The Muppets (2011)

Everybody loves the Muppets. They’ve been a part of nearly everyone’s childhood since the seventies when the original Muppet Show aired. Since then, they’ve maintained a solid place within our pop culture be it through film or television specials. They even survived the tragic death of their creator Jim Henson. Sadly, the Muppets have been teetering on the edge of pop culture relevance for some time now. Their last movie to be released in theaters was in 1999. Luckily they still have their devoted fan base, and even luckier that Jason Segel counts himself among them. As star and producer, he’s largely responsible for getting this movie made. 

The Muppets opens with the lives of two brothers, Gary (Jason Segel) and Walter (Peter Linz), living in an idealized American small town called Smalltown. They grew up as devoted fans of the Muppets, particularly Walter. They, along with Gary’s girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams), travel to Hollywood to visit the old Muppet Theater where Walter inadvertently learns of the evil oil baron Tex Richman’s (Chris Cooper) plan to buy the property and level it so he can get at the precious oil beneath (maniacal laugh). The plot then becomes Walter helping Kermit to round up the whole Muppet gang so they can do one last show as a telethon to save the theater.

The Muppets find Rowlf

This has everything you could hope for in a Muppet movie whether your fans of the original show, the movies, or simply a newcomer interested in seeing puppets. It’s obvious right away how much the filmmakers must love these characters. The movie is packed with references to the old show and the last half hour is literally a recreation of it. All the favorite characters appear to do their routines: Fozzie Bear with his terrible jokes, Gonzo the Great (Dave Goelz) with his ridiculous stunts, Kermit and Miss Piggy’s romance, musical interludes, celebrity cameos, and Statler and Waldorf heckling the performers. It’s all there. The weakest aspect is probably from the presence of the human protagonists, though they’re by no means a serious detriment to the movie. In fact, Jason Segel and Amy Adams are good and quite likeable. They’re funny, perform in the musical numbers and even have a small character arc to go through. The problem with it is how unnecessary they are. Once the Muppets enter into the plot, Jason Segel and Amy Adams are no longer needed and it’s obvious. The scenes with the Muppets driving around are good examples of this. While the Muppets talk and make jokes, the humans quietly sit in the back seat and let them do their thing. Again, they don’t hurt the movie, but they don’t really add a whole lot to it either. 

As with all Muppet movies, this one is a musical and this time around the original songs written for the movie were done by Bret McKenzie (of Flight of the Conchords fame). Bret McKenzie’s songs are all really catchy and clever, the most ridiculous and hilarious of these being the song that Chris Cooper spontaneously erupts into. The music has the same recognizable humor and wit that Flight of the Conchords is known for, which suits the Muppets perfectly. It’s hard not to like this movie. The characters are charming, funny, and nostalgic, which is something this movie plays to significantly. The humor of these characters has remained largely unchanged over the years, and yet has not become dated. It’s much in the same way that the Looney Tunes are still funny after so many decades. The humor and charm of the Muppets is directed at everyone, not just children. They tell their jokes straight without a hint of condescension and anyone can find it funny. This is a reminder of why the Muppets are still around after all these years and even in a time when nearly every family film is computer animated, there’s still a place for puppets.

Batman: Year One (2011)

In 1986 Frank Miller wrote The Dark Knight Returns, one of the most significant and influential Batman stories in comic book history. It returned Batman to a darker and grittier place, forever abolishing the camp of the 1960s. Due to the success of the series, the next year he created a follow-up with artist David Mazzucchelli titled Batman: Year One, which retold the events of Batman’s first year as a costumed crime fighter. It has since been considered the definitive version of the story and even influenced many aspects of Batman Begins. Now that it’s officially been adapted into an animated movie, the real question is: how does the story hold up? Is it an obvious match or should it have remained a comic? 

