Early into Big Hero 6, young Hiro is introduced to his brother Satoshi's new invention, a personal healthcare robot called Baymax. After assessing and treating Hiro's wound, having just had a piece of sticky tape torn off his arm by his brother, Baymax asks the following question: "Are you satisfied with your care?" Hiro says something to the tune of, "What does that matter?", to which Baymax replies, "I cannot deactivate until you say that you are satisfied with your care." It's at this point that I began to tear up and mentally gave Big Hero 6 a big "fuck you." Because I'd seen this movie before. It came out in 1999, and it was called The Iron Giant. In that film, a young boy finds a robot out in the middle of the forest that tries to follow him home, leading him to demand, "You stay. I go. No following." In the film's climax, the government has launched a nuclear bomb at the boy's city to destroy the robot, because they don't understand it and therefore fear it. The robot has come to the realisation that he needs to sacrifice himself by flying into the bomb to save the people responsible for it. Hogarth begs him not to go. The robot bends down to him, and says, "You stay. I go. No following." And, sure enough, in Big Hero 6's final moments, Hiro and Baymax find themselves in a situation in which the robot has to sacrifice his life so that the boy may live, and the only way to ensure this is for the boy to say that he is satisfied with his care. He has to be the one to order the death of his friend. Not only his friend, but his big brother, who dies in an explosion early in the film. His big brother who was established as his protector, the person he could rely on to rescue him no matter what. As Hiro grieves, Baymax continues to insist that, "Satoshi is here", something Hiro dismisses as the robot being unable to comprehend death. It turns out he was talking literally, as just when Hiro needs it most, Baymax loads video recordings of his brother iterating on the robot's design. But, "Satoshi is here", means more than that, I think. Satoshi, Hiro's great protector, becomes reincarnated in Baymax, an artificial intelligence designed explicitly to protect people. When Hiro realises he needs to let Baymax deactivate in order to save the day, he says through tears. "I can't lose you too." He's not just watching his friend die, he's watching his brother die again. This is fucking powerful stuff, and it's kind of amazing Disney have pulled it off in a movie so bloated with other stories. You see, it's a super hero origin movie as well, a sub-genre notorious for an underdeveloped villain being the necessary result of needing to establish a universe and motive for the hero to be born in. But not only is Big Hero 6 trying to be a super hero origin movie, it's also trying to be a super hero team origin movie. All of the hip-cat scientists Satoshi works with have cool establishing moments in the beginning of the film that foreshadow their super abilities come the time for Avengers to Assemble. But there simply isn't enough time in one movie to fully flesh out a hero, a team and a villain. It's necessary to get all of this out of the way in one movie, however. If the first film was about the origin of the hero and formation of the team with no villain, it wouldn't work. If the second film was about the formation of the team with another underdeveloped villain, it wouldn't work. Disney understood that a couple of elements were going to get let down with this flick, and mercifully, they made the right choice to hammer home on the relationship between Hiro and his AI brother. In the amount of time that every member of the team is developed, the same amount of time is given to Hiro and Baymax flying around San Fransokyo (don't ask, but it looks so fucking cool), in which, among other things, Baymax is fascinated with the texture of a rope attached to a flying weather vane, delicately running his fingers along its surface. Disney knew there would be stinky parts to this movie, but they've done the absolute best job of handling it. The Iron Giant has found its spiritual successor. Fucking Disney, I swear to God.
