I own Wool by Hugh Howey but I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet (I have poor reading habits due to my incredibly slow reading pace. So the fact that Sand is regarded as not quite as good as Wool isn’t really a problem for me.
What I read was an amazingly original novel. Sand is breathtaking. It’s not that the premise of a world totally overrun by sand is so good, because frankly it didn’t grab me at first and when I tried to describe the book to my wife it really didn’t sound appealing. What is so wonderful about the book is Howey’s descriptions. He takes a quite hard to visualize concept, that of special suits and methods for sand diving for treasure and really brings it to life with his telling.
The whole dystopian story thing has really been beat to death at this point, but Sand’s depiction of a world that has moved back to a western frontier style existence is fascinating.
What a weird movie. I guess it’s a satire of the 2008 Democratic Primary, although I didn’t get that from it at the time. Too over the top.
What’s more:
The hardest type of comedy has to be satire. It’s so difficult to get the tone right, and if you miss you really faceplant.
Butter is the story of the over-ambitious wife of a award-winning butter sculptor (yes, apparently that’s a thing) who believes his success will propel them both to political careers. When he steps down from competing, she becomes obsessed with taking up the mantle. The only problem, besides her total lack of any experience, is her competition from both her husband’s stripper lover and a 10-year-old foster child who has a real talent.
Butter really isn’t a very good movie. The script is a total mess, with at least two storylines too many going on and more actors than it can reasonably keep busy. It may be comic, but I’m not sure it can properly be labelled satirical, since it’s unclear what exactly it’s satirizing. Yeah, there’s a political message here that all elections are essentially the same, but it doesn’t really hit the mark.
There’s far too many good actors in this for it to be so poor. And it isn’t awful or anything. The film mainly seems confused about what it wants to be. I find myself in the unique position of recommending that you avoid the movie even though I didn’t think it was all that bad. It just doesn’t really have anything to offer.
The acting is really the only reason to watch Butter, and I’m not talking about the big-name talent. Jennifer Garner really goes for the crazy ambitious wife role with both barrels, but I’ve always found her sort of a lifeless performer anyway, so this isn’t the transformation it’s probably supposed to be. Ty Burrell does his thing, Kristen Schaal is herself and Alicia Silverstone is practically unrecognizable as a frumpy mom. Olivia Wilde is nicely over the top as Brooke and Hugh Jackman is just weird.
No, the star of the show is Yara Shahidi as the talented Destiny. This young actress is splendid and her performance alone justifies the 90 minutes I spent watching this. She has some really nice scenes with Rob Corddry, who up until this point I could take or leave. But he is wonderfully understated in this movie as Destiny’s foster dad and the first person to really connect with the girl. His character’s gentle caring for this amazing young kid is truly an unexpected subtlety in a movie that doesn’t deal in the small moments.
In Iowa, an adopted girl discovers her talent for butter carving and finds herself pitted against an ambitious local woman in their town’s annual contest.
Poster
Runtime
90
Tagline
A comedy about sex, power and spreading the wealth.
So good. Very different from the first film, due mostly to the modern setting. Both are excellent for different reasons. Highly recommended.
What’s more:
Captain America: The First Avenger was probably my favorite of the Avengers movies. A large part of why I enjoyed it so much was that it was a period piece. Not only was this wonderfully unique and refreshing, it was extremely important in order to view this character properly – by seeing him in his element.
Cap isn’t always the easiest superhero to get behind. He was created for a very specific purpose: to reflect the changing national mood as the American public began to support the country entering the second World War that was developing in Europe. It was a patriot and sound business creation, and was so firmly tied to the time that the comic was shelved soon after the war ended. Over the years, he has continued to endure with varying degrees of success, often tied to the country’s outlook and tastes. Cap quite simply has often been out of step with time.
So the plan to set the first movie in WWII and then bring him forward to the modern day was perfect. But now he’s got to work in the modern world – something that hasn’t always been successful with the character. The Avengers film did a good job of establishing that those traits of leadership and courage are timeless and that “With everything that’s happening, the things that are about to come to light, people might just need a little old-fashioned.”
Steve Rogers adjustment to today’s world continues in Winter Soldier, as he is increasingly disillusioned by the atmosphere at SHIELD. He has insulated himself in their mission as he once was able to do with the US Army, but is becoming aware that his blind faith and commitment to following orders is no longer justified.
Winter Soldier is less a superhero movie and more an action thriller with its roots in the 1970’s conspiracy films. They even bring Robert Redford in, as that is somewhat his métier. Can Cap commit to a “trust no one” approach?
One of the best things about the film is seeing Rogers develop actual human connections, both with teammate Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow and newcomer Sam Wilson / Falcon. Black Widow is always a great character to spend time with, and she works particularly well here as her background and entire outlook on life is so different than that of Rogers.