Batman: Year One is an almost episodic telling of the year Batman begin his campaign against crime, but that’s not to say it’s entirely about him. In fact, he’s more of an enigmatic side character as the majority of the story follows Lieutenant Jim Gordon whose transfer to Gotham City coincided with the return of Bruce Wayne from a 12 year absence. The two stories run parallel as Bruce finds a way to establish himself as Gotham’s Dark Knight and Gordon battles corruption from both the mob and the police department. There are several smaller subplots like the introduction of Catwoman (Eliza Dushku) and Gordon’s affair with Detective Sarah Essen (Katee Sackhoff), but neither of these has any real significance on the events in the plot. Not much would be different without the presence of Catwoman, but her inclusion just indicates the growing influence that Batman creates as he becomes more and more famous. Gordon’s affair, though offering a certain complexity to his character, has a small and almost insignificant resolution. Granted this is not a story about resolutions, but some kind of closure would have helped to move the story along. Also, because of the episodic nature of the plot structure, there’s no real lead-up to the climax. The finale is just another occurrence for the protagonists to deal with and, although the stakes are higher, it never feels like it was something the movie was building towards, thus lacking a satisfying conclusion. 

The animation is crisp and detailed, closely resembling the panels and look of the original comic. The shadows and lighting are used particularly well, keeping Batman as a shadow in the dark and Gordon’s glasses always managing to catch the light no matter where he is. Every character has fluid animations and some of the action sequences are pretty memorable, the best being Batman’s game of cat-and-mouse with the police in a derelict building. It’s suspenseful, exciting, and his escape has the distinct feel of a comic book superhero. There’s some use of computer animation alongside the 2D, but it’s mostly limited to backgrounds and vehicles. It’s never as polished as the 2D animation, and it’s easy to notice when they use it (during car chases the city looks oddly vacant in the background, devoid of other vehicles or pedestrians).

Lt. Jim Gordon (Bryan Cranston)

The voice acting is where this movie feels the most mixed in its execution. Bryan Cranston is perfect as Gordon, adding a great deal of character and emotion to his performance. This is practically Gordon’s story anyway, and had it been shown entirely from his point of view, it might have improved. Gordon is the most complex, heroic, and sympathetic character in the movie. He’s honorable and determined, yet also human and prone to certain weaknesses. His side of the story has a distinct noir feel to it and suits the tone well. It’s actually Batman’s side of the story that may be the weakest here, and it’s almost entirely because of the poor voice acting from Benjamin McKenzie. Most of the time he sounds stiff and at worst, bored. Like it was too early in the morning for him to be reading when they recorded him. It makes Batman’s narration, which contains the majority of his lines, painful to listen to. Once again I found myself missing the perfect sound of Kevin Conroy as the caped crusader. Thankfully Batman doesn’t talk much, otherwise even his action scenes would be hurt by this. 

Overall, Batman: Year One is still an interesting account of Batman’s early days. The movie adaptation suffers from having a poor Batman voice and it’s (at times) disjointed plot. As a comic it worked, but as a movie it lacks a steady pace and never feels as though its building up to the conclusion.

J. Edgar (2011)

John Edgar Hoover was the Director of the FBI from 1935–72 as well as instrumental in its founding. He was an incredibly secretive and powerful man, holding information and documents that prevented other more important political figures from removing him from office. Many of the things he did could be considered paranoid or an invasion of privacy (or controversially less than legal). His personal life was even more questioned than his ethics, as he lived the majority of it with his mother and remained a lifelong bachelor with seemingly no involvement with women. There were many rumors of his closeted homosexuality, something which he was outspoken against. 

His complex life and the founding of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (formerly without the Federal) is the focus of Clint Eastwood’s movie and the story is told entirely from Hoover’s point of view as he dictates his early days to be written down as a memoir. The entire plot unfolds as a web of deceit and political intrigue that spanned several presidencies. Clint Eastwood seamlessly edits back and forth between the different time periods showing the old and young J. Edgar Hoover dealing with organized crime, communist plots, and the formation of the FBI. Hoover is obsessed with details and appearances, all of which relate back to his own repressed sexuality and relationship with his domineering mother (played by Judi Dench because what kind of period drama doesn’t have Judi Dench in it?) who, when referring to homosexuals, lovingly tells him that she’d “rather have a dead son than a daffodil.” Everything in his life must look the part. Each FBI agent must be a white, clean-shaved, well-dressed college graduate. This goes double for himself, and it leads him to the hiring of his personal secretary Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts), with whom he shares a long and strictly platonic relationship with. Though this was probably clear to her from one of their early dates in which he showed her how well he catalogued a library before proposing marriage. He must be seen as the personification of the FBI, taking every advantage of being portrayed in the media as the man who personally took down criminals like John Dillinger and “Machine Gun Kelly”. He even goes as far as to punish Melvin Purvis for being the actual agent to shoot Dillinger and receive the credit. The other important relationship in his life is with his second in command Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). Although they’re obviously in love, it’s an impossible relationship the nature of which I doubt he ever truly admitted to himself. The portrayal of it is shown as chaste and instead they’re forced to be intimately close friends that share nearly every moment together.

Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover

Running alongside the formation of the FBI, we’re shown his obsession with secrets and knowing everything about your enemies (which he believes are everywhere). The slightest criticism leads him to see conspiracies and get authorizations for wire-tapping without a warrant. Without strongly condoning or condemning his actions, the story focuses mainly on the life of a troubled and extremely powerful man. He’s shown to be ruled by the way his mother wants him to be and conceals his own secrets with the knowledge of everyone else’s, while the files he keeps for blackmail are numerous. 

Much as you might expect from a Clint Eastwood film, everything has a cold grey look to it, which is particularly noticeable during the flashbacks. The entire movie uses this to tone the story to match the emotionally introverted main character. It maintains its cold and almost objective stance for the majority of the movie, though still keeps it feeling as personal due to J. Edgar Hoover’s telling of his own story (which may or may not be highly exaggerated). The acting is strong from the cast and Leonardo DiCaprio gives a powerful and nuanced performance, capturing the little emotions without forcing them onto the screen. I think he’s actually much more believable and suited to this character than he was as Howard Hughes in The Aviator. What’s probably the weakest aspect of the movie is the old person make-up used on the main characters. While it looks convincing on Leonardo DiCaprio, the same can’t be said for Armie Hammer who looks like he’s wearing a rubber mask. This is a minor complaint and in no way detracts from what is otherwise an intense and interesting character study.  

J. Edgar is an intriguing look into the life of a man whose entire being was about secrecy and power. It may not tell you of the inner workings of his mind, but that might be something he wasn’t aware of either.

Let's Roar!: Cinema's Effect on the Spectator

The cinema is an important aspect of nearly everyone’s life whether it provides an escape or is just merely a good way to waste time on a Saturday. There's no denying that cinema plays a major role in modern culture. But what effects does it have on the people watching it? What's the relationship between the screen and its audience? There have been many theories and discussions analyzing this relationship and there are a few commonalities as well as stark differences. Bell Hooks, Laura Mulvey, and Christian Metz all have their own views on the subject and share similarities and differences with each other. 

Bell Hooks wrote an essay called, “The Oppositional Gaze:  Black Female Spectators.” According to Hooks, the cinema gets a response from the viewer, in this case being black people and more specifically black women, by allowing them to unleash their repressed gaze. By this she means that throughout their history black men were prohibited from looking at white women and the cinema allowed them to do this without fear of punishment. Hooks also notes that the film experience is not the same for both genders. Often women were more isolated watching a film because of the overwhelming presence of white characters; there was no one for them to identify with. The reactions got from the black audience viewing film are definitely active according to Hooks. It's an event that leads to what she defined as an oppositional black gaze and critical spectatorship which were the audience resisting and criticizing the white supremacist films to the point that they wanted to do something about it. These led to the mocking of television shows that were aimed at portraying black people in a negative manner and the development of independent black cinema. It was through what Hooks called the oppositional gaze that black women were able to choose whether or not they would identify the white female in films. Bell Hooks mentions that most black women who went to watch films did so “on guard” because of the lack of representation or derogatory representation of them on film. Hooks uses an example of a woman named Pauline who must literally imagine herself as transformed into a white woman in order to watch the film without feeling too offended.

Hattie McDaniel (Gone with the Wind)

This lack of identification made the experience of watching film drastically different for black men and women. Where black men were finally able to look all they wanted at those who told them that they were not allowed to, black woman had nothing. There was a character on a show called Amos n’ Andy named sapphire who was a representative of black women. The character was annoying and mean; someone that both white people and black men could laugh at. The other option for black female representation was found in the “mammy” characters that would wait hand and foot on their white masters. This kind of imagery and treatment of black people in screen (especially women) had a major impact on that audience. It reinforced the idea that women should be critical with their gaze and analyze films, eventually leading to making them themselves as part of independent black cinema. 

