Movie Review: Red

I recently took a trip out to Kansas to visit my lovlier half. It was a wondrous trip, at least partially due to our not having seen each other for about two months. We did all the trip things we do: eat at Olive Garden, walk around Barnes and Noble, watch Nickelodeon.

But after today I thoroughly regret our not doing one that thing was on our list but a low priority: seeing Red.

I am sorry for the pun; I didn’t intend to put it there, I hoped to avoid it, but now it’s present and we all have to live with it in our lives. Her life (“Her” being my lovely lady) is likely to remain tragically unenriched by the experience of Red, at least until it hits DVD and we’re in the same city; she’s not much for hitting the theater by herself. But you, dear reader, could go watch it right now. And you should.

I’ve already expressed my appreciation for The Losers, another excellent film sharing many virtues with Red. I’ve also talked up The Expendables as a fun romp where a bunch of action stars get together and are burly and violent (or tiny and violent, in Jet Li’s case). With Red, we have the lighthearted and generally overblown approach to plot and villainy of the former, with an ensemble cast like the latter—only instead of Red’s cast being comprised of action stars, they’re really talented actors, some of whom can also fire a gun or get into a vicious, choreographed fight.

Bruce Willis (also in The Expendables) is great as Frank Moses, but is that really news? Outside of films like The Kid, does Willis’s performance still require commendation? If nothing else, he seems completely comfortable in this action roll. He’s able to remain extremely understand and laconic without coming off drugged or oblivious. Freeman and Malkovich are also spectacular, each stealing scenes in ways that suit their respective characters. Malkovich’s Marvin is guano crazy, though justifiably so; Freeman’s Joe oozes an affable charm. It’s interesting to view these characters as retirees and feel like one has a sense of what they would have been like in their youth, flying around the globe committing espionage. Joe seems like he’d have been very much a faceman, while Marvin probably didn’t get to interact with people much…though the special surprise during the credits might fly in the face of those assumptions. Karl Urban gives a performance which isn’t nearly as entertaining as Bones, but I’m just happy any time I see the guy getting scenes where he uses full sentences and doesn’t have to be angry at everyone. Richard Dreyfus, whom the lady and I both loved in My Life in Ruins, also has fun with his relatively small role…and gets pimp-slapped by Morgan Freeman, which might very well be a hearkening back to one of his early roles.

I know some men prefer women several years older, though I can’t claim to have ever been one such fellow myself. But Helen Mirren’s performance in Red gave me many reasons to reconsider my predilections. John Rogers mentioned, in a review of Body Heat, that one of the incredible things in that move is Kathleen Turner isn’t the “most gorgeous creature on earth -- until the film convinces you she is.” I’ve loved that line since I read his review, and it was at the forefront of my mind when Mirren’s character is introduced and Morgan Freeman declares she’s still sexy. I don’t know if it’s Mirren’s incredible charisma and vacillation between practical arctic camo and elegant dress (both ivory) that sold me, or that the innate response of a human being to Freeman’s voice making a declaration is immediate agreement. She fabulously portrays a character who remains “one of the boys,” where by boys I here mean a trio of still-lethal superspies…but does so while also remaining inarguably and irresistibly feminine.

Mary-Louise Parker also shines in the film, to the point where I felt guilty that I stopped watching Weeds after two seasons. I don’t think that I actually feel bad enough about it to go back to watching Weeds, but it was nice to be reminded of her exceptional charisma. In a film with so many big names, Parker’s Sarah Ross is content to sit back and react…and that’s what makes her so great. With her alabaster skin and wondrously expressive face, she’s at her most compelling when she has nothing to say—and while that sounds like a backhanded compliment, it’s wholly genuine.

I also loved the earliest scenes depicting Willis and Parker. In an alternate universe there’s a movie that is just shy of two hours of them courting one another over the phone, followed by fifteen minutes of explosions. And I would probably watch that movie.

The movie is fun, well-written, and acted in such a way that one can’t ignore the familiarity its stars have with their craft. Your experience may vary, but I find that extremely engaging, and am a sucker for films where the cast seems to be having fun and not feeling especially stressed. Combine that with lots of gunshots and explosions and Red is a very satisfying, worthwhile experience.

However, I do want to voice one small caveat. This is something I’ve become more conscious of in the last few months (specifically in Dungeons and Dragons Online, which I might address at a later time), and it’s gradually growing more noticeable: the morality in Red is thoroughly ambiguous. I don’t just mean the cloak and dagger, “can you trust your government?” elements to the plot, either. There are least two points when characters, thoroughly likeable ones at that, lament how long it’s been since they’ve killed someone or how difficult it is to stop killing people. And in both of those situations the context is completely lacking.

When we learn Frank Moses was a black ops man (and if that’s a spoiler, people…come on now), the information is carefully packaged to focus on his killing terrorists and drug dealers. The movie spends very little time trying to convince us that Frank is a bad, or even morally questionable, man. Marvin is initially presented as being dangerously paranoid, but the scope of what the retirees are caught in quickly vindicates his apparent mania. Yet when these other characters talk about killing, there’s no discussion about their targets. It made scenes where the team is quite clearly going out of their way to avoid killing other people, both innocents and armed lackeys, ring somewhat false. I was surprised that there was not even a suggestion that certain people are reasonable targets for execution because of their lines of work. I suppose if the film actually did present that sort of argument, it might invalidate the premise of the movie itself.

So maybe I’m glad it didn’t. I don’t think the absence of that moral conversation breaks the film or makes it impossible to enjoy. I’ll be purchasing it the weekend it hits DVD, so that I can sit back and enjoy a double-feature of The Losers and Red….and The A-Team…and The Expendables. That’s less a double-feature, more a movie orgy—and I’m looking forward to it.

Movie Review: The Expendables

There's a book joke at the beginning of The Expendables. When I saw the film today, I was the only one who laughed.

There's a joke in the movie about Arnold Schwarzenegger's political aspirations in the film; everyone laughed. I think that probably says a lot about the crowd in the theater when I saw the movie, but I also think it says something about the film itself. The Expendables looks like it should be a stupid fun romp, and it certainly succeeds at the fun part. But it's also something pretty magical, in that it concentrates decades of action movie talent across a wide gamut of subgenres (Stallone, Statham, Li, and DOLPH LUNDGREN!), along with lesser-known actors (Terry Crews and Randy Couture) who've made their names in other areas (Being a huge muscly black guy and UFC, respectively). The middle field is also stocked with classic character actors like Eric Roberts, who can't help but be the villain whenever he's on camera, and Mickey Rourke who, frankly, gives the most moving monologue of the entire film.

