I still *want* to love you, but you're losing me

Dear TiVo,

I read two articles recently that spurred me to write you this letter.  The first article described how at the end of July 2009 you had 3.05 million subscribers, but at the end of July 2010 you were down to 2.38 million.  Five years ago this would have surprised me, but not any more.

The second article was from your site, describing the spiffy new QWERTY TiVo remote with a sliding face and a full keyboard.  I was overjoyed by the news, as I’ve been waiting for a remote like this since I bought and activated my first TiVo back in 2002.  I read the article in great anticipation, wondering how pricey the remote would be.  Hm, $90.  Not unreachable, but seemingly a little steep, which would make it in keeping with everything else you sell.

But then I got to the last paragraph, where the last sentence read:

“The new remote will work with TiVo Premiere, Premiere XL, TiVo Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL boxes.”

No Series 1?  No Series 2 or Dual-Tuner?  Leaving us faithful early adopters behind again, are we?

Typical.  This is typical of everything I have come to expect from you over the years.  I still love TiVo-the-technical-solution, but with TiVo-the-company I have gone from love to like to not caring to being annoyed and, finally, to loathing, where I am today.

I now own and use 5 (count ‘em) TiVos, but they are all Series 2.  My disillusionment began in earnest when you released the Series3 boxes, and included things like YouTube browsing that were not made available to Series2 owners.  Now, you had a story for why this was so, which was something about Flash, I think, but I didn’t (and still don’t) buy it.  If you had wanted to make it work, you could have.   But, you chose to have those features and functions be differentiators to try and get Series2 owners to upgrade.

So close, and yet so far away

And it’s continued to be that way over the years, up through the latest insult of not letting us have the new remote (pictured at left).  You continue to add new and improved features and functions, very few of which are made available to your existing base of owners, unless they have the latest and greatest.  Now, I understand this from a business perspective, as I work in technology, so I know that it’s hard to keep the installed base happy.  It’s very easy to add new features and functions to totally new and redesigned devices, and your bean-counters are happy to see the R&D and other expenses that go into anything that will grab new customers and dollars.

I can visualize the meetings where you discussed the strategy of what to do with the installed base.  Spending money on something that will make the installed base happier is not a strategy that reaps short-term benefits, so it’s difficult for people to get behind it and make those investments.  Conversely, it’s much easier to talk about investing in the new model with the new features that will open up new markets and bring in new customers and new revenues.  *Everybody* can get behind that, and nobody gets fired for trying to grow the business.

But people do get fired for spending money on things that are difficult to quantify, like the care and feeding of existing customers.  However, the sign of a truly successful company is that they do exactly that.  It’s like flossing your teeth.  If I don’t floss today, nothing bad really happens.  If I don’t floss this month, or even this year, there may be no noticeable negative impact from my perspective. 

But if I never floss?  Eventually I’ll start losing my teeth.  And teeth, like customers, are things that, once you’ve neglected them to the point that you lose them, you never get them back.  Well TiVo, you haven’t been flossing, and you have decayed my loyalty as a customer to the point where now I hope that some viable alternative presents itself, so that I can leave you behind.

The good news, for you, is that the technology of the TiVo is awesome.  Usability is great, and you have features and functions that far outstrip anything that the cable companies offer.  However, from my cable company I can get an HD DVR for $5/month with no other out-of-pocket expense.  With you I’d have to spend $300-$500 to get the new TiVo Premiere, and then cough up another $300 for lifetime service, or $11/month for the monthly services.  Your DVR is far better than the one my cable company offers, but the three year cost for a TiVo Premiere for me would be $800, while the three year cost for my cable company’s DVR would be $180.

Not only are you more than four times more expensive, but you only have a one-year warranty, so if my TiVo has a problem in year 2 or 3 it falls to me to fix it out of my own pocket.  My cable company will send me a replacement box at no cost if their DVR has problems.

So, with TiVo I get a slicker product but at over 4 times the cost, and I also have to assume the risk of repair costs after the first year.  You’re good, but you’re not that good.  So, for the first time in eight years I am open to an alternative.  I don’t think it’s out there, yet, but if I’m ready and willing to move away from TiVo that means there are others like me who are, too.

I do hope that you figure out how to survive, and how to offer your products at a far more reasonable cost.  I know that cable companies are licensing your software to put on their set-top boxes, and I can see this being a way for you to survive.  My hope is that you are able to maintain the full feature set when provided by a cable company, because I can see them wanting you to disable or degrade certain functions so that they maintain control of their user base.  Don’t do that, please?

And I think one thing that has become clear over time is that your subscription fees are poisoning your business model.  Either make me buy the device with a huge up-front cash outlay *or* charge me a monthly fee, but don’t do both.  For a $500 up-front purchase price you should be able to provide the programming information at no additional charge.  If you don’t want to do that, then let me get the box for $10-$15/month and no up-front fee, and back it with an ongoing warranty just like my cable company does.  I’d do that in a heartbeat – get a TiVo Premiere for nothing up front and $15/month?  Sweet.  How about doing that?

