Man of Steel

Mark and I saw Man of Steel in theaters this past weekend. It's a pretty low budget indie film that you may have not heard of. Especially in this season of over-the-top blockbuster superhero movies. It is a coming of age story of a boy from a broken family struggling with his identity, in a cruel world.

Viewer(s): Both of us

Time Elapsed Since Release: 10 days or so

Dylan: Finally a dual review for a theatrical release. You know, I should really apologize to our readers. I had predicted a month or two ago that this would be a big summer for movies and that we’d be seeing and writing about a lot of them. That hasn’t really been the case. But don’t blame us, blame Hollywood; it has sort of turned out to be a crappy season for movies, as you may have learned from our Iron Man 3 and Star Trek into Darkness reviews. Or better yet, maybe you went and saw some of them yourself.

Dylan: So today we’re looking at Man of Steel. Man, I’m really getting tired of these moniker titles. Since everything is constantly getting rebooted, I guess they think it’s cooler to either use a hero’s epithet, or the original comic title. The AMAZING Spider-Man, The Dark Knight, The Incredible Hulk, The Wolverine, The First Avenger, etc. As if a more elaborate name means a better movie. It’s already overdone. But anyways, Man of Steel is the new Superman movie, duh. And we try to determine if it lives up to all the hype.

Mark:  You know we’re off to a good start with a review when the first gripe that’s brought up is the title.  Which I agree that making the title Man of Steel is just latching onto the trend that all of the movies are going with.  Which Nolan kinda started, but it reflects the gritty reboot process that everyone is doing.  And they really work for the gritty in this.  Sometimes it works to add tension and build the setting, but other times it takes things to much darker places than we’re used to with Superman.

Dylan: You might be right. I guess I don’t really know the other Superman films that well. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the original Christopher Reeve movie at least once from beginning to end. But one thing I can’t really agree on is when people say that this is a more realistic take on Superman. They compare it to what the Dark Knight trilogy does for Batman, which is bullshit. Sure, the movie is incredibly long, and modern special effects allow us to see more outer space and alien tech and what not. But it’s no more grounded in reality than any other Superman movie. And a lot of the plot devices call back to the cheesiness that we’re all familiar with. I was praying there wouldn’t be a scene in which Superman puts on a pair of glasses and suddenly is unrecognizable. But of course it happened. The whole idea of Superman is inescapably silly, no matter how much Nolan gets to toy with the script.

Mark: Well it’s certainly darker than the original Superman movies, which had more of an emphasis on an awkward Clark Kent and his banter with Lois, and obviously since they didn’t have the technology, the action was fairly limited.

Dylan: There was plenty of banter this time around...

Mark: Well when I say banter, I mean between Lois and Clark that created the initial chemistry that would grow between them.  And on how out of place Clark acts in the big city, how he acts so timid with Lois to hide his identity.  Goyer doesn’t do banter, not with this movie.  They just talk and try really hard to make me think there’s chemistry there.

As for the darker tone, I really just put it in with all the destruction and death that comes from Zod and his plan concerning Earth and all the humans.  It’s not like with Batman, where we focus on how corrupt and horrible Gotham is once you peel back the rich aristocracy that Bruce is from.  And we watch him descend into the underworld to fight it.  The world is big and bright in Man of Steel and suddenly goes ridiculously dark in the third act.  Though it did look really fucking good.

Dylan: So you think there should have been more banter, is that what you're saying? Becaues I agree. Instead, Lois and Superman pretty much fall in love just because that's what we expect them to do. And that's that. Also, didn’t Superman end in Lois dying (temporarily), or was that the second one? Just curious.

Mark: That was the first one.  But then he flew around the world really, really, really fast and turned back time, allowing him to save Lois and stop Lex from even firing the nukes.

Dylan: Haha, right. Well that’s kind of dark. And the physics and logic of this movie are only slightly more respectful to human intelligence than they were back then. I’d like to give some examples but I don’t want to spoil anything. I’m thinking of when Superman goes to destroy that machine. It’s Kryptonian so it weakens Superman (which, by the way, pissed me off. I had read that there wouldn’t be any Kryptonite because the writers thought it was too much of a cop-out. So they say that the alien crafts and shit have a ‘Kryptonian atmosphere’, and instead, that weakens Superman just the same. So in fact they did use the plot device that they originally said was too convenient.) And the alien technology beats the shit out of him. How do we see him being affected by this? He coughs. How does he overcome the challenge? ...well, he just does. There are the necessary shots of him losing, and then he just stops coughing and wins.

