Review - Elysium

Elysium is a sci-fi film that seemed to bear some resemblance to another film that came out earlier this year, namely, Oblivion. The trailer for this film suggested that it was going to be a "guy from the slums will take on the elite force of the rich and overthrow the system" type story. And, for the most part, it was.

Overall, this was a decent movie. From very early on in the film you can tell that the director had a clear vision of what he wanted this world to look like. The characters were strong and memorable characters, the design of Elysium was fairly unique and distinctive (well, for the modern audience anyway), and despite the presence of shaky cam, most of the action was fairly fun. This film will hold your gaze for the 2 hour as long as you like action or big idea films.

However, I did not find it a very satisfying experience as a sci-fi/action film. It flirted with powerful themes and had the potential to be social commentary, but it mostly gives you a backdrop to draw your own conclusions and speculate. They successfully build up a lot of tension, anticipation and curiosity, but nothing is revealed, and even less is resolved. A lot happens, but it feels like a lot more should have. Despite the intended message, this film leaves you in disbelief that Elysium is at all real. It feels more like a rich person's dream being interrupted by a poor person's dream, and that the natural forces of the real world would have prevented the scenario in the film from ever taking place. A rude awakening.

Nonetheless, I can't say the film is bad. It does try, and there were a few moments that were genuinely shocking and horrifying. I stayed engaged till the end, hoping that they would have tied up some loose ends. And even though they didn't, at least I wasn't bored by the direction they took the film. Elysium is not great even by other films from this year, but it's nowhere near the bottom. It is one of those films that tries to join the Elysium of the film world, but is stopped en route in the vast vacuum of space by a weapon of their own making.

Overall Rating: 6 out of 10.


The Spoiler-containing discussion

Lets start off by saying what I appreciated about this film. I really liked the themes in this film. There is some time spent observing how the rich people live on Elysium, and in particular the cure-for-everything "Med-Pod", which is an important plot device, and represents how health care is exclusive to the wealthy by means of class-based citizenship. The whole concept of having a hospital in your home is very similar to the public and private health systems in many countries.

The ending contains a scene where, after the class barrier has been 'broken' by hacking the Elysium mainframe, an army of autonomous ambulances docked on Elysium immediately rushes back to Earth to cure the poor who are viewed as citizens as well. While the 'equal right to life' bit is clear, they didn't take it to the next step and suggest whether those services are sustainable on the global scale. There is almost a communistic tone with that health care delivery, but at least this bit of the film did get me thinking a lot. We never see those ambulances at work until that ending so I suspect the implication is that there is "more than enough medicine to go around", figuratively speaking, but that the rich was just hoarding it all for themselves in reservation for the possibility of their own ailments.

Another strong theme in this film was desperation. Matt Damon's character faces three levels of desperation: physical (after being exposed to fatal dose of radiation), emotional (after failing to be able to reach Elysium after dreaming of being there for so long) and social (the system doesn't let him get to Elysium in a fair, legal way, but he both wants and needs to).

The physical desperation shatters his ethics, and switches on his survival instinct. He was on parole for theft in the past, but he has been trying to change his ways. But once he knows he was destined to die in 5 days he no longer cares and focuses on any and all means necessary to make it to Elysium to use the Med-Pods.

The emotional desperation almost destroys his relationship with Frey, his kind-of sort-of childhood sweetheart. His inability to keep the promise to bring Frey to Elysium makes him abandon her at a point, and if it weren't for the bad guys kidnapping them onto the space shuttle, they may never be able to reconcile.

The social desperation is expressed more universally, through the other poor people on Earth. How they use illegal vessels to enter Elysium in hopes to use their Med-Pods (I think) is a very real effect of desperation. They do not care that they aren't welcome; they just really want or need to be there. This is almost analogous to the asylum seeker boats entering Australia, except we have 'processing centers' in between so we don't simply deport them back to their home countries. So I guess we're at least a little bit better than Elysium! Just a little though.

I also kind of love how Matt Damon's character is dumb. He is not a brilliant scientist, and he isn't a role model. He wasn't trying to save the world, even at the end of the film. He did seek redemption before dying, but only for Frey. Up until he realized the harm he's caused Frey and her daughter, he really was just trying to save himself, and he never cared about the data heist itself or got involved with the politics on Elysium. He is almost like the Forrest Gump of Sci-Fi, minus the monologues.

Now all the good stuff about it aside, there is one thing that did leave me wanting more.


