Nerd 5 Presents: What We Learned This Week at the Movies: Oct 20th – Oct 27th 2013

Welcome back to weekly editions of What We Learned This Week at the Movies, it’s been a little bit since we posted a true edition of the article and I’m excited to get back into it. It’s the week of Halloween and I want to wish all of our dear readers a very happy All Hallows Eve! This article has a look at some recent Halloween films and one classic, however, it’s not a full Halloween article. If you want an in depth look at our thoughts on great things to watch on Halloween, take a look here at last year’s article! http://www.nerdfive.blogspot.com/2012/10/top-5-things-to-watch-on-halloween.html.  But as for this week, let’s dive right into our 5 lessons this week at the movies, and enjoy!

Movies Seen In Theatres This Week: The Birds; Carrie; Rush; Romeo & Juliet; Ghost Team One; Captain Phillips

Lesson 5. Don’t Paraphrase Shakespeare! – There is a reason that William Shakespeare is a household name and Julian Fellowes is not. The 2013 version of Romeo & Juliet is one of the absolutely worst written films I’ve ever seen. How? That’s a good question considering it’s based on one of the most well-known and beloved plays of all time. Fellowes takes several liberties with Shakespeare’s dialogue, he doesn’t try to update or modernize the language but instead Fellowes ties to rewrite scenes in Shakespearean tongue. Some “classic” lines now attributed to Shakespeare are “why was this man so rude? He likes to use his tongue to filet a woman,” “The Princes kindness is a golden ax that cuts off my head” and “Same as Juliet. Blubbering and weeping, blubbering and weeping.” The entire film is filled with painful gems likes these. The worst of all is Friar Laurence, played by Paul Giamatti, sounds like low rent Dr. Seuss character. I really can’t understand who thinks they can rewrite and improve Shakespeare’s dialogue. Fellows goes so far as to cut classics scenes such as the “Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?” Apart from these issues Romeo & Juliet  is terribly directed; it seems as if director Carlo Carlei lets the actors go on their own in most scenes with very little direction. It’s clear that Carlei focused all his attention on the production design, filming sequences and costume design (these elements are the only thing that shines in the film.) Good actors such as Damian Lewis, Stellan Skarsgard and Giamatti give off the rail performances and academy award nominee for True Grit Hailee Steinfeld seems utterly and completely lost as Juliet. Actor Kodi Smit-McPhee, who plays Benvolio, is the only bright spot on the acting side; I’ll be excited to see what he does in the future. Romeo & Juliet is a straight forward take on the story and is almost a complete waste of time as it brings nothing new to the story and hurts some classic elements. If you want to watch a film version of this great play stick with the ’68 Franco Zeffirelli classic or Baz Luhrmann’s ’96 modernization Romeo + Juliet (which is an unequivocal masterpiece compared  to the current adaptation.)

Lesson 4. What Goes Up Must Come Down – Over the last week, I went down to Ballard Underground and Ghostlight Productions as they showed a free screening of The Birds in promotion for their upcoming production of Rope, which I’m excited to see. It was a great time and I’ll for sure be visiting them again. With that said. I worship at the altar of Alfred Hitchcock, he a great filmmaker, but even the best of us have misses and I’m sorry to say that The Birds is as miss. Now, before you start viciously flying toward me beaks agape pecking out my eyes I’m not saying it’s, I’m saying it’s a miss and Hitchcock’s misses are far better than most peoples best. Sadly The Birds doesn't hold up; the puppet birds aren’t scary, the plotting and travel scenes drag and the characters reactions are very broad. With that being said, there are long stretches of this film that highly enjoyable and if you've never seen The Birds its worth a fun watch with friends. My main issue comes with the end of the film… AND IF YOU'VE NOT SEEN THE BIRDS STOP READING AND SKIP TO LESSON 3… still here, okay then you've seen the film and you know how it ends, and man is it anti-climactic. These birds, who have been angry and attacking the town, for no good reason, all of sudden, just as quick as it started, stop attacking and let the family walk out of there and to safety. They pass right by a group a bird who were bloodthirsty mere moments ago and now they are like “eh… walk on by, have a good day” It’s the most annoying and terrible end that I could think of for the film. It’s a clear case of not knowing how to end the movie, and it really hurts the outcome. Unless I’m missing something and if I am, bring it on please tell me.

