Sean Penn And Naomi Watts Steam Up The Political Screen In The True Story Of The Plamegate Affair, "Fair Game"

"FAIR GAME" ☆☆ 1/2

(NOTE: I caught this one, after a November 5 release date, so I know it's late.)

"Fair Game" might be a political platform for actors Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, both outspoken activists themselves, and as the movie itself is somewhat preachy to do for us, too, but even so, as a movie, it needed to act as a liberal ad campaign? Really? And does it really work?

Director Doug Liman, and Watts and Penn, dish out all the hardy detail about Valerie Plame's CIA operative and her and Langley's task at locating intel on nuclear weapons in Iraq (in the early years after 9/11), as well as Penn's Joe Wilson, a former US Ambassador, and Valerie's husband, who does an off job for her and the CIA to look into Niger to highlight the paper trail on possible sales of "Yellowcake" Uranium, which might be being used in some tubing to make those nuclear bombs, those dreaded and oft mentioned things on Bush's "Where the heck is it?" list: Weapons of Mass Destruction.

It takes almost a full hour for the movie to set this all up for us, which it does, as mentioned, in fine detail, without leaving one piece of evidence, or source, or betrayal, under the political forefront rug. Soon, Valerie knows Irag isn't making those tubes, and Joe knows Iraq isn't buying that Yellowcake. All clear, right? However, in Bush's 2002 State of the Union, he speeches, in the most infamous 16 words in any State of the Union Address, Iraq does have those WMD's, based on British Intelligence rather then the known intel by Valerie and the CIA, so the US has a just cause, however false, to enter into Iraq. Valerie doesn't like it, but Joe (and Sean Penn) can't stand it, and as a good - and passionately outraged - American, and not one for political injustice (Penn!), he speaks out in a New York Times article. That strikes a cord to the President's VP office, and they aren't ones for injustice, either, and decide Valerie should pay for it, leaking her name to the press in return - in what was the Robert Novak Chicago Sun-Times piece - given by her own comrades after the evil VP's started snooping around Langely and the whole WMD operations.

The real hook for the story, and the movie: Valerie's name is out, her job is caput, and her reputation and family are on the line. And while she tries to keep a level head about it all, Joe (Penn!) decides he needs to fight the system by doing loads of press, as a guest on talk shows and being quote bytes for newspapers (and Fox News, which maybe Penn received a pay raise when asked to say the line, "Fox wants me to comment...").

Only once the drama, and Watts and Penn, heat it up in the movie's last forty-five minutes or so, when we finally center on them for a change and not the Bush Administration, or those WMD's, then it's interesting.

I prefer the human drama, honestly. I'll take it any day, which is why I just couldn't take all this political, I'm sorry, mumbo jumbo (yes, I know it's all fact) that "Fair Game," and possibly Watts and Penn, need to convey for us, without any sort of movie filter. The film, and the script, are adapted well, but why not do this all to suit the layman? And why bother to set this all up when it doesn't have much of a payoff? We don't even get to see Valerie fight for her own name, but instead we get the early stages. The threats, the husband/wive feuds, all that supposed juicy detail on everything that happened up until someone in The White House pinned a scapecoat. Then, when "Fair Game" is just about over, we cut to the end credits as Valerie takes the stand in Supreme Court. Isn't that the real movie we should be seeing? The real drama? What the hell, man!?

(NOTE: I know "Fair Game" is based on two memoirs, one from both Plame and Wilson, and it might have only been about those early times, and they might have been insistent, and have set all that detail about the Langley bomb search and Joe's anger. And what happened once Valerie did take the stand might not have been that interesting at all but to just show as subtitles during the end credits. Even so, I still can't see "Fair Game" being a movie.)

Liman directed good (after the silly "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" and "Jumper," and back to smart movies like the career boosting "The Bourne Identity."), and even as I would prefer he got his own DP then do the duty himself (the cinematography is sloppy), and Watts and Penn are powerhouses in this, just...come on! I don't want to see the light and picket on the lines with you guys! Enough trying to hammer the evils of the Republican Party across! Enough left-wing crusading! If you had concentrated more on the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson story, which it only does for that last half, then I could justify the movie adaptation. Anyway, can you see a film made just as a political lecture on what exactly happened in the "Plamegate" debacle, and the absolute injustice of it all? Yes, it's outrageous. Yes, it stinks. Yes (maybe), the Bush Administration were really evil, manipulative bastards and that President Bush had no idea what he was doing. Yes, I know this is the story, the turning point, the catalyst, that got us into The Iraq War. I don't know politics, and I don't really much care, because as such the movie often bored and confused me. All I cared about were Valerie and Joe (as much of a self-righteous dick as he was. Penn!), and we were with them all the way. I say, with all this jargon and grainy detail, I liked the movie enough only because of them.

No more liberal agenda movies, okay guys?

DVD/Blue-ray This Week: "Flipped"

DVD REVIEW:

"FLIPPED" ☆☆☆ 1/2

"Flipped" is the new Hollywood movie from director/co-writer Rob Reiner, who often gives us diverse blockbusters, both good and bad, hit and miss, mixed and praised, rotten and fresh, and here directs the movie he probably should have made all along, and it's a real treasure. I don't say that lightly, and I'll tell you why, just give me a time to lovingly praise, and I love doing that... 

About love and life, the swinging 60's, and family cheers, "Flipped" follows two kids: Bryce Lowski and his family just moved into the neighborhood, and the only girl across the way is Juli Baker, who from shot one watches smitten as Byrce and the Lowski's pull up into the drive. From go she is easily taken by the young Bryce. He isn't, being a 7-or-so year old he thinks girls are weird and clingy. They aren't weird, but they certainly are clingy, and here Juli is so much to mention she died for his eyes, and desperately stricken ran to hold hands with him, in what cements the kids from the movie on. Juli and her girl crush, Bryce and his boyish jerk ways. What's the hook of the story, we follow Bryce and Juli up to Middle School, and through the same span of time, the same scenes and moments, we jump, or flip, from one point-of-view to another, one side of the story to the other. The dilemma for both Bryce and Juli, is Byrce is still a pain, Juli is still love-struck, and through misunderstanding in those different observations Juli takes new interest in other things, things more important and real, than love, and Bryce soon finds out what being in love means when he falls for Juli, just as she's moving on and losing her girlhood obsession with him. We are with them, from school to family life, where it mingles healthily or in calamitous results, still from one point of observation, still in different understanding and misunderstanding, until the final scene when Bryce and Juli come together, without prejudice. My hope, and yours, will be that it be happily ever after. 

I wouldn't tell you. Go and watch the movie. 

Obviously, I loved "Flipped." Kid and family dramas, as lovingly crafted as it is here, is a weak spot for me, even especially when it's well acted by the kids, and those kids are as cute as Juli and as youthfully handsome as Bryce. And I can't tell how much I enjoyed watching Byrce and Juli, and actors Madeline Carroll and Callen McAuliffe, and the rest of the astounding adult cast: Rebecca De Mornay as sincere Lowski mom Patsy, Aiden Quinn as sagious Baker dad Richard, Peneope Ann Miller as self-effacing Baker mom Trina, and two of the best of the adult cast, John Mahoney as refined old Lowski granddad Chet, and Anothony Edwards as inflated jerk Lowski dad Steven. It's probably I love those dramas so much because I wish my childhood could have been so bright and adventurous. I'm not saying my coming-up sucked (it was just fine, thank you, you can go and ask my parents), but I never did fall in love as a kid, never did have a grand understanding of the world at such an attractive age. Though I did act all adult, tried to grow up too fast like most kids do, and I'm glad to see Bryce or Juli won't be growing up anytime soon. They will be with us forever, I think, as eighth graders, as teens in love, kneeling frozen in time planting that Sycamore Tree together. 

