Vertigo (1958)

A woman is rushing up the stairs of a tall bell tower.  Just behind her, Scottie (played by Jimmy Stewart) tries desperately to catch up.  Life and death is in the balance, and any delay could be disastrous.  Yet when Scottie glances below him he slams to a stop; bewilderingly, the ground far below appears to recede and approach at the same time, as though he were simultaneously falling down and up!  It is called vertigo, an uncontrollable fear of heights, a dizziness that stops him in his tracks.  Everything in him cries out to climb the stairs, to catch up to Madeleine, but he simply can't; the vertigo has paralyzed him.  And then he hears a scream...

Alfred Hitchcock was the Master of Suspense.  His movies are masterful and extremely well-crafted.  And of all his great career, 1958's Vertigo is his most exquisite.  Granted, it is not his most fun movie, that honor goes to North By Northwest.  Nor is it his most iconic film, that would be a battle between Psycho and The Birds.  And neither is it my favorite; that honor goes to Rear Window.  But Vertigo is certainly Hitchcock's most artistic film, and is likely to be his most enduring and influential movie.  After all, this past year it was Vertigo was named as Sight and Sound's top film of all time.  For 50 years Citizen Kane had the honor of being named the best film of all time in this poll of the nation's top filmmakers and critics.  Vertigo finally unseated it.  Does Vertigo deserve such an honor?

Absolutely.

Vertigo does all the important stuff so well it could nearly be called a perfect movie.  The acting is superb, especially Jimmy Stewart.  Now, I love Jimmy Stewart, but this is his best film and a departure from the style of many of his other roles.  He plays Scottie Ferguson with a lighthearted flare at first, then a dark and obsessive drive later.  He puts himself quite passionately into the role; this is the best acting performance in a Hitchcock film.  Opposite him is Kim Novak in the double role of Madeleine Elster and Judy Barton.  Novak often gets overlooked as an actress, but it is quite certain that Vertigo would not be effective without her convincing performance.  She nails this role, convincingly portraying herself as calm, cool, alluring, mad, confused, mysterious, suicidal, hopeful, abused, and ultimately terribly frightened.  There are other speaking roles, but really it all comes down to Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak, and they earn their accolades.

Technically speaking the movie is a marvel.  The editing is wonderful.  I love the drawn out shots that are allowed to go on for significantly longer than the audience might expect.  I love the sequences when Scottie is following Madeleine that contain little, if any, dialogue.  I love the wonderfully edited nightmare sequence that is still ingrained on the psyche of Hollywood.  I love how careful editing can make a race up a tower feel so frantic and heart stopping.

The music by Bernard Herrmann is perfect and even a character of its own.  It is hard to place the style, and you come away thinking that it was somewhat Spanish, yet otherworldly.  Certainly it does nothing to reassure the viewer, but always keeps you on edge.

Vertigo is a movie beautifully shot, with Robert Burks getting credit behind the camera.  Under the direction of Hitchcock he uses washouts and color effects to a high degree of effect, allowing us not only to see but experience the madness and obsession of the characters.

And then there is the famed "Vertigo Effect."  Alfred Hitchcock pioneered the use of a great many techniques in filming.  Not all of them worked well for him, but his greatest success was how he allowed the audience to experience Scottie's acrophobia, his fear of heights, his vertigo.  By simultaneously pulling the camera physically backward while zooming in with the lens, you get the result of maintained focus on the subject but a highly unsettling change of perspective.  You get the sensation of falling while not moving.  This technique has become passe, used in almost every instance when a character sees something of great concern or realizes a horrible truth.  It was used to great effect in Jaws.  It was even used in Michael Jackson's Thriller video.  But it had never really been seen before in movies until Vertigo, and Hitchcock capitalized on that quite well.  The audience was seeing and experiencing something new, something unsettling, something that brought them into the action and made them part of the scene.

