Watchmen Review

I've heard many different people saying many different things about the Watchmen movie and I am quite frankly confused. I went in having never read the book, intentionally, and having no idea really of the plot, also intentionally. I think this gave me a good perspective of the movie and allowed me to view it free from preconceptions. This is something I did not have when I went and saw the Lord of the Rings trilogy and I sometimes wonder how my take on those movies might have differed.

Watchmen is indeed a difficult story to tell with its emphasis on different time periods being interwoven. As it is a piece of graphic fiction, it is an extremely visual movie that Zach Snyder (of 300 fame) used quite well. Again, I hadn't read the book before seeing the movie but I could certainly tell that certain scenes were most likely pulled straight from the novel as they weren't your traditional cinematic camera angles. For the most part, and I'm discussing this first because it is such an integral piece to the movie, the visual style of this movie is flawless. There are some less than desirable shots that sometimes pull you out of the movie a bit but they are so few and far between that I simply didn't care.

The acting in the movie was overall a mixed bag which is par for the course in a movie that employs relative nobodies in the lead roles. The standouts in my opinion were Rorschach, the walking talking Rorschach test, played deftly by Jackie Earle Haley and the Comedian played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Of all the onscreen personas they made me the least aware that they were acting. They became these characters to such a degree that it was truly a sight to behold. Going briefly to the Lord of the Rings parallel I drew before I would hold this up to Sir Ian McKellan's flawless performance as Gandalf (with one small irritating moment at the Mines of Moria aside!). The rest of the cast were adequate individually. As a whole, however, I truly felt they all did a commendable job for such a difficult piece of fiction.

Now, some of the detractors for this movie have made such a fuss over showing Dr. Manhattan's anatomy a little too much. I agree that it was onscreen much more than most fans of American cinema are used too but with his character it made no sense for him to cover up anymore. He simply doesn't care anymore. The book may have been better at hiding this particular feature of his anatomy but those camera angles wouldn't have made as good of a film cinematically. You can't handicap the cinematographer simply to deal with our over-sensitive take on nudity. I certainly didn't hear many, though there were some, complain about the amount of female nudity in the movie.

The other big complaint I kept hearing about the movie is that it is difficult to follow the storyline. Again coming from the point of view of someone who has never read the book I must say that I didn't have a problem understanding the plot. Is it intricate? At times it is but the movie does a very good job at leading the audience through the plot to its conclusion. Perhaps if people would quit texting during the movie or checking box scores they might come to the same conclusion. The problem here isn't the movie, I feel like the problem is that we as a society have such a small attention span though I think that may be the topic of another blog posting entirely.

The success or failure of any movie is tied in with how the movie comes together as a whole. Small miscues here and there can be forgiven if the core of the movie is strong enough and if the audience gets sucked in. At 2 hours and 45 minutes the movie is long but other than the strong urge to pee I couldn't say that I was completely aware of the length. I was mesmerized by much of what was going on, though I was surprised at the level of violence. There were times where I felt like a little boy looking out into the vastness of the universe and truly beginning to comprehend it. This may seem a bit out there but most of these times have to do with Dr. Manhattan who is a truly unique character in cinema.

If I am forced to distill this experience into a five star rating I would have to give it a four, which many websites say means excellent. You may go to this movie and have a completely different experience which is one of the great achievements of this particular medium. I would caution, however, against taking negative reviews at face value as they are misleading and will keep you from judging for yourself.

Review of "Perfume"

"Perfume: The Story of a Murderer", based off of a best-seller written by Patrick Suskind, was a very strange movie. I'm not sure that I could really say that it was bad as far as movies go. I could definitely tell the care that went into the acting and the cinematography, and there are a couple of well-known actors who are in this movie: Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman. However, there were many times where the aberrant behavior (as the ratings disclaimer claimed) was just a little too much for me.

Part psychotic killer, part soft-core pornography, and part strange. As such, "Perfume" is just too difficult to really nail down and put into one specific genre. The story, as far as it goes, revolves around a young man born into squalid surroundings in eighteenth century Paris who just so happens to have the best nose in the world (or at least in London). This is claimed by the protagonist himself at one point in the movie. The psychotic, and rather innocently naive, tendencies soon begin to manifest as he is determined to duplicate every single smell in the entire world and he begins to take scents of young women, which unfortunately for them resolves in their deaths. I can't give much more away without spoiling parts of the movie that might not be immediately obvious from the title or the description on the back of the dvd.

Suffice it to say, this movie is neither horrible or great. It is an experience in and of itself, and for that I cannot say that I regret watching the movie. Indeed, I do seem to keep going back to the movie trying to make sense of it. It is not traditional storytelling at all and as such may be difficult for most to stomach. Additionally, I can imagine that many people would become uncomfortable with the blatant sexuality in evidence throughout the movie. If you are looking for a deeper movie than most at your local video store, then I would recommend this. If anything, you should be talking about it with anyone you watch it with.

Review of "Sunshine"

This movie, directed by Danny Boyle, is a very striking example of story-telling. At times during this movie, I was suddenly made aware that I had been holding my breath and that my heart was beating at thousands of beat a second!! (A bit of an exaggeration here, but you get the idea) When Jess and I went to go see it, all we knew was that it was some kind of a space movie. Even the online summary, which includes something about insanity in the depths of space fails to do this movie any justice at all. I've never written a movie review before, so I hope I can avoid any spoilers as I hate it tremendously these days when reviews and previews of movies seem to give away half of what happens.

Editing is really the name of the game when it comes to just exactly how this movie so viscerally effects its audience. From specific audio cues, or lack thereof, to the musical cues which in this movie are so slight that I sometimes forgot that there was really any background music to speak of. Similar to other great movies of the past, the sound in this movie just becomes another element in the story and soon becomes indistinguishable from it. There are scenes in this movie that may be considered to be barren of much emotion, but when sound is added and edited just right it all of a sudden becomes an amazing experience to behold.

The acting in this movie, while playing second string to the visuals and editing techniques discussed previously, does a great job. Every actor has their own part that they play with very convincing realism. Cillian Murphy is good as the enigmatic and shy physicist but shoulders his responsibilities (essentially saving Earth) with much courage. This is definitely a much different part than his turn as the Scarecrow in "Batman Begins". Chris Evans, known from his work in "Not Another Teen Movie" as well as most recently in "The Fantastic Four" really showed another side as well and proved to me that he isn't just another pretty boy getting roles for his appearance only. Rose Byrne shows her own acting chops, and reminded me of her sometimes creepy role in "Wicker Park".

The visuals, though expertly done with the use of CGI, are never too flashy for the sake of being flashy. Instead, scenes of the vastness of space are interspersed very expertly with other scenes portraying the extremely claustrophobic interiors of the spacecraft. Lacking many of the extremely visceral and gory scenes from Boyle's other well-known movie "28 Days Later", "Sunshine" manages to pull off similar anxiety by the careful use of editing and musical cues. In the end, this movie is well worth seeing.