With that out of the way, here’s something I’m completely sick of: the James Bond franchise.

For 20 straight movies, it had a consistent style. Whether or not you actually like it personally, it doesn’t matter. The objective fact of the matter is, all 20 of these movies had basically the same tone and meaning to them: a light-hearted story about a spy with plenty of humour thrown in, meant for entertainment only. As the times changed throughout the 30+ years that these films were released, they each updated the franchise to fit the times without completely altering the franchise. For that reason, every Bond movie up until Die Another Day was at least recognizable as a Bond movie.

But since 2006, Eon has produced two Bond movies (with a third currently in production), all of which are part of their “rebooting” of the franchise. None of these new movies are even remotely similar to the old movies, other than sharing one actress (whose character has been changed beyond recognition). Now, I really don’t care if people like these new movies. I personally don’t, but that’s not the point. The point is that this “reboot” is completely unnecessary and insulting — not just to fans of the old franchise, but to anyone who puts their money forward to Eon.

What they’re doing is part of a big trend nowadays: companies that have or gain the rights to a franchise, change everything about it other than the names, and claim it’s a “reboot”. People who liked the series before will buy the new rendition even if they don’t like the new direction the series is taking, so the company is successful. The thing that’s so insulting about this trend is that these “reboots” aren’t just a new direction that the series is taking — they’re entirely different series released under the same name solely for the purpose of making a quick buck.

Yes, I am aware that making money is the point of a company, but they’re supposed to hide that fact by making quality products that are actually worth money in the first place. If you need to defend a company by saying that they’re just trying to make money, you’re an idiot.

If you want to make a serious, true-to-the-books rendition of James Bond, go ahead and do it. But don’t call it James Bond. There’s already a franchise using that name. There might be an argument for using that name anyway if the new franchise were closer to the books (since the books had the name first), but that’s not the case at all. The Bond stories were trashy stories about a spy written for pure entertainment, and the original film series already is the movie adaptation of that. Even if the new Bond movies are superficially more similar, their tone and style is nothing alike; the new ones act like they have some kind of deep meaning behind them. That’s the only part that actually matters, not the superficial crap like whether Q should be named Major Boothroyd or not. If you don’t believe me, look up what Ian Fleming had to say on the subject: he was alive for much of the franchise’s early history and thought it was exactly what he wanted: a fun story about a spy.

I just watched Princess Mononoke for maybe the third time in my life: this time, in Japanese. The copy came with both audios, but only one set of English subs: so I was watching the Japanese version, subtitled with the text of the English version. But that shouldn’t be a big deal, right? They’re roughly equivalent, right?

What I saw was a portal opened to the greasy, cavernous depths of human evil.

You really don’t understand, until you have happened to watch a movie this way, just how disgusting the dubbing process really is. There is an opening shot of a forest, music plays. I am looking at subtitles telling me in an omniscient, authoritative tone (I can imagine a Disney trailer voiceover just reading them) about an age of gods and demons. This narration is not present in the movie I am watching. But it had to be there for the English dub, or we might not have known what the movie was about.

It soon becomes clear that in every scene with humans, dialogue subtitles are appearing even when no one is speaking. This is not an exaggeration: every single time a human is present in a scene, and you don’t have a clear look at their mouth, they do not speak in the animation. And every single time this happens, the English version makes them speak. There can be no silence; these gaps must be filled by mediocre English voice acting, without fail. Otherwise the audience would wonder what was going on. Huh? Why are we looking at those people being killed? Oh, the character just told me it’s a massacre! Good thing, I might have missed that! I know when I watch animation, I close my eyes and just listen to the characters tell me what’s happening.

As you can imagine, an entire movie’s tone can be changed this way. Friendly interjections are thrown in where there once was formality. A simple call to a steed becomes “Yakul! Come here boy! Good boy! I have to praise you verbally or the audience won’t know I’m a kind person!” Ashitaka gives instructions to people, and they run off. The subtitles respond for them, “All right! Don’t get hurt!” Ashitaka later must leave his village; his tribesmen cannot go with him, cannot say goodbye, cannot even watch him go. He departs in silence; the subtitles say, “Farewell.” This is all in the first five minutes.

