Seek and Destroy: Thoughts from "Zero Dark Thirty"

The other weekend I was able to finally see Zero Dark Thirty, and I was overall very pleased with it. It found a good balance between action, political thriller, and psychological drama, and I definitely understood the critical acclaim it had been accumulating. However, between the critical reviews, Oscar nominations, and all the like, I don't see much of a point in offering up a detailed review of the film. Instead, I'd like to focus on some of the controversy surrounding the film.

Specifically, I was somewhat surprised to find when reading about the film on Wikipedia after I viewed it that it had ignited a fierce debate in the media as to whether the film directly supported the idea that torture was essential to finding Vin Laden. I suppose I missed the controversy since I was in Europe and my following of the news, especially American issues, is limited to important events, but it was weird to read about that kind of contention after viewing the film.

For those of you who haven't seen it, in particular the movie features a very explicit scene of a detainee being waterboarded for information. It's implicit that information gained from this torture scene did help in some way lead to other bits of intel that eventually led to bin Laden. Opponent of the film claim that this essentially praises such tactics, whereas the filmmakers and its supporters claim it's merely attempting to show the truth behind the decade-long search. Whether it was moral or not, helpful or not, the facts stand that US intelligence operatives used such methods: that is the stance they stand behind. 

I can definitely see both sides of the issue, but can only offer my personal reaction to the movie. I definitely did have a moment earlier on after the scene where I went "well, this guy clearly deserves it, and the torture is bringing results." So yes, for that brief moment you could say I was a proponent of torture. However, as the movie progressed and I analyzed my own thoughts further, I came to the (I think obvious) conclusions: how do you know any answers given are reliable, and how do you determine who "deserves" such treatment? Even in cases where it might be blindingly obvious, by allowing it in certain circumstances, you open up the possibility of it occurring in more ambiguous cases. Essentially it comes back to the cornerstone of our judicial system, the idea of "innocent until proven guilty."

A Clash of Media: Perspectives on Intrinsic Value

Dear readers, the blog will once again continue on the philosophical track; I got some good answers to my last post, so I'm hoping to hear some more on this note.

As my forewarning: as many of you probably know, I'm a pretty big reader. I always have been since I was young. I was that kid staying up late reading with a flashlight under covers, the one who took a book with him where ever he went, the one who belongs to the probably minority of our generation whose parents actually had to tell him to stop reading so much. I'm one of those people who rarely think a movie/tv adaptation is better than the source book, one of those who doesn't have "lol i h8 books" written on my "About me" section of Facebook. Thus I feel I have a pretty balanced perspective on the following discussion.

As all of you are sure I'm aware, The Hunger Games has been making a big splash as being the current hit book for children/young adults. This follows on the trail of the Twilight and Harry Potter series, the latter of which is often referred to as the series that "got a whole generation of children reading again."

I find this an interesting claim, because it highlights an underlying theme in modern American society. That is, specifically, that children aren't reading anymore, and this is a Bad Thing. Authors like Collins and Rowling are doing important work in getting children engaged in reading again.

This is a line of thought I sort of bought absentmindedly. Of course people should be reading, I thought, it's something I enjoy. It's always painted as a slightly more intellectual and satisfying past-time than, say, watching TV.

Unending Appetite: Mini-Review Rampage #6

Although I have managed to cause a significant dent in the Beast that is my backlog of things to review, it still remains strong. Thus I soldier on, maintain a brave facade despite my trembling within, and continue to do what must be done. Be warned: the following set contains much more raw emotion that the previous few installment.

You have been warned.

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.

Spurred Into Motion: Mini-review Rampage #4

Because a certain other Blogger has gone back to blogging daily, plus the fact that I am currently incredibly bored, I decided I should start working through my (scarily large) backlog of things I've been meaning to review.

So once again, we find ourselves facing the jaws of the beast: the start of another Mini-review Rampage. In order to try and post more frequently (but no promises!) I'll probably be restricting myself to 5-10 items per post, otherwise I'd have a 20 item post, not counting the 40+ albums I have listened to this semester and which will probably be receiving separate, music-only review posts. And so, without further ado:

Sovereign Soliloquies : A Review of The King's Speech

I know it's a bit late, but I finally got around to watching last year's Academy Awards Best Picture winner (as well as some other awards). I went in knowing almost nothing about it, since the first time I really heard a lot about it was when it got so many nominations for awards. It turns out it's a sort of historical drama of King George IV of England's effort to overcome his speech impediment, and won a lot of praise for the excellent acting and recreation of the period.

