Category: Movies

Bad Times at the El Royale

Posted on by Patrick
Still from Bad Times at the El Royale

Final­ly, last night, I watched Bad Times at the El Royale. Back when I first saw the trail­er, I thought it was an Evans movie for sure, but it end­ed up play­ing at the mul­ti­plex down the street instead, for all of two weeks. I man­aged to miss it. Now I regret not see­ing it on the big screen.

El Royale takes place at a hotel in Lake Tahoe, on the bor­der between Neva­da and Cal­i­for­nia. The bor­der lit­er­al­ly bisects the hotel. Rooms on the Cal­i­for­nia side are $1 more per night.

The movie opens with a priest, a singer, and a vac­u­um-clean­er sales­man try­ing to check in, one love­ly after­noon in 1969, but the clerk is nowhere to be found. Once they do track him down, a fourth guest appears, and she’s got some bag­gage. Well, they all have bag­gage, but the fourth woman appears to have kid­napped some­one.

Of course, this is a noir-ish thriller, and no one—not even the venue—is who they seem to be.

I quite enjoyed El Royale. It felt a lot like a Quentin Taran­ti­no movie, but it was writ­ten and direct­ed by Drew God­dard. God­dard man­aged to take all the good things about a QT movie—colours, music, sud­den vio­lent twists—and dis­card the end­less solil­o­quies. It real­ly makes for a tight, nasty thriller, and it’s just the thing I was look­ing for.

If you like vio­lence, secrets, thun­der­storms, ’60s music, and vio­lence, it might be just what you’re look­ing for too.

Head­er image from The Movie DB.

Christmas movies

Posted on by Patrick
still from A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Is Die Hard the best Christ­mas movie? I dun­no, I’ve always leaned toward The Night­mare Before Christ­mas*, myself.

But this arti­cle makes a com­pelling point for oth­ers, too. I just re-watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in the sum­mer­time, dur­ing my writ­ing retreat. (How is that five months ago already? Man, time flies.)

[M]ost of his films [have a] fairy-tale like sheen, sim­i­lar to what makes Die Hard so suc­cess­ful. And mak­ing it Christ­mas in L.A. (which the major­i­ty of his films do), offers a dif­fer­ent sen­si­bil­i­ty to the use of the hol­i­day on film.

—Emi­ly Ash­er-Per­rin, Die Hard is Great, but Shane Black is the King of Christ­mas Explo­sions

* Oh who am I kid­ding? Night­mare is sec­ond; A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas is first, even if it’s only about half an hour long.

The Old Man and the Gun

Posted on by Patrick
Still from The Old Man and the Gun

Last week­end I watched The Old Man and the Gun at the Evans The­atre. I loved it.



For­rest Tuck­er (played by Robert Red­ford) robs banks. We meet him as he’s rob­bing the lat­est one. He’s polite, he’s charm­ing, he’s got a gun that he shows the man­ag­er (but that we don’t actu­al­ly see till much lat­er). He makes his get­away, and after he’s switched cars he spies a truck bro­ken down on the side of the road. It’s dri­ven by Jew­el (Sis­sy Spacek), whom he offers a ride home (after the cop cars go scream­ing by, hunt­ing a get­away car he’s no longer dri­ving).

For­rest is in a gang with Ted­dy (Dan­ny Glover) and Waller (Tom Waits). The media dubs them the Over-the-Hill Gang. They don’t seem to need to rob banks, not for the mon­ey, at least; they seem to enjoy it.

(Aside: Teddy’s tragi­com­ic Christ­mas sto­ry was my favourite scene in the movie. It’s got noth­ing to do with the sto­ry, but it says some­thing about his char­ac­ter.)

Round­ing out the sto­ry is the police offi­cer John Hunt (Casey Affleck), who is deter­mined he’s going to be the one to nail the Over-the-Hill Gang. Will he suc­ceed? Will our plucky anti-heroes get away with their next heist? Will For­rest and Jewel’s meet-cute turn into some­thing deep­er? Watch the movie to find out. It’s worth it.