The subplots

There are many things at stake in this film, and few of them gets resolved in a satisfactory manner. At least half a dozen subplots are introduced, mostly to do with Elysium itself, but all of them are glossed over to keep the focus on Matt Damon's character. The biggest of these underdeveloped subplots, I would argue is the attempted coup by Jodie Foster's character Secretary of Defence Jessica Delacourt...which I'll just refer to as Foster anyway.

During a meeting between Foster and the president of Elysium, she establishes herself as a hardened commander who is not afraid to kill intruders to protect the sovereignty and peace of the habitat, and she hints that she has a past that involved intrusion by people from Earth harming her family's well-being when she questions whether the president has what it takes to preserve the way of life for Elysians. Ironically we know nothing about the president except he has more conservative views on how to govern, most of his character is dictated through Foster's description of his inefficacy in office.

Foster was so convinced that the current government is too timid and 'politically correct' that she plans a coup. With the support of their main Defence contractor, she plans to hack and reset the system to recognize her as the new president, overthrowing the current administration. While her plans are being thwarted indirectly by Matt Damon, she is suddenly killed off by her own agent, and when she is locked in the storage room with Frey, she refuses to be treated by her, and ends up dying.

I interpreted her ending to be one where she has a serious history with people from Earth that caused her to be so wary of them and even ready to instigate a war to be rid of them once and for all. This means that she died stubbornly believing she is part of the superior class, not willing to be in debt to an Earthling. Unfortunately we never really know her back-story so it's hard to appreciate her malice and stubbornness. Perhaps they did explore her character a bit more in an extended cut, though I guess she won't be as villainy then.

But outside of nitpicks, that's the only real issue I had with the film. It is a big one, but doesn't completely destroy the film. It's worth a view even if it's just to experience another vision of a futuristic present.


Finally, the nitpicks

• Elysium's Defence system is so unbalanced. I mean, they have the ability to lock down an entire region of Earth preventing anyone from flying in and out, but at the same time they've had illegal boats, I mean refugee shuttles, as well as another shuttle carrying armed 'resistance' people, who can casually make their ways into the rich people's homes as well as the government headquarters while it was on Code Red Alert? Also that force field that Agent Kruger (the slightly crazy secret agent) is so powerful, but why isn't that a standard feature on those bodyguard robots? I tried not to think too much about this because it was clear from quite early on their focus was never to create a plausible Elysium, merely a symbolic one.
  
• How exactly do they keep the atmosphere inside Elysium human-habitable? It seems like there isn't any shielding or glass walls fully enclosing the 'ceiling', as shuttles can just fly in and start landing without going through any gates, force fields or atmosphere.
  
• That exoskeleton Matt was equipped with. Now I think it's a cool idea, but I was wondering: suppose he did manage to get to Elysium, does the Med-Pod somehow cure him while that thing is drilled into his spine and connected to all of his nerves? I mean I had a picture of him trying to lie down in the pod and it starting to complain because he didn't remove all metal objects before entering what is essentially an MRI that also shoots miracles into your body.
  
• Shaky Cams. Please stop including this effect in movies. It just makes me dizzy and doesn't add to the film in most cases.
  
• Who was the father of Frey's daughter? I was just curious, because from the start of the film they establish quite a bit of romance between Max and Frey. Is Max the father? If not then who is he, why don't they ever mention it?
  
• The radiation chamber. This comes in one of the robot factory scenes where the door to a robot radiation chamber gets jammed and Matt was ordered to fix it, ends up getting trapped in the radiation chamber when it activates, and therefore receiving the fatal dose of radiation which is the catalyst for the rest of the film. But WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU EVER NEED TO RADIATE YOUR ROBOTS? Wouldn't that make them dangerous to be around you? Anyone who works with radiation please let me know if there is a single situation (other than for research purposes) would you need to radiate your equipment.
  

Review - The Wolverine

I feel like I've been quite negative with movies of late, so I'll try to be a bit more positive for the next few films (but doesn't mean I won't nitpick!). A few people also tell me I really should loosen up and turn off my brain to just enjoy a film. Now while I generally don't like films that are bad, that doesn't mean I don't have guilty pleasures.

For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger is a really bland actor and his movies tend to be full of cliches, with super straightforward plots and terribly uninteresting villains, but I absolutely adore them. I love silly action, one-liners and over-the-top stuff, but in moderation, and only if it doesn't ruin other things along the way (like Twilight did for vampires).

