Iro's Film Diary

#159 - The Lego Movie
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, 2014



A gormless everyman is broken out of his everyday routine by a freedom fighter who wants to defeat a ruthless tyrant.

It still astounds me that The Lego Movie not only manages to be as good as it is but it also holds up well after multiple viewings. Though it definitely covers familiar territory as it weaves a chosen-one narrative into another family-film setting about the fantastic lives of inanimate objects (in this case, the little yellow people from the eponymous plastic toy brand), it manages to provide a very well-balanced approach to the various levels of humour that can be gleaned even from such an outwardly predictable set-up. There are flaws in the deconstructive yet affectionate approach to the material (such as the shifting power dynamic that develops between the hypercompetent Wyldstyle and hapless Emmet, which goes relatively unscathed amidst the rest of the film's relentless barrage of satirical gags) but they don't significantly detract from the overall experience. The tightness of the film's comedy manages to sell even the most rudimentary of jokes, but they all feed organically off a fairly chaotic approach that can more than justify its jumping around between various settings and characters. The aesthetic provided by the obviously artificial nature of Lego pieces is also a pleasantly distinctive one that not only influences the plot and jokes but also looks amazing even as it constantly draws attention to the sheer blockiness of everything. Though I don't consider The Lego Movie to be perfect, it's just such a blast time and time again that it doesn't really matter.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

#160 - Babe: Pig in the City
George Miller, 1998



A sheep-herding pig must travel to the big city in order to save his owner's farm from foreclosure.

The original Babe used to be one of my childhood favourites, but not only have I not seen it in many years but I never actually saw its sequel. Having learned that it has earned something of a cult reputation in recent years, my curiosity was piqued; if nothing else, Pig in the City is indeed a rather curious little variation on the usual talking-animal movie. The sequel sees the intrepid little pig leave his farm and brave the trials of the "big city" that involve everything from angry pit-bulls to cruelly opportunistic humans. The tone is perhaps too off-putting at times as scenes of childish whimsy clash with darker moments that do feel genuinely creepy (just look at Mickey Rooney's brief turn as a ragged old circus clown), but Pig in the City is much like its porcine protagonist in that it hides a considerable amount of charm and heart underneath its unlikely surface. As a result, there are some genuinely good moments on display here; it gets to the point where even the most forced call-backs to the original feel irrelevant as Babe is capable of connecting to the unlikeliest of creatures in manners great and small. It's a credit to Miller and co. that these moments somehow manage to feel genuinely heartwarming even when the coldly logical side of me wants to write them off as baldly manipulative tactics. Though I'm not entirely sold on the attempts at actual comedy (especially the restaurant finale), I'm genuinely surprised that Babe: Pig in the City actually kind of lived up to the peculiar hype that it has acquired and I can actually see it growing on me as time goes on. "That'll do, pig", indeed.

#161 - The Time Machine
George Pal, 1960



An inventor manages to create a time machine and uses it to travel into the future only to be shocked by what he finds.

My first exposure to H.G. Wells' The Time Machine was through the 2002 adaptation starring Guy Pearce, though that film hasn't left a particularly favourable impression in my mind. At least the 1960 version starring fellow Australian Rod Taylor manages to not only hold up rather well, but I think it manages to hold up much better than your average retro sci-fi film. Though it gets off to a slow start, once the actual time travel kicks in things get rather interesting. The effects used to depict the machine's power (mostly in creating various time-lapse effects as Taylor observes his constantly-changing surroundings) hold up very well and allow for potent illustration of his character's musings about the various follies of man. The film definitely shows its age quite frequently (especially when it comes to depicting a far-distant future where vapid young folks live lives of idle ignorance, which feels like a very obvious influence on multiple episodes of Star Trek), but never to a significant detriment. I may tend to observe films like The Time Machine at something of a remove, but this one leaves a bit more of an impression than many of its peers and it's worth checking out on that basis. If nothing else, it effectively codifies the time-travel sub-genre.

#162 - Eternity and a Day
Theo Angelopoulos, 1998



On the day before he has to check into hospital in regards to his terminal illness, a middle-aged poet goes on a strange odyssey with a homeless boy.

