In Time

Posted on October 27, 2011 at 6:00 pm

In the future, according to this film, our currency will not be money but time. Everyone gets 25 years. Then the clock starts ticking down. If you have not earned, begged, borrowed, stolen, or inherited time, you die.

Everything is bought and sold for time. A millionaire has a million years saved up and can use them to buy a mansion, hire bodyguards, and postpone death, perpetually looking 25 years old. Everyone else lives — literally — one day at a time.

Writer/director Andrew Niccol likes provocative ideas (he wrote the similarly dystopic “Gattaca” as well as “The Truman Show” and the underrated “Lord of War” and “S1mone”) and this is a good one, well timed with themes that resonate with the 99%/Occupy Wall Street/collapse of the Greek economy issues. People treat and speak of time in this world the way we do with money. Prostitutes offer ten minutes in exchange for an hour of extra life. Toll roads charge in years. People speak of those who “come from time” (inherited wealth) and a nouveau riche character is spotted because he moves fast (“not in everything,” he responds coolly). Those who are used to wealth move very slowly, first because they have literally all the time in the world and second because the one thing that can kill them is a violent accident — or murder.

Justin Timberlake plays Will, a guy from the poor side of town whose fury at being unable to get more time for his mother (the three years younger than the real-life Timberlake Olivia Wilde) makes him determined to topple the entire system. Amanda Seyfried in a red Dora the Explorer-style bob is Sylvia, the wealthy girl he takes hostage until like a cross between Patty Hearst, Bonnie Parker, and Maid Marian, she joins him on a crime spree, stealing time and giving it to those who are running out. Cillian Murphy plays the “Timekeeper” who is chasing them, and “Mad Men’s” Vincent Kartheiser plays Sylvia’s father, who has all the time in the world and wants to keep it that way.

The production design contributes a lot to the story with retro cars and phones in the poorer communities and banks like citadels, and Roger Deakins’ cinematography makes the world of the story look bleak but not hopeless. Timberlake and Seyfried are both talented performers who are a bit out of their element in a sci-fi action film. The idea is better than the execution and it gets rather silly in the last half hour. Until then it is kept aloft by a timely concept that strikes pretty close to home.

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It’s Not Your Daddy’s ‘Star Wars’

Posted on October 18, 2011 at 3:52 pm

Just last week, I decided to watch the original 1977 “Star Wars” again and enjoyed it very much. I’ve lost count of how many times I have seen it, but I can tell you that when my then-fiance and I saw it in the theater, we sat through it twice. (How long has it been since you could do that?)

But, as an amusing and informative piece in Slate by Michael Agger points out, even a sturdy knowledge of the original trilogy is of no help at all when the younger generation is hooked on the latest iteration of the saga that takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away: Star Wars: Clone Wars. This animated “microseries” takes place between Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, the 4th and 5th of the movies as released but the second and third in the chronology. The animated series is hugely confusing for the generation that grew up on the live action movies in part because the focus is on Anakin Skywalker, who we know from all six of the previous films is not going to end up a good guy (“Nooooooo” notwithstanding) and in part because the good guys in this kind of dress like the bad guys we thought we knew. Just like the films, the series gives kids a rich imaginary world with many, many opportunities for memorization that will quickly eclipse the capacity of anyone over age 16. Agger’s crib notes are a big help.

Real Steel

Posted on October 6, 2011 at 6:57 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some violence, intense action, and brief language
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Human and robot violence, character badly beaten
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	October 7, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	January 24, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B004A8ZWW4

The robot has the heart and the human has to learn to feel again in this unabashedly cheesy but irresistible fairy tale about a father, a son, and robots who bash the heck out of each other in a boxing ring.

Charlie (Hugh Jackman) was a boxer until human boxing was abandoned some time in the near future. Now enormous rock ’em sock ’em robots get in a ring and fight to total mechanical destruction. It is like something between trial by combat, a computer game, a cockfight, and a demolition derby. Now Charlie drives around from one skeezy venue to another, promoting whatever bucket of bolts he can get to stand up and throw a punch. When his robot loses a match because Charlie was distracted by a pretty blond, he loses everything. He actually loses more than everything because he bet more than he had.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei5l3r1dV4I

He gets an opportunity to try again when a former girlfriend dies and he is left with their son Max (Dakota Goyo), with whom he has had no relationship. The boy’s wealthy aunt on his mother’s side (Hope Davis) wants to adopt him. Charlie agrees to sign over the boy in exchange for enough money to buy a new robot. It means keeping Max for the summer, so the aunt’s husband can take the child-free vacation trip he has been planning. Charlie planned to dump Max on another old girlfriend, Bailey (Evangeline Lilly of “Lost”), the daughter of the man who trained him as a boxer. But Max insists on going along and when the robot Charlie bought with the money he got is destroyed, Max finds an old sparring robot in the junkyard. He was never intended to be a boxer. He was not designed to throw punches, just to take them. But he has a “shadow” function that enables him to learn moves by imitating a human. And Charlie is the human who knows how to hook, jab, and uppercut.

Two things work surprisingly well in this movie. The first is the robots, magnificently designed and brilliantly executed. Real-life boxing champ Sugar Ray Leonard provided the boxing moves and gave each one of them a distinct style and personality in their approach to fighting. They are outrageously fun to watch. The second is the storyline. Part “The Champ” (made twice, both among the greatest sports weepies of all time) and part (of course) “Rocky,” the script is co-written by Dan Gilroy (the stunning fantasy “The Fall” and the uneven but intriguing and provocative “Freejack”). It may be cheesy but it embraces the cheese with enthusiasm and awareness. Jackman and Goyo bring a lot to their roles as well. We might lose interest in Charlie but Jackman makes us see that he is wounded, not selfish. And Goyo has just the right mix of determination and faith to show us that he has the best of Charlie in him and to show that to Charlie as well.