Few things in this movie are stat­ed out­right. What appears at first glance to be an old-timey hear­ing aid is more like­ly a police-radio scan­ner, and this rev­e­la­tion makes it eas­i­er to under­stand how Tuck­er man­ages his get­away in the open­ing scenes. As men­tioned, we don’t actu­al­ly see his gun for quite some time, and it’s unclear by the end of the film if he’s ever even loaded it, much less fired it. One of the cen­tre­piece heists isn’t even shown on-screen; we see a bit of the plan­ning, a lot of hand-wring­ing by the Over-the-Hillers (“Can we even do it? Is it worth try­ing? I can’t run near as fast as I used to”, etc), and then a news report about the crime as Tuck­er puts the loot into its hid­ing place.

It’s a fun movie, a fun­ny movie, and a sneaky, sly movie. I loved it.

I read recent­ly that Robert Red­ford decid­ed to retire after mak­ing The Old Man and the Gun because he want­ed to go out on a fun movie. I think he did a fine job.

Tomorrowland

Posted on by Patrick
Still from Tomorrowland

On the week­end I final­ly watched Disney’s Tomor­row­land. I sort-of remem­bered its the­atre run, which was under­whelm­ing (appar­ent­ly it lost over $100 mil­lion dol­lars, based on its pro­duc­tion and mar­ket­ing costs vs. its box-office take).

The sto­ry in a nut­shell: As a boy, Frank Walk­er goes to live in a retro-future par­adise, till he’s boot­ed out for some crime that remains unspec­i­fied until near­ly the end of the movie. He grows up into a bit­ter, bit­ter man (played by George Clooney). Mean­while, Casey (Britt Robert­son) might be the key to Frank’s return to Tomor­row­land, and also the key to, you know, staving off the seem­ing­ly inevitable end of the world. Fac­ing off against them is Nix (Hugh Lau­rie) and his army of skin­jobs Audio-Ani­ma­tron­ic robots.

I thought it was a decent movie, worth a watch, even if it was unsub­tle. The scene in the Texas col­lectibles store (Blast From the Past), where Casey squares off against evil AA ’bots Hugo* and Ursu­la, was chock­ablock with reminders that Dis­ney bought Star Wars. Some of the AAs were pret­ty creepy, espe­cial­ly the man­i­cal­ly-grin­ning leader of the Men-in-Black–styled “Secret Ser­vice” squad.

In a world that seems to pre­fer its enter­tain­ment on the grim & grit­ty side, opti­mistic SF is a hard sell. It has a ten­den­cy to come off preachy or heavy-hand­ed, and this movie didn’t man­age to evade those pit­falls. I’m still glad I watched it, though.

It’s an inter­est­ing com­pan­ion to Elan Mastai’s All Our Wrong Todays, which I read a few months ago, in that both explore the idea of alter­nate futures, espe­cial­ly the sorts of futures we seemed to expect in the 1950s (fly­ing cars! shin­ing tow­ers! per­son­al jet­packs!).

* Hugo Gerns­back, because of course.

Anomalisa

Posted on by Patrick

I went last night to the Evans The­atre to check out Anom­al­isa, which was an Oscar nom­i­nee in the Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture cat­e­go­ry.

anomalisa2

I didn’t know what to expect, but I didn’t expect what I got. The sto­ry is pret­ty sim­ple, in a way, but trip­pi­ly com­plex in anoth­er way. The way it’s told leaves it up to the view­er to fig­ure out cer­tain things, which I pre­fer to hand-hold­ing and spoon-feed­ing. The pup­petry / ani­ma­tion was amaz­ing; some­times it was solid­ly in the uncan­ny val­ley, oth­er times it was so life­like that I for­got these were pup­pets.

If you’re look­ing for a movie that makes you think, that makes you won­der, check it out. If you’re look­ing for the feel-good hit of the sum­mer, this may not be for you. (I’ve seen it called “hilar­i­ous” and “laugh-out-loud fun­ny”; I don’t agree. I did find some amuse­ment in it, but most­ly in the small details (“Try the chili!”, for instance), not in the broad­er sto­ry.)

 

Movie time

Posted on by Patrick

Tonight I watched about half of Man of Steel and all of WALL•E. I had nev­er seen the for­mer; I saw the lat­ter at the cin­e­ma.

The end cred­its of WALL•E are a bet­ter movie than Man of Steel, IMHO.

Action scenes

Posted on by Patrick

Ear­li­er this week I read an arti­cle on io9 about why you shouldn’t write action scenes, an arti­cle aimed at screen­writ­ers, espe­cial­ly those mak­ing big-bud­get action movies. Then this after­noon, I went to see one of the biggest action films cur­rent­ly in the­atres: Avengers: Age of Ultron.