But what praise is that last statement, really? It's a valid question. The Expendables is not a thinking man or woman's film, and doesn't spend overmuch time beating your head in with moral lessons and geo-political commentary. Even The Losers worked harder to establish just why the bad guys were bad and the main characters were just misunderstood. None of that takes away from Rourke's speech, though, and the little details (The focus on his ravaged grill, the way his voice catches and chokes) sell that this is a man who went into Hell, came back out, but was never quite right thereafter.

I feel, though, that all you need to know about the film is this: Arnie and Bruce Willis are uncredited for their appearances in this film. You know they're going to show up, you've seen them in commercials and trailers, but it's still awesome when they do. The exchange between Schwarzenegger and Stallone condenses what one assumes is a lifetime of familiarity by association, and a recognition of one another's physical changes. It sets a tone for how I, at least, want to take the film: as a gathering of men who punch, stab, and shoot things on film. I'd like to envision that between takes Dolph discussed kicks with Li, Stallone and Statham talked about how loud blanks sound when they're going off right by one's head, and so forth. Everyone seems to have been having fun, and even Crews and Couture give performances that make up for in amusement what they might lack in thespian ability.

Ability, though, is on display. There is nothing The Expendables reminds me of so much as Tango and Cash, and not just because the characters have such improbable names (Barney Ross, Toll Road, Ying Yang). Tango and Cash is another film where nearly every line any main character speaks is, in itself, a one-liner; usually met with another one-liner from whomever else is in the film. Everything the villain says oozes menace and contempt, and everything the three female characters in the entire film say....doesn't amount to much.

However, what was somewhat painful in Tango and Cash has largely been remedied here. It's not that the jokes are necessarily more amusing (short of the book sight gag, it was all pretty trite). However, the actors are much, much better. They're universally large men (Though some are shorter than you'd expect, and it was a surprise to see Willis tower over Stallone) with one exception, and Jet Li has a charming monologue where he makes much of his struggles amidst such company ("I'm smaller, I work harder."). They are, in most cases, veterans of the kind of film that requires punching someone over and over while the director yells cut, repositions, and shoots again. In a film directed and co-written by Stallone himself, the crew he's assembled gives a loving send-up to violence, gunfire, and the camaraderie that develops between crews of lovable misfits who don't belong in polite society. I think you already know whether or not you'll enjoy the movie without reading a word of this review, or even seeing a second of the trailer. If the list of names in the film made you say "Fuck YES!" then you're in.

The other advantage that The Expendables has over Tango and Cash is that fight choreography in American cinema has improved by leaps and bounds (Sometimes literally. Thanks David Belle and Cyril Raffaelli!). Statham, Stallone, and Li all get their respective spotlight solo fights, and there is something magical in seeing how different a type of action film each man represents. Stallone is a slab of meat murder machine these days, but that's presented much more engagingly here than in the last Rambo movie, which felt like punishment to watch. He's in a knock-down, drag-out brawl that feels a little Rocky, even if he's not punching Lundgren. Statham doesn't go up against any significant character, but he gets to take on a whole slew of them instead, and do so stylishly and while championing a lady; very Transporter without all the oil and shirtlessness. And Li...well, I won't say much about Li's fight, except that it adds a little bit of humor (in the tradition of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Li himself) without ever failing to be deadly serious. It's telling that Statham and Stallone both have stunt doubles, yet Li has an entire fight team plus a choreographer.

All of the fights are entertaining, and the climactic battle lets every actor show themselves impressively in some way. They mix guns, blades, and knuckles with liberal explosions, are highly kinetic, and rarely flinch-worthy (again, I'm thinking of John Rambo here). I watch for a few things in action movies, like places where a quick cut suggests something went wrong. There is one shot where an explosion seems like it must have gone off too close to Stone Cold Steve Austin (yeah, he's up in this piece too) but, ever the consummate self-stunman, he barely flinches. There's also a single shot where one of the characters, I think Statham, kills a soldier who barely looks 18; I imagine that it's a scene they wish they'd cut from sooner than they did, but it doesn't break the movie.

Like I said, you already know if you like The Expendables. But maybe there's a sentence in here you can use to justify that appreciation to a dubious headshaker in order to get their butt in a seat for the big screen experience.

Movie Musing: Short Circuit 2 and Violence

What the Hell was up with 80's childrens' movies?

Watching Short Circuit 2, I'm struck by the realization that even Resevoir Dogs wasn't this violent. Mr. Blonde only takes an ear...in this, we watch two thugs hack the main character apart. They take an axe to him. Hitting one of the thugs in the ass with a big remote-controlled plane doesn't make that any less horrific.

Then, instead of the sob-filled conversation between a mortally wounded Harvey Keitel and Tim Roth, we get to watch Johnny 5 make his horribly maimed, spark-dripping way down the street to sad violin music. Please recall, this is after he ran through a crowd, screaming out for any sort of help, completely ignored by the confused amateur aereonauts. These are people, note, who watch a man with an axe running through a park and don't think to ask what's happening.

The 'bot can't even talk. When the sleazy swindler feller catches up to him, Johnny has to write on the wall with chalk to communicate that he is dying.

Johnny's triage instructions provide an interesting theological argument: "My memory is me. If it loses power, I die." I would have been 4, maybe 5, when I saw this movie. I'm not sure if a 5 year old needs exposure to that sort of material (though I suppose I'd been going to Sunday school for a time by then).

What renders all of this more ridiculous from the perspective of someone watching in 2010 is that Johnny proudly proclaims he has 500 MB of memory. This heart-wrenching examination of morality and survival is presented in the words of a character with less memory than the flash drive I bought years ago.

Despite, or perhaps because of, all of this, Short Circuit is very much a part of my life. When the villains are hiding their ill-gotten gems they use a bunch of plastic dinosaurs (and at least one Kaiju). I still have two of the creatures sitting on the table during that scene. Rewatching it now, I wrestle with the question of whether or not kids' movies today ought to treat their audience with a similar presumption of maturity. I know there's a vast gulf between G and PG, but I've seen PG-13 movies made in the last five years with less profanity and certainly less visceral violence.

One Piece Makes Me Cry

The plot of One Piece: The Desert Princess and the Pirates: Adventures in Alabasta is functionally identical to that of Lord of the Rings, or even Henry V. When I weep at One Piece, it's no different than when I sob through the entirety of Branaugh's interpretation of that latter tale. The Dancer, the Detective, and the Talking Reindeer saddling up to help their friend in her deadly quest is no different than Falstaff's drunks going to war against France; it's all the same delicious, resonant stuff. Impossible odds, unrepentant villains (some of whom will obviously redeem themselves), and a conflict that will shape the fate of nations.

If you allow One Piece to distract you with its art style, or the unusual characters, you miss the point. I understand that many of the characters are strange and confusing--why is that reindeer wearing a hat, why don't that man's hands ever leave his pockets, what's with the swan-wearing crossdresser? However, if one watches the show without falling prey to these inquiries, the film makes absolute sense.