I’m trying hard not to be nitpicky. But it is definitely that kind of movie.

Mark: Well, yeah, I didn’t read anything about them not wanting to use kryptonite, but the whole different atmosphere thing did ring pretty much the same concept.  And my only way of looking at it is that he used all the power he had at that last moment to deal with the machine.  Up to that point, we had no idea he could do such a thing, but I’d chalk it up to him really utilizing his powers.  But that’s just me defending what is a very obvious hole in the story.

But one thing I want to point out about the story is in the original, when Lois “died”, there was real emotional weight, cause we’ve spent the whole rest of the movie setting these two up.  Giving them plenty of time to interact in human ways, as both Clark and Superman.  So when her death came, and it was a slow death, it was really shocking.  But in this, the relationship between Lois and Clark/Kal is kinda forced.  She gets a couple of super serious conversations with him and suddenly it's love.  They set it up to do this for the second movie, but they rushed into it for this one.

Dylan: Yea, I was wondering how much they glazed over, assuming that we would know it from previous films and not want to see it again. You’re right, they were pretty much immediately in love. I also felt like the Daily Planet characters -- Perry White (who, creatively, is now black) and Jimmy (read: Jenny) Olson (who, creatively, is now a girl) -- were thrown in there because we needed to see them. And when they were put in danger in the third act, I really didn’t feel like enough attention was given to them for me to care. I mean, sure, what was happening to that city was pretty fucking scary. But the dynamic between Perry, Jenny, and that other dude meant nothing to me. Was it a love triangle of some sort? I couldn’t figure it out.

It’s the same thing with people’s acceptance of aliens. A whole movie could have been dedicated to a realistic reaction of the world to this kind of knowledge. But they pretty much accepted it right away. Lois and the military didn’t seem all that fascinated. And then Lois told Perry, and rather than him saying something like “this isn’t a tabloid. You’re fired, you crazy bitch”, he’s like “Lois, this world is not ready for something that huge.” Well, you’re taking it pretty well yourself, old man. And so does the world, five minutes later, when they find out too.

Mark: Well I put the acceptance thing as shock.  Like you’re too stunned at the revelation of it and the devastation of it to really stop and think about what is happening.  Again, this seems to be set up for a sequel.  Now that the threat is gone, they can focus on the fact that it happened; that aliens exist, and that one of them is still here.  And he’s from the same race that just annihilated half of Metropolis.  So, that’s my take on that.

As for Perry and gang, they were there for cameos.  It’s a Superman movie, they have to show up, even in their new forms, because it’s iconic.  I think it would have been a big move to not go to the Daily Planet, just have Lois.  You know she works for them, but it won’t come into play until the sequel.  And when they were in danger, much like how Star Trek Into Darkness didn’t have the balls to pull the trigger on it’s characters, neither would Goyer and Nolan.  That would be too dark.  But really you don’t fuck with canon.  Not unless you’re willing to take the fan backlash for taking a chance, and with how DC is trying so hard to become something like Marvel, they won’t risk it.

Who do you think were the strongest performances?  Or at least you’re favorite?

Dylan: Is that a serious question? The obvious answer is Michael Shannon, and even he was just making the best of what he had to work with. Some of his lines were just laughable. And there were a hundred obvious flaws in his diabolical schemes. But he made me believe he was the bad guy, for sure.

But before I forget, in response to what you just said: I think a slower, more intelligent sequel would really bring things back around. We’ve managed to throw in all the necessary players (with the obvious exception of a new villain, which will probably be Lex Luthor), now it’s time to give them some depth. That’s where the realism and humanity comes from. Not by trying to make a more sensible origin story.

