RJ^2 Reviews

          Pixar has had some serious missteps recently. Cars 2 seemed like something outsourced with the Pixar name slapped on it, Brave was about a simple as a cheap video game, and Monsters University was decent as far as animated films go, which means that it’s still sitting towards the bottom of Pixar’s repertoire. After this string of misfires, people (myself included) were beginning to wonder if Pixar had lost its storytelling touch amidst a race to keep their existing properties relevant. Thankfully, after witnessing Inside Out, I can safely say that Pixar is back on point and I couldn’t be happier.  

           The basic premise of the film actually reminds me a bit of Osmosis Jones except with emotions instead of antibodies and blood cells. The emotions of joy, sadness, disgust, anger, and fear are all personified here. They run the mind of Riley, an eleven year old girl who is suddenly uprooted when her father moves the family from Minnesota to California. From there, the film is about Riley’s various emotions struggling to figure out how to deal with new, complex emotional challenges.

           The film wastes little time in creating a sense of internal conflict. In fact, all the conflict in this film is internal. Nobody is trying to hunt Riley down to steal her toys or end the world or anything of that nature. Everything that Riley and her emotions are having to deal with come from the hardships of everyday life. It’s what makes Inside Out so insanely relatable. Director Pete Docter clearly has a firm grasp on the concept of childhood emotions, and he refuses to frame those sensitive developmental years as the worry-free fairytale that many adults want to remember it as.

           Children will always be more susceptible to their emotions, especially during times of change, and Inside Out does a great job of showcasing how relying on a singular emotion during times of stress isn’t going to work out. You can’t ignore feelings of anger or sadness and just expect everything to be alright. This film asks you to confront your feelings, and in doing so it hopes to give you a better understanding of other peoples’ emotions.

           These are pretty complex themes for a kids’ movie, but the film handles its themes with such a deft touch that it never comes off as preachy. The film never slows down to explain things, aside from the film’s introduction that quickly establishes the rules of the world, and it’s all the better for it. Kids won’t get bored, and adults won’t feel like they’re being talked down to. This also gives the film an upbeat pace throughout, and by the time the film is over you won’t even have noticed that two hours came and went.

           Aside from having a brisk pace, the film is also consistently funny. I never felt the need to check my watch or wonder how much time was left in the film. The unorthodox story kept me on my toes, and I was always curious to see how Pixar would interpret each section of the mind. See, I love animated films because they’re really the only place that you can find well thought-out visual humor. Slapstick in live action films is hard to pull off because it usually either feels lazy or it breaks the rules of the established world. However, the visual comedy in most Pixar films usually works because it’s both clever and it doesn’t break the conventions of the established world. In other words, cartoon physics.

           I’m also a sucker for animated films in general simply because they feel untainted by the major movie studios. Yes, I know that Disney is probably going to sell Inside Out merchandise by the millions, but the actual film itself feels like a self-contained work of art that actually has something to say. Compared to Jurassic World, where a brand logo would be onscreen at least every 5 minutes, Inside Out harkens back to a time when movies were made to tell a story, not sell a franchise.

           Let’s get this out of the way first, since it’s probably what most people were afraid of. Jurassic World is not a bad movie. The action is solid, the performances are enjoyable, and the dinosaurs eat a lot of people. That being said, Jurassic World is not a great film. It’s enjoyable enough to look past its flaws, but its flaws are still there, and they unfortunately hold the film back from greatness.

           The most glaring issue I had with the film was the amount of unnecessary subplots. The kids in the film feel like nothing more than placeholder characters that they forgot to develop. The brothers get one throwaway line of development throughout the film regarding their parents’ divorce, but that aspect of their story is literally never brought up again. Their story is completely irrelevant to the film’s overarching plot, and by the end of the film it feels like the brothers are exactly where they were at the beginning of the film. Their experiences don’t change them at all, so the only reason for including them in the film was to have kids run from dinosaurs.  They don’t even know how to work a unix system.

           There’s also the subplot regarding the weaponization of velociraptors. For real. Honestly, the idea of InGen becoming militarized over the course of 20 years or so isn’t a bad idea. It’s the specific idea of weaponizing freakin’ velociraptors that really makes me scratch my head. I know that the military regularly uses service dogs, but from my limited understanding of how dogs in the military work I always assumed that the dogs were used to sniff out bombs and traps. Not that I wouldn’t love to see a velociraptor general, it’s just that the idea seems a little farfetched.

           Okay, now that the painful part is over, let’s talk about what worked in the film. Dinosaurs. The dinosaurs in this film, especially the Indominus Rex, are intimidating as hell. I mean, Jesus, the Indominus Rex is basically the Predator amped up in size and without any lasers (though it’s not like she needs them). If that thing finds you, there is no escape…unless you’re Chris Pratt. The other dinosaurs were just as entertaining even though they were left out of the spotlight. The velociraptors now respond to commands from Chris Pratt, but have no fear, they’re still killing machines.

           One of my favorite aspects of the movie was actually the relationship between Pratt and the raptors. It’s not like the movie was Marley and Me with dinosaurs, but it was refreshing to see a relationship form between a human and a dinosaur other than the relationship one’s mouth has with food.