But it is the relationship with Wilson that is the most special, because at heart Steve Rogers is first, a soldier. One of the best aspects of his character is that even though he is clearly a superhero, he never stops identifying himself as part of the team and just another soldier. His care and understanding of the soldiers surrounding him is always much more instinctual than his behavior in SHIELD, and having Wilson’s story of loss affect him is entirely in keeping with his character. Wilson is a great character, and having a strong black soldier serving his compatriots at a VA hospital gives the movie a grounding in reality that is most welcome. The wings are cool, too.
As for the titular Winter Soldier, my job writing a spoiler-free review is made easier by the fact that Marvel elected to identify him in the trailers as Steve Rogers’ boyhood friend Bucky Barnes, believed killed in the first movie. Frankly, I wish they hadn’t done so. I don’t think they gained anything by not keeping it as a surprise. Comic readers already knew but it might have been a twist for the uninitiated in the audience to get the twist at the same time Cap does.
The character is massively underwritten, and that’s a shame. Everything you get is great, there’s just not quite enough. Although it was a long movie, I gladly would have sat for another ten minutes to have Barnes get a few scenes.
There are also a bunch of characters from the comics that only fans will recognize, and maybe not even then. (If you dress named villains as uncostumed soldiers, how are we supposed to know that they are more important than “mercenary bad guy 3”?)
The acting is good. I don’t really know what more to say than that.
The film was written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who wrote the first one, as well as the last Thor movie. It’s good stuff. Not particularly funny, and honestly I wish it was less so. Several times a big action piece would conclude and I’d expectantly wait for the “funny” quip one of the heroes would deliver. Enough of that crap – it’s cheap.
Winter Soldier was directed by Anthony & Joe Russo, who will also direct the next one, and they’re kind of an odd choice in my mind. They’re primarily comedy guys, and tv comedy at that. Arrested Development, Community, Happy Endings, that sort of really funny tv series. I have no idea how they got the gig, but they do a great job.
Visually, the movie is excellent. Great use of practical effects, and a couple of phenomenal chases. I saw it in 3D last night, which I don’t always go for; it was a good conversion. I actually enjoyed it more than most of the live-action 3D films I’ve seen.
Captain America is back, and that’s a good thing. Go see it.
Steve Rogers struggles to embrace his role in the modern world and battles a new threat from old history: the Soviet agent known as the Winter Soldier.
Another day, another teen movie. But this one’s quite good, as it gives the teens depth & emotions, even if it does contain the usual stuff.
What’s more:
This may be a modern-set teen movie based on an old play and released 15 years ago, but the similarities with She’s All That end there. Mostly.
An updated telling of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, which the title slightly hints at, 10 Things was penned by screenwriting partners Karen McCullah Lutz & Kirsten Smith inspired partly by something from Lutz’s high school diary, 10 Things I Hate About Anthony. Modernizing Shakespeare’s plays is a cottage industry at this point, and this version takes the basic structure and theme and then lays a teen comedy on top of it. But that’s fine.
What raises this above standard teen fare is not the film’s roots in the play. It’s partly a success because the characters, while archetypes, aren’t caricatures, or at least not merely caricatures. Everyone comes with their own label, and it’s limiting, but most of the significant characters have more under the surface than their packaging.
The main reason the picture works, though, is simply the talented young actors. Sure, they’re too old to play high schoolers, but that can be said of most of these films.
Julia Stiles is particularly fine as Kat, an intelligent young woman with an edge that the filmmakers wisely chose not to blunt. She may have one of the best roles a teen protagonist got in the 1990’s.
Heath Ledger oozes charisma, although his accent is poorly hidden. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is utterly charming as the smitten Cameron. Only the character of Bianca is under-written and Larisa Oleynik consequently doesn’t have much to do.
David Krumholtz is at his best here. I love his shtick. And Allison Janney damn near steals the whole movie.
Directed by first-timer Gil Junger, 10 Things isn’t brilliant or anything, but it’s a well-made, enjoyable coming of age comedy. It has pretty good acting, it’s funny and while it employs all of the teen comedy set pieces, it doesn’t feel enslaved by them.
A new kid must find a guy to date the meanest girl in school, the older sister of the girl he has a crush on, who cannot date until her older sister does.
Poster
Runtime
97
Tagline
There are so many different ways to hate. Count them yourself.
There’s practically no end of bad things about this movie, most of all the fact that I’ve seen it more than once. I’m a sucker for rom-coms.
What’s more:
I appreciate “actors” like Matthew Lillard; they let you know right away which movies to avoid. He’s like the modern Louis Gossett, Jr. If you want to find everything wrong with teen movies all at once…
God, this story is absolutely awful. How hard was this? It was a great play when it was Pygmalion, it was a better play when it was My Fair Lady. All you had to do was update slightly for the modern teen audience. Instead it was so badly botched that they had to hire M. Night Shyamalan to doctor the thing. It didn’t work.
If this story of mean rich teens wasn’t unlikable enough, they’ve cast it with actors who probably can’t even remember what high school was like, it was so long ago. And they cast TWO rappers – no movie can overcome that!
I don’t know who’s time is being most wasted here, Anna Paquin or Dulé Hill. This thing makes every wrong decision you can make. What a perfectly dreadful picture…
