Airplane Movies
I watched two films on the way to New Zealand.
I was shocked how much I like Paul. I was looking forward to it when it was being released, but things didn’t quite work out and then, the response was muted at best.
I really enjoyed the tone of the piece, more so than in the previous Pegg/Frost films, which I have liked, but not loved them the way some do. These two middle-aged geeks reminded me of real middle-aged geeks… self-aware, but still engaged and hopeful.
I really liked the balance of these guys against Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio, who like our geek heroes, are really on the outs while they feel like they are insiders.
I liked Kristin Wiig’s Ruth Buggs, whose evolution via Paul was inevitable, but still worked pleasantly for me.
That’s really the thing… here are these guys… on this stupid trip… and they meet an alien… and they get over it in a second and just keep rolling along. It was like The Muppet Movie with an alien.
Speaking of which, it was one of my favorite Seth Rogen performances because he wasn’t encumbered by his look, which in the movies is a real thing. Using just his voice, his Paul could go from being stoner laid back to cocky to mean to arrogant to sweet as sugar and just keep going. I liked the integration of the CG character into the film and found it reasonably seamless… as though Greg Mottola was directing a guy in a suit on the set and didn’t really change much to accommodate him.
No doubt, it may have seemed more flawed on a screen 50x bigger than other one I viewed it on. But I mostly grinned through the whole thing, utterly entertained.
Flip side, maybe a theater would have helped Source Code for me.
I didn’t hate the movie. How can one hate the movie. And I racked my brain to remember why anyone would be remotely upset – or interested in – Jeffrey Wright’s mad mocha scientist or any of his movie cliche ticks.
My problem with the movie was that I never cared for a second about this guy. I figured out “the secret” within the first 2 or 3 serious looks into camera when he asked unanswered questions.
I don’t care about the logic. I don’t care about whether the cheesed up ending makes sense. Don’t care. I will give a movie its premise. I will overlook those leaps.
But I have to care about these characters. And I really didn’t. After a short while, it felt like every leap was just there to teach him 2 or 3 tricks… no real threat of anything good or bad happening as a result of his actions. I would have liked the version where he murders everyone on the train because, who cares… he’ll just be back in a little while.
If nothing can change, as the story claims, aside from an event none of these characters have anything to do with, why do we care?
This is where Unstoppable can teach filmmakers a lesson. Keep It Simple… And Stupid. If the train is heading off the raised tracks into a neighborhood, at least put one guy’s estranged wife and kid and the other guy’s two Hooter-iffic daughters within the kill range. It’s good old fashioned movie BS… but it brings you into the drama, like it or not.
The fatalistic “you can’t change anything, but do the right thing” schtick is arthouse crap. Duncan Jones is a skilled young director and should have a long, healthy career ahead of him. But if you’re making boom-boom movies, don’t confuse yourself by being too smart… unless you are so smart that you can achieve a masterpiece… and I will watch all of your films, but you aren’t there yet, Dunc.
As I say, maybe the ride would have been more fun with a room full of people instead of a sleeping Brit snoring away in the seat next to me. (I had earbuds that kept the noise – competing with the plane engines – out of my head during the film.) More likely, there was just so much crap in theaters from Jan-March that people were thrilled not to want to be running for the exits to ask for their money back. (I didn’t pay… I had nowhere to go… but I could have switched channels and chose not to… so there!)
Of course, the highlight of my trip was 5 hours of The Walking Dead. With that and Game of Thrones this year, it may be the best year ever for “fantasy” on television.
I haven’t seen Source Code yet, but my brain has leaked a spoiler to me already. You know how it is, you’re watching the trailer and the answer to the clearly spelled out mystery pops up unbidden. Jake Gyllenhaal probably made the movie. Guys would like to be like him and young women, dragging the guys to the movie, would certainly want to be with him. I think I’ll go visit the redbox and get it now.
Paul was alright but Jason Bateman was wasted – anybody could have played that …i liked the computer graphics with the ending ..nicely done ..
Has Paul seen the movie about himself yet?
I thought PAUL was a good-natured and generally amusing trifle that might have benefited from an even shaggier treatment, like certain loosey-goosey ’70s films. There’s a bit of a disconnect between the shambling tone and the state-of-the-art f/x, though admittedly the premise sort of requires both. Definitely the slightest of the previous Pegg/Frost efforts, and, sure, maybe a bit more charming as a result. I thought Wiig was great, and Rogen was very funny, as was the design of his character.
Source Code would have to be the most overrated film of the year. Not for one second did I care what was going on. It wasn’t even that clever and the ending to me doesn’t make much sense if you start examining it. Gyllenhaal for all the attention he gets is a very inert presence onscreen.
It’s hard to dislike movies on planes though, even dire ones seem to float by without much annoyance. I guess they’re taking your mind off exploding and falling into the sea below.
