Suicide Squad (2016)

"We're bad guys, it's what we do."

 

*Spoilers...do not proceed if you have not seen the movie yet.

 

I would be lying if I said that I went into the theater to watch Suicide Squad without any preconceived feelings. I already had a horrible taste in my mouth with this new DC universe after watching Batman vs. Superman. Low to no expectations was what I went in with, but I was sincerely hoping that I would be pleasantly surprised. I wanted to walked out after the credits and say, "WOW! That was so much better than I thought it was going to be. They proved me wrong." Instead I walked out saying, "I liked it better than Batman vs. Superman, but it was as bad as I thought it was going to be."

 

The more that I thought about the movie, the more I realized that my dislike for it really steams from the lack of these DC movies to really tell their characters story in a catching way. There was not enough character development for me to feel invested in these villains and actually care about what happened to them. Their backstories where short cutaways as Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) pitches her idea about this Suicide Squad at a dinner in a restaurant. It was maybe 15 minutes long. This was only enough time for me to feel any sort of real connection with Deadshot (Will Smith) and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie).

 



Warner Bros. has really dropped the ball with this entire DC universe. They are trying so hard to do Marvel has done with Avengers, but they don't seem to recognize that Marvel started this whole universe development back in 2008. It has been almost 10 years of movies to get to where they are with the Avengers. Warner Bros. throws together Batman vs. Superman and we are all supposed to understand this world and really feel like we are invested in an understand the characters. I have to be honest, when Waller was talking about metahumans, my brain went more toward Marvel first before I remembered that those are not the same characters.

 

They are accelerating the storylines with "files". So many freaking files. Apparently that is how everyone gets information in the DC world. Batman learns about the further members of the Justice League because of a computer file and then gets more information on them through files bestowed to him by Waller. We also learn about each of the member of the Suicide Squad as the members of the military flip through their files. Files, files, files, files, and more files.

 

The best way to really do these beloved comic book characters justice would have been to take their time through a few different movies. They could have easily given these high profile villains their own movies. People would have went to see them. An entire movie highlighting Harley Quinn and the Joker would have made a killing at the box office. I would have definitely enjoyed a movie around Deadshot. It was clear that he was a lot deeper of a character than just a man who kills people for money. The way that Marvel developed the Avengers, Warner Bros. could have easily develop the Suicide Squad. That would have been a really refreshing take on the whole super hero world. We always focus in on the heroes, I would have really enjoyed seeing the other side of things.

 

They also didn't sell me on the fact that we really needed to go to this extreme with the suicide squad yet. There was all this talk about the metahumans, but we only really had 2 movies with Superman. I didn't think that was enough to convince me as a movie goer that we needed to grad for these deplorable villains and throw them back out into society.

 

There where so many times throughout the movie that I turned to my boyfriend with a questioning look and said to him, "I am a bit confused as to what is going on..." The conflict was just so bizarre. The machine thing that the Enchantress is creating and then these sudden boil faced creature things... I had no idea where they came from. It wasn't even clear to me right away that the Enchantress was attacking the entire army. You don't really GET that. They also defeated the this godlike creature and her magic machine pretty simply...a bomb destroyed it. That is it. Blah. Too easy.

 

The one positive thing was most of the acting and casting was on point. I thought that Will Smith was a wonderful choice to Deadshot. His relationship with Harley Quinn was heartwarming. It helped to show Deadshot as a strong father figure, and Harley as the broken girl in need of love. Margot Robbie did a good job as Harley Quinn. Her character intrigues me. Viola Davis annoyed me as Amanda Waller. She seemed to be the playing the same type of character that she plays in How to Get Away With Murder. There was only one person that did not sell their character to me. That would be Jared Leto and his Joker.

 

I am sure that I am going to be attacked for that comment, but he really did not to anything spectacular in this movie or with that character for anyone to convince me he did this character justice. The Joker didn't have much of a place in the story line except for his role in turning Harley into Harley. The marketing team made it seem like he was part of the Squad, but that wasn't the case at all. That let me down a bit. His Joker seemed to try and channel Heath Ledger's Joker at times. It just didn't work. He tried to do a more psychotic Joker. It didn't work at all. A good friend of mine, Steve, (whose opinion and knowledge about comic books and these universes I greatly respect) said that the relationship they portrayed here in the movie between the two is not anything like their actual relationship. He said that the Joker is not anywhere near devoted to Harley as she is to him. The movie made it seem like he cannot live without her. They hinted at the fact that he owns her with her doggie collar with his name on it, but unless people where really thinking about it, they may not pick up on that.