It only gets worse as the pacing increases. A convoluted battle scene: a caravan is attacked. It is very obviously a supply caravan. But there is bustle, confusion. Through the battle, the subtitles give, over the crowd’s grey noise, calming instructions. “Come on! Keep moving!” The attackers disappear; there is suspense. “Where are they?” the subtitles ask helpfully. Men have fallen off a cliff. “What about them?” The caravan leader’s response is given curtly, to leave them for dead. The scene cuts there, but not before the subtitles can add, “Let’s get the living ones home!” Because they might have been moving on for some other purpose.

Why? What is the philosophy that justifies making your own movie out of someone else’s work? Princess Mononoke was taken, with its spare dialogue, and visually driving style, and raped. It was bound to a table, legs spread, and violated with stuffing and folderol, crammed into its cavities by the sweaty fistful. Were the translators being paid according to how many words they produced? Would Billy Crudup and Billy Bob Thornton only sign onto the project if they got a certain number of lines?

Translators — perhaps this is the problem. The movie is not dubbed by translators, it is dubbed by dubbers. All this time I thought I was getting translations of Miyazaki movies, when I was actually getting adaptations. Adaptations with American writers, American producers, American actors. The American audience expects nothing less.

What’s sad is, the adaptation isn’t actually that bad. It’s still a good movie, good enough to be one of the best I saw as a child. About fifty times better than Lion King, and I liked Lion King. Maybe that’s why they get away with it. But I have a problem with the ethics of rewriting a text (and a movie’s script is a text) with the imposition of one’s own ideas, and representing it as equivalent to the original. Please have this in mind, the next time you are watching a dub, if you watch dubs (most people do). There is no regard for the original tone in the dubbing process.

Miyazaki himself has said he wants audiences to watch his movies in their native language, whatever it is, so as not to distract from the animation. There’s something to be said for this; subtitles do distract. But they do not corrupt and defile, hopefully. They do not add and inflate. This cannot be said for Miyazaki dubs. Watching Miyazaki dubbed is not even watching his movie, but something else, with a cloudy, veinous coating on it. I thought I had seen Princess Mononoke before, but I feel like I haven’t really seen it until today. And since I was still reading the story from the English dub, perhaps I still haven’t seen it.

Now mind you I have read three of the four books and watched the first two movies so I had expectations for this film and on some levels you could say I was disappointed.

Story
In an attempt to cram every last bit of the book into a two-hour film, it seems the writers overlooked the fact that watching this all at once is a tad nerve racking. You’re never given a moment to think because there’s always something happening. Depending on your taste, this is either good or bad.

It may be good due to the fact that the movies are primarily for those whom have already read the books and are expecting every last bit in the film.

On the other hand if you’ve only ever watched the movies or are just jumping into the saga for this film (which I strongly urge against) you may not be happy with all the story being thrown your way at once and it’s possible you’ll be lost at times.

Choreography & CG Animation
I’m not going to lie the action sequences were intense. It took a good portion of the film to build up for the finale but it was well worth the wait for an incredible battle that easily made it’s way on my top ten.

Now it wasn’t necessarily the battle itself that was so amazing but more so it was the delivery. The sound effects, animations, choreography, and editing were perfected leaving you with an ultra-realistic battle royale. I could go on about it but it really has to be seen to be appreciated so I’d advise you to check it out when you have the chance.

Soundtrack & Score
The soundtrack and score of the Twilight Saga films have always matched their corresponding feature perfectly and Eclipse is no exception. I was only disappointed that Muse’s track recorded solely for the movie was probably played for about ten seconds and in the background no less. To whomever chose the music sequence for the movie, have some respect for Muse.

So to sum it all up, I liked the movie, I expected more but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. They were high expectations to be honest and because of them I probably didn’t enjoy the movie to its fullest extent which is why I’ll be checking it out again. I’d recommend it anyone, there’s actually a more than decent film behind all the ridiculous criticism the franchise gets for its portrayal of vampires and overload on romance, but that’s what this series is about so I don’t see any reason in pointing out the obvious. So if you’re going to hate on the franchise at least give it a chance, don’t just senselessly follow the crowd.

8/10

Reposted from: TechVoo

On the other hand, I found the film to be fantastic; stylish, gritty and darkly witty, it’s everything I expected executed with the slick visual style which has been the target of much praise. As for the comment regarding the film’s “degrading” nature – I couldn’t disagree more. The prostitutes of Oldtown are dangerous, ruthless, and determined to protect their business and their truce, which is all but shattered by Rafferty’s death. These whores aren’t the subject of objectification; they’re businesswomen, exchanging services for cash with no judgement from others or accusations of moral depravity, much superior to the dirty reputation of Amsterdam’s red light district or Hamburg’s Reeperbahn.

