Smith's Verdict

By Tanner Smith

How do you follow something as big and innovative as “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” in the MCU?

With “weird.” But, like, the good, awesome kind of “weird.” Why not hire Troma aficionado James Gunn to adapt the Marvel comic book about space aliens and a talking raccoon kicking ass across the galaxy?

Thus came “Guardians of the Galaxy,” the blockbuster hit no one expected. Even fans of the comics didn’t see this coming.

It is interesting to go to intergalactic fugitives battling through space after we’ve been used to superheroes and all-powerful gods. How are we supposed to take a talking raccoon and a walking tree (who only says three words: “I am Groot”) seriously? Well…we kind of do and kind of don’t at the same time. It’s complicated.

How complicated? Here’s how the movie opens–we get an emotionally heavy scene in which a little boy sees his mother die in a hospital bed right in front of him, before he’s abducted by aliens as he runs off in a sad fit. That’s the kind of WTF-ness we’re in for, so we just have to see what we get.

Cue the Marvel logo, followed by the caption “27 YEARS LATER” on a desert planet as a masked rogue kicks some small alien creatures while rocking out to Redbone’s “Come and Get Your Love” on his walkman and headphones, as the opening credits roll.

OK, movie. I’m hooked. Keep it coming.

Point is, “Guardians of the Galaxy” has a sense of humor and we’re not meant to take it that seriously. But at the same time, it embraces its weirdness, so we can identify as well.

So, we have our hero…hero…er…….considering the idiotic things Peter Quill aka Starlord (Chris Pratt) does in subsequent MCU entries, I don’t like to call him “our hero” anymore. Well, anyway, Peter was abducted by alien bounty/treasure hunters and has lived amongst them since then. But now he’s caught and imprisoned by the Nova Corps, along with other outlaws: a humanoid plant named Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), a lab-experiment swearing raccoon named Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), and Gamora (Zoe Saldana), the adopted daughter of Thanos who works as an assassin.

Oh, and this marks the first appearance of Thanos (not including his end-credits cameo in “The Avengers”), the all-powerful super-villain. Everyone saw this as a big deal; I didn’t. He doesn’t do much in this one, so we’re subjected one of his boring subjects, Ronan the Accuser (I had to look up his name; that’s how forgettable he is). And whenever he reappeared at a distance in future MCU movies, I wouldn’t give a damn who this guy was…until about four years later, of course, when he finally comes out to play in “Avengers: Infinity War.”

This was also the second appearance of the Infinity Stones (which were set up in “Thor: The Dark World”). Again, we had to wait to see what those were all about. (Or at least I had to–I don’t read comics.)

Anyway, our band of outlaws team up with Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), a heavyset warrior who never lies or understands sarcasm, as they escape the prison and race to outrun Ronan before they decide to stand together and fight him.

“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” gave us something interesting and new while still staying true to the Marvel traditions, whereas “Guardians of the Galaxy” is…different. And we embraced it because of that. I did too. I thought it was fun and funny…I even called it the “Ghostbusters” of our generation. Do I still think that?

Well…maybe it’s not as great as I remember it being. Maybe I just appreciated it highly for being so different. But it is still a fun watch.

I may be in a minority opinion here, but the Guardians of the Galaxy aren’t the most interesting heroes to me. I mean, their backstories are interesting, but they themselves…let me put it this way: it feels like they think they’re funnier than they really are. Peter’s a dork who’s too high on himself (and I’ll get to his “ego,” if you will, in future posts), which is funny sometimes when he practically whines to be taken seriously with his title of “Starlord”; Rocket laughs way too much at his own jokes; and soon, even when Drax lightens up, he becomes a little grating too. I like them better when they’re sincere goofballs rather than standup comedians who need to know when to move along with the next bit.

But something else that makes me hold back a little bit when looking back on this movie is that the pacing is a little confused. Some of the action goes on a little long, and the emotional moments (such as Groot lighting up a room) are a little short. I get that it’s a comedy first and foremost, but sometimes, especially for an MCU entry, it feels a little messy.

But I still enjoy “Guardians of the Galaxy” for individual scenes that make me laugh out loud, individual moments that get me excited, and simply the overall creative and giddy spirit of the thing. (And of course, the rousing vintage soundtrack helps a lot too.) I don’t love it as much as most MCU fans do, but I still had a good time revisiting it.