However, critics didn't love "Flipped," nor audiences, who mostly didn't see it, since Warner Bros. released it limited, then pulled it from it's wide release, and soon the movie was taken out of cinemas right after. This was a studio picture, was meant to screen on 2,000 plus screens, and I scratch my head. Who cares the audience might not have been there (which I think is bull), that you needed to market it for a different demographic (I forget who and why. And why would you?), and that you were terrifyed WB, the movie, costing only 14 million, wouldn't get it's money worth, or be a post-Stand By Me or Wonder Years hit? If you had released the movie for everyone to see, the crowd would have come. It might not have been a runaway success, Gosh, what is mostly?, but it would have made more than it did. "Flipped" is sentimental, and it rightfully is so, and that's an audience soft spot. If you had released it, your audience would have found it. 

Man, I wish I had seen it in theaters, myself. 

Why those moviegoers would have come, is why most people come to movies: to watch captivating storytelling. And why "Flipped" is captivating is it's terrific characters, lovingly settled in the enchanting harken back to the 1960's, a wistful time of guiltlessness, love and spunkiness that was soon taken away by the Vietnam War when all those kids grew up to hate war and then peace and mankind came in, which should be more perennial, but I like child innocence better. It's more charming, and Rob Reiner has no problem with that, either. Having himself grown up in that time, he relishes it. And it's easy, for him and us, to delight in it, too. Why not when you can flood the soundtrack with those great, endearing contemporary pop/rock tunes: "Pretty Little Angel Eyes," "You've Got A Hold On Me," "A Teenager In Love, "He's So Fine, "One Fine Day," and "Let It Be Me" and so many others, and which here has the rare literal placeholder about, really, two teenagers in love. The cinematography by Thomas Del Ruth, a not oft prestigous DP, but the visual hero for "Flipped," does glorious genteel work, both lush in Suburban emanational delight and moodily sanguinity. And Reiner, who, as we all know, is familiar with this territory (director of that time-honored "Stand By Me"), and he does the best he's done in a while. Reiner directs good relationship dramas, is an actor's director, but he's also a filmmaking chameleon. He can do any subjects, any characters, any mood, and really make it work. And here sets the right mood, the right pace, the right feel, for "Flipped." He's fallen victim to it in the last decade or so, with maybe not so great scripts or characters, or that he wasn't up to par those times, but he has his strongest film since with this one. It might be the type of movie, after the perennial success of "Stand By Me," he was meant to make after, and as much as "Flipped" has a lot riding with it, could have been the magnum opus he should have made those 20-odd years ago. "Flipped" was a book, written only nine years ago, and is set during that early time, but even though Reiner did set the movie in the Rock N' Roll 60's, he could have made this film earlier, set it in those 60's, put those contemporary tunes in there, as endearing as they were then and are even now, and hit the mark right when it was still fresh when he made that wonderful, though tough and unabashed coming-of-age movie "Stand By Me" (what would you expect from writer Stephen King, who also had a lot to say about his boyhood youth in Maine, and is just as nostalgic though not as peachy as Reiner's). 

Ah, oh well. We have "Flipped" now. It's just like those 60's, innocent, free-spirited and full of life, and even though I haven't come of age then, am only so young as to have that life experience now, can tell you anyway I have grown up to have flipped. Not in love, but in life and living, as both Byrce and Juli inevitably do. As they fall in and out of love, they also grow up. We can all relate to that. I say the critics who have been poor to this movie have either not grown up (but not in the Willy Wonka way), or have not recognized that they have. They should give "Flipped" another chance, and you all should give it a first. You will like, maybe even love, this film. If not, then maybe you are more like Stephen King then Rob Reiner, or one of those critics. "Flipped" does have real drama, though it is a tad too glorious in it's depiction, as Reiner is so keen to represent for us, and it doesn't fall short on it at all. Though I admit, as much as I love it and the shortcomings aren't too short, the movie could have been better. Even said there's nothing really wrong with it, the movie is well adapted, by Reiner and co-writer Andrew Schienman, the characters are purposely rounded, the cast is stupendous, and Reiner directs with the right air of simplicity and complexity that could appeal to kids and the older (that's a stretch, but I'll say it anyhow). But even as the narration isn't too boggled, isn't too over-lordly and big on exposition, which it somewhat is, it wasn't irritating to listen to. Everyone uses narration, if sparingly or just for the opening and the closing, but in "Flipped" it's key. The narration is used with love and caution, but even still I wish scenes of quiet weren't in conjunction with that voiceover, times we should be in the moment we are taken out of it to be with the off screen voice of Bryce or Juli and watching with them as a voyeur, a reminiscer, rather than be there with the younger Byrce and Juli in those scenes, to feel the magic, the love, the humor, the drama, with them at that time. I say even as the narration is what makes the movie you see, or will see, it might have been better had we witnessed the points-of-view of Bryce and Juli in more of a seamless style rather than the stark way added by the narration, complete with a screen-flip effect to transition from one side to the other. The movie's simplicity has that charm that I find the reason I enjoy this movie so much, but we could have had an artistic, complex, really endearing real-life drama film similar to "Stand By Me." In this way I think that film is better, but I didn't love it more, and you might find you wouldn't, too. 

"Flipped" isn't perfect, and I'm not championing it as a masterpiece, but it's so wonderful. Again, another word I don't use throwaway. It has an affect on you, and it did for me. I can only urge you to see it, and if you had seen it while in it's theatrical run, you might have found something special. Movie houses, with the big screen, the immersive sound, the overall absorbance, and the company of dozens upon dozens of movie-lovers alike, is an experience to treasure with a movie that hits you deeply. 

Again, I had only wished...

Hey Baskerin, What Did You Think Of "Harry Potter 7?!"

"HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1"

☆☆☆

I did preview "Harry Potter 7 (1/2)" recently, and I do have a good dose of media honey to sweeten onto it, I just haven't cemented all my thoughts into my critic platform, and I think a second pass will help with that. 