But just because I watch silly this doesn't mean I turn off my brain, I think enjoying a film while examining what makes it good (or bad) is part of the movie-going experience. Films are a form of art, a means of self-expression, while movies are a form of entertainment. I examine the film aspect while enjoying the movie aspect, and sometimes I have to blur the line because I want to see past what is presented to recognise what the directors, producers and actors intended.

Now that I've gotten this off my chest, onto the film.

The Wolverine is the second spin-off of the X-Men franchise focusing on Logan/Wolverine (portrayed by Hugh Jackman again). Premise? After the events of X-Men 3, where Logan was forced to kill Jean, his lover, he is haunted by the guilt as well as by the deeper prospect of seeing every person he ever cared about die as he continues wandering an eternity with no purpose or identity other than a killing machine. He is then invited by a man who he once saved to Japan, who is now a powerful figure in the technological, corporate and political scene, and offers Logan the greatest gift an immortal man could ever get; mortality.

I'm going to be very brave here, and claim that this is my favorite X-Men film so far (beating out X-Men: First Class). Perhaps my sentiments will change over time, but as I am leaving the cinema fresh in my mind, I can safely say this film was a great experience.

Now having said that, this film isn't perfect. Is the plot predictable? Yes. Are there plot holes or things that just don't make sense? Yes. Are the themes and ideas explored by this film deeper or stronger than in the other X-Men movies? No. But it got one thing really right, and that is the characters (well, most of them).

If you are a seasoned reader you would know that I really care about character development in films, especially if they are a sequel. I feel that being able to relate to or immerse yourself into the character's perspectives on their constructed worlds is why we often want to watch movies. We want to be taken away to an alternate universe where we can do fantastical things or be part of something epic, tragic, dramatic, exciting, or even erotic.

Characters in the story are the vessels that transports us into these worlds and  scenarios. And so if the studios have the audacity to make a sequel to a spin-off film focusing on just one character from the story continuum (imagine Minions 2, Puss in Boots 2, Supergirl 2, The Scorpion King 2 etc), they darn better get it right. And in my opinion, they did so admirably for Wolverine (the character, not the overall movie).

I personally love Hugh Jackman's take on Wolverine throughout all the films. His character has a tragic backstory, and so his character is also tragic. He seeks purpose, redemption, justice, escape, humanity, anything to compensate for the brokenness and animalistic side he carries, especially after being alive for so long. In this film he is pushed further down that path of tragedy to a point where I would say this is as depressing as the character can get. The drama is theatrical, almost Shakespearean, his development as he tries to sort out his existential dread in the midst of solving a conspiracy plot tied to his past and his mutant ability is so intriguing, half the time I forget that this was a superhero movie. He is moral on his own terms, is stronger in weakness, and strongest when protecting the innocent.

The other characters were intriguing too. There are many scenes where the film slows down, detours from the plot to focus more on growing the relationships between the main characters as well as respecting the Japanese cultural backdrop, like the way of the samurai, honor and tradition. There is a lot of atmosphere and serenity in the middle section of the film that I enjoyed. Honestly I really didn't expect so much of this for a film about Wolverine.

As for the action scenes, some are good, some are in fact quite fun, some are okay, and some are hard to watch because of the shaky camera effect modern filmmakers occasionally have a fetish with. But the best fight scenes are the ones where they pause between the punches and katana swinging to show the emotions and thoughts going through Wolverine's mind. They are unspoken words as well as unspoken thoughts. His revelations are expressed as raw emotion, an intense stare at his opponent saying "I know exactly what I am going to do with you. Try me."

The only real thing that I found disappointing is the plot itself, and while for the first half the mystery and complexity of everything happening and unraveling keeps you engaged, the ending, what it all builds up to from the story perspective, is a bit weak. It's the type of ending that you probably could've seen coming based on the events in the first 15 minutes, but deep inside you really hoped they would do something differently, that they would have a smarter reveal. So even though what actually unravels does make sense, I thought there's many ways they could've ended the film that could've made this an even more satisfying film. Some of the villains are also so blunt, not fully fleshed out and just end up feeling like a one-dimensional cardboard cut out of the word "Evil", but not all of them. As it is, the film probes very interesting ideas but doesn't follow through all the way. They return to the status quo so that more X-Men films can be made!