The film’s nudity is barely ever in a sexual context; the most sexually charged scene in the film is Jessica Alba’s dance, which oddly enough also has no nudity at all. No, the use of nudity here is purely artistic, a supplement to the already unique and eye-catching visual aesthetic of the black-white-red-blonde colour scheme. Everything is exaggerated, even the plot and the animated gore, and the film’s protagonists are primarily strong, self-sufficient women. Degrading? No, Sin City is nothing but empowering to women, and you’d think the film would have some reputation for that. But no, my sister, so thoughtful and educated thinks that Sin City is a shitty, degrading film, and her mind is set on that notion before she’s even seen the film – which knowing her stubbornness, she probably never will.

The plot involves Jim Sturgess as Jude, a young man from Liverpool who illegally moves to America to see his estranged father. While doing this, he runs into Max (Joe Anderson), who introduces him to rich college life — knocking golf balls through windows, running away from people, going to pubs, singing about true love, and smoking pot. This, of course, turns Jude and Max into fast friends, so Max invites him over to his mansion for Thanksgiving. There, Jude meets his love interest, Max’s sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood). Max drops out of college and decides to go bohemian in New York with Jude, moving in with the aspiring singer Sadie (Dana Fuchs), her guitarist Jojo (Martin Luther), and yet-another-Beatles-reference Prudence (T.V. Carpio). Soon thereafter, Max is drafted into the Vietnam War, and the movie follows the hippies into a long drug-laden anti-war message, with Jude as the tortured vaguely-apolitical artist who just wants to be with Lucy.

Obviously none of the Beatles songs in the film were written with this plot in mind, so it’s all working backwards from lyrics written almost fifty years ago. With that in mind, I think it does an incredibly good job. Yeah, it doesn’t always make a lot of sense, but that’s more the writing than anything. The actual plot does make sense, it just sort of gets lost under all the music. Watch the movie a second time if you don’t understand it the first; trust me, there are going to be things you missed. There are only a few songs that really seem forced, I think. Most of the music is incorporated very well into the story, and the fact that it’s often only tangentially related to the movie kind of makes thematic sense — this is, after all, a trippy movie about the sixties.

Cinematography is gorgeous overall. The dance numbers all seem very well choreographed to me, not that I know anything about dancing. The singing is very good, doing admirable justice to the original songs while still changing them enough to befit different voices (women, most obviously). Special mention goes to Sturgess’s hair, which beats Mia Wasikowska’s Alice in Wonderland style for the Bran’s Favourite Hair award. Seriously, I’m drooling on my keyboard over here.

Here’s a little rundown of the songs, since they’re so important:

Girl: Strong choice to open the movie on. It functions like the chorus in a classic play, summarizing some of the key plot points of the movie. Very effective.

Hold Me Tight: This is just used to introduce Lucy early, before she’s met Jude in-story. For some reason the soundtrack disc excludes the bass that’s in the movie, which makes the song a lot more like the original — and thus, a lot less interesting. If you’re going to cover a song, make it different, otherwise why cover it at all?

All My Loving: Ironically used by Jude to console his British girlfriend. The fact that he breaks all the promises in this song makes him 1) an asshole, and 2) an honest portrayal of long-distance relationships. Zing!

I Want to Hold Your Hand: Sung by a woman despite the “I want to be your man” line, which gets turned into a joke about heteronormative relationship values being applied to homosexual relationships. (I might be reading too much into that.) It’s not especially important to the movie, but it’s still a pretty decent musical number.

With a Little Help From My Friends: Kind of a lame cover, but used quite well in the film to show Jude and Max bonding. Drugs are absent from the movie until this song, when they suddenly appear two seconds before the relevant line in the song — am I only one who finds that hilarious?

It Won’t Be Long: Lucy’s equivalent to Jude’s All My Loving, but with less blatant lies. Fairly bland.

I’ve Just Seen a Face: I like this cover way more than the original Beatles song, which had sort of a country feel to it. I wish it was a bit longer in the movie, but oh well. It’s really catchy and highlights Jim Sturgess’s amazing singing talent (as if the rest of the music didn’t already do that).

Let It Be: Pretty sure I’m the only person in the world who doesn’t like this song. The original is boring pretentious shit and this version is no different.

