Hanna

I enjoyed Hanna, but it was a film that relied on its style alone more than almost any I've seen in a long time. Director Joe Wright is known for his serious period dramas, but Hanna is very different. It's an action movie; a revenge thriller where the protagonists are always on the run and trying to get back at the person who wronged them years ago. Eric Bana is a former CIA operative who has been raising his daughter played by Saoirse Ronan in the woods, and training her her whole life for one mission, to kill a woman from the same organization responsible for her mother's death. Hanna is not only a very adept hunter and fighter, she's also unusually strong for her age and fluent in many languages. The secretive nature of her past and larger-than-life skill set hint toward the inevitable plot revelations, ones I won't spoil here but which are pretty easily guessed at and honestly not kept all that secret.

I think if I played fewer video games, I might have enjoyed the story of Hanna more. But as it is, the concepts it deals with are very familiar to anyone who's spent some amount of time with the kind of outlandish stories that games trade in, or just pulpy genre fiction in general. The craft with which the film is made doesn't discount the familiarity of what it's doing. I also wasn't really thrilled by the subplot where Hanna learns what life outside the forest is like and comes to regret her upbringing, which is another idea that's very familiar and is hard to make interesting anymore. Also, while Bana and Ronan are both good in the movie, I really didn't like Cate Blanchett's work as the villain. The American accent she put on was pretty terrible, and the character in general wasn't as interesting as the movie wanted her to be.

Where the movie succeeds though is definitely in the presentation. Wright definitely has a handle on action, creating some memorable sequences that don't rely on super fast cutting to be exciting, and he knows what he's doing in the personal scenes as well. Two moments that definitely stood out were a pair of long takes that were gripping for their entire duration, even though I'm sure I spotted where a cut was masked in one of them. Apparently they're a trademark of his, and while most people can hold a camera in one place for a while or even move it through a crowd, it takes a lot of effort to shoot scenes like this in that style. It definitely reminded me of Children of Men, even though they weren't quite that impressive. Elsewhere, I generally liked the look of the film, even if the use of color was a bit over the top and places, and the score by The Chemical Brothers was as interesting as promised. Hanna is certainly a flawed movie, but it's a unique one, certainly worth a watch if you like to see a different take on the action genre.

Finding Nemo

I feel like the first several Pixar movies were good but not quite exceptional like their more recent output, and Nemo sort of marks that transition to true brilliance. It's not a favorite, but it's really quite good, capturing the right combination of humor, excitement, and heart. I guess they really figured things out when they started making things sad. The movie doesn't linger on it, but the opening scene where Marlin loses his wife and most of his children is probably harder than anything else the studio had done to that point, and it works very well to inform the character for the rest of the film. Marlin searching all over the ocean for his son isn't a terribly different story from say, the toys trying to rescue Woody after he gets stolen, but the knowledge of that earlier tragedy gives everything a greater weight and urgency. You want him to find Nemo because you know it will destroy him if he doesn't. One of the best family relationships the company has done.

It doesn't take over the whole movie though, as there's plenty of opportunity for the expected clever action sequences and windfall of entertaining celebrity voices. Sequences like Dory reading the address by the light of an anglerfish and escaping from the seagulls in the beak of a pelican are a lot of fun, and while I think having famous people do voices because they're famous can be damaging in pointless, everyone here seems really well cast. Albert Brooks and Ellen DeGeneres make a good leading pair, it's surprising hearing a very young Shane from Weeds as the titular character, Willem Dafoe is entertaining as the gruff leader of a group of aquarium fish including Brad Garrett and Allison Janney, and you'll probably hear a few more recognizable voices at some point. It's a nice looking film if not as eye-popping as what they've done in the last few years, and it tells its story and wraps it up at a very nice pace. Not my favorite animated movie, but a pretty good benchmark for what family films should aim for.

Funny People

After creating two very good comedies with a bit of heart and building a movie empire as a producer, Judd Apatow returned last year with his third film, which has quite a bit more focus on sentiment rather than laughs. I saw a lot of people skeptical of his ability to pull this off, although I would guess most of them haven't seen Freaks and Geeks. I had no issue with the idea of Funny People, and it's successful in a lot of ways. The fact that it's not a great movie isn't because Apatow shouldn't try to be serious, it's just that a large chunk of the movie ends up being pretty unwatchable.