 

Overall, I would probably wait to see this when it comes out on DVD. David Ayer really dropped the ball on this one. That was a surprise to me considering I loved End of Watch and Harsh Times. He also had in hand in Training Day and Fast and Furious. How he helped to shape those movies, but put this out I still have not been able to wrap my head around. A huge let down and two strikes against DC on my count. Even if they make new "back story" movies with these characters, they did it wrong and it is just a money thing in my eyes. They needed to focus on establishing a long lasting film franchise instead of just throwing things out there to jump on the bandwagon and make the instant money. Comic book fans are always going to be there. There is no reason to rush their stories. Take the time. Get it right, and you will had gold.   
 
 
 

Interstellar

 

 

"We've always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible."

 

 



Christopher Nolan has done it again. He has restored my faith in the movie industry. He has reminded me what it is that I love about the movies is not at all dead, but alive and well. It is because of this that I saw it fitting to dust off my keyboard and get back to one of the things that I love most- talking about movies. This was a great film to start again with. (I have only watch the movie once.... I will be watching it again....and then probably changing some things only because there was sooooo much to this movie. I am sure that I missed something)
Like every Nolan film, this movie was nothing more then another trip into the human psyche. This time he gives us a glimpse into one the most common and instinctual human needs- survival. That was the heart of this movie. At it's very basic, the story centers around a small group of astronauts attempting to save the human race from extinction.
It is set in the future, I would say maybe 60-100 years based on a conversation between John Lithglow's character and Matthew McConaughey's character. The world has reached a point in which we are being ravaged by these terrible dust storms. These storms have caused many deaths because of all the people breathing in the dust. Earth has begun to turn on us. Our plants keep on dying. Every year a new crop fails to grow. You get a sense that the population has decreased drastically. Nolan does a great job showing us this without telling us.
McConaughey's  character, Cooper, is a former pilot who works on a corn farm with his two children and their grandfather. The movie opens with him having a nightmare because of crashing his plane. We are given a sense that Cooper is much more then a farmer when he takes his children on a case of a drone plane to gather parts. During a meeting with his daughters school teachers, we learn that there is no need in this world for the technology that we use and take for granted everyday. Not one person in this movie had a cell phone.... NOT ONE. There were no computers, no video games, no medical equipment..... NOTHING! Our job as humans is to try and grow food so that we can survive. The need for all of those things that we say are "necessary" is not there. It was an interesting thing to have to think about. At a government level, their answer to helping the human race to survive was to make sure that there are enough farms and farmers to keep to population well fed. A major shift in what we see today.
The opening sequence of the film, like all of Nolan's, was significant. A shot of books on the bookshelf and his daughter, Murph, waking Cooper up about the ghost in her room. I won't talk about what I think about that right now, I'll wait until I know more people have seen the movie. However, the books play an important part in the message that Christopher was trying to get across through the movie. Food is not the only necessary part in our survival as a human race. Knowledge is just as important. There was so much physics in this movie, I wish that I was able to comment on all of the science stuff, but I am not a very science person so I cannot tell you that I even have an understanding of everything yet. I have to watch it again.
Cooper happens to find NASA's hidden underground work station and learns about a mission that they are ready to take. We learn that there have been 12 astronauts sent out into space, another galaxy, to find a new planet that we can survive on. Each astronaut had settled on a new planet, and this new group of explorers was to go out and collect them and their data. Cooper and Amelia, Anne Hathaway, end up with two other men on this mission into the new galaxy while Amelia's father, Micheal Cane, stays behind to try and solve an equation that would get the human population off of earth. If that fails, the people on the ship are instructed to start a new colony using fertilized eggs to ensure the survival of the human race as a whole.
Cooper makes a promise to his daughter Murph before he leaves that he will come back for her. He does not tell her when he will come back, but he promises her that he will return. One of the most interesting parts of this movie was the idea of time and gravity. For those up in space, time is moving at a much slower rate then on earth. Years are passing on earth and it seems like hours and days up in space. Murph has trouble dealing with her father being away. She never even told him goodbye, all she wanted was for him to stay.
This promise to his daughter is what drives Cooper's survival instinct out in the great unknown. He wants nothing more then to get back home to his daughter. Amelia talks to Cooper about the other astronauts  that are waiting on the other planets to be picked back up. She tells him that they all had no families and no attachments. Her father believed that this would be important and allow them to focus on the mission at hand rather then about surviving and getting home to their families.
The group arrive on one of the planets to find one of the scientists, Mann, that had been sent into space years before. He wakes up in tears at the sight of another human being (something that he thought he would never see again). He tells the group that the planet is livable down near the surface. They begin to set things up to start the colony and return home when Mann turns on Cooper while they are out exploring. Mann has lied about all of the data in order to get someone to just come and rescue him. He gives a speech about survival and how we will always fight for it. Even without human attachment, Mann wants nothing more to make it out of this alive, but at what cost. He has no human attachments back on earth, therefore he has nothing to fight for except his own survival. The one thing that Professor Brand thought to be the most essential part for his explorers, turned out to be the most damaging.
While Cooper is influenced by his love and desire to return home to his children, all of his decisions are based on their survival-Not his own. He went on this mission so that they would have a new place to live. It is with this that Cooper is able to make the sound decisions that he does rather then the rash ones in a simple fight for flight manner. He has known his entire life that his actions have consequences for the people around him. Mann only ever had to care about himself. How can a person who has only cared about themselves, ever truly be able to make the decisions necessary to save the entire human population?
I also loved that Nolan did not put aliens into this movie.....I have said before, and I stand by this even now, Aliens are just a copout way to explain the things that are occurring in a movie. Nolan uses the science of black holes and our basic understanding of how they are to work in order to explain what happens throughout the movie. There are no aliens or "they" as Ameila refers to them throughout the movie. It is us and always has been us. This is explain by that folded in half explanation of a black hole and how time is folded against itself....or at least that is the best why I can explain it.
Christopher Nolan does what he does best, and that is bring the movie full circle. There is nothing in this film that was there by accident, and that is what I love so much about watching his movies. I highly recommend taking the 3 hours out of your day and sitting down to watch this. It was brilliantly acted and well shot. The silence when they where in space at times made my skin crawl. You could almost touch the silence it was so thick. It really gave you a sense of what it would be like if you where to end up in space one day.
I will be watching the movie again and then editing this jumble to thoughts, but these where my initial feelings on the story and movie. I loved it. Get lost in space today. It's well worth the journey.
Surviving is built into us as a natural human instinct. This movie touched on the different types of survival instincts. It looked at a person who saw beyond what was in front of them. A person who thought about the survival of the human race as a whole, an sacrificed and lied to all of the people around him because he could see the bigger picture.