Lesson 3. Don’t Waste Opportunities -- Was there a need to remake Carrie, no. Could this have been a good film, yes.  Could this film be worth your time, no. This time around Carrie is played by Chloe Grace Moretz and her mother Margret White by Julianne More and this relationship should be the focus, center and emotional core of the film, it fails miserably at this. You never quite care about Carrie, or anyone else in this picture and it falls flat for this very fact. The 2013 Carrie plays with the exact themes and styles of the book and the Brian De Palam ’76 film of the same name; while they could have actually had a unique spin on the film instead they choose keep it familiar and in some scenes almost like a shot for shot remake. What could have been unique about this film is that it could have been a female take on this overtly female story that had previously only been adapted and written by dudes; instead it feels like a studio driven traditional horror film that follows it’s paint by number formula to a tee and bores it’s audience into lull.

Lesson 2. Don’t Get Upstaged – Ghost Team One is weird film. It’s a good film, but it’s a weird film. This little-film-that-could made its debut at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival, a festival that takes place at the same time and place as the Sundance Film Festival with the goal to showcase the “true” independent filmmakers and their films. Because of its success at Slamdance Ghost Team One and has gotten it’s self a limited nationwide release date. I’d be surprised if this gets a full nationwide release, and yet, we are sitting at the starting line of cult phenomena. Ghost Team One is the type of film college students and high school students are going to find on DVD, streaming, on-demand or however they will be finding films in 5 years and fall in love with it. Always raunchy, always profane, at times raciest and completely oversexed Ghost Team One tells the story of Sergio (Carlos Santos) and Brad (J. R. Villarreal) college roommates who find out their house used to be a brothel and is haunted by its former madam. Filmed as if it were a documentary Ghost Team One uses its style, actors and it unique take on the horror comedy genre well. The film falls off the rails in its extremely adult and exceedingly bizarre ending, nonetheless Ghost Team One is an above average film with a strange and eerie point of view that would make for a good time on Halloween.

Lesson 1. Once More, With Feeling! – Lesson 1 this week is twofold. The Oscar films have started to roll out this year and two of the first ones out of the gate are Rush and Captain Phillips and while nothing per say wrong with either film, in fact both are quite enjoyable in their own rights, neither film has enough gusto to get over the top and be a true contender. Both films fall into the category of not doing anything wrong but also not really going above and beyond to become memorable classics. Both films feature fantastic Oscar caliber  performances from their Best Actor contending lead actors, Chris Hemsworth as James Hunt in Rush and Tom Hanks as Captain Phillips in the film of the same title (I think Hanks will be a serious contender this year either for this or Saving Mr. Banks). Both films are good and worth seeing but both need a little more feeling, a little more oomph behind them! Let’s take a quick moment to look at the films individually. 

Rush is a film in Ron Howard's mold and yet feels distinctly different from his recent films. This film looks at the racing rivalry between James Hunt (Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl) and picks up when their rivalry kicks into high gear. Rush is a slow starter and anti-climactic finisher but has strong middle section. You can’t really blame the film for its anti-climactic ending because it does it’s best to work around the real life ending that did not play out perfectly. Howard did a good job with Rush but not a great one.

Captain Phillips is the “true” story of Rich Phillips and the Semolina pirate attack on his cargo ship. I put true in quotes because the film is telling a story that Phillips, a hero, did all he could to avoid the situation, when in fact he’s being sued by his crew for the exact opposite thing. Casting Hanks is a genius move as it makes Phillips instantly relatable and loveable and he plays him as convincingly kind. That aside, Captain Phillips is a good film. It’s compelling at times, gripping at others, but overtly long in the end. When you know the true story (The Captain himself wrote the  New York Times best-selling book that this film is based on) it’s hard to wonder what going to happen and director Paul Greengrass’ film  feels longer then the story it has to tell. In one of my screenwrighting classes, my professor said to me that a film should have a problem that takes an entire film to solve; Captain Phillips would do well to learn this lesson. In the end the film is full of great individual pieces, but sadly never adds up to a satisfying whole.