Speaking of Pratt, he was one of the most enjoyable aspects of the film. His character, Owen, was recruited out of the Navy to train dinosaurs, because I guess the Navy has a dinosaur training route now. For the entire running time of the film Pratt’s character felt like Indiana Jones had accidentally crossed over into the universe of Jurassic World. Seriously, just give Pratt a hat and a whip already. He’s charismatic and aggressively likable, but he can also carry dramatic weight when necessary. Dallas Bryce Howard was enjoyable as well, playing the stuck-up CEO of the park who gets her hands dirty in order to save her nephews. The nephews themselves are serviceable dinosaur fodder, and that’s about all I have to say about their performances. Nobody’s performance made me gag, so that’s a plus. Unfortunately, Jeff Goldblum is nowhere to be found.

Other than the action and performances, there’s not really much to talk about when it comes to Jurassic World. The film isn’t reaching for any higher ideas other than the notion that dinosaurs are good at killing people. You get glimpses of what could be an interesting analysis of the ethics behind genetic modification, but those ideas are quickly pushed aside to make room for product placement and scenes of vicious natural selection. There’s also this odd sense of self-awareness throughout the film that doesn’t really add anything to it. Jurassic World knows it’s just a big budget monster movie designed to thrill audiences and sell toys, and it wants people to know that it knows it. I just don’t know why.

Overall, I enjoyed Jurassic World. Yes, it’s flawed, but the film succeeds where it counts and I don’t regret buying my movie ticket. It’s nowhere near as good as Jurassic Park, but really, what movie is?

Stephen Hawking has always been an inspiration to me. The idea that he would not let his intellectual prowess be hampered by his crippling disease has always been awe-inspiring, and I’m honestly surprised it took this long for a proper feature-length biographical film to be made about his life. “The Theory of Everything” is informative to those who are unfamiliar with Hawking’s history, while also being incredibly moving, if a tiny bit underwhelming.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a great film with two outstanding performances from the leads (Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones), but there is a lot of emotional material that could and should have been explored in the film. It was also a little irksome to see the scientific aspects of Hawking’s life pushed aside in favor of his personal relationships, but thankfully, the complex relationships in this film are what truly sell it.

The film opens with Hawking still being fully mobile, and chronicles his life from college to where he is now. He meets his wife, Jane, shortly before learning that he has a debilitating motor neuron disease. He learns that the average life expectancy for patients in his condition is only 2 years and rapidly becomes depressed and hopeless in the face of his morbid situation. However, Stephen learns that the disease does not affect the brain, and with the indispensable help and support of Jane he continues on his pursuit of knowledge, hoping to eventually find an equation that can prove that time has a beginning.

Watching Hawking slowly become imprisoned by his own body is by far the most difficult thing to watch in this film. Redmayne is fantastic as Stephen, and you really can see the effort Redmayne has put into the role. Throughout the film, his speech becomes increasingly more unintelligible as his symptoms progress until Stephen loses the ability to communicate naturally completely. It’s heartbreaking to watch Stephen have his bodily functions ripped out of his control, but it is even more painful to watch his wife have to deal with caring for the man she loves as he slowly deteriorates. Jones is also fantastic as Jane, displaying a resolve strong enough to carry both her and Stephen forward no matter how difficult the situation.

Unfortunately, the scientific contributions that Stephen made throughout his life are a bit underwhelming in the film. Most of the scientific concepts that the film presents are boiled down to a simple metaphor, and at times it can feel like the film is talking down to the audience. If you’re already paying for a ticket to see a biopic about one of the world’s greatest living theoretical physicists, chances are you can grasp a few of the concepts without them having to be simplified into an analogy that a 5-year-old could understand. I get that the focus of the film is how the Hawking’s battled through some of the most difficult times of their lives, but I would have enjoyed a bit more insight into how Stephen came to the scientific conclusions that he did.

Aside from the science nitpicking, though, “The Theory of Everything” really is a great film. It’s certainly one of the more powerful films of 2014, and the performances are top-notch. The cinematography is pretty, if a bit pedestrian, and the color palette occasionally comes across as washed out, but for the most part, the film is well-made and an accurate period piece. There are times I wish director James Marsh had been willing to let the film get darker, as I’m certain the Hawkings’ lives did, though the melancholy ending does make up for it a bit.

I love award season. Jake Gyllenhaal knocked it out of the park with “Nightcrawler,” Matthew McConaughey nearly brought me to tears in “Interstellar” and now Michael Keaton has returned to the silver screen with what will most certainly be an award worthy performance with “Birdman.” Honestly, this is the film I’ve been waiting for all year. I’ve yearned to finally experience a film that allows me to simply sit back and bask in both the technical craft and emotional maturity on display. I loved “Birdman” more than any other film in 2014, and that’s not something that I regularly say about a film.

The film opens with washed-up actor Riggan Thompson (Keaton) meditating on his life decisions. He used to be the blockbuster movie star known as “Birdman” in the early ‘90s, but since he declined the opportunity to do “Birdman 4,” he has been all but forgotten in the public’s eyes. In a desperate attempt to validate himself as an artist and an actor, he decided to produce, direct and star in a Broadway play. The film picks up a few days before the opening night of the production, and the audience is given a very intimate look at the utter insanity that is putting on a Broadway play.

From the get-go, it’s clear that this is a film unlike any other. The entire thing is shot to look like it was done in one long take, and the illusion of never overtly seeing the film cut only adds to the immersion of the audience. The camera eerily floats down hallways and through doorways while it spectrally chases after characters.