I think I won't have a spoiler-discussion section, because I highly recommend this film and would rather have conversations with people about it face to face. If you love X-Men, or superhero movies in general, or a good film, or even just something that is set in Japan, this is very worth checking out. There is so much about Japan in this film I feel like teachers should show this to their Japanese classes; your students will love you for it!


Overall rating: 8 out of 10.


Just the nitpicks (spoilers)

• For the majority of the film, the Japanese characters speak Japanese to each other but English to Logan. But randomly there will be a few stray scenes where two Japanese characters would suddenly switch to speaking English with each other in the absence of caucasians. Especially between the Yashida family members.
• I don't like how Logan ends up sleeping with Mariko (the girl he was trying to protect from the Yakuza). I mean you can sort of see it happening from the very first scene their eyes meet, next to her dying grandfather's bed. But in between his dreams of ex-lover Jean and trying to fend off the bad guys, it feels a bit troubling, given that you know, Logan is 100 years old and Mariko looks like she is still an undergrad student. They have like nothing in common except her grandfather. I mean I like them both as characters, and Mariko is gorgeous, and if not for the X-Men backdrop, them getting together seems natural (definitely a better love story than Twilight). I just thought it would have been more powerful if he actually resisted the urge for once. Maybe that's the point; his animal instincts are strong. Alternatively, let him choose mortality, so he can commit to a real relationship for once.
• During the pre-climax scene, Logan attempts to remove the healing-factor-removing-spider-bot by performing surgery on himself to extract the spider by hand. He immediately works out how to operate the really high-tech scanner, then proceeds to rip open his cage during his vulnerable state. Even if I can buy that, how on Earth did that spider floating and tapping on Logan's heart inhibit his healing ability? I thought that ability is controlled by the brain? Whatever.
• That mutant with the ability to spit venom is so lame! You can tell she is one of the main villains from the first/second scene you see her, but her motivation is never made clear, especially why or how she is sort-of self-interestedly helping grandpa Yashida. What does she get out of the whole deal? Money? I don't read the comic books, so I don't know whether she does more in those stories, but judging by the movie alone you could have made this film without her and lose nothing. If she was secretly Mystique all this time, that might have tied in better to the franchise, but nope, she's a throwaway and I doubt we'll see her again.
• That Mecha suit revealed at the end is just...wow...suspense of disbelief completely gone. It's just too extreme and out of place compared to the rest of the film. It almost felt like someone else decided to take over direction halfway and say "you know what this film climax is missing? That bad guy from Iron Man 1, only lets make him Japanese!"
• From my understanding, Yukio is not a mutant in the comic books. Her precognitive abilities added in this film seems pointless, or underutilized. How could the Yashida family have brought her in from the slums, and not eventually recognize what a valuable member of their empire she would be for the mutant-genetics research Yashida seems to be obsessed with. Maybe she never revealed to anyone else what she could do until Logan.

Review - Epic

The 2013 summer season of Hollywood movies has been underway for a while now, but in Australia, the animated features are just starting to come out (Monsters University and Despicable Me 2 in a week's time). But one did come out a lot earlier than its competition: Epic. When I saw the trailer for this I was very tempted to skip it because it just looked like a Brave rip-off. Also the anthropomorphic forest kingdom premise in the trailer seemed eerily like FernGully, Avatar and The Borrowers (or for Miyazaki fans, Arrietty). Nonetheless it was the most promising film in theaters to watch before the big two is coming out next week, so fill up my popcorn bucket! :)

Epic is from the same studio that produced the shaky success of Horton Hears a Who, Robots and Rio, none of which are as financially successful as its flagship franchise Ice Age (whose quality has declined with each sequel). I had my reservations of whether they were even in the same league as Disney/Pixar and Dreamworks and will ever able to produce the same level of humor, emotion-wrenching story-telling as these two rivals have in recent years. And in my opinion, they're getting there with this film. in fact, given how sub-par the most recent Pixar films have been you could even say that on a good day, they're comparable.

Epic is a story about Mary Katherine, a girl who is trying to reconnect with her estranged father after her mother passed away, but inadvertently gets reeled into the world of tiny humans her father has been unhealthily obsessing about and trying to prove its existence. Through all the high flying adventures and fast-paced action, she learns about...hmm...family is important?