I'm still not sure how to feel about Theo Angelopoulos. This marks the fourth film of his I've seen, and while I can appreciate his slow-burning artistry to an extent, at this point I can't help but wonder if he makes genuinely good films or if they just seem good on the outside while not having much to say underneath. Eternity and a Day treads some familiar ground as it tracks the progression of Bruno Ganz's sick writer as he opts to spend his last day of relative freedom trying to help out a small boy who turns out to be an illegal alien (when he's not having flashbacks to an important day from his past, of course). Such a fundamentally simple plot becomes another vehicle for Angelopoulos's musings on subjects ranging from the broad (love and death) to the specific (immigration and child abduction), all of which are captured with his trademark long takes. There's the same distinctive visual style that makes even the most outwardly mundane scenery and actions at least a little engaging, to say nothing of the moments where the film exposes a dark underbelly to the ordinary surface (such as the scene where Ganz rescues the boy from his adult captors or even the part where they reach the border - the latter of which might just be the most striking image in the film). In any case, Eternity and a Day is about what you can expect from Angelopoulos as he manages to musters just enough substance to justify another extremely slow piece of work.

#163 - Suicide Club
Sion Sono, 2002



When fifty schoolgirls join hands and jump in front of an oncoming train together, a pair of detectives must investigate the cause of that and other bizarre suicides.

Suicide Club definitely starts off with a darkly fascinating premise - investigators trying to figure out why young people are randomly committing suicide, often in groups and with bags of stitched-together slices of human skin being discovered nearby - but the premise only goes so far as it becomes the launching pad for a variety of disparate approaches that struggle to cohere into a satisfactory whole. Though the concept of a psychological contagion prompting acts of extreme violence against not just one another but also one's self is a potent source of horror, Suicide Club mainly forgoes such an approach in order to play the subject for as much black comedy as possible, whether it's through some absurdly gory deaths or some satirical jabs at youth culture and the ways in which they are affected by (or willingly interact with) the concept of a "Suicide Club" and the police investigation into it. While this does yield the occasional decent scene (such as an early one that takes place on a high-school rooftop), they are fundamentally disconnected by the film's constant shifting that goes beyond mere tonal jumps and eventually makes it hard to truly give a damn about anything that's happening by the time the credits roll. While I sort of get the feeling that this might be intentional, I question whether or not such an intent even matters when the execution feels this shoddy.

#164 - Primer
Shane Carruth, 2004



A pair of engineers build a time machine.

I heard that Primer is one of those films that requires multiple viewings to get, so naturally I was not especially enthused with that first viewing (after all the hype about its four-figure budget and unusually hard approach to sci-fi, I was left thinking "Is that it?") I've finally gotten around to re-watching it and, if nothing else, I no longer consider the film a failure simply because I didn't get it at first. Though the nature of the film demands that you pay considerable attention to how its protagonists develop and utilise their particular method of time-traveling (especially as things naturally get more complicated), I've realised now that it's still possible to appreciate the film as a cinematic experience even as it eschews many of the usual plot conventions. One can learn to embrace the zero-budget approach as it results in over-saturated cinematography and suitably unremarkable performances - while those have arguably been sort of improved in Carruth's later film Upstream Color, here these qualities prove pleasantly understated and complement the film's narrative just fine. I don't love Primer, but I can finally feel myself starting to embrace this singularly weird little film and I would not be surprised if it continues to grow on me with each new viewing.

I was underwhelmed by The Lego Movie. I know I'm in the minority there, but I just found it fairly average in quality and rather forgettable.

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Approzimately how many hours have you spent playing with LEGOs?

I don't know. I had a bunch when I was a kid. I had this really cool castle set that I loved. But my brother and I played more with Hot Wheels and stuffed animals than with Legos.

What about The LEGO Movie put you off?

I keep saying it's the religious idolotry.

Also, pop culture licenses.

Didn't care for the story, didn't care for the characters, thought the song was pretty obnoxious. Can't really go into more detail than that, as I said I found it forgettable.

On a different note, was not a fan of Primer. It was so friigen' boring the first time I can't be asked to see it again before I "get it".

The song is supposed to be obnoxious, which is why it's especially irritating to hear people praise it as a "great song" and play it like a radio hit.