The filming technique truly lends itself to creating a claustrophobic environment, and you really do feel like you’re backstage with the cast and crew for a majority of the film. There’s also the soundtrack comprised entirely of drum beats. It has a very jazzy feel to it, as if the entire score was performed off the cuff. Again, this only reinforces the theme of improvisation that is inherent to putting on live performances.

As for the acting, let’s just say that Keaton is all but guaranteed to be nominated for his performance in this film. Riggan is manic, but sincere, and you can truly feel his desperation and insanity towards the third act of the film. Riggan just wants to be known as an actor, not simply as the guy who was popular in the ‘90s, but his inner voices keep trying to tempt him into going back and putting the Birdman costume on again. His internal conflict is one of doing what is right versus doing what is easy. He knows that audiences would be clambering at the chance to see Birdman again, and he knows that it would easily make a killing at the box office, but he doesn’t believe that Birdman is what gives him purpose. He has to prove to himself that Birdman as a character exists because of his efforts, and not that he exists as an actor because of Birdman. Everyone else in the film is fantastic too, from Edward Norton to Emma Stone. Even Zach Galifianakis is wonderful, but they all perform in Keaton’s shadow.

Space is vast. It’s intimidating and fascinating, but it is also a vacuum devoid of character and emotion. It’s easy to forget about human characters while making a science fiction epic about reaching the farthest corners of the known universe, and my biggest fear when going into “Interstellar” was that Christopher Nolan would let humanity fall to the wayside in favor of showcasing the awe inspiring visuals that he and his special effects team concocted. Thankfully, this is not the case as Nolan and his team have crafted one of the most emotionally powerful, albeit imperfect, films of the year, thanks in no small part to Matthew McConaughey’s riveting performance.

The film takes its time setting up the plot, choosing to remain on Earth for the better part of the first act. Cooper (McConaughey) is a retired pilot who is desperately trying to make a living by farming to provide for his family. The time period isn’t made explicit, but the film takes place somewhere in the near future with Earth having turned into one giant dust bowl. Blight has wiped out almost every crop available except corn, and the dirt is no longer suitable to grow anything. Dust storms occur on a regular basis, and the Earth’s breathable atmosphere is slowly changing to carbon dioxide. After establishing the dire situation that humanity faces, Cooper is recruited by an underground form of NASA to travel through a wormhole that miraculously appeared by Saturn in order to search for a habitable planet.

The first act of the film packs an emotional wallop. It is absolutely heartbreaking to watch Cooper part with his daughter, Murph, without knowing if he will be making a return trip. Murph’s feelings of betrayal by her father evolve into a much more interesting internal conflict for her, and watching her try to reconcile with the belief that her father abandoned her to suffocate on the dying Earth is nothing short of engrossing. Jessica Chastain is wonderful as the adult Murph, but McConaughey is the one who truly delivers a standout performance. Watching him struggle with the conflicting ideals of self-preservation and species-preservation is utterly captivating. His performance in “Interstellar” is one of the best of his already impressive career.

Unfortunately, Anne Hathaway’s performance is a bit more one-note than everyone else’s, but I’m hesitant to place her at fault. She is a fantastic actress, and you can see tidbits of emotion come through her character, but for the most part, her character is simply boring. Most of the time it feels like her character exists simply for expository purposes.

Still, whatever flaws there are in characterization are almost made up for by the incredible visuals. You’ve never seen space like this. The alien planets are gorgeous, the black hole is beautiful and the space travel sequences are visceral. The cinematography does a fantastic job of showing just how insignificant humanity is in the grand scope of universe, but it also showcases the beauty of astronomical phenomena that we cannot even begin to understand. The best part is that all of the visuals, like the gravitational lensing of light around a black hole, are based on real mathematical calculations done by Nolan’s visual effects team. The grounding of this film by real world mathematics makes it even more breathtaking to look at.

However, there is one major gripe I have with the film that I’m hesitant to write about here. I cannot describe in detail what the major problem was, as it has to do with the final ten minutes of the film that I don’t want to spoil, but suffice to say that the ending was a bit too neatly wrapped up for my tastes. Still, with everything else that this film gets right, it really would be shame to discount the film simply because of the final 10 minutes.

You know a film is well-directed when it can get under your skin without having to resort to a smorgasbord of jump scares, violence and gore. Such is the case with “Nightcrawler,” the new film starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a sociopathic news correspondent who spends his nights seeking out the most violent and disturbing video footage around Los Angeles. “Nightcrawler” is a rare beast, one that asks audiences to laugh at the film while also posing some interesting and important questions regarding what the news is versus what it should be. It’s satire done right, and thankfully, the film is also hugely entertaining.

“Nightcrawler” opens with Gyllenhaal’s character, Louis Bloom, working as a petty thief stealing scrap metal to sell to a scrapyard owner. After happening upon a car accident and witnessing a couple of men with video cameras document the accident, he learns that local news stations are willing to pay for graphic footage of accidents and crimes. He promptly buys a police scanner and a camcorder before deciding to pursue a career as a stringer, someone who records graphic accidents and crimes in order to sell the footage to the highest bidding news station.

Bloom struggles a bit at first, but after a few failed attempts at getting good footage, he realizes that he has to take risks that other stringers won’t in order to make a name for himself. He gets better at finding shocking scenes, but it doesn’t take long for his ambition to set him down a terrifying path.