If there is a portion of Vertigo that is a bit weak it might be the writing. The story is about a detective hired to shadow a woman who may be mad, or even possessed.  To explain any more would be criminal, if you have not seen it before.  Let's just say that when the story is laid out simply it seems on first blush to be a bit absurd, even simplistic, melodramatic or corny.  There are a few small plot holes, and also a few things that seem far too convenient.  Just hearing the plot explained to you would not make you want to see the movie.

But that doesn't matter.  The film is so well made, so meticulously constructed that it transcends the story.  This is a movie about obsession, something even understood from the titles.  There we are treated to an extreme, uncomfortable close-up of a portion of a woman's face.  And as the camera pans from one side to the other we finally come up to her eye, and in the eye we see this spinning geometric patterns.  We fall, mesmerized, into this woman's eye.  Hitchcock had a way of making his title sequences fit into the story or set the tone of the film, but nowhere does he succeed better than in Vertigo.  Vertigo is about obsession and guilt, and by the end of the film these forces transform the character we had thought a hero into a manipulative bully, an abuser even.  And in my favorite shot, as the camera pans in a circle around Scottie and his remade Madeleine we clearly see that the obsession he thought would remove his guilt only plunges him into madness.  He has his demons to overcome, but what toll will they take on him or others before he conquers them?  There are no happy endings for the characters here; but then again, what happy endings are possible when obsession and guilt are your driving forces?

Vertigo ages well.  It was not received enthusiastically by critics in 1958, nor did it do extremely well in theaters.  Yet it seems to grow in influence as the years go on.  And for me personally, each repeated viewing (and there have been many) brings new insight and seems a bit more powerful than the last.  Vertigo will forever be regarded as Hitchcock's great artistic masterpiece.

Entertainment: 8/10
Artistic Value: 10/10
Technical Merit: 10/10

Overall: 10/10

The Hunger Games (2012)

I had no idea what to expect from this one.  When I first heard of The Hunger Games it was in context of the Twilight books.  As in, "The Hunger Games is the newest series aimed at young fans of Twilight."  Given the fact that Twilight is a horrible monstrosity, such an association did not fill me with great hope and confidence.

So let me get this out in the open: The Hunger Games is to Twilight what apple pie is to cow pie.

But even so, I've eaten better pie than Hunger Games.  After all, in this business, simply being not as terrible as Twilight is not really a huge deal.  Twilight was bad.  It was miserable dreck.  It really isn't all that hard to be better than such pathetic stuff.  Hunger Games, on the other hand, does quite a lot very well.  It really is a good movie in many ways.  Unfortunately, it seems to rely quite heavily on having a built-in fan base and rarely rises above the level of adequacy.

The acting is adequate.  Jennifer Lawrence, of X-Men: First Class fame, has the lead role, and puts in the best performance of the cast.  It shocks me to say this, since there are a few top names in the cast such as Woody Harrelson and Donald Sutherland.  Woody Harrelson has a great entrance and a large part, but never manages to make much with what he is given.  Donald Sutherland is grossly underused; he had simply nothing to work with, showing up now and then only to scowl and such.  I can't help but think that his role is actually unnecessary for this film.  Perhaps the character of President Snow would have been better as an unseen menace, a power behind the curtain like the Emperor was in the first Star Wars.  All that to say this: the acting is passable, but could have been much better.

The writing is adequate.  Certainly this is a film that leans upon the source material and does not want to displease the target audience.  Perhaps this is why I, as a viewer who has never read the book, kept thinking that what I was watching would be better if I knew the book.  It came off stiff and unnatural at parts, as though faithfulness to the novel were more important than being its own thing as a movie.

The special effects and design are adequate.  I appreciate the fact that they do not try to do much that is over-fancy.  On the other hand, nothing really stood out either.  This was a glossy, high-shine kind of film, where everything that is done feels like there was a high price tag to make it.  But for all that there was not much that was truly memorable.  No iconic location, set piece, or distinct feel.  Not to mention that each of the "districts" felt rather small.  I honestly thought, after viewing the film, that each district (at least district 12) was about the size of a county, perhaps a very small state at best.  Only later (online) do I find out that each district represents a region that would incorporate several states.  That each district seemed only to have the population of a few thousand seems a design flaw to me.