It's an odd thing, really. The movie's dangerously long for what could still be called a comedy, approaching two and a half hours. But Adam Sandler gives a surprisingly good performance as an actor and comedian who finds out that he has a very dangerous disease, and tries to get back to his stand up roots. Seth Rogen is his typical likable self, playing a much less confident version of himself who's struggling to make ends meet and gets hired by Sandler to be his assistant and help write jokes. Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman are both very good as his roommates who he must occasionally butt heads with because this movie is more dramatic. For reasons I'll get into in a moment, the movie needs a love interest for Rogen, and Aubrey Plaza does her usual sarcastic thing pretty well in that position. It was funny seeing the origins of Aziz Ansari's Raaaaaaaandy character, and tons of people make cameos as themselves, either in casual interactions with Sandler's character or in brief snippets from his fake filmography.

For the most part, the movie manages a good balance between the humor and the drama, with its great cast doing the typical improv-heavy vulgar conversation thing in one scene and seriously considering mortality in the next. There might be a few too many sad musical montages, but it never really goes over the top trying to sell Sandler's plight, maybe because his slightly self-destructive tendencies make him feel like a real person rather than just a sad sack trying to manipulate your emotions. So it's really disappointing when the movie hits the breaks on what it's been doing to spend like forty minutes wasting our time with a romance subplot. Leslie Mann and Eric Bana are both pretty good, likable actors, and they do a fine job in this movie. It's just that the part that they're in really doesn't belong with the rest. Everything else pretty much grinds to a halt as Sandler reconnects with Mann as the one that got away, as Apatow proudly presents his wife and daughters again, and then her husband played by Bana shows up to create a whole lot of awkward and difficult to watch tension. These scenes just keep going and going until the breaking point, while I was desperately waiting for them to get back to the real movie.

Eventually they do, once the scripts reaches its Time to Wrap Things Up phase with some predictable character development and resolution, although even being a bit rote as it was it was still better than what just came before. People reconcile and part ways as necessary, and everything ends just about the way it should. It's really too bad the movie went on that whole tangent, because apart from that I really liked it for the most part. As it stands, it's the least of Apatow's three films, though still worth seeing if you like the cast enough. I don't mind if he still wants to be sentimental last time, as long as he makes sure the script is a lot tighter than this.

Star Trek

As someone who's never given the Star Trek franchise much of a chance, this movie made me want to. It was somehow a prequel, sequel, reboot, and homage all in one, and they all managed to work. It seemed like it did a lot to make both series fans and newbies happy, and I think it succeeded in most areas. Most of the science and some of the plot contrivances are a bit silly, but it captures the spirit that seems interesting to me, of an interesting jaunt through the galaxy with exciting adventures that don't get too bogged down in what would probably actually happen, tied together by a likable cast of spaceship crew. It does what the Star Wars sequels failed to do for most people - retain the classic feel while modernizing the style and not taking the risk of ruining the set rules.

Without getting too much into details, the movie manages to set itself up fresh as a new series, while still remaining within the overall continuity of the franchise without erasing anything. It's a pretty clever setup, and it's all quickly and deftly explained in one scene in particular that I quite enjoyed. I appreciate that all the characters are highly competent and intelligent, because it lets them figure it out without dumbing it down too much or losing the audience. The way that the classic crew comes together in the course of a single mission is a bit convenient, but I just have to be impressed by the way that they accomplished everything they had to with the reboot while still having time for a pretty solid actual conflict to the story.

The villain's background and evil plan are where the film is at its weakest, relying on some extremely sketchy scientific babbling and a rather poorly thought out concept of vengeance, but in the end it allows for an intimidating antagonist that's at least slightly sympathetic in a certain way. The special effects and action are pretty good, with a pretty brisk and exciting pace throughout as Kirk gets the crap kicked out of him while the good guys always just manage to scrape by without getting obliterated. The pacing dips slightly with some unnecessary CGI creatures somewhere before things really get going towards the conclusion, but overall it was a fun, light piece of cinema as I couldn't believe that two hours had passed by the end. The cast was pretty darn strong, with everyone seeming to do a good job. I liked Quinto's Spock despite being sick of his face on Heroes, Urban actually worked outside of a crazed badass role (not that Bones isn't kind of a badass), Pegg was great for the short time he was there, and Pine made me like Kirk a whole lot. The whole movie is filled with nods and references to moments and lines from the Star Trek canon, and it's well set up for further cinematic escapades. I definitely look forward to a sequel.