Bel Canto

Bel Canto (2018)

Starring Julianne Moore, Ken Watanabe, Sebastian Koch, Ryo Kase, and Tenoch Huerta

Directed by Paul Weitz

Written by Paul Weitz and Anthony Weintraub

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  D

Movie Review - Godzilla

Godzilla (2014)

Starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olson, Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, and Juliette Binoche

Directed by Gareth Edwards

Perhaps being my most eagerly anticipated film of the summer (which looks incredibly weak overall movie-wise) did Godzilla in, but I found this reinvention of the classic Japanese monster movie a pretty big disappointment.  Part of me respects the fact that director Gareth Edwards and screenwriter Max Borenstein were ballsy enough to keep the title figure off the screen for all but (seemingly) ten minutes of the film, but the other part of me can't help but think they squandered away their money shots with the creature.

However, let's just say that I'm fine with Godzilla not being the film's focal point.  That notion would be totally true if the film's centerpiece -- the humans who are facing an epic battle between Godzilla and to Mothra-esque creatures -- had any modicum of interesting storyline to latch onto.  There's actually been much talk about Aaron Taylor-Johnson (whose US solider character is the lead) and his inability to emote properly, but I found that the script didn't give him a damn thing to do.  For a film that follows this guy around and tries to make us connect with him by giving him a plotline about returning home to his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) after visiting his crazy father (Bryan Cranston) in Japan, Taylor-Johnson is in this movie solely to react to the CGI-ness of the monsters rampaging around him.  Without being the impetus of a single plot point, I found myself detached too much from his character and the story.

In the film's opening act, we are given a bit of background which admittedly does a decent job about setting up how Godzilla and these two gigantic winged creatures he fights manifested themselves thanks to radiation in the 1950s.  This is essentially where the rest of the film's cast -- Cranston, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, and Juliette Binoche -- come into play.  Watanabe and Hawkins are here simply to elucidate the scientific goings-on, Binoche is essentially a walk-on cameo, and Cranston -- well, I'm warning you that I'm about to say something that Breaking Bad fans (myself being one of them) may find utterly sacrilegious -- overacts to a point of oddness.  Cranston's character is the first major player we meet in the film and at first, I actually thought Cranston was paying homage to the 1960s Godzilla films of yore.  However, as the film progressed, I realized that no one else was playing up the "corny factor" and that Cranston was just doing some schticky overly dramatic thing on his own accord.

If the fact that I've not talked about Godzilla much in this review seems a little odd that's because, as I already mentioned, Godzilla isn't in the flick all that much.  Once again, for me, this would've been a perfectly acceptable conceit had the humans in this story been given any type of emotional arc I could've looked to for some meatiness in terms of plot.  With that not being given to me, Godzilla ends up falling flat.

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - Batman Begins

Batman Begins (2005)

Starring Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Katie Holmes, Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman, Ken Watanabe, Rutger Hauer, and Tom Wilkinson

Directed by Christopher Nolan

I must admit that I watched this back in mid-August.  I had planned on a one-two-three punch of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, but that never came to fruition.  That said, with The Dark Knight Rises just arriving in the mail today, I figured I might as well briefly discuss my thoughts on this first flick in the series.

I didn't remember being a huge fan of this when it first came out in 2005 and this subsequent viewing in 2012 didn't really change my mind.  Origin tales always border on tedious for me and this proves no exception.  While I didn't mind learning the story of Bruce Wayne as a kid, once he gets older (and turns into Christian Bale) and travels to Asia to strengthen both his body and his mind, I lost interest.  As Bruce returns to Gotham, the film picks up a bit, but by the end, I found the climax to be much too lengthy.

It certainly doesn't help that Liam Neeson's Henri Ducard/Ra's al Ghul isn't a great villain, and while Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow is more menacing, I felt he wasn't exactly placed into the spotlight his character probably should have been.  Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Gary Oldman are all quite strong in their roles providing nice characters for Bale's Bruce Wayne to play off of in their respective scenes together.  Katie Holmes is fine as well (although Maggie Gyllenhaal breathes a little more life into the same romantic love interest character in the second film).

As for Christian Bale, I'm not quite sure where I stand on him.  While I respect the choices of the deep voice and stoic emotionless demeanor while in the persona of Batman, it does make the character a bit one-note.  He certainly plays Wayne as a smart (though smarmy at times) playboy which allows for a bit more fun to be injected into things, but when behind the mask, he's almost bland.

While I'm mainly listing qualms with the film, I do think Batman Begins is a pretty solid comic book adaptation and certainly one of the better flicks of the genre over the past twenty years.

The RyMickey Rating:  B-

Movie Review - Inception

Inception (2010)

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, and Marion Cotillard

Directed by Christopher Nolan

There are major spoilers ahead here...This isn't so much a review as a discussion of my thoughts a day after watching the film...If you haven't seen the film yet and don't want some key plot points to be ruined, don't read any further.

In the end, some magnificent "parts" of Christopher Nolan's newest film, Inception, don't quite add up to a fantastic "whole."  Now, fair warning -- I'm going to be overly critical here.  A creative film like this wants me to question it...so I'm going to do so.  But, as you'll notice by my rating at the end, I enjoyed myself thoroughly while watching it.  I simply wish it was something I could have loved.