Beyond that, I honestly don't feel like I have that much to say about the movie, which points to the strong points and the weaknesses. The acting, as stated, is terrific, and although I'm not very familiar with the actual historical figures and time period I assume that all are up to high standards. Similarly, while I don't know personally know anyone with a stammer like that, the work Colin Firth does seems very authentic and emotional. With that said, the story told is rather... boring, at least to me. It's literally just the Prince attempting to overcome his speech impediment, alongside all the pressures and frustrations of being part of the royal family. Yes, there's also the growing friendship between George and his unorthodox speech therapist, but while it was interesting to watch evolve I didn't find it terribly compelling.

I know this is kind of an odd complaint to levy against a movie, considering that one of my favorite shows is Azumanga Daioh (a show where not much happens) but I guess my problem is that the slow plot isn't really replaced by much else, and there were moments (not a lot, but they were there) where I got bored. I don't think this is an issue with pacing or writing or anything like that, I just feel that the story itself isn't super compelling. It is told well and acted with great passion, but the source material just isn't quite what I was expecting.

Besides this one complaint, though, it was a very solid and very enjoyable film. I definitely understand why it won such critical acclaim, although I'm not quite sure if it would have been my personal choice for Best Picture (I think Black Swan would have taken this). However, in terms of excellent acting, good writing, and overall great production values, The King's Speech is definitely worth watching if you get the chance and think you'd appreciate a good period drama.

-HTMC

A Personal Apocalypse: A Review of Cloverfield

I'll admit I initially avoided Cloverfield due to a big element of the film being the "shaky-cam" style of footage, as the film is supposed to be a home-recording of "the event" by someone with a handheld camcorder. I'm not usually prone to motion sickness, but the latest Bourne movie at the time had the distinction of the only movie I've ever seen in theater that made me feel physically ill. Understandably I passed up Cloverfield with barely a second thought. A few years later though and it came up, for whatever reason, in casual conversation, and Matt told me he really enjoyed the film. For this reason I decided to finally watch it, and was happily surprised.

To address the large concern, the film definitely is shot as if by an amateur cameraman with an unfamiliar camcorder (and in fact some of the shots are apparently from footage taken by the actors with such devices). However, instead of action shaky-cam prominent in movies such as the Bourne series, I'd classify the majority of the film as "unsteady;" exactly what you get on home movies. Of course there are some scenes which definitely fall under the classic shaky-cam style, the majority is just 'unsteady.' This combined with watching it on a television rather than a movie theater screen meant I suffered no problems, although I can't say this would be the case had I watched it in theaters.

To move onto the actual content, I'll admit I was expecting a monster film horror/thriller type film, in the vein of Jaws. I quickly had to revise this opinion, and by the end of the film I was actually unsure of where to place the film genre-wise. It featured a giant monster, naturally, but most of the film it was more of a backdrop rather than a centerpoint. It definitely has thriller-esque moments, but again they're surprisingly seldom and for me were not particularly tense. The military provides a few action scenes, but once again they're almost always in the background.

In fact, having taking a cinema class and being at least elementary familiar with film techniques, I was shocked when they right out showed the monster fairly early on the film, and extremely clearly at that. I thought it was a huge mistake, since this was a the key reason, for instance, the initial showing of Jaws bombed so badly with test audiences. However, as the movie progressed, I had to quickly shred the aforementioned genre expectations. I'd classify the movie as exactly what it seems like: a personal account and recording of what, for the people in Manhattan, is essentially the apocalypse. If that was the film's goal, it does an exemplary job of showing what would happen to an ordinary group of people in a catastrophic situation. They don't find the weak-point of the monster, they don't heroically band together a group of survivors and escape, and in fact they have no impact on the larger situation period. Instead we see exactly how the situation affects this small group of people, how they react, and what ramifications their choices end up having. The point-of-view framing makes this sensation very strong, and adds a strong degree of realism to the scenes that I think would have been lacking with traditional filming methods.

Beyond this, the acting is good enough and the special effects as well done as you'd expect (the monster itself seemed a little weaker, but it wasn't a huge deal). Although all these other aspects weren't spectacular, they weren't lacking, and in my opinion were all secondary to the story the film was attempting to display.