It’s unfortunate, but these movies are starting to have very predictable and obviously similar setups. This one will of course be compared to Batman Begins. But it’s also like The Amazing Spider-Man, Star Trek, and Captain America; rebooted origin stories that only serve to line us up for a sequel that may or may not be better. Because personally, I was not a huge fan of Batman Begins. For me, and I think a lot of other people, it was The Dark Knight that really made me fall in love with the trilogy. So hey, maybe Man of Steel 2 will do that for me.

Mark: I agree mostly with you.  Shannon has proven time and again how great he is (see our last couple of reviews).  Whether it’s being serious or just going over the top, like with Zod, he’s just so enthralling in his acting.  And I thought Christopher Meloni was one of the few who was able to bring out more emotion in the story.  How his character arc goes throughout is one of the more interesting, especially when he faces off with Faora.  And I actually thought, regardless of how little time he had, Costner had a hell of an emotional presence whenever he was on screen.  Cavill is good as Superman, but he’s not given anything to go with to give him depth or anything.  Which is kinda the problem all around.  Goyer created his crazy story and tried to be all gritty, but without the Nolan brothers writing too, it didn’t have any of the depth or complexity to it.

And yeah, it’s in the sequel that we should see the depth.  I have to assume that now we’ll get Lex Luthor to come into play.  And this will create the conflict of the mind rather than the conflict of strength, like with Zod.  And we got plenty of that conflict.  I swear, the only thing I could think of during that punch up with Zod was how insane the fighting got.  It was the cartoon fighting we’ve always seen, what with them punching each other through buildings, across the city, into fucking space.  It was a blast to watch, but it just went on.

Dylan: One thing the sequel needs to do is get rid of Costner and Crowe. Every time we should’ve seen Cavill have some sort of deep moment, it was just externalized by a scene where one of his fathers explained out loud exactly what he was going through.

But yea, the fight scenes were just what I would want. And somehow we have yet to mention him: Zack Snyder does a damn good job. 

...and now I’m already regretting that sentence. Because a lot of his techniques piss me off big time. But the fighting at the end was pretty nuts. And just like you said, it was still cartoonish, but it worked.

Mark: Well I’m fairly certain you’ll get your wish about Costner and Crowe.  But what do I know?  And yeah, Snyder was actually a lot better than I thought.  I mean, his action scenes are still as over the top with gorgeous CGI explosions as ever, but when the camera slows down, and you get those intimate shots, like with little Clark running around with the red cape, that was actually just great.  One thing with Snyder is that he can do a lot of different film styles, what with the aforementioned CGI  stuff, but then the different composition with the flashbacks, and it’s like someone else has taken the helm.  And I appreciated getting a different feel when things changed tempo.  He’s much better than I’ve ever given him credit for.

Dylan: Sometimes I wonder how much of that is luck. Not to discredit the guy, but I think of 300. I really like 300, and I don’t really know anyone who doesn’t. But the same techniques he used to make it unique and awesome are the ones that, if you watch it again, you find kind of annoying. And this is kind of the same way. There are certain things he kept doing over and over again when he approached the action sequences. Some of it worked, at least for a time. But once you caught on to it, it got pretty irritating. In 300 it was the ramping. In this, it was the quick zoom-ins and the shaky cam.

Mark: I agree.  I’m not saying it was perfect, far from it. But he did a good job with what he had.  And I also put some of it in that Nolan was right there.  It was very much a group effort, just not everyone in the group was pulling their weight.  But at the end of the day, I’d recommend it.  It’s a hell of a lot of fun to watch, and it’ll keep your attention without ticking you off like some other blockbusters have.  At least for us.

Dylan: This is probably a stupid question. Was it scored by Hans Zimmer?

Mark:  Yeah.

Dylan: I figured. He is obviously the next generation’s John Williams. So I guess it’s appropriate.

Anyways, the movie is entertaining. It’s essentially a checklist of things the writers think we want to see and DC needs us to see so that they can move forward with the next step of their extended universe. But that seems to be the case with all of this summer’s action franchises. This one just does a better job of it.

Mark: Speaking of extended universe, did you catch the little easter egg in the film?  Or at least the one I did, I don’t know if there were more.

Dylan: I caught two. A Wayne Enterprises satellite and a LexCorp truck. (In addition to about a hundred product placements.)

Mark:  Where was the truck?  Oh sweet jesus, the product placement.  IHOP anyone?  Maybe 7/11.  God, it wasn’t even trying to be subtle.