What I can tell you now is I liked "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1," again directed by brit art helmer David Yates, who did the last two, written again by oft Potter screenwriter Steve Kloves (all but "Potter # 5"), continuously produced by David Barron (most of them) and David Heyman (all of them), and acted by the never before, and possibly never again ultimate british thespian ensemble cast, with often good kid leads Daniel Radcliffe as Potter, and Emma Watson and Rupert Grint as his wizard/witch greatest friends, know-it-all-common-sense Hermonie, and steamy, but loyal Ron. For a 8-film fantasy series of this success, with this cast, with this creative team, with the big money, and the constant array of good visual effects, pyrotechnics and locations - (which is even more grand as the three young heros traverse the England landscape and pass over hills, valleys, wood, and craggy rock, in an effort to reward our trek journey as with the glory-New Zealand "The Lord of the Rings") - we as the audience have never been more spoiled by any other movies at all the last decade. Unlike "The Lord of the Rings," however, we haven't gotten the best of the material, author Jo Rowling's kid series of mostly good vs. evil and wondrous fantasy myth of magic schools, spell-casting wands, game-flying brooms, and constant magical surprises around every corner. In a word, and everyone uses it more often than ever: epic. And there's my main point of concern, and is more so with the Yates directed films - 

Why doesn't he go all out? Why doesn't he make his "Harry Potter's" as involving as with some of the better movies, and end on the note of the grand, exciting fantasy saga that this series could have been, and may not be (or will) with the last of the "Deathly Hallows" half, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," out next July? Why be so...calculated? So laid back? So cautious? So artsy? Where is the steam, the juice, the punch? Where is the EPIC? 

I'll go more into this later. But watch the series, or just watch one, and if you can the Yates directed films. See what I mean. And watch Peter Jackson's lovingly adapted, and not lacking in involvement or excitement, "The Lord of the Rings" fantasy epic, and compare what "LOTR" has and what "HP" should have. If your a fantasy lover, or movie lover, and watch those movies and read those books, you'll notice the difference immediately. 

I'll update. 

Crowe And Banks Have Character Issues, Director Haggis Falls Short On Key Moments, But That Last Half-Hour Moves Like A Freight Train And It Shows Us That Every Minute Counts During "The Next Three Days"

"THE NEXT THREE DAYS" ☆☆☆ 1/2

This might be rare, but I usually don't disagree with the consensus of critics (though not yet audiences), who here mostly dislike director/writer Paul Haggis' jailbreak suspense film "The Next Three Days," where Russell Crowe is John Brenner, a college professor who finds the means and the how, and the guts what he needs the most, to break his wrongfully convicted wife out of prison. And not legally, either, after the courts, and Daniel Stern (Daniel Stern!) as the Brenner trail lawyer called it quits and gave John the "do not pass go" card. But a college professor!? And who after he nearly gets convicted for wrongly playing with a broken bump key pukes out of near-getting-busted nerves? Can we believe a mild-mannered school teacher with anxiety can successfully beat the system, passing all road checkpoints in what Liam Neeson's stodgy con man Damon Pennington says will be 15-35 minutes to bypass all those police roadblocks before it's locked down, there's no way out, and it's game over? Can we honestly believe that? Well, I say I can believe Russell Crowe, who fought the invading French in Medieval England and won, who hunted down notorious heroin gangster king Frank Lucas and won, and not only out smarted him in the end, but got the former mob don to help put all his gangster buddies and rivals behind bars. And Maximus! Come on! The man beat and defined The Roman Empire! It's why we can believe him, that Russell Crowe is today's heavyweight leading man, and he can carry a movie, pack the punch, even make us sympathize, better than any leading actor right now. If anyone can free the woman he has undying loyalty to, and have enough time for a quickie on the car ride hightailing it into Canada, then that's a guy to take seriously. (I was kidding about the quickie. Only Chuck Norris would think to do something so dangerous and risque at the same time) I won't tell you if he succeeds or not - that he may get his wife out of jail, but into a safe haven without being captured - but the movie does. 

I'll say it: Even with some of the problem areas that are bringing a lot of critics down, I really liked this movie. It's at it's best a really edgy and fast-moving suspense ticking-clock, and never more so in the show's last quarter as Crowe's qualmish, but determined John Brenner and Elisabeth Banks as imprisoned wife Lara escape the confines of the jail walls, race against time in those precious 15-35 minutes to beat the borders before they close, and have to outsmart a Lieutenant and several detectives who are hot on their trial from the moment they hit go, and where John may have been the smarter to out fox them all. I say that's satisfying enough, for a pretty rousing climax to what is really a genre action jailbreak movie (the human drama matters, too, don't get me wrong), where everything leading up is but bread crumbs, and Haggis, and his editor Jo Francis, really fly through it (an editor, by the way, who has the chops to do an action feature, and a first, after doing TV); and composer Danny Elfman helps to set the pace. People say it enough, but I'll say it here, I was on the edge of my seat (though not literally), and my heart was beating all the while. And I even felt nauseated! (Now I'm just pushing it) But it all works to that degree. So the movie has it's shortcomings. John does stuff that's kind of stupid, Lara's behavior doesn't make sense at first, she isn't given enough scenes for us to care whether she gets out or not, and what should be key dramatic moments of relief and dire realization didn't have as much punch and weren't considered as much as Haggis did with the jailbreak. But, what a jailbreak! 

But for an exciting movie like this - and I think that's where I disagree with everyone else - who cares!? If a movie manages to excite you, for that rollicking last act, and did as the story was setting the pace, then racing along, gaining traction, until you're actually into it and you really started to care if Lara was caught, if John was sent to jail with her, and if their son Luke went without parents. So, the first some-odd half-hour was weak, but it really pays off when John takes that photo at the resolution, after when we first see Lara snapping that photo then is suddenly taken away, when a horde of officers flank and storm the family kitchen, arrest a flabbergasted Lara, restrain a upset John, and snap evidence photos as distraught Luke sits at the table, crying. And when Luke finally kisses her mother again, at the end, when Lara says that he may have never done so again or seen her the same way, and that she'll spend the rest of her life as a jailbird convict. As sappy as that seems, it works, and it had meaning at the end. We suddenly cared about these characters, and even though that beginning half was weak, it was at least set up right. 

And that beginning first half-hour, though: After Lara's arrest, however, the movie does lose some of that meaning, some of it's punch, when we have a hard time believing Lara is so calm for it from the start (even though she loses that resolve later on), and when we didn't see anything at all of the court proceedings. If we could have stayed with John, Lara and Luke through those defining hours and days, hanging on every second, like the show does for the next three days, then we wouldn't need to see those court cases. But it didn't help that the scene after Lara's arrest in that kitchen we are already months down the road. Now, there's some wasted drama. 

And John. I'll believe he's a somewhat non-common-sense junior college professor, and that he is indeed Russell Crowe, but why did he do some of the dumbest things? Chat up a guy about how to break out of a maximum security facility, in a restaurant, in public? Shopping around for someone to manufacture fake passports and I.D.'s, from one clueless drug dealer to another, buying from them, and continuing to do so, continuing to try to find the hookup guy, and leaving all his bought pills and bags in the passenger seat for any passing cop to see? Then researching on Google? Learning from YouTube tutorials? This isn't child's play, man! Your breaking your wife out of prison, for God's Sake! John might have did less had he watched "Cool Hand Luke" or "The Great Escape" for pointers. 

(SPOILER ALERT! And robbing those drug dealers, and what I felt was completely wrong he ends up killing those guys. Why does he suddenly have the guts to do it, and not puke right afterward like he did with the bump key? That scene was a nifty suspense set piece, but way out of the ballpark for a character who we shouldn't believe is ready to kill just yet, or at all. He's a convicted felon now! What does that make him? We should think that helps with the drama, but as I feel it really ends up not making sense.)