By Tanner Smith

Rich Hill is a documentary I saw at the 2014 Little Rock Film Festival during its festival run. I remember immediately wanting to write about it upon seeing it, because it affected me that deeply.

It’s a documentary that gives us insight into the lives of three different teenage boys (Andrew, Harley, and Appachey) who live in the impoverished town of Rich Hill, Missouri. We meet their families, see what they do during the day, how they all live, and how they get by, so that we get a melancholy yet hopeful portrait of three boys with families who are not “white-trash,” as Andrew puts it, but “good people.” The one who gets the most sympathy from me is Harley, whose case is so sad that I really hope things are going well for him now.

More than five years later, I do still wonder where these kids are today. I hope wherever they are, they’re doing OK.

“Rich Hill” is now available for streaming.

By Tanner Smith

Continuing my series of Looking Back at 2010s Films, my favorite thing about the 2005 dramatic thriller “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” is that it left everything up to the viewer’s interpretation, giving us different possibilities as to why something happened the way it did. Was it the supernatural or was it something simpler?

Mike Flanagan’s “Oculus” did something very similar in its first hour. It involves two siblings who both went through a traumatic experience involving the death of their parents. The brother has been living in a mental institution since then, convincing himself that it was a violent domestic issue and not the cause of something supernatural he now believes his traumatized mind came up with as a coping mechanism. What was it he thought caused the tragedy? A haunted mirror that manipulates people’s minds. He’s now released and welcomed back by his sister…who now has the mirror and still believes it was what caused the horrible ordeal that killed their parents. So, she decides to bring her brother in as she documents her experiments with the mirror before she attempts to kill it.

(Why she doesn’t bring other people in as witnesses to this apparent supernatural presence, I don’t know, but…never mind.)

I love the first hour of “Oculus,” as the sister is dead-set to prove that her parents were victims of something that can’t be explained that dwells within the mirror itself and brother has spent years proving to himself that it’s not real. Now he has to convince her that things they went through did not happen the way they remember it, but she’s shocked to find that he has no recollection of what she believes truly happened. This is great stuff!

The rest of the film is good too (and you can even make the argument that what happens in the final act isn’t actually what happens). There are some very good chilling moments (including one involving an apple…yecch), some more insight into our main characters slowly but surely going crazy, and an effective way to show flashbacks and have them intersect with present-day events. But that first hour, which allowed us to consider one thing when another thing seemed too obvious from the start, is so damn good, it kind of feels like a different movie. But I still like “Oculus” overall, for challenging me as well as scaring me.

And it was the first film to give filmmaker Mike Flanagan some much-needed attention (he had another film before, a low-budget thriller called “Absentia,” but that hardly went anywhere). Little did he know that it would lead to more projects that would cement his status as one of the very best horror directors working today.

By Tanner Smith

I’m a supporter of the found-footage/fake-documentary format, but I should emphasize that I’m only a fan of it *when it’s done right.* When it is, it can make for an effective thrill ride in putting the viewer in the shoes of the character holding the camera, and thus making the viewer an inactive part of the story.

Don’t get me wrong–there are some terrible ones; but the ones that make us wish they’d go away only make the good ones good enough to make us wonder what else could be done with the approach. Some of my favorite examples include not only the popular ones like “The Blair Witch Project” and “Cloverfield” but also “The Sacrament,” “The Visit,” “Chronicle,” “V/H/S,” “REC,” and…the “Creep” movies.

“Creep” was a microbudget indie thriller created by Mark Duplass and Patrick Brice, who just decided at one point to go out to a cabin in some woods and make their own movie in which a videographer may or may not be in danger of his “creepy” subject. This was a brilliant setup for the first-person perspective setup, with our main character being a videographer named Aaron (played by Brice, who also directs the film) and filming his experience in answering an ad for a strange man named Josef (Duplass) who asks him to follow him around with his camera for a couple days. When Josef who’s already shown to have very strange qualities becomes even more disconcerting, we have no idea where this film is going to go and neither does Aaron–we ourselves are with it along with him, trying to piece some things together. THAT is how you do a found-footage/faux-doc movie!

OK, now I have to talk about the ending so that I can talk about the film’s sequel, “Creep 2″…even though “Creep 2” itself is already a spoiler for “Creep” anyway. So, SPOILER ALERT!!!

The whole film, this whole time, has been edited by Josef long after he took Aaron’s footage for himself…after killing Aaron and filming himself doing it. It turns out Josef is a serial killer who loves to make movies out of his murders, with beginnings, middles, and endings…..yikes.