You needn't be versed in Shakespeare to understand which character is the coward, which character is playing it cool despite being in love with another, and which character is the generally goofy but profoundly driven character. The urbane villain, the misguided rebel, and the doomed retainer...these are all atavistic tropes presented in One Piece just as they are in any other work, but with more swans.

The archetypal nature of the film extends to its plot as well. It's unnecessary to understand why the princess is on a pirate ship; it's unnecessary to comprehend why her most loyal guards can turn into a bird- and dog-man respectively. I don't mean for my readers to mistake my dismissal of the need to understand these things for a rejection of the film's value. It's profoundly the opposite.

The Japanese practice of producing OVAs (Original Video Animation) is something I've come to appreciate. An OVA is usually an addendum to or remix of a successful anime series; a way of saying either "And then this happened..." or "But things might have happened this way..." The most impressive task of OVAs is that they must cram a multi-episode, if not multi-season, storyline into a few brief minutes; even if they aren't theatrical releases, OVAs need to appeal to an audience that might not be well-versed in the background material. As such, OVAs are adept at communicating everything that the viewer needs to know about the actors, and situations, with which they are presented.

The characters are archetypes, the plot is eternal, the Pluton is just a MacGuffin. Once you understand that, One Piece ranks amongst the greatest films of all time...because it's functionally identical to them along all the valences that matter.

Movie Review: Daybreakers

Guys, Daybreakers is really bad. Painfully bad. The same night I rented it (for a dollar, from the bounty of the Redbox) I also purchased three DVDs for a full cost of $10 from the Smith's where I do my grocery shopping. Those films (Knight Club, Spreading Ground, and Meet Market) are all completely unknown to me. I picked up one because it has Dennis Hopper, one because it had Julian McMahon and Alan "The Tudes" Tudyk, and one because it's about a secret organization of bouncers either run, or about to be betrayed, by Lou Diamond Phillips (The box doesn't tell you who stars in each role). I do not anticipate that these will be incredible films, though I suspected each would a bare minimum exceed the quality of Mazes and Monsters, which was an option.

In brief, Daybreakers is about a near future where vampirism is rampant across the entire globe. They never explain where the vampirism comes from, or what it represents (A disease? A curse? Interbreeding?), and frankly I cherish that. One of the biggest frustrations for me in watching vampire films is how much time they tend to devote to explaining all of those things. They’ll have the scene with the cross, or the character conveniently chopping up some garlic for a nice Italian dinner, and then the vampire busts in so the director can confirm or disconfirm some typical vampire myth.

Instead, the film focuses on the prospect of starvation vampires are facing. While we’re presented with a well-ordered, fancy vampire society, news broadcasts and a special meeting make it clear that the human blood supply is running low. The meeting goes further, illustrating how vampires deprived of vampire blood gradually devolve into monstrous, feral bat-men. Ethan Hawke portrays one of the vampires’ top blood researchers, desperately attempting to master an artificial blood system before the humans in the bank all expire and rioting reaches catastrophic levels (In the US; it’s pretty clear that it’s already there in third-world countries). Of course, some plucky humans kidnap Hawke and try to put him to use in their own project.

There are some nice touches. At one point, when a group of humans are taken by the vampire army (Which still recruits using Uncle Sam on its posters), a baby audibly cries in its mother's arms. The audience never sees the child, but it's a subtle reminder of the sheer scope of horror in the vampires' hunger.

I won't pretend the plot isn't interesting; it's a clever reversal of the typical vampire myth, mixed with a little disaster movie and a little zombie movie. Those merits, honestly, could have applied to Ultraviolet as well (The movie, not the British TV show). Daybreakers also has a unique visual style, washed out and pale during the daylight; with a slight retro, WWII aesthetic. Minus the last part, that's reminiscent of Blade; possibly the greatest vampire-killing movie of all time.

However.

I originally had the impression that the human resistance somehow made use of exploding arrows in all of their crossbows, given the pyrotechnics that result from every shot…except for the bolt Hawke takes through his arm at the beginning of the movie. It wasn’t until the film’s last-minute attempt at action, with Hawke running around ramming chair legs into vamp chests, that it became clear vampires simply explode when you poke them…like balloons, if we filled them with fire.

Ethan Hawke ends up dressed like Robin of Loxley, and I can't produce any logical argument as to why. Knight Club, I expect I'll be far more enthused.

Movie Review: I'm Not Going to Make a Pun About Kick-Ass or The Losers

Spoilers exist below, albeit in a somewhat subconscious way. Beyond mention of a few critical scenes that you might not see coming, I’m mostly just pointing out where things in one of these films find their way into the other. It’s cool, kids.

Anyone possessed of a familiarity with either myself in general or EgoPoisoning in particular may have been surprised that I didn’t post a review for Kick-Ass immediately after it hit theaters. Please believe I saw it then, and spent much time engaged in acts of gushery thereafter. However, I suppose that I decided writing a review was unnecessary: it was the #1 movie in the nation, and outside of my immediate circle of friends (Or rather, a large concentric circle around the smaller data point that was the guy who went with me when I saw it) and their steadfast refusal to consume the awesome, it seemed as though everyone went and saw the movie. As my bubonic memeticism drives me to fill folks’ heads and ears with things they ought to be consuming, but aren’t yet, Kick-Ass seemed to be doing okay without my help. Sure, Ebert hated it, but he also thinks video games not only are not, but cannot be, art. Big Doughy E, “You inhabit a world I am so very not interested in.”

Then my younger brother caught the flick after a week of my urging, and his response afterward was a resounding meh. Given that I readily idolize my younger brother—this is a man who asked his special lady friend to be his special lady friend by having Colorado rapper Black Prez write, record, and e-mail him a song to that effect in the time it took her to shower--learning that he didn’t dig the movie distressed me deeply. I hit him with a rapid-fire interrogation: “So what you’re telling me is, when a twelve-year-old impales a man’s hands with a rope-tethered kunai, leaps over him while wrapping the rope around his wrists, and then tugs the rope in order to draw his gun against his chin and fire a bullet into his own head…that did nothing for you?” After a few more such questions, my brother ultimately said that, even after having seen the film, I made it sound better than he found it while watching it. I said he just needed to watch the movie with my eyes, which is probably true but not biologically possible.

However, I can watch movies with my eyes, and I just finished watching The Losers, a movie I had initially been pumped for based on the trailers, and then swerved away from when I realized it was only rated PG-13, and finally decided to see (12 minutes before the showing, at a theater across town) on the recommendation of the illustrious Wesley Johnson. So what I’m really sitting down to do is talk about The Losers, not Kick-Ass, except that from the position of the brain situated behind my eyes it’s impossible to talk about the former without the latter. But when I say this, I mean it for reasons other than the superficial similarity that both films are based on comic books (in the case of The Losers, the comic is actually based on another comic). If I were going to make a comparison between The Losers and something else on purely superficial, it would be The A-Team, or the Expendables, or Xuande’s crew in Romance of the Three Kindgoms. The Losers follows a group of elite government agents, each with particular specialties including piloting vehiclesand talking really fast while being a fetchingly bestubbled Caucasian male, led by a grizzled strategist in disgrace. They’re framed and betrayed by a sinister government agent (Portrayed by an actor with experience playing a nocturnal individual). For serious.