All together I don't think Cloverfield achieves a personal top spot for me, but I was highly impressed with the story it managed to convey and the way it went about it. The fact that it manages to tell such a compelling tale in only 80 minutes (the length of a standard residential cassette) is all the more impressive, and makes it a quick, enjoyable film to enjoy. I definitely think it's worth checking out if you get the opportunity, if only because it's quite different than the standard Hollywood blockbuster (not so much as many indie films, admittedly, but still moreso than comparable films). Now I'd just like to see a zombie movie in a similar style and I would quite pleased, or at least I think I would be.

-HTMC

Finite: A Review of Deathly Hallows Part 2

Readers of the blog might recall my review of Part 1 of the movie adaptation of the final Harry Potter book, and how overall I was quite pleased with the result and interested in seeing how the second half turned out.

Overall, unfortunately, I actually felt like the second half was a bit weaker than its predecessor. I had actually had high hopes that by splitting the final volume into two feature-length films, the movies could finally take the time needed to fully develop the stories told in the books, but despite having 4+ hours of material to work with, this movie still felt rushed to me. Many scenes that were quite powerful in the books lost a lot of emotion and depth, in my opinion. For instance, the scene in the maybe-afterlife-King's-Cross with Dumbledore felt incredibly short, and without the exposition from the book felt like it didn't accomplish nearly as much. Likewise, Snape's memory sequence left out a ton of memories for the book, and to me at least it felt like his love for Lily felt a lot more forced without the evidence of their deep prior friendship.

Of course, something that's easy to forget and that I had to remind myself of is that the audience for these movies is not all like me. At this point, there are probably equal (if not more, I don't know the numbers) of people who have never read a single word of the novels who come to these movies. I'm sure when making creative decisions the directors and producers have to balance pleasing the diehard fans against the possibly greater number of people who won't be actively comparing every scene to its novel counterpart. The problem is after coming off the brilliant adaptation that was HBO's Game of Thrones, it's hard to go back to anything less.

With that said, there was some things that the movie did well. For instance, I was happy to see the way the battle was rendered. To actually see the castle exploding, spells flying everywhere, and absolute chaos was nice, considering such scenes are a bit harder to imagine from just reading. I do think it was overdone a little, since there was one point where Harry kept going through stairwells with students running everywhere (seriously, where were they going?), but overall it worked. The triumphant escape from Gringotts aboard the blind dragon also worked quite well; in general the actions scenes were good is I guess what it comes down to.

I think the biggest problem I had, honestly, is the host of minor, small changes they decided to make. I think I understand the reasoning behind all of them, but in general I didn't like the tone shift they introduced. For instance, making Griphook blatantly betray the trio and have the Imperio'd goblin fried felt wrong to me. Neville's speech against Voldemort also felt a little out of character. Having the Ravenclaw ghost know exactly where the diadem was (and what happened to it) but not do anything about seems odd. Having Voldemort feel the Horcruxes destroyed also sets a weird precedent.  I think the biggest change I objected to though was the final fight: it felt like a over-hollywood-ization of a final scene, and Harry and Voldemort battle it out all around, which makes no sense given how much a superior wizard Voldemort is, and Harry only survived in the past due to dodging and/or Priori Incantatum. I also really enjoyed the final speech in front of an entire audience in the final book, and instead Voldemort just melts away after Nagini dies, which in and of itself seems odd. Again, I feel like it robs a lot of the importance of the scene when the main villain of 8 movies just kind of drifts apart with no major conclusion.

Again, though, not everything was bad. I liked how they added in the scene explicitly showing the destruction of the locket, and I actually like that they destroyed the diadem together instead of exposition-ing the fiendfyre. So while most of it I didn't necessarily care for, there were definitely bright spots.

Overall the movie fit into my general expectations for the series thus far: reasonably entertaining, but very forgettable and inferior to the books in almost every way. It was kind of interesting to see a photo posted on Reddit a week ago showing the main trio's actors when they first started, and the realization that they've been growing up at the same pace I have; it was very weird seeing young versions of them again. The main point though is that while I can see myself coming back to the novels years from now, and likely multiple times, I doubt I'll ever consciously choose to watch the films again of my own volition. Could they have been better? Undoubtably. Could they have been worse? Most easily. They're on the better side of average, and something that had to happen given the books' popularity and immense money-making capacity, and while I'm reasonably happy that we got a half-decent production, but I probably won't ever stop wishing a little that we had gotten something a bit better.