I'm a bit tired and busy this week so no spoiler/nitpick section this time. What I can say is this: it has lots of creativity, imagination and intelligence packed into it. You can feel there is effort placed at every level, and that the producers really wanted to tell a timeless tale but updated to stay relevant. However the very one thing it tries to teach throughout the film is perhaps the main thing the film fails. There are a lot of pacing issues, a lot of inconsistencies, lots of modern day references and slangs littered throughout. The film also suffers from not knowing what it truly wants to be and so you feel like it's the surprise offspring of Disney, Dreamworks and some computer graphics student's honours year project.

But overall, it is exactly what kids in 2013 will love and can relate to. Their parents should find the film a pleasant experience as well, since there are some family themes embedded and a surprisingly touching undertone with the main character and her father, even though he doesn't get much screen time. Epic may not be a film that will be a classic in the canon of must-watch Animated features, but it certainly surpassed my expectations, and, for the most part, is an epic film.


Overall rating: 7.5 out of 10

Review - The Call

The Call is my first true thriller/suspense film I have watched since Panic Room. I rarely watch them because they rarely provide the 'thrill' or 'suspense' the namesake suggests. Paranormal Activity being the least effective of these, and perhaps Stephen King's stories-made-to-film being the more effective ones within the genre for me. Nonetheless I haven't checked out a thriller for a while so I decided to give this one a try in place of tired alternatives currently showing in theatres near me.

The premise? Jordan is a 911 operator who was traumatized by directly witnessing her failure to help one of her callers out of trouble, and when the same person attacks again, she makes it a personal mission to stop him from getting away.

For a film that claims itself to be a suspense, only near the end did I find myself occasionally at the edge of my seat. Rather, I think The Call is better described as high-stakes mystery solving. There are elements in this film that are quite baked, lack of character design, and mostly weak ideas recycled from other films and even television shows (in particular Dexter), but the execution of some scenes and Halle Berry's performance fully justify for the rest of the film.

The creative use of camera focus, the film's heavy investment in Halle Berry's character and sparing use of one-liners pushes this film into the realm of high-concept films, but most audience would probably be deprived of these subtleties due to the rapid editing techniques chosen to supposedly create tension, but really just interrupts us holding our breaths. It also offers an unclear or unconvincing message which I couldn't really take home.

Anyway. For thriller/suspense addicts, this is a lighter but zesty choice for a night screening at home, but I wouldn't recommend to see in the theater as its suspense is not grounded in sound effects or gruesome imagery, which is unfortunate in my opinion.

Overall Rating: 6 out of 10.

Spoilers Ahead!

Halle Berry

Basically everything good and bad about this film can be summarised by looking the character of Jordan. The opening sequence of this film shows what happened 6 months earlier, and quickly establishes the personality, character and role of Jordan in her work environment. It introduces a whole host of character we can recognise by their stereotype relationships to the main character (friend-colleague, boss, boyfriend, boyfriend's friends, etc). These characters are glossed over so quickly and given such a placid script it is hard to care about them. Perhaps that was the director's intention but that's an awfully large gamble that we like the main character.

And this type of gambling pops up again with the next victim Casey (Abigail Breslin) who we (and Jordan) follow through the rest of movie after the time jump, just as we were given seemingly unrelated scenes of her going girlfriend-shopping, and is suddenly launched into a main character role after being kidnapped. But since our brains hadn't decided if we needed to pay attention to her up till that point, it is hard to recall her face and personality when it's so dark in the trunk. And again, her personality didn't matter except for her transition from the "I'm afraid, help me!" to the "I'm a strong woman capable of defending myself", which only works in a few moments.

Jordan is also the lone wolf protagonist in this film. This is the character whom, when the system fails, must abandon the system to solve the case by some other rogue means. Hollywood action films love exploiting this template till we're tired of it, but here it actually works for the better instead of making me want to rub my face with sandpaper. The ending does paint a few darker streaks in her character which I enjoyed, as it shows how ethically ambiguous people in the police force can be. They are humans firsts and public servants second. And judging by the tone of the ending, it almost feels like the intention was to leave it an open-ended question of whether the girls had the right or moral justification to leave him for dead like that.

One of the big opportunity this film discards was fully exploring the psyche of the serial kidnapper/killer Michael (Michael Eklund), and giving him and Jordan a few more lines. The film leaves enough clues about his character/motivations by trailing the police officers who raid his family's house, and by showing his 'process' with his victims. But these scenes passes so quickly, I think the screenwriter's only interest was to create an artificial path for Jordan to be able to sneak in and save Casey.

