Surprise, surprise, surprise, Gomer Pyle! Two great movies in one day! And we're only at the Ides of March!
Battle: Los Angeles: You got your military movie in my Sci-fi flick! No, you got your sci-fi flick on my military movie! Mmmm... two great tastes that taste great together!
HUZZAH! The year's first truly exciting movie (that I saw, anyway)! Certainly not the most original flick, and far from perfect, but it kept me on the edge of my seat and never dragged once in it's nearly 2-hour running time.
So, if you were wondering, yes. It's very much like Independence Day. Or as the guy behind me in the ticket line told someone on the phone, "it's that movie where they fight aliens. You know, like that Will Smiff movie." A perceived meteor shower turns out to be a fleet of alien spacecraft that park themselves along the world's biggest coastal cities and before we know why they're blowing us straight to hell so they can mine our natural resources. We fight back.
Now, I love Independence Day. It's big, it's loud, it's dumb as a bag of hammers, but I love it. And while B:LA's story (and some scenes) might be very similar, the execution of that story is so very not. In fact, I'd compare its storytelling to Black Hawk Down before I'd compare it to ID4 (yes, I just used that weird ID4 marketing tool thing that pissed so many people off. Deal). This movie is about the Marine Corps band-of-brothers unit that we follow through the movie and not about aliens blowing up iconic man-made structures and anti-heroes Slim-Pickensing the bad guys. I hesitate to call it a more "intimate" movie, but it's certainly not the far-reaching, grandiose, converging-plotlines extravaganza that was Emmerich's explosion-fest. Also, it's mostly in real-time. Once our Marines get dropped into LA I'm pretty sure it doesn't take a break and jump ahead for another hour, hour-fifteen. The tension this adds is pretty amazing, especially since our heroes are almost constantly being hammered by alien forces.
Speaking of the boys-in-camo, what a great bunch of likable characters we've got here. Again, maybe not the most original, and there may be a few too many, but they're fleshed out so well that it's actually sad when one or two or ten of them die (and no one is safe here, btw). B:LA does a pretty good job of introducing each and every one of them in the pre-game show- we see the day and night leading up to the invasion, and each time this sequence focuses on one or two individuals we get their name and rank subtitled on screen. Front-and-center is Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart), quiet, pensive, almost-retired, and still dealing with a tragic past that sows the seeds of mistrust in the other guys. There's 2nd Lieutenant William Martinez, still a little wet behind the ears, but obviously competent (the non-moron version of Lt. Gorman from Aliens), who looks to the far more seasoned Nantz for advice...
...you know, I could spend many paragraphs going through all the characters. I'm not going to. All you need to know is what I said before- they're all very well fleshed-out. Director Jonathan Liebesman does such a fine job of stressing the importance of military brotherhood without hitting you over the head with it and making it a needlessly OO-RAH!-heavy movie. If you want uncomfortable ass-kissing like that, re-watch Transformers. Actually, don't. That will only make you dumber. Go see this instead. Anyway, Liebesman. Yeah, great job, bro. A near-perfect mix of action, drama, and, oh yeah- sci-fi. Damn! I keep forgetting that bit. It's the right kind of sci-fi- the movie never spends too much time on the aliens, why they're here, or their technology. I mean, it does deal with that stuff, but only so much as is needed to logically further the plot. We learn as the Marines learn, which really makes it easy to feel like a part of the action. It reminds me a little of the War Of The Worlds remake in that way, but if we followed the military instead of civilians.
Something needs to be said for the sound design here, too. I saw it at Union Square in NYC and besides that fact that it was very awesomely loud, the sound design/mixing/editing was amazing. Weapon rounds buzzing past your face, alien craft hovering over your head, the crumbling of newly-abandoned buildings... it all added to the atmosphere like nobody's business. Again, puts you right in the action. Like the characters onscreen, you can never really relax while watching this.
So, while it's likely stuff you've seen before, it's amazingly fresh. And it never reeks of ripping off its source material. Battle: LA is undoubtedly an homage to both classic and neo-sci-fi flicks, as well as the best modern military dramas. What's great is that it never actually relies on, nor is hobbled by the existence of such films. See it. It's a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
8 out of 10 Ass-Kicking Marines
Rango: Holy Jesus-jumped-up-Christ, what a frakking CRAZY movie this was.
First, the basics: Rango is a pet chameleon that accidentally winds up out of his aquarium and roadside in the Mojave desert. He walks until he finds a town, comes up with a new persona, fools the locals with it, and becomes Sheriff. Right away he is tasked with solving the mystery behind the desert town's water deficiency problem, and quickly becomes the (apparently false) embodiment of the hope that the town needs.
OK. So. First off, don't let the posters fool you- this is absolutely not a kids' film. The little buggers can enjoy it, I think, but it's got death, sexual innuendo, existential crisis, drinking, smoking, talking roadkill, and guns, guns, guns. And, for the first time ever, we've got an animated movie that rivals Pixar in its visuals. I'll even go so far as to say it's on par with the last 3 or 4 films from Lasseter's behemoth. Visually, anyway.
Secondly, don't let me fool you- this is not some kind of exploitation film. All of those non-kid-friendly things I mentioned above are not the focus of the movie. They exist to further the story, not to give the movie empty shock value. An example- to assert himself as a force to be reckoned with, Rango drinks a shot of booze, then takes the cigar from the mouth of a big bad guy in the town's Saloon. Of course, he then eats it and burps it up, setting the bad guy's face on fire, so it's not like this is a serious movie. In fact, it's very old-school Looney Tunes in its execution, which suits me fine. Those weren't for kids, either.
I'm having a really hard time writing about this one. I know for sure it's great, but it's a little convoluted, to be honest. And I think it's because...
Rango was directed by Gore Verbinski- the man behind the Pirates Of The Caribbean flicks. And if anything is a detriment here it's the same issues that Dead Man's Chest and At World's End have- there's far too much going on for the frenetic pace to handle. And while I love those two movies (and, I think, Rango, too... but it's too soon to tell) I freely admit that even having seeing them a few times each, I still check out for 5 minutes here and there so my brain can catch its breath*. Same happened with Rango once or twice. It's like the old "too much of a good thing" thing. Just because you can pack all that originality, wackiness, and technical prowess into a film doesn't mean you necessarily should.
Of course, now it's sounding like I was disappointed in Rango. The reality is quite the opposite. I was expecting something on par with How To Train Your Dragon, or if I was less lucky, Despicable Me. What I got was... well, Toy Story 3 meets High Plains Drifter cut with a little Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (to keep your mind limber). And that suits me just fine. Add to that some fantastic voice acting (Johnny Depp, Ned Beatty, Alfred Molina, Bill Nighy, Stephen Root, Harry Dean Stanton, Ray Winstone, to name a few) and some seriously trippy visuals, and I'm sold. Makes sense that Rango comes from, in part, "Nickelodeon Movies." Those guys tend to take chances, right? I mean, I dug Nacho Libre. Oh. Right. The Last Airbender was theirs, too. Forget I mentioned it.
So, yeah, this review kinda sucked. But Rango most assuredly didn't. Go see it- you owe it to yourself to have your mind blown, even if you walk away a little confused, like me.
8 out of 10 Mariachi Greek Chorus Owls
*I think DMC & AWE are best watched either as one (very) long movie, or split into 3 parts. It's been awhile, so I can't remember exactly where, but if you stop around 2/3 into Chest (somewhere before the island wheel swordfight, for sure), take a break, start it back up and continue to somewhere around 1/3 of the way into Worlds (just after they find Sparrow... I think...), take another break, then come back and finish it out, it's easier on the noggin.
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