But, after 8 years I feel that I know you well enough to know that you won’t do either of those things, because it appears that your corporate culture is too hide-bound to consider those alternatives.  Somebody, somewhere has decided that a monthly subscription fee needs to apply, and the huge up-front purchase price needs to apply, and that’s that.  If you have to have a monthly fee, how about making it something reasonable, like $5/month/household, and it doesn’t matter how many TiVo’s I have?

I’m rooting for you, but only a little bit.  I used to care about you, but now I don’t, because you’ve spent 8 years not caring about me.  I wish you good luck, and I hope you figure out a way to survive.  But, if you don’t, I will no longer be among those who mourn your passing, because while you had great engineering, your business side sucks.  How about listening to your engineers, who I’m sure have been trying to tell your business folks all of this all along?

But, no, conventional wisdom says that engineers don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to business.  Er, except for Google, that is.  And Microsoft.  Oh, and HP, too. 

But, what do they know?

Sincerely,

EngineerBoy

Related posts:

1. Review of Amazon Unbox for TiVo
2. Review of the Westinghouse 47″ LCD HDTV (TX-47F430S)
3. EngineerBoy’s Review of the Litter-Robot

"If you could make God bleed, people will cease to believe in Him."

Iron Man 2 is a not-disappointing sequel, however it’s also not as entertaining as the original.  But, there have been only a very few sequels that equaled or surpassed their predescessors, so that’s not surprising. 

What was surprising, for me, was the understated performance by Mickey Roarke as Ivan Vanko (right), Iron Man’s nemesis with a family grudge in this installment.  Calling his performance “understated” is an…well…understatement, because Vanko is of course a larger-than-life comic book villain.  However, within that context, Roarke’s performance is carefully restrained and excellently realized.

Also well cast and well characterized are Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer, head of a competing defense contracting firm, and Garry Shandling (Garry Shandling?!??!?) as Senator Stern, Iron Man’s foe in the Senate who is looking to have the government own (and exploit) the underlying Stark technology.  Scarlett Johansson also does a good job as Natalie Rushman, Tony Stark’s new assistant who is “from legal”.

The story…well…the story gets us from Point A to Point B very effectively, but it felt like a transition piece instead of a complete story.  That may be the way it has to be for movies based on comic books, since the comics have been around for decades and have much more story material than can be compressed into a movie (or two, or three).  However, it seems like a movie of this caliber should at least strive to end at a more momentous and climactic juncture.

The film-making is also sloppier than in the first one.  As an example, there is a sequence where Tony Stark appears as Iron Man at his own Expo (about the size of a World’s Fair) and is attacked by an army of drone robots.  These drone robots are similar to Iron Man, can fly, and are packed with advanced weaponry.  Iron Man takes off with the fleet of drones in hot pursuit, launching a continuous stream of weapon fire at him.  Does Iron Man fly as far away from the gathered expo-attendees?  No, he spends five minutes swooping and diving around the Expo, causing the drone-fire to strafe the crowds of innocent bystanders below, over and over and over and over again. 

He has no reason to hang around the Expo, there’s nobody he needs to rescue, nothing he needs to disarm or defeat, and if he had simply headed as far and as fast away from the Expo as he could he would have saved many, many lives.  In fact, after his 5 minutes of induced-strafing-of-the-innocents, he finally wises up and says something like, “Holy crap, I better get away from the Expo!”, and then zooms off.  Narcissistic personality disorder, indeed.

But, overall, it doesn’t disappoint, which is a bit of faint praise, but also a bit of a relief.  I really liked the first film, and was very worried that the sequel would go off the rails.  It didn’t.  It also didn’t blaze any new trails, but that’s okay.  This is one of the few sequels that left me wanting to see the third installment, and was definitely worth the price of a non-matinee, first-run movie theater ticket price.

Related posts:

1. Iron Man (***½)
2. Iron Mountain Lodge and Marina – DeGray Lake, Arkansas
3. The Dark Knight (***½)

Bound by Logic

We walked into Sherlock Holmes with the baseline hope of being entertained, and we were not disappointed.  Director Guy Ritchie has created a period/action/mystery film, starring Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson.  We could not recall a single other Guy Ritchie film that we’ve actually watched all the way through, as we typically find ourselves overwhelmed by the style but underwhelmed by the story, however in this case the film delivers on both counts.

The story revolves around a plot to return England to her glory days as the Empire, including re-absorbing the United States, weakened by the Civil War.  A secret society uses advanced (for the times) technologies in an attempt to give the appearance of supernatural powers, and to then rule by fear.  In a parallel thread, Watson is engaged to be married and is in the process of moving out of 221B Baker Street, much to the dismay of Holmes, who conspires to delay the passing of their close partnership.

Holmes and Watson, of course, work together to uncover the plot and foil the plotters, and the film ends with an obvious setup of the sequel, which will, of course, include matching wits with the infamous Professor Moriarty.

The style is a mash-up of authentic-looking old London combined with modern slow-mo, blow-up, near-super-hero-ish sensibilities.  This could have been a horrific combination, but Guy Ritchie keeps it all just enough in check so that things don’t spin into forehead-slapping territory.