Overall, I enjoyed watching The Hunger Games.  It was a good action film, drawing on tried and true themes that had been done many other times by previous films.  The problem, of course, is that previous films had done all those themes better.  At best, The Hunger Games is average.  That's not bad, of course, but neither is it worthy of all the attention it is getting.  I'm just guessing here, but the book is probably better.

Entertainment: 5/10
Artistic Value: 4/10
Technical Merit: 5/10

Overall: 5/10

Apollo 18 (2011)

I've always been a space nut.  Since childhood I've been fascinated by rockets, space, and landing on the moon.  I've extensively researched the space program from Mercury through the space shuttle.  I've enjoyed museums and documentaries about space.  I love seeing pictures and film of earth from space.  And the Apollo missions are by far the greatest achievement of manned space flight.

Added to that is the fact that I love thrillers and scary movies.  I'm a sucker for this kind of film, seeing it as escapist entertainment that has at least the possibility of saying something profound.  The best monster movies are really statements about the condition of man, or even a political statement, in the guise of some giant lizard terrorizing Tokyo.

So it can clearly be understood, taking those two interests of mine, why I watched Apollo 18.  Space flight with monsters.  This is a winning formula, and has been since Ridley Scott directed Alien.

How was it, you ask?  Well, let me tell you.  Lousy.  It really is hard to think of even one element of this movie that could have been done worse.  The one thing that I might give any sort of gracious nod toward is that there were a few shots that did indeed look like old footage of Apollo missions.

But that's it.  The script was awful; it seemed like the stunted and anemic work of some high school aspiring writer who thought he had a great concept.  The acting was as bad as I have seen in the past 2-3 years; absolutely no line was delivered in anything approaching a believable way, and no opportunity was passed up to display an over-the-top emotion, or just plain the wrong emotion.  The direction was laughably amateur.  The editing was obnoxious.  The cinematography, meant to resemble found footage, was horrible, distracting, and painful.  The monsters, which resemble (are?) rocks for most of the movie, are never seen clearly and never explained or explored properly.  The effect that these things have on the astronauts is unclear and unexplained.  Nothing is explained, come to think of it.  There are plot holes that are big enough to sink a house.  Even at the end (which you won't mind if I spoil for you, will you?) we see that there is an accident that kills all the remaining astronauts, which only begs the question: if this is supposed to be "found footage" of a secret Apollo mission, who found the footage?  All the tape is out in deep space!

Enough of this abomination.  If you have the choice between this one and vacuuming the carpet, make sure that carpet is nice and clean.  If this is the in-flight movie on your next trip, take a parachute.  You get the idea.

Entertainment: 1/10
Artistic Value: 1/10
Technical Merit: 2/10

Overall: 1/10

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

2001: A Space Odyssey is perhaps the most perplexing, strangest movie that I love.  It's an experience, a work of moving art more than it is a typical movie.  If you've never seen it you need to stop reading now, because it is utterly impossible to discuss this film without spoiling everything strange and shocking about it.

Seriously now, you don't want a movie review to spoil one of film history's most amazing enigmas, do you?

