Pacific Rim Movie Review

Pacific Rim is the story of a future Earth that has been under attack for many years by an alien race that enters our planet through a rift at the bottom of the Pacific. We get the history of this in the first 15 minutes, then enter the story at a time where the world has, paraphrasing the movie's tagline, built monsters to fight monsters. The world has built giant robots (called Jaegers, German for 'Hunters'), controlled buy two pilots who connect via a neural bridge to control the giant machines from within, and go to war with these monsters (called Kaiju, Japanese for 'Monsters') when they enter our world. This has been effective up until this point. From there, we watch as our heroes fight to save our Earth from attack while simultaneously try to close the rift in the Pacific. It stars Charlie Hunnam (the gang leader from Green Street Hooligans), Idris Elba, Charlie Day (from It's Always Sunny), Ron Perlman, and others, and is directed by Guillermo del Toro.

This movie was SO much fun. It was a movie that I didn't have much advanced info on before going, so I had really no expectations. What I experienced was the type of movie that is just a ton of fun from start to finish. Watching these giant human brain-powered robots fight these alien monsters that were ever growing in size and threat was incredibly fun. Like 10 year old giddy type of fun. Now there were many reasons for that. The next two paragraphs are going to be my likes and dislikes, starting with dislikes.

There are always issues when you invent a new reality on film, which is what Guillermo del Toro did in this movie. Hard to build the scope, hard to build the circumstances, hard to build the stakes, in a 2 hour movie. Those that can don't have the scope of this movie. Now, this has a good side (which comes next paragraph), but it left a lot of holes and a lot of questions that I felt you need to really be invested. The overarching plot was simple, but the micro-scenes, those that are there just to drive the story forward, were bad. There was a lot of cheesy dialogue, a lot of flimsy relationships forced on us, and really no character development that's worth a damn. The worst was when Idris Elba emerges from the Jaeger in Mako's memory. It was so cheesy, and simply there to show us his connection with her. I honestly think it would have been more powerful as a dialogue. That is one scene of many though, which luckily are far enough apart that the action can pull you right back in. It was also a bit scattered, but honestly, I chalk that up to just not having enough time to show everything, while wanting to.

Now, for the good. ALL of those negatives I just mentioned, the lack of substance, are ALL made up for with the positive aspects. Number one, the scope. This movie is perhaps on the largest scale I've ever seen. By that, I mean sheer size of what we are looking at. Plenty of movies have a broader universe, span more time, or have larger themes. However, this movie does a fantastic job of first establishing how big we are (humans), and then showing us how large these monsters and robots we've created are. We are first introduced to our first Jaeger (older model) and Kaiju (category 3), which are almost equal in size. We're told this is what we've been dealing with for years, and we are now very profiencient at besting these monsters when they appear. However, throughout the movie we are shown larger and larger Kaiju (up to a category 5, "the first ever") that come more frequent and in larger numbers. The helplessness we're supposed to feel is clear. The end is near, if we don't do something drastic. Enter the plan to close the rift, etc. Going along with the scope, the visuals are incredible. I would say 80% of this movie is visual effects, and they are SOLID. Easy Best Visual Effects Oscar coming to this movie this year. A marvel in visual effects, truly. The third piece of the scope and visuals puzzle is, of course, the action. Just pure fun. Orchestrated and directed in such a way that there wasn't any boring Power Ranger-style fight scenes, but there was enough action to get your knucles white. A few times I caught myself with my hands clenched like crazy. Now that leads me to the comic relief. Charlie Day plays a GREAT Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day. Just great. Hilarious the whole time. But when he's with Ron Perlman, those are some of the best scenes in the movie. It is well done to give you a little break but not too long where you're begging to get back to the action. I thought this movie was unique in a couple ways, also: first, it's a unique script, not based on source material or a sequel. There should be a round of applause for that right there, we need more ambitious, creative, original movies out there. Second, this is one of the first movies I can recall that shows a global crisis, which is then fought by the entire globe as one. All countries coming together to fight for the greater good. Not America saving the world (looking at you, Michael Bay), no competition among nations, just good old fashioned human race vs. the rest. I liked that. The last thing I will say, and this may be the thing that proved to me how much I liked the movie, is that I really want to know more about this universe. I want to know the backstory, how we built these things, the origin and progression through technology, how we came together as a world to build and fight these things. I want more! I will see sequels or prequels if they are made, in spite of my previous commendation of this being original and NOT a sequel.

In summary, I think this movie is as popcorn as it gets for all the right reasons. It's fun, it's unique, it's loud, it's exciting, it's got a huge scope, it looks great, and it's a pretty darn good movie to boot. Go see it on a Sunday afternoon and just enjoy yourself.

On the Reganometer, I give Pacific Rim an 8 out of 10.

Links: Trailer IMDB page Rotten Tomatoes Review page

Critical Drinking

One of the things I like most about doing Critical Drinking (besides the beer drinking part) is pretending to be critical about movies. I've always loved film, and the more I began to learn about it, the more I wanted to learn about it. This has been the perfect outlet to do that while also making light of the fact that I don't have any credibility to be doing so. The beer drinking and joking around allows me about 15-20 minutes of each 100-ish minute episode to talk seriously about movies while not pretending I should be. And that was enough for a while.