St. Vincent
As the credits roll for St. Vincent, a fixed camera documents Bill Murray sitting on his shitty deck chair. He's got his headphones on, listening to a cassette tape of Bob Dylan's Shelter from the Storm on his Walkman, singing along out of key and time as he waters his dead pot plant with a garden hose. Eventually, he gets sick of having to hold it, so he just inserts the hose into the pot plant far enough that it sticks. This works for about 30 seconds before the water pressure forces the hose out of the container and onto the ground. He casually looks down at it, still singing along, and hops up to move over to the sun lounger in the middle of the dirt patch he calls his backyard. The camera swaps to a static top-down angle and he lies down and continues to ramble along to the song until it finishes and the screen fades to black. It's far and away the standout moment of St. Vincent, and in being so, it kind of proves the realisation I had about halfway into the film. St. Vincent is a bad movie; it's a poorly written quirky indie dramedy that panders to its audience in all of the worst ways and sacrifices moments of real emotion to the almighty God of convenient story beats. But it's also got Bill Murray in it, and for some reason, he seems to care enough about the source material to try and elevate it out of the mucky muck it wallows in. So, in the end, St. Vincent is a bad movie that I really liked, mainly because, as the credits showed, I'll watch Bill Murray do pretty much anything. This is not to discredit the few moments in which the film actually got somewhere with its material. There's a subplot involving Murray's cantankerous, gambling-addicted drunk showing another side of himself when he visits his wife who is in a home, suffering from dementia. So as not to freak her out when he drops by, he dresses up like a doctor, and offers no indication that he's her husband. In one of their scenes, he makes her laugh and she calls him by his real name. Recognising a potential breakthrough, he turns and says, "It's me! It's Vin!" For a brief second, she looks like she sees him, before the disease kicks back in and she gets lost once more, and all Vincent can do is look away and cry. In another subplot of the film, he suffers from a stroke, and when we next see him conscious, half of his face is paralysed. The people who care for him show up for a visit as he's undergoing speech therapy. Being an old man asked to say the word "dog", which is displayed with a picture on a card, can't be too dignifying an experience, and Vincent is trying to get the words out that he wants the nurse out of his room, but can barely enunciate. In a fit of defeated rage, he tips his table over and shouts. Let me remind you that this is Bill Murray we're watching here, a man whose warm and inviting legacy has left many people feeling like he's a grandfather to us all, and we're seeing him break. It is hard as hell to watch, because it's so daring. But don't worry, the movie's too scared to get too real for too long. The subplot that ties those two subplots together (I don't think the movie even has a main one) is that Vincent is running out of money. A loan shark is breathing down his neck with vague threats of violence and the home his wife is in needs the money he promised them months ago. But, rather than get real, the movie decides instead to have Vincent have the stroke in front of the loan shark, leading him to believe he's dead and therefore in no need to repay the debt, to have his paralysed face and immobility healed in a neat little montage, and to erase the necessity to have him pay his wife's bills by having her die. But, offensive to the audience as this is, it never rings truly hollow, because, as I said, Bill Murray seems to give a shit. And he doesn't deserve all of the credit, either. Melissa McCarthy, whose star-stealing performance in Bridesmaids deserved better than the roles for her that followed, knocks it out of the fucking park as the mother going through a rough divorce whose son finds a father figure in the titular next door neighbour. One scene has her detailing just how shit her life currently is to a Catholic school teacher played by the equally out-of-the-fucking-park-knocker, Chris O'Dowd. It's a really poorly-written monologue, but McCarthy's delivery of it, just the sheer fact that she gives a fuck, elevates it far beyond what it deserves. That's a sentiment that runs through the whole film; it deserves far less than what it has. But it's lucky enough to have a cast that try to make it more than what it is. And, above all of that, it has Bill Murray. One actor should never be enough to recommend a film, but there will always be an exception to a rule, and that exception is Bill Murray.