And there are scenes in that beginning which could have really packed an emotional wallop and hit our hearts cords early, when we needed to feel so soon, but didn't surprise us the way we should. Lara's arrest was good, but what about that first prison visit, or the next one, or when we learn of her unalterable fate? Well acted by Crowe and Banks, especially that speechless, tearful scene between the looking glass, but they didn't resonate enough. 

But soon, all of it starts to make sense, and even make us feel for John and Lara even more, when John finally does figure it all out, and really does have the ultimate plan in place to stay a step up the creek from those Philadelphia PD's, and he does, and the movie starts getting better. When the silly, sensitive college guy does something no one convict or Harvard smartie or jailbreak artist (except maybe Pennington) can accomplish, and when that sighing Lieutenant finally says, after it's all over, "A teacher did this?," we believe it. It's an underdog thing. As much as we now care whether John succeeds, and now whether suicidal, manic Lara (who even goes as far as to say she did it, with misplaced intensity) makes it out, we care for the everyday man to triumph at the impossible. The ordinary hero in extraordinary situations. That applies here, and we should do no less then cheer once the credits roll (SPOILER ALERT! and their all safe in Haiti). We would if we weren't on the edge of those seats. But not literally. 

"The Next Three Days," is a well written and directed by Haggis, and though he falters with that beginning setup and character troubles, he makes up for it once we get to the meat of the movie. Jailbreak, baby! And, should I mention, Crowe is just as superb a leading man as he is in every other movie he takes on, really making us believe that an idiot teacher can do the unthinkable. And Banks, once Lara started to lose hope, really showed her waning resolve as the movie progressed, as little as we did see of her in that first half. There isn't much of a supporting cast here, but Daniel Stern is pure lawyer bullshit, Brian Dennehy is the sure quiet softy of a dad, and Lennie James (who I got to see work, in a very similar role, in "Colombiana" last summer) had that relentless mean cop vigor we all like to see put up against our on-the-run protagonist (was anyone better than Tommy Lee Jones in "The Fugitive?"). And I always like there is a potential love interest in a movie by Paul Haggis, after Charlize Theron's smart detective to Tommy Lee Jones steadfast dad looking for his missing son, and doesn't become a love interest, thank god!, and here doesn't become one to John. Granted, that would ruin his whole motivation. And why would Tommy Jones go for Theron when he was already married? Yeah, it doesn't make sense, but it ruins the potential for good drama, okay. 

But I'm glad Olivia Wilde was nothing more than a friend to John, in the one or three scenes she has. She's not much of a character (there goes saying there was a strong female presence in the movie and that she wasn't used as sex toy), but was really only a character tool to be used so Luke had somewhere to stay when everything was going down (why couldn't he just stay with granddaddy Brain Dennehy?) 

I think I'll quit the argument for this movie for now, if I made some sense or not, but I might think of something later to add (times I had wished I had a notepad and pen in the theater, and maybe a solid memory bank), or even reread all this and do some editing. But if you should leave this review page with a one thought, know that "The Next Three Days" is worth your time and money. It isn't one of the best movies out this year, or this fall, as we should expect from Paul Haggis, the Academy Award-winning writer and director of movies like "Million Dollar Baby" and "Crash," but the movie is solid. It sports a good cast, good writing and good directing. Again, that setup was slummy and man, I kinda wish John Brenner was a little smarter. Maybe he should have been a former detective, like Tommy Lee Jones. But, that would take away from the appeal of the character and the story. The ordinary man in the most extraordinary situations. Steven Spielberg would be proud. 

DVD/Blue-ray This Week: "A Christmas Carol," "The Kids Are All Right" & "The Last Airbender"

DVD REVIEW:

"A CHRISTMAS CAROL" (2009) ☆☆☆

I neglected to write about this one when it was released last year, sighting - as it always is with me -  that is was just utter laziness. It was a sad thing, since I had something to say about Robert Zemeckis' latest of digital animated wizardry and caricature wonderment of Motion Capture that is "A Christmas Carol," and what is actually one of only a few notable adaptations of Charles Dicken's little holiday tale of bigotry and humbleness, longing and loss, companionship and loneliness, and forgiveness and atonement. And the movie is in itself a dazzling feat of 3D and striking/beautiful animation. I'll stand by this technology. I think it's great, and I think it's innovative, and I don't agree that Zemeckis shouldn't continue to make movies like this, or anyone else. Here's my statement: You have a world that has never been able to be seen before (and I mean that literally) of intricate colors and design, of deep and depthless shadow and aurae light, and of laboriously detailed, fallible human representation, that may only be achieved with photo-real digital animation. I ask you if you might have seen a movie like "A Christmas Carol," or Zemeckis' other efforts, "The Polar Express" and "Beowulf," that was as strikingly real as a live-action film? Can you see the falling snow so patterned, so stark against the deep blue night skies in any other movie? The candle light as golden, or the mist of translucent? (Or the pores as big and open on Scrooge's nose? Just look at the picture above!)

Maybe you have, but I'm enchanted by it. 

My other side of the statement: The other aspect that is the treasured aesthetic of MoCap, Performance Capture, it recreates an actor's facial design to perfection, down to every wrinkle and mole, to look as photo-realistic as possible. It even shapes it imperfectly, to tweak and age it. And to record a real facial and bodily performance and mirror in onto a digital character is a milestone step. It's real acting, by real actors. In terms of set construction you don't have to worry about spending too much and building whole structures strenuously to look as close to the real thing, or intricately knitted costumes and finely detailed props. Instead you can recreate a world digitally, to the exact design and detail, just like 1800's London. And MoCap is a dream for a director. You can put the camera wherever you want and have it do whatever you want. It can swivel, cut, turn, fly, soar, hang, sweep, run a mile a minute and stop on a dime. It's ingenious.

Of course, I acknowledge that the flaws are big ones. The technology is getting better, but the caricatures, and those dreaded lazily eyes, still look stern. (How can we sympathize with a character that looks dead?) And the boundary of the recording stage is only so far, and with sensors on the actors, and a hundred sensory cameras along the stage to record them, the actors can only do so much, can only run so far along the space to where the filmmakers "cheat" stunts to seem like actors are flying, falling, riding, dancing, swinging, hanging, ext. Forget that it's silly, it's limiting. And that dreaded t-pose. Those aren't really big problems, it just sucks for the actors. 

But for the filmmakers, it's a godsend. Imagine what you could do, what you could create. And you can have your actors soaring and jumping and doing all sorts of lame feats if you can showcase it grandly in the computer. I say MoCap for always!

Now, even as great as the technology is, as much as I can argue in it's defense, I'll say the work it is helping to adapt is not so much suited to the screen as or ready as it should be. With that, "A Christmas Carol" has a few things against it. 

As a story, which is adapted scene for scene, line for line, and tone for tone, you have a story that wasn't really cinematic to begin with. The novel was written over a hundred years ago, before film was around. Scrooge may have jumped from time and space, but he didn't really soar, or fly all over London. And a carriage didn't chance him, or shrink him, and he didn't hang over his own coffin, as outrageous as that all sounds. As it may have been interpreted, Zemeckis took the liberty. And other than Dickens story, his themes, and his dialogue that still rings true today, we could have used more story, more backstory, more scenes. As a short novel, written to represent the morality of the times, it can't really work as an immersive, cinematic feature film. 