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10 Great Movie Robots

Posted on October 6, 2011 at 3:56 pm

In honor of this week’s “Real Steel,” here are 10 movie robots worth watching. The term “robot,” by the way, was invented by playwright Karl Capek in his 1920 play, “R.U.R.”

1. Transformers The first in the series was a great summer action film and I admit to tearing up when it looked like Bumblebee had been destroyed.

2. Robots An underrated gem, this charming film about a world of robots has imaginative visuals based on the work of illustrator William Joyce and a heartwarming story featuring the voices of Ewan McGregor and Halle Berry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57kshAyVrec

3. Bicentennial Man Think of it as Pinocchio played by C3PO from “Star Wars.” Robin Williams plays “Andrew Martin,” a robot who wants to be human, in this adaptation of a story and book by Isaac Asimov.

4. Forbidden Planet The first big-budget sci-fi film was inspired by Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” Leslie Neilsen stars as a spaceship captain to comes to a planet where a mysterious scientist, his daughter, and Robby the robot are the only survivors of an Earth colony.

5. Robot Jox In the future, wars are conducted by gladiator-style battles between giant robots in this film starring Gary Graham, Anne-Marie Johnson, and Paul Koslo.

6. I, Robot Will Smith stars in this film based on one of Isaac Asimov’s best-known books, the story of an investigation into a possible murder of a human by a robot.

7. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence Steven Spielberg completed the film begun by Stanley Kubrick, an uneven but ambitious and visually stunning story about a robot child. The scene in the robot junkyard is heart-wrenching.

8. Spy Kids: All the Time in the World 4D Ricky Gervais provided the voice for the robot dog, which writer/director Robert Rodriguez said had so many functions he was like a Swiss army knife.

9. Return to Oz This is a much darker story than “The Wizard of Oz,” so it is not for younger kids, but it is an imaginative adventure and Tik-Tok the mechanical man is a delight.

10. Metropolis This brilliant German expressionist film from Fritz Lang was made in 1927, about a dystopian future with managers in luxurious surroundings and workers condemned to live in dungeons. A beautiful robot modeled after a kind-hearted woman from the managers group plays a crucial role.

And the one I am most looking forward to is the upcoming film based on Boilerplate: History’s Mechanical Marvel, directed by J.J. Abrams.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Posted on August 4, 2011 at 6:53 pm

By the time they got to the line, “Take your stinking paws off me, you damned, dirty ape!” I couldn’t help thinking, “Take your stinking paws off the franchise, Hollywood!” Do we really need another apes movie?

We do have one, though, and it’s good. We can skip over the way it departs from the explanation in the original films that humans (spoiler alert!) wipe ourselves out with nuclear war. The explanation in this prequel is better, more chilling, more visceral. James Franco plays Will, a dedicated pharmaceutical company medical researcher desperate to find a treatment for the Alzheimer’s that is stealing his father (John Lithgow) from him. The tests on a chimp are promising, but when a demonstration before the company’s board goes horribly wrong, the program is shut down and the chimps are killed. It turns out the test chimp was pregnant and gave birth to a baby before she was destroyed. Will brings the baby home to his father. They name him Caesar.

He meets or exceeds human development for the first few years. The changes caused in his mother by the experimental drug were passed on to him. But as happened in the real-life story of the chimp raised in a human home portrayed in the documentary, “Project Nim,” when he becomes strong and the hormones of puberty kick in, he can no longer live with Will. He is taken to a facility where the animals are abused by the staff (including Tom Felton, “Harry Potter’s” Draco Malfoy).

Will tries desperately to get Caesar back, as he works on an even more powerful drug to improve memory and cognitive ability. But the drug has some devastating consequences as well, and the movie’s niftiest twist is the way the two elements of elevating the apes and bringing down the humans are tied together.

After more than two months of superheroes and giant robots, it is nice to have a science fiction/fantasy film that thinks it’s a drama. Light on bombast and unexpectedly tender-spirited, the story is grounded in Will’s wanting to hold on to his father, a passion born of love and devotion that recklessly spills over into hubris. Greed, ignorance, and cruelty of others ignites the conflict. We see how increasing intellectual development affects strategy and decision-making, including deciding when it is time to break the rules. And we are reminded of how ruthless the process of the survival instinct in evolution can be, especially when humans are no longer the fittest.

There are some nice touches for fans of the series. A chimp plays with a Statue of Liberty and Charlton Heston, star of the original movie, appears on a television. We see the origin of the insignia that becomes meaningful to the ape-run society. But the deeper connection is to more, well, primal themes of freedom and justice. I kept thinking of the storming of the Bastille.

Andy Serkis, who did the motion capture body movements for Golum in the “Lord of the Rings” movies, provides the acting inside the CGI. Serkis gives a performance that brings Caesar’s expressive face and eyes to life. Even the whiz kids at WETA special effects still haven’t licked the gravity problem, though. The computer animated apes never quite feel as weighty as they should. But there are some stunning images as they swing through the trees and crash through windows. And when Caesar stands erect and looks Will directly in the eyes we may find ourselves wondering whose side we are on.

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