All over the place today, comic fans are sitting around with funny smirks on their faces.  Finally one speaks up: “So what did you think?”

Well, as an avid comics fan and an extremely enthusastic fan of Moore and Gibbons’ Watchmen graphic novel, I obviously have a lot to say about the film–both good and bad–but I’ll try to keep it brief, and I’ll also try not to spoil either the movie or the book for anyone.

First off, I’ll start with some of the better things about the movie.  The opening credits were incredible: as someone who’s read the GN twice, it was beautiful and invigorating to see so many accurate portrayals of the Watchmen universe.  So what the hell am I talking about?  Well, after an opening fight scene, the credits rolled over Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” while on-screen we see a sort of summarized history of the Watchmen universe: the original heroes posing for photos, beating up burglars dressed in full black and white garb, and all sorts of cool little details, things that would have been wholly appropriate the the Graphic Novel.  My personal favorite: there is a short segment in which Andy Warhol’s famous Campbell’s soup can painting has been changed to a multicolored portrait of Nite Owl I.

Speak of Bob Dylan, another real highlight of the film for me was the music.  I loved the fact that they kept with the setting (the 1980’s) and used music that was very appropriate.  There was a lot of 80’s music that was just cheesy enough to get the point across, and the rest of the soundtrack did it’s job well, including Hendrix’s Dylan cover, “All Along the Watchtower” and a perfect use of Philip Glass’s “Prophecies” from the score to Koyaanisqatsi.  But what I was most impressed with in terms of the music was the score: rather than sticking with the all-too-common Iron Man style nu-metal-ish rock (you know what I’m talking about) that’s supposed to make the characters somehow more badass, Watchmen had some genuinely cool score music reminiscent of Bladerunner’s score by Vangelis–lots of moody moogs and synths.

As far as some little bad things: there were three things that were overdone a bit.  One that I imagine we’ll start hearing about soon is that Nixon’s nose is ridiculously caricatured, to the point that it distracts and detracts from what he’s saying.  It’s huge!  The second was the sex scene: it was just about 7 or 8 seconds away from being really tasteful and perfect–the music worked really well and the movement and camerawork really grasped the gravity of the event–but there was just one thrusting position too many, and it pushed it just barely over the edge of necessity.  The third, which any of us should have guessed, is the gratuitous use of slo-mo.  It wasn’t nearly as overdone as it was in 300, but there were definitely moments when it seemed quite silly to have the characters moving in uber-dramatic slow motion.

Now, the inevitable part of any Watchmen review is upon us: how did it stand up to the book?  Well, to be honest, the movie was pretty much exactly as I imagined it would be, and was pretty much as good as I had hoped; this doesn’t mean that I wasn’t disappointed in some respects, but it was all expected.  The film does, for the most part, a wholehearted job of capturing the universe of Watchmen, but even in 2 hours and 45 minutes the film could not capture the feel, the depth, or the complexity of the universe portrayed in the Moore/Gibbons masterpiece.  Most fans of the GN have already heard that they changed the ending a bit–don’t worry I won’t spoil it–and the ending isn’t so bad, and I even understand why they changed it.  If you’ve read watchmen, you know how freaking insane the ending is, and if you’ve ever tried to explain to someone what the catastrophic event was and how it came about, you know how complicated it is.  I feel like the movie would’ve had to have been at least another 40 minutes longer to really fully explain that ending, and there just wasn’t that sort of time, but the ending they replaced it with was pretty suitable.  But in losing those key little aspects of the book–the street corner microcosm being the biggest casualty, although this might be included in the companion DVD Tales of the Black Freighter due out later this month–the film loses a big chunk of what made Watchmen so mind-blowingly good: that this world was just as real as ours, that it had every sort of person in it, and you can’t quite sympathize or hate any of them.

Conclusion:

Worth checking out. Me and my friends that saw it all came out with a sort of empty look on our faces.  While some parts of the film really were a joy to watch, it just lacked the soul of the graphic novel and didn’t seem to blow any of us away like The Dark Knight did.  We didn’t all walk out of the theater making plans for the second viewing, in other words.

For Fans of: The GN who are aching for just a little more of that intriguing world; fans of slo-mo action; people who’ve never heard of Alan Moore.

You Might Not Enjoy if: you’re a stickler for the graphic novel; you hated 300; you hate comic-movie adaptations; you have a tiny bladder.

• Info: IMDb
• Watch: Youtube Trailer
• Tickets: Fandango

This unclassifable graphic novel explores notions of history, reality, Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, a town in England called Sunderland, and all the wondrous connections that fall everywhere in between.