Put it together and it was a solidly entertaining film, and I am looking forward to the sequel.  It wasn’t great or classic cinema by any stretch of the imagination, but you’ll feel like you got your money’s worth, unlike with many (many, many) other big-budget, action-oriented movies.

Related posts:

1. The Bourne Supremacy (***)
2. Unleashed (***)
3. Iron Man 2 (***)

Three's A Crowd

First, about the hype.  This is one creepy and disturbing movie.  It may not be the scariest movie I’ve ever seen, but it’s in the top ten.  The fact that it delivers such a wild ride but was made for less than $20,000 borders on amazing.

The plot is simple – Katie has been sporadically plagued with things going bump in the night her whole life.  She now lives with her boyfriend Micah, and recently she has started noticing strange happenings once again.  Micah, being the typical male, figures that the best way to respond is to buy some new electronics, and so as the film begins he as just come home with a brand-new, high-def video camera and sound recorder which he proudly explains (multiple times) he has connected via firewire to his laptop to document the events.  Then, if they are actually happening they will have proof, but if the tapes show nothing, it will serve to help Katie understand that nothing is actually happening.

That seems reasonable, except for the fact that Micah’s meddling and problem solving only serve to piss “it” off, and so matters begin to escalate.  They consult a ghost expert, who is helpful and friendly, sort of like Tim Gunn if he were on Project RunAway!  However, once the expert figures out that the malevolent entity is a demon instead of a ghost, he gets the hell out of there, leaving Micah and Katie phoning for help from what appears to be the only practicing demonologist in Southern California (ha!), who conveniently happens to be out of town until after the movie is over.

The entire film takes place on their property, from the opening shots of Micah filming Katie pulling into their driveway, to random handheld shots around the house, typical family films from the backyard pool, and most disturbingly, tapes of them sleeping, filmed with the camera completely stationary on a tripod in the corner of the bedroom, in night vision.  Yes, that’s where the fun begins.

The film does a great job of ratcheting up the tension, night after night after night.  We learn from the film that since this is a demon who is fixated on Katie, it wouldn’t help for them to leave, because the issue doesn’t have to do with the house, but with Katie, and the demon would simply follow them.  So, they surf the web and read books and try to figure out what to do.  How successful they turn out to be I will leave as an exercise for the viewer.

The actors who play Micah and Katie do a great job of seeming like a typical, young, upwardly-mobile couple.  Their house looks freshly decorated, and doesn’t have a “lived in” look.  He’s a day trader, she’s a student, he plays guitar, she does bead-work and knitting.  They seem perfectly natural on-screen, just the way all of us look and act when self-consciously filming ourselves with home video equipment. 

When they wake up, they look groggy and puffy.  When the camera pans the interior of the house, we see awkwardly exposed power cords and clutter, intermingled with furnishings from the upper-price ranges at IKEA.  They have a HUGE television and a pool, she drives a Miata, and they live in what appears to be higher-end-but-still-somewhat-cookie-cutter neighborhood.  It’s all pitch perfect.

The story behind the film is pretty interesting, too.  The director (Oren Peli, also the writer) filmed it in his own house and a very low budget.  He showed the film around festivals and shopped it around, and Paramount ended up buying the rights to the film, but apparently they did so only to get the rights to remake it.  Paramount started showing it to big-name directors trying to entice them into making a bigger-budget version, but Steven Spielberg told them they were crazy and they should just release the original film, albeit maybe with a different ending.

Also, reportedly, Spielberg took the screening DVD home with him to view, and after watching it started having his own paranormal problems, including doors closing and locking from the inside.  Things got to the point where he finally brought the DVD back to Paramount in a garbage bag, as he didn’t even want to touch it.  This could all have been cooked-up nonsense to add to the film’s mystique, but it would seem to me that Spielberg has more than enough money to waste his time playing make-believe in order to sell somebody else’s film.

After all that, I do have one big, BIG problem with the film, that almost caused me to shout at the screen, and which caused me to quietly whisper several times to Marie.  If you look at the picture included in this post, you will see that Katie sleeps on the side of the bed closest to the door.  And all through the movie, even when malevolent happenings are happening, even when they see ON TAPE with their own eyes that these happenings pass through their door, she continues to sleep on that side of the bed.  Although it certainly makes us feel more fear for Katie, it was ridiculous to think that any boyfriend/husband would allow his wife to continue to be the first one exposed to known danger by being closest to the door that way.  Hmph.

Other than that, this movie is pitch perfect.  I’ve seen a *lot* of scary movies in my day and am pretty jaded, but I can tell you that I’ll be very happy going to bed tonight knowing that we have three big, fierce dogs in the bedroom with us.

Related posts:

1. The Machinist (**½)
2. Syriana (***)
3. Thank You for Smoking (**½)

Jesus Christ, it's the 14th Earl of Gurney!

I am amazed that I had never heard of this film until very recently.  We watched it last night (via Netflix Watch Instantly), and it was one of the most profoundly absurd, amusing, and disturbing films I’ve ever seen.  If you think you may one day have any plans to see it, my advice is to stop reading reviews right now, and come back after you’ve seen it.

