News You Can Bruise for 2013 May 1

(1) Wed May 01 2013 10:59 April Film Roundup: Another month, another few movies. RESTful Web APIs is almost done, but not quite, so once again there's not a whole lot here. The theme of this month is "really loving a movie, seeing a different movie on that basis, and being very disappointed."

The Face You Deserve (2004): This movie caused a rare Siskel and Ebert-type rift between me and Sumana. I thought the first part of the movie was boring, but that it picked up once it turned into a surreal fairy tale. Sumana thought the first part showed promise and hated the Michel Gondry-esque manchildren in the fairy tale part. I don't recommend this movie, either, but I was engaged for the fairy tale.
The General (1926): This is one of the best movies I've ever seen. It's so well put together. The movie is basically two chase scenes, and each chase scene is made entirely of inventive Jackie Chan-style action gags. People in the theater were cheering, which I've never experienced before, and laughing to an extent not heard since The Whole Town's Talking. The General has all the good things Chaplin put into his films, but none of the treacly sentimentality. The one bit of sentimentality is deflated by its co-occurance with the one bit of corny dated-looking special effects.
No surprise, then, that this was Keaton's Ishtar: a way-too-expensive flop that cost him his creative control. You can Watch The General on the Internet Archive, but as always with silent film the problem is finding an appropriate soundtrack. We heard an amazing live soundtrack performed by Viola Dana, and they have a CD available, but the CD only has "selections". [Update: The liner notes make it look like the CD only has selections, but upon ripping the CD I discovered what appears to be the entire soundtrack.] So maybe try Stravinsky's "Chamber Works", as suggested by a comment on this page? I bet some peppy chiptunes would also work.
Die Hard (1988): Not one of the best movies I've ever seen. It deserves a lot of credit as the pinnacle of the 80s action movie, but at this point I've seen some action movies from the 70s, and it feels like movie execs saw Die Hard and said "well, we found it!" and the genre never advanced again. Not really Die Hard's fault, but it's hard not to be bitter.
For improvisational comedy-violence, The General is better. Not just my idiosyncratic opinion! The General's IMDB rating is 8.4, versus Die Hard's 8.3, and at the high end of the distribution, 0.1 IMDB star is worth a lot.
Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928): A big disappointment after The General. Buster Keaton has lost his creative control, and it shows. The film lacks a through-line (unlike The General, which was literally on rails), and promises a "snobs vs. slobs" rivalry that never gets going. Partially redeemed by great stunts. This, too, can be seen on the Internet Archive.
Tai Chi Zero (2012): Zany anti-colonialist steampunk kung fu movie that annotates events with video game-style infographics and otherwise breaks the fourth wall all the time. It's kind of China's Scott Pilgrim Versus the World, and judging from online reviews it's just as divisive. We liked it a lot. (I also liked Scott Pilgrim.) It's got big problems, notably the acting, which is very stiff. But most of the actors were chosen for their martial arts ability, and martial arts are happening about seventy percent of the time. The only time the fourth-wall-breaking got out of control was a scene at the beginning of the third act, which blends together "we're planning this heist" shots and hypothetical "this is what it will look like when you carry out the heist" shots, and then starts mixing in "this is how the heist actually went down" shots! It took about thirty seconds before I realized that I was now watching the actual heist.
Sometimes the problems made me enjoy the movie more! The awkward English scenes gave me an experience similar to what I imagine a Mandarin speaker feels watching a Mandarin scene in an American movie. There's a steampunk tank with an English instruction manual, which was supposedly written by Brits but which reads exactly like the instruction manuals that come with Chinese-manufactured kitchen appliances. I thought the villain was a more complex character than he actually was, because I assumed that if everyone derides a character as a wimp, that makes him the underdog and you're supposed to have some sympathy for him. But no, apparently not in this movie.
Oh, and you know how they say "there ought to be a law?" Well, the special effects supervisor for Tai Chi Zero is credited as "A Law". So now there is A Law!
But I gotta tell you that this is not a standalone movie. It could have been, but about three minutes from the end it turns into The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, introduces a whole bunch of new characters, sets up a sequel and leaves you hanging.
Tai Chi Hero (2012): Fortunately, the sequel is playing in Times Square right now, so we went and saw it the next day. Aaaand... we were very disappointed. If you liked all the steampunk and fourth-wall-breaking from the first movie, then too bad, because there's no steampunk until the second act and no fourth-wall-breaking until the third. (The steampunk, when it finally happens, is still great.) On the other hand, if you hated all that nerd shit from the first movie, you'll love the by-the-numbers soap opera they replaced it with.
On top of everything else, the title of this movie retroactively makes the title of the previous movie dumb. I can't believe they got Peter Stormare to... wait, he was in Armageddon, never mind.