-HTMC

Unstoppable: Mini-Review Rampage #3

So being summer, I find myself without any way to "productively" spend my time (emphasis added by parents) which results in a majority of my time still be spent in the consumption of media, which once again means I have a large back-log of things I've watched and want to write down my thoughts of.

I keep saying I'll make some posts that aren't reviews... but then I keep losing the motivation. I still have high hopes, though. Until then, though, enjoy my opinions on the following ten works. Pictures provided for your visual pleasure!

Blood, Swords, and Honor: A Review of 13 Assassins

Being back home means catching up with old friends, and I did so the other day by seeing a movie. My friend suggested 13 Assassins, and after quickly skimming a synopsis and seeing Rotten Tomatoes had overwhelmingly positive reviews of the movie, I agreed and off we went to the local art-house theater to see this imported Japanese samurai movie.

Searching for a Thread: In which Blake makes a Top Ten List

So I recently finished watching FLCL, and when talking to people about how much I liked it. At one point I made the claim "It's not in my top 10--er, well at least not in the top 5" or something very similar to that. This caused me to start considering where my opinions on things actually stood in relation to one another. I mean naturally I prefer things more than others, but I had never really sat down and though what things were absolutely my favorites. It would be hard with things like books and movies, since the sheer amount of things I've read and watched at this point means just compiling a list in the first place would be a lot of effort.

However, I realized if I restrict myself purely to Japanese media, my job gets a lot easier. I thought it might be fun to make a top 10 list of manga, movies, and anime that I've enjoyed over the last few years, partially because I can and partially to see if I can discern any underlying threads why I like certain things.

A couple disclaimers. The first is I left out videogames on purpose. For one, I approach them a lot differently than I do other forms of entertainment, and in addition adding in videogames would add a looooot of titles to the list; for instance, on my desk I have 16 DS games, of which 14 are Japanese in origin.
The second disclaimer is that the following list only comprises series that I've completely finished. There are quite a number of works that I either gave up, couldn't finish since I didn't have access, or the series themselves have yet to come to a conclusion (such as Broken Blade, Hellsing, Hani-kimi, Wallflower, Bleach, etc).

Anyway, without further ado!

Giant Backlogs: A Mini-Review Rampage

So over the break I consumed quite a large amount of media, and actually wanted to write individual reviews for all of them, but I never quite felt like writing them over the break, so instead I'm going to do a series of small mini-reviews just to get my thoughts down. Feel free to chime in!

Priori Incantatum: A Review of Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part 1

I've seen every Harry Potter movie, and I remember pretty much exactly nothing from any of them. Sure, I can summon the likenesses of Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, and others when necessary (although my mental representations of the characters are still stronger) but there was never a single scene that was so well presented that it overtook the one I saw when reading the novels. This is a bit surprising, since exactly that happened when I saw the Lord of the Rings movies, amongst others.

Although I don't think it will happen with the most recent attempt at screenplay magic, it's the closest yet, and I think it's a movie where I'll actually be able to recall some of the scenes. I went into the movie with low expectations, and was rewarded with the best Potter film to date, and probably the first one where I exited talked about its strengths rather than its manifold failures. Considering Book 7 is my favorite in the series (with 5 almost but not quite a tie), it was a welcome relief, and makes part 2 sound all the more appealing.

Going Beyond the Impossible And Making the Believable: A Review of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

Scott Pilgrim actually succeeded in passing completely under my radar; I had never heard of the comic, I don't think I ever saw trailers (and if I did I obviously forgot it), and the first time I remember hearing about it was during my weekly Rotten Tomatoes check where I saw it was garnering mostly positive reviews. When a friend invited me to accompany him to watch the film, I accepted purely on those grounds.

Therefore I walked out of the theater having been very pleasantly surprised, since Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World is likely one of the best movies I've seen this year (although to be fair I haven't been super happy with the offerings). It's always a nice surprise when a movie comes out of the blue like that.