Come Together: The lyrics have nothing to do with anything, but what did you expect from a song with stuff like “He got monkey finger, he shoot Coca-Cola”? The cover is pretty good and is used in the movie to introduce Jojo as a soulful musician — for that purpose, it does a great job. I’m still waiting for someone to use this song for a sex scene, though.

Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?: Used mostly as background music in a pub that Jude and Lucy go to. Nothing to really say.

If I Fell: Again, nothing to really say. It’s just Lucy falling in love with Jude.

I Want You (She’s So Heavy): Not an especially great cover, but used amazingly in the movie. “I want you” refers as much to lust as it does to the military Uncle Sam posters. “She’s so heavy” shows the soldiers carrying the Statue of Liberty. There has never been a less subtle anti-war message, but that’s what makes it so great. Your mileage may vary on the music video; I love it, but I can see why it would be unpopular. The only complaint I have is that I wanted more of that famous guitar riff in the song.

Dear Prudence: Nothing to say again. It’s a pretty good cover, but not really relevant to the plot at all.

I Am the Walrus: Sung by Bono as a shameless expy of Ken Kesey, while driving the gang across the country in his psychedelic van. Everyone is on LSD by this point (seriously), so the lyrics actually kind of make sense. Bono’s character is irrelevant and just used as an excuse to show off the hippies; I would have preferred it if the movie had come with an excuse to show the Vietnam war instead, but at least this song is good.

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!: Absolutely terrible cover of a song that wasn’t really that great to begin with. Makes no sense whatsoever in the movie. Bad in every possible way.

Because: More irrelevant stuff from the LSD trip. This and Mr. Kite should have been cut from the movie entirely.

Something: The cover isn’t nearly as good as the original, but at least we’re done with the LSD trip by this point in the movie. I don’t know why we need yet another song explaining how and why Jude loves Lucy, but this is the right place to put it, right before their relationship starts getting turbulent. Good musical number overall.

Oh! Darling: Sadie and Jojo play this song on-stage. It’s pretty good.

Strawberry Fields Forever: I’ve always liked this song, but this cover is even better. This is without a doubt the best song in the whole movie. Jude sings it while designing a strawberry logo for Sadie’s band, intercut with Max in the war singing with him. The strawberries are used as a metaphor for hearts and grenades, with the juice (the blood) being related to both of them. I’m not normally a big fan of the “true art is angsty” tone that it has, but it really does work here. It’s hard to explain without seeing the movie, but suffice to say: this one is incredible.

Revolution: Another great song, sung during a fight scene with no trippy effects added in post — very effective. I think Jim Sturgess could stand to sound a bit more angry, but oh well. The Chairman Mao line is just as clever as always.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps: Just used to show Jojo going solo with his music. A decent song. Not much to say.

Across the Universe: Very emotional, about on par with the original. I was expecting this to be a big song, given that the film is named after it, but it sort of just gets glanced over. It doesn’t even end properly, as it gets mixed into the beginning of the next song.

Helter Skelter: Way worse than the original, and used quite badly in the film. It gets mixed into the ending of Across the Universe (the song) and just comes across as really dissonant and anticlimactic for a scene that’s probably supposed to be the climax. The lyrics are used entirely as a metaphor for chaos; the actual Helter Skelter slide doesn’t appear in the movie.

Happiness Is a Warm Gun: Reinterpreted really effectively to be about a character’s morphine addiction. I’m not a fan of the ridiculous dancing in the movie, though.

Blackbird: The lyrics are completely irrelevant as far as I know, but it’s still an emotional song that’s used effectively to show someone’s sadness.

Hey Jude: It takes a long time to get to Jude’s song, but it’s worth it. The song is exciting and uplifting after all the sad/angry songs that lead up to it. If the original still gets stuck in your head, this one will too. Icing on the cake: the lyrics make perfect sense in the film. I’m going to guess it was one of the songs the plot was specifically built around.

Don’t Let Me Down: Not a lot to say. This one’s mostly in the background, just to set up the last song.

All You Need Is Love: I’ve honestly never really understood why everyone likes this song so much. It’s not bad, but it’s not that special either — the Beatles have definitely made better songs. Still, its use in this movie is pretty strong and finishes the story on a high note. Jim Sturgess injects a lot of emotion into the first few verses before the others come in, which really helps.

Across the Universe is a movie with a great context and a lot of subtext, but very little actual text. It’s an emotional film that can make you feel something if you let it. It’s just not the kind of movie you can really quote to your friends. I recall the first time I saw the trailer for Across the Universe in theatres, my friend Robin yelled “What the fuck?” across the room. That about sums it up.