Dylan: Amazing how no matter how much flame and debris clouds the air, and how every building is destroyed, you can still see the Sears logo shining bright. The truck was just something that was quickly destroyed or thrown into a building or something. I’m sure if you googled it, you could find a blurry screenshot.

Mark: Oh, ok, so it wasn’t setting anything, just putting it in there for gits and shiggles.  Well, wanna know something cool I found out?  Before they got Shannon for Zod, they were gonna go with...pausing for effect...Viggo Mortenson.

Dylan: Wow. That would have been interesting. And I can kinda see it. But Shannon was just fine.

Mark: Right, cause all I can picture is his character from Eastern Promises.

Dylan: Yea that's the image I had as well.

Mark:  Right?  Like that’s the one character he’s done that fits what Zod would be like.  Zod as a Russian gangster.  Super violent and intense.

Dylan: And then we’d get an epic naked wrestling match (hopefully through space or something) between Zod and Superman. And what self-respecting American wouldn't want to see that?

End of Watch

"Balls to the wall". What a fascinating phrase. Naturally I assumed it had a dirty connotation. Ironically, it is one of the few instances where Urban Dictionary gives a relatively grounded and rational explanation of a phrase. Apparently it was originally used by pilots when referring to full throttle; the 'ball' on the lever is either facing the wall or touching it. Maybe if I spelled Ballz (with a 'z') I'd get a different result.

Anyways, I was going to tell you to get ready for balls-to-the-wall action. But that's really not what this movie is about. In End of Watch, we get a front row view of the lives of police officers in the most dangerous and crime-filled section of Los Angeles. Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena are two partners, brothers bound together by the uniform and the job.

Netflix: Sir, yes sir
Pick: Skid Mark

Dylan: This movie was not what I expected.

Mark: I know exactly what you mean.  I came into this assuming I was gonna get an action-packed police drama with some handheld camera angles to try and make it overly realistic.  Damn, I was wrong.  I mean, I was right, but it did everything in such a way I did not expect.

Dylan: Well before I give you the wrong idea, let me just say that I don’t think I liked it. First of all, the camcorder gimmick was such a waste. Jake Gyllenhaal’s character Taylor turns on the camera and says how he is doing a law school project or something and that he and his partner are going to be wearing little cameras during their shift. So okay, for a while we see things through these cameras. For about half a second. And then we go right to additional cameras, taking away the documentary feel and making the shaky cam just feel cheap. And it irritated me that the handhelds kept making useless appearances, mainly so someone else could say "put that camera away". The project was never mentioned again. In fact, the amount of stuff happening in his life would indicate that a couple years has gone by. Or at the very very least, several months. I don't think there even was a law school.

Mark: Oh goody, another movie we’re at odds about.  Mostly.  For me this is the first film using camcorders that I didn’t think was completely useless.  I do agree that it switches when things are convenient for the film.  Those times are usually when things get insanely intense and believing that they have a camcorder or even using the cameras on their chests is just impossible.  However, since everyone is using cameras, I mean, Taylor and Mike as well as the different gangs all use cameras for some reason, it helps to keep things somewhat consistent.  The thing is, the other cameras, such as the ones in the cruiser, are just switching to the dash cameras that cop cars usually have, so I never felt that they left the core idea of handheld.  So it did just try to add shaky realism to the more crazy moments, but on the whole, I thought it worked rather well.  At least for what they were going for.

My biggest complaint comes with the (lack of) concept of time, like you said.  There is absolutely no sense of time throughout this movie.  It jumps throughout the movie, and big moment in their lives seem to come, but one would assume these would take months at the very least.  But we have no idea.  Could be months.  Could be years.  No idea.  That being said, it didn’t take anything away from my overall engagement or enjoyment through the movie, but I did notice it a lot.

Dylan: I'd like to quote you: "for some reason". It could have just been a shaky-cam movie. But all the camcorders were there...for some reason.