One of the reasons we have done episodes with movies like Salo, or the reason I've seen movies like Irreversible, Funny Games, and Antichrist while doing this, and actually LOVED them, is not because I'm some crazy, perverse lunatic (debatable), but rather because I recognize the larger context in which these movies are made and come to really respect them for what they are. Now that's not saying I'm some sophisticated cinephile who shits on major movies. Far from. I just came out of Pacific Rim (which I'll review in a bit), and really liked it. A lot of fun. But I like to think that seeing, respecting, and loving the afore mentioned movies elevates me above the folks who walk out of complete bullshit and say "that was good!" Movies like Grown Ups come to mind... But the films I mentioned before, the independent, disturbing, cerebral, beautiful flicks you would never catch in a major theater, are some of those where you really get to see a film crew at the top of their game. Strangely as it may be, you see top notch direction, cinematography, style, editing, writing, and all of those things. You see something that couldn't be done by your average Hollywood director. You get something that won't make $100M opening weekend. You see something artistic, something real, something that comes from passion and talent and vision. And sometimes it's fucked up.

Now, all of that braindump is illustrating my larger point here, which is that Critical Drinking has been enough for a while. Has. And my 140 character Twitter reviews have been enough for a while. But I realize I want another outlet to talk about movies a little bit more. Another avenue for getting my thoughts out on paper, even if just for me. So that's what this is going to be. I'm going to start writing movie reviews here, which I will title "... Movie Review" and tag with "Movie Review", and they will all be linked from the CD page as well.

Now, onto Pacific Rim.

I need a new outlet for my movie chatter

Hopefully by now, everyone is aware that for the past year or two, I've been doing a podcast called Critical Drinking. It all started when Ryan and I realized that one thing we did a lot of was drink beers and talk about movies. "Wouldn't it be fun to try a podcast?" we thought, and so it began. Well, we did about 52 episodes, each one more fun than the last.

Then I took a job that moved me down to Southern California, and away from my fellow host. Sad, yes. This looked like it was going to be the end of Critical Drinking as we knew it. But wait! One of my co-workers down here, it turned out, had quite a vast movie knowledge as well, and was interested in doing this podcast with me. So we've done a few episodes since we've been down here, but after about 5, I feel like I'm doing more forcing him to do it rather than him wanting to do it. And I totally get that, it's not for everyone.

Listening back to some episodes with Ryan, we had so much fun doing it and I hope it turned out to be half as funny to other people as it was to me. Ryan is actually going to be in town soon, and we're going to try to do an episode for old times sake, and in all honesty, I think it may be the final episode. Cut out on a high note.

However, just because the podcast will be ending, doesn't mean I'm any less fervent about movies (or beer for that matter). I think it's time to start my search for a new outlet for movies. The podcast route is fun, so it may be something like that, but we'll see.

Posting here again was fun, maybe do that again?

Fantasy Football has become an obsession

I really am not that big a fan of the NFL. I don't have a favorite team, my favorite players are generally just former Ducks, and the only NFL gear I have is an old Randy Moss jersey Ryan gave me back in College. However, every Sunday, I follow the NFL like crazy. All because of Fantasy Football.

Sitting on the couch in front of my TV with NFL Sunday Ticket's Red Zone Channel pumping all the best plays into my living room with no commercials, the DirecTV Player Tracker TV app tracking the performance of all my players, my computer open with the Live Stat Tracker tracking the performance of all my teams, and my ESPN Fantasy Football app open on my phone just so I can have all my players at my finger tips.

I get pumped when any of my fantasy players do well. Like, physically pump my fist or jump off the couch. And why? Because they scored me points. Not because I care about the game itself. I could care less about the games, or division records, or even the early playoff games that happen after my leagues end even. It's all about the fantasy leagues. And it's an obsession. I think I'm addicted.

Obviously, this has to make the NFL so happy. Fringe fans like me that become raving fans without them really having to do anything? That's any marketing department's dream. But they have done a great job creating things to love about the NFL aside from the games themselves. Or at least cultivating those things. In Those Guys Have All The Fun, the book that explores ESPN from the inside out, they discuss the NFL contract negotiations and how important the NFL is to the success of a sports network. However, it's such an expensive contract because of the built in mega-audience with a rock solid demo that the networks end up having to build their entire week around it to drive ad dollars. And the NFL just keeps getting stronger.

But for me, the beauty of the NFL is in the fantasy league. Or in my case, leagues. I am in 5 this year. But only one is a cash league. Because for me, it's not really about the money, it's about the bragging rights. And NFL fantasy is built so perfectly. Having one match up a week so it's not too overwhelming, and having one day a week where you can sit there and get instant gratification throughout the day as the points grow. Then, of course, the trash talk with friends is so key as well. It all just boils down into such a nice, neat package that has me addicted.

And by the way, I won my match up in 3 of 5 leagues this week. The 3 I won all happened to be against Allen. Talk about bragging rights.

This was as exciting as expected early on...

I expected these numbers from Blaine Gabbert, but not Joe Flacco. And to think: Jacksonville won! Some Jag fans in Vegas are very happy right now. Jag offs...