Fair enough. Looking back at the last, say, five years of Western animation, I think the only other film that I think is on its level is Wreck-It Ralph (and, to a lesser extent, Inside Out, but I always feel like I'm kind of forcing myself to like that one). Both those films do such a good job of world-building and actually utilising their all-star casts in some extremely varied roles that they rise above their fairly standard narratives (though in Lego the generic nature of the core narrative seems to be intentional, especially when the main character is supposed to be the most generic Lego person possible), but I can understand if making a film deliberately generic might actually make it forgettable.

Yeah, that's arguably an example of the movie's attempts at parody backfiring on itself a bit - I really felt that it was still a step up from the directors' same approach to anarchic self-awareness that they practiced in the Jump Street movies. I did note the film not really having the jokes to back up its whole Emmet/Wyldstyle dynamic, for instance.

Yeah, I wouldn't listen to the song of my own volition, but it's a surprisingly well-crafted take on the "annoying poppy earworm" because it manages to not actually be too annoying.

The Lego Movie is a lot of fun. I can totally understand someone not liking it because of how loud and fast it is, i find it hilarious though. Not crazy about the twist though, not just because of the idea. I can't really explain this well but i always feel like that scene is making fun of emotional scenes instead of actually going for one, just makes it awkward. It probably isn't as well it is more than likely that stops me from taking it seriously.

I think The LEGO Movie is waaaaaay above Wreck-It Ralph. At least Emmett seemed like a genuine chatacter.

That's a good point. I think the fact that the film decides to shift gears so radically is supposed to indicate a change in tone away from the playful nature of the rest of the film, as if it really is the cinematic equivalent of an adult showing up and putting an end to their child's playtime.

They're fundamentally kind of similar, now that I think about it. Both of them are lonely people who just want to be liked and are willing to do whatever it takes in order to achieve that. The main difference is that Ralph is more proactive about it - it's his idea to go and "win a medal" in order to prove that he's a good guy to people, thus setting the plot's events in motion. On the other hand, Emmet more or less lucks into the adventure by getting the Piece of Resistance stuck to his back, effectively rendering him a walking MacGuffin for the other more obviously heroic characters like Wyldstyle or Vitruvius to handle. Also, there's the fact that Ralph's journey is one of self-acceptance rather than Emmet's more straightforward hero's journey.

It's more the way he acts that bothers me (plastic almost) along with the transparent plot devices. Sure, The LEGO Movie had it's fair share of obvious story tropes, but at least the writers gave enough of a **** to rationalize them.

#165 - Russian Ark
Alexander Sokurov, 2002



A faceless narrator and a mysterious stranger find themselves travelling through a building that serves as a microcosm of the past 300 years of Russian history.

Watching Victoria recently reminded me that I hadn't seen what is probably the most high-profile single-take film to ever exist, Russian Ark. Though the prospect of floating through Russian history does not sound like the most exciting way to spend ninety minutes, it is lent a surprisingly deft framing device in having it not only take place for the point of view of a narrator who thinks he is dreaming but also by having him interact with a mysterious stranger who flippantly breezes through each new set-piece where his opinions range from the awestruck to the derisive. It's as good a "plot" as any to carry the film as it smoothly glides through many ornate settings filled with intricate costumes and elaborately-choreographed movements that range from ballroom dancing to officious ceremonies. Even if its clever methods of injecting some vivacity into a potentially stuffy film aren't necessarily for everyone, this definitely feels like a film that needs to be seen anyway.

#166 - Titus
Julie Taymor, 1999



An old Roman general who has recently returned from war with the Goths sets off a series of unfortunate events after he refuses to take up the mantle of emperor.

Having not read or seen Titus Andronicus before, I was definitely interested in seeing Julie Taymor's extremely surreal cinematic rendition of William Shakespeare's twisted tale of the power games that ensue between a vast collection of incredibly flawed characters. Anachronism-as-aesthetic can be a tricky thing to pull off because its inherently distracting nature puts a higher demand on it being relevant or at least visually pleasing, but the strange art direction on display in Titus definitely doesn't hinder the film. The same goes for the performers on display, with Anthony Hopkins providing an appropriately theatrical turn as the eponymous general as the rest of the ensemble mercilessly devours the very bizarre scenery. The long running time is definitely a bit of a stretch and it's definitely easy to feel like the movie is being weird for the sake of being weird, but by and large Titus is an enthralling film to watch. Whether that makes it great or not is debatable, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt simply for trying and succeeding at doing something sufficiently different and ambitious in comparison to your average Shakespeare adaptation.