I Am Number Four

First Hit: The beginning was mediocre but it picked up quickly and became a very entertaining film.

In the first 10 minutes I thought this was going to be a waste of my time. I’m not sure about the initial sequences but they weren’t a good setup for the rest of the film.

However, the rest of this story worked out and only because the actors were good and they wanted the characters to be as real as possible. John (played by Alex Pettyfer), who is Number Four, is one of 9 aliens sent to earth by his planet to save their planet’s species.

His home planet was invaded by Mogodorians who destroyed his planet’s inhabitants. They are out to find and destroy the 9 who were sent to earth. Each of the 9 has a guardian who assists them from being found by the Mogodorians. Numbers One, Two, and Three are dead and now they are after Number Four.

He is discovered to be an alien by a couple of kids his own age as the Mogodorians are closing in to kill him. At the same time Number 6 (played by Teresa Palmer) comes on to the scene to assist in killing the Mogodorians who have found Number Four.

The ending leaves it possible for there to be multiple follow-up films.

Pettyfer made this film work for me because he came across as thoughtful and made his character as honest as he could. Palmer was fun. Dianna Agron played Sarah an earthling John falls in love with. She was very good and held her own in keeping this film as solid as possible. Callan McAuliffe was wonderful as the odd earthling boy who figured out something was odd about John. Timothy Olyphant was good as John’s protector. Alfred Gough and Miles Millar wrote a really good screen play except for the initial 10 – 15 minutes. D.J. Caruso directed this sci-fi fantasy in a clear story like way.

Overall: I was surprised by how this film grew on me.

Tron: Legacy (3D)

First Hit: Great 3D visual experience and if the dialogue were better we’d have a good film.

The original film TRON wasn’t a great film, what made is irresistible was the cutting edge visuals. This second effort has many of the same; great visuals. The 3D adds so much to the original look and feel which makes this film fun to watch.

The film begins with Sam Flynn (played by Garrett Hedlund) playing havoc with the company he owns. The company is one his father Kevin Flynn (played by Jeff Bridges who also starred in the original) started with cutting edge technology before he disappeared into “the grid”. Kevin disappeared when Sam was only 2 and therefore Sam is angry at his father for leaving him.

Alan Bradley (played by Bruce Boxleitner) who was his father’s confidant tells Sam that his there was a page from Flynn’s old office below an arcade. Sam goes to the office and discovers a way to get sucked into the grid. There he meets his father’s alter ego Clu who challenges Sam (the User) to a match against his perfect programs. His programs are part of the perfection he was commanded to create by Kevin.

Sam with the help of Kevin's confidant Quorra (played by Olivia Wilde), escapes Clu's challenge on light-cycles and is delivered to his real father Kevin. Kevin on the other hand sees that perfection includes imperfection and that sometimes doing nothing is the best thing to do.

Philosophically this could have been an interesting film but what hurts this film is the dialogue. Kevin is reduced to living in the grid with no way back to reality after discovering the perfection.

The visuals are, again, extraordinary and just like the first film; I want to ride a light-cycle.

Bridges was good when the dialogue was OK but when it was poor, the film fell flat and Jeff looked less than the man who was master of the grid. Hedlund was good enough to make it work. Again, the script let the actors down. Wilde was very good and less affected by the poor script. Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz are to blame for much of the failings of this picture as their script was weak, unclear and not thought out. Joseph Kosinski exceeded my hopes on the visuals, I love them. However, the script needed a lot of work to hold up to the world created by the legacy of the first film.

Overall: Unfortunately the best part of this film is the visuals and the weak part is the dialogue. This is a very uneven film.

Inception

First Hit: Beautifully and visually arresting but overly complicated, long and too many gun fights to make it really work.

I don’t think films need to be seen multiple times to understand them better. Films need to create the story in a way which allows one to move (pulled) into the story with thoughtfulness.

I don’t want a lot of rethinking of what I just saw, wondering how it conjoins with the part I’m seeing now and if it makes sense with the beginning or where it might be going. Good films can be complicated. A good complicated film allows the complicatedness to unfold in such a way that the audience trusts the story and director to make sense of it all which they invariably do.

There are films I will see more than once (Memento and Sixth Sense to name two) looking to see if I missed story line clues along the way which revealed an earlier ending or a plot twist which I misunderstood, but after seeing it again, I realize it was just a well-made film.

I don't see films more than once just so I can understand the film. If after seeing a film I have this thought that I have to see the film again to understand it, then in my book, the director has failed. Inception is such a film.

Christopher Nolan over complicated this story and film to make it seem intelligent. He didn’t have to. The story is already intelligent. I understood the story, but it's the execution which is flawed. I knew early on why Cobb (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) felt guilty about his wife’s death. It was obvious, the early hints at tokens and them being personal along with the longing angst.

One knew early on it wasn’t his token which he was carrying. Nolan tried to make this a pivotal part of the film but it didn't work that way. It became a weight. At 148 minutes it was laboriously long and could have used about 30 – 40 minutes of trimming. Cut out the multitude of gun battles (why were they there and what did they add?) in which only one person on the “good team” gets shot. How can people miss their target at 2 feet distance, (Think about this: I’m at the window of your van with a really big gun, you’ve got 6 people in your van and pull off 15 shots and I don’t hit anyone – not likely) especially if they are hired killers?

