Review: The Great Gatsby

This weekend opened Baz Luhrmann's take on F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic The Great Gatsby. Opinions after the opening weekend are varying pretty wildly. And why shouldn't they? The Great Gatsby is a beloved classic, and opinions are going to vary wildly from person to person based on expectations. Fans of this story have a very specific idea of it in their heads, and it can be difficult to watch something that deviates from that. So, ultimately, the question becomes what are you looking for as a viewer? Are you looking for the book to be faithfully translated from page to screen, detail for detail? Are you looking for a loose adaptation that basically hits the same notes, but deviates here and there? Are you here to see the latest Baz Luhrmann film? Are you simply looking to show up and stare at the pretty costumes and the glitter? All of the above?

So just so you know which person I am - I went into this looking for a gorgeous Lurhmann film. Lots of style and glitter and beautiful imagery. I was excited when I learned that he would be offering his take on the material. I love the 1920’s aesthetic, and I couldn’t wait to see how he would interpret that time period. As for the story, I expected something that followed the most of the source material, but probably strayed a bit. I read it in high school, but I didn’t remember a ton from it, nor did I classify what was written on the page as untouchable.

So what did I think, coming from that perspective?

Review: Iron Man 3

Happy Summer, everyone! Blockbuster season is officially upon us, and it looks to be the most kick-ass summer we have had since 2008. Starting off four months of awesomeness is Marvel’s latest offering - Iron Man 3.

Review: Mud

Mud is the latest film from writer/director Jeff Nichols, who gave us the amazing Take Shelter just a couple of years ago. His latest work is a coming of age story set in Arkansas, along the banks of the Mississippi River. Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and his friend Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) explore a nearby island and discover a boat beached in a tree as a result of a recent flood. Before they can fully claim it as their own, they discover that a drifter calling himself Mud (Matthew McConaughey) has been using the boat for shelter as he hides out on the island. He confides that he has recently been in some trouble and he is hiding out until he can be reunited with his girlfriend, Juniper (Reese Witherspoon). Mud’s story strikes a chord with Ellis, whose parents have been having marital problems and are well on the path to divorce, and the boys become Mud’s accomplices, bringing him food and supplies and helping him to plan their escape.

Review: Oblivion

Guys, this summer is going to be awesome. I am getting super-excited about the barrage of sci-fi flicks on slate in the coming months. And April is often sort of “summer lite.” The studios start building toward their monumental tentpole pieces, but hold back the stellar stuff until the summer itself is good and underway. Cue Oblivion.

Oblivion takes place in 2077. The Earth has been all but destroyed by a roving group of aliens known only as “Scavs.” Most of humanity has been evacuated and has set up shop on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. Jack Harper (Tom Cruise - by the way, this is the Tom Cruise-iest of Tom Cruise character names) and his partner Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) are the last humans remaining on Earth, effectively serving as the clean-up team. Their job is to repair and protect a group of water converts that are sucking up Earth’s water and using it as part of a fusion process to fuel our new civilization on Titan. With only two weeks left of the operation, Jack seems hesitant to leave. He has recurring dreams about a woman he does not remember, and a life he did not live. Things become even more unsettling for him when a strange spacecraft crash lands nearby, and he is able to rescue one of the survivors (Olga Kurylenko).

Review: The Lords of Salem

I have been a fan of Rob Zombie’s work since House of 1000 Corpses. I saw that flick at a midnight screening in college, and it was like nothing I had ever seen before. Raw, colorful, violent, and completely unpredictable, it didn’t follow any of the commonplace storytelling paths that regularly pop up in horror films. I felt completely out of control and totally at the mercy of this filmmaker. It was exciting. And unsettling. And completely unexpected. He went on to continue to push boundaries with The Devil’s Rejects (my favorite of his), The Halloween remake, and its (rather disappointing) sequel.

While Zombie’s work is never perfect, I always find it interesting, in one way or another. Whenever he releases a new film, I am always excited to see it and to see what it will bring to the table. His brand of horror always manages to catch me off guard in some way, and it’s always an interesting experience. This film is no different (yet, at the same time, very different).

Review: Upstream Color

Hands down, the highlight of my weekend was getting to see Upstream Color. This is the second film from writer/director/jack of all trades (he did just about everything on this film - I’m not even kidding) Shane Carruth. His first film, Primer, was released in 2004. Fans were afraid he had disappeared off the map entirely in the subsequent years, but now he is back with Upstream Color.

Review: Jurassic Park

I was about eleven when Jurassic Park first came out. I have a younger brother, and our parents decided that the ginormouse dinosaurs might be too intense for us in a theater, so we had to wait until the VHS release to finally experience what everyone else was talking about. It was a bummer. This was a movie that was meant to be experienced in a huge theater, with monster sound and a giant bucket of popcorn on your lap.

Last weekend, 20 years later, I finally got the opportunity to reclaim that experience. And it was awesome. I found the biggest theater I could and saw it in one of their showcase houses. Huge screen, and wicked sound. The dinosaurs were bigger than life, and when that T-Rex roared, it was so loud and thunderous that I felt it in my chair. Wicked awesome!

Jurassic Park is a classic film. It broke the boundaries of what we could do with CG effects at the time, but married them with some absolutely astounding practical work from Stan Winston. And it still looks really damn good. It was the first time I can remember actors talking in interviews about how they had to react to tennis balls on sticks because the dinosaurs would be inserted later in post, and we all marveled that such a thing could even be possible.

And it is part of that classic era of Spielberg that was all about awe and wonder. The first time Grant and Sattler see the dinosaurs when they first arrive on the island is one of my very favorite parts of the movie. They can't believe that what they are seeing is real, yet they are so excited that it is - that their wildest dreams have come true. It was so cool to have that moment strengthened by the stellar theater presentation - I had a tear. I'm not even kidding. This is what going to the movies is all about.

As for the quality of the 3D, I can't really say. It was okay, I guess. If objects were in the extreme foreground they looked a little wonky, and I think the 3D probably darkened the image, but in all honesty, I was much more entranced by finally getting to see HUGE ASS DINOSAURS on a HUGE ASS SCREEN. So I really wasn't paying much attention to the 3D work. So if you're not psyched about the conversion, it's easy to ignore. And if you are excited about the 3D, it's not terrible (because I would have noticed that, even in my happy stupor).

Even if you have seen Jurassic Park a thousand times (as many of us have by now), you need to make some time during this re-release to see it the way it was meant to be seen. Yes, our home entertainment systems are light years beyond what we had back in the day when I first had to watch this flick on VHS, but it still doesn't hold a candle to being in a ginormouse theater and having the dinosaur stomps vibrate your ass!