My other complaint(s) is how unbelievable the story is and how underwhelming the bad guys turn out to be. The gist, ladies and gentlemen at home, is that some Mexican cartel has moved up to the block our two heroes patrol, and are shaking things up. And it irritates me that, even while explaining how boring and repetitive their job can be, they miraculously fall into the more exciting and wild scenarios. Human trafficking, shootouts, torture/murder cellars, etc; all, apparently, on the one block that they patrol. And then the bad guys, who we see a few times but don’t really care about, come out at the last minute with a special order to kill our two cops. I mean, we knew it was coming. But it all happened in the last fifteen minutes and wasn't very thrilling, in my opinion.

Mark: While I agree that the things they get themselves into seem to escalate over time to a degree that seems a tad ridiculous, I never thought it wasn’t thrilling.  Then again, I don’t think thrilling is the word I would use.  To me, it was engaging throughout.  Yes, the bad guys were almost completely underdeveloped, but I think that just goes with how uncontrollable and unexpected this area of LA can be.  We see them do a driveby at the beginning, and as you listen to them, you realize they’re working for a higher power.  That power being the cartel.  And for the majority of the film, this little bit of information isn’t fleshed out, not until the third act.

Now, concerning our heroes’ alarming tendency to find themselves in more and more crazy situations, really only one of them felt completely plot convenient, and that was when a house they happened to visit for one reason turned out to be something impossibly more sinister.  Other than that, this area in LA is realistically this fucking nuts.  So I didn’t feel like it was out of the realm of reality for them to find themselves in these situations.  In fact, there were several moments that hammered in for me how realistic they took the police procedures.  I had to look up what four fingers meant when Taylor showed them to the other cops and the helicopter.  This and so many other things like that helped make the film more interesting for me.

Dylan: Alright, how bout I put it this way: what frustrated me was how it went to great lengths to show the realism, but then oh-so-slightly pushed the boundaries of believability. And, I don’t know, with this kind of movie, I either want complete realism or complete absurdity. But hey, that’s coming from a guy who has seen -- nay, experienced -- a little show called The Wire. But let’s talk about the one redeemable quality of this flick: Anna Kendrick.

Mark: Ok, I can understand that.  It does push the boundaries of realism with some of the things that happen to them, but I feel like it never gets so far away from realism that it becomes a problem.  And I totally agree that Anna Kendrick was really good throughout, I also thought that Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena were also great.

Dylan: Well I’m just saying that Anna Kendrick is adorable. As for her character, it seemed like in each consecutive scene she just progressed from girlfriend to wife to mother and that was it. But I enjoyed seeing her on screen once in a while.

Okay, I have one more complaint. And that’s the dialogue. There are certain movies where slang and banter can really emphasize the close bond between two people. But here I felt like I just wanted to see them doing cop stuff. Every time they were in the car cracking jokes and talking about women I just felt like I didn’t care. I guess it just serves to make them genuine, relatable people, but I never really cared enough to get into their chit chat.

I promise, after this, I’ll say some good things.

Mark: I honestly did not think this would divide us as much as it is. I found their dialogue and banter in the car one of the better aspects of the movie.  I thought it did a great job characterizing them, defining them, through their jokes and conversations.  We got a sense of what their beliefs are, how they see life and what they want from it.  How they view the department and how they view their work.  I thought all this was engrossing and did a great job making me care about the characters more.  You really got a sense that these two have been together for a long time.  And we’ve been able to have a look into their lives.

The last twenty minutes -- the action-packed, tense chase shootout and whatnot -- would not have been all that entertaining without all that time spent with these two.  That’s just me.  Now, be nice.  Or whatever your definition of nice is.

Dylan: Okay, so I complained earlier about the gimmicky handheld thing. But really what I meant to criticize was the fact that we needed a reason for the handhelds; Taylor’s project or whatever. I do agree that the shaky cam style was used correctly, for once; it didn't make you dizzy and it wasn't used as an excuse to pull you out of the action. It went perfectly with the hyper action sequences. I just don’t think we needed them to explain why they had cameras, if five minutes in, there were other cameras there two.

And so yea, I thought all of the drama and action, while conveniently coincidental, was pretty exciting and intriguing. When things actually happened, they got pretty tense.

There, I was nice. Don’t make me do anymore. It hurts.

Mark:  True, they didn’t really need to explain it, but I guess it just goes with David Ayer’s need for realism that it’d make it more so if the camera was involved as well.  Hell, I’m forever a believer that handheld/shaky cam can be just gotten rid of altogether, but this is one of the few times when it works.

