Option A: Establish a villain of non-specific European or Asian descent. Avoid killing off any good guys, but if you must, kill only one, and see that she dies protecting 13 others from certain doom. Once all the baddies die, have your leading man stare back in solemn victory, as though wondering whether it was all "worth it." But smash cut to a wedding / family reunion / beers-with-the-boys after a maximum of three seconds. (Examples: Air Force One, Taken, Inception, Apollo 13)
If we've learned anything about Serious (with a capital S) action films, it's that they must play out in one of two ways.
Option A: Establish a villain of non-specific European or Asian descent. Avoid killing off any good guys, but if you must, kill only one, and see that she dies protecting 13 others from certain doom. Once all the baddies die, have your leading man stare back in solemn victory, as though wondering whether it was all "worth it." But smash cut to a wedding / family reunion / beers-with-the-boys after a maximum of three seconds. (Examples: Air Force One, Taken, Inception, Apollo 13)
3 Comments
Breaking Bad Series Review (Spoiler-free!)Breaking Bad has been many things over its five seasons: glum, sterile, exact, clever, unforgiving, unrelenting. And yet, the series finale seemed like something else entirely. It was, for once, satisfying. With "Felina," Bad dealt with every plot line as neatly as Walter White had once organized his high school lab. Where other television series have slunk away from firm resolution, Bad resolved with cold relish, knocking out viewers' questions with the efficiency of an assassin.
I've spent the last two weeks playing (way too much) Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V), the Rockstar Games blockbuster that sold $800 million in its first day. Here are 25 thoughts after 25 hours of playtime. 1. GTA V's combined development / marketing budget: $264 million. My combined development / marketing budget: $19 on two self-help books and a free Twitter account. 2. Rockstar: when I'm on the run from a dozen cop cars, three choppers, and a SWAT team, don't interrupt me with a blurry, 10-point font info box that reminds me how to turn on my headlights. 3. Actually, just don't show me blurry info boxes. 4. I need to get a better TV. 5. In real life, I spent 20 minutes looking for parking and had to walk a half mile just to visit the Griffith Observatory. In GTA V, I parked on the steps outside the front door and only three people were there. 6. Why do my in-game emails look like they're from 1997? 7. The best thing about GTA 5 are the heists. You pick your crew, you choose an attack strategy (loud? smart? sneaky?), you gather supplies, and then you execute. Your planning, team members, and performance are all crucial to survival and financial reward. Masterfully implemented. 7. The real Los Angeles County is home to 244,000 businesses. The GTA V Los Santos County is home to roughly six types of businesses: strip clubs, liquor stores, burger joints, auto shops, gun stores, and discount clothing. 9. Great fake company names: LifeInvader (Facebook), Lampadati (Maserati), Cluckin' Bell (Taco Bell), Chihuahua Hotdogs (not sure, but hilarious). 10. If I did an 8 GB install before even starting the game, why does the pause menu take six seconds to load? 11. Come to think of it, why did I have to do an 8 GB install? All of OS X Mountain Lion was less than 5. 12. I can't say for sure how people would look if they frequently jumped while running, but I know it wouldn't look like that. 13. The second best thing about GTA V is the 3-protagonist dynamic. I started out skeptical—multi-character games tend to require intense micromanagement, create divergent plot lines, and—like the latest season of How I Met Your Mother--increase variety at the expense of cohesion. Instead, switching characters is fluid, fun, and occasionally, strategic. Well played. 14. I'm still confused as to how the playable characters can conceal a full arsenal of military-grade weapons while jogging through a park, but can't crouch down and crawl under anything less than four feet tall. 15. The third best thing about GTA V is the driving. The first time I caused a pileup on the freeway, for roughly 1/10 of a second, I felt exactly like how I felt when I almost drove off a real cliff at the age of 15. 16. Therapists get a bad rap in this game. The average session is four minutes and you get a $1,500 bill. In a related story, I'd like to take this moment to confirm that GTA V is a video game, and in this video game, you can see a therapist. 17. I've spent a combined hour seeing my in-game therapist. I have seen no real-life therapists in that same time span. 18. Helicopters are tough to control, so this is my current strategy for landing them: 1) find an open corn field 2) free fall 3) crash land 4) bail out before the copter catches fire 5) buy a new one the next time I need to fly. To be honest, I would probably do the same thing in real life. 19. Women get a bad rap in this game. I wish GTA V were less misogynistic, even as it attempts to masquerade as satire.