From the arti­cle:

You don’t do an action sequence for the sake of doing a damn action sequence — you do an action sequence because it’s a new or more effec­tive way to advance your char­ac­ter or sto­ry.

Ultron fea­tured a lot — a lot — of action sequences. The bulk of them, to my eye, were action for the sake of action. A few of them — the mass fight at the start, for exam­ple — fea­tured some char­ac­ter build­ing. Among oth­er things, it estab­lished the team as an actu­al, cohe­sive team, and it showed the start of the Widow/Hulk sto­ry­line. But a lot of the lat­er action sequences were there, it seemed, to Make Things Explode. More than once I found myself won­der­ing when they were going to get back to the sto­ry. (That, or try­ing to cal­cu­late just how much mon­ey Stark’s rebuild­ing fund must burn through in a year. It’s got to be a lot.)

This is not to say I didn’t enjoy the movie. I liked it. It was a pleas­ant diver­sion. For a big stu­pid fun movie, it was decent­ly smart (though the whole plot hinged on a cou­ple of super­ge­nius sci­en­tists mak­ing some pret­ty bone­head­ed deci­sions).

Once more, quot­ing from the arti­cle:

Don’t write action sequences. Write sus­pense sequences that require action to resolve.

We’ll call Ultron a par­tial suc­cess there. Here’s hop­ing that the next film I see — slat­ed to be Mad Max: Fury Road1 — does as well or bet­ter.

Update: I watched Mad Max: Fury Road on the hol­i­day Mon­day. Even though the movie is one pro­tract­ed action scene (or maybe it’s more like a dozen or so action scenes, linked togeth­er with brief paus­es so the audi­ence can catch their col­lec­tive breath), it had more char­ac­ter devel­op­ment and sense of sto­ry than Avengers: Age of Ultron. So that’s a win.

  1. I appear to have a thing for com­mas2 colons in movie titles. ↩
  2. Typo. Gah! ↩

Tiens, cherchons le mot juste

Posted on by Patrick

Tonight, I watched a pair of amaz­ing home-grown doc­u­men­taries at the Evans The­atre: the 3rd film in the Warpaths tril­o­gy, sub­ti­tled Sil­ver Cross­es, for the memen­to received from the gov­ern­ment by moth­ers and wives of the men killed in action dur­ing the First World War; and Shaun Cameron’s Tales from the Eddy, a look back at Brandon’s famed Prince Edward Hotel, whose open­ing was delayed by the loss of its fur­ni­ture in the Titan­ic dis­as­ter, and whose igno­min­ious end could have (per­haps) been avert­ed if the list of pro­pos­als before City Coun­cil had been ordered dif­fer­ent­ly.

Warpaths: Sil­ver Cross­es, like its two pre­de­ces­sors, was an amaz­ing look at the effects of a glob­al con­flict on the lives of local folks (specif­i­cal­ly, the Bowes fam­i­ly of Bois­se­vain, MB). I enjoyed it immense­ly, as I knew I would. Kudos to Marc George and Gra­ham Street for a fit­ting cap­stone to an impor­tant series.

Tales from the Eddy was an eye-open­ing expe­ri­ence. I moved here years after the hotel was demol­ished; I nev­er knew a sky­line with its impos­ing bulk in it. For the last two decades I’ve heard peo­ple rem­i­nisce about the Eddy, usu­al­ly with that far­away look in their eyes, and I must admit, I rolled my eyes a lit­tle (inward­ly, any­ways). It’s just a hotel, I would think. How grand could it be, real­ly?

Very grand.

I learned a lot about Brandon’s hey­day in the hour-and-change that the doc­u­men­tary was up on the screen. Dozens of still frames of the hotel’s inte­ri­or and exte­ri­or showed me just how amaz­ing the Prince Edward was in its day. For what­ev­er rea­son, see­ing the skate park that has been built where the hotel used to stand — com­plete with help­ful paint­ed labels mark­ing LOBBY and PLATFORM to indi­cate rough­ly the extent of the building’s one­time foot­print — struck me quite hard.

Entropy grinds away at us. That could be tonight’s theme, I sup­pose. But we keep push­ing back against it, and I think I like that theme bet­ter.

Watch­ing Shaun’s doc­u­men­tary, I felt a strange emo­tion, a nos­tal­gia for some­thing I nev­er knew. If the Ger­mans don’t have a name for it, sure­ly the French do.