Part of the power of this film is that it starts out as what feels like a quirky little comedy, then evolves into a sort of absurdist satire of the English class system, takes a turn into the blackest of black comedy, and then…well…let’s just say that the longer you watch the stranger it gets, until the end when it will elicit from the viewer an involuntary “WTF?!?”, whether one likes the film or not.

And we liked it, very much.  Well, as much as a disturbing move can be liked, that is.  However, I wouldn’t give it a blanket recommendation to every potential viewer, because it’s just so…bizarre.  I’ll put it this way, if you think that a film that is sort of a combination of Eraserhead, Monty Python, A Clockwork Orange, Murder by Death, and Jesus Christ: Superstar sounds intriguing, then this might be a film for you.

The key ingredient that allows this film’s radical elements to coalesce into a near-masterpiece is the transcendent performance of Peter O’Toole, for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor (losing to Marlon Brando in The Godfather).  He enters the film sporting both the appearance of, and belief that he is, Jesus Christ.  When asked how he knows that he is God, he responds, “Simple. When I pray to Him, I find I am talking to myself.”

If you find that quote witty and sublime, you might enjoy this film.  If you find it blasphemous and/or offensive then you may want to skip this movie altogether, because it only gets worse (or better, depending on one’s perspective) from there.  In another example, while reciting his marriage vows he promises to love his bride “…from the bottom of my soul to the tip of my penis.”  Again, if you think you could find that line funny in the proper context, this might be a film you would enjoy.

The basic storyline is that, after his father’s (jaw dropping) death, Jack (Peter O’Toole) returns to inherit his vast estate and title as the 14th Earl of Gurney.  Jack has spent the last few years in and out of asylums, as he is quite mad, but his powerful father would never allow him to be committed, as that would bring shame and disgrace on the family name.  Jack’s surviving relatives begrudge him the inheritance, and so plot and scheme to take control away from him.

That could be the synopsis for a benign and forgettable English parlor dramedy, but it merely provides the framework around which a surreal story unfolds.  If the description of the film thus far hasn’t given you a clear idea of what to expect, I’ll add that, at any moment, in any context, and in any combination, the characters of this film are prone to breaking out into song and dance numbers, which is normally one of my least favorite things in a film, but here it serves to ratchet up the lunacy to ever more scarifying heights.

I won’t share any more of the plot, but I will reiterate that this film will most definitely *not* be for everyone, and I don’t mean that in the “some of you aren’t cool/hip enough to get this film” sort of way, I mean it in the truest sense of the words.  I believe that most viewers will either love the film or hate it, with very little middle ground – think of an exotic dish prepared with unfamiliar spices and ingredients, with a distinctive and powerfully unique taste and texture.  Some will love it, others will hate it, and neither are “right” or “wrong”, it’s just a matter of taste and preference.

But, if you are intrigued by the prospect of a film that is absurd, engaging, dark, surreal, funny, musical, and tragic, then you may want to put The Ruling Class on your Halloween movie list.

Related posts:

1. Paranormal Activity (***)
2. Die Another Day (**½)
3. Funny People (***)

Zombieland Rule #1: Cardio

To survive in Zombieland, you have to follow the rules:

Rule #1: Cardio.  These are fast, famished zombies and they will run you down…unless you have speed and stamina.

Rule #2: Beware of bathrooms.  You’re exposed and encumbered, and there’s usually only one exit.

Rule #3: Seatbelts.  When you’re whipping around trying to run over and/or shake off zombies, you want to be sure that *you* stay put.

Rule #4: Doubletap.  Shoot ‘em once to stop ‘em, shoot ‘em again to make sure they stay stopped.

And so on.  These are the first few of an ever-expanding set of rules that Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) has derived for survival in Zombieland.  It seems that mad cow disease mutated into a more immediate and vile infection, one which causes the infected to become black-goo-spewing, human-flesh-eating, fast-running, not-very-smart zombies, who roam America looking for their next man-wich. 

Columbus is a nice young man who is trying to wend his way back from his dorm in Austin, Texas to his parent’s home in Columbus, Ohio (hence his nickname).  He meets up with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), who is a hard-bitten, hard-driving, hard-hitting, zombie-killing machine (with a cool hat, more on that below).  The unlikely duo decide to join forces for as long as they can stand each other, and along the way manage to get conned by a couple of grifting sisters, Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), who take the boys’ Escalade and leave them stranded.

The tale unfolds from there, and I won’t say much more about the plot.  Zombieland is both a zombie film and a comedy, and it does both genres very, very well.  It compares vaguely to Shaun of the Dead, but it has a much different vibe, and is better as both a zombie film and a comedy. 

And the laughs are big…BIG.  After the film, my throat hurt from the laughing and hooting I’d been doing throughout almost the entire film, which is amazingly short at 83 minutes.  There was even an eye-misting interlude shuffled in between the carnage and mayhem, which was suprisingly effective and well-done.

