Gif Review: 12 Years a Slave

Full disclosure: Though I've heard excellent things about both, I've never seen Hunger or Shame, director Steve McQueen's pre-12 Years a Slave flicks. They're on my list… but so are a ton of other movies. Like E.T.. All the movies I watch, and I've still somehow hit 29 without seeing E.T.. I know, I know.

What I'm trying to say is that if I had seen Hunger or Shame I probably wouldn't have gone into 12 Years a Slave expecting something Oscar bait-y. On the surface, 12 Years look at a lot like The Butler: Critically acclaimed director. Similar subjects (slavery vs post-slavery racism and the civil rights movement). A cameopalooza of famous actors popping up everywhere.

And I hated The Butler, because it didn't leave me feeling anything except vague irritation at Forest Whitaker's career. A Martin Luther King scene here. An Obama scene there. But put it all together and it's all a bunch of empty platitudes with a feel-good bent to make it palatable for inclusion in the "movies your grandmother who hasn't been to a theater since 2010 will like" category.

But 12 Years a Slave was not that. Oh boy howdy, was it not. "Palatable" is the last word I'd use to describe it. And I mean that in a good way.

12 Years is a brutal movie to watch. It fixes its lens on the horrors of slavery and forces its audience not to look away. There's a scene, for example, when the main character Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free man sold into slavery, gets hanged, but his feet are touching the ground, so he's still being choked but he's not going to die anytime soon. And McQueen stays on that shot for minutes. By the end of it you're like.

This movie lets no one off the hook. In that whole ginormous cast there are only two decent white dudes, and the only one with a major role is Canadian. You hear that, American north? Just because there weren't plantations in you doesn't mean you have a claim to virtue. Slavery wasn't just the South. It was an institution. A national shame. With its equal-opportunity awfulness, 12 Years is basically:

There's a shot of the building where Northrup's being held before getting shipped down South that absolutely punches you in the gut, because we see that he's being held right outside the Capitol building.

Is 12 Years a Slave a subtle movie?

Does it tend a bit toward the torture porn-y at times?

For the most part the tendency toward the simplistically gruesome was saved by wonderful performances. Ejiofor added nuance to the role that wasn't in the script and against all odds kept the occasional hackneyed line of dialogue ("I don't want to survive! I want to live!") from being wince-inducingly corny.

If he doesn't get an Oscar nomination I'm going to riot. Yes, all by myself. I don't care. I will clone myself and then riot.

Michael Fassbender was great as the capital-E Evil slave owner Epps. Benedict Cumberbatch was also good as the lower case-e evil slave owner Ford.

I love what was done with Ford's character, by the way. Yeah, he's a relatively nice dude because he listens to his slaves sometimes gives them presents when they're good. But he's still a slave owner who sees the wrongs around them and goes LALALALALALA because he benefits from the misfortune of others. He'd rather give Northrup to Epps than punish the psychotic overseer who has it in for him. He suspects Northrup's a free man, but he'd rather not think about it. He still sees slaves as property; he just treats his toys better than other people do.

The only time when I really felt the movie fall down was with Brad Pitt's character. Remember how I said the movie's tendency toward unsubtlety was saved by great performances? Yeah, not here. Pitt plays a guy who, basically, shows up for an extended cameo and saves Northrup from slavery. He's the only white guy in the movie who speaks out against slavery, and he does so to Epps' face, straight up telling this evil bastard that he's an evil bastard and he's bad and he should feel bad. I couldn't pinpoint anything specifically bad about Pitt's performance, but it has a distinct air of "Hello, I am hunky Brad Pitt and I am here to save you, Chiwetel Ejiofor."

Other actors, even the ones with a few scenes, generally managed to disappear into their characters. Brad Pitt was just Brad Pitt.

(Also, I'm not saying that Pitt was cast as one of two decent white guys because he was one of the movie's producers. But… well, he was one of the movie's producers. And he played one of the two decent white guys. Make of that what you will.)

But other than that bit of clunkiness, the movie was great. It makes The Butler look like a damn Hallmark card. Final verdict: Four of of five dancing aliens.

Review: Blue Caprice

Director Alexandre Moors doesn't play around. For Blue Caprice, his first feature, he chose a, shall we say, heavy subject: The Beltway sniper attacks of 2002, specifically the relationship between shooters John Allen Muhammad (Isaiah Washington) and Lee Boyd Malvo (Tequan Richmond). In the hands of a lesser director the story of these two men could've come out as an awful, a hackneyed, offensive Lifetime-style movie, or worse.

And yet Moors has crafted a psychological study that's terrifying and engrossing, an analysis of paranoia and power that keeps a steady, unwavering eye on its subjects without going out of its way to condemn them.  After all, their crimes do that enough. Moors focuses on their time together before the shooting spree, Muhammad's megalomania and Malvo's desperate need for a father figure. You're unable to look away as Muhammad trains his young charge in how to be a sniper and as Malvo grows increasingly emotionally dependent on the man with whom he will come to kill ten unarmed civilians.