Again, THIS is how it’s done with the subgenre! It’s chilling and disturbing in all the right ways.

“Creep 2,” I think is even better. Brice & Duplass didn’t just remake “Creep”; they continued the story with something that I can’t recall having seen in any horror film–Duplass’ serial-killer character, whose real name is NOT Josef apparently, is going through a midlife crisis…the serial killer is going through a midlife crisis…

That’s just oddly fascinating.

This time, the videographer he’s brought on board for his next project is amateur web-series creator Sara (Desiree Akhavan). As soon as she arrives at his cabin, he makes it quite clear to her that he’s a killer, and he announces that he asked her to come make a film about his own end, thus creating his “magnum opus.” Sara is smart enough to keep on-guard but isn’t quite sure exactly where he’s going with this. Where this goes…let me just say I’m curious to see “Creep 3,” if it does go anywhere.

And yes, there is a “Creep 3” in the works. I’ll be interested to check it out!

Both “Creep” movies are on Netflix–I recommend you check them both out for a good scare or two!

By Tanner Smith

Continuing my series of Looking Back at 2010s Films, here’s the setup to “The Guest”: a stranger named David (Dan Stevens) arrives to a family’s house, saying he was a friend of their late son who served and died in combat, and after he earns their trust, he slowly but surely reveals his true colors as someone diabolical…

It sounds familiar, but it doesn’t feel familiar. But unlike “The Gift,” which also did something different with a familiar setup, “The Guest” isn’t interested in providing psychological insight into human behavior while providing a familiar setup. Instead, it’s just a good fun time, with action, comedy, horror, and occasional drama. And it never takes itself too seriously–it’s like if “The Hand That Rocks The Cradle” combined with “The Terminator.”

By Tanner Smith

Continuing my series of Looking Back at 2010s Films, I was forced (er, “suggested”) by a friend to read John Green’s popular young-adult novel “The Fault in Our Stars,” because it was one of her favorite books and the film adaptation was coming that summer.

Being the pushover that I am, I agreed to read it…and I’m glad I did. No dystopian futures. No contrived love-triangles. No vampires. Just a nice little romance between two young people…who have cancer. (YIKES!) It was written with a sly wit, the characters were likable, it was melancholy with realistic issues with the comic relief thrown in at just the right time, and it made me feel something overall.

And thankfully, I could also say that about the film adaptation.

I joined my friend to see the movie on opening day in June 2014, and I was impressed. It was handled very delicately with just the right tone to fit…though judging from the loud sobbing from the teenage girls sitting in the row behind us in the theater during the final act, I’d say it did its job TOO well.

Our narrator is Hazel (Shailene Woodley), a teenage girl who, because of her cancer, uses a portable oxygen tank to breathe. She starts up a relationship with a charming teenage boy named Augustus (or “Gus,” played by Ansel Elgort), a former athlete who had his leg amputated due to cancer risk. This guy is too good to be true (call him the Manic Pixie Dream Boy), but then again, he does have his secrets, most of which are revealed late in the relationship (and the film). Both of these characters know that their relationship is surely doomed, and they actually talk about it, which makes up for the overabundance of cuteness that’s set up in the former half of the film. Thus, just as “50/50” worked because it used humor to lure the audience into serious territory, “The Fault in Our Stars” used charm and cuteness.

There are some good funny moments and light comedy in the screenplay. The lighthearted conversations between Hazel and Gus are cute, some of their text conversations are funny, and there’s an effective comic relief from Isaac (Nat Wolff), who uses humor to cope with having just become blind–Isaac deserves his own movie.

I wrote in my original review, “it could work if the writers are smart enough to know what to leave and what to keep.” Who wrote the screenplay? Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, probably my favorite screenwriting duo working today–they also wrote “500 Days of Summer,” “The Spectacular Now,” “Paper Towns” (another adaptation of a John Green novel), “Our Souls at Night,” and “The Disaster Artist.”

At times, they’re so faithful to the novel that I think scenes could have been cut from the film (especially the little sidetrack of a backstory for the therapy-group leader–seriously, was that even needed?). But…eh. At least the strengths of the original source are still in the movie.

“The Fault in Our Stars” is sweet, well-acted, and with enough humor to keep me entertained and enough melancholy effectiveness to keep me invested.