Posts Tagged ‘Edward Norton

15
Mar
13

Moonrise Kingdom, Pierrot le Fou

Moonrise Kingdom

Oh wow, they are all such tremendous actors.

Director Wes Anderson is the king of quirky independent movies. Just for that you would think I’d automatically hate him. I don’t because I love the movie Rushmore, which is fucking brilliant. So, I was interested to see his new film, which reunited him with actors he uses often like Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman. I was also excited to see Edward Norton and Bruce Willis.

Moonrise Kingdom is about two kids who run away from home. Unexpectedly, 90% of the screentime is devoted to their fledgling love affair. Of course, it’s all viewed through a quirky lens. It’s romanticized to an unneccessary degree, and is made annoyingly wholesome and cute. It’s unfortunate because that drains all of the interesting bits out like a vampire. The remaining 10% focuses on the attempts of the other characters to track them down. This is where Norton, Willis, and a troop of Scouts come in.

Parts of the movie are fun, such as the early attempts to track them down, and the later attempt at avoiding capture. These are the highlights of the movie. The rest of it features more camping scenes than a Harry Potter movie. The majority of the movie’s heavy lifting comes from the two leads who were both 12 years old at the time of filming. And, wouldn’t you know it, they fucking suck at acting.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, “LOL BUT BRIK TEHY ARE JUST LITTLE KIDS SO TEHY CANT BE THAT GOOD AT ACTING YET GIVE EM A BREAK LOL!” I’m sorry, but no. You’re wrong. Some kids can be good at acting. Just take a look at Chloe Grace Moretz or that little bastard from The Sixth Sense and tell me their acting is not light years better than the twats in Moonrise Kingdom. The fact that these two can’t act, and that they dominate 90% of the screentime, nearly ruins the movie. Other problems include woefully underdeveloped characters like the parts played by Willis and Murray.

I’m conflicted about this movie. On one hand I want to like it since it’s so off-kilter. On the other hand, the two leads are such horrible actors that the movie should automatically lose points for that. They don’t get a pass for being kid actors. They were both absolutely terrible. It’s like Wes Anderson intentionally sought out shitty kid actors to put in his movie. Maybe he did. Maybe that’s the point? Who knows?

Verdict: Average

Pierrot le Fou

I’m sure this still from the movie has SUPER DEEP MEANING.

If you aren’t a hardcore filmfag, chances are you’ve never heard of this movie. Consider that a blessing. Pierrot le Fuck is a 1965 French movie directed by Jean-Luc Godard. He became a famous director in this era because he liked to film shit in the weirdest way possible, and people thought he was some kind of goddamn genius for it. Pierrot le Fuck is about a couple of egotistical assholes who abandon their families, steal shit, kill some people, and run around like turd burglars for the entire movie. Everybody dies at the end, too, so — spoilers — I guess. The problem really isn’t the story so much as the directing. I couldn’t fucking stand how it was directed. It was way too cool and hip for a troglodyte for me to understand. Everything about it from the way the actors read their lines, to people staring directly at the camera, to how trendy everybody was, to just about fucking everything irritated me to no end. Godard is more pretentious cock gobbler than innovative director. Obviously, this is only a movie for the hardcore amongst us. The only good thing about it was it had some nudity. That’s it. Pierrot le Fuck can go fuck itself. That would be the trendy thing to do.

Verdict: Shitty

22
Oct
10

Screw You, Marvel

This is exactly what Marvel is doing to their properties.

All of Marvel’s upcoming movies are going to be trash.

A decade ago, movie adaptations of comic books were a joke. With the exception of the 1989 Batman and 1978 Superman films, they were laughable at best, and huge steaming piles of shit at worst. The problem was that nobody took it seriously, not even the creators. They made them campy and hokey, and self-referentially stupid. They were the lowest common denominator of movies. They became a self-fulfilling prophecy of crappy movie-making. After all, if the filmmakers themselves treated the properties like shit, then the movies would inevitably turn out to be shit. The industry chugged along, and churned out turd after turd with the occasional, anomalous decent movie like Blade in 1998.

Fast forward to 2002, and the release of Spider-Man. Suddenly, we had a GOOD live action version of a comic book movie. How did it turn out good, you ask? Well, let me answer that for you. The simple reason was that the director, Sam Raimi, had been a longtime fan of the comic book series. He wanted to stay as true to the character as possible while adapting him for the more difficult live action film environment. Naturally, certain things needed to be changed, but they were done with as much care as possible. The characters and situations were taken seriously, and given the right amount of gravity with occasional moments of levity thrown in to keep things fun. The script was solid, the actors were well cast and talented, and everything flowed together seamlessly. It just worked. Worldwide, that movie grossed over $800 million. People were screaming about how awesome the movie was, and all of a sudden it wasn’t nerdy to like comics any more.

Continue reading ‘Screw You, Marvel’




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