So taking the aerial view, it is vastly easier to compare The Losers to other movies; Three Kingdoms obviously lacks an overabundance of Caucasians, but a ragtag group of mercenary warriors follow their grizzled, framed leader Liu Bei while pursued by the shadowy and manipulative Cao Cao. That’s my masters education at work, people.

No, where The Losers and Kick-Ass are disturbingly similar is in tiny, specific things. There’s a slow-motion fight in the darkness, while flames lick around the edges of the scene. There’s a shocking betrayal. And bad things happen to tiny children.

I want to stress that I enjoyed the hell out of The Losers. It’s a great action movie, full of entertaining dialogue. The villainous Max is superlatively portrayed by Jason Patric, who manages to be every bit as sociopathic and unhinged as Gary Oldman’s Carnegie without ever going over the top. He doesn’t chew the scenery, he doesn’t fly off no frothing tangents; when he does reprimand his underling it’s always very subtle, understated, self-aware…and hilarious. All of the characters manage to be likeable and expressive, conveying a subtle (And not-so-subtle) badassery that feels comfortable and well-worn. The early fight between Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Zoe Saldana has a charming pre-combat stretch on both actors’ parts that leaves the audience with no doubt as to what’s about to go down.

What fascinated me in watching it, though, was how I kept thinking that I ought to buy a ticket for the 7pm showing of Kick-Ass afterward. Partially this was because of the combat; it’s great in The Losers, very technical and weighty, but that fired a hunger in me to watch Chloe Moretz flow gracefully through a crowd of armed guards. Partially it was the difference in scope and scale of the emotional connection I was able to form with the characters in each film. It’s made clear, reasonably subtly, that one of the characters in The Losers has a pregnant wife; Chris Evans’s Jensen is also adorably fixated on his niece’s soccer team, even from Boliva. However, beyond these simple statements and occasional references to them, The Losers isn’t really crafted to give you a deeper understanding of what drives and motivates the characters; beyond the two connections I just mentioned there’s essentially nothing for anyone else in the film. Of course, part of the purpose behind this fits the characters, whose truest and deepest connections appear to be with one another, a group of brothers forged in battle to function as a single effortless unit. Which is cool, and well done. But it feels like small beer in comparison with the utterly heart-wrenching family dynamic portrayed in Kick-Ass, where Chloe Moretz and Nic Cage form a parent-child bond that puts 7th Heaven to shame.

But truthfully, at its core, I think what put me in mind of Kick-Ass as I watched the Losers was something that happens at the very beginning of the film, and could be a spoiler if you’ve never seen an action movie before. The Losers give up their spot on an extraction helicopter after aborting their mission due to the presence of a number of children. As they put the children on the chopper, one of the little boys tries to give Clay (the Loser’s leader) his teddy bear; Clay pushes it back into his hands and says “No Gracias. You keep your bear safe.”

If you don’t see a missile coming at that point, movies must be full of surprises for you, and I’m genuinely a little envious. I watched the helicopter rising back into the sky, and I thought about something that had troubled B.D. Ebert in the review I linked above, but from the opposite angle. In Kick-Ass, Chloe Moretz does get kicked around, smacked around, at one point brutally, viciously beaten…all by adults who are right there in front of her diminutive frame. It’s horrifying, and gut-wrenching, and it leaves a profound impact…because it’s the point of every scene where it occurs. The impact of the images, of what they say about her conviction as a hero and the upbringing that led her to that life, is never hidden or obscured. We see her gasping on her back, blood caking her nostrils, and are struck by her fragility and her ferocity.

In The Losers, 25 kids are blown up in the first ten minutes. They’re never seen again, and while their death is at least part of the impetus for the film’s plot, their tiny lives have less repeated significance than the bobble-headed Chihuahua that Pooch the driver puts onto the dash of every vehicle he nabs, or the cowboy hat Couger the sniper wears. In many ways, Kick-Ass and The Losers are using the same tools to tell a story, including the very human reaction that seeing children threatened elicits. However, in this I think the point goes to Kick-Ass, because there’s not a moment in that film where you can forget that Hit-Girl isn’t old enough to see her own movie.

Movie Review: Clash of the Titans (2010)

I saw Clash of the Titans today. Simply googling that title further bolstered my already formed thrust for this review. Gentle Giant John Meo (I don’t know if John Meo is a gentle giant. I don’t know anything about John Meo) suggests that it will be a much-hyped bore; he apparently draws this opinion in part from the esteemed Doug Cooper (Don’t know anything about the Dougster either). Earlier today I was speaking with my boss and asked if she planned to see the film; she’s in a similar situation to that of my own lovely lady in that she’s been so long attached to a nerd it’s caused her own recessive nerdity to express itself fully. My boss said she’d heard the movie was cheesy. Really, really cheesy. This is not to say she wasn’t going to see it, but it did impact the likelihood of her seeing it in the theaters. Later, another coworker popped by the office (It used to be her office, but she moved down the hall and it’s certainly not my office, hence “the” office.) and when I mentioned my ever-increasing excitement to see the film she said it had received “mixed reviews.” I’m pretty sure that was a diplomatic way of saying that she’d heard it sucks.

People of the world, heed my words: Clash of the Titans does not suck. I try to refrain from being that guy who says “You’re just watching it wrong,” but (Like anyone who starts a sentence by saying “I try to refrain from x”) if you think Clash sucks, you are watching it wrong. You are watching it with unwarranted, unreasonable, unrealistic, or undeserved expectations. And, honestly, that’s fine. The movie is already made. It already exists, in gorgeous 3-dimensional sexy. If the flick bombs in the theaters it will simply reach DVD, and my collection, that much faster.

Real talk folks: Clash is kind of cheesy, but so is mythology. That is why mythology is awesome. Dudes are jumping onto the backs of giant monsters and stabbing them with enchanted dinnerware; ladies are beguiling men and magic-ing them into bestial forms; completely impractical pieces of metallic fruit drive entire countries to war. The Trojan War? Sex and the City-style cat fight. Do the characters in Sex and the City fight? I don’t know, I’ve never watched the show and really can’t back that comparison up. But mythology=cheese, and sometimes even camp, and that’s a glorious and beautiful thing. It’s a major part of why we even remember this stuff. So in Clash, when Perseus learns that Zeus slipped a magic roofie to his mom and made baby times, that’s what the Greeks say happened. Granted, Perseus’s mother was king Acrisius’s daughter, not his wife, and Big A Little c wasn’t besieging Olympus at the time, and Zeus didn’t appear as a copy of the king and then flash a little butt at the king when he stormed into the chamber after the deed was done; but is that somehow cheesier than Zeus appearing to Danae as a shower of gold? I submit to the reader that it is not. The change of moving Calibos’s identity from suitor-to-Andromeda to pissed-off-king is actually less cheesy, since it removes a tangled and somewhat wearisome romantic subplot.