Blue Caprice is a movie that sticks with you, in large part because of the brilliant acting of Washington and Richmond. Special props go out to Richmond, who plays a largely inscrutable character with barely any lines, and yet he's mesmerizing. And his biggest role to date has been on General Hospital, for Christ's sakes! Someone needs to get this kid away from the soaps. He deserves better roles. Joey Lauren Adams and Tim Blake Nelson also turn in great performances as a couple that serves as Muhammad and Malvo's only real tie to the outside world.

Everything about this movie works perfectly to craft a stunning portrait of insanity. The acting, the cinematography, the structure—we know from the beginning what Muhammad and Malvo will go on to do, but we don't see it until the very end—and especially the music. Like the movie as a whole, it's jarring and offputting, capturing your attention and never failing to put you on edge.

Gif Review: Riddick

In which Rebecca has some things to say and some gifs to post about Riddick's treatment of its sole female character.

Fruitvale Station Will Kick You To The Ground And Make You Cry, And You'll Want To Thank It For Doing So

I had mixed emotions going into Fruitvale Station. It's gotten a lot of buzz—and I mean a lot—since it debuted at Sundance earlier this year, particularly focused on lead actor Michael B. Jordan. I've heard nothing but good things about it. Which concerned me, because what if my expectations are too high? It's not like I've never been disappointed by one of The Weinstein Company's adopted Oscar babies. For example: The King's Speech and Silver Linings Playbook. They're both OK movies, but they're in no way deserving of all the praise they got… the same sort of praise Fruitvale has been getting. What if this movie neither good, nor bad, but average? What if I'd enjoy it more if I mentally talked it down a bit before seeing it?

I needn't have worried. Fruitvale Station is every bit as good as they say it is.

Jordan plays Oscar Grant, a 22-year old man living in the Bay Area with his girlfriend and their young daughter. Oscar's had some trouble with the law in the past, but he's reformed himself. He's nice to strangers, animals, and his elders. His life's not easy, and it would be the simplest thing in the world for him to fall back into old habits, but he doesn't.

We get to know all this over a 24-hour period stretching from New Year's Eve to New Year's Day, 2009. It happens to be the last day of Oscar's life. (That's not a spoiler. The movie informs us of Oscar's fate first thing. Also, it's based on a true story, so it's not exactly a secret.)

The quality of Fruitvale Station creeps up on you, or at least it did on me. I wasn't feeling it at first because of the way it's very, very sure to let you know how great a guy Oscar is, almost to the point of establishing him as some sort of saint. One who used to be not-so-saintly, sure, but that just makes the conversion more admirable. One of the first scenes has Oscar texting his Mom right after midnight on her birthday because he's just that good a son, for goodness' sake. It was a bit heavy-handed.

But when Oscar's fate rushes to its inevitable end like a train to the eponymous Fruitvale Station, you realize that every moral, selfless thing you've seen Oscar do up to this point was absolutely necessary. Without it, the last third of the movie would not be the emotional gut-punch that it is. It's not just sad. It's gutting, which must've been a tough clhallenge for writer/director Ryan Coogler to pull off when the audience already knows exactly what's coming. I had to sit and stare at the screen during the credits just to give myself enough time to emotionally recover. It's a brilliantly made masterpiece of a movie, but boy it is rough.

Jordan's performance is also every bit as good as you might have heard it is. The movie skirts along the edge of over-the-top at times, but his nuanced performance never does. He keeps the movie grounded, just as his terror near the end is what really takes your heart, squeezes it in a medieval torture device, and hurls it over a cliff.

And since Fruitvale Station is based on a true story, let's add "putting your heart in a blender and pushing puree" to that list.

Is Fruitvale Station a subtle movie? Absolutely not. But the subject it tackles isn't a subtle one, and when it comes to police perpetuating violence against citizens based on their race… well, we don't exactly live in subtle times. Every single scene, every line, every shot Coogler put in the film heightens its emotion and hammers home its message, and it's a message that, particularly now, is worth hearing.

I've been known to stand up on a soapbox and yell about how much I dislike blatantly emotionally manipulative movies (*cough*GraveoftheFireflies*cough*), and maybe if I ever get up the nerve to watch Fruitvale Station again I won't like it so much. Something tells me I will, though. Because it doesn't use emotional manipulation as a crutch. It's 85 minutes of tightly paced, perfectly constructed emotional torment. It's only after you've sat through every horrible, brilliant second of it that you truly realize how good what you watched just is.

