Reel Entropy

Anarchy behind camera in Chris Evans’ debut

Posted on September 15, 2015 by reelentropy

If you’re thinking to yourself you’ve heard of this plot summary before, you are correct! Richard Linklater made this exact movie in 1995, it’s called Before Sunrise — even the title is ripped off — and it’s a classic that doesn’t make you wonder whether or not there was a single functional camera on the production. Photo courtesy Columbia Pictures.

Captain America has been saying he’s going to leave acting for a little over a year now. Before We Go represents his first directorial effort, but he clearly spent more time on the side of the camera more familiar to him.

Freshman director Chris Evans stars as Nick Vaughan, a jazz trumpet player doodling around Grand Central Station. His night gets knocked for a loop when he runs into Brooke Dalton (Alice Eve), who has missed her train, lost her purse and broken her phone. Despite Dalton being a horrible jerk about it all, the duo wanders New York City for a night, questing for Dalton’s lost purse and Vaughan’s lost love and generally running afoul of every romantic cliche imaginable.

I think I’ve found a nice interpretation of this movie’s problem — they only had a $3 million budget, so they couldn’t afford anyone who had ever operated a camera before. Or they could only afford one camera and the aperture was broken. It was something like that.

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Posted in Entropy | Tagged #alice eve, #aperture, #before midnight, #before sunrise, #before sunset, #before we go, #chris evans, #contempt, #debut, #depth of field, #focus, #grand central station, #new york city, #pixelated, #prada, #richard linklater, #stalker vibes, #uptight bitch, #visual medium, Captain America, Marvel | Leave a comment

Applying Chaos Theory: Krampus looks like Christmas movie we deserve

Posted on September 10, 2015 by reelentropy

The only Christmas-themed movie on the slate this year is Krampus, a horror about the anti-Santa monster of German legend. The trailer dropped a couple of days ago, and this movie looks like everything.

The trailer establishes Krampus as a biting, whimsical satire. There looks to be a strong jump-scare element, but most of the trailer focused on mean-spirited mockery of both the commercialism surrounding Christmas time and the family values we all pretend the season is really about.

Despite it being clear that horror elements will drive the bus here, the trailer maintains a detached, silly tone with its songs, breakneck editing, funny-not-dark family dysfunction and an unusual willingness to let viewers see some of its monsters. Many horror movies won’t give up the ghost until you’re in the theater, but Krampus lets you see the scary clowns and see that they’re not that scary. They’re kind of funny, actually. Look like animatronics out of the ’70s or early ’80s.

What really gives the trailer teeth are its visuals, particularly in the opening 10 seconds. In this space, the trailer establishes not only the setting, but what it thinks of the setting, before zeroing in on the main characters and their house, the actual physical setting. And what does the trailer think of the setting? Not much. In just this montage, we get a little girl bawling with her arms outstretched greedily on the lap of an annoyed mall Santa; a slow motion shot of a credit card sliding, with a red bow on the side of the credit card reader implying that it is the real gift; crumpled up 20 dollar bills; and a savage Black Friday crowd overwhelming a greeter. Later, we’ll see a ginger bread man impaled by a kitchen knife and a burning Christmas tree.

The plot will obviously see the family, in particular the child lead character, re-find its Christmas spirit so the movie can wink at the audience about how it’s all really important and affirming core American values about love and peace and all that other shit, morals so wrote that a plot twist toward them isn’t really a twist at all, but the real wink is these images. “No,” the trailer says, “This isn’t actually OK.”

Krampus hits theaters Dec. 4.

Posted in Applying Chaos Theory | Tagged #christmas, #christmas spirit, #krampus | Leave a comment

The Visit Shyamalan’s masterpiece

Posted on September 9, 2015 by reelentropy

It wouldn’t be surprising to find out the AARP or another such organization is protesting The Visit. It really does make old people look that scary. Photos courtesy Universal Pictures.

After the turn of the century, everyone kind of gave up on M. Night Shyamalan. Though he entered the ’00s on a wave of critical acclaim with Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense, he steadily lost steam with dud after dud until the hotly anticipated Last Airbender broke the spirit of everyone who saw it and ended the public’s patience with the director.

Now, Jason Blum, the man behind the ongoing found footage renaissance, has given him a $5 million soapbox. Shyamalan stood on that soapbox and said nothing, his only communication, a long, throbbing middle finger to everyone, including his new benefactor, and that middle finger is titled The Visit.

The Visit tells the story of Rebecca and Tyler Jamison (Olivia De Jonge and Ed Oxenbould), pre-pubescent siblings who are spending the week with their maternal grandparents, Doris and John Jamison (Deanna Dunagan and Peter McRobbie), whom they have never met because of a falling out they and their mother (Kathryn Hahn) had before they were born. Rebecca brings her cameras along to document the adventure and quickly deputizes her little brother — yeah, it’s found footage. The trip immediately becomes a nightmare when the children discover their hosts are mentally ill, to put it mildly.

