Sucker Punch

As I said in my review, I don't subscribe to that mentality of movie going (not that you are wrong, but there are those of us out here that do expect more from movies than a background for eating popcorn and drinking soda and it not be Eat, Pray, Love, which by the way is just as much drivel as Transformers). It's not too much to ask for both from a movie. I don't want to "turn my brain off" I want something to turn it on! That's my escape: real, honest, thought provoking cinema.

Also reviewers review movies based on their artistic value as film. It's not that they are "wrong" per se, its just that they are evaluating all movies based on the same parameters, which is fair. It's just not what you (generic you) are looking for and to be honest, it's not what most people are looking for; its a specific type of journalism that too many people put too much stock in and then blame the reviewers when they don't hear what they want. If you want a fun popcorn movie, its best to not get your recommendations from someone comparing them with the same method as The King's Speech.

Just saying.

The "snobs and hacks" argument against reviewers does a disservice to all those out there who genuinely love movies in all their genres and would like to help films find their audiences. That such thankless, low-paying job still manages to attract intelligent, articulate people is a testament to movies' cultural importance.

That said, when these people are honor-bound to sit through an entire two-hour bloated mediocrity instead of just leaving the way a normal audience member can - and being trapped without hope of escape in a genre trainwreck works as a metaphor for both the film and its audiences - the subsequent reviews are that much more entertaining to read. And when the publications are sufficiently independent, the vitriol erupts off the page. Here are some of my favorites, from places that ordinarily would be receptive to a girls 'n' guns flick, that I picked up when trying to decide whether or not to see this film:
(I enjoy reading passionate reviews, even when they're passionately against.)

When even AintItCool has to concede the awfulness, the marketing guns are going to try every tactic they can to stop the box office hemorrhaging. Word of mouth is going to devastate it next weekend, especially with competition like Source Code and Super.

From the trailers, Super doesn't appear likely to devastate anything. However, I'll probably still see it though (I grew up around people involved in entertainment be it on stage, tv or making movies, so its basically been my life), but not before Source Code, then I'll give my honest view on it.

At least every reviewer I've read stated that Zach really knows how to make the pretty. So if Nolan and Goyer has his back where he's weakiest...the storytelling, Man of Steel should be something to behold.

Oh, if you haven't seen the Ultimate Cut of Watchmen, you haven't really seen Watchmen.

Classic slow mo fetish. 2 minutes of film streched in the 5 minutes with over use of doing everything at half speed.

To each their own, I like that style. It is a lot better than this crap...

Not that there's anything wrong with that objective (one could add A/C in the summer time), but that shouldn't preclude either well-made big-budget movies or cheap disposable entertainment.

These days, Hollywood has co-opted the indie model so that they're making their versions of such films for many times over the necessary budget or, worse, pouring way too much money into "dream projects" from fanboys-turned-auteurs. And since the movie theater owners have contracted into mainly a few big chains stuck with the industry-approved distributors, we're paying $15 for every movie, no matter what its quality. And this complaint is coming from someone who enjoyed both halves of Grindhouse - it just didn't need to cost a total of $67M to produce and run in full-price moviehouses.

And from the trailers, I thought that there was a chance Snyder could bring the cool to Sucker Punch, even after seeing previous movies of his. The mounting evidence from interviews, featurettes, and other such pre-marketing deflated that possibility. With Super, all of that has only whetted my anticipation, and since the director's previous movies, Slither and The Specials, have been good low-budget fun, there's a reassuring track record.

As it turns out, Super is opening gradually, first in limited release to build up good word of mouth and critical reviews. But even if it does turn out to be a fiasco, it won't be a massive financial loss that affects the direction of an already troubled franchise.

Ironically, I've had to stay away from learning anything about Source Code beyond the premise since the director is one whose work needs to be kept surprising, although that goes directly against the marketing grain.

That one has the intellectual depth, nuance, and humanity of the original comic? Or at least a competent actress in the key role of Silk Spectre II?

From the trailers, sure, but what did you think after seeing the movie?

Oh...I see what you did there

The irony is, Sucker Punch bucked today's established marketing technique of using the trailer to pre-sell the movie by delivering a capsule version of it with snippets of the best dialogue, funniest jokes, coolest sequences, climactic scenes, or the denouement to the point where the audience has the vague sensation of having already seen the movie. In this case, though, there were some very disappointed fans when they saw the final product.

Wamp wamp!