I received Alice in Sunderland as a gift a year or so ago, and tucked it away on my shelf in favor of whatever my current favorite comic series was at the time.  Recently, I decided to give it a shot, and within the first 10 pages I was totally engrossed.

Alice in Sunderland is more or less a work on nonfiction.  There are several narrators that guide the reader on the bizarre and intriguing journey, including Bryan Talbot, the author, playing himself.  He, as well as the other narrators, lead the reader through the intertwining histories of England, Sunderland, Lewis Carroll and his masterwork, Alice in Wonderland.  The book finds dozens of strange and coincidental (?) connections between all of these things, many subtle and full of magic, myth, and the-truth-is-stranger-than-fiction moments.  At the center of the book is the triumverate connection between Lewis Carroll, Alice Liddell (the young girl that Wonderland’s Alice is based upon), and Sunderland (a small ship-building town in England that Talbot theorizes was the basis for Alice in Wonderland).  Also explored are the origins of comics and its connection to all of the other things.

The book can drag at times when its massive cast of both history and fiction becomes confusing, but for the most part it is written for the reader.  It flows very well, as each interesting topic lasts long enough to quench the reader’s thirst while generally not going on so long that it becomes boring.  Beyond anything else, though, the book remains interesting through its completely unique style, visually, in the written word, and in it’s general concept and structure.  The artwork always complements the words and often the blending of many historical pictures and new drawings leaves the reader to explore the intricacies of the pictures as much as the words.  Often Talbot ponders the book that he himself is writing and narrating, so that the book you hold in your hands fluidly becomes part of the history that Talbot seemlessly sutures with so many other things.

Conclusion:

An interesting and inspiring read! Talbot’s book has inspired me to respect research, to find the amazing in the everyday and in history.

For: Those interested in any of the forementioned topics, especially history and its effects on everything.

Not For: Those with little patience for history and nonfiction.  Those looking for a quick read.

• Buy: @ Amazon.com

I’ve been waiting for another great Sam Mendes movie since I discovered the beauty of American Beauty back in 1999.  I was intrigued by the unique look of the film when I first saw the trailer, and indeed Mendes works well with the period piece: the film takes place in the suburban 50’s.

Most interesting and noteworthy about the film, however, isn’t the art direction, although that is very well done; it is the brutal truthfulness that pervades the film.  Revolutionary Road is replete with moments that make you want to turn it off, but not in a bad way.  The gruesome arguments that Frank and April Wheeler (played with reality and passion by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet) have throughout Revolutionary Road are so striking because they are utterly real.  They are exactly the kind of arguments that couples have, and in the first two-thirds of the film at least, it seems that both sides of the arguments are equally valid so that both Frank and April are equally sympathetic.

My only real complaint with the film was that this quality, something that I am always delighted with, that both sides of the war are even and even justified, doesn’t really last.  About two-thirds into the movie, the sympathy factor begins to lean more towards April than Frank, and in the climactic and wonderfully dramatic peak of the film, one cannot help but empathize with April while hating Frank.  In the end, we feel sympathy for Frank, but only after the tragedy that the tense plot leads to.  I loved the fact that both sides were equal up until some point, and was disappointed to watch the balance change.

However, this doesn’t take away much from the film.  Of particular note is the character of John Givings, a mentally unstable adult son of the perfect old married couple that lives in the Wheeler’s neighborhood.  He is played spectacularly by Michael Shannon, and he completely deserves his Oscar nomination.  He plays the role of Shakespeare’s ever present fool: he is the crazy person, but only perhaps in the sense that he says what everyone else wouldn’t dare mention; he doesn’t just point on the elephant in the room, he rides it around and forces it to destroy all in its path.

Conclusion

A very good film. Not an uplifting film, but extremely truthful, a very well done exploration of non-conformity and the consequences of a society that places more on manners, money, and tradition than on creativity and individuality.

For: Those who can handle the truth.  Those who wish to dissuade their significant others from marriage.

Not For: Those who don’t like confrontation.  Those who wish for standard melodrama.

• Info: IMDb
• Watch: Youtube Trailer
• Tickets: Fandango

Criterion finally lets us see both the early and the late films of the French New Wave great, Agnes Varda.

Varda is quite an interesting filmmaker, somebody I’ve been anxious to explore for a few years now.  With this collection, I was finally able to see her first film La Pointe Courte which hasn’t been available on any format previously as well as three of her other films: Cleo from 5 to 7, Le Bonheur, and Vagabond.