The tone of the movie is also true to the source. Zemeckis created a dark portrait of a destitute and dreary London, as it was in the year of Dickens, as much as Disney would let him. And he didn't let the frightening level of the story go, either. The ghosts were terriblely grotesque and chilling at times, and with Zemeckis own trademark flair, a little comical. 

Even then, that isn't my main beef with the movie. No. What I think "A Chritmas Carol" needed more of, a level that wasn't represented too well, and may have been limited due to the tone the movie was going for, was the emotion. I wasn't ready to watch the next "It's a Wonderful Life," but for a story of Christmas redemption, couldn't we, at the least, have smiled a bit more? Couldn't we have really connected with a character going the way of an unforgiven, dead miser into the completely changed man, in the ultimate character arc, of a giving, cheerful old bugger who as Dickens wrote "was as good a friend, as good a man, as the good old city ever knew?" Couldn't Scrooge have been more a scandalous bigot and demeaning penny-pincher so we could have praised him for his kindness and silly cheer at the end? Couldn't we have felt for poor Bob Cratchit? Couldn't we have shed a tear for Tiny Tim? Where was the Christmas Carol heart? But I tell you, if it was there, audiences would have come in bigger numbers. Emotion sells, as much as blood and sex do.

You may have noticed this has been a flaw I've felt and have addressed to several movies, "Scott Pilgrim" being one recently, but I'm serious. What was "A Christmas Carol" meant to be? A chilling ghost story, and an accurate look on hard-times, with Scrooge and the Ghosts meant to be a guide along the journey? No. If anything, Dickens tale is "It's a Wonderful Life" as much as "It's a Wonderful Life" was "A Christmas Carol." I won't lie, had this movie made me cry, I would have liked it more. And I guarantee had it made audiences cry, stand up and cheer for Scrooge, then the movie would have been a box office hit.

(SPOILER ALERT!) Something that was manufactured, in a literal storybook ending, Zemeckis had Bob Cratchit himself addressing the audience at the closing, in what I felt was cheap and false. 

Robert Zemeckis and the Motion Capture technology seem to be going by the wayside, at least fully animated ones. The movies aren't making enough, even with 3D sales. His company, Image Movers, which made the film, will shut down next year. And even with his adaptation of "Yellow Submarine" and "Mars Need Moms," and Steven Spielberg's own "Adventures of TinTin," I doubt the technology will continue the way it has with those efforts. "Avatar" may have proved what you could do better with MoCap and 3D, but that was only half animated. 

But I know the anecdote: Robert, if you could make "Yellow Submarnie" better, and emotional, and if Spielberg can do anything with it, then I think we may yet have a go for more MoCap movies. Continue the effort, continue to improve, because I want to see more. No one does it better than you, Bob. 

MoCap Forever!

DVD REVIEW:
"THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT" ☆☆☆

The kids are indeed alright in this pretty good indie family dramedy about a seasoned lesbian couple - Nic (Annette Bening) the stern breadwinner and Jules (Julianne Moore) the keen self-starter - who have two teens from a sperm donor, and once the kids get old enough to be curious they seek the guy out, who is easy-going restaurant owner Paul (Mark Ruffalo). They invite him into their lifes, and of course, complications arise and the family slightly unravels, some.  

"The Kids Are All Right," as good as it is, is typical family drama stuff, or love mishmashes from those good old contemporary romcom's, though this movie is better than those will ever be. It's predictable, but it's fresh (gay marriage and sperm donors take the place of a modern nuclear family), and is well written, directed and acted, and I say the cast saves the show. 

Though those kids didn't have too much to do. Joni (played by "Alice in Wonderland's" Mia Wasikowska, and is better here then she was in that) - the assertive A-student, 18-year-old soon going off to college - has a bit more going on then her fairly straight-lined younger athletic brother Laser (played by Josh Hutcherson), who just has a doofus punk of a friend to deal with. But if you could call getting drunk at a party and smooching one of your good buddies severe family trauma, then...

(SPOILER ALERT!) And poor Paul, left out to dry. Wasn't really his fault, and I think we could have seen him redeemed a little as the end, though it's the only unpredictable part. 

"The Kids Are All Right" is good, and I wouldn't doubt the positive vibe it's getting from Oscar buzz, but I have to say everythings pretty straight forward here. Maybe a nod for Bening, Moore or Ruffalo, but I don't see the potential. 

Anyway, good movie. It's funny and heart-churning, though not as much as it could have been. I say just ease on the praise. 

DVD REVIEW:
"THE LAST AIRBENDER" ☆

I caught this opening day, and I could have viewed it again, just to refresh on it. But once was enough for me, and I'm sure most of you, too.

Now, I could go the way of most reviewers and bash on "The Last Airbender" until there's nothing left to like but the pretty awesome CG effects of water, earth, fire and air bending. I could lament on the missed opportunity, the adaptation for Paramount to try again for another fantasy franchise and catch up to the likes of "Twilight," "Harry Potter, "The Chronicles of Narnia," and "The Lord of the Rings," and be hailed as the masterful representation of a good kid's animated TV show. I could expel on M. Night Shyamalan, like almost every critic with a misguided vendetta to crunch and couch-potato blogger who sits safely in front of the computer screen and finds venting about shitty movies is the cure for jealously that they aren't making those big movies, aren't big Hollywood directors, and aren't Shia LaBeouf. I could go into mind-bending detail on Shyamalan's lack of craft, as thin as it was even for movies like "The Sixth Sense," and how it has continuously gotten worse and worse with each new thriller/fantasy that wasn't too thrilling or fantastical. And whose concepts have been written as sillier and sillier, with character's that are quiet and bland, and dialogue that's flat and untrue. With directing that is just plain poor, as bad as anything as you would see from a student short film (and I've seen, and made, plenty enough of those). His actors have no steam, no juice, and zero direction. His camera is in one place and never in the right place. His coverage is minimal. His action is slow and tepid. His stamina is unwanning. His ability to continue to make studio movies is perplexing and unjust.

So, what the hell? What happened to the M. Night Shyamalan of decently good thrillers? I'll try and answer that. 

Now, I could also write in this review what exactly did really suck about "The Last Airbender," but I'm afraid it's near everything, minus the crew talent and production value. You could admire the effects, the sets, the costumes, the photography, the music, and all those respected departments did bang-up work. But can you ignore the severely suffering story that moves along like a turtle caught in molasses and exercises in painfully awful dialogue? M. Night Shyalaman has a weakness for bad moviemaking, and "The Last Airbender" suffers from this the most. For a big-budget/studio tentpole and CG-heavy fantasy blockbuster movie, "Airbender" shouldn't have been as bad as it was. I agree with that, though I don't that most audiences, and critics, too - and those jealous bloggers with supposedly some steam to vent - want to rip M. Night's twist-sensitive proneness out of him for screwing up their precious animated fantasy/action series, and who most do actually hail as masterful (I just say it was good). It's common that most movies fail in box office, but rarely that they fail on craft. But those movies, even bigger and more expensive then "Airbender," always fall harder, with not enough money in the bank to continue as a series or establish anyone involved to make movies on that same level again. "The Last Airbender," as hard as it indeed hit, as lacking and poor as it was, still made enough to trek on for another two more films. Probably. We all know Shyamalan has made several misfires since "The Village," going from one studio, failing again, then going on to the next one, until soon maybe there will be no one left to finance his next screenplay. But he is still here, hasn't been thrown out of the Hollywood trenches yet. No producer or studio exec may be willingly to pay, or even read, his next script, but he still has the "Avatar" series, and his current "Night Chronicles" for 20th Century. I say if those continue to go down the dirt hill, with less audiences going to see them, then he has worked with and lost connection to every major film studio. There is a chance - and it should have happened sooner and is a miracle it hasn't already - M. Night Shyamalan may never make another movie in Hollywood again. And I snarl my mean studio exec voice when I say that.