The Imitation Game
There's nothing expressly bad about The Imitation Game. It's well-crafted, professionally acted and it tells a story that is worth being told. But there's nothing expressly good about it, either, and I think that stems from its seeming unwillingness to really commit to any of its themes. There's a scene about two-thirds of the way through the film when brilliant mathematician Alan Turing and his team have cracked the Enigma code, which was garbled, but freely accessible, radio broadcasts detailing all German positions and plans during World War II. They're staring at a board of the position of every German plane and ship for that day, and one of them realises an imminent attack on an Allied Forces boat. What becomes a frantic race to notify the ship becomes a slow realisation that sending the ship off course to avoid the attack would be far too conspicuous, and could easily lead the Germans to believe that someone has cracked Enigma. To make matters worse, one of the mathematicians recognises the ship as the one his brother his currently stationed on. He begs the room to make one exception, but he and they all know that simply isn't possible. "We're not God," he says to Alan through tears. "Yes, we are," Alan replies. Good shit, right? The sort of shit you'd want this movie to double down on and really explore, right? Well, fuck you. This scene is followed by a quick series of moments explaining that they used statistical probability to choose which attacks to avoid or intercept, and which to leave alone. It's almost like there...isn't any sort of moral quandary here, which certainly isn't the case. It's just that the film is too afraid to lock into any of its ideas. Even the plot that it locks onto more than the others, a focus on Turing's homosexuality and subsequent persecution for such, pulls its punches where it needs to swing hard and fast the most. A lot of people don't realise it was illegal to be gay in the UK until 1967, and in spite of everything Turing did for his country, he was found guilty of being an abomination and, instead of going to prison and being unable to work, he accepted chemical castration as his punishment. The movie lightly suggests that the chemicals began to fuck with his ability to think straight, but the word to focus on here is lightly. It lightly suggests the chemicals began to fuck with his ability to think straight. It lightly condemns the abhorrent and nauseating treatment this hero found himself subject to. The string of events is powerful, but only if you put them together yourself, because the movie seems terrified that you might have an opinion on the matter, or that it might affect your opinion on the matter. It's not just here that it drops the ball, though. It's terrified that an in-depth examination into the machinations of Turing's machine would put the audience to sleep, relegating its explanation to a handful of stock-standard "Eureka!" moments. I wanted to walk out of the theater knowing pretty well how the machine worked. I walked out with a vague idea that it was the genesis for the modern computer. I mean, this was a story kept hidden by MI6 for decades. If it's coming out of hiding, you should want to tell it the best fucking way you can. Hit hard with Turing's persecution for being nothing more than a human being. Go deep into how brilliant his mind was. Turn over every rock involved with the notion that the knowledge provided by his machine led his team to pass judgement on who lived and who died every day until the war ended. Hell, there's even a subplot involving the fact that the only mind comparable to Turing's was a woman's, whose brilliance was looked over by everybody for not having a doodle, and the movie does nothing beyond say, "Yeah, ain't that fucked up?" before moving right along. I've said this before, but it doesn't ring any truer than right now: the only thing worse than a film that you hate is a film that you feel nothing for, and the only thing worse than a film that you feel nothing for is a film that you feel nothing for that could have been great. The Imitation Game is what it is, and there's nothing sadder than that.
Birdman
Birdman opens in the dressing room of Riggan Thomas (Michael Keaton), an actor who used to be a household name for playing a superhero that has since disappeared into obscurity. He's one day away from beginning previews of a Broadway adaptation of a beloved book that he's writing, directing and starring in. As he talks to his daughter on Skype, my eyes trailed to a piece of paper stuck to his mirror. It read, "A thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing." There are a lot of things that can be said about Birdman. It can be said that the fact that the film has been made to look like its been done entirely in one take is obviously not honest and is indicative of a movie desperately trying to dazzle you with technical brilliance and shy you away from thinking this is a compensation for lack of depth. On the other hand, it can be said that the "one-take" aesthetic enhances the idea that Riggan is a man putting everything on the line in a desperate attempt to be relevant again, and it's leaving him feeling like it could all come crashing down at a moment's notice, with one tiny mistake, but he can't go at a pace any slower than what he's currently going at. It can be said that the film's ambiguous narrative that constantly blurs lines between time and reality doesn't really amount to anything revelatory, and only serves to distract you from the fact that this is a film about a self-obsessed jerk talking to himself for two hours. On the other hand, it can be said that the