The plot is really hard to define.  We begin by watching a group of apes do typical ape stuff.  This is not what we might expect from a science fiction movie, but apes it is.  These apes encounter...something.  A large black rock (hereafter "The Monolith") that seems to have some effect on them, though it is hard to define exactly what.  These apes then learn to use bones as tools.  Then, in one of the greatest time-jumps of movie history, we are rocketed to the near future, when space travel is common and we are beginning our baby steps into the solar system.  There is a permanent base on the moon, and something has been discovered there.  It is another Monolith, which sends a radio signal out toward Jupiter.  So we jump to the mission to Jupiter that results from this discovery.  This Jupiter mission is the part of the film that has the closest thing resembling a typical movie plot.  Astronauts Dave Bowman and Frank Poole are the crew of the ship heading out into deep space.  I guess technically there are other crewmen; several scientists are in cryosleep, and then there is HAL 9000, the ship artificial intelligence.  But then something goes wrong; HAL predicts the failure of a circuit board, which when replaced is found to be in perfect condition.  At this point there is a paradox, a bit of a conundrum really; since this seems to be an error, and since HAL supposedly cannot make an error, Frank and Dave begin to wonder whether to shut HAL down.  So HAL tries to kill them.  Frank is lost into deep space, and Dave is locked out of the ship in the ship's space pod.  (and thus the exchange "Open the pod bay doors, HAL."  "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that." becomes movie legend)  To make the long story short, Dave forces his way in, manually shuts HAL down (And by the way, if your computer starts singing "Daisy Belle"...run.), and completes the journey to Jupiter on his own.

And then things REALLY get weird.  At Jupiter Dave discovers another Monolith, and flies his pod toward it.  And then he goes into hyperspeed, or something.  There is a segment of probably about 3-5 minutes of nothing but quickly moving lights and odd patterns.  It's a light and sound spectacular show, but very trippy.  And just as suddenly, Dave finds himself in a hotel room.  Well, it's something like a hotel room anyway.  Very austere, without carpet.  Just hard surfaces and a bed.  Then he sees himself out of the pod.  Then he explores a bit into the bathroom, then sees himself, only now as an older man, eating at a table.  Then the Older Dave knocks over his glass, breaking it, and after looking at the glass glances at the bed and sees himself again, only this time as a very old man.  Old Man Dave is dying, ancient, very close to the end of his life.  Then the Monolith shows up again, and as Old Man Dave reaches out to it he is transformed into a glowing, quasi-spiritual human fetus.  This "Star Child" then is shown floating through the void of space, revisiting earth and watching over the globe as "Thus Spake Zarathustra" plays its epic music in the background once again.

The End.

I remember my very first full viewing of 2001 many years ago.  I remember quite well my initial reaction to what I had just seen.  I think my full thought pattern was as follows: "What?  ...what?  ...did I just...what was...huh?  Really?"  I admit, I was lost and had no clue what I had just seen.  There did not seem to be any rational explanation to what I had just seen.  Other than the obvious, which was that there were film makers who did a LOT of drugs in the 60's.  But now after seeing it many more times, and contemplating long and hard over the various themes of the film (and even reading the book), I think I have a much better understanding of what the film is saying.  And I actually believe it is brilliant, even though I disagree with its conclusions.

This is a movie about a journey, a "space odyssey," as it calls it.  No, not the trip to Jupiter, that's only one very small part.  Really, this is a journey of a whole species, from birth to the evolution of something wholly new.  Evolution is at the heart of this film, but it is a guided evolution as represented here.  Humanity begins when the Monolith is first encountered; what humanity was to become is inspired at that point at the beginning of the film.  And humanity is defined by its tools.  It was the crude bone club that marks the beginning of the human race.    Symbolically, the bone is thrown into the air and becomes a space ship.  Just another stage in evolution, because you see, the human race goes on progresses, and the tools become more complex.

But now something is changing.  Tools enable us to reach into space, but our tools are beginning to get away from us, as symbolized by the floating pen in the middle of the earth to the moon sequence.  Much is made of the tools that humanity has mastered, yet the tools that define us and give us our best advantage over nature are becoming our biggest threat to ourselves.  This is most evident in HAL 9000.  HAL is the greatest tool ever invented by humanity, a flawless computer of exceptional speed and ability.  This perfect tool, designed to carry out its task with perfection, concludes that perfection cannot be attained while the humans it should be helping remain alive.  After all, if the computer cannot make an error and humans can, then what should be done to remove the chance of failure?