As for the rest of the plot, the only really glaring change is the addition of those fellows you may have seen in the trailers, standing around in robes and having fewer than five fingers while they point at scorpions. I won’t go into their role in order to avoid spoilers, but I will make the claim that any movie already including giant sea monsters, giant scorpions, and giant snakes with the torsos of women attached where their head would be-with snakes attached to where the woman’s hair would be-really can’t be rendered more ridiculous(ly awesome) with the addition of some scaled desert-dwelling-dudes. There is arguably a larger alteration to the motivation behind the plot, but it remains “gods be capricious and petty, yo.” As for Perseus’s involvement, as much as I proudly wave the flag of a romantic I can definitely buy his character’s current motivation more easily than

This is not to say that the new Clash is simply a tired retread of the classic original. Clash has several new and delightful things going for it. The first is Gemma Arterton. Gemma is fast becoming one of “my” people, and I hope she keeps it up. What this means is that Gemma keeps showing up in awesome films that I want to see, and is hopefully approaching the point where her willingness to be involved in a project helps get it the green light, thus creating more films I want to see. In this she’s like a more (well, equally) attractive Orlando Bloom circa early 2000s; they’ve even both starred in movies with Liam Neeson and magic desert people! Gemma portrays the immortal Io, whose mythology for the film does not involve being turned into a magic cow and chased by a demon fly. Again readers, I ask you, is it possible for the background she does receive-lady who doesn’t get old-to be any cheesier than her mythological backgrounds? Would there be any great cinematic gain to remaining more faithful to the original plot for the character? I submit that, while Gemma could voice a cow beautifully, there is not.

The other major victory for the new Clash is the advancement in our special effects and combat choreography since the 1981 version. I mean no disrespect to Dominaar Harryhausen, who was and is a man of magic. His films shaped my childhood, my imagination, and my entertainment predilections. However, you can love caramel and dark chocolate; as much as I enjoyed the incredible scene where Calibos summons giant scorpions in the first film, the scorpions in the 2010 version are bigger, meaner, faster, and somehow more believable. What ultimately happens to them is ridiculous, and I will make neither excuses nor apologies for it because it is also awesome. The Kraken has been prominently featured in most of the trailers and commercials, so it’s not really necessary to say much about it; I assume you’ve seen it and can draw your own conclusions. Calibos is also awesome; he was always my favorite part of the original, and this version is much more powerful and sinister. The only complaint I raise is that he looks so much like New Mickey Rourke that it’s criminal they didn’t just cast him in the role.

However, I do want to say a few words about Medusa. I’ve seen countless Medusae in my life, particularly as a fan of fantasy films, Dungeons and Dragons, Magic: the Gathering, and video games across all platforms. I battled my first Medusa in a game for the Nintendo Entertainment System; I decapitated scores of the creatures in the various God of War games. Clash of the Titans has the best Medusa I have ever seen. It’s not just that they went for a beautiful face, rather than the equally popular serpent-skinned face. This is important, though, because I’ve always felt that the idea that the Medusa is so hideous she kills with her gaze but still manages to be beautiful is the most chilling part of the creature. However, Clash also does a phenomenal job of conveying Medusa’s size and heft. Her tail is huge, thick, and agile, and the stinger at the end of the rattle is the sort of unnecessary yet totally like the Greek Gods touch I cherish. After all, these are the folks who gave us the Hydra (It’s like a snake, but it keeps growing new heads!), the Chimera (You know what’s scary? Take a big lion and give it a snake for a tail. And then make it breathe fire. And then? Then give it an extra goat’s head for no reason.), and the Sphinx (Let’s take another lion, right? Lions are cool. Then, let’s stick a lady where its head should be, and give her wings, and make her really smart.). There’s absolutely no reason that their giant super-archer petrifying-gaze snake lady wouldn’t have a rattle with a poison stinger on the end.

Clash of the Titans isn’t a movie about character development, emotional growth, or successful family dynamics. If you purchase your ticket expecting these things, you will be disappointed. However, I would challenge you to name the last 3-D blockbuster to focus on those themes. Or the last Greek myth. The movie is an excellent spectacle, an action-filled orgy of strutting about and hitting things with other things. If none of that sounds appealing to you, then there’s really no reason whatsoever for you to see it. If those things do appeal to you, you probably bought a ticket already.

Movie Review: The Crazies

A Confession: I was maybe 20 minutes into The Crazies when I found myself asking...myself...the following question: "Why am I watching this?"

It's important to stress that this is a compliment. The Crazies scared me several times, and left me deeply unsettled throughout. At one point I actually considered closing my eyes, which is a horror movie tactic I haven't employed since I wasn't considered old enough to watch them. The Crazies can't take the entirety of the credit for this, granted, because part of what was happening was likely holdover from Shutter Island. That movie's score was phenomenally unsettling, and from the opening shots onward the music was twisting my stomach and keeping me on the literal edge of my seat- seriously, I remember becoming aware of my precarious perch part-way through that movie, feeling ridiculous, but not moving. The Crazies is not Shutter Island, but I saw it in a theater I'd last been in right before I saw Shutter Island, and I hadn't hit the theater in between.

Still, Secondary-Scorsese aside, The Crazies still freaked me out, and American horror movies almost never do that. I have to go to fabulous Nippon for that, or catch a flick crafted from the guts of a movie originally written with Japanese sensibilities. So I am impressed that I was so disturbed, that I flinched so often, that I jumped at points that should have been simple (and easily telegraphed) gotcha gags. I think the score is responsible for a lot of that fear, but the way they use the Crazies does the rest. Its not a film that went the zombie route, with infected townsfolk running through the streets while bloody spittle flies from their lips. If they had, it would have too greatly resembled 28 Days Later, which the infected already do to a certain extent. Instead, the Crazies spend a lot of time brooding, peering quizzically into the middle distance, and even talking. They seem to retain their capacity for reason even in the deepest throes of the disease, possibly even possessing an enhanced cunning and predatory sensibility. It's that latter point that helps to make them so disturbing; you get the sense that the Crazies could converse with their potential victims, but they're too busy setting up an elaborate ambush or methodically slaughtering people to bother. Their chilling silence did a lot to make the jump-scares more frightening; the Crazies don't appear in a shot with a roar or a hiss, usually. They're just there, and maybe they kill you. At the same time, though, they possess a level of emotion that a character like Mike Myers (at least Classic Mike) explicitly lacks.

