and finds things inevitable screw up, it makes for both humorous and slightly-to-very depressing situations. It’s an interesting idea and it’s been done well. As a bookseller, one of my favourite things about it was that the book covers in the movie were actually great instead of the crap they usually put out in films—mostly, the author’s name IN VERY BIG LETTERS in case you weren’t sure the book they were signing was their own. If these books turned up in my store, I would buy them. Kudos to their art department then, and to their set designers for Calvin’s stepfather’s forest-like house, which is the most divine place you’d ever want to live in armed with lots of bug spray. 

Ruby Sparks is quirky and delightful while avoiding cliché and never straying into comedy for the sake of it. You could do a lot worse than this film next time you’re out and about. I give it four out of five houses with swimming pools.

kath & kimderella

Have you heard of the sandwich way of criticism? It’s when you need to say something bad about someone who you’re trying to encourage, or who you like, or who will roll up their manuscript/screenplay/comic and beat you about the head with it if you are mean. (I am this person.) You sandwich the bad criticism between good criticism. 

Like, for instance, Kath & Kimderella. I enjoyed the first season of Kath & Kim (I bought it on VHS, in case you were curious about how long ago it started). Kath & Kimderella is possibly the worst movie to ever grace the big screen. But Woodley was very funny. 

See? A nice gentle criticism sandwich. 

Kath (Jane Turner) and Kim (Gina Riley) are both angsting about the missing sparkle (or “vajazzle”, as Kath would and does say) in their relationships when plot encouragement occurs for them as Kath wins a competition at her local chemist for a trip to the Spanish outpost of Pampilloma, located in the south of Italy. Upon their arrival they discover that the whole place has gone bankrupt and their hotel has shut down, but after a tour of the local castle the king (Rob Sitch with luscious hair) misinterprets their knockoff label clothes as the real thing, assumes they’re rich and attempts to seduce Kath for her apparent wealth. His son, hiding his features behind a mask, falls for Kim after seeing her with a t-shirt that says PRINCESS on it in sparkles. Hijinks ensue. Sigh. 

The central conceit isn’t really a problem—give me enough jokes and any plot is fine. But crucially, Kath & Kimderella is not funny. It’s not funny when Kath, Kim and Sharon (Magda Szubanski, along for the ride) go outlet shopping and the girls run around sped up like a Benny Hill skit. The same sped-up schtick is also not funny when Kath uses what she thinks is the castle’s gym but is in fact their dungeon (LOL HAHA except that it is actually totally a gym). It’s not funny when Kath and King Javier go for a ride on their Vespa against some green screen so obvious that it could almost be a joke, but just looks bizarrely cheap against the rest of the movie’s actually decent backdrops. It’s not funny when the plot stagnates halfway through, and it’s not funny that all the twists are completely obvious from the moment the characters appear on the screen. 

It’s also confusing when the poor men, left at home to watch telly in their Snuggies, decide to go fight the royals for their women. Kath’s husband Kel (Glenn Robbins) commits an act on an airplane that would surely get him banished from all flights forever, but then turns up mysteriously in Europe five minutes later to save the day. And, even more mysteriously, arrives before Kim’s own husband Brett (Peter Rowsthorn), who was on either the same flight or an earlier one. Uh, spoiler alert. Also, Gina Riley looks amazing and while I certainly can’t rock a midriff top, I’m a bit over the whole “ugh, look at her in an outfit that’s too small lulz” thing. Wear what you want and get over it. 

Oh hey, It wasn’t entirely awful. Kim’s cutting little digs were occasionally funny, and the cinema popcorn was nice, and the bit where the king and Kath address a crowd and Frank Woodley signs for the hearing impaired made me shake with laughter. This hasn’t made me dislike Turner and Riley, whom I admire greatly for making me laugh numerous times over the years, but I really did not enjoy this. Though I did just see a review on IMDb by summerblink that stated “To everyone who didn't find it amusing - there's so much of Australian culture you do understand. If you call yourself an Aussie, you should be ashamed.” And I’m glad people like it, honestly, but here I am in shame, saying I give it 9 out of 86 minutes.

rock of ages

It was my thirtieth birthday last Wednesday, and I was determined to take myself and the kidlet out and do A Thing during the day instead of sitting around incessantly shaking a stuffed robot at her and singing songs about Masterchef contestants. Unfortunately, the only option was the terrible-looking Rock of Ages (I’ve already done 1987 once, and that was enough.) But after a scare where we thought the babes in arms movie option was instead Adam Sandler laugh-an-hour fest That’s My Boy, suddenly it seemed like a perfectly serviceable film, and, thanks to a lovely new mother-type friend who also jumped at the chance to go to the flicks during daytime hours, off we went to see it with our best perms and midriff-baring band t-shirts. (Haha I’m kidding, my stomach looks like I was in the last Freddy Kreuger movie.) 