Laura Mulvey's essay entitled “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” focuses on a different aspect of the gaze and that is the pleasure that derives from scopophilia. Scopophilia is the pleasure that comes from watching people usually without their knowledge. The people become objects and are subjected to the viewer’s “controlling and curious gaze” (Mulvey, 713). This kind of relationship with the screen and the objects displayed on it make the viewing, as Hooks saw it, an active engagement. At least for the men. As with Hooks’ essay on the effects of cinema on viewers, it's different based on gender. And with this, the way it engages both genders differs. According to Mulvey, in terms of pleasure, cinema engages men actively and women passively. The woman is displayed on screen as a sexual object that's mainly used for spectacle while the presence of a male central character is used as a means to drive to story forward. Mulvey cites large production numbers such as those from musicals featuring a large number of women that if anything merely distract from the plot of the film. The man in the film is what moves the story and with him as the main character, the audience relates and identifies with him. The woman is the character that needs to be saved and made to be less sexual by becoming a possession of the leading male. Through this achievement and by the audience’s association with the male figure, the audience gains possession over her as well, fulfilling the desire brought from scopophilia. There are social implications from viewing cinema this way. Unlike Hook’s essay in which they are mainly racial, Mulvey sees them as part of a sexual experience as well as a form of advanced identification. Like an infant seeing its reflection in a mirror, the viewer watching the screen develops a recognition of the objects displayed an which Mulvey describes as “the birth of the long love affair/despair between image and self-image which has found such intensity of expression in film and such joyous recognition in the cinema audience” (Mulvey, 714).

James Stewart & Kim Novak (Vertigo)

Christian Metz’s essay also seems to describe cinema as actively engaging the audience. Metz describes the viewing process as requiring a considerable amount of subconscious knowledge of perception and truth. The audience is aware of what they perceive to be imaginary which is why they are not seriously disturbed by even the most extreme absurdities. In this sense, Metx claims that the audience identifies with himself. He's aware of himself watching something that's not real. Metz describes cinema as the most perceptual art form in relation to artwork, photography, etc., but it's also the most false. All the images that are being watched on a screen are not real, nor are they there. They are the shadows of the real images that made the film. Interestingly, like Mulvey, he compares cinema to a mirror. The cinema is a mirror that includes everything but the spectator so then he poses the question: what does the spectator identify with? The effect that the cinema has on the viewer according to Metz is one that puts the viewer in a position of supreme power. The viewer becomes “all-perceiving” (Metz, 697), as in the spectator is in no way displayed on the screen, but nothing that's displayed on the screen can exist without the presence of a spectator. It's with this in mind that Metz makes the statement, “it is I who make the film” (Metz, 697). Another aspect of cinema that the audience unconsciously identifies with is the camera. With all the movement that the camera makes (pans, close-ups, etc.) the audience never accepts that this is truly the viewpoint of another person. This is a camera and it's the eye that they can see through, or in the case of a conversation and a character’s viewpoint becomes the perspective given to the audience, then that audience automatically accepts that this viewpoint is the way that they can acknowledge that he's still present despite not being visible on screen. Also enforcing the idea that engaging with cinema is an active process, Metz, like Mulvey, brings up the passion that coincides with viewing cinema. The desire to see, and Metz references scopophilia, and the desire to hear are important aspects of engaging with film. 

Unlike Mulvey and Hooks, Metz doesn’t seem to distinguish between genders in terms of how cinema engages the audience. Metz is much more general with his viewpoints on the effects of cinema on its’ viewers. While all three would agree that cinema engages the viewer in a more active than passive way, they all see how this happens differently. Hooks explains its effects on a black audience and distinguishes the differences between the black male and female spectator, Mulvey also delves into the different experiences of men and women watching films. The two of them both acknowledge that women are often represented a certain way in films typically as objects meant to serve the male and male spectator sexually or in the case of black women not at all. The sexual aspect is seen again in Metz essay, but there's no mention of any discernable experiences between men and women engaging in viewing cinema. 