The locus of this film is really Jordan, and where she is written well, the film works, and where aspects of her are overlooked or poorly scripted, the film falls apart and sucks us out of the story. Casey doesn't leave an impression, while the serial killer does, and Jordan's boss is perhaps the only other person that does as well, mostly because for half the film it's hard to gauge where on the good guys/bad guys spectrum she sits on, and her personal relationship with Jordon. Her professionalism in spite of the situation is surprisingly compelling, and I was surprised they just cast her aside after she sends Jordon home. No commentary or deeper message?


Disproportionate suspense

As I mentioned, I don't watch a lot of suspense/thriller films, so I may be a bit harsh in how I view these films and perhaps not understand why they exist. I find that people who watch different genres of films tend to be filling some sort of philosophical gap in their life. Those who like comedy tend to have unhappiness or disappointments in their own lives. Those who like action tend to have overprotective/restrictive parents, and those who like fantasy/sci-fi genres tend to have social anxiety.

Of course this is a generalisation that no longer applies when put in context, but my issue is that I don't know what 'stereotype' of people tend to watch thrillers/suspense. I have friends of all sorts that enjoy Silence of the Lamb, so it's really hard to pin down what part of our emotions or life does it compensate for. Do people just like subjecting themselves to tension because their lives are too relaxed and easygoing? Does it help us mold our own survival instincts?

In any case, this film does provide the suspense they want, but in an uneven distribution across the film. There are like 3-4 tense moments almost consecutively, not allowing the audience to become satisfied, and then 20 minutes goes by without another tense scene because it's just 'clockwork CSI stuff happening' but not 'something horrible might happen any moment'. So it doesn't cue the audience to get suspenseful; it just kind of throws it at you before you're ready, leaving you to wonder "was I meant to be tense just then?"

6 months of guilt 

A lot of what happened to Jordan between in the 6 months time jumps are summarized by Anxiety meds in her locker and her retasking as an trainer instead of an operator. All we are shown is that she is still on the road to healing and self-forgiveness. It is effective in itself, and her redemptive arc isn't contrived, but something still feels disconnected.

On the way home I did think about it and it finally hit me; her redemption is at the cost of being a role model protagonist. It rings closer to home when I thought about the ending to Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins. In that film after seeing how Bruce grows and embraces his avatar to be a symbol for justice, we expect him to make a righteous decision when fighting Ra's al Ghul on the train. But no, he decides to just let Ra's die even though he could have saved him and handed him to the police force. His "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you either" was not a neutral stand morally speaking. In fact, he did indirectly kill Ra's since he instructed commissioner Gordon to take down the tracks so the train wouldn't make it to Wayne Tower. So in fact he broke his 'one rule' (The Dark Knight) very early on in his career as Batman. It wasn't even a dilemma, it was simply "something that had to be done and there was no other way I could have done it".

So back to this film. Jordon preaches several principles as a 911 operator to the interns/newbies, including "don't ever make a promise", and "don't get personal". Yet she broke both rules and yet everything worked out well for her and Casey. Where does that take us except nowhere? This type of message which makes us think but provides contradicting signposts and ambiguous conclusions we could draw, is what made the film surreal and hard to take fully seriously. In many ways the world on the 911 operator's side of the conversation did fascinate me, and Brad Anderson (the director) seemed to have done his research when trying to represent the real people in this profession. But with how this story takes a dump on the 911 operator's principles, rules, processes and purpose, all I can say is that they'll have to call me again to clarify what they were trying to say.

Maybe I'll take a look at this film again in 6 months and see how it holds up, and update this review if I've been unfair; my reviews have been more rants than fair analyses lately. Maybe I should try giving it a few more days to ponder before writing...though time is always against me (which was also the point)! >.<


Finally, the nitpicks

• While it is understandable that Jordan was deeply affected by her failure to help a girl from the prowler 6 months ago, why was that girl special compared to the other victims/PRs she had to deal with everyday? I would've thought suiciders and medical emergencies are equally serious and life-threatening.
• Apparently when there's a kidnapping happening, the other 911 operators are allowed to stop answering their 911 calls to stay tuned to what's happening with Jordan's. 
• When Jordon gives a tour of her workplace to some interns/students, it is implied that "The Hive" (the 911 call center) handles all the emergency call cases across greater Los Angeles. Given that LA has a population size of 3 million or more people, I would've thought they needed more people than the dozen or so staffs to handle the influx of 911 calls. And given they can seemingly choose to leave their station and go to a 'quiet room' at any given time, the caller queue must be super long!
• Who on Earth is Terence? This guy calls 911 so many times that the staff recognises him and knows his issues aren't emergencies, but shouldn't he get in trouble for holding up limited resources to respond to real emergencies?

