Madding crowd here referring to those Marvel maniacs this released against

Posted on May 20, 2015 by reelentropy

This movie could just as well be about how stupid sheep are. Photos courtesy Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Far from the Madding Crowd is one of those movies that makes me uncomfortable being born a man. I just want them to stop hitting on her. It’s a “Leave Bathsheba alone! Leave her alone!” type situation.

The movie follows Bathsheba Everdene (the scintillating Carey Mulligan) as she is proposed to by every man that lays eyes on her. She first meets Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), an affluent shepherd. While Everdene worked for him when he first proposed, he works for her most of the movie after she inherits a farm from her uncle and he loses his flock to an inexperienced sheep dog who, in a distressing scene, drives the whole lot over a cliff. She is then proposed to by her neighbor, William Boldwood (Michael Sheen), who becomes obsessed with her after getting a cheeky Valentine’s card. Finally, while making the rounds on her farm, she locks eyes with the wandering Sergeant Frank Troy (Tom Sturridge), and a slow look of “oh shit” crawls over her face as she realizes yet another suitor has latched onto her.

Far from the Madding Crowd is a remarkably calm movie. Even in scenes with a literal fire or where an entire flock of sheep kills themselves, the camera stays still, and the only music is period-setting violins. It’s an unexpressive film. The point seems to be to create that late 1800s English countryside atmosphere the book was about, and it’s nice, but it’s much easier to do with a movie than with a book and movies are capable of much more in general.

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A cappella is the worst

Posted on May 19, 2015 by reelentropy

Despite a cappella being a blight — a pestilence! — upon mankind, there’s a lot to enjoy about the Pitch Perfect movies between dance numbers. Announcers John and Gail (John Micheal Higgins and Elizabeth Banks) are the best in so many ways. Photos courtesy Universal Pictures.

Any time “regionals” is a key word in a story’s plot, that’s a bad sign.

It’s what sunk the first montage-tastic Pitch Perfect, and even though they replace it with “worlds,” the same mechanic applies in the sequel. Due to a wardrobe malfunction in the first scene, Beca Mitchell (Anna Kendrick) and the gang are disqualified from regionals, and nationals for that matter, as the a cappella competition board suspends them from all activity. However, as the reigning national champions, they cannot be suspended from worlds. The board agrees to reinstate them if they win the competition, which no American group has ever won.

On the side, Mitchell interns at a record producing company under an oddly unnamed boss (Keegan-Michael Key), Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) and Bumper Allen (Adam DeVine) do it on the down low*, and the Bellas adjust to their one new member, Emily Junk-Hardon (Hailee Steinfeld).

The first thing that sticks out is the movie’s subplots — they are many and they are frail. The conflicts are almost all internal struggles to do things viewers know the characters can do — be creative, learn to love and sing good. They’re dull and boring and they clog the plot.

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Fury Road may be the best action movie ever made

Posted on May 15, 2015 by reelentropy

I’ve always thought Tom Hardy was overrated, and I still do, but he shows off why people get excited about him here with a snarling, desperate performance stepping into the shoes of action legend Mel Gibson. Photos courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

People are calling Mad Max: Fury Road the best action movie of the year, and that’s a little short-sighted. We probably ought to be thinking about it as the best action movie of the decade, or century so far.

This sounds like hyperbole, but it isn’t. Watch it, then think about anything that’s come out in the past 20-30 years and ask yourself if it compares to this. The answer has to be no.

The movie follows Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), a wanderer of the post-apocalyptic desert. In the film’s first scene, he’s captured by warboys, raiding servants of local warlord Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) to be harvested for blood for dying raiders, specifically Nux (Nicholas Hoult). Joe’s general, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), leaves soon after to trade with other local settlements for gas and bullets, but she betrays Joe, stowing away five of his sex slaves and making a break for the green place she herself was taken from as a child. Nux and the rest of the raiders who were left behind ride out to take her back with Rockatansky still attached, thrusting him into the conflict.

Saying the action in this movie is like nothing ever filmed before is a bit of an understatement. The film features three 10-minute long keynote chase scenes and one high-octane three way fistfight between Rockatansky, Furiosa and Nux. It’s got all the signatures that have made the original Mad Max movies last — that fast-forwarded, scurrying feel, the plot-driven scarcity of bullets and explosions forcing characters to do things the old-fashioned way, the terrifying, endless car chases.

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We need to talk about Pitch Perfect’s rape joke problem

Posted on May 14, 2015 by reelentropy

UPDATE: It’s still not funny, but the movie fleshed out an under-the-table relationship between the Amy and Allen that explains the interaction and turns it into something that doesn’t dump all over the idea of consent.

Photo courtesy Universal Pictures

Rape jokes can be funny sometimes. It takes a very talented comedic mind and general care that the joke doesn’t become a part of rape culture by making sexual assault seem like a normal, acceptable thing.

Good example — George Carlin. Dead for seven years and still the master of modern comedy, Carlin’s bit about rape highlights and ridicules victim-blaming and the general conception of how rapes happen as part of a larger piece about how words shape thoughts.

Bad example — Daniel Tosh. Tosh has always been pond scum but not quite as funny, and this joke revolves around how little he cares that his own sister is raped.

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Water Diviner competent, may deny genocide

Posted on May 11, 2015 by reelentropy

If there’s two things he loves, it’s well digging / and! / well-digging ’round the world. Photo courtesy Warner Bros.

If there’s two things he loves, it’s directing / and! / directing ’round the world…

Russell Crowe stars in what is also his directoral debut, The Water Diviner. Crowe plays Joshua Connor, an Australian well-digger who’s ability to sense groundwater is, well, divine. It’s implied that his ability is literally magical. Connor’s three sons, Arthur (Ryan Corr), Edward (James Fraser) and Henry (Ben O’Toole) were killed in the Battle of Gallipoli in World War I five years earlier. His wife, Eliza (Jacqueline McKenzie), mad with grief, drowns herself at the film’s start. With nothing left for him in Australia, Connor journeys to Turkey to find his sons’ remains and bring them home.

The film is nondescript. Not quite boring, but it doesn’t hold attention the way a movie really ought. It’s all competent and even makes it easy to feel for an atheist character who’s motivation is to make sure his family is buried in holy ground. Few people care about corpses until they have corpses they care about, and The Water Diviner helps the audience have that transformation alongside its main character.

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