20. The in-game radio station commentary starts to make up for it: "Weazel News: confirming your prejudices!" Stephen Colbert would be proud. 21. In GTA V, the more near misses you have while driving, the more your driving skill counter goes up. In real life, the more near misses you have while driving, the worse at driving you are. 22. After playing the GTA V stock market, I feel 3% less mad at Martha Stewart. 23. I also feel 3% dumber. 24. If I had three wishes, one would be for the universe to provide me with a little yellow beacon indicating wherever I was supposed to go next, just like in GTA. 25. A month ago, if you told me I would spend 25 hours reading over-stylized fonts, watching mediocre acting, and hearing a series of half-baked explanations about "hacking into the system" and "stealing a top-secret nerve agent," I would have asked who was lending me the DVDs for 24, Season 2. It all started when Pasadena reader Mike* asked why I hadn’t included Rotten Tomatoes in my 2013 Oscar Race post. A debate simmered. More readers joined in. It was time for the definitive guide.
*He’s actually a really good friend. I just thought “Pasadena reader Mike” would give the post a certain professional heft. Casually refer to a movie's "Metascore" or "Tomatometer" percentage, and you might get an actual tomato thrown in your face. Movie ratings cause controversy, particularly when they're presented as "final" or "overall." I'm referring, of course, to the movie review aggregators Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, which compile dozens of scores from around the web to calculate one overall rating for each new film. IntroductionBe warned: this is a futile exercise. Assessing the Oscar race in late August is like picking the best surgeon from a group of undergraduate biology majors. The real players haven't even arrived yet. Still, TheCroakingFrog knows its readers need rankings and analysis, and far be it from TheCroakingFrog to disappoint.
Brief Rules: There's a surprisingly clever plot lurking within 2 Guns; unfortunately, it doesn't work as well in the actual movie as it does in the trailer. Bobby (Denzel Washington) and Stig (Mark Wahlberg) stroll onto screen as a couple of gun-totin', smack-talkin' gangsters, buying drugs, shooting chickens, and cruising up and down the US-Mexican border. But wait! Bobby secretly works for the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) and—whaddaya know—Stig soon holds a covert meeting with a handful of uniformed naval officers. Each oblivious to his partner's true colors, the two men plan a bank robbery, both expecting to surprise the other with an arrest (or kill, if necessary) once the deed is done. The bank robbed, the getaway accomplished, the men confront one another in the desert, only to realize they've been tricked. As it turns out, the con men themselves have been conned.
It's been hyped as the last great action film of the summer, which is a little like being the last month of regular season baseball or the last Republican primary debate before Super Tuesday. Haven't we seen enough? Fortunately,
Elysium opens with four distinct advantages. First, it's not about a super hero. Second, it's directed by Neill Blomkamp, the young prodigy responsible for District 9. Third, it has a compelling dystopian premise. Fourth, it stars a white, male, reluctant hero who wears special armor and solves problems by shooting things.* *Okay: three advantages. There's a moment late in Jack Reacher—a sometimes stylish, mostly silly action flick starring Tom Cruise—where Mr. Reacher (Cruise) swerves around a corner as a dozen cop sirens wail a block away. He steps out of his still-rolling Chevy, striding into a crowd of onlookers just before half the precinct arrives on scene. As the cops surround the (now empty) sports car, the onlooking crowd gleefully conceals Reacher, shielding him from view and handing him a baseball cap to blend in. The manhunt foiled, the cops exchange confused looks as Reacher makes his getaway on a bus, all while his fellow travelers nod at him as if to say, "we got you." Never mind they've never met him nor have any idea what (surely heinous) crime he's committed. Gotta stick it to the cops.
The Place Beyond the Pines moves quickly—perhaps too quickly. There's a daredevil circus show, sentimental bike ride, revelation of fatherhood, dramatic job resignation, and several beats of a tense love triangle all before the film's 15-minute mark. The pace rarely slows. By minute 140, you'll have to pick what to remember—and just like the film's damaged characters—what you'll let yourself forget. It's a bit of a shame, really, given that Pines packs in so many exceptional moments. In his rush to tell a story about loss and regret, writer-director Derek Cianfrance often forgets to show us how it feels.
|
TheCroakingFrog
|