The film also earns its R rating, as the violence and gore are excrutiatingly high-def and are often presented in super-ultra-mega-slo-motion, so that you can practically count the droplets in the spray of zombie-ejecta, and count the shreds of flesh between their teeth.

However, if you can handle over-the-top-gore and convulsive laughter, then Zombieland just might be the picture for you.

Oh, and stay all the way through the credits.

The Real Deal

Okay, now, about the hat.  Woody Harrelson’s character is wearing his hat (seen to the left) in virtually every single scene.  And I can tell you from direct experience that that is one cool hat.  It’s made by a company called Real Deal Brazil, and they make them from reclaimed/recycled tarps used on trucks that ship goods across the Brazilian rain forest.  Marie and I each have had one of these hats since long before we had heard about Zombieland, and they are perfect for working out in the scorching Central Texas summer heat.  The hats are tough and so far are indestructible – in fact, their motto is that you don’t take care of the hat, the hat takes care of you.

Related posts:

1. Shaun of the Dead (***)
2. Dawn of the Dead (**½)
3. Sherlock Holmes (***)

Lies Scene

The Informant is a *real* movie, made the way movies should be made.  First of all, the script is amazing.  Second, the acting is phenomenal.  Third, the score is perfect.  Fourth, the costumes, locations, and make-up are flawless.  And fifth, the directing and cinematography are beautiful.

And sixth of all, it’s funny as hell!

The story is loosely based on the events surrounding the Archers Daniels Midland price-fixing scandal of the 1990′s, primarily involving lysine, a food additive.  Matt Damon plays a fictionalized version of real-life whistle-blower Mark Whitacre, a high-level ADM executive who turned informant for the FBI.

As imagined in The Informant!, Mark Whitacre is a mildly sociopathic, self-deluding, compulsive-lying, white-collar criminal.  When Whitacre blames his own failures on sabotage by competitors, the FBI is called in to investigate.  Lead agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula) develops a rapport with Whitacre, and eventually hears about much bigger malfeasance being perpetrated by ADM themselves.  Whitacre’s wife guilts him into revealing the sordid details to the FBI, seemingly because it is the right thing to do.

And over the course of the next few years, Whitacre is run as an undercover agent by the FBI, wearing wires, eliciting damning statements from competitors and co-workers who are being secretly videotaped, and providing substantiating documentation of the global price-fixing being organized by ADM.  And, when they finally have enough evidence to convince the Attorney General’s office that the case is solid, they swoop in and make a bunch of arrests.

And then the fun really begins.  I won’t divulge any of the rest of the story, but suffice it to say that The Informant is an engaging and laugh-out-loud black comedy, made with near-perfect craftsmanship.  Matt Damon added 30+ pounds to meet director Steven Soderbergh’s one-word description of the look we wanted for the character – doughy.  Add the 80′s styled hair and porn-star-ish moustache, and Damon is transformed into a grifter extraordinaire.

And if there was an Oscar category for Best Stream-of-Consciousness-Narration, this film should win, hand’s down.  As played by Damon, Whitacre is placed into many stressful, dangerous, and scary situations, but his running mental commentary is…sublimely detached and egocentric, as if he was having an out of body experience, and while his body and voice stay engaged with the real world, his thoughts wander to trying to figure out how polar bears realized their black noses made them stand out against the snow, and so cover them with a paw while lying in wait for prey.  Did they see their reflection in the ice or the water?  Did they notice other polar bears were conspicuous with their black noses?  That seems like a lot of thinking for a polar bear.

It certainly does.  And this movie will cause a lot of thinking from the audience, because the story moves fast, the plot is serpentine, and there are no dramatic zooms or musical flourishes to alert the audience that Something Important Is Being Conveyed Right Now.  In this film, the plot twists and turns based on casually uttered phrases, and you end up asking yourself, did I just hear that?  But doesn’t that mean the exact opposite of what we already know?  Now what?!?

And I have to admit, it felt really, really good to be engaged both by the humor and also by the complex story.  Too many movies today are either Serious or Funny, but this movie is both.  It’s like a bizarre clone that combines the DNA of Michael Clayton and A Fish Called Wanda, but in a good way.  I mean, the plot revolves around a bunch of execs from a global conglomerate who conspire with their international competitors to fix the price of a food additive.  That’s not exactly a gold mine of possibility, but Soderbergh and company have taken it and crafted one of the most unique and enjoyable movies I’ve seen in years.

To put it in perspective, this is the kind of film where you’re watching a scene where the biggest, baddest, silver-haired ADM exec has come down to face-off with and intimidate his conniving underling, and as the scene unfolds you ask yourself…do I recognize that actor…no…wait…can it be…is that…is that Tommy Smothers playing the executive?!  Yup.  And later on, is that Dick Smothers as the judge?!?  Yup again.

So, directed by Soderbergh, exec produced by George Clooney, starring Matt Damon, story about boring food additives and price fixing, main character is a compulsive liar, there’s a guy from 30 Rock, a guy from Quantum Leap, The Smothers Brothers, and there’s even a gratuitous Cusack in this film (I didn’t know there was a third!).  Put it all together and this is a film.  A Hollywood film.  A piece of cinema.  Not a packaged deal.  Not a marketing campaign.  Not a merchandising machine.