Probably.

But, for the present, we still have him. And I think all we could, and should, say is that we continue to ask that Shyamalan up his game, continue to improve and better his shortcomings, rather than chew on the battered meat Hollywood and critics have already beaten on. Because M. Night is a good filmmaker, or once was, as hard is it is to believe. He once made intriguing supernatural extrusions. He could scare us, make us shiver, make us cry (yes, he could), even make us think, which no movie today really does anyway (I know, all you Chris Nolan feet-kissers, I got it.). He was the answer to smart thrillers. The guy to take the voyeur of Alfred Hitchcock and continue his horror. The director to pry the box office mantle and make crowd pleasing money-rakers as was once called the next Steven Spielberg. The man to be of his own voice and aesthetic, and he was. 

So now what has become of him? Sadly, I don't think even he knows. His current work just fails so horrendously on every level, on directing aesthetic, on writing, acting, camera, and the overall pacing, which is always slow and effortlessly monotonous. And it just gets far worse with each picture. Can M. Night save himself from what he thinks is good moviemaking, what he pushes as masterful? And most of you bloggers will agree with me that he indeed does, and how often he represents himself as the next filmmaking genius, even as good as his idols Hitchcock and Spielberg. For those of you who think that he just sucks in every possible way (bloggers!), know that this is his flaw, and what has made all his movies so terrible and not that he shouldn't be making movies but go back to being a doctor or the cashier behind the counter at 7-Eleven, as wrong as that is. What's really his problem is he can't accept his gifts, and can't accept it may not be genius. He can't accept to quit, or give up on it. He constantly indulges in it, in his own genius and fantasy, often to where his own producers don't even get it, and soon enough audiences, too. Can he for once step back and see the crud he is making? It's not about you, Night, it's not about your name above the title. It's about the movie. Can you defer yourself as just the writer, as just the director, as just the producer, or story-holder, as you did with "Devil?" Can you make different fair, not similarly plotted thriller/fantasies, like you did with "The Last Airbender?" 

But we all know even that's not good enough. Can you, M. Night Shyamalan, stop making just plain bad movies? 

With that said, as always, I look forward to your next picture. Yes, I do. I always have. Even after "Lady in the Water" and "The Happening" I hoped and preyed "The Last Airbender" would be a different stretch and that somehow Shyamalan would make a blockbuster better then he did his smaller horrors, even when it's so obvious now that the scale, huge production value and heavy visual effects probably got the best of him.

I'll hold out on you, Night, that your movies will continue to get better, rather than get worse. You were once a talent, once a contender, and were with the Oscars, and maybe will be again. See the light, Night. Step back. Take a new approach. You still have the power, the means. Hollywood, or critics, or even those relentless bloggers, haven't sicked the dogs on you yet. Not yet.

There is still a chance for a good M. Night Shyamalan movie.

What "Monsters?!"

"MONSTERS" ☆☆ 1/2

So I decided to catch this one, this $15,000 to $500,000 budgeted - depending on whoever worked the books after - indie sci-fi alien movie about a guy and girl who trek from Mexico to get back to America, but through what's known as the alien ground zero, the "infected zone." Obviously, it won't be an easy or safe distance to cut.

Gareth Edwards is the helmer, who wrote/directed/shot and did all of the visual effects, which meant plastering a lot of "DANGEROUS! INFECTED ZONE" and "WATCH OUT! INFECTED ZONE UP AHEAD" and "YOU ARE NOW IN THE INFECTED ZONE!" onto already real street signs. There was also tons of other stuff to put in there, in what are - reportedly - about 250 effects shots. Some destroyed, unmanned and abandoned military vehicles, decapitated homes and villages, a towering electric fence, and a cement wall stretching across the US/Mexico border, a structure of such magnificent size and mile-length it would wrongly inspire the US government to solve illegal immigration. There are also lots of patrolling helicopters which fly by every few minutes. And of course, the aliens; giant squid-like creatures we only see a handful of times in the whole movie.

Shot digitally, completely guerrilla, with a small crew, reportedly, driving around in the same van, from one location to the next, like our two leads in the movie, often lost and unsure of where to go next, and entering without authority, or as in any case without a film permit. With all the hectic filming, this, reportedly, caused most to all of the scenes shot to be improvised. As a result I wouldn't say "Monsters" is a bad movie. No, not entirely. It does what most big-budget stuff should do: concentrate on the human story, concentrate on the characters. In a future already years fostered to aliens who came supposedly as infection on a downed space probe, we have photographer Andrew Kaulder tasked with seeing his boss's soon-to-be-wed daughter, Sam Wynden, safe back into the states. All goes fine and dandy until it doesn't. A train turns around. A scheming ticket clerk unfairly bribes out 5, then 10 grand. An escort party is killed. It's soon then up to Kaulder and Sam to walk the dangerous miles past the border through the infected zone.

Minus a few scenes which I felt resonated enough and were well intentioned, I can't justify the rest of it. There just isn't much going on to care. Not enough story, not enough excitement, or those aliens, to get us involved at all. So Kaulder has a kid back home. So Sam has a fiance. So, to their better judgement, they fall in love. So we had all this rounded character detail - though I would dispense with the falling in love thing. But nothing really happens, or causes us to care much at all, for the first hour of the movie when we should matter what happens to these two once circumstances start to get more drastic. I just didn't care.

(SPOILER ALERT!) I would say after that first alien attack, in one of those scenes that resonated, was indeed good: Kaulder finds a family dead, and while he would take a picture of the mangled bodies, as he says gets paid a good deal of money for them, he instead covers up one dead little girl. And then those last ten minutes: Safe in the US, Kaulder and Sam each make a phone call in an abandoned gas station. He talks to his kid, cries a little, shows his humanity after acting like a reckless loner throughout the movie, and Sam calling her groom-to-be, her speech telling us she just doesn't care anymore. Then some aliens show up, in what I would define as a beautiful moment, when these two things embrace in bond, mirroring our two lovelorn leads. After the aliens depart, Kaulder and Sam kiss, the army shows up to take them home, and just for the hell of it hell breaks loose again. The End. It was nice, but after those 90-odd minutes, I still didn't care enough for them to know if Kaulder and Sam were dead once the credits rolled.