Bloom’s ambition is actually one of the main focuses of the film. Much of his dialogue sounds like it was lifted verbatim either out of a self-help book or a marketing textbook. He views every decision he makes as a business decision, carefully weighing the pros and cons of each option. Although it doesn’t seem like it at first, Bloom is rational to a fault. He cannot connect to a single person, and throughout the entirety of the film, he is not shown to have one friend. He views people as either rewards or obstacles, and he isn’t above disposing of an obstacle entirely in order to get what he wants. He is the perfect sociopath, and as a result, one of the most interesting characters I’ve ever seen in a film.

Watching Bloom work is riveting. He is utterly disconnected from the rest of the world, and because of this, he makes for an astounding businessman. His tactics would be lauded in a corporate culture, and his knack for manipulation would make him an intimidating negotiator.

Obviously, a morally conscience audience would never root for Bloom, but that’s all part of the satirical genius of “Nightcrawler.” Bloom’s story is, by all accounts, an uplifting success story of a young, ambitious man who starts out with nothing and lifts himself up by the bootstraps in order to become one of the most renowned figures in his industry. Society has become increasingly focused on individual success within the business world, placing a higher value on the ability to make money instead of the ability to help other people. Based solely on corporate values, Louis Bloom should be regarded as a hero.

“John Wick” is a pretty simple movie to sell. Keanu Reeves plays a retired hitman who is drawn back into the fray after some Russian mobsters steal from him. On paper, it sounds like a simple setup and, for the most part, it is a relatively straightforward revenge story. However, the most impressive pieces of “John Wick” have virtually nothing to do with the pedestrian plot. In fact, what really stood out to me after leaving the theater, aside from the astoundingly high headshot count, was the storytelling potential of the universe that the film had created.

The film begins with Reeves’s character grieving the loss of his wife. The day after she dies, a puppy is delivered to his doorstep with a final goodbye letter from his ailing wife. He cherishes everything he has left of her, including the dog. So when a couple of young Russian thugs break into his house and take the only reminders of his wife he had left, he decides to get back into the underworld game and track down those who wronged him.

This simple setup is handled with a surprising amount of grace and restraint, turning what could have been a quick, generic setup for an action film into something emotionally resonant. Reeves shows off an emotional intensity that he’s never really shown before, and by the time the action starts, viewers are already invested in seeing Wick exact revenge upon the young Russians. Reeves sells the character of Wick like no one else could, and it is invigorating to see him back in action hero mode. Watching Reeves perform a majority of his own stunts is exhilarating, and it only further proves his dedication as an actor.

Now, no action film would be worth mentioning if the actual action of the film was subpar. Thankfully, the action scenes in “John Wick” are some of the best choreographed action sequences of the year. The actors move with such a kinetic grace that the action scenes can sometimes feel like a choreographed dance with firearms and bullets. The handheld camera technique – which has become far too prevalent in action films these days – is thankfully nonexistent in this film.

Instead, the filmmakers opt to allow the audience to actually see the action happening on-screen, rather than letting the audience just assume a scene is intense because the cameraman can’t figure out what to focus on.

When the action slows down, the film shifts into world-building mode. Rules exist within the underground world, and the film does a great job letting the exposition be delivered organically, in favor of awkwardly shoehorning dialogue about the rules and boundaries of this world.

The film doesn’t play down to audiences. It assumes the audience is smart enough to figure out how the world works after showing it on screen, instead of hand-feeding the rules to the audience through unnecessary exposition. This keeps the film’s pacing on beat. The universe it creates is quite interesting as well, and I already want to know more about the world that all these characters operate in.

For a long time, video games wanted to be movies. Games wanted to tell epic tales over the length of 10 to 20 hours, and they wanted to look as realistic as possible while doing it. When games like “Uncharted” began hitting shelves, gamers were rightfully impressed with the presentation and storytelling, with some people describing it as a playable Indiana Jones movie.

However, now that photorealistic graphics are becoming more commonplace in the gaming world and linear storytelling is getting a bit stale, people are beginning to realize that video games have so much more potential than their film counterparts to create living, immersive worlds. This is due in large part to the one facet that differentiates video games from nearly every other form of media: interactivity.

Interactivity in games is something that many cinematic video games have begun to shy away from, and this trend is hugely disappointing to a lot of people.

Now, when I say that a game is interactive, I don’t simply mean that the in-game avatar reacts to button pushes on a controller. A truly interactive game will shape itself around the decisions made by the player, and the game world will alter to reflect those decisions. True interactivity in a video game means that no two game worlds will be exactly alike.

This is something that has sadly been shed by games like “Uncharted,” where every player will see exactly the same scenes at the same points in the game, just like a playable movie.

The thing is, if I wanted to watch a movie, why would I be playing a video game?

That’s not to say that I hate the “Uncharted” series. They’re hugely successful and mostly enjoyable as playable films, but because everything that happens in the game is already set in stone, they can grow stale fast. It’s like watching the same movie four times in a row. There’s nothing surprising in these games, aside from their graphical fidelity, and the actual gameplay mechanics are passable at best.