Prince of Darkness (1987)

John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness is a supernatural thriller about a big tub of snot. It begins with a priest (played by Donald Pleasance from too many Halloween movies) finding another priest dead leaving behind only an old key and a cryptic diary which leads him to a church where a shrine with candles that never go out is kept hidden. At the center of the shrine is an enormous jar of green fluid, the sight of which alarms him, so the priest teams up with Professor Howard Birack (Victor Wong) and his physics students in order to keep the great evil contained. Or study it. Or announce its existence to the world. Actually, I’m not sure what he expected them to do, but that’s the setup.

The setup is probably the strongest aspect of the film and the first half hour or so isn’t bad. Characters are introduced naturally and the reveal of the threat is well paced. The movie takes its time establishing the situation and the building the mystery, which has potentially apocalyptic consequences. They unravel the secret of the ancient books, decipher codes, and take in the bizarre surroundings. For a while, I was genuinely interested to see where the story was going. The atmosphere is emphasized through the serious tone and the way it’s filmed, with the majority of the movie being shot using wide angles, slightly skewing the way things look outside the characters. This goes a long way in building the feeling that something is wrong with the world around them. The sets are large and well designed, the shrine being a particular highlight. The combination of the lost shrine mixed with modern technology makes for a fun contrast. The central characters at first seem interesting and they’re given clear character traits and even a budding romance between two of the students, Brian (Jameson Parker) and Catherine (Lisa Blount), but this all dissipates before long, much as the attention paid to the science surrounding the supernatural events does.

Unfortunately, as the plot moves forward, the execution of everything built up to in the first part fails to meet expectations. The glowing green liquid is apparently the great source of evil in the universe, but all it does is spray itself in people’s mouths so it can possess them or turn them into zombie-like slaves. It also attracts bugs and violent homeless people, though I’m not sure why it does that. Homeless people just seem to flock to the church, killing anyone who tries to leave. There’s never any explanation for their actions either. They couldn’t have been possessed because everyone else who gets possessed is spit on first. The entire scenario raises a lot of questions. For instance, why homeless people? Let’s say the “negative energy” the green goo gives off somehow attracts them. Why doesn’t it work on anyone else? Why can’t the army of evil homeless people enter the church? And why is Alice Cooper leading them?

I always knew Alice Cooper and Donald Pleasance would somehow bring about the end of the world. 

Another major and painfully obvious issue with this movie is the stupidity of the protagonists. Professor Birack and the priest can’t seem to agree on what they should be doing, and the professor likes to withhold information from his team of students. These are the people he specifically chose to save the world, so you’d think he’d want them well informed. As for his chosen-for-intelligence students, they do very little besides make poor decisions. At every chance they get they like to split up, creating the highest possible chance of danger for themselves. I gave them a free pass with this at first, because they’re all skeptical about the whole purpose of being at the church, but it never stops, even after people have started disappearing. There are some baffling moments of stupidity like when students Brian and Walter (Dennis Dun) don’t notice the dead body in the room with them or worst of all, when soon-to-be-possessed Kelly (Susan Blanchard) comes to Catherine and shows her an ugly bruise. Catherine looks at it and the bruise has clearly changed into a strange marking. Instead of doing anything about this, she advises Kelly to take a nap. It’s later revealed –after it’s too late for Kelly– that Catherine had recognized the marking on her arm. If that’s true, then why didn’t she help her?! She could have said something! To anyone!

The entire last act is just your typical horror fare. There are some jump scares and violent deaths, though the real threat is the zombies of Satan, but all they do is spit. Despite being the harbingers of the prince of darkness and the end of the world, they’re not only uninteresting, they’re just not scary. I mean, these zombies have trouble getting through doors (some of them aren’t even locked). To accompany, or as a desperate attempt to make up for all this is the overbearing soundtrack (also by John Carpenter) which feels like it goes on forever, futilely searching for a melody.

Despite a promising opening, Prince of Darkness fails to deliver in almost every respect. It’s not scary, the effects are nothing memorable, and the stupid decisions of the characters are distracting. Even with its over-the-top and ludicrous story, the movie feels familiar and at worst boring. It’s depressing when a story that spends so much time explaining and incorporating metaphysical and scientific theories with religion devolves into zombies spitting on people. Be afraid.