Much of the gun battle stuff doesn’t make sense nor does it add to the intrigue of the film's concept. Just because a person is in a dream doesn’t mean they cannot get shot; if one guy gets shot (and he did), then all can get shot (and they don't).

On the plus side, the exploration of dreams at multiple levels is interesting. The concept of inception or implanting an idea and having it take hold and grow is in someone's mind is interesting. Another really good segment in the film was the part in which Cobb hires Ariadne (played by Ellen Page) as the dream architect.

The initial scenes where she is learning how to be a dream architect are extraordinary. Page (as Ariadne) is just the right kind of person to push dream boundaries with a particular amount of intelligence and risky youthful exuberance.

DiCaprio is alright here but from an acting standpoint he hasn’t grown and his standard character is getting worn out. Page is wonderful especially at the beginning of the film. Joseph Gordon-Levitt as DiCaprio’s side kick is great as the solid piece of the team. He brought great energy and clarity to the film. Nolan did direct some great scenes with interesting pictures, but the story (by Nolan) was overwrought with needless gun fights (real or imaginative) and took away from what might have been a real psychological thriller.

Overall: Not an impressive film and certainly doesn’t live up to the hype of the previews or press.

Repo Men

First Hit: What started out as a film with promise, it soon dug itself into a very deep and mediocre hole.

Jude Law and Forest Whitaker are good actors however the script and direction let them wallow in a poorly executed idea. This film had possibilities because the idea, artificial body parts being used to save humans, is not that far away.

Think about what it would mean to be able to go into a store and buy a kidney, liver, lung or heart if you needed a new one. Let’s say you’re 35 years old and your kidney is failing. Waiting for a donor is takes a long time. What if you go to a store and buy a new kidney? What would you pay? Would it be worth $50,000, $100,000, $250,000 dollars?

Let’s say you buy one for $100,000 but started missing some payments. Would the company that sold you the kidney have the right to repossess their product?

In this film, they do and Remy (played by Law) and Jake (played by Whitaker) are two of the best at repossessing the product their company sells when clients are past due. They work for Frank (played by Liev Schreiber) a store manager whose job it is to sell product to people who cannot afford it and to allocate the past due notices to his "Repo Men".

Their repossession methods are a bit extreme, but it is all in the contract the clients sign and this is where the company makes money, the repossessed parts are cleaned up and used again. All this backfires on Remy when he becomes a body part recipient.

Law attempts to keep this film alive and attention-grabbing, but the script and overall direction of the film is impossibly lost and becomes complicated in an attempt to be interesting. Whitaker is one of the few people that, even in a poor film, can express so many different and interesting feelings and emotions with his face. In one moment he can seem jovial but there is always a new expression coming and it may be dark. Schreiber is good as the store manager. Eric Garcia and Garrett Lerner wrote this very poor screen play while Miguel Sapochnik directed. His lack of a clear and realistic vision made for a lack luster effort.

Overall: This is a waste of good talent. A better developed story with clear direction could have made this a real interesting science fiction thriller.

Avatar 3D

First Hit: A visual extravaganza and a very satisfying 160 minute film.

I went to the theater skeptical of this latest James Cameron film. His last big film, Titanic, was one of the most boringly long and overdone films I’d ever seen. However, he more than made up for it with Avatar.

Sure, there was some clunky dialog (“We’re not in Kansas anymore” – In the year 2154 they wouldn’t know about this line from the Wizard of Oz) and there were some overly staged and orchestrated scenes (Sitting around the Tree of Souls), however all in all this was a wonderfully entertaining film.

In brief; the story line is that humans, from a dying earth, are mining “Unobtanium” (a substance which is expensive but we are never told how humans will use it), on this phantasmagoric planet called Pandora (Yes, Pandora like the box).

The Na’vi, who are about 10 - 12 feet tall and have blue skin,  live on this beautiful planet. They live in harmony with the nature of their planet and reside in a tree that is over a thousand feet tall. In this operation to mine Unobtanium, the company supports and tolerates some scientists who are attempting to learn about and live within the spirit of the Na’vi people by using Avatars (A body made of both Human/Na’vi chromosomes).

Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington), a paraplegic Marine, is pressed into action to control one of the Avatars. He slowly befriends Neytiri (played by Zoe Saldana) who is the daughter of the spiritual leader of the Na’vi. She sees something special in Jake and teaches him their ways.

While he learns their culture and earns their trust, his human military leader Colonel Miles Quaritch (played by Stephen Lang) is pushing him to either negotiate with the Na’vi to move their home to make room for more mining of Unobtanium or to provide him with enough information to destroy the Na’vi in their home.

Cameron did an outstanding job of keeping this long film moving (he learned from Titanic). Although clunky at times, the dialog, storyline and action were well gauged. However, the thing that impressed me the most about this film was the use of the digital 3D. Cameron didn’t use the 3D as a gimmick to push stuff in your face. It was used to put you, the movie goers, into the film. It made you part of it. It was not distracting it was enhancing. The small touches of flying bugs popping up here and there along with the depth it added to each scene was amazing. The digitalized enhanced Na’vi were wonderfully created and did not seem false or unreal in any way. The creatures and fauna created as part of the planet’s life were beautifully created and represented.

Overall: This film was very satisfying. It was fun, visually stunning, and the story was adequate enough to push this full blown film forward. I really enjoyed it.