A film.  By film makers.  For film watchers.  Go and enjoy.

Related posts:

1. Syriana (***)
2. Sherlock Holmes (***)
3. The Ruling Class (****)

Hello, It's Me

If you think you might end up going to see Moon, I strongly suggest that you stop reading this (and all) review(s) and just go see it.  Really, you don’t want to know what happens before you see it.  Trust me.

However, I read reviews all the time for movies I’m planning to see, because how else is one to figure out which movies to see, particularly if you don’t have time to see as many of them as you would like?  So, for the benefit of those of you who are trying to figure out if you might like Moon, the following paragraph (and *only* the following paragraph) will represent my attempt at a spoiler-free review/guide.  Remember, the paragraph after this next one will start to reveal plot, so only read this next paragraph if you haven’t seen it yet.

First of all, if you are looking for some light, late-summer fare to while away an evening with mindless entertainment, this isn’t it.  This movie is very challenging, the storyline is purposely confusing, the scope of the story is very small, and the ending is…well…not a typical Hollywood ending.  To give away a little of the flavor of the movie, it is set in the reasonably near future, and, as you may have guessed from the title, it has something to do with the Moon.  This is not a space opera (like Star Wars), it isn’t an breathtaking allegory of the ascent of man (like 2001: A Space Odyssey), and there aren’t any aliens (like Aliens).  All of the technology in this film is easily extrapolated by taking current technology and extrapolating it forward to the time the film is set.  And although the special effects are stunningly well-done, this is a movie based on the character(s) and their interactions with each other, and themselves, and the effects merely serve as just that…effects, not as the story itself.  And the story is incredibly well-done - well-written, well-acted, well-filmed, and well-directed.  So, if you can enjoy serious, small-scale character films that are well-done, and also just happen to be set in the future and off the planet Earth, this might be the film for you.

There, that concludes the generic review/recommendation, such as it is.  I know it contains some nuggets of information, but it couldn’t be helped – and, anyway, if you didn’t want to know about this movie you wouldn’t be reading this in the first place.

So, on to the more detailed review, which will also reveal the plot.

Again, please don’t read any further unless you want spoilers.

Not kidding now, here we go.

One last chance for you to go back.

Okay, if you’re still here, Moon stars Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, the lone worker at a helium mining facility located on the far side of the Moon.  He has signed up for a three year contract to work there alone, with only a talking computer called GERTY (voice by Kevin Spacey) as his only day-to-day companion.  When the story begins, Sam is nearing the end of his three year contract and is getting ready to head back to Earth, and to the wife he loves and misses and to the daughter he has never met.

It’s also made clear that the satellite that is normally used for real-time communications back to Earth is malfunctioning, so Sam doesn’t have any interaction with other humans in real-time, only via taped messages which are bounced off of Jupiter and so take quite a while to send and receive, leaving Sam in a sort of limbo-like state.

But, all that is about to end with the completion of his contract.  He shaves his scraggly beard and cuts his scraggly hair, he puts the finishing touches on some of his office crafts, and sends delayed messages of love and longing to his wife, who responds with messages of love and confusion.

But Sam is also beginning to lose it, mentally.  He’s seeing visions and making mistakes, and he eventually crashes his rover when he’s out on the planet surface checking on a mining robot.  But we see him wake up in the infirmary, looking none the worse for wear, and he can’t remember his accident, recovery, or recuperation.  In fact, Sam is so confused by his recent past that he slips away and finds the wrecked rover, and in it he finds the still-living body of Sam Bell.  He, and we, are confused by this, and Sam is feeling mentally unstable enough that he’s not sure he’s seeing what he’s seeing, either.

What is revealed through the story is that Sam(s) is(are) part of a chain of clones, each with a functional lifespan of about three years, after which they start to break down mentally and physically.  It turns out that their employer/owner/creator/master has stocked the outpost with a large supply of Sam clones, each waiting to be awakened by GERTY when the previous one gets into the chamber that they think will prepare them to return to Earth, but which really just cremates their failing bodies.

The two Sams exist in a strange existence – one fresh-faced, healthy, robust, and naive – the other wizened and decaying – and they don’t exactly hit it off.  For example, to whom to the slippers belong?  Whose wife is sending them video messages?  Who is the father of their daughter?  What can they do now? 

The good news is that they at least understand their plight, the bad news is that a “rescue” ship is headed their way, and these “rescuers” certainly aren’t going to let two Sam clones live when they know about each other, and about the other clones waiting in stasis.

At this point I’ll leave the storyline for you to discover, but it unfolds in very interesting ways.  And Sam Rockwell does a Oscar-nom-worthy job of portraying the two stages of Sam.  Note that this film is basically a one-man show, albeit with that one person playing two copies of himself.  There are other characters, but none of them are presented live, only via tape delay, memory, dreams, or hallucinations.