A Second Confession: Okay, this is where things get a little weird. At the same time I was twisting, and jumping, and being unsettled by The Crazies , I kept expecting one of the ominous government vehicles, or perhaps the massive combine seen at the beginning of the movie, unfold into Optimus Prime. Throughout most of the movie I couldn't shake the expectation that the autobots would show up and really just break the situation down. And near as I can tell, this is also the score's fault, at least partially. Something in its bombast, even some of the specific notes it hits, sound exactly like the two recent Transformers films. And while that is absurd, parts of the film are absurd too. The saw chasing Sheriff Seth Bullock is absurd, for instance. And, waxing philosophical for a moment, the crux of the plot itself is also absurd.

Either I, or the folks behind this movie, don't fully understand viral pathology. Specifically, if you're exposed to a virus and you don't get sick, does that mean you're immune to the virus forever? I understand that the body eventually develops the capacity to fight off certain viral infections...but if I injected myself with AIDS-carrying blood today, and didn't get sick, I wasn't under the impression I could do it again tomorrow and be fine. This is relevant, and not just a staggering display of my lack of biology classes, because the virus in the film is waterborne at the begin of the film, but eventually is thought to have become airborne. I can understand that, maybe, the airborne version doesn't make people sick once they've been exposed and emerged unscathed; it's a mutation, its a new strain, maybe its weaker, etc.

But if the disease starts out waterborne...isn't it bloodborne as well? This becomes extremely relevant when you consider that one character just wanders around in a blood-stained smock for a good chunk of the movie, and before things have progressed too far they've all be slopped and splashed with twitchy crimson. Sheriff Bullock, at the very least, has quite a few open wounds as this is occurring.

Also, and equally relevant: we want these brave souls to survive, and escape, and get to safety. But aren't they covered in airborne virii? Isn't that soaked into their clothes, their hair, and even their skin? Again, I don't mean simply because they've been traipsing through town; I mean because they've been wrestling with Crazies throughout the film. So even if they're somehow immune, and they make it to Cedar Rapids, aren't they just going to get everyone around them sick? Zombie movies dodge this question by having the disease transmitted entirely by fluids (even though that's now how the original Night of the Living Dead sparked it off), but The Crazies makes a point of the disease being airborne.

So the goal is to root for these people, to want them to escape, even though the act of doing so is almost sure to result in the deaths of many hundreds, or thousands, more. For whatever reason (and without markedly detracting from my enjoyment of the film) this was at the forefront of my mind for the latter half of the film. Well, that and Transformers.

Redbox Risk Review: My Life in Ruins

Over the break I watched My Life in Ruins, starring Nia Vardalos, who is Greek. Nia had a big wedding in another film, which I have also seen (twice).

It should be noted that I saw My Life In Ruins because of my girlfriend.

Watching the movie was my proposal, but only as part of a calculated maneuver designed to ensure I saw Ninja Assassin on opening day, which happened to be during my visit. This did not happen, as it turns out that my girlfriend is afraid of ninjas (Note: This is not actually true; she is not afraid of ninjas so much as not eager to watch a movie that heavily relies on gore to move the plot along. Having seen Ninja Assassin just today, I must concur with her decision to skip the film. Blood happens a lot. The gore was so intense—apparently—that I was carded when I bought my ticket. I’m 25; I don’t even get carded for drinks anymore. So double kudos to the family that brought their three year old to the movie and sat in the front!).

Digression aside (No, just kidding. I want to talk briefly about The Book of Eli. This is a movie I know nothing about. I’d never heard of it prior to catching the trailer today, and I’m going to scrupulously avoid learning more about the film. It’s entirely possible it turns out to be some zealous religious film, or something with an M. Night Shamamawow-esque “twist” ending, or even a Scientology vehicle. I don’t know. I don’t care. I will see this movie. Any film that lets Denzel play a hard-bitten, gritty hero while Gary plays a maniacal villain with a loyal but unsettling army of misfits—that’s a film I’ll be seeing. Mila Kunis is also shaping herself into a moderately well-off man’s Eliza Dushku, so that’s cool. Plus, there’s the knife.), My Life in Ruins was actually pretty good. I think, on the whole, I enjoyed it better than the big wedding.

The plot moves with surprising speed, and the disparate group of characters coming together into a beautiful unit occupies far less of the film than I would have expected. It works, though, because the film centers around a tour guide, her hirsute bus driver, and the loveable gang of misfits she’s saddled with. I could talk about how the plot develops, but I figure you can get that from IMDB. Instead, I’ll mention the single biggest surprise this movie held for me: it’s about Richard Dreyfuss, an esteemed actor whose name I utterly mangled when I Facebooked that revelation following my viewing the film.
As evidenced by my previous review, I have a certain affection for talented, big-name actors “slumming” in movies that don’t get a lot of attention (and possibly head straight to the Red Box). Dreyfuss plays an irascible, joke-slinging loudmouth who comes off as a prick but turns out to be a wonderful dude. Also, he totally scores at one point. The reason his character is memorable isn’t great writing—I’m not entirely sure this movie is particularly well-written. Instead, it’s because of the challenge of the character; Dreyfuss is playing a character who is not especially funny, but thinks he’s funny, and comes off as a prick to people who don’t think he’s funny, which is everyone but him, because he’s not funny. And the man actually manages to make the character…funny.

There are other amusing characters. The awesomely-named Rachel Dratch and awesomely-in-that-movie-with-a-dildo-lightsaber-battle Harland Williams both deliver performances that are probably funny. Since they’re playing ignorant tourist Americans I imagine some of the humor is lost on me, though. I’m an American and I really don’t remember the last movie I watched that portrayed Americans as anything but boorish assholes in a foreign context. The IHOP character elicited more chuckles because he collected artesian syrups and kept comparing things to pancakes. Jareb Dauplaise apparently keeps playing the same ignorant frat boy character…his IMDB page is saturated with fraternal appearances. I wonder if he really pledged. His bio is adorable, and his performance as a really, really ignorant tourist (also American, but it seems like less of a thing) is probably the funniest of the four non-Dreyfuss Americans.

Alexis Georgoulis plays a character named Poupi Kakas, and he does so with an entirely straight face. His deadpan delivery and gradual transformation from tamed bear to dude getting laid is solid—I wondered, watching it, if he was as amused by the whole production as his character seemed to be. My girlfriend also confirms that he looks spectacular in minimal clothing. So there’s that.