This movie is about Leonardo Dicaprio's character Cobb.  It's about his need to be forgiven for what he considers to be the "crime" of causing his wife's (Marion Cotillard) death.  Being absolved of this sin will allow him to not only return to his children, but also to return to a more peaceful existence with himself.  If this is the main point (which, to me, there can be no argument that it isn't), why does it fall to the wayside for so much of this film's 150 minutes?

The final hour-long act of the film -- the dream within a dream within a dream within a dream where the key players are attempting to complete the inception in Fischer's (Cillian Murphy) mind -- hardly focuses on Cobb's emotional part of the story at all.  Not until we reach the "limbo" stage does Cobb really come into play.  Granted, this whole segment of the film was really amazing -- I truly enjoyed all of the levels within the dreams and that hotel scene is just a gigantic WOW -- but it's really just a huge McGuffin (sort of).  I can't help but think something could have been trimmed here or there (or something even added, if necessary) to bring the focus back to Cobb.  Yes, there were the occasional images of his children, but a larger emphasis on Cobb would have been much more powerful in terms of character development.

Speaking of character development, where was it?  Beyond Cobb, there's nothing.  I guess that could be because "this is all a dream" (an idea which I'll touch upon in a bit) and in dreams, character development is nonexistent, but that seems like a cop-out.  So, if the film's not a dream, that makes it real -- well, "real" in terms of the fact that we're watching a film.  And if this is a film, I'd like to know something about these people I'm watching.  Unfortunately, I know nothing beyond the fact that the girl from Juno is the Architect, the guy from (500) Days of Summer is Cobb's right-hand man, and the guy from Bronson (yes, I know you've never heard of it, but you should watch it anyway) is like some fancy X-Man that can change his form.  Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Tom Hardy are all very good, but they're not really given anything to do beyond what their job requires.  It's like a much more intelligent Oceans 11 film in that sense.

So is the whole thing a dream?  Is the reason that I don't know anything beyond the outer surface of these characters because I'm watching Cobb's dream?  I can't buy that (even if in the director commentary Christopher Nolan tells me that is the case).  For starters, if this is all a dream, how the heck is the story so linear?  Yes, I may have some dreams that follow a general storyline, but for the most part, the restraints are gone when one dreams and logic bears no importance.  Yes, I may be dreaming about work and it may seem perfectly straightforward, but I could change my thoughts within seconds and be some place completely different.  That never really happens here.  Yes, I'm sure there are things that point to this being a dream, but if that's the case, I'd be utterly disappointed simply because things are much to logical here for that to be the case.

Plus, it seems obvious to me that at the end of the film Cobb's spinning top is beginning to wobble.  When a top begins to slow down, the change in aural tone that it begins to make is blatant -- and it does that during the final scene (plus, it starts to wobble).  Yes, one could certainly make the statement that the top was never Cobb's token, but instead was Mal's, so it was never his "way back"to reality.  While that's certainly true, I always felt that the top was his connection to her and since she was so connected to the top, he, in turn, can be taken out of the dreamscape by the top as well.

Okay...enough rambling.  Let's get to a tiny bit of general thoughts here.  Inception was a treat to watch, without a doubt.  The more I sit and think about it, the more I appreciate it.  It's not a perfect film, but it's a more than admirable effort (I still say that its biggest fault is that first point I make above in that the emotional connection for Cobb's character is pushed to the sidelines for too long in the final act).  Nolan (a director and writer who I appreciate, but don't find myself fawning over) once again proves that he's a smart guy with an eye for some special set pieces.  The rotating hotel scene which was shown in the previews really blew me away.  Even though I knew it was coming, I was amazed while watching it.

Additionally, kudos to Nolan for making what could have been a convoluted mess of a film perfectly coherent.  Before going into this, I heard so much about how you "really have to pay attention," but I found the film to be easily comprehensible.  Little asides that in some movies may have made the viewer feel stupid (or made the viewer feel that the filmmaker thought they were stupid) proved to be quite natural and justified in their existence.  (This was actually a very impressive aspect of the film...and the whole point of Ellen Page's character.  Her Architect was "us," the audience, and since she was an intelligent character, whenever she asked for an explanation or elucidated on a certain topic, it was never done in a manner that talked down to the viewer.)

Still, the problem with the lack of character development is that Nolan doesn't allow any of his actors to shine.  None of the actors are problematic or detrimental to the film in any way, but they're not allowed to really add anything to the final product either.  Leo and Ellen and Marion and Joseph and Tom are all fine, but never given much to work with.

Yes, yes, this "review" was perhaps overly negative, but I enjoyed Inception and the more I think about it and the more I discuss it with others, the more I appreciate the film.  Do I wish it was a little better?  Absolutely.  A little trimming of the Fischer dream storyline could've done wonders to the film as a whole.  A bit more character development for anyone beyond Cobb would've been wonderful.

Still, Inception is no nightmare...it's just not the fantastical dream of a film that others say it is.

The RyMickey Rating:  B+