At the Cinema: The Maze Runner

I'm not going to lie: my main motivation for seeing this movie was Stiles. Stilessssssss. He's the best. I'm also inherently interested in all YA book to movie adaptations because a) I like reading YA and b) YA movies are either great (The Hunger Games) or hilariously bad (Twilight series) and even though I prefer a great movie experience I am also usually down for a hilariously bad one. So which was The Maze Runner?

Somehow, it was both.

The beginning was pretty great. Just confused Stiles in an elevator. In that moment, we were all confused Stiles in an elevator. Great. The set up is interesting too: a bunch of boys are all stuck in 'the Glade', which is surrounded by a man-made maze that changes every night. None of the boys remember who they are beyond their own names. They have to explore the maze to find a way out. There are also giant mechanical spider things in the maze that want to kill them. Cool. Cool cool cool.

They set a good pace for revealing info and moving the story along, and I thought the scenes in the maze were both interesting and filled with tension. The robot spiders, or 'Grievers' as the boys call them for some unexplained reason, were creepy and the CGI looked pretty good because they were only seen in darkness. I was intrigued from the start to know why the boys were in the maze and why their memories were wiped, so it had that going for it.

But for all that good, there was also some not so good, including Stiles--who's character is actually named Thomas so I guess I will call him that from now on--and Teresa...and that ending.

But let's start with Thomas.

He's one of those YA super special snowflake characters that for no particular reason is inherently better than everyone else. But he's curious, everyone keeps saying. So what? I'm confused as to why more of those boys aren't also curious. What the hell else are they doing all day living inside a single square mile? I know he has his Super Secret Backstory, but that really isn't expanded on enough to be relevant. Also: Thomas is milquetoast to the max. The only thing I know about Thomas's personality is he's curious, and that's because all the other characters tell me he is. He is so bland I think I might have fallen asleep while writing this paragraph. Cute but bland.

This leads to my next point: Teresa. From the trailers--and the book synopsis--Teresa's arrival as the first female to the Glade appeared to be a major plot point, an upset of the fragile ecosystem the boys have built as well as a turning point in the story. Nope. She was utterly pointless. She came up in the elevator with a piece of paper that said She's the last one ever, and my friend pointed out that they could have literally sent the elevator up with just the piece of paper in it and it would have had the same impact on the story. Teresa and Thomas have a ~connection~ right away, and I was really hoping they were brother and sister (hell, they actually look like twins) so Teresa wouldn't end up being just a weak ass love interest for our curious hero. But alas, tis not so. She is simply there too stare longingly at Thomas until we get back to the real story.

Side note: I think this Thomas/Teresa problem could have been resolved if Thomas simply didn't exist and Teresa was the hero. Think about it. Way cooler story, right? Yes.

So both Thomas and Teresa don't quite fall into that YA hilariously bad category, but the ending does, to which all I can say is: ??? There are so many layers of what the fuckery in that ending that I actually feel like I know less about what's going on than I did before the movie started. I don't want to spoil anything, but I do have one question: who the heck edited that suicide video after the maker of it was you know, dead?? Did the maker edit in all that supplemental video footage posthumously? Lol.

So basically I liked this movie up until that clusterfuck of an ending. I am down for the sequel though, because I am expecting it to veer head on into hilariously bad territory, which will be fun times.

At the Cinema: Gone Girl

I've been looking forward to this movie for a long time, and it feels really great to say that I was not disappointed by it. The only thing that disappointed me was the lady next to me who would not shut up and the fact that I had to pee like half way through and had to hold it until the end. And this movie is over two and a half hours. I guess that basically makes me Amazing Rachel (buh dum dum tish).

I read the book by Gillian Flynn a while back so I knew what was going to happen, right down to the ending that you either hate or hate (amirite?), so my viewing experience was certainly different than someone who didn't know where it was headed. I kind of wonder what I would have thought of the ending if I hadn't read the book, because I think it was actually more believable on film? I dunno, maybe my annoyance has just dulled and I've accepted it and moved on. But I would love to hear how other readers of the book thought the ending played on film. The same? Better? Worse (if applicable)?

And now since I'm not really sure how to actually continue this review without spoiling anything, and I'm just going to list some highlights in vague terms that viewers/readers will understand without spoiling GG virgins:

the scene with the box cutter that made everyone in the audience v upset
Trent Reznor's score
the casting in general, Ben Affleck in particular
the use of cut-to-black scene editing
all the junk food
them fancy pencils
Tyler Perry?????
the fact that the most competent cop is female & rad

In short, this was a great movie and I liked it a lot and David Fincher is the best.

At the cinema: Mud

I saw Mud absolutely ages ago, and I've had bits of this review written and sitting in my drafts for so long that it's out on dvd now, whoops. For some reason I had a difficult time expressing my feelings about this movie; when I reopened this post I found a bunch of half finished sentences and partial paragraphs and ramblings about the setting and Ellis and the Mississippi River. I think I came back to it a few times and then just gave up. The thing is, I really liked this film, and the things I liked about it are hard to put into words. So much of what I liked has to do with the feeling of it all. There was just a certain quiet authenticity to the characters and the rural Arkansas setting and the way they interacted and shaped each other. It just felt so true to the midwest I've experienced, in all its faults and beauty, and I like--no, love--that. There's something so comforting and beautiful and free about the wide open spaces of middle America, and they really do have a particular feeling to them, and if you want to know what that feeling is, watch Mud. (Or Jeff Nichol's previous film, Take Shelter.)