Another gaping flaw in the design of cinematic games like this is the narrative dissonance on display. For example, in certain non-playable scenes in the game, emphasis is placed on moments where characters are forced to kill someone, and the consequences play out in full. However, when the time comes for the player to take control, enemies are slaughtered by the dozens, yet this doesn’t seem to affect the characters at all.

A well designed game shouldn’t have narrative dissonance. If I were to watch a film where the main character is remorseful for having to kill somebody, regardless of who they were, I would be a little taken aback if they were to suddenly go on a murdering spree in order to get from point A to point B. Characters’ actions should be consistent with their moral values, and in many cinematic games, the actions of the character do not line up with their moral standards.

Sometimes, this dissonance can actually be used to great storytelling effect, like with the “Bioshock” series, but those games aren’t cinematic, nor are they trying to be. Instead, the designers have embraced benefits of an interactive medium, and in doing so they crafted one of the most highly respected series in the industry.

The “Bioshock” games don’t want you to just sit back on the couch and watch the action play out. They require you to be invested in the game, forcing you to build up your character with genetic modifications that have some pretty interesting ramifications, and because the game is presented entirely in first person, the player sees the story unfold the same way that the main character does.

Games should be intimate, and a great game will create a relationship between the player and the world instead of simply putting the world on display. The video game industry used to look at the film industry with jealousy, and many developers often put out cinematic games in an effort to validate themselves as artists. To me, though, that’s missing the entire point of an interactive medium.

Theaters are always looking for an excuse to throw a surcharge on top of the price of a regular movie ticket. When James Cameron's “Avatar” hit theaters, theater chains scrambled to install 3D projectors into their auditoriums. The gimmick of 3D allowed theaters to tack on a few extra dollars to the price of a ticket, and for a good few years, Hollywood churned out cheap 3D movies one after another. Thankfully, the 3D fad is finally beginning to die down, but theater chains have already begun push for the next movie going gimmick.

Enter the off-brand IMAX experience.

Certain theater chains, like Cinemark and Regal, have begun installing their own large-format theaters in an attempt to draw bigger crowds. Now, Columbia has one at the Regal Stadium 14 theater, and it is dubbed the RPX (Regal Premium Experience) auditorium.

So, is the "Premium Experience" simply the next iteration of the 3D gimmick? Well, yes and no.

Over the weekend, I was able to catch a screening of “Dracula Untold” in the RPX theater. Right off the bat (pun very much intended), I can tell you the screen is big. In fact, the new screen is a cool floor-to-ceiling screen that honestly looks pretty impressive. It's just a shame that most films being shown in RPX probably aren't going to be filmed in IMAX's standard 70mm film format, so the black bars on the top and bottom of the screen make it seem unnecessary to have such a large screen. After about an hour of the film, I had forgotten that the screen actually reached from the floor to the ceiling. The screen sounds awesome on paper, but without the proper media format, the RPX theater looks like a regular theater screen, albeit marginally wider.

However, the audio quality of the RPX theater is something to behold. The RPX theater is certainly louder than your average theater auditorium, but the loudness isn't what won me over. The clarity of the sound effects was top notch, and it really helped with my immersion into the film. The battle scenes of “Dracula Untold” were elevated by the brutal audio design of the swords clanging and bodies being tossed around the battlefield, and it was gratifying to get to hear that audio design in full. I would love to see a horror film in the RPX theater, though I would love it even more if a studio ever decided to film a horror picture in 70mm.

So what else is there to differentiate the RPX theater from the rest of the movie screens in Columbia? Not much, actually. The seats are leather and have extra cushioning, and you can put the armrests up if you so desire. The entrance has some neat blue lighting and an RPX logo, but none of these things are really that crucial to the moviegoing experience. It’s nice to see Regal trying to make the moviegoing experience more comfortable, but paying a surcharge to sit in a marginally cushier seat isn’t something that I would normally do.

“Gone Girl” is a fantastic film. The level of technical craft on display is top-notch, and the actors deliver some powerhouse performances. However, what stood out to me the most was neither how gorgeous the film’s shots were, nor was it the way that veteran actors, like Ben Affleck or Rosamund Pike, delivered their lines with chilling restraint.

Instead, what stuck out in my head after leaving the theater was just how brutal David Fincher’s characterization of modern media was. The film as a whole is a ruthless send-up of today’s 24-hour news cycle, and aside from being beautifully crafted, the sharp satire of this film is one of the reasons I expect it to be remembered for years to come.

I didn’t expect to laugh much when going into this film. Having never even heard of the novel before I saw the trailer for the movie, I was expecting nothing more than a dark, stylish murder mystery punctuated with some solid acting from Affleck and Pike.

To my surprise, the film quickly began to focus less on actually solving the mystery and instead shifted its focus onto how modern media can bend public perception to a hilarious degree. Affleck’s character, Nick Dunne, simply doesn’t know how to act during these dire times. He awkwardly smiles at the cameras during the search for his missing wife, not knowing what to do with a camera in his face.

The media’s reaction to Nick’s strange behavior is virtually instantaneous, with news anchors and talk show hosts making judgments about Nick’s character based entirely off of one picture. They claim that nobody in their right mind would be so composed during a dire time like this.

The media sensationalizes his story while diagnosing Nick as a sociopathic murderer all thanks to a few photos and a selfie that leaked onto the Internet. The story is sold to the public like a murder-mystery gift basket, complete with flashy news graphics and a theme song.

