Movie Review - Oblivion (2013)

I recently saw the latest Tom Cruise action movie vehicle Oblivion in theaters.  It had to have been made in direct competition with Will Smith's After Earth for no other reason than to piss in his face, because Will Smith's movie came to my eye well before Oblivion ever did.  It was a well-done rush marketing job, that made me wonder how the ad firm saddled with selling this film got it moving so fast.  Marketing questions aside, I have noticed something about Tom Cruise: not the fact that he's had his wives picked out for him by his religion (because arranged marriages are as old as human civilization), or how Hollywood goes to the absurd lengths to tell us he's a great actor (despite only having four or five acting settings, of which "determined" is his best and makes him the most money).  Tom Cruise has recently played characters with the same name: JACK.

Mr. Cruise started playing Jack in Ridley Scott's Legend back in 1986, and it was the movie that inspired the Legend of Zelda (according to Shigeru Miyamoto). He played the titular character in Jack Reacher, and (although a stretch) played Stacee Jaxx in the film musical Rock of Ages.  Many of his characters are so close in temperament and behavior that they might as well be called JACK also.  I expect there to be a day when Mr. Cruise reveals to us all that his real name is not Tom but JACK.  With that out of the way, we can talk about our latest Jack, living above the ruins of old Earth--completely transformed and nearly empty of humans.

Mile High Club Headquarters? Possibly.

The humans of the future have fled to Saturn's moon Titan to escape the destruction wrought upon Earth by an invading alien race 60 years earlier--the Scavs.  Many Scavs still roam the surface of Earth, and attempt to strike out at large reactors built to convert sea water into fusion energy.  Most of thee facilities are guarded by drones, the spherical four-eyed white robots that fly about the skies.  These devices are programmed to shoot Scavs.  Sometimes they go bad and crash, and that's where Technician 49 (Cruise) comes in.  His name is Jack Harper, and he's been having strange dreams--of old Earth, of New York City, and a woman whom he feels a strong connection to...but has never met.  It brings him to start remembering things, which his "partner" Victoria Olsen (Andrea Riseborough) strongly discourages due to company regulations and a mandatory memory wipe for security purposes.  A red flag should pop up here, but for the grace of suspension of disbelief we soldier on with the story.

Julia (l) and Jack (r) realize they got to the observation deck
of the Empire State Building by stepping down off the ground. 
That is on the 86th floor, so that should give you a clue to
how screwed up the Earth is.

Not soon after a craft crashes into Zone 49, which is Jack's territory.  He feels the need to go in despite warnings from Victoria.  He proceeds in to find life pods scattered about the crash site.  All of them contain humans from an astronaut mission, and one of them contains the woman who has been haunting Jack's dreams of late: cosmonaut Julia Rusakova (Olga Kurylenko).  Eventually, Julia asks to have the black box recorder returned from her ship's landing site and Jack obliges.  Unfortunately, the Scavs are watching the landing site and capture both Jack and Julia.  A revelation hits them both once they meet the true faces of their captors: humanity is apparently fighting itself, and soldiers of "La Resistance" (aka the "Scavs") are led by Morgan Freeman.  And that's not the wildest part.

"Dammit, now where did I put that app?"

Oblivion is an amazing movie to watch.  It's got amazing design work from its sterile white house, to the geometric stylings of machinery (Jack's ship and collapsible dirt bike are a marvel, and don't get me started on those beautiful drones).  Much of the soundtrack is performed by my new favorite band M83, recalling the funk that is their smash hit "Midnight City".  Both of these combined remind me of the visual masterpiece that is TRON:Legacy, which is funny because Joseph Kosinski directed that film as well as Oblivion.  But there is a huge problem in the film (not counting the fact that Andrea Riseborough's irises never contract, which makes her look like a robot) with the twist at the end of Act II and the movie's denoument.