HAL fails to kill all the astronauts, with Dave triumphing over him.  Tools cannot be the future of humanity; designing new and better tools only seems to lead to the probability of destruction.  But if tools are not the future, then what is?  Dave discovers the next step in encountering the Monolith again.  He travels beyond space and time, to a place not constrained by distance and sequence.  Certainly this "hotel room" is the most puzzling part of the film.  It is here that Dave, and humanity with Dave as its representative, learns to rid itself of the tools that are now a detriment to further development.  First, Dave leaves the space pod, and that disappears.  Then Dave leaves his suit behind, aging and now eating at a table.  But even the tools of table, utensils, and cup must be rejected; it is when Dave breaks the cup and sees the wine (presumably wine, anyway) spilling out that he is able to take the next step.  He is dying, yet there is a rebirth awaiting.  One more encounter with the Monolith and humanity has finally progressed to the next stage, one needing no tool and constrained by nothing.  The Star Child has been born, and with him the future hope of humanity.

So what does the Monolith represent?  One possibility is that it is a form of life that is far beyond our existence, an alien presence that simply manifests itself in this way.  This is the way the book presents it.  Another way to take the Monolith is simply as a marker, a beacon that indicates major moments of human development.  I personally think the movie makes more sense along this option.

It needn't be said that I disagree utterly with the message of this movie.  As a Christian, I believe what sets humanity apart from the animal kingdom is not the fact we use tools, but rather that we are created in the Image of God.  And the great hope of humanity is not simply progressing beyond tools and flesh, but spiritual rebirth and resurrection with Jesus Christ as Lord.  The worldview of Christianity and the worldview of 2001 could not really be more different.  However, the movie is certainly a work of art, and one that is worthy of appreciation.  And the longing that the movie has for something greater than the physical, something beyond the consumeristic mentality, is laudable.  The sad part is that the movie's hope seems to be that somehow, someday we might possibly maybe perhaps attain a godlike status through unknown means.  This type of optimism is unmerited and actually kinda pathetic.  Humanity needs a better hope; one found in a real Savior who has overcome death and is beyond the limitations of this world.

Technically, this movie is a masterpiece.  The classical soundtrack consists of songs like "Thus Spake Zarathustra" (popularly known now as the song from 2001) and "The Blue Danube."  And with such limited dialogue (you will not hear a whole lot of talking in this one), I almost regard 2001 as a cinematic ballet.  Everything seems to dance with the music; spaceships fly, space stations spin, and apes strike the ground, all in time with the beat.

Beyond that, the special effects are astounding, even by today's terms.  Everything looks fabulous; the shuttles and stations (done with models) are well-conceived and believable, and the weightless moments are perfectly filmed.  Visually, only the "flying at hyperspeed" portion at the end looks dated at all.  Remembering that 2001 was filmed nearly 10 years before Star Wars will also help you appreciate the model work.  And if we consider that this vision of the future was all conceived and filmed before the first moon landing our appreciation will grow by magnitude.

This is a masterpiece, but it is hardly among my favorite films.  To be fair, while it is always interesting it is not always entertaining.  I'm sure that those who only like movies that have tons of action and constant tension would find 2001 a tad on the dull side.  You might even hear the word "boring."  

But I do enjoy 2001.  I find it stimulating as a mental exercise.  In film-history terms, it is a must-see simply due to its unmistakable influence; it is undeniably important and references to it permeate our popular culture.  I also simply enjoy the music and rhythm of the film in the same way that I would enjoy listening to a favorite CD or marveling at ballet or interpretive dance.  This is a deep film, deserving of the recognition it has always received.  2001 is an enigma, a great work of film art that will continue to puzzle and befuddle audiences for years to come.  Yes, I'm a fan.

Entertainment:  4/10
Artistic Value: 10/10
Technical Merit: 10/10

Overall: 8/10

Really?

My Opinion: The fact that there is a movie called Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters makes us all a bit dumber.  That is all.