Eventually, the media itself becomes a character. It’s shallow, it doesn’t actually care about the facts, and all it wants is to raise its viewing numbers. It can be used to both help and hinder the protagonist, and by the end of the film, manipulation of the public’s perception has become a powerful tool for the film’s characters.

It is difficult to talk about how the film handles the 24-hour news cycle without spoiling major plot details, but suffice it to say, “Gone Girl” essentially revolves around the stories we project onto people we see on the news and not the story behind the newscasts.

The film highlights just how susceptible the general public is to a little bit of charisma and high production values. A man in a nice suit is always more credible than the investigators actually doing the dirty work, and a pretty woman yelling into a news camera will always be more influential than a dull, uneventful press conference. Fincher coaxes laughs out of the audience by showing us a mockery of talking heads, the most notable of which is a parody of Nancy Grace, satirizing the armada of armchair lawyers and investigators who make a living off implications they make on the air for a massive audience to see.

By the end of the film, Fincher’s (and novel author Gillian Flynn’s) disdain for tabloid-style “reporting” is pretty evident. The law isn’t what actually matters in the news anymore. Reporting on crime stories is no longer about what the situation looks like in the eyes of the law or is it about the facts. These days, crafting a strong news segment is about creating a narrative with whatever pictures and audio clips the field reporters were able to nab, regardless of the truth. The only angle that matters is the emotional angle. People don’t care about the outcome of the case, they care about what the talking heads have to say about it.

This weekend, I was lucky enough to catch a free screening of the new Michael Fassbender film, “Frank.” Judging by the trailers, I thought “Frank” was going to be an enjoyable, if trite, film that wore its quirkiness on its sleeve.

At first glance, the film seemed like it was aiming to showcase the creative process of a strange and unstable band. I thought it was going to ask the audience to laugh at the lack of reasonable behavior on display by the band members, but to my surprise, the film actually ended up showing a much deeper and tragic side of the band.

The film opens with Don (Domhall Gleeson) trying desperately to compose a song while walking around his quaint hometown. He futilely posts to social media sites, unnecessarily documenting every moment of his life for a group of 16 or so followers to read.

Things change for Don when he witnesses the band, SORONPRFBS, trying to stop their keyboardist from drowning himself in a river. Don is then invited by the enigmatic Frank (Fassbender) to join the band and replace their keyboardist, much to the chagrin of the band’s theremin player Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal).

After playing one miserable live show, Don becomes so desperate to have his music liked by people that he makes the utterly irrational decision to move in with the band and live with them in the middle of the woods. This moment in the film provides a strange dichotomy in which the film begins to grow darker while also growing seemingly more whimsical.

The cracks in the characters’ psyches begin to show, making for some amusing imagery but also revealing a much darker subtext to the film. Don begins to document, and in certain cases exploit, the quirks and eccentricities of the band members, slowly unraveling the camaraderie that used to exist between the band members.

However, the film doesn’t explicitly show how damaging it is to the mentally ill or impaired for people to romanticize their problems. There are multiple times in the film that Don wishes that he had a traumatic childhood or a mental impairment so that he could compose better music. Too often will I come across a film centered around a disabled or traumatized character that romanticizes the impairment to a point where it becomes desirable to the audience.

In reality, as this film hints at, making a showcase out of someone like Frank is inviting the internet to scrutinize their entire livelihood. The fallout of Don’s grabs at fame is truly felt during the third act of the film, and the film takes on a decidedly and fittingly more somber tone. The characters’ quirks are still present, but the audience isn’t invited to laugh at them any longer.

Once the curtain is pulled back on these characters, it becomes clear that these people don’t exist simply to be a one-dimensional cutout for people to laugh at. These characters are more than just vessels to deliver a universal truth to the main “normal” character, and the fact that the film is aware of these expectations makes it all the more satisfying to see Don become disillusioned with Frank. As Don slowly realizes that Frank is not someone he should necessarily look up to, the film becomes a fantastic character study of someone who unhealthily idolizes a person simply because they have a talent that he doesn’t.

By the end of the film, it is clear to both Don and the audience that looking at only one aspect of someone’s life is simply another form of objectification. Idolizing someone’s weirdness or envying someone’s mental trauma is juvenile, and “Frank” does a great job at luring the audience in with humor before revealing how a person, a true character, is more than just the quirks that make them different.

Kevin Smith is a weird guy. I mean, who in their right mind sets out to make a film about a psychopath abducting people and trying to surgically turn them into walruses?

Such is the simple, twisted premise of “Tusk,” Kevin Smith’s latest entry into his increasingly experimental filmography. When I first heard about the film, I wasn’t entirely sure that the world was ready for another “Human Centipede”-style movie, but being a fan of Smith’s previous work, I found myself curiously intrigued and cautiously optimistic.

So how was it? Well, let’s just say that I’m glad that I wasn’t eating anything during my viewing.

“Tusk” opens with Wallace (Justin Long) and the long-dormant Teddy (Haley Joel Osment)playing a couple of hugely successful podcast hosts who found success through making fun of embarrassing Internet videos on their Howard Stern-esque podcast.

While on a trip to Canada to interview a minor Internet celebrity, Wallace finds an interesting invitation to stay and listen to an old man’s tales of adventure. From here, “Tusk” shifts dramatically from what viewers are used to from a Smith comedy. The film eschews the funny, friendly banter between characters for a far more grotesque sense of humor.