I think there are two main points as to why I enjoyed the film so much. The first has to do with the scope, for lack of a better word. It seems the directors/producers/etc had a specific vision in mind, and they seemed to have pulled it off without any part failing. The acting is good, effects excellent, soundtrack good, editing, wardrobe, etc etc. No part was lacking and everything came together really well. I think all the actors were well cast, and he-whose-name-I-always-forget (Michael Cera, and I just had to look that up) mad a surprisingly good "action" hero, despite his inherent painful awkwardness. They also managed the feat for making the female "punk" outfit actually work, from my perspective. Surprise minor roles from people like Anna Kendrick and Mae Whitman were also cool.

The second point has to do with the title; although the film made no attempt to be completely ridiculous (what with people exploding into coins and Scott drawing a sword from his chest) for all it's over-the-topness, it managed to be somehow more authentic when it came to the love story. Although I'm not expert in "chick flicks," I've obviously seen a lot of movies that revolved around a love story, ranging from Twilight to the Notebook to Titanic and whatnot. However, Scott Pilgrim seemed to really hit home and actually resonate with me in terms of what relationships are like. I can't really pinpoint what facets make it the case, and it's not like any of the relationships actually correlate to experience I've had, but the way the characters behave and the way the actors perform their roles just felt unforced, realistic, and completely not-Hollywood. Obviously this is only my feeling and I don't know if others feel the same, but it was definitely one of the strongest points of the movie.

Beyond those things, the action scenes were cool, the characters pretty interesting (although, as always, Michael Cera was Michael Cera + Superpowers) and it felt culturally relevant to me. One thing I will warn was that, when I saw the reviews, I saw a lot of them mentioned the "lots of videogame references." This put me on guard, since I assume movie reviewers and video game enthusiasts don't overlap very much. I think I was proven correct, since the movie deals with a substantial number of video game tropes (particularly fighting games) it never gets referential in way a show like The Big Bang Theory gets, where a majority of the viewers may not get a joke. The closest thing was the FF2 and Zelda themes playing, but I never felt like there was a joke I got that people with even a passing familiarity of gaming wouldn't. However, this is far from being a flaw, and rather just an observation.

Anyway, the movie has been out for a while now, and I can happily recommend it to all my friends, since it is quite enjoyable and worth seeing. If you do miss it in theaters, it's not spectacular enough to regret not seeing it on a big screen, so do yourself a favor and find it next time you're wondering what movie to watch.

-HTMC

How You Know You've Lost All Respect

Today I saw Scott Pilgram Vs. The World. It was quite an excellent movie, and I enjoyed it a whole lot. I will likely even write a short review sometime in the near future. However, this post isn't about the movie, but rather about something that occurred during the trailers.

Trailers were going normal, some background chatter but that's to be expected. Then another trailer started, and within a few seconds it was obviously a thriller, with something attacking people in an elevator. The entire audience was quiet, trying to figure out what was going on. Tension was about as high as you'd expect from such a trailer.

Then, about 3/4 into the trailer, during a montage of "intense" moments (which were serving their purpose quite well) the screen suddenly flashes:

"From the mind of M. Night Shyamalan"

And suddenly about a quarter of the audience goes "Oooooh," then a beat, then about half the audience burst out laughing, completely ruining the tone of not only the rest of the preview, but pretty much ruining all the potential interest that had built up prior to that point. It seems the Last Airbender really was his final straw. I almost feel bad for the man.

I hope I myself never fall that far.

-HTMC

All's Well That Ends Well: A Review of Damnatus

Some of you may be familiar with Damnatus, an extremely low-budget German fan-made 40k film that due to weird copyright differences between German and British law meant that it was never officially released. Naturally it was "leaked" to various torrent sites and the entirety of the film is even easily findable on Youtube, so I suspect it Games Workshops protests were more against the copyright loss than actually disliking the film, since they tend to pursue other copyright violations with extreme prejudice.

Nevertheless, I managed to acquire a copy and finally sat down to watch the 1 hour 45 minute production, and figured I should share my impressions with you.

First off, if you choose to watch it, made sure you approach it with the right mentality. If you go in expecting even an indie filmmaker type movie, you'll be disappointed, and probably end up laughing at a lot of it. If you go in thinking it was a movie made by a bunch of very enthusiastic and talented fans, you'll be very much impressed. The costumes and tone were well done, the story-line was decent if not mind-blowing, and the CGI for a lot of the scenes were far better than I expected. In particular however they did the servo-skulls was really cool, and I liked their Tech-priest costume a lot.