Peachy blonde bubble of enthusiasm Sherrie (Julianne Hough) arrives in Hollywood from the town of Dreamsquasher USA and within minutes is mugged then saved by mop of curly hair Drew (Diego Boneta), an employee of the famed Bourbon Room who also kindly nabs her a job there. Both are musicians, and the Bourbon Room is a haven for rock music lovers after giving Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise, channelling Axl Rose et al) his big break. But the Room is in trouble, with owner Dennis Dupree (Alec Baldwin, greying) and his cohort Lonny (Russell Brand as the only person who didn’t need a wig) running out of cash and fame. In the meantime, Mayor Whitmore’s wife Patricia (Catherine Zeta-Jones, underused) is on a mission to destroy rock music because sex, Stacee is going through a career crisis, and Drew and Sherrie’s fledging relationship is threatened by Drew’s shot at fame. And all this is conveyed through songs you probably know the words to. 

While the music generally grated on me, it was a pretty entertaining film, relentless in its mashed-up tunes and enthusiastic actors. Tom Cruise is a good choice as Stacee, who is a tool, so you don’t have to force yourself to get behind him. He’s all excess, big-haired groupies and dragon-head codpieces, swanning about in a grotesque manner that will make you squirm and laugh and squirm. The singers are all passable to great, with Sherrie and Drew smiley endearing kids you want to see live happily ever after. The highlight, however, is the surprisingly touching relationship between Dennis and Lonny, two meathead looking dudes harbouring a lot of secret Feelings. The lowlight, though, is the other two hours of the movie. 

Rock of Ages is terrible. They should have just done a live covers concert and be done with it, because the plot is so thin on the ground I’m not sure why they bothered. One or two lines of dialogue are in between each song and are so earnest and ridiculous that you’ll sigh and wish for the next dose of Bon Jovi. There are decade errors like the hipster-style underpants worn by Malin Ackerman’s Rolling Stone journalist Constance Sack, who also suffers from a painful dose of cliché when she turns up in glasses and a hairclip and is only attractive, apparently, after she loses both. Patricia’s plan to demolish rock is never a threat, not even for a moment, and everyone seems to know it, making Zeta-Jones a pointless addition who also has the most redundant song and dance routine in a rendition of Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” that looks like it’s been choreographed by someone who never read the screenplay to see what was going on. (Lucky them.) Sherrie, down and out after leaving the Bourbon Room, stalks angrily out of a job at a diner when someone slaps her on the ass, only to go directly into a waitressing job at a strip club and then be told by boss Justice (Mary J Blige, talented but another unnecessary part) that the only way to get respect is to become a pole dancer. (Obviously pole dancers and everyone in the sex industry deserve respect, but deserving more than a waitress is a bizarre concept and has no relation to the rest of the movie anyway. I was tuning out completely by this point.) I also dislike the way the movie mocks the late-eighties angular-primary-colours pop that was blooming on the radio—anyone who makes fun of another’s musical taste is a jerk. As Stacee Jaxx’s agent, Paul Gill (Paul Giamatti) is such a complete idiot that I assumed he deliberately wanted to be broke and despised. You know what, I actually have a lot of rage for this movie, I think I have to stop before I set my keyboard on fire. 

An adequate movie that you’ll enjoy more if you’re a fan of cock rock. If you’re not, watch it with a sarcastic friend for much more fun. I give it 500 out of 1987 years.

prometheus

One of the cinemas at Hoyts Victoria Gardens has this perfect little oasis called the Crying Room. Maybe nine seats, soundproof walls and glass, tinny sound piped in through speakers, and the opportunity to take any small children you may have to see a film where someone’s helmet is melted onto their face. Yes, I am an amazing mother. 