The completion of this task, the so-called “inception”, is vital for team leader Dominic Cobb; unable to return home to his children because of legal complications, he is forced to stay on the run, taking jobs to attempt to buy his way back home. Client Saito’s job offer is irresistible: a powerful figure in the energy market, Saito promises to use his connections to let Cobb return home, presuming the inception is successful. What is already a difficult task is complicated by the presence of Cobb’s subconscious projection of his dead wife Mal, seemingly intent on sabotaging his missions to convince him to stay in the dream world with her forever.

Cobb and Mal’s relationship and the circumstances surrounding her death are key plot points in the film; explained through dream sequences, snippets and emotionally charged flashbacks, Nolan does an excellent job of teasing us with the details and leaving us to guess the rest as he returns to the mission. Perhaps most interesting about the situation is that Mal is only a projection of Cobb’s subconscious, and her anger and attempts to trap him are influenced primarily by the guilt with which he is wracked over the notion he is responsible for her death. His physical conflict with her in the dream world represents his internal turmoil; reconciliation would be akin to coming to terms with her death, and the plot accurately depicts the difficulty involved in forgiving oneself.

A definite master of intrigue, Nolan’s primary policy appears to be that of hiding the secrets until the very end; he lets the film become serious and dark before adding a dash of humour to bring the audience back into the action. There’s no break for thinking: in flashbacks, you’ll be lost in the plot, deeply analytical and trying to guess the meaning; then you’ll be thrust back into the action and the accompanying state of awe as we enjoy fast-paced, gravity-defying fight scenes rivalling those unreal, carefully choreographed scenes seen in The Matrix. His preference for practical effects over computer-generated is admirable; even the most complex fight sequences were patiently shot over and over, take after take to match his artistic vision. There’s nothing trivial about the 100-foot motorised hallway set built in-studio, turning at a speed of eight revolutions per second to simulate shifts in gravity; this is the way special effects should be done.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt skilfully navigates the spinning set, throwing his armed assailants against the wall as gravity changes to his advantage; his character is Cobb’s curiously-mannered point man; perhaps even more curious about the character are the similarities in his mannerisms to those of Gordon-Levitt’s last role, Tom in Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer. Undoubtedly a unique and talented actor, it is somewhat interesting to note that he isn’t engaging his full potential here. The fight scenes are awe-inspiring and epic, but in brainstorming sessions it’s easy to forget you’re meant to be watching a trained extractor and point man, not a smitten greetings card writer.

A better example of acting talent well explored is in the case of Ellen Page, perhaps best known for her role as the eponymous heroine in 2007’s drama-comedy Juno, who portrays architect Ariadne, hired to design the levels within the dream to create the impression of realism for the subject they are attempting to deceive. Nolan’s idea here is wonderful; the world, designed by the architect, is populated by projected manifestations of the subject’s subconscious after they are drawn into the dream. However, if the dreamer changes the world of the dream too much, the subject will subconsciously attempt to find and eliminate the dreamer through whatever means possible. In some cases, the subconscious projections are militarised thanks to training by another extractor, making the process more difficult.

Inception is, without a doubt, the best film of the year so far, and is far more impressive than Nolan’s last work, The Dark Knight. Combining a clever plot with strong, emotionally-charged acting and some breathtaking action sequences, Inception will probably go down as one of my favourite recent films. If you haven’t already seen it, see it now; if you have seen it, you’ll know exactly why I’m such a fan of this film.

Matthew Vaughn, someone I’m totally unfamiliar with, does a good job directing. The action scenes are colourful and inventive in a way that’s awesome rather than just silly — though it is a bit silly in a way that’s appropriate for a film that’s mostly a spoof of the superhero genre. The film has a very modern look without turning its action scenes into an incomprehensible series of blurry close-ups like so many movies do nowadays. It also features a voice-over from the main character (a narrative device I’m in love with for some reason, so bias ahoy). The movie is technically very well-made: Big Daddy’s big action scene, in which the camera zooms through a security recording and smoothly pans across a large rectangular room, is particularly memorable both as a technical achievement and as an ingenious storytelling device (allowing us to see the entire room without being confined to the security camera we’re supposed to be looking at, without losing coherence).