Right off the bat it’s clear that this film’s sense of humor was not for the faint of heart. From the twisted monologues delivered by the film’s villain, Howard Howe, to the disturbing yet hilarious imagery, it’s clear this is a film created to please the masses of jaded horror fans.

Every joke has an air of self-awareness, and the film is packed with homages to classic horror films and references to Smith’s own repertoire. There’s even a cameo of epic proportions by a star who is no stranger to bizarre films.

The film really shines when it is reveling in its own absurdity, though its sense of self-awareness unfortunately can’t always make up for the film’s flaws.

About halfway through, it became clear that Smith hadn’t put much thought into the pacing of the film. By the third act, the film felt a bit lethargic, which is a shame considering how briskly it had been moving forward. The runtime is a meager 102 minutes, yet “Tusk” somehow manages to feel stretched thin by the end. Certain plot points are padded out beyond necessity with relatively unfunny dialogue, and there are moments where Smith seems to have become a bit too overindulgent with the grotesquerie.

Fortunately, these flaws don’t overshadow Smith’s impressively meticulous direction.

Scenes are framed well, the editing feels quite deliberate, and the audio mixing is suitably eerie. “Tusk” is one of those films that is able to utilize every element of the medium to elicit some sort of reaction, and it mostly uses them for a comedic effect. However, when it takes a break from making the audience laugh, it can genuinely be an unsettling experience.

Altogether, this makes it somewhat tonally inconsistent, but for the most part, Smith does a great job of integrating the horror into the humor. It’s a bold move to ask the audience to laugh at the absurdity of the main character’s suffering, but it’s a strategy that often pays off.

By the time I had reached the melancholic ending, I was both disturbed and in stitches. Still, I can’t help but feel that Smith wanted to say something more. The film is funny and well-directed, but it feels entirely trivial. I want to believe that Smith was trying to provide some form of social commentary, but any message he was trying to send is muddled by the sheer absurdity and self-awareness of the film.

Thankfully, while those two aspects make for a lack of depth, they also make it hugely enjoyable and entertaining.

There are no good new releases currently in theaters.

If you want to have a good time at the theater this upcoming weekend, just see “Guardians of the Galaxy,” and if you’ve seen it already, I would recommend watching it again rather than going to see any new releases in September. Every year, the movie industry suffers a drought of good content from September until November, and 2014 is no exception.

Thankfully, the offerings of video-on-demand have grown exponentially over the past few years, making this time of the year a bit more pleasant to get through for film buffs.

While scouring a few digital libraries, I came across the 2011 indie horror film “The Innkeepers.” Seeing as Halloween is about six weeks away, I decided to get into the spirit of the holiday early, and I gave “The Innkeepers” a watch. Thankfully, I don’t regret my decision.

To start off, I was pleasantly surprised by the film, but not in a way that I had expected from a horror film. I went in hoping to be terrified of turning off the lights while watching the film, but, to be frank, the film really isn’t that scary. Sure, it has its moments of terror, but they are relatively few and far between. What I was truly surprised by was how much I ended up caring about the characters.

The story is pretty straightforward. Two hotel clerks, Claire and Luke, are working the front desk during the final weekend of the hotel’s operation. They’re on a quest to prove that the hotel is actually haunted, as is suggested by some local urban legends.

The film does a great job of characterizing these two as a couple of semi-lazy outcasts finally trying to do something to garner the attention of their peers. It starts off with a healthy dose of banter between the two, firmly establishing the characters’ personalities while giving just enough exposition to explain why they do what they do. In fact, a large majority of the film is dedicated to developing these characters and building them up before tearing them down in the finale.

It’s an effective technique, and one that is unfortunately quite rare to find in horror films. The film plays the psychological game for a while, refusing to say whether or not the urban legends are actually true. It is disturbing to watch the psyches of these two likable people slowly unravel.

It’s the film’s strongly established sense of normalcy that makes it so effective as a horror film, more so than most horror films that just devolve into a barrage of jump-scares and an endless amount of gore. Watching a world that seems immediately familiar with characters that can be easily empathized with slowly twist into a ghost story from hell is unsettling, to say the least.

Many horror films use humor to relieve tension, but “The Innkeepers” does a great job of blending the two together. Sometimes I found myself laughing with the characters out of fear; other times the scares are underlined with a sense of self-awareness. Eventually, it becomes clear that humor can’t always save you from what’s lurking in the darkness.

I’ve always been a big fan of horror films that can be disturbing without relying on violence or gore. I believe that disturbing imagery can certainly supplement a horror film, but only when the filming techniques are already solid. Gore and violence should not be a substitution for creating actual tension and dread with the camera.

In the past decade, television shows have become increasingly serialized. This shift from episodic formats has lent an air of epic storytelling to many television shows.

In 2004, ABC took a huge risk when it decided to air “Lost,” but to many network executives’ surprise, the show drew huge numbers and went on to run for a full six seasons.

At that point, serialized shows were almost unheard of on most networks aside from premium cable channels, like HBO or Showtime. Shows were designed to be instantly watchable, easily digestible and, in some cases, utterly forgettable. Overarching stories were few and far between, with studios opting instead for self-contained stories within each episode.