Review: The Lost Potential of World War Z

Let me start by saying that Max Brooks' World War Z is one of my favorite books I've read in the last ten years. As such, when it comes to watching a film that's very honest about making changes from its source material, I was biased from the start. Hell, I'm still biased. I admit that. All the same, I tried to go into World War Z with an open mind. After all, though it may not be good (as in accurate) as an adaptation of Brooks' book, it could still be good as a movie. And that's what important. People complaining that "Waaaah, you changed [some tiny thing]" always gets on my nerves. A movie has to work as itself, and every individual element has to be in service of that, not the book/comic book/whatever.

So attending a screening of World War Z started with me tamping down my inner hypocrite. And then, near the end, saying "screw it" and letting my inner hypocrite fly from my mouth like a shrieking (but silently, because movie theater), movie-obsessed banshee. Because World War Z? Is just bad.

Gif Review: Much Ado About Nothing

My gif collection is way, way larger than it by all rights should be. And so, to give some purpose to the hours I've spent building and organizing that collection (don't look at me), here's my review of Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing… in gifs.

Review: Meh of Steel

I didn't expect greatness from Man of Steel. I generally go into summer blockbusters hoping for a good, entertaining movie that will hold my interest and not bug me too much. Hell, Fast & Furious 6 has been one of my favorite movies so far this summer. I don't require The Dark Knight-level quality. I think my expectations are pretty reasonable.

Unfortunately, Man of Steel failed to meet them.

Now You See Me Review: All Flash, No Substance

Early on in Now You See Me Daniel Atlas, a smug, jerk-ish magician played by Jesse Eisenberg, tells the viewers "The closer you look, the less you see." I would modify that line and apply it to the whole movie: "You can look as closely as you want, there's just not much there."

Now You See Me is an entertaining movie filled with good actors and characters that are interesting, if a bit flat. You don't really get to know any of them all that well. Even the ones whom you supposedly get insight into over the course of the film—Mark Ruffalo's detective, Mélanie Laurent's INTERPOL agent, Morgan Freeman's professional magician debunker—still feel slick and shiny by the end of the film. You may at some point feel like you've gotten into the character's head, and the movie's many twists and turns tell you things about certain characters that invite reinterpretation of their motives and personalities, but like the magician's mirror-in-a-box that pops up several times throughout the course of the movie, what you're seeing is only what you're being told. There's no more to it that than.

The same is true of the film's plot, which starts down one path only to wing off in a different direction, offering no explanation of or follow-up to the subject of its previous attentions. It's quite admirable, in a way: The film's about magicians, who are most successful when they distract their audience by something shiny while they go off and do the real magic behind the scenes, as is pointed out in the movie several times. And that's exactly what the movie's doing. It's form meets content.

But, just as magic shows are ultimately empty of actual magic, so too Now You See Me is empty of depth. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Hell, I loved Fast & Furious 6. I don't need all my movies to be thought-provoking. And if one or two major elements of Now You See Me don't make any sense when you really stop and think about them, well, that a plane would continue to try and take off when it has three cars dangling from it is pretty stupid, too.

It bugs me with Now You See Me, though, probably because its cast—in addition to Ruffalo, Eisenberg, Freeman, and Laurent, there's Woody Harrelson, Michael Caine, Dave Franco (who was great in 21 Jump Street) and Isla Fisher (whose character brought an insane amount of charisma, good looks, and… well, that's about it. But that level of depth is held by most of the characters. Eisenberg: Cocky and an asshole. Laurent: Sorta spiritual, love interest… French. Et cetera.) Director Louis Leterrier brought all these wonderful people together and gave us nothing better than a run-of-the-mill crime thriller.

Maybe that I got so little out of the movie is my fault. Maybe if I watched it again, without expecting so much, I'd appreciate it more.

And yet. I don't think I'll be giving this one another two hours of my life.

4 Reasons Fast & Furious 6 Is Better Than Star Trek Into Darkness

I write this as an inveterate nerd who on the whole actually really liked Star Trek Into Darkness.

But Fast & Furious 6 is better. Much better. I know, I know. But hear me out.

1) With Fast & Furious 6, what you see is what you get. I'm not going to try to convince you to see it if you have no interest in popcorn-y action movies. The trailer makes the movie look ridiculous for the pure and simple reason that it is. There's a character who used to work for the good guys but now works for the bad guys because she bumped her head and lost her memory. The climax of the movie features cars dangling from a plane, for Chrissakes.

But it works. The movie promises fun, car chases, and explosions, and that's what it delivers. Then look at Star Trek Into Darkness, which—at least in the marketing—highlighted as a major draw of the movie Benedict Cumberbatch's villain. He's such an interesting character, we heard time and again. (A super-smart terrorist who uses overly elaborate plans to stay one step ahead of the good guys? How many times have we seen that in the last year alone?) There's a big twist relating to his true identity! And, yeah, rebooting one of the franchise's most iconic villains is a big deal. It's important. It's epic. It's exciting.

