“Life in space is impossible.” There is no gravity, no sound, no air pressure, and no oxygen. Director Alfonso Cuarón opens the film, Gravity, with these facts about space on a black backdrop, accompanied by unnerving silence. When astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson’s tweets dissected several inaccuracies in the film, many reviewers lashed back, arguing that the film is a science-fiction film and not a documentary: it makes no pretenses to scientific accuracy. But it does. I am neither an astrophysicist nor an astronaut—merely a chemistry major—but even I noticed a few key blunders in a film that painstakingly tries to be as scientifically accurate as possible. Little wonder science-minded viewers interpret every fact to be a taunt. Gravity throws down the gauntlet and dares us to find something wrong with it. Challenge accepted.
When I picture the 80s, I see scrunched-up leg warmers, primary-colored tights, high-cut leotards, and chunky off-the-shoulder sweaters Tae-Bo-bouncing in unison to “Eye of the Tiger” on a television of microwave thickness. I imagine the smell of aerosolized hairspray in the dressing rooms of Broadway’s Dreamgirls and the taste of glorified teenage angst served in The Breakfast Club. I hear the beats of Madonna’s “Material Girl” and feel the onslaught of the dancing plague made viral by Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”
But beneath the threat of environmentally unfriendly hair product dispensers and angry teenagers was a real danger, one so well known in present-day, first world, hygienic, retrovirus-aware America that we often forget how it horrified our country just thirty years ago. I’m not talking about dancing zombies. I’m talking about HIV.
Avatar Korra is a frustrating character, which is part of what makes The Legend of Korra a frustrating show. The show’s original release sounded like a godsend: brand new adventures set in the same world as Nickelodeon’s superb mid-2000s fantasy series Avatar: The Last Airbender?—count me in! Yet the story of the next Avatar has largely failed to live up to Airbender’s legacy. That’s not to say it’s a bad show; the first season successfully expanded on the original series’ themes of moral complexity, and the central conflict over equality between benders and non-benders made Korra far more than just an empty dose of nostalgia. But the fault lies with the characters: whereas Aang, Katara, and Sokka were a pleasure to hang out with in Airbender, Korra and her friends, despite being slightly older, are somehow less relatable. These teenaged leads range from boring to angsty to annoying to stubborn. Frankly, they can be kind of a drag to watch.
I, along with almost every other college student out there, grew up in the generation of Harry Potter-mania, reading every book and eagerly hitting the theaters every summer to see the onslaught of Potter movies. Now as a college senior facing a life filled with overpriced rents and underpaid jobs, rediscovering my obsession with fantasy novels geared towards thirteen-year-olds has been quite the relief. And after binge reading the Hunger Games trilogy last week, I was skeptical to see how the movie adaptation of Catching Fire could possibly stand up to the scope of the novels. But director Francis Lawrence delivers, satisfying not just the 13-year-old book lover in me but also the cinephile. The latest installment of The Hunger Games creates a mature franchise for a post-Potter generation.
When a new franchise movie comes out, I almost always dress up to go see it, but for some reason this didn’t hold true for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. When the first movie came out last spring, my way-too-excited group of friends and I donned our leather jackets and “fiery” clothing and did our hair in our best imitation of Katniss’s signature braid. Despite the common consensus from early critics that the sequel was better than its predecessor, I guess I just wasn’t looking forward to it as much. Having already been introduced to most of the cast and knowing the feel of the script, edited and approved by author Suzanne Collins, I felt like there was less to anticipate. Looking back, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Though you’d never guess from the title, the most dynamic character in Jules and Jim is not Jules or Jim, but Catherine. Played by a passionate Jeanne Moreau, it is she who makes François Truffaut’s 1962 film—based on Henri Pierre-Roché’s 1953 novel of the same name (which Truffaut purchased on a whim from a street-side Paris book vendor)—great. Catherine is a charming and flirtatious woman who flouts social norms and bewitches the titular characters (Oskar Werner’s ruddy Jules and Henri Serre’s severe Jim) in her quest for lasting happiness. Characterized by jump cuts and sudden transitions, Catherine’s story manages to be one of the most compelling things about a film memorable for its lovable if not entirely sympathetic characters, its ironic, fast-paced, and humorous style, and its powerful, understated symbolism. Overall, I was floored.
We celebrate the fifteenth anniversary (November 23, 2013) of Disney-Pixar’s A Bug’s Life: has it stood the test of time?
On the face of it, it seems nearly impossible to humanize insects. But those creepy crawlies that barely get our attention, save for a scream or a swat, elicit onscreen not only many a chuckle but also a great deal of emotional investment from the viewer of A Bug’s Life. This in itself is perhaps the greatest achievement of Disney and Pixar’s 1998 film chronicling the life and times of an ant colony that faces an existential crisis when a band of roving grasshoppers seeks to exact tribute from their small store of food. Moviegoers were hooked by the professional animation and visual impact of the new Pixar animation. But though the fifth highest grossing Thanksgiving movie ever, fifteen years later A Bug’s Life has failed to acquire the iconic status we bestow upon many other animated films, like The Lion King (1994), Toy Story (1995), or Finding Nemo (2003). Could the biggest reason for the film’s disappearance into cultural limbo be that A Bug’s Life was always as much covert political allegory as light children’s entertainment?