Okay, now that I've got that out of the way, I want to talk about my other favorite thing about this movie, which are the two kids. In a nutshell, Mud is about these two kids who happen upon a fugitive named Mud, and decide to help him reunite with his girlfriend. First there's Ellis, the more strong-willed and passionate, and then there's Neckbone, who is, as the woman sitting next to me said many times throughout the film, the 'smart one.'

Ellis is an old soul, a staunch believer in True Love and doing the right thing. He yearns for the day when he'll fall in love, which he seems to think will render all his problems obsolete. He's a kid who will rush a man twice his size when he sees him hit a woman, and will risk everything to reunite a stranger with his true love because if he didn't, he'd be turning his back on love as a concept. He feels that by helping Mud reunite with Juniper, he's proving to himself that real love exists, and that someday he'll have it too. He also says things like, "I ain't no townie!" when faced with the prospect of moving away from his beloved houseboat on the Mississippi River, which is rad and only makes me love him more.

Neckbone, on the other hand, is less trusting and more wary of abstract concepts like True Love; he deals in logic, in things he can see and touch. He would just as soon not involve himself in Mud's problems--as a kid who's lost both his parents and lives with his well-meaning but clueless uncle, he knows how to take care of himself and figures others can do the same. He saves both Ellis and Mud on more than one occasion, proving they could benefit from taking their heads out of the clouds every once in a while.

But these kids, different as they are, need each other; Ellis needs Neckbone's grounding, his ability to look past his feelings and take care of the present, while Neckbone needs Ellis's wild abandon, his willingness to follow his heart no matter the consequences. I thought their relationship was completely perfect and really quite beautiful. And I can't help but have this weird crush on Ellis as a person, and if he was ten years older I think I would ask him to marry me.

That's all.

At the cinema: The Place Beyond the Pines

I should tell you that I am a major baby when it comes to movies, and will cry at most things. For example: you know that scene in Spider-Man 2 where the people on the subway car carry Spider-Man over their heads after he passes out and then promise not to tell anyone who he is? Tears. On my face. SPIDER-MAN 2 MADE ME CRY. Me = baby. I guess I'm just extra sensitive? I don't know, I also think I kind of like crying at the movies, even though whenever I feel tears coming on I always bite my lip and mumble, don't cry, stop it, stop crying, this is fake, and then proceed to to snot-cry anyway. But I do always feel better when I walk out into the world afterward. I mean, I don't have much to cry about in my real life, and a good cry can be therapeutic, you know?

So, with that said, The Place Beyond the Pines is a really therapeutic film.

I think I cried continuously for the first forty-five minutes? Haha, just kidding, that would be weird. But I definitely cried a lot during the first forty-five, aka the Ryan Gosling section. This film is loosely in three parts, telling the story of two men (Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper) and their sons (Dane DeHaan and Emory Cohen). Gosling is a motorcycle punk who starts robbing banks to provide for his son, and Cooper is the cop that apprehends him. We then see how the aftermath of those events impact their teenaged sons years later. Of the three sections, Gosling's is by the far the best, the most compelling and emotional. Everything about it was perfect, and I know it's working really well when I'm not just crying because something is sad, but because it's happy (with an undercurrent of doomed, however...). I'm thinking of the scene where Gosling's character (named Handsome Luke by the way), feeds his year-old son ice cream for the first time, and when Eva Mendes cries during the family photo. Ugh--don't look at me, I'm a mess!!

Even though there were moments in this film that truly touched me, I did feel it was perhaps overly ambitious; it attempted to deal with many complex themes (fatherhood being the most prevalent) but couldn't quite make a fully formed statement about any of them. And while Ryan Gosling's section was great, the following two were lacking in comparison. At first I really enjoyed Bradley Cooper's section, but then he did something that just didn't make sense to me, and not in a how could he do that?! kind of way, just in I guess I don't understand this character at all kind of way. And I felt that the final section missed the mark to bring the story full circle and truly say something about fatherhood, or sons, or the consequences of our actions, or whatever.

All that being said, this film still stayed with me for days afterward, due to the parts that were working, and the beautiful photography, and wonderful soundtrack. And also Ryan Gosling and Dane DeHaan, who are both the best.

At the cinema: Warm Bodies

I read Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion last year on a ten hour flight from London to San Francisco. It started out quite good, then became just okay, and then ended a bit abrupt and a little too tidily for my taste. It certainly helped the time pass though. In a weird way, it's one of those books where I almost think it was meant to be a film; I mean, it is told from the prospective of a zombie, so you can imagine there are a few narrative difficulties there.

I went to the cinema and saw this by myself (because I actually really love going to the cinema by myself for some reason), and just as I suspected, I found the film version more enjoyable. Seeing the memories that R does when he's eating brains (brrrrains) was very effective, and because I'm a softie, I almost started tearing up because look at this sweet boy riding his bicycle in a meadow and he doesn't even know what's coming and what's going to happen to him and the light on his face and he's smiling and he's so happy... (this is what's it's like inside my brain). And I thought that both Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer were well cast, and though this film does have a few silly sappy moments, they played it well so it wasn't any more silly or sappy than it needed to be. The CGI left something to be desired (not to mention the opening credit titles, which look like something from a youtube video), but ah well.

The audience I saw it with seemed to like it as well, laughing and awwing in turn, which probably made me enjoy the film even more. And I kept hearing exclamations of "He's so cute!" about zombie Hoult, because apparently the way he groans and staggers is adorable (it is), so there's always that.