But it honestly all comes back to Dreyfuss. Without his character to bring balance to Vardalos, the entire film would have been much harsher and abrupt. Dreyfuss combines impishness, gravity and wisdom, and a certain “Yeah, I’m a prick. But I’m a prick because I earned it,” in such a way that his manipulation of the other characters into a coherent group is believable. It’s not the kind of role Dane Cook could deliver—Dreyfuss manages because he constantly exudes the sense that he knows when his character isn’t being entertaining, because he intended it to play out that way. It’s also not something I could see, say, Bill Murray pulling off—I feel like his presence would quickly overwhelm the other actors, even if he weren’t trying to ham it up. Dreyfuss, though, he pulled it off and added several layers to what would otherwise have been a very shallow, rushed film set in beautiful surroundings.

Did I enjoy the flick? Yes. I like romantic comedies. If I hadn’t watched it with my special lady friend I imagine I would have made my way around to it on my own, eventually. But she really wanted to see it and had so little luck finding it (even the first two days I was out there) that when it popped up in a Red Box I knew our night was set. I wanted to be sure she got to see it.

The fact that I think I enjoyed it more than she did, though…there’s probably no excusing that part. I claim ninja withdrawal.

Redbox Risk Review: The Maiden Heist

Let me start this review by stating that Marcia Gay Harden looks incredible. I've been a fan of her for years, in the sense that she's in someone I see in movies and think "Oh, it's her! I like her." She has quirky, unconventional (yet delightful) features and is one of those "character actors" who blends relatively seamlessly into whatever role she's playing. Comparing her venomous performance in King of Texas to the slightly naif wife she plays in The Maiden Heist gives just a slight example of her range. It also underscores another important fact: for a woman who just crested 50, Marcia Gay Harden has a fabulous rack. I seriously wanted to applaud, particularly because it goes on display toward the end of a film in which she's purposefully portrayed as somewhat dowdy. The only other scene that prominently displays any of her flesh is when her husband is massaging some unguent onto her feet.

Her husband, by the way, is played by Christopher Walken. Walken's character is the focus of The Maiden Heist, supported by William H. Macy and Morgan Freeman. This is obviously a phenomenal cast, and yet you may be saying "I have never heard of this movie." I had originally anticipated suggesting that folks from big cities, which presumably have arthaus theatres galore, would be exempted from that statement; then I did a bit of internet research and learned that the film's original distributor went bankrupt before the it could be shown anywhere. Folks in Edinburgh for their film festival apparently caught a show and then...DVD.

The Maiden Heist falls into a beloved film category for me: movies I see advertised at the Redbox rental kiosks, have absolutely never heard of, and pick up mostly because of that latter fact. I like to gamble, and one dollar is the perfect price to pay when doing so. I recognize some might say "free" is the perfect price to pay, but I really don't dig the whole internet-piracy thing where movies are concerned. I don't know where I'd go to do it, I don't really know how one does it, and I don't think that my tenuous wireless connection could handle any attempts at it. So the Redbox satisfies my cinematic adventurousness. When I saw the Maiden Heist splashed across the "Coming Soon" strip above the screen, I knew I'd be picking up a copy if it happened to be stocked at the local Smith's (admittedly an iffy proposition).

It also helps that The Maiden Heist is, obviously, a heist film. I love heist films (and no, this doesn't mean I've seen x classic heist film- I'm not a huge consumer of "classic" films that don't involve Godzilla, truthfully). I enjoy the intricacy of planning, the fast-talking con men, the tension, the few things that utterly fall apart in every execution, the twists, the twisty twists, the twisty twist retwists, and the expectation going in that things might completely fall apart by the film's conclusion. I enjoy the promise of these things even when the film doesn't deliver. Morgan Freeman apparently agrees with me, since he starred in The Code, also released on DVD this year and apparently called "Thick as Thieves" everywhere, including IMDB, except on the DVD itself. The Code was another Redbox Risk (catchy, non?) and it was wretched. Part of my excitement for The Maiden Heist was the hope that, this time, Morgan would deliver- and he definitely did.

The titular heist is centered around a titular (no entendre intended!) maiden, a painting to which the viewer is introduced at the start of the film. Christopher Walken's character, Roger Marlow, is a security guard at an art museum, and he's spent many years standing in front of a painting called "The Lonely Maiden." The movie reveals its tone immediately with an awesome action sequence (really), and quickly sets about illustrating Roger's relationship with the painting. The relationship is threatened when he learns that an entire display, Maiden included, is going to be shipped to Denmark; to be replaced by animal phalluses and dung statues. Roger despairs, privately, until he catches Charles (Morgan Freeman) sobbing a few rooms over. Charles has his own attachment to another painting, "Woman with Cats." He also knows, due to his overtime job reviewing night security tapes, about George McLendon (William H. Macy)'s nocturnal adventures with a bronze statue.

Together, the three hatch a plan to steal the respective works of art before they can be shipped off to snowy Denmark (after discussing the feasibility of moving there instead). The plan itself is clearly not the focus of the film, or the plot; one of the elements is to secure perfect copies of the articles in question, which presents almost no difficulty for any of the characters. Charles just whips one up, as his love of the painting has resulted in the ability to perfectly replicate it, endlessly, in almost any medium. George already had something like this in the works for his own purposes, apparently, and Roger overcomes his own obstacle relatively swiftly. Most of the other elements of the plan, and twists therein, are handled in equally short order. One of the film's themes is the relative laxity of security at the museum/museums in general, and the general disinterest which permeates guards and curators alike. Roger corrects a tour guide at the start of the film, and there's a great shot of hurriedly consulting her crib sheet as he expounds on the history of The Lonely Maiden.

The Maiden Heist dispenses with most of the genre's tropes. Instead of the intricacies of the heist, the authorities closing in, and the duplicity of thieves and con men, the movie focuses on the three guards. Each of these men has shaped their lives around the art they adore, and it's suggested that they were shaped to appreciate those particular pieces by their lives as well. It's this powerful connection the works that brings the three together, though most of their interactions serve to highlight the differences between their personalities. The fact that the three characters are played by three incredibly talented, experienced, and fascinating actors is what holds the film together.

There are some films (The Code) that slip under the radar despite having one or more big names; then you watch them and realize that the big name is barely performing. I'm not an actor and I've always avoided theater due to a personal conviction that I couldn't possibly memorize and deliver lines with any sort of emotional resonance, so I'm not making the claim that what they're doing is by any means easy. However, the movies I'm describing have famous, well-known and respected actors in roles that derive no intrinsic benefit from their presence; the director could just as easily have employed a total unknown and, outside of that name draw, had the same impact. If the movie is relatively unknown, the aforementioned name draw apparently didn't work in the first place. The Maiden Heist is not one of these movies.

Freeman's Charles is fascinatingly effeminate; this probably stands out more for me since I watched Wanted all of yesterday, where he's a combination of stately authority, slightly rumpled wisdom, swaggering contempt, and a bit of coarse thuggishness. By contrast, Charles is fragile and fluttery, but somewhat inconsistently. He also owns several cats. Several. Many. I admit that when first introduced to his feline companions I hadn't actually noticed there were cats in the painting with which he's bonded (the focus in the shot was on the woman in the frame) and so it wasn't until the latter chunk of the movie that I began to see how the painting influenced his character. He's not presented as a flouncing characature, but the occasional gesture of a hand or soft exclamation renders him much softer that either of his cohorts, or even his initial impression in the coffee shop meeting with Roger.