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Posted in Entropy | Tagged #9/11, #AARP, #after earth, #blumhouse, #deanna dunagan, #ed oxenbould, #found footage, #fuck you, #inside job, #kathryn hahn, #katy perry, #m. night shyamalan, #middle finger, #olivia de jonge, #peter mcrobbie, #shooting the bird, #the blair witch project, #the last airbender, #the sixth sense, #the visit, #unbreakable, #universal pictures, Jason Blum, Paranormal activity | 1 Comment

Jurassic World rampages through flop-filled summer

Posted on September 7, 2015 by reelentropy

All numbers via boxofficemojo.com are domestic and current as of Labor Day morning. Photos courtesy Universal Pictures.

We’ve written before about how much better Jurassic World did than anything else, and as the summer went on that article became more and more accurate. As of this writing, only two movies — Inside Out with $348.2 million and Minions with $328.6 million domestic — have joined the list of films that made more during their entire run than Jurassic World’s monstrous $208 million opening weekend. That’s the story of this blockbuster season — these movies moved significant amounts of tickets, and nothing else really did.

It’s not hard to see the common thread in this trio — they’re all children’s movies, or at least all thought of as children’s movies, and they were the only children’s movies. The only exceptions are Tomorrowland, which was horribly advertised, and possibly Pixels, which is almost deliberately offensive to the parents who would be paying to see it. Everything else was significantly adult-oriented.

Kid movies have a leg up in pretty much every way imaginable — more advertising outlets through fast food toys and other merchandise, easier minds for said advertising to sway, more money per convert as they typically have to bring their parents along — but it shouldn’t be this big of a problem. Movies should be able to make money without convincing children to beg their parents to take them. The fact that the only successful movies operated on this mechanism — or a bizarre reverse of that, in Jurassic World’s case — indicates that adults in general are simply less interested in going to the movies these days, and that conclusion is backed up by the week-to-week totals.

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Posted in White Noise | Tagged #adam sandler, #agent 47, #Alicia Vikander, #american dad, #american ultra, #amy poehler, #amy schumer, #ant-man, #antoine fuqua, #armie hammer, #arnold schwarzenegger, #bill hader, #blumhouse, #bridesmaids, #channing tatum, #chris pratt, #despicable me, #disney pixar, #dope, #dwayne johnson, #elixabeth debickig, #end of days, #entourage, #family guy, #fant4stic, #Fantastic Four, #forest whitaker, #furious 7, #george clooney, #guy ritchie, #HBO, #henry cavill, #hitman, #hugh grant, #inside out, #insidious 3, #jake gyllenhaal, #james wan, #jason bateman, #jesse Eisengerg, #joel edgerton, #john green, #judd apatow, #jude law, #jurassic world, #kevin james, #kristen stewart, #lebron james, #leigh whannell, #lewis black, #Magic Mike, #Magic Mike XXL, #mark wahlberg, #mindy kaling, #minions, #mission: impossible, #mission: impossible -- rogue nation, #no escape, #NWA, #open road films, #owen Wilson, #paper towns, #paul rudd, #peter dinklage, #phyllis smith, #pierce brosnan, #pirates of the caribbean, #pixels, #poltergesit, #rachel mcadams, #rebecca hall, #san andreas, #seth macfarlane, #sinister 2, #southpaw, #spy, #straight outta compton, #sundance, #Ted 2, #Terminator, #terminator genisys, #the fault in our stars, #the gallows, #the gift, #the heat, #the man from uncle, #tom cruise, #tomorrowland, #trainwreck, #transporter, #war room, #we are your friends, #zac efron, Insidious, Jason Statham, Marvel, Melissa McCarthy, Paul Feig, Rose Byrne | 1 Comment

Applying chaos theory: An introduction to trailer analysis

Posted on September 4, 2015 by reelentropy

We’re going to start reviewing high profile trailers on this site, and I’ll tell you the reason.

It’ll get more clicks. That’s it. That’s the reason.

The reason it won’t be trashy bullshit is because of how far movie trailers have come in the past few years and how important they’ve become to the art form. Movies release so much promotional material now, every bit of it making its own wave via social media if the movie is anticipated enough, that the material has realistically become part of the movie. It shapes expectations, caters directly to the target audience and betrays a lot about the producers’ state of mind. Obviously it’s not OK to say a movie is bad or good without seeing it, but it is OK — necessary, given the amount of work that goes into it — to glean as much as we can based on how distributors are communicating with their audience.

We’re going to go through a few examples of recent trailers, good and bad, and explain why they’re good or bad and what they tell the audience.

***

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Posted in Applying Chaos Theory | Tagged #Batfleck, #david ayer, #fant4stic, #Fantastic Four, #james wan, #josh trank, #man of steel, #paste eating, #secret life of walter mitty, #suicide squad, #the maze runner, #trailers, #zack snyder | 1 Comment

Reel Entropy

Anarchy behind camera in Chris Evans’ debut

Applying Chaos Theory: Krampus looks like Christmas movie we deserve

The Visit Shyamalan’s masterpiece

Jurassic World rampages through flop-filled summer

Applying chaos theory: An introduction to trailer analysis

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