Are you dissing The King's Speech? If you haven't seen it, you should. It is emotional, it is powerful, it is hilarious. It is, however, subtle. Unlike Snyder's over the top video game style of bombastic filmmaking, it gets under your skin by doing things most people aren't even aware off. For instance, Snyder does slo-mo, then explosion, then twirly-fighty thing. Rinse, repeat. In The King's Speech, when the king is first starting to open up to the speech therapist, the camera has a very slight Dutch tilt to it. Colin Firth is also off-center in the frame. What this does is make you slightly uneasy and you don't know why. Gradually, as he overcomes his difficulty, he starts to take center screen and the frame becomes level again and they start shooting him from below rather than from above. What that does is make you feel subconsciously that he's regaining his confidence and taking control of his problem.

It's that attention to detail that won it all those Oscars. It's a superb script that's brilliantly acted, but it's so much more than that and so much better than anything Snyder has ever done.

But how did what you saw in the trailers compare to what you saw on the screen? Did the trailers build up too much expectation and you left the theater feeling disappointed?

I'll probably wait until getting The King's Speech from Netflix. I'm worried it'll be too much like The Queen.

However, I've recently violated my rule about not buying movies until after seeing them with my recent purchases of Oscar-nominated films from this year, specifically 127 Hours, The Fighter, and Black Swan.

(It is also whitewashing historical revisionism of at its most meretricious. But that's another thread.)

Horse crap or bull crap, take your pick. How about instead of having to chew crap we eschew crap altogether?

You know what film uses slo-mo with an artistic (and restrained) degree? RED. That movie was not just the best action film of 2010, it's the best one in years. I can think of two really excellent scenes that use slo-mo for a period of seconds rather than minutes, all to emphasize the action rather than to fetishize it. Some of the slo-mo in 300 and Watchmen was just weird because it didn't seem to be doing anything other than be slow motion. A couple times it was used to good effect but mostly it wasn't.

And the obvious example of one that used it constantly throughout for valid thematic purpose would be Inception. It's not that Snyder lacks the technical skill in cinematography, just that he doesn't know how to employ it.

And that's all of maybe 60 seconds of film time. Churchill has such a tiny role I'd have to watch the film again to see if those articles are correct. Since the screenplay was based on the letters and diaries of the two men in question, perhaps that's how they saw Churchill.

Even if it is an error, it's not germane to the movie's point or its brilliance. There's no such thing as an historical film that gets all the facts correct.

Film fetishes:

Zack Snyder -- slo-mo
Michael Bay -- explosions
J.J. Abrams -- lens flares

I'd have to disagree about Snyder over-using a slow motion effect in the case of 300 and Watchmen because many of those shots were replicating the panels from the comics.

If there's instances of Snyder implementing unnecessarily I think it's more of a product of a bad habit that I think he actually is developing, and that is to use a lot of music in his films. There's nothing wrong with using music in movies, but when you do this, you usually want to draw on the emotion and effect that's associated with the song, and it was noticeable in Sucker Punch that he used slower versions of the songs to fit the drawn out shots. It's less noticeable when someone like Tarantino does this because he paces out the shots to fit the song and create a more cohesive atmosphere.

Glossing over the Saxe-Coburg's predilection from appeasement that ran from Edward VIII (which the film conceded) to George VI (who unconstitutionally tried to give his royal seal of approval on Chamberlain's Munich sell-out before a parliamentary debate) could be argued as a dramatic necessity to preserve sympathy for its protagonist, if one wants to condescend to the audience. "Bertie"'s dramatic arc doesn't need to shadow the historical events, and frankly, the film could have used a little tension instead of consistently portraying a stammering aristocrat as, counterintuitively, an underdog. Incidentally, the performances in the King's Speech were almost uniformly superb, with the usually reliable Timothy Spall as Churchill being the only exception.

Oh well, at least the history was better in the King's Speech than in 300.

The Ultimate Cut has adds all the scenes around the Newpaper Vender that was missing from the other cuts plus the Tales of the Black Trader put into it. They also changed a few scenes and the ending. It's really the only way you can see the movie as it was meant to be, and the closest cut to the Graphic Novel sans the Psychic Rainbow Squid.

o.O

300 was a comic book that stylized a period/event in history that really isn't all that well documented to the point of 100% historical accuracy.

Could it have been closer to what REALLY happened? Perhaps. Wouldn't have been the same however.

Peoples problems with 300 is not so much specific events rather the leather nappies in place of the most heavily armoured soilders in the world at the time and the lack of the 700 odd archers, 500 light infantry too (I think) that where there too.

Yes, I know this. The irony is that Snyder's attempts at fidelity - and frame for frame, he was meticulous in trying to adapt Watchmen - still manage to miss so much of what it was about.

Yes, I know this, and I know the graphic novel (Miller and Varley's highly stylized art is firing on all cylinders in it, whatever I may think of the plot or historical accuracy). Do I have to start using emoticons to denote irony when I'm comparing two movies that are exactly nothing alike? The combination would be like a Robot Chicken sketch.

Soooo....the Ultimate Cut was another movie you did not see.