I really liked this movie, if you couldn’t tell.  For me, great characters, intense action, great world building in a sense, which all came together to give me a movie I did not think would be as engaging as I was.

Dylan: I wish it had less focus on the main protagonists and their love for each other, and more on the department as a whole. We got some glimpses of the other cops, but not nearly to the same extent as Gyllenhaal and Pena. But Van Hauser had a few interesting lines to hint at the shit he's been through, and at the wedding, the Sarge was giving this heart-wrenching alcohol-induced speech that we only heard a brief snippet of. I guess the point is that they’re all cops with interesting stories, but we’re only here to focus on two.

Honestly, if I wasn’t scrutinizing the shit out of this movie for the purpose of this blog, I may have enjoyed it more. I think it probably belongs on the drunken movie list, which is not to say that it’s bad, but that I had some trouble taking it seriously. And the more it tried to take itself seriously, the more I drifted away from it.

Mark: If this movie gave as much characterization to the whole department as it did for the leads, I think this movie would vault to one of the best.  I agree, we get a glimpse of it.  When we see the other cop duo, the two women, we get a interesting look at who they are and the things they’ve gotten into.  But not a lot, same with the Sarge, who for as little as he’s characterized, I really liked.  If this actually had a defined plot and more time, it could have done that.  For now, what it is is just fine.  Really good actually.

Dylan: Agreed. It’s on Netflix. Go watch it. Trivia time?

Mark:  Sure, why not.  Since this movie is all about the realism, what do you think Gyllenhaal and Pena went through to prepare for their parts?

Dylan: Gyllenhaal’s character was supposed to be a Marine at some point, right? So I would assume they both went through police training, or maybe military.

Mark: Well yes, but to be more specific, for a period of five months, they rode on twelve hour shifts with the LAPD for three days a week.  And the first shift that Gyllenhaal went out on, he witnessed a murder.  So, yeah, they had a bit of preparation for this.

Dylan: A few 12-hour Grand Theft Auto binges probably would have been cheaper and safer, but hey, when in LA, do as the Los Angelenos do, which, having seen Drive, I assume consists primarily of murder, drug use, and movie-making.

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You know, for a blog about toilet paper arts and crafts, we sure do go on and on about movies. I apologize on behalf of Mark and myself for disagreeing about some of these films. Now you are sitting at home, with Netflix up, trying to decide whether or not to click play. Or, more aptly, you're probably scrambling for the 'close' button in the corner because god knows you never meant to open this blog in the first place. The real mystery is why you read all the way down to this point before figuring that out.

Our next film will be...well, we're not sure yet. But I can assure you that it will indeed be a movie, so that ought to narrow it down. "Au revoir, Shoshanna."

Cloud Atlas

After our last review I promised that we'd do the 80's fantasy epic(?) Legend before Cloud Atlas. So maybe right now you're like "yo, where the fuck is the Legend review? All I fucking came here to read about was Legend. None of this bullshit cloudy with a chance of who gives a shit." Clearly you do not follow our twitter feed. We did, in fact, do a review of Legend. But it was submitted to another movie blog, aptly titled Movie-Blogger.com, and if you are desperate to get our take on the Blade Runner followup, you can find it right here.

If you're one of the few willing to stick around for some Cloud Atlas talk, read on.

Netflix: Are you kidding? It just came out on DVD. Give it a chance, will ya?
Picker: Crimson Dynamo

Mark:  So this is my second time watching Cloud Atlas and I noticed new things as I went along, but knowing that you’ve read the book, I just want to start by asking you how it matched up.  Maybe that’s a bit broad, but I mean, this is a movie with essentially six stories which I thought it handled well and I want to know how it was in the book compared to this.

Dylan: Yes, I read it. I figured I ought to make that clear early on, but I'll try not to reference the book too often. However, since you asked, the major difference with the book is the structure. The book is like a pyramid. You go up through the first half of each story and then reverse back for each one's respective climax. To an extent, the way the film moved through all of them throughout its runtime kept it more exciting than the book. But at times they raced through several at a time, devoting only a few seconds to each, making it difficult to remember what was going on the last time you were in this particular story and how what just happened relates to the other ones being thrown at you. Especially when they're all completely different.