Moon is the kind of movie that, in my mind, should get a wide release and put a lot of butts in the seats.  However, Hollywood has decided that movie-goers don’t really want to think, and so continue to shovel crapload after crapload of dreck for our mindless entertainment.  And I’m all for mindless entertainment, some of the time, but I think Hollywood is missing the opportunity of mixing up the menu a little bit, and putting some more exotic fare out there for us to nibble on.

And that’s what Moon is, something exotic and strange, and it frankly won’t be to everyone’s taste, but if you’re the kind of person who, when they hear that a film is character study clones in the near future on a base on the far side of the moon, think it could be an interesting trip, then Moon is probably for you.

Related posts:

1. The Moon, the Sun, and Cosmic Coincidence
2. Bubba Ho-tep (***½)
3. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (***)

Sympathy for the Bossman

When we heard that Mike Judge had a new movie coming out, we knew it was a must see for us on opening weekend.  His previous films Office Space and Idiocracy are considered to be works of genius in our house, even though it took us a while to discover and appreciate the masterpiece-i-ness of them both.  But we now know and love them, and regularly quote both on a daily basis.

For those unfamiliar, Office Space told the story of downtrodden workplace drones who rise up to throw off the shackles of their e-dentured servitude  and stick it to the man, while Idiocracy tells the story of the evolutionary decline of mankind into mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, mono-syllabic morons.

In counterpoint to those films (particularly Office Space), Extract tells the story from the perspective of “the man”.  Jason Bateman plays Joel, who is the owner of a successful food flavoring extract company.  While he was in college he developed a unique way of creating extracts that retain their flavor when heated, leading to tastier results.  Through years of hard work he has parlayed his breakthrough into a moderately large factory, which he runs from his office overlooking the shop floor.  He’s so successful that General Foods is sniffing around and thinking about buying him out lock, stock, and barrel, which would allow Joel to retire a relatively wealthy man.

However, even with his professional success, Joel is not happy.  He and his wife Suzie (Kristen Wiig) have drifted apart, and Joel finds himself lusting after the flirty new company employee Cindy (Mila Kunis) who seems to be fascinated by the world of flavoring extracts.  But, Joel is honorable and can’t bring himself to be unfaithful, so his spacy bartender friend Dean (Ben Affleck) suggests that he secretly hire a gigolo to seduce his own wife.  If she goes for it, then Joel is then morally free to also cheat, and if she doesn’t go for it then he’s learned a valuable lesson about his wife’s fidelity.  So, in a fit of chemically-enhanced miscalculation, Joel hires the himbo gigolo to “clean his pool”.

And then – everything goes wrong for Joel.  His wife Suzie jumps at the chance to jump the new pool guy’s bones, Joel’s Idiocracy-like workers perform a ballet of OSHA violations that result in a sprung bolt performing a half-masculation on his floor supervisor Step (Clifton Collins, Jr.), who decides to sue big, which scares General Foods into delaying their buyout until the lawsuit is settled.  Add to that the fact that Cindy, the cute new employee, is also a sociopathic grifter who is pilfering the purses of her workmates while she dates Step and pushes him to sue for bigger money (which she presumably plans to get her hands on).

Jim Adler, the Texas Hammer!

To help Step score the big civil case win, Cindy hires bombastic lawyer Joe Adler (Gene Simmons – yes, *that* Gene Simmons) after seeing his number painted on the back of a bus stop.  As an aside for those of you not from Texas, “Joe Adler” appears to be loosely based on real-life, bombastic lawyer Jim Adler, self-described as “The Texas Hammer”.  The picture of him to the right is from his web site.

And to top it all off, Joel’s ungrateful and woefully ignorant employees think that they’re entitled to some of the money they assume he’s about to make by selling to General Foods, and decide to stage a walkout if they don’t get stock options prior to the deal.

So, here’s a man who had it all, built a company using his own brains and hard work, beautiful wife, nice house, and a lottery-sized buyout coming, and early retirement while he’s still young enough to enjoy it.  But then it all starts falling apart.

Suffice it to say that, by the end, things get wrapped up pretty satisfactorily.  The acting and directing are solid, and the script is pretty funny.  There isn’t a huge message being delivered in this film, unlike Idiocracy, but it’s a good message – don’t sacrifice the truly important things in life in the pursuit of “success”.  Success is happiness, not wealth or material things. 

The other message is that, while blue-collar types might not realize it, in many (if not most) cases the bosses that they like to insult and ridicule are their bosses because of hard work and smarts, not because of who they know or because they got lucky.  Hollywood has a tendency to demonize bosses, and it’s refreshing to see a film where a business owner is shown as a sympathetic character instead of a money-grubbing soul-sucker.  In the film you can see that Joel cares about his employees, he strives to run a safe plant, he encourages his employees to improve their positions, and he really does want to make the best darn extracts that he can.

So, while I’d put this as Mike Judge’s third best film, that’s still a big compliment.

Related posts:

1. Idiocracy (***½)
2. Sherlock Holmes (***)
3. District 9 (***½)

Prawns a la Apartheid

If you are planning to see District 9, I urge you to stop reading reviews and just go see it.  It will best be seen with as little foreknowledge as possible, so that the film can be experienced without preconceptions.  I will warn you that this film is not for the squeamish, and the R rating is well deserved.  I don’t recall there being any sex or nudity, and the language isn’t all that bad, so you can infer from that where the R rating comes from – the violence, evil, and inhumanity.