The story takes a leaf out of Christopher Nolan’s idea trough, following Dave’s transition into the masked vigilante Kick-Ass, how he gets known across the city, and how he takes on the mob first and a supervillain second. Like Batman, the movie keeps to a sketchy sort of “realism” which is just barely realistic enough to fit the theme. Kick-Ass gains worldwide popularity through a MySpace page and a shaky YouTube video, becoming famous in the course of a few weeks.

If you asked Bruce Wayne how he picked his costume, you’d get a vague, “Well, bats are kind of scary I guess.” If you asked Dave Lizewski, you’d get the more succinct, “I dunno.” Keeping in mind that the movie is not supposed to be especially serious, I give it points for cutting the crap and getting right to the point. In fact, that’s the main thing I like about this movie. It really doesn’t mess around at all. Dave becomes a superhero less then fifteen minutes into the film, flatly cutting through that “first hour of the movie is an origin story” bullshit that every other superhero movie does.

The only thing that bugs me about it is the last fifteen minutes. After a startlingly effective tonal shift from comedy to drama during the rising action, the actual climax of the movie is very disappointing. Instead of resolving any of the movie’s themes or being at all consistent, we have a huge fight scene that isn’t even focused on the main character — instead, it’s focused on Hit-Girl, now playing the role of Steve Urkel. It’s okay until the last few moments, when the movie suddenly remembers that Hit-Girl isn’t the protagonist, at which point Dave spontaneously appears out of nowhere, having now gained the superpower of not going deaf when firing two Gatling guns on either side of his head.

Funny? Sure. Awesome? Okay, sure. Consistent? No. Annoying? Very much. I know I’m probably in the minority here, but this climax is so paint-drinkingly stupid that it completely stops the movie from being “great”, in my eyes. Don’t get me wrong: it’s fine for a movie to be stupid. The problem here is that, even though the movie is a comedy, it isn’t that kind of comedy. This isn’t Spongebob Squarepants. The movie, except for this scene, sticks to that aforementioned barely-plausible realism that gave it a very specific theme: “If people tried to be superheros in real life, they would suck.” It’s fine to show Hit-Girl being an unadulterated badass and mowing down legions of mobsters with assault rifles — precisely because she’s Hit-Girl, the character we all know to be completely unrealistic and silly. Dave Lizewski — even when he’s Kick-Ass — is supposed to be this ineffectual nerd who gets his ass handed to him in every scene. Turning him into a badass totally ruins the theme of the movie; at least, it ruins the theme I thought the movie would have.

With the climax taken into account, what is the theme of the movie? “Be a superhero because superheros are totally awesome”? Might as well watch The Dark Knight.

Even when it derails Dave’s character for the sake of a great action scene, it squanders the potential that could have had. Watching Dave murder a bunch of people with his testosterone guns is cool, but not nearly as cool as any of Big Daddy’s or Hit-Girl’s action scenes. His later fight with the supervillain is flat-out boring, basically amounting to a couple of sissy punches in a small nondescript room. Nobody even gets injured; they just knock each other out and fall asleep together like a couple of gay lovers.

There’s a lot of nits to be picked if you’re into that sort of thing. Many references are dated in a very head-scratching way. I understand that the movie is based on a comic book written by a 40-year-old man, but surely someone in the cast and crew must have used the internet in the last five years and realized that no one uses MySpace anymore. The film’s story takes some rather huge liberties in adapting the story as it is, so a minor change like that should hardly be a problem. And what world do these characters live in where everyone has YouTube and iPhones, but comic books are considered a huge phenomenon? The comics industry is dead and has been for a very long time, as much as the writers would try to deny it; the fact that the movie doesn’t even attempt to acknowledge this fact is sort of a missed joke.

Overall, you probably think I hate this movie, but I really don’t. If I was asked to review my favourite movie of all time, I’d still find something to complain about. At the end of the day, Kick-Ass is hilarious, exciting, and very much worth your money. I just think it could have been a bit better.

Ben Affleck stars as Holden McNeil, an uptight comic book artist who makes his living on “dick and fart jokes” while he tries to think of better comic ideas. He lives with his inker, Banky Edwards (Jason Lee), who is totally satisfied with the dick and fart jokes. A running subplot in the film concerns Banky’s desire to turn their comic books into a cartoon series, which Holden is reluctant to do because he feels it will make him into even less of a “true artist”.