However, thanks to the success of shows like “Lost” and the ever-increasing availability of television shows on demand, networks have been able to produce a growing number of cinematic shows, eschewing the episodic format in favor of season-long storylines and characterizations the likes of which had rarely been seen on television. Once shows were freed from the constraints of having to fit an entire story into a 45-minute episode, they began to tackle increasingly difficult stories. Many shows today have mastered showing the audience instead of shoving loads of exposition into 10 minutes of dialogue. Characters grow over the course of a season, and thanks to the relatively new ability to binge-watch an entire television show, individual seasons have begun to feel like 12-hour films.

With this paradigm shift, show creators have been given the freedom to tell stories without compromise, pulling inspiration from cinema in both terms of emotional intimacy and epic scope. Shows can now take the time to devote an entire episode to developing a character, using around 45 minutes to show what made a character the way they are. This is a luxury that is generally reserved for film, but as evidenced by shows like “Mad Men,” a slow-burning serialized drama that is no longer a fantasy for television writers.

Aside from the storytelling leaps made by television shows in recent years, the technical advancements of production have also brought the world of TV closer to the world of cinema. HBO’s “True Detective” is a wonderful showcase for the aesthetic influence that the movie industry has had on television. The color palette is strikingly similar to David Fincher’s films, and the show’s cinematography would be right at home on the silver screen. The camera regularly lingers on characters and scenery past the point of comfort, forcing the audience to contend with the demons bubbling just beneath the surface. Filming techniques like this are becoming increasingly common among serialized television shows, and it is enthralling to see television shows pay more attention to the framing and blocking of scenes.

“Breaking Bad” is another fantastic example of the influence that cinema has had on television stories. It is rather difficult to recall another show where the central character had an arc as powerful and dramatic as Walter White’s. Episodes regularly opened immediately after the conclusion of the previous episode, and while many television shows were concerned with pacing in regard to commercial breaks, “Breaking Bad” feels like it was designed to be watched in one sitting.

The ups and downs of the show are spread out over an entire season, and the show never gets repetitive. Where episodic shows generally rely on a formula, like the police-procedural formula of shows like “CSI” or “Law and Order,” modern television shows no longer adhere to a comfortable formula for an episode. I understand the appeal of a show that offers a familiar experience every episode, but as with cinema, I prefer being surprised by a story.

The original “Sin City” was a refreshing breath of fresh air for the film industry when it was released in 2005. Comic book adaptations were beginning to hit their stride in that decade, but audiences had not yet begun to gravitate toward comic adaptations like they do today. With disappointing adaptations like “Daredevil,” “The Punisher” and “Catwoman” regularly making their way into theaters, it’s not hard to see why people were still apprehensive about comic adaptations.

Granted, the early 2000s had quite a few hits that laid the groundwork for the hugely successful comic adaptations of the next few years, but the general consensus is that studios hadn’t fully grasped what made a comic book adaptation good.

Studios would often tone down the language and violence in order to nab a PG-13 rating, hoping to make a quick buck during the summer seasons at the cost of a film’s integrity and quality. The general blandness of most comic adaptations during the time was sharply contrasted by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s bombastic and stylish “Sin City.” Soaked in sex, lathered with violence and littered with profanity, “Sin City” was a 12-year-old’s dream film, and critics largely agreed.

The film was lauded for its neo-noir atmosphere and hyper-stylized violence, with some critics claiming that “Sin City” had pushed the comic book adaptation genre to its absolute limit. Sadly, the general audience consensus was that “Sin City” was just too strange and different for their tastes.

It seems that audiences haven’t yet changed their minds, seeing as how its sequel, “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For,” a film with a $70 million budget, has only made a measly $6 million at the box office.

Objectively, “A Dame to Kill For” is as solid as the original film. It still has the neo-noir feel, gratuitous sex and violence, a healthy dose of black humor, and the iconic styling of the first film. Joseph-Gordon Levitt adds a youthful touch to the film, and watching Mickey Rourke bulldoze through bad guys as Marv is as enjoyable as ever. The film looks sharp as hell, and it still is refreshing to see a comic adaptation in which the heroes aren’t actually heroes. So why did it bomb at the box office? Well, a couple things could be at fault.

Firstly, releasing a film at the tail end of the summer is just asking for it to bomb. School is starting up again, and moviegoers are worn out by the bombardment of blockbusters during the previous months. The only positive to releasing a film during this window is that it allows a studio to wait out their competition. Obviously, this strategy didn’t work out for “Sin City 2.” Perhaps it could have if it weren’t for the film’s atrocious marketing campaign. I rarely saw trailers or posters for the film while in theaters, and its presence online was virtually nonexistent.

Another possible reason for the film’s failing is that critics and audiences have matured (or like to think they’ve matured) over the course of nine years. Is the film crude? Yes. Is its violence and sex appeal gratuitously over the top? Absolutely. Is it still a little bit cool? Hell yeah. Don’t get me wrong, I completely understand someone outgrowing their adolescent tastes. However, I am a man-child, so for the same reasons I enjoy watching “Adventure Time” for its nostalgic properties, I enjoy watching films like “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For” to relish in my adolescent fantasies.

Sadly, as much as I want to praise this film, I know that it is not perfect, and evidently not suitable for a general audience. I’m certainly happy that I got to see the location of Basin City on the silver screen once more, but after a financial blunder this large, it’s going to take a miracle to keep this series alive.