<<---NOTE: RAMBLING AND SPOILERS AHOY--->>

Movie Review - Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)

I saw a photo in an issue of EMPIRE Magazine several years ago, and it made me wonder: is Gemma Arterton the next Kate Beckinsale?  I sincerely hoped so.  She has a nice face and that deadpan British accent that makes almost anything she says sexy as hell. The photo also helped, as she was clad in tight butt-hugging leathers and holding a crossbow, standing next to some guy (later I found out he was Jeremy Renner, star of The Avengers, The Town and The Bourne Legacy).  The photo was for a movie and it looked like an adventure in the same vein as Van Helsing--the type of movie set in Industrial period clothing but containing anachronisms, like sniper rifles with night-vision scopes or incendiary grenades.  It looked like it might be steampunk, so I checked the name:  HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS.

That already sounded nuts, so I was waiting for a while to see this one.  It was a similar situation when I was waiting for the American release of Solomon Kane: fucking unbearable.  Eventually I got to watch this movie, and I did it in IMAX 3D! So how was it, you ask?  It seems that too much anachronism can spoil what would otherwise be a good fantasy yarn.

"I noticed the script says you're a diabetic, Jeremy.
Are you alright with that?" "No...but says here you
headbutt a grown man with no blood on your forehead
or bruising. You're as pale as a sheet Gemma; how is that--"
"SOUNDS LEGIT; let's do it!"

To start us off, this movie is a VERY loose adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale about two kids who find a candy house, are captured by the cannibal witch who lives inside, and kill her in their attempt to escape.  Now these two kids have grown up to be Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and forward-thinking Gretel (Gemma Arterton), bounty-hunting the very supernatural creatures that mentally scarred them: witches.  They have come across several gadgets in their quest to rid the world of witches, like Mossberg pump-action shotguns, Tasers, split-level axial transforming perpendicular crossbows (you have to see it to believe it), folding rifles, carousel-loaded hand cannons, and what may be a Gatling or Maxim gun.  The most interesting part of the movie comes with Hansel and his "sugar sickness." It seems when the witch was trying to fatten Hansel up to eat him, she made him eat nothing but candy which made him sick.  Now in his adult life Hansel must take an injection of serum every few hours or he dies.  This makes Jeremy Renner's Hansel a diabetic hero (the first being Captain Novolin).  It's a good thing to have a weakness for a hero that seems somewhat invincible in the film.  Our heroine Gretel is not limited to such problems, and can fight without any real injury or hindrance.

Tenacious D says "THAT'S CALLED TEAM-WORK!"

Hansel and Gretel (whose makeup never smears, not even the blood) earn the enmity of a witch named...Muriel (played by Famke Janssen of X-Men fame) who wants to save her kind from these traveling murderers by sacrificing 12 souls during the Blood Moon--one for each month--and also needs the heart of a great White Witch to complete the ritual that grants any witch that drinks the brew created from the blood of the sacrifices to become immune to fire permanently.  A witch's enemies can tie her to the stake but she will not burn...totally worth the convoluted plan that can only happen once a year, I say.  Throw in some forgettable characters/love interests and discarded plot threads and you have an action movie for the summer...strangely placed in January.

Cool guys (and girls) don't look at explosions as they
walk away from them. Especially if they caused them.

I don't know what the goal of Dead Snow director Tommy Wirkola was when he set out to make this movie, but it would seem he needed to hire a different editor.  If he requested this cut, then he needs to fix it.  The editing was all over the place, and clipped several establishing shots to shorten the running time.  There were some problems, notably in the final battle sequence when Hansel drops his shotgun, Gretel comes in with a weapon and she is struck and drops it.  The next shot is of Hansel's shotgun hitting the ground.  The way that's ordered it looks like Gretel had Hansel's shotgun.  This confused me, but not nearly as much as allowing an untrained person to handle a rapid fire machine gun in a crowd setting.  It's a damned good way to get shot and give the witches what they want, but apparently not in this world.  In any case, I expect a Director's Cut of this film, with all the stuff that should have gone in to fill in any problem issues.  Other than that, a film that had great props and artwork but still needs a shine and polish to be complete.