The films:

La Pointe Courte is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in Varga, and it was her first film.  It contemplates and portrays many of her stylistic themes: a blur between documentary and fiction in a way not dissimilar from Italian Neo-Realism, a photographic sense of composition, and a careful attention to subtlety in her characters and their complex relationships.  While on the surface this is a story of a troubled marriage, the real subject is perhaps the small fishing village that is the setting; nearly everyone in the cast besides the husband and wife are non-actors, just people who live in the village who play themselves.  In a sense, it is a planned documentary with a rocky marriage subplot that teases out the political and social problems that the village faces.

Cleo from 5 to 7 is unquestionably Varda’s most famous film, and it is the one which most closely places her in the French New Wave camp with Truffaut, Godard, and several others.  Here, the story is more clear: a semi-famous pop singer, Cleo, is waiting (from 5 to 7) to find out whether she has cancer.  The film explores her character, largely through a recurring theme of looking: Cleo is always looking at other people, and looking at how they look at her.  It is about viewing and being viewed, and how that affects us when death is looming over our heads.

Le Bonheur comes three years later, a film about love and the love affair in a modern age.  It is a surreal, somewhat disturbing film, especially considering that the title means ‘happiness’.  It is a provocative film that probes the moral consequences of love.  This is also the first color film in the collection: always the photographer at heart, Varda makes use of the color in interesting ways, giving the film a “deceptively cheery palette” (back of the box) that belies its somewhat dark subject matter.

Vagabond is the final film in the collection.  It was made in 1985, and yet, rather than simplifying her themes and bowing to more typical stories and styles, Varda seems to have continued to push and develop her own style even further in the thirty-one years since her first film.  It is the extremely engrossing tale of a female drifter, Mona, who bums around the French countryside for no obvious reason.  She meets and has relationships with many different, interesting people, all of which influence her in some way or another and all of which are changed by her in some way.  As with all of Varda’s films, it is unbelievably beautifully shot, again in color this time; each shot could literally be framed and displayed as a phenomenal photograph.  This is perhaps her most accesible film, largely because the story is so interesting and impossible not to care about, and because it explores such interesting themes.

Features:

As with all good Criterions, you get a whole bunch of features.  But are they worth the price?  With La Pointe Courte there isn’t much: just a new video interview with Varda and an excerpt from a French TV show that she was interviewed on.  However, this can be overlooked simply for the fact that before this DVD it was literally impossible to see this film unless you knew someone who owned an original 35 mm print.  Cleo has a little more in terms of features, including three shorts, a documentary featurette on the making of, a gallery of paintings that inspired the creation of the title character, and another French interview show with Varda and (of all people) Madonna talking about the film.  Le Bonheur has similar features: several shorts, both documentary featurette style and fiction.  One of the shorts on this disc, Du cote de la cote, is perhaps my favorite feature of the whole collection: it is a wonderful, inspiring short film that explores and satirizes a French tourist trap.  The final film, Vagabond, includes a few more shorts, although unfortunately there are no fiction shorts on this disc–I was looking forward to seeing more of Varda’s modern work in this form, so that was a little disappointing.  On top of that, you of course get the gigantic booklet that comes with Criterions: this one includes one or two essays on each film, both by Varda and by film scholars.

Conclusion:

Worth it, but check out a movie or two first. With the $99.95 list price, you don’t want to be disappointed.  So I would suggest neflixing Cleo or Vagabond first.  If you enjoy them, and you’re interested in filmmaking as an art, then it’s worth it.  Not to mention how great it looks on a shelf!

For: French New Wave enthusiasts.  Photographers.  Criterion obsessors.  People with money to spend.

Not for: The impatient.  Those who don’t want to read subtitles.  Those who want to hold on to their money.

• Buy: @ Amazon , @ Criterion.com
• Watch: Youtube Trailer

Paul Auster’s 2002 novel is whirlwind of storytelling, but may not be for every reader.

I’ve been a big fan of Auster every since I read his masterpiece, The New York Trilogy.  He’s a master storyteller, and I often feel like he’s just some portal to the world of stories and he can’t help it that they just pour out of him so easily.

The Book of Illusions is a fantastic return to the themes that recur throughout most of his work: identity, metafiction, and impending disaster.  The book is the story of a man who’s lost his wife and children in a plane crash.  He becomes interested in Hector Mann, a lost silent-era comedian, and decides to write a book on him to take his mind off of his lonely life.  Doing so drags him headlong into a bizarre mystery that has been going on since the early 1920’s, which brings him danger and romance…but not in a hokey spy novel way–in a completely breathtaking way.

