Review: The Golden Compass

Phillip Pullman's novel His Dark Materials is currently being developed into three movies corresponding with the three portions of the book. The first is The Golden Compass. Chris Weitz (About a Boy) directs the likes of Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman, and others in this sci-fi/fantasy adventure about a parallel universe where people's souls live alongside human bodies in the form of spiritual animals called Daemons.

To be perfectly honest, The Golden Compass seems to be another way to capitalize on youthful audiences, and I'm sure that more youthful audiences appreciate the movie more than I did. The IMDb user rating details show that females under the age of eighteen gave the highest average rating for the movie, tied with females over forty-five. It's hard to say whether this means anything. Typically (personal observation), the ratings given on IMDb by young women tend to skyrocket higher than any other age/gender group.

I will say that the CGI in the film is rather exceptional. I was concerned about having realistic-ish animals talking. I generally hate movies where this is a major feature. No worries here. The problems with the movie come from other areas.

Though I've never read Pullman's novel, I get the feeling from the movie that it is far more immersive than the film. The film sets up an entire world's back story in a matter of ninety seconds. By assuming that the audience will buy into the fantasy aspects of the story simply by labeling the movie "fantasy," the filmmakers make a horrible mistake. I would have preferred an additional twenty to thirty minutes if it made the rest of the movie more enjoyable. I think it is this detriment that contributes the most to my lack of interest that followed.

As far as the cast is concerned, I think Nicole Kidman was probably the best-cast of the movie, though she seems somehow uninspired. Dakota Blue Richards, who plays the primary character Lyra, is decent for a child actor, though it's obvious she can't cry on command, which contributes poorly to a scene near the climax. I don't want to be too hard on her though. She's very young, and the script didn't allow for much character development. In fact, all the characters are rather wooden and flat.

The camerawork didn't impress me. When I watch an epic movie, I expect to see sweeping images that dazzle my eyes, or at the very least something creative. The Golden Compass is a photocopy of a cinematography textbook. And when most of a movie is made by a computer, you have free reign over the way it looks. This goes back to the idea that it's just there to follow a string of successful like-styled movies.

All-in-all, the movie's alright. It's watchable. I'm glad I saw it at the movies with my wife because if this were on DVD, I would have turned it off or walked away after half an hour. If that had happened, I would have misssed the only interesting point in the entire movie. There's a spot of brutality about an hour and a half through that absolutely floored me. It caught me by surprise. I won't mention here what it is because if you're gonna see this scene, you're gonna have to sit through the same forced "speeches for the sake of having speeches" that I did. Overall, this gets a boring 5/10.

Review: The Mist

In 1985, Stephen King published a collection of short stories and novellas called Skeleton Crew, the first and longest story of which is called "The Mist." It should be mentioned that "The Mist" was published five years prior in an anthology called Dark Forces, but that's beside the point because now, twenty-two years later, we have a movie version screening in mass release across the country.

Now, I'm a guy who likes me some Stephen King. I've read a great deal of his novels (though certainly not all of them), and seen most of the movies based on his books. It's a trend for me to not like the movies too much when they're based on King's more frightful novels. In cases where King's source material is more akin drama, I typically enjoy the movie. For instance, I didn't like Carrie or Misery, or even Kubrick's The Shining, but The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me (based respectively off of the novellas "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" and "The Body") are both somewhere on my top 50.

Directing The Mist is a man who's had some experience working with the kind of Stephen King movies I like. Frank Darabont directed The Shawshank Redemption back in 1994 and then The Green Mile in 1999, and both were movies I enjoyed. The Mist, however, is the first actual horror film based on King's work that he's directed, unless you count The Woman in the Room (1983), a television program that was part of a larger collection of King's horror stories. I had my doubts. Especially since The Mist has a lot of monsters in it and material that seems corny when taken outside the perspective of King's The Dark Tower series.

I was pleasantly surprised. The movie focuses enough on the human aspect of fear to allow for some monsters without feeling too cheesy. The story is actually about our perceptions of death and fear, and how they affect us, as well as how people can influence one another by emotion alone. Much potential corniness is done away with by underplaying everything.

The acting here is superb all around, but a special shout-out goes to Marcia Gay Harden as the demented Mrs. Carmody. An imbalanced Bible-thumper, she believes that the mist which has overcome the ordinarily cozy outpost of Castle Rock, Maine, is actually God's hand in the end-time. She begins preaching to the marooned crowd of shoppers, and, after they've seen enough to believe, they begin to follow her. She believes she is God's vessel for their salvation, and the group eats it right up.

The cinematography is fresh and interesting, with a great deal of subtle, but noticeable, quick zooms and pull backs. The camera is constantly moving, and handheld most of the time. It gives the audience the feeling like they're there in the mist as well.

The mist itself serves as a symbol of the unknown, and death, and this tale has more to it than just tentacled monsters and a few good frights. It's a good thing Frank Darabont got ahold of this story, and not someone else.

I didn't like the ending at all, but I don't have much room for complaint, since I didn't write the damn thing, but it still is the only thing that counts against what would ordinarily be a perfect score. I give The Mist an 8/10.

Edit: I am upping my score on The Mist to a 9. Retrospect shows that I actually really liked the ending, just not the way it made me feel. That's the tough thing about true tragedy, isn't it? It's the best way the movie could have ended, but it doesn't make you feel too warm and fuzzy.

Is Michael Bay able to save himself?

Alright, alright. It's no secret. Everyone knows that I hate Michael Bay and that for months, I have outright refused to see Transformers. But sometimes you have to be lenient and I can barely look at myself in the mirror now that I've thought this, but I might just have to see this one.

I was working today. One of my fellow Geek Squad agents got there before me. He put on Transformers before I got there. I usually hog the CD player so I can listen to Modest Mouse or the Shins or whatever obscure music that everybody except me hates that I want to. But today, Transformers was on before I could get my greasy hands on the A/V deck. So I respected his desire to have the movie playing during working hours.

Like I said before, the one credit I'll pay to Mr. Bay is to say that while he doesn't have storylines in his movies, or plots, or interesting characters, or engaging dialogue, or pertinent themes, or pretty much anything else that makes a movie a film instead of a flick, Michael Bay does have the uncanny ability to capture in every single frame of celluloid an eye-pleasing image.

These aren't particularly expressive images, nothing like you would get in a Coen Brothers movie or a classic film noir, but even after just glancing at the TV every few minutes as I walked from one customer's computer to another's, I was engaged. It pains me to say that, but I was. I will probably rent this movie. If I hate it, expect to see Michael Bay slandered on this blog like never before. If I'd had this blog back when I paid fourteen bucks for my wife and I to go see Spider-Man 3, you'd know the kind of retribution I'm talking about. You don't want me to go there. I don't even want to go there.

So know this, Michael Bay -- Spider-Man 3 was probably the worst movie I saw this summer, but I didn't see Transformers. If Transformers somehow manages to be worse than that heaping pile of eel sushi vomit (and in case you're wondering, yes, I do know what eel sushi vomit looks, smells, and tastes like) then you have created a masterpiece of crap which could rival many an Ed Wood movie. And you will be called deceptive. You will be called a con. Dragging me into a movie with appealing images only to discover the movie blows is evil. I will even invent a new word to call you, which will become synonymous with your name. Maybe... "decepticon." Yes, you will be labeled a Decepticon!

Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourself. The definitive verbal beating of all time may well be on the horizon.