For a movie made as small, shot the way it was, by the one visionary who took the reins to make the whole production a possibility, mirroring a similar small alien occupation movie, "District 9," "Monsters" deserves it's praise. It's impressively done. It looks like more money was spent on it, and those two leads weren't bad, and neither was the supporting who, again reportedly, were recruited. And those affects weren't bad, either. Other than those aliens, which didn't look too organic - and who we should have seen more of, and should have been involved earlier to cause more dilemma for Kaulder and Sam - the other effects were pretty good. That border wall looked majestic. Those helicopers seemed like they were really soaring around on the director's command, and the font on those signs seemed like they've always been there. Oh, the things you could do with computer effects! And most of that (reportedly, reportedly) done on Adobe!

I hear "Skyline," another indie sci-fi alien movie just released, by amateur directors who were also CGI animators, isn't the bet to go over a movie like "Monsters." From what I read, and what I saw in this movie, I would agree. And "Skyline" was shot for somewhere around $500,000, while the effects were done of upwards to 10 million, with the shots rendered ranging around 900! Again, reportedly, reportedly, reportedly... But I'm sure impressed Edwards did his movie without all that dough.

As a side note: I liked the sound design. In the Mexican jungle, when we aren't seeing the aliens, we hear screaming monkeys and squawking birds. Without the aliens around, or at least partially in our peripheral or out yonder snapping trees and screaming a lot of noise, that forest ambience really worked. It reminded me of the first "Jurassic Park," the sound design done to similar effect when the dinosaurs weren't around to chomp on anyone. There was even a scene in "Monsters" where an alien's tentacles search and float around Sam in the gas station shop, similar to that frightening scene where Lex and Tim hide from the raptors in the kitchen in "Jurassic Park," and still similar to other Steven Spielberg movies with kids in danger. In fact, I hear Edwards is Spielberg fan...

"The Greatest Thing You Will Ever Learn Is Just To Love And Be Loved In Return." Only At The "Moulin Rouge!"

DVD REVIEW:

"MOULIN ROUGE!" (2001) ☆☆☆☆

(Here's a quickie. Just because I felt like it.)

A new Blue-Ray release this week, what is considered the musical to define musicals for the decade. Oh, is it!

What is it? It's "Moulin Rouge!" It's 1899, Montmartre, France! It's the Bohemian Revolution! Of Truth, Beauty, Freedom, & Love! Raise the curtain! Cue the lights! Let's sex it up! And don't forget Marilyn Monroe!...

Musicals can't get any more crazy or more inspired than "Moulin Rouge!," from Australian director Baz Luhrmann - whose own parents were Ballroom dancers! - and did lush 1996 remake "Romeo & Juilet" and the recent critic bash, full-on-scope WW1 romance of visual delight "Australia." And "Moulin Rouge!" is such a wonderfully grand music number all it's own, of prostitute hoofers, of swinging pimps and silly/merry Frenchmen, and staggeringly lush/tacky stage and costume decor, all with implemented contemporary pop/rock music and mad edits and constant sexy zing and swivel, and all that nutty comedic Paris Cabaret, you might think twice of where in the world the whole movie might be taking place. Luckily for you, it all mostly takes place in The Moulin Rouge! And the windmill that's always there! There's also the giant elephant!

It's a classic-style love story, taken from old mythology, or older stage plays (maybe those Cabarets, or Romeo and Juliet!), or even older poems. And you could probably follow along with it so well that somewhere along you might know exactly what is going to happen. But it shouldn't spoil it for you, it didn't for me. And it didn't back nine years ago when the movie hit the Oscar circuit and soon went to bring the near dead musical genre back to it's swinging feet. The following year, "Chicago" would get the honors, and later bring resurrections of "The Phantom of the Opera," "Mamma Mia!," "Rent," "Hairspray," and what I think is to "Moulin Rouge!" in using a diverse soundtrack, "Across The Universe."

Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor are torn lovers: the-world-is-my-oyster English writer, Christian, and Nicole Kidman as lustful French Bordello courtesan Satine. There is Jim Broadbent as ecstatic showman Harold Zidler, Richard Roxburgh as wimpy, snide The Duke, and my favorite turn, John Leguizamo as nicely doofus Toulouse-Lautrec with an accent to kid any Frenchmen. Oh, and that soundtrack! Elton John. Nat King Cole. The Crusades. The Police. Madonna. Queen. "The Sound of Music."

I would say those numbers, and even the music already with the legacy, wasn't exactly the best choreographed stuff or as enduring as the moves you saw in "Chicago." "Moulin Rouge!" could have used more moving camera, than fast cuts. More bigger, elaborate numbers than the repeated type's of dance over and over with the foot-tapping nuts hitting the floors of the Rouge. Maybe we could go beyond Montmartre and have more guy and gal dancers and dreamers, and more subplot, More conflict, more going on. Either way, "Moulin Rouge!" is just too hip to care, too silly drunk on love and crazy dance to matter much. This story is about Romeo and Juliet, and we're with them to the end. Through love and death.

For a musical of such lushness and mad song and dance aesthetic, Baz Luhrmann could be the guy whose movies we should keep looking forward to. If you haven't seen this before, or have, or are a long-standing fan with your own song in your heart, than see it again, see it for the first time. It's a movie to constantly keep being taken up in. That decor! Those insane cuts! That Frenchman Toulouse! Oh, the sheer joy of a musical. On crack!

Hit it! (..."There Was A Boy. Such A Strange, Enchanted Boy...)

ZING! ZONK! KABOOM! COMBO! Sometimes It's So Much Fun You Can Forgive "Scott Pilgrim" For Being A Self-Seeking Dork With No Heart.

DVD REVIEW:

"SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD" ☆☆☆

I wanted to catch this movie in theaters. But I didn't. I was 24. Out of a job. Living rent free. And didn't have a working car. But I'll quip more on that later...

Like the ditzy, faint, uber-cute girly-girl who won't leave your oh-so-busy important self alone, she can't stop saying how "So very awesome, and so very super cool you are." The same can go for "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" - not the guy, the movie. About out-of-work slacker twenty-something Scott Pilgrim, who strums the bass in a meaningless band, in the meaningless winter landscape of Toronto, Canada (or "Not So Long Ago, In The Mysterious Land Of Toronto, Canada...") with his other meaningless twenty-something friends and cohorts, who also play band or otherwise work behind the counter at a coffee shop (Super Cool!), this self-absorbed Pilgrim falls head-over-heels (but predominately in Michael Cera's utter blank stare) for Ramona Flowers, the mysterious multi-colored haired new girl who works for Amazon delivery. And with roller stakes! And as impish, dorkish, naive Scott somehow woos the unwooable Romana, he must fight off the "The League of Evil Exes" in a Super Smash Bros. Melee-style to the death in the ultimate video game lovers movie paradise, for Nintendo and Atari lovers alike, of techno music intros, bleeping sound effects, old 8-bit game graphics, and all of it swimming and dazzled-up in new, super cool, way high-tide CGI as Scott Pilgrim has to defeat each of Ramona's Evil's in that all-too mesmerizing video game battle, leveled-up to the max like anything you would play in Mortal Combat. And those fights are pretty cool, pretty nifty, pretty snazzy, pretty zippy, so much doggone fun that this movie flies through it's many fights and visual sight gags of 1-ups, strumming "D-D-D-'s," kissy "♥-♥-♥-s," coin exploding, and KAPOWS!, that there isn't a dull moment in the whole thing. You will enjoy the hell out of "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World." It's assurdly impossible. I dare you not to.