As with all of Auster’s books, they are super-easy to read, just a breathless, straightforward style of storytelling; the key to Auster’s work, and the thing that makes him so exciting is that while it’s so quick and easy to read, there is an enormous amount of depth.  There are so many layers to this book, many of which intersect with Auster’s other works: David Zimmer meets Alga, who tells him about the life story of Hector Mann, who in turn is a storyteller in the form of a filmmaker, who’s films Zimmer views.  The film he sees is entitled The Inner Life of Martin Frost, which, in 2007, Auster himself turned into a real full-length film that he wrote and directed.  Confused yet?  Good.

Not really confusing, just mind-boggling that Auster has created such a fascinating pantheon of characters and stories in so many great books. But, I suppose, one could see the endless connections that are seemingly pointless as…well, pointless.  And I could see that that sort of thing could definitely get on someone’s nerves…if you’re not onto the whole thing.

Conclusion:

Check it out! Even if you don’t like it, don’t be put off by the length; it can easily be read in a weekend.

For fans of: Existentialism.  Kafka.  The art of storytelling.

You might not like this if: You don’t like subplots.  You’re not into the whole interconnectedness thing.

• Buy: @ Amazon

Matt Wagner has built an epic mythos around the characters in his series Grendel.  See where it all started.

I’ve been a fan of Wagner for a little while now, having read the superb Trinity just recently.  I had tried to get into Grendel many years ago, and although I tried valiantly, I couldn’t understand what was going on.  That’s because Wagner has been working on Grendel for over two decades now, building up huge story arcs and characters that span centuries and continents.

So, where can the casual reader check out some Grendel that’s intelligible?  Right here!

The Grendel Archives collects the first Grendel story from Primer #2 as well as the first three issues of the actual Grendel comic books.  These stories are fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable.  We get a real sense right away of Wagner’s unique approach to storytelling and superheroes: most intriguing is the fact that Grendel, the title character, is the villain, although a pretty benevolent one–picture Batman as a ganglord.  But having a “good” villain isn’t so revolutionary; what really makes it interesting is that there is also a superhero, the Native-American-turned-werewolf Argent, a character whose backstory is equally as creative as Grendel’s himself.

The artwork is fun; it begs comparison to Frank Miller in some sections.  It has a very nice sense of action and movement, but I would say that Wagner’s artwork has improved since this point, becoming more his own rather than working in the same style as a master.

Conclusion:

Worth Checking Out! And with the list price at only $15 for a hardback, it’s a steal.

Who would enjoy this: Someone interested in Grendel or Wagner who doesn’t know much/anything about the mythos.  Miller fans.  Fans of ambiguous morals and crime comics.

Who would hate this:  Someone who only reads color comics.  Someone who prefers Golden Age style comics.

• Buy: @ Amazon , @ TFAW.com

Frank Miller’s newest work at DC is causing quite a bit of controversy, but what I see is the beginning of a great story.

I bought this largely because I am a huge Frank Miller/Batman fan, and though I generally dislike Robin stories, I figured I’d give this one a try.

It is fantastic.

I think it portrays a style of Batman story that hasn’t been explored very much, maybe at all.  This sort of story is in the vein of what Year One and Batman Begins has done first: Batman is new to the job, messing up, unsure of himself.  There is one key element that separates All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder:

Batman is having a blast!

He is totally enjoying all the chaos he is causing in the criminal and corrupt world, not having fully realized the responsibilities and horrors that come along with the job that he has created for himself.  Robin, however, is the perfect vehicle for this sort of evolution in his character: is Robin a good way for Batman to deal with his tragic childhood, or just a madman’s cruel way of extending his tragedy to another, innocent individual?  It isn’t just the reader who asks this question, but Batman himself, an issue that I hope is provoked and dealt with even more thoroughly in the coming volumes.

But this series doesn’t just deal with the Dark Knight himself: there is a great deal of storytelling about the beginnings of the Justice League (boy scout Superman, goofy Green Lantern, and ready-to-kill-Batman Wonder Woman) and of the Batman copycats (Black Canary, Batgirl).  It portrays a world that is just as enamored (or annoyed) with the new creation of the superhero as we were the first time we picked up a comic book.