But the way it was handled in the movie was just kind of... blah. He wasn't a bad villain. But the great parts of Star Trek Into Darkness, for me, were the parts that explored Kirk and Spock's character development, and for all that Khan was presented in the marketing and the movie as OMG The Scariest Villain Starfleet Has Ever Faced This Is So Epic and Alarming, I didn't buy it. The part of the movie I enjoyed the best was the third act, after Khan had been defeated (but before he died) and all the changes that had happened to Our Heroes over the past hour-ish finally came to a head.

Star Trek Into Darkness brought a pound of the highest-quality ground beef, and all they could give us in return was a serviceable cheeseburger. But with Fast & Furious 6 we wanted a nice, juicy cheeseburger (emphasis on the cheese), and that's what the writers gave us.

2) Related to point one, all of the elements of Fast & Furious 6 mesh together really well, while with Star Trek Into Darkness... not so much. It's a movie about car chases, but it's also a heist movie, a movie wherein people beat the shit out of each other (former MMA champ Gina Carano is in it, of course it is), and a movie about the power of family. That last one serves as the emotional core of the movie, but aside from popping up in a few scenes it generally keept itself belowground. This is a Fast & Furious movie, after all. People don't pay the ticket price to see drama and romance. There is a romantic element, but the lady in question is Michelle Rodriguez, so you can be sure its sappiness level (close to zero) fits the movie as a whole.

Likewise, the heist element drives the plot along, but at the climax it turns out that—surprise!—the villains' plot means the good guys and bad guys alike will have to engage in a high-speed tank/motorcycle/car chase both on a highway and on an improbably long runway. Is it ridiculous? Fuck yeah. But it works in the context of the movie. I never batted an eye.

There were elements of Star Trek Into Darkness that I didn't like (see: KHAAAAN!), and there were parts that I did (SPOOOOOOCK!), and while the latter outweighs the former I still don't feel that they worked well together. I just wanted to watch Spock and Kirk be conflicted and Scotty be competent and Uhura be better than anyone and Khan and Admiral Marcus kept waving their hands in my faces going "Look at meeeeee! Look how cool I am!!!"

3) Speaking of Khan, I'm not going to get into the whole whitewashing issue—Zoe did that better than I could in her review on The Mary Sue—but I do want to talk about diversity in general, because Fast & Furious 6 has it. There are six or so main good guys, and most of them aren't white. It's not presented as a big deal, it's just that they're part of an international heist team with members that originally come from all over the world so, y'know. Not all white dudes.

You can make the argument that there's some stereotyping involved, particularly with the character played by Tyrese Gibson. This movie is not some great statement on race relations or tolerance or anything like that. But at least number of non-white actors in the main cast isn't a grand total of two.

4) Fast and Furious 6 has kickass, sexy ladies who actually do things. As with the diversity issue, Fast & Furious 6 isn't some progressive portrayal of gender. Quite often women, particularly extras (looking at you, pre-car race party scene) are presented as eye candy. But it's better than Star Trek Into Dakrness, not least because Fast & Furious 6 just has more female characters. (You'd think that a franchise that celebrates diversity would have more than just Uhura and Carol, but hey, what do I know?)

More than just being an issues of numbers, though, the women in Fast & Furious 6 take control of their own plotlines. Hell, even when Giselle (Gal Gadot) and Riley (Carano) use their ~feminine wiles~ to get information on the baddies out of a car mechanic, they're the ones who chose to do that. Is the whole "har har, women use sex to get things and men think with their dicks" thing dumb? Yes. But it's an action movie.

The female characters also also actively engaged in the plot at a level that Carol and Uhura in Star Trek Into Darkness really aren't. Giselle, Riley, and Letty (Rodriguez) get into fights, they shoot guns, they race cars. Everything the men do, pretty much. (There's a fun scene where Riley and Letty are kicking each others' asses at the same time two of the male protagonists are getting theirs thoroughly beat by a lone baddie.) Carol Marcus is introduced as an advanced weapons whiz and then stands around for most of the movie, never really getting to show off her intellectual chops (her underwear is another matter). And Uhura, who's always been excellent, got the raw end of the stick; in a movie filled with character development for its protagonist, for most of the movie her role was that of "Spock's girlfriend." She got a chance to shine on the Klingon home world, but unless I'm forgetting something all the other substantial screen time she got was Spock-related.

Conclusion: If you're in the mood for something fun, exciting, and summer Hollywood blockbuster-y, I'd recommend Fast & Furious 6 over a repeat viewing of Star Trek Into Darkness. You don't even need to see any of the previous movies (even though Fast Five, the only other one I've seen, was good. The Rock says "funderwear"). Go on, give it a chance.

(Thanks to @HumbugJones, who commented "I liked it more than Star Trek" and set my mind a'runnin'.)