Dorothy's Junk

You want better movies? Pay for better movies.

Last week Warner Bros. released Cloud Atlas, a grandly ambitious film that provides the viewers with an experience that’s almost impossible to describe. Like the symphony at the center of the film, Cloud Atlas intertwines six different stories into a seamless (and to my mind and eye beautiful) piece of music. I could have paused the movie at any moment and named the character in the screen, described his (or her) motivation and told you where in the story we were. That’s pretty amazing. 

But it’s seems I’m in a lonely minority when it comes to the film. Cloud Atlas, which cost $100 million to make, has earned only $12 million at the box office so far. Just writing that made me want to cry.

To tell truth-truth, I get that Cloud Atlas isn’t for everyone. It’s long - almost 3 hours. The sheer weight of the six stories is intimidating and the connection between the stories is a bit of new age hokum about how acts of crimes or kindness reverberate in our next lives.

But you know what, the next time you complain about the crap quality of most of the films in theaters or how you just can’t stand to watch one more superhero movie full of generic action sequences, think about the fact that you didn’t buy a ticket to Cloud Atlas.  

Movie studios are businesses and they want to make money. We, the movie-going public, provide them with that money. We vote for what we want to see with our dollars. If we flocked to new, original, challenging films, the studios would take more chances. If we only go to see the next adventure of The Avengers crew, that’s what we’ll get.

There’s another great, original movie that’s about to hit theaters this weekend - Wreck-It Ralph. Ralph is based on a very original idea. A bad guy in an old video game goes AWOL looking for a medal so the people in his Fix-It Felix game will respect him and invite him to their cocktail parties. 

In his search for a medal Ralph travels to a scary first-person shooter game and a candy-coated racing game. Each world in distinct. The rules of the arcade are clearly spelled out and everyone sticks to them. The jokes are really funny. The relationship between Ralph and little Venellope (an outcast in her own game) is touching. I laughed. I shed a sentimental tear at the end.

Ralph, which seems like it should be a slam dunk for kids, is expected to earn only $38 million this weekend. That’s not much. 

I hope hope hope it does much better than that. I hope it’s another underestimated hit like Despicable Me was. I liked it that much. And I want to see people supporting films like Ralph — because they’re really good and they’ll make you happy!

So please. If you love movies, spend your money on something that might be a little challenging. Even if you don’t like it, you’ll think about it and talk about it. I promise. 

So I finished the first two seasons of Game of Thrones last night and I have thoughts. Spoilers ahead. And “What is dead may never die” is also a zombie reference - right?

Zombies

Really? Zombies? Is that where we’re going? I’m a little disappointed by this. Zombies are so much a part of pop culture now — I’m worried that the show is going to just turn into a zombie war thing closer to The Walking Dead than Lord of the Rings. I like the interpersonal stuff on GOT. I’m not sure I want to watch them fight zombies. (Just had to get that out of the way first)

Ned Stark

I loved Season 1 so much. It had a good central story about Ned Stark and his struggle to be an honorable man in a treacherous town. I knew he wasn’t going to make it to the end of the season but I was still shocked by the way he was so abruptly killed off. His relationship with his children and the purity of leadership made him a character to love and root for and I really missed him in the second season.

In retrospect, I see that his death was necessary to start the war that became the focus of season 2. But it’s been less interesting watching dozens of characters struggle for power than it was to watch one man try to keep his head up in a sea of liars.

Honor

Game of Thrones is really about honor. At the beginning, these people tooktheir oaths very seriously. Like when Tyrion came to his father’s camp with the wild men he had met in the forest and everyone just accepted that he had to live up to his word to give them more power.

By the end of the second season, Robb has married that nurse chick despite having promised to marry one of the daughters of the bridge guy. (There are just too many names in this show for me to remember all of them.) And we’re kind of rooting for them. That’s very cool.

Tyrion

Tyrion is truly one of the best characters I’ve ever seen on TV. A lot of that is due to Peter Dinklage who is an amazing actor. He’s a Lannister and he tries to protect these despicable people but he still has our love and sympathy. When he led the battle at the end of season 2 it was so inspiring and when he was subsequently rejected by his father it was so heart breaking. I would love to see him leave King’s Landing and maybe start advising Robb but as he said, his job is to outthink the other Lannisters and in his way, keep the kingdom safe from his terrible siblings.