I'm not much of a gamer, but I've played those older ones. From Mario to Sonic to Duck Hunter, to the newer, now older stuff like Legend of Zelda and Banjo Kazooie. Not any of the very newer, graphics-heavy, one-person shooters or muli-player violent, gun-blasting games from Xbox to World Of War Craft-style international gaming. I never got into it those. And "Scott Pilgrim" doesn't, either. That might be why audiences didn't show up. But I think it has more to do with what stylishly talented writer/director Edgar Wright (of "Shaun of the Dead," "Hot Fuzz" and "Spaced") made of his previous work, and what "Scott Pilgrim" lacks and could use to save it from Game Over, and that precarious "Continue" countdown! (Does anyone else have any more quarters!)

What I mean is maybe "Pilgrim" doesn't let up, and I don't think it should have. This film zips by so fast, and so stylishly, that every sentence, every shot, is something new, something sparkling, something cool. Like a comic book itself, the way each shot, each effect, edited together, is represented to you. So many split-screens! And thrown in for an epic movie homage the film goes from wide to wider-screen just for fun! Even when those uber-cool battles aren't going on, the zippy style doesn't. It's pretty, well, awesome. Like I said, not a dull moment. Wright is a visual genius. I think he's the best we've got (His editors might even be better). Why else have all these characters brake into fights instead of song! He even has the first Evil Ex break into a little tune when he's done kicking ass. Why not? Just for fun!

However, what was missing was the substance, the surprising heart that made the horror/comedy "Shaun of the Dead" something other than a zombie-apocalypse comedy, when it actually became kind-of scary and kind-of emotional, and it really worked. When "Hot Fuzz" became more elaborate (in a good way) when the action wasn't just American movie knock-offs a-al "Die Hard." The stakes kept getting raised, the fights kept getting more dangerous, that you somehow were on the edge of your seat like it would be in any other action movie, except we really cared about Simon Pegg's stern, gung-ho Angel and Nick Frost's simple deputy Butterman. And even Scott Pilgrim's identical in lazy, worthless Shaun, and lazier grown-up kid Ed. It's what made those movies work, be unique as they are and as popular as they were, and the way all the comedies of Judd Apatow and Ricky Gervais work now (the latter to less popularity). So, why doesn't "Scott Pilgrim" have any heart, besides the automatic visual ones that pop on screen whenever someone kisses? Where was it this time? Wright, the full-blown creative force behind this movie, and all his others (that visual genius, that ultimate tongue-in-cheek gag man!) tried for it, in what became the film's somewhat bittersweet resolution, but why did he consider all that absolute tongue-jammed-in-your-cheek stuff? It was there to an extent. But where was the real sentiment? Why were the sound and visual Nintendo homages around so much when the moments and scenes of talk and thought were less? There were those scenes, there was that emotion, but could Scott go without remarking like a naive badass? When him and Ramono get real, about her constant Seven Evil Exes, and about love, can we stop with the gag-filled subtitles?

Why was there was so much of that wit and comedy glamour, as good as it is, but not much on characters? Where was the material? Where was the story about visual panache that was so much fun to watch and to be taken up in, and that would be so much better if we could care about anyone in the movie? This is the big thing. That what's missing. "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World" can't really live off the comic-book page, or the screen, or past the die-hard popularity of it's many twenty-something fans, without something to feel. Sure, a lot of youngsters still play video games. Some still even brake out the Nintendo and Saga if they still have them (or work), but gamers today are younger. The Play Stationers, the X-boxers, the Wiiers, the computer gamers. "Scott Pilgrim" is all about visual nostalgia, appealing to that crowd, when most to all gamers play the computer and are the majority of America's moviegoing audience. All of 45mil in the bank might account for that.

But, with all that aside, you twenty-something, lazy bums, do you really care? I wouldn't if not for the degrees mentioned. This movie is fun. Oh, so much fun. Not too funny, but full of visually wistful delights and that tongue-in-cheek, and younger and older actors who ham it up to perfection, that you can forgive the film for anything. And you do. There's those flying letters like a "snooze-snooze-snooze," those old, wonderful graphics, and those old, cool techno sound effects. Like most movies that want to establish a mood, the movie you're about to walk into, the Universal opening logo plays like the blocky menu of Mario and has the studio fanfare playing in that cruddy, but oh-so-wonderful video game techno. And what I think is a self-indulged comic book for those lazy twenty-somethings (You!) who might think that out-of-work bass-kid Pilgrim is their hero, "Scott Pilgrim" is an original. A unique style vision that really pays off. Of teen-dream romance and video game fights filled with lots of epic. Edgar Wright has shown his chops before, if better. Here he shows what he can do with 60mil of studio money. Sure, it didn't pay off for them, but I think that's kidding themselves. Universal lost an investment. Move on. They made a good quality movie. Some might even forgive them for "Land of the Lost."

And that terrific hammy cast. Oh man! Mary Elisabeth Winstead as mysterious, steady punkette Ramona. Alison Pill as sour band drummer Kim. Anna Kendrick as younger, but somehow older Pilgrim sister Stacey. Aubrey Plaza as glum, gossipy Julie Powell. Ellen Wong as that cutie-pie, screaming asian girl Knifes. Kieran Culkan as Pilgrim's cool, gay roommate Wallace. Brie Larson as rock star, sexy-tongued Envy. And the Evil Exes: Chris Evans, brilliant as super-slick, super-dick movie star/skateboarder Lucas Lee. Mea Whitman as angry emo Roxy. Brandon Routh as suave jackass, super-Vegan Todd. Satya Bhabha as fly, mystic Matthew Patel. And Jason Schwartzman as gentleman record producer with a nasty snare, Gideon. And Michael Cera as Scott Pilgrim. Whiny Scott. Cera looks like a geek. Looks like a slacker. Looks like a whiner. He finally has a role to be typecast in! But he brings a little more. Something definitely immature, free-spirited, and even nasty about Scott Pilgrim. He didn't look the part, but he was Scott Pilgrim.

There are others. And all of them steal the show! (My favorites were Culkan as Wallace, Evans as Lucas Lee, and Wong as Knifes. She maybe because I have a crush on her now). This is the ensemble cast of the year!

Comic book movies are still the standard in movie adaptation right now. But the super-super heros. You know, Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, X-Men, The Avengers, Captain America, Thor, Wolverine, on and on and on...But when those film guys try for the abstract stuff, audiences don't dig it. Besides "Scott Pilgrim" there was "Kick-Ass" earlier in the year. A better movie (it had that precious substance), and faired better, but no one really cared. A sequel, which is in the works right now, might get around. But will anyone really see it? Would anyone see a "Scott Pilgrim 2?" The economy stinks, but you all flocked to the more expense 3D flicks...

You will have fun at "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World." It didn't have a good theater stint, but it should, I hope, find that audience on DVD/Blue-Ray. And there's the huge amount of bonus extras that the movie deserves to reveal to you. Enough for you guys to revel in it's delights to no end. With all you living at home, you kids, working at Best Buy, having enough money and credit without room and board to pay, you should rake it up for sales. Maybe other, younger kids for Christmas or their birthdays. Let's hope. Put another quarter in, before that dreaded countdown. 3...2...1...Level Up!

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