All that being said, I think that this series possesses the same unbelievable fun that all of Miller’s work has.  Is it possible to read Ronin or The Dark Knight Returns without getting a sort of breathlessness, a thought coming across in your mind that says, “Holy ****, this is awesome!”  I think All-Star Batman and Robin has that feeling as well, and to have that feeling with Batman again is so exciting!

If you are a fan of Frank Miller, it might be impossible for you to dislike this.  If you are a huge batman fan: I think if you enjoy the idea of the origins of the crazy DC Universe and its characters then you will enjoy it, but if you like batman solely for the detective work or action (don’t get me wrong, those are two of the best elements of Batman), then you might not like it as much.

Major Con, though: as of now it’s only available in hardback and is a whopping 25 bucks.  Be on the lookout for the paperback, due on on June 6th.

• Buy: @ Amazon , @ TFAW.com

Aronofsky’s gone back to his roots in a way with this film, though I don’t mean in terms of the jagged, jarring edits of his first two films or even the beautiful cinematography and art direction of The Fountain. What I mean is that he’s gone back to the simple, dealing with a very low budget tale of a simple man.

The Wrestler is a heartbreaking tale of Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a professional wrestler who’s about 20 years past his heyday. The film largely centers in on the various relationships that The Ram has: his wrestling buddies, both young and old, who respect the hell out of him; the kids that live in the same trailer park as him who play video games with him and whom he pretends to wrestle with; the stripper Cassidy, the closest thing he’s got to a friend; his estranged daughter Stephanie; and his boss at the local grocery store. There’s a major plot point that has somehow stayed unheard of that happens near the beginning of the film that really puts a twist on what happens to The Ram, something that at first seems cliché, but which pays off, big time.

Mickey Rourke plays the part of The Ram just as good as you’ve been hearing: he plays the part with such normalcy, such pathos, such gritty melancholy that it’s no wonder that the story of The Ram so parallels the trials of his own life.  The supporting cast does a wonderful job as well, Marisa Tomei standing out in the daring role of the stripper Cassidy.

Aronofsky put together a fantastic movie, full of great, intimate moments that resonate powerfully on a very personal and emotional level. While not for everyone, it is a fantastic character study and explores a world that has been completely ignored in terms of literary or significant stories. Aronofsky and his writer, Robert Siegel, found a wonderful story in Randy “The Ram” Robinson, and it shows. One of the most powerful and moving films that I’ve ever encountered.

See it!

Who would like this movie: Fans of wrestling, I would imagine, would love this film. But also anyone who’s got a heart, I have to say. Those interested in the story of the washed up, common man with no flourishes, no clever little quirks, and almost nothing to live for.

Who wouldn’t like this movie: Fans of nonviolence. Impatient filmgoers.

• Info: IMDB
• Watch: Youtube Trailer
• Tickets: Fandango

What looked like a promising horror flick by Batman Begins‘ screenwriter quickly turned into a piece of sh-crap.

I was pretty excited about The Unborn.  Generally I don’t get my hopes up for these sorts of movies, but this one just happened to be directed by David S. Goyer, credited with the screenplay for Batman Begins and the story for The Dark Knight, two of my favorites, not to mention it had one of the best actors alive in it, Gary Oldman (second billed, I should add).  Besides that, the trailer was pretty intriguing: lots of creepy moments and very scary and unique creatures.

Well, the problem is, the movie was bad.  Plain and simple.

Unfortunately, it was most often just a vehicle for extremely cheap, not to mention predictable, jump-out-and-scare-you moments with very little substance.  The story often contradicted itself and several of the main characters just conveniently disappeared–and I don’t mean they literally disappeared, I mean they just suddenly weren’t in the film for no apparent reason other than to make it seem that the main character was alone.  That includes Gary Oldman, who, although second billed, was scarcely in the film for more than 10 minutes.

The Unborn just really hit all the tropes of the typical rip-off of Japanese horror films while simultaneously hitting all the tropes of the typical slasher/teen horror movie.  That includes the needless and yet constantly recurring pseudo-nudity as seen in the poster above.

Not to mention that this is the kind of movie that attracts really obnoxious people to the theater who will scream and talk through the whole thing…

Conclusion:

Not worth it. Just a bad experience all around.  Sorry Goyer, maybe next time.

For fans of: Mindless horror.  Crappy plots.  Genuinely creepy creatures that only show up once.  Panty-clad teen girls.

Not for fans of: Good horror.  A pleasant movie-going experience.  People who value their money!

• Info: IMDB
• Watch: Youtube Trailer
• Tickets: Fandango

View The Unborn’s IMDB page