Danny Targaryen

Of all the people fighting to be king, she’s become the least interesting. I loved her story line in the first season, the way she went from being a victim to a queen. But her arc in the second season was less clear. She seems like a shrill, terrible leader. She can’t convince anyone to do anything. She gets all of her people killed. All she has going for her is dragons and that’s not real leadership. I think Little Finger could talk her out of those dragons in a matter of minutes.

Too many Kings

They’ve been pretty good about introducing new kingdoms and people in the second season but I still find it takes a few minutes for me to tell if we’re with Stanis, Robb or Tywin at any given moment because they are all basically in grubby tents with lots of white men in dark armor. I don’t have a lot of hope for the third season on this front. A little video on HBO introduced us to roughly 10 new characters. Hopefully the producers will keep them all separate and give us clues as to which camp we are with at different times.

Finally - the second season felt a bit like throwing obstacles up to keep people from getting what they want and that was a bit annoying. I missed the clarity of the first season. But it was still fantastic TV. I’m hoping that in the third season Tyrion becomes more of the emotional center but who knows, maybe he gets killed. I don’t think I’m going to read the books but I’ll be anxiously waiting for season 3.

Yesterday I went to see The Master. I went in really excited. I’m a huge Paul Thomas Anderson fan. It’s nice to see Joaquin Phoenix back in the game and PSH can do no wrong.

I walked out … confused and a little disappointed. (There are some SPOILERS here so stop reading if you don’t want to know anything about the film before you see it.)

Before I go into the film, let me say that I thought about the movie all night and it’s still with me 24 hours later. To me - that says that the film was powerful and left an impression. But I’m still not sure if I would say I liked the movie. I certainly don’t want to see it again and I can’t remember every feeling that way about any other Anderson movies.

My first problem with the film was that Phoenix’s character, Freddie, was so unlikeable, such a deeply lost cause. I’m not sure why Dodd took him on board in the first place. Maybe because he felt that if he could save Freddie he could save anyone? It wasn’t clear. He kept talking about how part of The Cause was proving that we aren’t animals but Freddie was all animal. He’ was almost a monster - the way he was always hunched over. 

And what was going on with Freddie’s mouth? Had he had a stroke? The affectation made it hard to understand Phoenix’s dialogue sometimes. I think it was to make him even more of a monster. He poisoned himself, seemed to think only of sex and violence and willingly let Dodd experiment on him while acknowledging that it never seemed to really make him feel any better.

It made it very hard to like him or care about him and for me, that was a problem.

Anderson didn’t make Dodd any more likable though. Although he was very charismatic, nothing he said made any sense at all. Maybe that was intentional but it made it really really hard to see why people believed in him. I also felt like I never really understood the tenants of The Cause.

I do think all of this was intentional. That Anderson was trying to say something big. I’m just not 100% sure I know what that was.

Amy Adams was amazing but I read one review say her character was Lady McBeth- like. I didn’t get that. Was she supposed to be the master that Dodd was serving?

Which leads me to the moment that almost killed the movie for me. When Freddie went to England, he kept saying he heard Dodd in a dream. So Dodd didn’t really call him there? How did he find Dodd then? And if Dodd did call him there, did he call him just to reject him?

And why the hell did he sing Slow Boat to China to him? Was that supposed to be homoerotic? Watching him sing that song, I really felt like - maybe I’m just too dumb to understand this movie. Was he threatening him? Was it just an expression of platonic love? A father singing a weird lullaby to his son?

And what did Mary mean when she said Elizabeth was DCF? Argh.

I wish the story line had been a bit more clear, that I had related to the journey of at least one of the main characters. Freddie didn’t seem to grow or change much. I didn’t understand why he left Dodd on the motorcycle. Why did he chose that moment to give up on Dodd?

I do think it was a powerful movie and I’m not completely against working my brain but in the end, I think the film didn’t work for me. I really wish it had.