Prometheus is a prequel of sorts to the Alien franchise, started by Ridley Scott and continued by numerous directors in varying levels of excellence and shambles detouring into the Predator universe. Seemingly deciding there was no way forward to pursue, Ridley jumped back into his unicorn-leather director’s chair and helmed a movie set before it all. Drs Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Holloway (Devil’s Logan Marshall-Green) discover the world’s oldest cave drawings—edgy sketches by the skinny-loinclothed hipsters of 40,000 years ago—and one more piece of a puzzle they’d been collecting. Artworks from diverse cultures and times all had one thing in common: a constellation unable to be seen by the naked eye. Shaw believes she will find her maker in this place, and with a rocket full of shipmates (including a robot, a bureaucrat, some comic relief and a stack of dispensable people you won’t miss when they get splattered), funded by the Weyland Corporation they head off on the two-year journey to this planet. Will they find happiness, peace, and a flowery sunny utopia? Seems likely. 

Prometheus hasn’t been receiving the most favourable of reviews, and I can’t say I adored it either. There weren’t any moments of surprise in the film. Spoiler alert: they don’t find happiness, peace, and a flowery sunny utopia. They find dark caverns and goo and aliens so like sexual organs you won’t be able to do any bonking for days. (The penis-worm with the vagina-mouth is a good example noted by my friend Brett.) People have secret agendas on the mission but the agendas of the aliens themselves are never fully explained. Apparently Mr Scott wanted to leave a lot of loose ends to keep people interested in Prometheus 2: The Flubber Returns, but by the end I just assumed he’d done what I do frequently and interrupted his own story with a tangent and interrupted that and so on until he’d forgotten what he was originally talking about. Don’t worry, Ripley, it happens to the best of us. I don’t get paid tens of million dollars to do it though. While I’m on the whiny paragraph, I was thrown by the ship Prometheus itself: it has technology that far surpasses the 8-bit technology on Alien’s mining ship—I mean, my car has more advanced technology than the Nostromo—so even taking into account the fact that the Nostromo isn’t a luxury vessel it seems likely that anything that can make it into space will have a better font. But that’s not a huge problem—it’s not early-80s-Ridley’s fault that technology became amazing, and the audience would hardly believe shitty tech on a ship when our phones alone have Google Earth on them. I was also annoyed by the characters’ lack of emotions—their expressions when discovering alien lands were about as enthusiastic as when you discover a two-dollar coin in your car when you need to pay for parking. You know, pretty pleased, but nothing you’d talk about when you got home to your spouse. Their motivations were confusing at times, with crew member Millburn (a timid Rafe Spall) freaking out at the sight of a long-dead corpse then suddenly not being concerned about reaching out to the aforementioned penis-worm (and calling it “beautiful”, I mean, ew), and the ship’s captain Janek (Idris Elba) not at all worried about leaving Millburn and tattooed redhead Fifield (an unfriendly Sean Harris) in a corpse-ridden hellhole overnight even when the storm keeping them apart only lasted long enough for an (excellent) action scene. The only character whose emotions seemed right was Weyland’s representative Vickers (Charlize Theron, stony), though I guessed her role on the ship right from the start. Most frustrating of all, a particular character undergoes some dramatic stomach surgery, limps around for a bit, then is suddenly sprinting about and flinging themselves onto ledges. I don’t care how advanced medical surgery is in eighty years...just no. 

On the upside, though, I was never bored, and the effects of the ship and the aliens and space itself were marvellous (and I saw it in 2D, for the record). There are numerous scenes of dramatic tension that had me clutching at arm rests and people’s hands. The stomach surgery I discussed above was so suspenseful that I was almost climbing the soundproof walls to get to the other end of the scene. All the bad reviews in the world weren’t enough to stop me from seeing this, and the many reviews that list what I’ve discussed above, and probably some smarter or more subtle flaws as well (apparently Holloway yells “Noomi!” instead of “Ellie!” during a particularly sandy part of the movie), shouldn’t be enough to stop you either. It’s not terrible, it’s just that the errors were numerous and obvious. Just about anyone who’s seen this will feel compelled to see the sequel to figure out what the hell’s going on—me included—so it can’t be that bad. Go in with low expectations and you might be pleasantly surprised. 

I give it forty out of a hundred jars of black primordial goo.