The Beast Hungers: Mini-review Rampage #5

We can't stop here, I'm on a roll... or something. No introduction needed, just more reviews!

The Road (Book + Movie)

I somehow managed to avoid the big craze when The Road became super popular and talked about, and all I managed to hear was that it was "incredibly depressing" and really good at the same time. Thus I decided to finally pick up the book, and after finishing it watch the movie (because yay Viggo Mortensen). It tells the story of a man and his son in a post-apocalyptic world, walking along the titular world while trying not to die. My impression of the book: overall, kind of meh. As a disclaimer, I've never found horror stories actually scary, and while it was kind of an interesting premise, I never felt an emotional tug at any point during the father and son's journey. Perhaps it's because I had just come off reading some much more depressing novels (Song of Ice and Fire anyone?) but I honestly did not find the book compelling at all. Part of it was that it was a little too vague, which I know was intentional, another part is that I really didn't like McCarthy's style in this book. It felt needlessly "artsy," and that he was trying to be different just to be different. Overall it was pretty unmemorable and pretty forgettable.

The same goes for the movie as well. Despite a strong presence from Mortensen, the movie follows the book incredibly closely, and suffers for the same reasons. Overall I think both were overhyped way beyond their actual value; I honestly wouldn't bother.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Given how much I enjoyed Summer Wars, I was quite excited to sit down and watch its (non-related) predecessor, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. The movie revolves about the title character, who as you expected suddenly finds herself able to literally "leap" back in time. The movie is kind of interesting, in that it almost feels like two halves. Without spoiling anything, the first half is pretty much her jumping back and trying to create perfect moments, whereas the second deals with the consequences. 

To be perfectly honest, about half-way through I started to get a bit bored, as the jumping seemed a little aimless and I wasn't sure what they could cover in another hour. However, the switch in the middle point very much revitalizes the movie, and it managed to catch my attention once again. Overall it manages to tell a very poignant story in a rather surprising way that I wasn't at all expecting. I don't think it was quite as strong as Summer Wars, which I feel is the superior movie, but I can definitely see why GWLTT is as critically acclaimed as it is. Besides the pacing issues, it's a very solid movie all around, which good characters, witty and realistic dialogue, and great animation to boot. I'd watch Summer Wars first, and if you like it, definitely take the time to check out this film.

No Country for Old Men (Book)

I actually saw the movie for this when it came out a number of years ago, and I agreed completely with it winning the awards it did. Furthermore, I disagreed with the one big complaint I heard being levied against it, namely that it was "ambiguous," a claim I believe could only be made by someone not paying close enough attention. 

Luckily, because I was reading it on my e-reader, I actually didn't realize till about 1/4 of the way through the novel it was by the same author as The Road. I don't know whether that would have influenced my opinion, but No Country for Old Men is a much better novel than The Road in almost every way. The characters are far more fleshed out and interesting, the dialogue much stronger, the plot interesting and varied, and the style worked far better. This is very odd, considering that the Road was written after No Country, but go figure. 

The novel tells the story of an ordinary man who comes across an incredibly large sum of money from a drug-deal gone bad near the Mexican-American border, and the conflict he gets sucked into. Despite knowing how it all ended, the book kept the story compelling, and there were enough differences (mostly additions) when compared to the film adaptation that made the book very worth reading. The philosophical breaks from the action are quite welcome and help with the pacing, and McCarthy's meditations on America and life in general are quite though-provoking, even if I don't necessarily agree with everything he says. If you liked the movie, definitely check out the book, and if you haven't seen either it's worth picking up if you like an action/intrigue adventure in a grittily realistic setting.

Das Weisse Band (The White Ribbon)

This critically acclaimed Austrian movie actually came out while I was Austria, but I never got to chance to see it, so I finally recently got around to it. It tells the story of a small German village and its inhabitants on the brink of WW1, and does so in black and white. The plot is very slowly paced and oftentimes incredibly subtle. The major problem I had was that the subtitle pack I found did not work very well, so I ended up discarding them due to incredibly bad timing; although I could understand most  of what was being said, the incredibly quick speaking and accents meant I occasionally missed things, so I don't think I always caught everything. Add to this the film was intentionally made to be unclear and a bit murky, and you can see why it was sometimes a bit of a frustrating experience. 

The film is very slowly paced, and intentionally so; it's made to capture the weird pre-war atmosphere, and highlight the problems inherent in a seemingly idyllic country life, or at least how it's depicted in modern times. Essentially, the town's got a lot of people with some serious problems. I know a lot of people got angry with how little happens, and how slowly that little does happen, but on the other hand a lot of people loved the atmosphere, the cinematography, and the very accurate portrayal of the time period. I can definitely see both sides of the argument, and thus am a little torn on how I feel about the film. It was definitely interesting and worth watching, but I'm not sure if I actually enjoyed it on any level; it's definitely something I would classify more on the "art film" side of things. Perhaps with full, working subtitles it would have been a bit better, but I'm not sure. I don't really feel comfortable making a recommendation one way or another on whether or not to watch it; I'll leave that up to you.

Black Hawk Down (Book)

The movie version of Black Hawk Down is one of my favorite war/military films, and I generally really like the genre. I was curious to see what the book was like, since I had very little knowledge of what it was like. It turns out that it's basically a journalist who temporarily turned himself into a military historian to investigate this war/battle that was apparently at the time almost not talked about at all. The book alternates between a novel-like portrayal of the events, garnered from hundreds of interviews with the participants, and scoping back to give a general picture of both the tactical situation and the general social structure and global events taking place. 

My biggest complaint is that in switching around between the different parts of the battle, Bowden also occasionally zips back and forth chronologically, and the reader has to pay very close attention since things aren't always in strict chronological order. Besides that, though, Bowden does a fantastic job of bringing this battle to life, explaining the historical background, and generally making it incredibly understandable to a layperson. Apparently he became an "expert" that got called in by the Army a lot because, despite his lack of training, his analysis of the events was so great, and I can definitely believe it. Going back and rewatching the movie afterwards make a lot of the events depicted in the movie a lot more clear; instead of just a nameless soldier dying of some random wound, I was able to put a name to the soldier and knew exactly why he was dying; obviously morbid, but it added a degree of depth that you just can't show in an action movie without breaking it. If you're interested in military history/action at all, it's definitely a very different kind of book, but a very good one.

Contagion

Contagion is another movie I went into with almost no expectations other than a short two-sentence blurb I read online. What it turned out to be is basically the film version of "what-if," in this case specifically what if a fast-spreading, high lethality virus suddenly started spreading across the world. 

I kept expecting some kind of twists; zombies suddenly to appear, a militant nation to claim credit, something like that. But no, the movie is very straightforward; it merely posits a possible outcome if a natural illness like H1N1 suddenly sprang up, and what would happen in this day and age. It examines both the societal reactions, the personal problems and errors, and all of those things, bouncing to a number of different perspectives. 

It's definitely interesting to see something so realistic and grounded, compared to the plethora of ridiculous disaster movies like "The Day After Tomorrow." The biggest problem is that it felt a little underwhelming towards the end; there was no grand resolution, precisely because it's meant to be so realistic, and real life rarely has nice little happy endings. Instead, the world adapted, it recovered, and life went on. It was definitely refreshing and a nice change of pace from normal movies, but I would definitely advise you to alter your expectations before watching the film. 

End

That's all for now, folks. Tune in soon for more!

-HTMC