During all this, Holden falls in love with fellow artist Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams), who draws a less successful but more artistically-fulfilling comic book. Unfortunately for Holden, he only finds out after falling in love that Alyssa is a lesbian. They can only be friends, so Holden tries to let it go and do just that. He fails, as anyone would, but so does she. Even though she’s supposed to be a lesbian, Alyssa falls in love with Holden and the two start dating.

The rest of the movie is a really harsh and realistic look at relationships, sexuality, and art, which I won’t spoil here. The characters are engaging and relatable while still being very funny; no one person stands out as being “comic relief”, as everyone gets their fair share of punchlines and witty dialogue. The plot is excellent and treads some serious ground without becoming too angsty — an important quality in any story. It all works very well to provide a satisfying experience — a movie with deep characters, big laughs, and a plot that should leave an impact on the audience, no matter how they interpret it.

There are minor gripes to be had with the execution, however. The script drags at times and loses a lot of its humour as the film goes on. There are a few too many dramatic monologues from the characters, especially in the third act. Although the acting is very good for the most part, some of these are a bit too on-the-nose to make sense.

One monologue that does work especially well is given by Alyssa about two thirds of the way into the movie. As she lies in bed with Holden, she talks to him about her sexual identity and experimentation – in such an insightful way that it makes me wonder how a straight man could have written the screenplay. This dialogue in particular is what makes Chasing Amy worth watching. You’ll have to watch the movie to understand — a quotation simply doesn’t have the same impact.

Still, there is one huge problem that looms over the movie and almost ruins it for me. This is a problem I have with the film’s message. Chasing Amy is a movie about a lesbian who falls in love with a man, but the movie excludes a certain word entirely from its dialogue-heavy script. Not once does a character use the word “bisexual” in the entire film — even though Alyssa clearly is.

Alyssa’s self-identification as lesbian is all because she doesn’t want to be ostracized by her gay friends. It’s an unfortunate identity crisis brought on by our society’s implicit acceptance of monosexuality over bisexuality. It’s a bad thing. The only thing worse than being gay in a straight world is being bi in a gay world, which is a message that the character of Alyssa conveys quite well — but only in implication. The film refuses to use the b-word.

Bisexual erasure exists — to many, many people, bisexuality is a “phase” that people will eventually snap out of. Sometimes being bisexual is seen as a cheat, like an unfair advantage that should be discouraged. Attitudes like this cause people to be pigeonholed into the discrete categories of heterosexuality and homosexuality, all depending on the situation. This is shown clearly in the scene where Alyssa tells her friends that she is dating Holden. To Alyssa’s friends, she is “selling out” by allowing herself to be attracted to men — as if she’s straight now and everything previous was just a lie.

Chasing Amy seems to be making a deal with the audience to accept Alyssa’s sexuality for what it is — and to combat bisexual erasure. But by leaving out the b-word entirely, the film paradoxically supports this attitude. Many people — gay and straight alike — misinterpret Chasing Amy as a movie that shows how the right man can turn a lesbian straight. By obfuscating the real meaning and refusing to make its point clear, Kevin Smith panders to audiences who only want to see this misinterpretation.

It’s still a great movie that has a lot to say about sexual identity, but it doesn’t really make an effort to teach the audience anything. It just preaches to the choir. It could have done more than that with minimal effort.

The question is, does the enormous price tag help make Avatar something worth seeing? Or is this just an expensive tech experiment?

The film follows Jake (Sam Worthington), a marine tasked with exploring the surface of an alien planet, Pandora, and communicating with the natives. Jake gets this position because he has similar genetics to his twin brother, who was a scientist initially picked for the job. To visit Pandora, the scientists and Jake use artificially-created alien bodies as avatars (thus the title).

The aliens – blue-skinned cat-people made out of advanced CGI and motion capture technology – are known as the Na’vi (with an apostrophe for decoration). The Na’vi are very spiritual beings who live in a giant tree, worship a god who actually exists, commune with the animals, etc. They are cliched nature-loving aliens through and through.

Humans are the bad guys who want to destroy the aliens’ big tree, which is located on a large deposit of valuable “unobtainium” (probably the funniest joke in the movie). The whole avatar program is in place so that scientists can communicate with the Na’vi and tell them to move out of the tree. Why the government would spend billions of dollars developing the avatars instead of just killing all the aliens is never explained.

From there, the film turns into Pochahontas. Jake falls in love with one of the aliens, they have a PG-rated mating ritual, and he turns against the evil humans. Some other sympathetic scientists help Jake to stand up for the Na’vi while a generic antagonist with literally no personality whatsoever rides around in a manga-inspired mecha and tries to destroy the big tree.