Macy's George is probably the most outrageous of the three, all swaggering bravado and military jargon, mixed with serious paranoia and...well, I don't want to spoil his defining characteristic. Once again, it's easy to see the influence of his chosen work of art, The Bronze Warrior, in his personality and lifestyle (idealized and expressed).

In comparison to the others, Walken's Roger might seem flat and poorly defined. The scenes with Marcia tend to be dominated by her performances, as well as her dialogue, and the suggestion is that this is how his entire marriage operates. His relationship with the Maiden is less one of emulation, more an almost romantic connection. However, Roger is the only character who really interacts with anyone else in the film; he has moments with his wife, artists in the park, fellow security guards, and a few others. The awkwardness of these interactions usually leads to some humor, though it's almost never delivered in the form of lines from Walken himself. It should be noted that a flat, quiet, non scene-stealing character played by Christopher Walken is notable in itself; part of the humor with Roger comes from you, as an audience member, expecting a typically wacky Walken delivery and not getting it.

Well, for most of the movie. There's an obvious and necessary evolutionary arc at work here, where Roger eventually has to step up to the plate. What I found fascinating about the plot, however, is how each of the three guards is the dominant male at some point. In the beginning, Charles seems to be relatively insidious, clever, forceful, and manipulative. That lasts up until George opens his bag (you'll see) and then George is ascendant, if not always obeyed, through most of the film. The film progresses almost like a fairy tale, where each critical moment can only be overcome by the timely intervention of one of these strange, imperfect men.

There's a lovely message in The Maiden Heist about what grabs us and affects us, either due to repeated exposure or one sudden, brilliant, beautiful moment. There's also a lovely shot of Marcia Gay Harden's crowded balcony. If you live within driving/walking distance of a grocery store/McDonald's/Walmart/other place with a Redbox, odds are very good this movie is available for rent. And if you're reading this, you're probably inclined to listen to my advice, in which case I say it's worth the risk.

The Opposite of a German Yes

I finally got out to see 9. I felt that not seeing it on opening night was something of a personal betrayal- this is a movie I've been so excited to see that I wept every time I saw the trailer while at the theater for other movies. The flick was pretty great; the fights were all exciting and very conscious of the environments where they occurred. The backstory which girds the plot is interesting without being especially important, so even though you don't get much of it until the middle and tail end of the film that doesn't really matter. It was short, but I'll probably rent or buy it when it hits on DVD.

However.

The ending to the movie feels like a "bad ending." I don't mean that it is an ending which is bad, or necessarily poorly done. I can see some logic in why events resolve in the manner which they do. However, the way things resolve seems unfair, less-than-ideal in a fashion which isn't dramatically appropriate. Based on the world created, and what we know of the characters (and see demonstrated from the very beginning!) and the item they have obtained, a much more satisfying resolution seemed to be completely within reason.

People who play video games, particularly Japanese Role Playing Games, are probably familiar with the concept of the bad ending. It's a specter which hangs over the player's head the entire game. Every decision you make, every enemy you face, every item you do or do not find- all of these things have an effect on which ending you're handed. Some games, like Kingdom Hearts, simply demand that you collect an innumerable quantity of items/experiences in order to obtain a superior ending. Some games, like Final Fantasy X-2, not only demand you obtain perfect game completion but that you also know when to push X and whistle, a context-sensitive action which has no relation to any other use of that button in the rest of the game.

But when I finished 9, which was a great movie overall, the game it most brought to mind was Parasite Eve 2. The Parasite Eve series, based on a Japanese novel that also spawned a movie, forces us to confront the question of what the hell mitochondria is doing, all hidden up in our cells. The first game suggested that it was just waiting for an evil opera singer to unleash it, at which point it turned parrots into flesh-rending monsters, and did something similar to every other animal, only worse.

Parasite Eve 2 picks up where the first game leaves off, but eventually enters this strange other plot whereby people are being turned into hideous monsters. Your character, the same woman from the first game, is now a professional monster hunter, thanks in large part to the fact that her sentient mitochondria work with her, rendering her immune to the effects of evil mitochondria and letting her do neat things like heal herself and set people on fire through command of their mitochondria.

Seriously.

It's a great game. But the ending scenario is brutal. If you complete the game in a haphazard, imperfect fashion, you get an ending where things are resolved, but you are also shot with a gun from space. Certain people have died, certain people just don't show up, certain shits hit certain fans. You do get a fancy gun, though your final boss battle doesn't leave much room for anything that doesn't fire rockets. Regardless of the ending that you secure, you're given the option of starting the game over, carrying some of your advancement points from your previous completion (which can be exchanged for purchases, letting you buy both unique equipment and scrolls that let you learn the highest level powers in the game). This obviously makes the replay easier, increasing your chances of getting more kills and dying less.

However, it doesn't really help you to get the good ending. No, to get the good ending you have to accomplish a number of seemingly unimportant or random tasks, including:
-Answering the phone whenever it is ringing (you are in a motel) and checking your messages whenever you aren't answering the phone. If you don't do this you won't know that a man is coming to visit.
-Saving a dog which is barking at a King-Kong sized corpulent man-monster with flamethrower breath. You save the dog only through killing the monster really, really quickly; otherwise he kills the dog.
-Following the dog when it is barking later. If I recall correctly, this leads you to the water tower.
-Climbing the water tower to find the man who came to visit, who is being vigorously exsanguinated by flying human infants with huge mosquito nose cones. Note that these are not the worst human infants in the game; that title is reserved for the human infants which just explode when you come near them, taking anywhere between a quarter and two-thirds of your life.
-Running back through a certain area, during a timed mission, rather than just leaving. You could just leave, mission successfully completed; but you have to run back and do...something.
-Don't forget the phone! I distinctly remember a section where the phone which is ringing is doing so in a room filling with poisonous gas; you are being tasked with escorting a little girl out of a secret military base, they are gassing you, and there's a phone to answer. You must answer the phone.

If you complete all of these, plus myriad other, extremely counter-intuitive or invisible tasks, you get the good ending. I think a man comes and kisses you, and possibly you don't have to get shot by the gun from space.

But this is, I promise, an article about 9. My point is that, while watching 9 I felt that I was doing everything right. I was seated in my chair, did not have my feet up on the back of the chair in front of me, and had my cellphone powered off. I was not chewing loudly or engaging in sex acts. I did my part. But when the ending happened, with its spoiler spoiler spoiler spoiler, I felt that I had somehow failed in my movie watching duties. All of the elements for a much more satisfactory ending were available.

Maybe I missed a phone call.