Posts tagged Movie Trailers
“(500) Days of Summer” Movie of Expectation
Aug 5th
Movie of Expectation
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
(500) DAYS OF SUMMER of Summer is an anti-romantic comedy, but more than that, it is a long string of gimmicks from its title to its final scene, when a new character is introduced.
The gimmick in the title is the parentheses around “500” and the fact that “Summer” is the name of the character played winningly by Zooey Deschanel.
The gimmick of the movie is that it portrays the first 500 days in the relationship of Summer and Tom, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who meet when she joins the greeting-card company that Tom works for as a writer.
Thankfully we don’t see every one of those days, but the gimmick of the story is that it jumps randomly throughout the 500 days, identifying each scene with a number that marks the day.
The gimmick of the plot is what we are told by a narrator at the beginning when he says, “You should know up front that this is not a love story.”
No, it is a love-story wannabe on Tom’s part and a romantic-comedy wannabe on the filmmakers’ part.
So, even though Summer tells Tom at the beginning of their relationship that she doesn’t believe in love, but is willing to be best friends with Tom, like all men of the romantic persuasion, he either doesn’t believe her or else he believes that he can get her to change her mind.
Especially since they are “friends with benefits,” as the kids today are calling it.
Well, the film begins essentially on Day 290 when Tom is reacting to Summer’s having broken up with him, and Tom’s adolescent sister, Rachel, is called over to help him get through it.
Yes, there is the “wise younger sister” gimmick in the movie, too.
And, yes, we go back to Day 1 when they meet, and eventually we will get to Day 500 at the end of the film, but the days in between move around so quickly and so much out of order that the audience can suffer from romantic whiplash just trying to follow the action and to keep up with Tom’s expectations about their relationship that keep flying in the face of everything that Summer keeps telling him.
Now, the actors are appealing, but the movie, not so much.
(500) DAYS OF SUMMER is a movie of romantic expectation.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Moon” Excellence
Jul 22nd
Excellence
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
MOON is an excellent film that doesn’t answer all of the questions it raises, but it leaves them for you to think about and enjoy for weeks to come, if not for years to come.
In other words, it stays with you and isn’t easily forgotten about, as so many other movies are today.
It was directed by Duncan Jones, which is all the more remarkable, because this is the first feature film that he has directed. What is at least interesting, if not also remarkable, is that Jones is the son of David Bowie.
The film stars Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, the only human on a mining base on the far side of the Moon, which means that he doesn’t even have the comfort of being able to look up into the sky and see planet Earth.
Sam has only two weeks left on his three-year contract with Lunar Industries, and he says, “I’m talking to myself on a regular basis. Time to go home.”
However, Sam isn’t alone inside the lunar station. There is also a robot named Gerty to look after him and the operation.
Gerty, which is voiced by Kevin Spacey, isn’t just a stationary box inside a wall, either. It has components that can move around inside the station, and it has an animated smiley face that displays its three “emotions”: happy, sad, and noncommittal.
Sam can also communicate with his wife and daughter back home on Earth by using recorded video messages, but that isn’t very much comfort to him.
One day Sam injures himself when he is distracted by a hallucination of a beautiful woman sitting in a chair, and his injury will have consequences later on.
Worse than that, however, Sam has an accident in one of the lunar rovers while out at a mining operation, and this accident will change his life for the rest of the time he has on his contract, if not forever.
When Sam lies to Gerty, and then we catch Gerty lying to Sam, we know that something dramatic is about to happen. And when Sam’s replacement shows up, it does.
At first Sam and his replacement don’t get along, but then they start cooperating for reasons that we couldn’t have imagined.
MOON leaves us with questions, but its lasting impression is excellence.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”