film requires that ambiguous blend of fiction and reality because it's a very intimate depiction of a man at wit's end experiencing an existential crisis that is manifesting itself in the form of a character he used to play. It can be said that Riggan's rant to a critic who is planning on writing an awful review for the play before she's even seen it, in which he takes her to task for never bothering to talk about the technical craft or intent in a piece of art, instead getting bogged down in buzz-words and references to other works is hypocritical when the film itself can't go a single scene without a shameless pop culture reference to someone like Justin Bieber. On the other hand, it can be said that that's the point. Birdman isn't for everybody. The aforementioned one-take aesthetic, coupled with its fondness for Extreme Close-Ups and an all-jazz-drumming soundtrack makes for a very intense, frenetic two hours. But Birdman isn't trying to be for everybody. Birdman is just Birdman, and that's maybe the greatest praise I can give it. It's interesting that the movie I saw before this, on the same day, was The Imitation Game, a movie that certainly wants you to think that it is what it is, but is really a false, half-hearted version of what it could be. But that's just my opinion, right? Well, that's the beauty of Birdman. It's completely aware of itself, from its aforementioned condemnation of and conviction to cultural references, to casting Michael Keaton, a man whose career evaporated after he stopped playing a superhero, as a character whose career evaporated after he stopped playing a superhero, to casting Edward Norton, a man notorious for being brilliant, but difficult to work with, as a character who is notorious for being brilliant, but difficult to work with. Any criticism you may have for the film, the film has already covered it during the film, which is appropriate when you consider that this entire thing is about a man who can't get out of his own head. And even though it doesn't care if you like it or not, it still tries to cater to everybody. People with any understanding or respect for the craft of film-making, people who appreciate dark, complicated, and unresolved character drama, and people who are sitting down to a movie called Birdman and are expecting to laugh will all be catered to. But every one of those people will also be challenged. Riggan spends the entire film trying to reconcile whether or not he's capable of being good, as an actor and a person. In the end, he realises the only way to win the respect and legacy he so desperately desires is to take the scene where his character kills himself to end the play, and to actually kill himself to end the play. Except he manages to survive by only shooting off his nose, in a move that earns him legendary status and unprecedented praise from critics and public alike. Except he didn't shoot off his nose, because when he removes the bandages, he just looks like he's been punched in the face. But he's happy. And then he hops out onto the windowsill of his hospital room and flies away into the sunrise. That's Birdman. I fucking loved Birdman, but who cares what I think? Birdman will still be Birdman, and frankly, there's nothing better than that.
American Sniper
Much of the public had already made up its mind about American Sniper before I got a chance to sit down to it. Being one of the few American productions to address the Iraq war, directed by the politically outspoken Clint Eastwood no less, it was always going to garner a lot of attention. And, for the most part, people's reservations on what the movie was going to be weren't going to change after they saw it. A lot of people assumed it was going to be the "Ooh-rah"-inest, "America, fuck yeah!" propaganda-fueled, Islamaphobic recruitment film of the decade, and whether that was a good thing or a bad thing to them, they were able to walk out of the theater thinking they were right. Celebrities have tweeted their distaste and support for the flick in equal measure, allowing these people to feel further validated in their steadfast notion of what this movie is. Personally, I didn't know what to expect of American Sniper. Apart from knowing there was a scene where a Cabbage Patch Kid was used as a baby, I didn't have much to go by. I'd heard a bit of what people had thought of it, and I'd seen the stellar trailer for it. Going by the trailer alone, I was expecting a film that dissected the psychological impact that a war in which the enemy wears the same clothes as the innocents can have on a person. The movie that I saw was kind of about that, but it was a little more complicated than that. And it's that complication that it locks onto, resulting in a film that's not enjoyable in the slightest, because it isn't supposed to be. Like the conflict it covers, it's complicated. Telling the true-enough story of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, who accumulated around 160 kills during his services, the film uses him as a vessel to look at what war has always done to those who fight in it, and the ways in which we see and react to such a person. The movie opens with Kyle perched with his sniper rifle, looking at an Iraqi woman and child moving towards an American tank. The mother hands the child a grenade, and the child begins to run towards the tank. As the music intensifies, and Kyle's finger goes towards the trigger, the movie hard cuts to a handful of scenes about his childhood, in which we see two children being taught by their God-fearing father that there are three types of people in the world: wolves, sheep, and sheep dogs, and that he'll beat the shit out