Review - The Host

When I saw the trailer for this movie and did some research on the book, I developed some expectation for this film. Despite knowing that it is by the same author as the Twilight series, I thought this film had a shot of becoming something more than its source material. This film had a lot going for it; a visionary director Andrew Niccol (who directed Gattaca, The Truman Show, S1m0ne and The Terminal), an actually talented rising star Saoirse Ronan to play the title role, and a sci-fi story I honestly wanted to see done in a big budget film.

The idea of extraterrestrials invading Earth by possession of our bodies and minds is nothing new, but I really like this premise, and to me the defining work for this sub-genre was Invasion of the Body Snatchers. If you haven't seen the latter film I highly recommend you check it out from the video rentals (not sure if they'll stock it though). I loved this film though I only watched it 30 years after its release, and I really wanted to see this concept revived and explored in the psychological dimension I hoped this film would explore it while using the invasion aspect to keep me in suspense.

Well, the movie does try, and fail miserably. From a movie sense, I would argue that this was far worse  as entertainment than Twilight, and amongst the worst in terms of character driven stories I've seen on the big screen. But its biggest sin was not stupidity, plot holes or unconvincing character. It offended me the most because it took everything great about Sci-Fi films and sterilized the script till it became nothing more than a backdrop to present a soap opera played in slow motion.

A few people already warned me against seeing it but I really wanted to experience the film myself before I can dismiss it. I would say regardless of whether this film turned out good or bad or to my taste, I needed to see it anyway to end my curiousity.

An interesting world abandoned for uninteresting characters.

(spoilers alert...sort of)

As I type this I literally deleted 5 paragraphs of my draft because I couldn't elegantly explain what a betrayal this film was to the Sci-Fi genre. So lets try to do this as simply as possible.

Science Fiction genre films invite us to explore a world constructed from an author's creative interpretation of where science could one day take us, and placing characters in those worlds we hoped to see (or never see) become our reality, but has not yet come to pass. This is why Science Fiction has been saturated by ideas about our future, about the possible, the probable and the plausible. In the sub-genre of Apocalypse and post-Apocalypse, the stories are almost always about seeing how the human condition can endure in the harshest living conditions, against the mightiest and deadliest of foes, and come out on top through ingenuity, courage and sometimes, simple faith.

The Host invites us to enter a world where an alien race has invaded Earth by assimilating into humans, bringing with them their technologies far beyond that of Earth's, and providing an easy indicator of who is human and who is not. However the scenes showing a changed world counts for less than 20 minutes of the 2 hours we sat through, where the other 100 minutes we're trapped with Wanderer/Melanie in the desert cave and talking with other people and talking with herself.

The first 10 minutes where they spew out expositions and character back stories, and the last 10 minutes where you start seeing how Wanderer changes sides to help the humans, is probably the only "Sci-Fi" bit of the whole film. In between we get 1 car chase scene using Earth technology, we get a few small talks about Wanderer's background, and a small reveal about The Seeker's motivations for finding and subduing the human race. Then it's more sitting around, strolling in the cave, farming and avoiding detection from the helicopters overhead.

We are presented the opportunity to explore a post-invasion world where humanity has been bettered by the removal of humanity itself. And it is pushed aside so that we can have a 'character'-driven story. I say character quote unquote because there really isn't much character in this film. The interactions between Wanderer, Melanie and The Seeker has a few (very few) good moments, the rest of the humans and Souls are completely forgettable and unimportant to the story. The romance Wanderer/Melanie shares with Ian and Jared is unconvincing, the uncle is cool but he doesn't really develop much as a character, and the younger brother, well, he's not that bad an actor is the only positive I've got. 

Andrew Niccol manages to get his hand on a fairly decent cast and does almost nothing with them. Nothing substantial happens in most of this film. There really isn't much tension, there isn't much at stake, and even the climax lasted less than 2 minutes, then we drag on the resolution for another 20 minutes before the film ends on an unsatisfactory note. The scene where Melanie tries to kill herself at the beginning is arguably the most profound decision made by the character, perhaps the most effective scene in the whole film, and it was glossed over as a flashback just to get the story going. Seriously I think the trailer was a better film than the film itself.