You’ve been warned, the information starts flowing below – seriously, just go see it, then come back here.

Really, just go.

Okay, for those still reading, this film as that rare cinematic gem in that it is both completely unique and absolutely entertaining.  It took a few minutes to get my bearings as the film started, but I was quickly absorbed into the story and felt like I didn’t blink for the entire running time, except when diverting my eyes from the carnage on the screen.

We jump into the middle of a story where a gigantic alien spacecraft is hovering of Johannesburg, South Africa, and has been there for 20 years.  The aliens on board, numbering in the millions, were “rescued” by earthlings and put into a holding camp, which over the years devolved into a ghetto.  The aliens are referred to, derogatorily, as “prawns” because of their resemblence to roughly human-sized shellfish.  The prawns from the ship seem to be all be from a worker-class, and aren’t particularly smart, communicative, creative, or industrious.

They do have language, consisting of very alien-sounding clicks, grunts, and squeals, and they can understand English, and the human governmental workers that interface with the aliens can also understand their language.  The prawns are enamored of cat food, and the local Nigerian criminals are only too happy to provide it to them, at a price.  The Nigerians are also accumulating alien weaponry, even though each weapon is genetically locked and can only be fired by the aliens.

As the movie opens, the residents of Jo’burg are tired of having the aliens around, and a private conglomerate called MNU has been contracted to build a new settlement for the prawns 200 miles outside of town, and then forcibly relocate the aliens there.  Technically, the aliens have rights and there is at least a superficial attempt to try to make it all seem legal, but the aliens don’t really understand what an eviction notice is, so the logistics are kept on track by private mercenaries, who are only too happy to…uh…incent the prawns into cooperating.

MNU puts a man named Wikus Van De Merwe in charge of the move.  Wikus is a middle-management type, not really too bright or ambitious, not really evil, either…just sort of banal and thoughtless.  He doesn’t seem like he’s spent any time examining the awe-inspiring fact that humanity has discovered another sentient race, and that race is advanced enough to send a ship to our planet.  He seems about as engaged and caring as a farmer would be about his cows…yes, he cares, but only because it’s his job to care, and that care isn’t really very deep or profound.

Wikus and his team have to go through the formality of getting the prawns to “sign” their eviction notices, so that there is an audit trail showing that their forced move to the new camp is fully legal.  He goes about this job with the sort of manufactured enthusiasm that any middle-manager would have for an unpleasant and thankless task that nonetheless got him a small promotion of sorts.  He grins and bears it, tries to keep up a good attitude for his team, and even has a camera crew tagging along to document the relocation.

The crux of the story revolves around a particular alien who is definitely *not* a hive-minded worker.  He’s obviously a leader within the alien community, and he has a small son who he watches over with great fatherly care and devotion.  He’s also been on a 20 year mission to gather enough fuel to get his small command module to launch and get back up to the mothership so that he can rescue his people and go home.  He has just gathered the last of the needed fuel when he and his team are rousted by the MNU mercenaries for relocation.

Wikus, while involved in rousting this alien, becomes infected by an agent that starts a transformation of his DNA – to the point where one of his arms turns into one of the tentacled-flippers that the aliens have.  Interestingly enough, his DNA gives him the ability to arm and fire the alien weaponry, which makes him very valuable to MNU – valuable in the sense that he is a mass of tissue with DNA they can harvest to create hybrid soldiers capable of using the superior alien firepower.  However, the entity known as Wikus Van De Merwe is valueless, a complication, a glitch to be fixed as MNU moves forward to reap their billions in defense contracts.

And therein lies the story.  Wikus wants nothing more or less than to go back to being human, and to hold his wife again.  The head alien tells Wikus that if he helps recover the fuel and get them to the mothership, he has medical equipment that can re-humanize him.  MNU, however, will stop at nothing to recover the tissue culture known as Wikus Van De Merwe so that they can continue to harvest him.

The footage shot by the film-crew-within-a-film is used to book-end the movie in news report/documentary style, including interviews with key players, excerpts of newscasts, etc.  As you may have been able to infer from the above description, the storyline is quite unique.  The effects are outstanding – after a couple of minutes the digitally rendered aliens simply become characters.  The hovering mothership, the size of a city itself, looks real – or as real as such a site would look considering the unreality inherent in a city-sized alien ship hovering over a major metropolitan area for two decades.  And the weaponry is suitably dazzling and lethal.

Put it all together and it’s a movie unlike any I’ve ever seen.  There are parts that call to mind other movies – Aliens, Men in Black, Independence Day, Robocop…hell, even Office Space.  But it’s not slavish copies of those, it’s a unique pastiche of those kinds of films that came before it, but with the result being something completely fresh, and definitely worth fighting the crowds and paying the full price for an opening weekend viewing.

Related posts:

1. Iron Man 2 (***)
2. Moon (***½)
3. Sherlock Holmes (***)