The World of Christopher Nolan Part 1- Following

"Everyone has a box."

In honor of the release of The Dark Knight Rises this week, I decided to go back and review all of Christopher Nolan's films. He is one of my favorite directors of all time, and it is never a bad thing to watch a Nolan film, and I always have something to say about everything, so what better place than my own movie blog. (and it's a great way to pass some time while in the hospital :oP ) I thought it fitting to watch his movies in order of their release. It is always interesting to watch a director's progression and growth. So, I started with his 1998, black and white movie, Following.
Following appears a first to have a very simple story line, a young struggling writer, Bill, follows people in order to help inspire his writing. One of his marks notices him one day and approaches him. This man, Cobb, turns out to be a thief. (Fun fact: also the last name of DiCaprio's character in Inception) Cobb begins to teach him the ropes of breaking and entering. Seemingly basic storyline correct? Nothing is ever basic with Nolan, and that is why is his amazing.

This movie is categorized as being a film nor, which is a fancy word for a stylish crime drama. I found that this particular film really reminded me of some of Hitchcock's (my favorite director ever, he stands above everyone else) This movie, much like his second film Memento, does not start at the complete beginning of the film. It goes back and forth from the beginning of the story, the end of the story, and even at times the middle of the story. Being that this was his first full-length feature, this could easily be a disaster for an experienced director, let alone a brand new one. He did a wonderful job though. He has such a way with reveling little things piece by piece, without giving to much away, but making you think that you have everything figured out. Then he hits you again with something new. What is great about this, is that it is never something to far fetched that it is unbelievable, it is just something that you probably didn't think about, even though all of the pieces were there for you to figure it out yourself if you looked close enough. This has been a talent of his throughout all of his films. I thought that the cuts in between the scenes could have been a bit smoother, but this is a directorial and debut, and a very low budgeted film, so I can't complain to much.

Another thing that I loved about the film is that it was filmed in black and white. Many people now a days are a bit turned off by black and white movies (my cousin's boyfriend being one of them :op). I feel that black and white movies force us to focus on the important aspects of the movie, the story. This generation of movie goers are so used to the special effects and how big the expectations are, but what they are forgetting is what is at the heart of every movie-The Story. I thought that this was a great choice for this particular film. There was nothing that was lost without color. You focused on the story and the characters.
What also amazed be about this movie was the focus of this idea of voyeurism. This movie was made in 1998, a few years before the Internet boom, and the insane blow up of social media. Cobb talks to Bill about how all people have a box that contains all of these intimate items, and that knowing someone has taken a look into this box, excites them a little. They don't really take much of anything, but they are observing and peaking....they are making judgements based on the things that they see displayed in their homes. I didn't think that this was very far off of what we all do in all of our social media outlets. I thought that aspect of the movie was the most interesting.  
All in all this was a great start for Nolan's career. You can see different things that he was playing around tired to perfect with his later films. Memento has many of the story telling tricks that he used in this one. If you are a Christopher Nolan fan at all, this is a must see. The acting is nothing special, but for me it really didn't need to be. If you appreciate Alfred Hitchcock at all, this is also a must see. I think that is definitely has many remnants of his film style as well. Watch it from a distance, quietly at first, and then feel yourself become lost in a world you never intended to be in.