It does however have its weak points, particularly due to pacing. I feel like they wanted it to be a feature-length production, and thus there are quite a few shots that drag on a bit longer than they should, although never horribly so. The dialogue can be a bit stilted, and mostly not that impressive writing-wise (also, everything's in German with English subtitles, which wasn't a problem for me). The fight scenes were also a bit underwhelming, but again that's more due to the nature of the film than the actual shooting itself.

I think by far my favorite part though, has to do with the ending. Also, spoiler warning! If you don't want spoilers, stop reading this entry now. Anyway, the film follows a small kill-team who is sent to purge a cult, and they manage to do so although end up unleashing a Daemon. Now, it turns out my copy was a bit corrupted towards the end, so for the last 15 minutes I was somehow zoning out due to the occasional pausing and loss of visuals, but I perked back up at the end. For the entire team dies to a daemon. That's right, in the last 10 minutes a Daemon appears and kills everyone. I was all for this, since it was very 40k, but it seemed like an odd ending, and I was somewhat confused.

But not to worry! An Inquisitor, who we saw in the first minute of the movie and didn't appear again, finally arrives in his ship, and does the only logical thing to do when a single, lone Daemon appears on a planet:

Exterminatus!

So yes, we get treated to a nice sequence of the entire planet being bombed just because one minor daemon escaped onto the planet again. It's great, you'll love it, and it left me feeling very pleased, since it ended on a super grimdark note.

If you're really into 40k or just want to waste 2 hours on a halfway decent movie, I can recommend Damnatus: The Enemy Within. I bet it would be especially good in a group setting, especially one where people tend to talk a lot anyway.

-HTMC

Hollywood Complexity: A Review of Inception

It's funny, as has been discussed many other times in many other places, Hollywood has weird ideas about how certain things work. Electronics and technology are simultaneouslymore complex and more simple than they are in real life and guns might as well be in an alternate universe, among other things. Therefore I thought it was interesting that the first article I read about Inception (which unfortunately I don't have the link for) was talking about Inception's complexity.

Yes, although I apparently missed it while in Austria, apparently the "complexity" of Inception was a big marketing point, in that it was supposed to be unlike other Hollywood films and challenge you to think (I'm looking at you, every summer blockbuster ever). However, the article I read took the position that the American audience is actually smarter than Hollywood would like to believe, as evidenced by the number of "slow burn" complex movies that were only moderate successes at the box office but grew in popularity as time went on (I believe the Shawshank Redemption was one example). Article-man hoped Inception would do well, thus encouraging more complex movies, and hoped also that Inception actually would be complex.

Well, the first part seems to be true. And the second... maybe?

I liked Inception a lot. I enjoyed the film, it had good pacing and excellent cinematography. The actors all did their parts well, and taken aside from any expectations, I don't think I really had a single problem with the movie (aside from a car tumbling over a hill not counting as a "fall"). However, there was one point, and one point only, where I was at all confused by the movie. And that was during the first five minutes, and that was because I couldn't understand Ken Watanabe's Asian accent.

I read this post earlier today, and I agree, I can think of a handful of movies off the top of my head that confused me a lot more than this film did. Primer and Donnie Darko are my favorite two from the list, since the former I still don't understand and the latter I almost understood but it wasn't until I did some internet research that I got it all the way through, and once I did it was very satisifying. Both may be better films overall, since neither relies on fancy cinematics at all. Not that cinematics make a bad film, but I suspect that a movie like Avatar, though while enjoyable, doesn't have staying power, much like video game graphics are only important for a couple years till they're eventually outdated.

Of course, this is only my opinion, and if my Facebook feed is any indication, a lot of my friends loved it and though  it was "mindblowing" or other similar adjectives. Am I in a minority who understood the film without any help at all? I mean, someone took the trouble to make this chart, but I feel like it's completely unnecessary, and want to ask "were you actually watching the movie and paying attention?" I even wish they hadn't done so much exposition in the beginning and made me work a bit more to understand what was going on. They set up something intriguing that I didn't quite understand, then spent a half hour explaining every last detail extremely clearly to Ellen Page.

In conclusion, I suppose it's good it was so popular. Perhaps more films like it will be created, and maybe some of them won't guide the viewer along every little step. And it's not that I don't Inception: as stated, I enjoyed the film a whole lot. But if that's what Hollywood thinks "complex" means, I'm more than a little disappointed.

-HTMC