It’s an environmentalist film, if that was too subtle for you.

Still, even if the story is nothing special, that doesn’t mean Avatar is a bad movie. The delivery is a big part of it, too. And with this much money on the table, it’s clear that the delivery of this film was a big deal to Cameron. He waited twelve years because 1997 couldn’t deliver.

The acting is good. No performance really stands out, but that’s the story’s fault. Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana do most of the movie in motion-capture, which is pretty impressive – it’s hard enough to act in the film industry when you have to do the same scene dozens of times, even harder when you’re working against computer-generated creatures that you can’t see on the set.

The imagination and design put into the setting is also pretty impressive. None of it is particularly original, but there’s clearly been a lot of thought put into fleshing out what’s there. The human technology looks very mechanistic and grey, which is played for contrast against the blue-and-green alien motif. The Na’vi themselves are nicely designed. The filmmakers cheated somewhat by making them very humanoid, but it’s necessary to make the human-falls-in-love-with-alien plot work. If the Na’vi were any less human, the whole film would have crashed because the audience would no longer be able to believe that Jake could fall in love with one of them.

The CGI is gorgeous, of course. Nothing to complain about there.

I’m torn on exactly what to think about Avatar. It has an incredibly trite story that I find very annoying, but the delivery is actually pretty solid. It is a very well-made film that might be worth seeing for the effects alone. It still leaves me with a sour taste, though. Titantic, at least, had something worth delivering, and that made the delivery much more satisfying. Avatar is frustrating because it has good effects that it doesn’t even deserve. It’s a very boring and uninspired movie that isn’t worth 230 million dollars by any stretch of the imagination.

Had the film been made in a realistic setting – not as a fantasy with sci-fi flavour – it wouldn’t be half as annoying. The aliens aren’t necessary, and the special effects only serve to distract. Just watch the trailer and you’ll get the same effect. All the eye-candy without the condescending tree-hugging nonsense.

“Condescending” is the word, really. The aliens and humans are both totally one-note and boring: humans are all evil for no clear reason, and aliens are perfect paragons of good. I find myself rooting for the humans to kill everyone just because the aliens are so perfect and infuriating, and that’s where the story really falls apart. Even with the cliche story, it could have come to life with some engaging characters. Avatar doesn’t have characters; it has archetypes.

Watch Avatar if you want to see some really cool motion-capture. Don’t watch Avatar if you want to see a good movie.

If you read the title of this post and instantly know what I’m talking about, you’re awesome. Invasion was a television show that started back in 2005 on ABC; the premise was simple, and something of a twist on the classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Without giving too much away, the show was set in an American town which is suffering after an unusual hurricane. During the hurricane, a hell of a lot of strange orange lights fall from the sky into the water. What are they? Well, it’s never quite made clear. It’s possible they’re aliens, or maybe just biofluorescent (or is that bioluminescent?) fish tossed up by the storm. At first, they’re just dismissed, but eventually some of the characters begin to take notice, and these are the show’s primary characters.

We’ve got Russell, a park ranger, married to Larkin, a news reporter on a cable television network. The sheriff in town is Tom, who’s married to Russell’s ex-wife Mariel, a doctor at the local hospital. Larkin’s brother Dave is unemployed, although he appears to run a blog, where he posts his latest conspiracy theories for the world to read. Russell and Mariel have two children, a teenage boy called Jessie and a young girl called Rose. It’s Rose who first spots these mysterious lights coming from the sky.

Now that I’ve established the show’s premise and introduced most of the ensemble cast, let’s move onto the show’s history. It was a fantastic show, I must say. I thoroughly enjoyed it; the characters were likeable and the story was gripping. Unfortunately, even after a strong start, Invasion was cancelled after its initial twenty-two episode run, ending on a cliffhanger. It took over a year for the studio to release the series on DVD, even after huge fan efforts to have the series restarted. It’s quite similar to the attempts to have Firefly restarted, a show with a similarly premature conclusion. It seems that television network executives don’t like me enjoying their stations.

I leave you with just this piece of advice: go to your favourite DVD retailer, online or physical, and grab the first season of Invasion on DVD. It’s an incredible show which is under-appreciated due to its age and status that does not deserve to be overlooked. It’s quite easy to imagine the show becoming as popular as Lost had it premièred before J.J.Abrams’ brainchild.