Wow you didn’t care about Gyllenhall. A bunch of bleeding hearts in this place.
Now, could Don Lewis come in here and insult David like he did me for enjoying Paul? That would be swell.
Source Code was one of those really good movies I’ll probably never watch again. It’s a more complete work than Moon (Sam Rockwell’s great in it and it’s a good first movie, but like The Truman Show, it stops the moment the movie would’ve been REALLY good if it continued, but it would’ve been a harder movie to make). I think the test of these movies is whether one wants to revisit them and obsess over every little detail, like Memento or something like that. I was more than satisfied with Source Code, but it did feel awfully disposable. Probably because the two main characters only engage at a basic level than as rounded out individuals.
I was disappointed by Source Code. Back in April, my wife and I hadn’t seen a movie in theaters in many many weeks. We got the chance to catch a flick and I insisted upon Source Code. Thought it looked very interesting. Certainly has its moments, and I didn’t dislike it, but the plot turns are way too easy to decipher and it really drags in the second half. And as others have mentioned, not much characterization. The script from the writer of Species 3 & 4 needed a little polish.
There was a Species 4?
Sure was. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0844894/
“Source Code” is like a really great TV movie that would’ve aired on SyFy if SyFy wasn’t into making absolute shite priority number one lately.
i liked Source Code. Well executed.
Paul was ok. A little too heavy on the references. I’ve been on this internal rant for years that the current crop of filmmakers are incapable of doing anything other that riffing on what came before them.
Paul is one of those movies that lives in the wake of Spielberg, Star Wars, The Alien films. Then again, so was Super 8.
I’m kind of tired of seeing everyone’s ‘take’ on the era of films that inspired them, rather than seeing their own creations. Paul is one of those movies that requires you to have spent a lifetime living within the niche.
Super 8 cast a wider net trying to get people who spent a lifetime seeing Spielberg films. Apparently there’s 125 million dollars worth of nostalgia out there.
I have to imagine it’s an odd thing being the beard. Sitting back, watching all these filmmakers not just standing on your shoulders but basically asking you to carry them to the finish line.
Paul was at least more honest about what it was riffing on.
I liked Source Code for what it was. It wasn’t as smart as it thought it was, but at least it tried, which is more than I can say about a lot of the other movies I’ve seen this summer.
I didn’t feel like the story was reliant on the twist or secret to make it work, as it wasn’t all that secret. I thought the audience was being led to the reveals rather than them being hidden from the audience.
I agree on the characterization being the problem. In Groundhog Day, Murray learns and changes with each day, so you can see how he became who he was by the end. I never got that from Source Code, but liked Jake enough, and thought the stuff with his dad was just barely enough to fill in the character.
I liked the ending, as it fit with some of the theories on (spoiler) alternate universes that were referenced a couple of times in the dialog. I just wish the characters had been explored a little more so that we cared that they ended up together.
I also caught SOURCE CODE the other night and agree with most people here. It was alright but out of my mind within 30 minutes of the credit rolling.
One thing that did strike my about SOURCE CODE was how horrible the score was. It had just about the most bombastic and cliched “action movie” score I’ve heard in a while. Just dreadful. Moon had an awesome score so I’m not sure what happened to Jones’ taste in this area.
It seems they wanted to dress it up as an action thriller but it’s really more like an episode of star trek NG: solid but not really substantial sci-fi explored in a reasonably satisfying way. Jones’ two films both have a reassuring if vapid ending after a somewhat successful attempt at troubling material. For me it also didn’t help that the movie had poor image quality, although that might have been partly the amc I went to. I suspect Jones’ style is, right now, too verbal to carry off his stories. He stays too much on the surface of the problems he sets forth. Source Code feels like a lateral movement where Jones has dialed down the verisimilitude of Moon while embracing a set of more traditional plot structures: amnesiac detective story, improbable but totally predictable romance, Hitchcockian paranoid thriller, all carried off pretty well and certainly quite intriguing for the geekier audience members.
I’m pretty much in agreement w/Mike. I liked Source Code, the effort it made and was engaged enough with the characters to not need a special reveal to make work for me. I was kinda hoping for a little bit more but I’m not sure exactly what. It was actually a film I went to a Thurs night midnight showing. I don’t regret that but I had wanted it to be a little more special than it was.
I can’t remember the last time I watched a movie on a plane. Do they show the same cuts as in a theater or do some movies get a slight bit of editing?
No, airline versions are even more severely cut than broadcast TV. They even edit TV shows; I once watched a BIG BANG THEORY with nearly half a dozen bleeps.
Actually, on this flight and other international flights I have been on lately, Joe, there may be cutting, but not for language or violence. And as I recall, they had Californication on this flight, which would be silly to cut the sex out of, no?
David, was it one those personal in-the-seat deals? If so, it would not be edited, as you can choose not to watch it, unlike cabin screens.