And it is perhaps a worse offense for Sci-Fi films to be unsubstantial than to be filled with plot holes and inaccuracies. This film has no plot holes because its plot is very thin, and not much of the world it takes place in is explored, explained or even hinted at. We never learn where the Souls really come from, we never learn how they found or chose Earth, we can't really tell them apart from normal humans because of the 'personalities' we see in Wanderer and The Seeker, and the way Souls can be removed from the Host safely, is just plain weak. 

The Annoying Inner Voice

For the most part, you get a feeling that the aliens are very hygienic, orderly and sterile in both appearance and the way they interact. Perhaps it was designed for contrast, because Melanie's inner voice is so annoying and, for the most part, juvenile. I'm all for the concept of the resilient mind surviving in the occupied mind, but most of the time her vocal mannerism is so immature and simplistic, she behaves more like a parasite inside Wanderer than a duality of being. 

The way she talks and reacts to situations often removes any character depth built by her other half, who in my opinion wasn't done that badly, but it any atmosphere the choreographer tried to create through the set design, colors, lighting, soft lens and fairly effective use of angle shots is quickly killed once Melanie talks.

In a way this 'portrayal' of Melanie makes the film more realistic, but disrupts the tone (albeit a really slow, melancholic and empty tone) and reduces the film to sounding almost like a Saturday morning Disney show in a few dialogues, particularly as Wanderer humanizes.

Also it is kind of boring that we never 'see' the real Melanie talk with Wanderer the way people with multiple personality disorders might through the reflection of mirrors. Granted a visualisation of their dialogues wouldn't really improve the film much but as it stands, this film has been fairly lazy and budget conscious.

I think I'll just go to the nitpicks

I really don't like this film, but I realise that the more I try to think of reasons why I don't like it, the less I'm coming up with. Perhaps it's because this film is essentially a blank slate. It provides you with a shell, with underdeveloper characters, unclear rules and a larger universe that has yet to be shown. In a book this would be effective but again in film adaptations we expect the director to populate the world for us to some degree, so that whether we like it or not, at least we can see our ideas of the world realised in some form or another.

I think my main complaint for this film ultimately is lack of substance. The film was two hours, but I felt like I was fed maybe 20-30 minutes of actual content, yet it's so draggy in most scenes I felt like I've been watching for a thousand years. I learnt nothing, felt nothing, remembered almost nothing (especially the expository scenes), and now expect nothing of its sequels (if they ever get produced). And even the worst of Sci-Fi films like Battlefield Earth, as stupid and flawed as it is, at least was entertaining to laugh at. The Host, is not only complete failure as entertainment, it also fails in providing any thought-provoking ideas for Sci-Fi lovers, and I believe even for most of the general audience, they should be refunded.

The Nitpicks

Most of my nitpicks are related to things not explained in the film. Maybe they are in the book but I'm going by movie logic:

• The film says that Souls can only exist by bonding with another lifeform, and that they cannot survive without a host. So...where, when and how did Souls exist in the first place? Did they exist in another entity but then lost their physical form? Explanation wanted/needed!
  
• If the Souls' only purpose in invading was to survive by bonding with hosts, then shouldn't invading one world be enough? What's the point in invading every world? Are there that many Souls out there that need a home?
  
• It doesn't look hard to disguise yourself as a Human or a Soul; just need to wear contact lens! After all the only way both sides check your terrestriality is with a torch light.
  
• After Melanie tries to kill herself to avoid capture and assimilation, one of the Souls says that she is still alive despite all her critical bone and organ damages. Then he says that she must have a strong reason to live. Wouldn't she have a stronger reason to die? I don't know, in retrospect it seems like she might be weaker than the Souls think since she wanted to die but failed to commit to it.
  
• Wanderer says she's at least 1000 Earth years old and have seen 8 different worlds, and she fell in love with Ian? It's not as creepy as Edward and Bella but still doesn't digest well. Also they have like no chemistry anyway.
  
• How does the Soul-occupied Earth operate economically? As far as I can see Souls get free medical care and can visit shops where you don't need to pay. If this is a moneyless society that actually works, I want to learn more! See what they are doing right that we can use. Not explained!
  
• Towards the end of the film, Wanderer teaches Doc that a Soul can be safely removed from a Human host, thus restoring the original Human mind without harming the Soul. But at the start of the film it is explained that most humans "fade away". So...what happens if you safely remove a soul from a Human who has faded away? Do they wake up like from a coma or do they stay faded away? No explanation either :(