RATING: 6/10

A CONUNDRUM: HOW TO RELAX

This is my first post in 2013, and it's a doozy.  I couldn't sleep tonight because I find myself in a interesting conundrum: the idea of relaxation, how to relax, and stress.

How does one relax? I've found it odd that I have never been able to relax around others. My problem stems from the perception of relaxation.

When I was a child, I had a lot of pressure on me to succeed and I wanted to relax.  I could only do it when I was alone.  If I was seen doing what I thought was relaxing (i.e., sleeping, reading, playing video games, etc.), I was called "lazy" and that I should go relax outside. Going outside meant that I had to go do stuff--stuff that I already hate to do over the course of a busy week.
When I was with others and I was supposed to relax, I had to do all this stuff I was supposed to already know from...somewhere...and that was supposed to be relaxing.  If I could not do that, there would be a problem: questions why, peer pressure to conform, etc.  Oddly enough the solution to the first problem (answers to questions why) can elicit a negative response.  Now a new problem comes up: how to relax outside of other people  ('cuz you're not gonna stick around people you can't talk to).  The easy answer is to be alone, but how should one relax when alone?  Another easy answer; whatever you feel like.  This leads to the interesting conundrum at the start of this post and how it relates to the contemporary ideal form of relaxation.

If you find yourself in a group of people and begin to make small talk, the question comes up, "So, what do you do to relax?" or some permutation. To tell people what you do to relax supposedly says a lot about a person--and that's not a fair assessment.
Our world spends a ridiculous amount of money and time on crafting the ideal form of relaxation, from concerts (be they loud, bass-filled Spring Breaks or quiet opera nights) to vacations (preferably to picturesque lands or designed and designated travel destinations), even down to the desired physical effects of the trip (tan lines, souvenirs, photos, etc.).  Yet no one ever asks what people want to do to relax.  There are offers on what to do on the trip, and more often that not they're telling folks what to do and how to do it.  For argument's sake, let's say these instructions are for the safety of the vacationer.  Now comes the hard part: when you want to relax, you have a great deal of societal norms to follow, even in situations where the behavior is frowned upon (i.e., doing drugs).

So back to the idea of what people think about you when you answer the questions on how you relax.  Imagine someone making all kinds of assumptions and extrapolations based on the idea that you went to Paris on vacation this year.  They could assume the following in a positive light, by virtue of your destination:

• you speak French
• you have money to travel across the Atlantic
• you have connections in Europe
• you are important

Oddly enough, some would say the same of drug kingpins, computer hackers, and Moroccan terrorists. These assumptions listed by bullets above are but a few that make many people who take vacations in the BO-RING lower 48 to think they must somehow get to these artificially elevated places. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

I want everyone who reads this to evaluate how you relax and why you relax the way you do. Is it because you want to relax this way or because someone told you this is the way you are to relax or should relax? Have your ideas on relaxation been shaped by outside influences (TV, internet, etc.) or are they internally formulated?  It's a bit deep to think about relaxation, and you wanna say to what you're reading now, "Dude, just chill out and relax" but get this: I have heard the word "relax" so much in my life without support on what people who tell me that want to see or hear or know in reference to that word, that every time I hear it I tense up and I CANNOT RELAX.

It's so weird, but it happens every time. Same thing happens when people ask me to "loosen up" or "be more flexible".  Usually when I am asked this from people I know or have met, I find this precedes a change in attitude: one minute it's "loosen up" and the next it's "get serious".  I know there's a time and place for all these things, but sometimes things just ain't funny. And sometimes they're hilarious.  I'm not some sort of sociopath, but I swear this kind of activity is driving me insane--and you'd go insane too if someone was playing yo-yo with their scale of seriousness every other week.  So I lock up and cannot relax.  In my experiences, there's just too much expectations on what is and isn't relaxing or relaxation.

I need to find a way to relax with people, or I'm going to be locking a lot of doors behind me.  Does anyone have any suggestions that does not involve illicit or illegal drugs?  I'd like to hear from you; please reply in the comment box below.

TL;DR: How can one relax around people without being self-conscious and getting fucked up first?