Contour At The Movies

Overall Impression – A movie as slight as a one-hit wonder, but just as endearing.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? – ‘Young’ Carl.

What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: Get his life together (at the insistence of his mother) by living on a pirate radio ship with a rowdy bunch of DJ’s.Personal: find out who his real father is.  Private: have a relationship with the father he’s been waiting his entire life for.

Who’s trying to stop him? – Ostensibly, Sir Alistair Dormandy, the government official charged with trying to shut down pirate radio.  Additionally, his mother who is vague about who his father really is.

What happens if he fails? – He will never know his father, and then when he does know who is father is, he and his father will actually die due to the government’s inaction when the ship starts to sink.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – Carl doesn’t have much of a relationship with his mother, and doesn’t know who his father is.

Wanderer – Carl tries to learn how to fit in aboard the pirate radio ship, slowly becoming familiar with its’ peculiar rhythms.

Warrior – Carl gets the idea put into his head that one of the DJs might be his father, so he sets out to figure out which one.

Martyr – There are multiple martyr beats running simultaneously.  Once the government announces that pirate radio is illegal, everyone decides to keep broadcasting and risk jail time.  Then, with the ship sinking and Carl now aware of who his father is, Carl risks his own life to save his father from drowning.

AND, IN THE END…

PIRATE RADIO’s plot is more a series of episodes rather than a full story.  It actually reminded me of M.A.S.H.; a group of quirky, completely entertaining characters live and love together in tight quarters, doing something noble.  In M.A.S.H., the characters are saving lives.  In PIRATE RADIO, they’re saving rock and roll.

The fun of this movie is definitely NOT the story, the thinness of which is merely a delivery vehicle for the joy of spending time with a group of colorful and funny, characters.  And don’t mistake ‘colorful and funny’ for ‘well-defined.’  We never know who anyone really is or how they got that way.  There’s nary a backstory to be found.  Instead, it’s like going to a great party and being immediately drawn in by the people there. By the end of the night you feel like you’re one of them, without really knowing who ‘them’ is.

The movie is a brilliant example of funny writing given to memorable characters.  You leave the theater not enlightened, but certainly entertained.  Who wouldn’t want to spend a few deranged hours with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Nick Frost, and Rhys Ifans as they spin tunes, bond, and make the world a better place one transistor radio at a time?

- Jeffrey Alan Schechter

Overall Impression – Ignore those logic questions scratching at the back of your brain.  The movie’s kinda fun!

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? – Nick Rice.

What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: put an end to Clyde’s vendetta against the broken justice system. Personal: fix his relationship with his family.  Private: learn how justice should really be won.

Who’s trying to stop him? – Clyde Shelton.

What happens if he fails? – Clyde will continue killing people (including innocents) all over the city.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – Nick’s focus is on his work instead of his family.  His approach to legal justice might also be seen as misguided, dubious and self-serving.

Wanderer – Nick joins forces with his colleague (Sarah) and a local detective, and together they try to figure out how and why Clyde’s killing people when he’s locked up in a maximum security prison.  When those attached to the case start dying after Nick doesn’t take Clyde’s demands seriously, Nick makes it his sole mission to stop Clyde.

Warrior – Nick throws everything into the investigation, eventually becomes the city’s DA, and races against time to stop Clyde’s murderous agenda.

Martyr – Nick is willing to die to stop the bombing of important government officials, and later risks his legal career by tricking Clyde into killing himself.

AND, IN THE END…

There’s certainly some dubious logic at work in LAW ABIDING CITIZEN (e.g., How does Clyde leave his cell for any length of time without the prison guards noticing?), but that’s a conceit that I have no trouble overlooking.  If that sort of thing got to me, I’d have issues with a lot of movies!  Like in HOME ALONE: why would Kevin take on a pair of bumbling burglars when he could simply call the police?  Answer: who cares?!  The movie’s fun!

LAW ABIDING CITIZEN is an interesting take on the notion that the hero and villain create one another.  When high-flying lawyer Nick takes on Clyde’s case following the murder of Clyde’s family, his feeling of injustice at Nick’s handling of things creates his belief that the justice system is broken – and so begins Clyde’s vendetta.  This in turn brings Nick into action as the hero.  Similar cycles appear all the time in movies.  Batman: Jack Napier kills Bruce Wayne’s parents, creating Batman; Batman later causes Jack Napier to fall into a vat of acid, creating The Joker.  The Incredibles: Mr. Incredible crushes Buddy Pine’s dream of becoming a superhero, so he becomes Syndrome.  Syndrome’s antics later cause Mr. Incredible to come out of hiding and resume his crime-fighting career.  It’s a kinda cool pattern to watch out for.

- Dan Pilditch

Overall Impression – A technically wonderful movie, but sadly it loses steam rather quickly.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? – Max.

What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: rule the Wild Things and keep ’sadness’ away.  Personal: forge a friendship with Carol. Private: learn the importance of family.

Who’s trying to stop him? – Some of the Wild Things are skeptical of Max (and kinda want to eat him!), and their idiosyncrasies throw up some challenges, but much of Max’s conflict is internal.

What happens if he fails? – Max will never be part of a family, and the Wild Things will probably eat him.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – Max lives completely inside his imagination, which puts him at odds with the real world around him. He doesn’t have a dad, and his teenage sister has begun ditching him for her friends.  Soon, Max becomes the only human amongst the Wild Things.

Wanderer – Max gets to know the Wild Things, starts developing a friendship with Carol, begins to explore the island and learns about being part of a unit with creatures he can understand and relate to.  Max learns that Carol has been harboring a dream home (of sorts) for the Wild Things.

Warrior – Max leads the Wild Things as they make Carol’s vision a reality.   They act like a real team and build their new “base”.  However, when tensions rise between the Wild Things, Max must struggle to settle the disputes and keep the group from falling apart.  They begin to suspect that Max isn’t the magical leader he claimed to be, and Carol turns on him.

Martyr – To escape Carol, Max must let himself be “eaten” by a Wild Thing so he can hide in its stomach. Max realizes he can’t help the Wild Things, and decides he must return to the real world.

AND, IN THE END…

I think if I saw WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE a second time, I’d enjoy it more.  Most of my energy was spent trying to figure out what was going on, why stuff was happening, etc..  Then again, if this all happened in the mind of a wildly imaginative kid, maybe that’s to be expected.  Normally it doesn’t make a big difference to my enjoyment/understanding of a movie, but in this case, I think not having read the book beforehand was a big handicap!

That aside, the movie was rich in a lot of ways.  The puppetry really was amazing.  The level of imagination, feeling of fun and adventure – it really does make you feel as if you’re in a kid’s imagination; or maybe it reminded me of how easy it was to live in my own world when I was that age.   Max trying to be the king of the Wild Things was also a fun spin on the dynamic of a difficult child learning the challenges of parenting.

One issue I had with Max was that I just didn’t like him that much, despite elements present to make him a sympathetic character.  There’s certainly undeserved misfortune: Max’s father has left, a new father figure might be moving in, he lives in his own world and nobody understands that apart from him, he doesn’t seem to have any friends his own age, and so on.  However, all that sympathy went down the drain for me when Max bit his really, really nice mother.  Obviously this is only my opinion, but it draws attention to how you should be careful how you make your character sympathetic.  Or, to make sure you don’t undo the sympathy you’d built up for your character.

- Dan Pilditch