of them if they don't grow up to be anything other than sheep dogs. From there, it's a relatively swift series of scenes that show the young Texan grow up, enlist, find a girl, and head out to war following the events of September 11, 2001, all leading back around to that opening scene. Kyle pulls the trigger, and ends the boy's life. The mother screams in pain and rushes to her son, picks up the grenade and attempts to throw it. Kyle takes her down too. His spotter commends him. "Get the fuck off me," Kyle replies. This didn't happen when I saw the movie, but I've been told by people I trust that the theater broke into applause at the sight of seeing a Middle Eastern woman and child gunned down by a Caucasian soldier. The very thought of that makes me nauseous, but let me run with it to try and understand it. It's their reaction to a movie they feel is giving them the reason to. Except I don't think it is. Watching American Sniper reminded me more than a little of Starship Troopers. Stay with me, here. Starship Troopers was initially hailed and condemned for being a jingoistic, nationalistic, dogmatic piece of trash that painted a future where the world's government was simply "America". What people only realised in later years was that the film was a complete act of satire - a scathing, stone-faced critique of the way Paul Verhoeven saw the country. In a lot of ways, I see American Sniper as a similar beast. It's not satire, but it's asking you to at least think about what it's saying as opposed to what it's showing. If you didn't know, Chris Kyle was murdered by a wounded veteran, probably due to the PTSD he was suffering from. The film ends with real footage of his funeral procession, a humongous-scale event that drew countless people out of the woodwork to commemorate a hero. And it's there that the word is finally used - hero. And sure, going by what we see, we're looking at a hero, but let's think about what's being said. This was a complicated conflict, and it remains so to this day. Imagine being in it. Kyle desperately searches for the evil he can prescribe purpose to, a Hitler or a Ho Chi Minh that he can call a villain, and finds it in a psycho with a penchant for drilling children's heads, and a merciless sniper whose skill matches his own. It's such a movie thing to do, but that's the point: movies like this have clearly defined notions of good and evil, and Kyle needs this. From here, Kyle spends each tour hunting them only to have them slip through his fingers over and over, and no amount of ally deaths that he caused or level-headed pleas from his wife to let go of the confusion and focus on what matters will stop him, because he claims his country still needs defending. But there's no hiding it by the end: this is a man so full of confused rage with nowhere to direct it but at the one thing he can call bad. It destroys him. A soldier he rescued tries to thank him at an auto shop back home, and Kyle can't even look him in the eye. He's arguing with his wife while driving down the freeway, and a tailgating van behind him leads him to believe he's in a car chase. The only thing that saves him in the end is visiting and rehabilitating wounded veterans. What a selfless act of heroism, right? That's what you see, but think about what you're being told. The only way he can return to his normal life is to sink himself straight back into the horrors of war, to look upon the result of something it's all to easy to call evil and to face it every day until it eventually kills him. Chris Kyle enjoyed killing those he did. He called them "savages". Think of that what you will. But if you think American Sniper is justifying your world view, think again. You don't get one side of a coin without the other. And while the film might support the conflict in Iraq, it doesn't support the way we're talking about it. We called Chris Kyle a hero, but it's not that easy. It's a little more complicated than that.
Dumb and Dumber To
The big mystery of Dumb and Dumber To is why it isn't funny when it's a carbon copy of its predecessor. It's not like this can't work; Home Alone 2 taught us that it can actually work pretty well. Why is it then that seeing all of these jokes that made us laugh twenty years ago and still make us laugh don't work in this context? The answer is actually rather simple: it's the heart, or lack thereof. Dumb and Dumber was, at its core, a sweet-natured flick about two best friends supporting each other no matter what. Anyone who got hurt deserved it, and nobody did anything deliberately to hurt another's feelings. Dumb and Dumber To has such a strong disdain for everyone in it that there's rarely a moment when it isn't trying to pull humour from someone else's pain. Don't get me wrong, now: comedy comes from pain, but there has to be a point to it. One of Dumb and Dumber To's few funny moments occurs with the return of the Mutt Cutts van. Harry and Lloyd fly over a hill in a recreation of the shot in the first film, slow-mo close ups documenting their joy at having their old friend back, before the front of the van nosedives into the road and they wreck it. So, that's comedy coming from pain, but what's the point? That you the audience are fucking idiots for thinking you might have wanted this. The closest thing I could possibly describe as enjoying this movie was taking mental note of how much the six (fucking six) writers must love Breaking Bad, Empire of the Sun, Jeff Daniel's butt crack and cruel jokes towards anyone that isn't a white, straight, physically and mentally able man. Dumb and Dumber To has no heart. It's not laughing with you, but at you. It's an ugly fucking turd.