Mark: Yeah, I liked how well the movie moved from one story to the next without any real loss of flow.  The editing was amazing, being able to blend the scenes together, like with the horses across the bridge to the train, with the sound being able to link them.  It helped keep everything engaging without becoming too jarring with the changes.  Now, you do need to stop for a second to realize where you are, but since each of the stories are so unique, I never really felt lost.  Each one had a different feel that after a while you would know where you were in the timelines by the look of the scene.  The Somni story had the most changes throughout, since it was the grandest in scale, compared to the others, but like I said, after a while, they all had their own unique feel.  Which only adds to the strength of the editing and narrative flow that the individual stories didn’t feel disjointed.  All separate, but all connected; they did this so well in my opinion.

Dylan: I’m on the fence. I agree that they flowed well visually -- and for the most part you were able to see the parallels between stories (more clearly than in the book) -- but contextually things were out of sync. There were three or four voice-overs meant to sort of describe the philosophical themes of the story. But I didn’t really feel like they united them all that much. And the stories are all very different, even tonally. One is more humorous, another is a mystery, another is obviously futuristic sci-fi. And it almost seems like if you separated each story, it might make an interesting movie on its own, but mashed together it was just a jumbled mess.

Mark: I totally agree that any one of these could make a good movie on their own.  Okay, maybe not the lawyer on a ship in the Colonial Era, but still, they all could essentially.  But I felt that the filmmakers excelled at giving each story an identity, while subtly binding them together.  Obviously the birthmark that each protagonist shared, but I mean the constant theme of freedom, or understanding in each.  Maybe that’s a tad broad, but it worked for me.  Even though one story was very dark while another is about a bunch of old people escaping from an old folks home, they kept those same themes, keeping them together.  Now, I admit, sometimes, just narratively, I was more interested in some stories more than others, but I never felt things were too jumbled to stay together.  Also I just enjoyed looking out for all the actors in each story.  Fun little game to play while going along.

Dylan: Yea okay, the two things I was very impressed with were the makeup and the music. The movie flowed incredibly from scene to scene. And having a half dozen actors play multiple roles, spanning age, ethnicity, and gender was a pretty ambitious task. I would complain about how, when all of the westerners were made to look Asian, they looked ridiculous, but I won’t, because every other costume was really fantastic.

Mark: Yeah, the makeup is just astounding throughout, creating all of these characters and also being able to perpetuate the idea of lives beyond lives.  And the thing with the makeup that I most enjoyed is when they had some of the major people just in once shot, as something so innocuous, like Jim Broadbent as a blind musician on the dirty streets of  Neo Seoul.  It just adds to the subtlety of the film.  And I liked the fact that they had the actors playing characters of different race and gender, it worked to create paralells throughout the movie.  Sturgess playing a character who becomes an advocate for the abolitionist movement, and then in the future, he’s already a fighter for freedom.  The race doesn’t matter, it’s the actions that matter.

And the music, for me, was one of my favorite scores of 2012.  Throughout the movie, being able to convey the emotions of the scenes so perfectly with the music, but have it work in all the different times.  Either having it be just the quiet piano or have it become bombastic for the action, it all has the same feel.

Dylan: I guess you can interpret the movie in different ways, especially since the same actors play multiple roles. In the book, it wasn’t made clear -- at least not to me -- who was who in each timeline, or if that was really the meaning at all (with the exception of three or four of them commenting on birthmarks). In the movie, certain characters are the same throughout. Hugo Weaving is a good example; he is consistently the antagonist. So it forces you to think about the recurring roles of each...soul, I suppose, and it’s a big step away from the book.

I guess my only complaint is that, while on the surface, the movie seems very deep and philosophical and beautiful, when you try to dig deeper, each story is kind of hollow. I don't blame the filmmakers, because the book suffered from a similar weakness. For each story, you’re barely given enough to understand what is going on and why. The worst case is the story of Sonmi, and the following story in which Sonmi is an idol. I kept asking myself things like “well, what’s so special about Sonmi? They just rescue her and tell her she’s a messiah. But why?” And before you get any answers, she is captured. What is Union? What is The Fall? Now, I don’t expect the book or the movie to stop and give us an entire history lesson of this future, but there definitely needed to be more development in order for me to care at all about certain characters. Other than one characters saying something like ‘it’s as if we’re all connected through time like clouds in the sky and the blah blah blah.’ That’s very Romantic, but I’m not really convinced.

Mark: I agree that the future stories could have really used more fleshing out.  Again, that adds to the idea that some of these stories could have made for interesting individual movies. We’re only given what we need to know for the stories themselves, nothing more.  So we don’t know how Somni’s words affect the world and the colonies.  We don’t know how that one story leads to the post-apocalyptic world.  Hell, this could have somehow become an interesting mini-series, which would have let it flesh everything out.  Personally, I would have loved to see more about the authority in Neo Seoul.  How the world is run and how the rebellion got started.  But, yeah, that’s a lot to ask for from a film that’s already clocking at around three hours.  Some stories are better contained than others since they are less expansive in scope.  I think this is the type of movie in which looking at it on the surface is fine and you come away with a really enjoyable and well done film, and you can only look so deep before things begin to give way.  Like you can look at the themes that run throughout, but too much on the stories themselves leave you wanting.

Dylan: Bingo. The trouble is that the movie wants so desperately to be deep and meaningful. But the Wachowski’s and Tykwer made the best of what they had. The cinematography was cool, the acting was very good, and the style choices were new and creative. In that respect, I really enjoyed it.

Mark: I personally loved this movie.  I think it was one of the more ambitious and engaging films of 2012.  The acting was entertaining and at some points just brilliant, in my opinion.  The standouts for the movie were the makeup, editing, and music.  And I know it’s almost three hours long, but even on a second watch, I found myself absorbed and noticing new things, like the actors in the different roles, and story elements.

And just to ask, which of the stories did you like the most?  As a personal choice.

Dylan: The Sonmi story had the most interesting world-building. It just didn't go anywhere with it. So I suppose I found the Cavendish story the most entertaining. And that reminds me, I wanted to ask what you thought of the dialect in the most futuristic story. Even in the book it is kind of distracting. Do you think they made the right choice to honor the book or should they have smoothed it out a little bit so that the story made more sense?

Mark: Well, the first time I watched the movie, I found it pretty irritating, just cause we’re given nothing to based this language on, so I was lost for a part of it as to what they were saying.  Second time, I could understand more.  It worked to show how separate this story was in its own time, but it did leave you alone as to what was being said.

And my favorite was the Frobisher story.  It was the least actiony of all of them, but it was the most engaging to me.  The acting was amazing by everyone in this very simple, but very intense story.  And the ending of that particular story was just done so well.  Also I liked how it had a direct living connection to the following story, which created more emotional depth.

Dylan: Trivia?

Mark: I’ve got two things.  First, how many oscars did it go up for?

Dylan: Hm. Three or four, probably. The makeup was pretty impressive.

Mark: Further reason why I have lost all faith in the academy: jack fucking none.  Which still blows my mind.

Dylan: The sad part is I watched those awards and don't even remember.

Mark: It went up for nothing, even though, without a doubt, it had the best makeup, bar none.  And the music should have gone up; it was amazing.  It’s a real shame that nothing was given to them.  I would've hoped, because it was such an ambitious film, they would have given them something.

Dylan: And number 2?

Mark: Andy and Lana Wachowski directed three stories, while Tom Tykwer directed the other ones. Can you guess who did what?

Dylan: Well, I could be an ass and say the Wachowskis did the ones involving gender-crossing actors. But instead, I’ll say they did the two future ones and...maybe Luisa Ray?

Mark: So damn close.  The Wachowski’s did do the future stories, but the third one is... the 1849 story.  So they did the furthest and earliest, while Tykwer filled in the middle.

Dylan: The ol' Wachowski sandwich. Classic.

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There you go. A long review for an even longer movie. I encourage you to read it again and try to figure out which lines are Mark's and which are mine.

Oh, damn, we label them now? Well, never mind then. Just look out for our next review, End of Watch, starring the brother of not-Katie Holmes' Rachel Dawes and the stereotyped Latino from Crash.