Living Digitally

Review of 21

See it: Yes (and read the book)

I'm no book snob. I liked the book Jurassic Park, but I think I liked the movie better. And Fight Club was a much better movie than book (which is a tribute to how amazing the movie is because the book is pretty good). I could go on and on, but my point is this: I give every book and movie an equal opportunity to impress me.

I was impressed by both the movie 21, and the book that inspired it, Bringing Down the House. Which is better? The book is a better book, and the movie is a better movie. In other words, both are well done and appropriate for their genres.

I do actually prefer the story of the book (the true story) over the screen adaptation, however it probably wouldn't have made a very popular movie. The book is much more real. It's messy and chaotic, and since it's a true story, it defies formulas and nice tidy endings. It would have been hard to squeeze into two hours, and it would have played out more like a documentary. And finally, I doubt it would have gotten the applause that the movie received from the audience in the theater.

The movie is clearly a Hollywood version of the book: good looking actors (MIT math geniuses probably don't clean up quite this well), retribution, the good guys winning in the end. It was essentially a heist movie inspired by true events which made it more fun than amazing or inspirational.

The movie was entertaining. The book was amazing. Both of these things are good.

Oh, and if you were confused by the "game show host problem" discussed in the variable equations math class, it is more commonly known as the Monty Hall problem, and is fascinating and fun (insofar as probability can be).

Review of "I Am Legend"

See it? Yes (especially if you like dogs).

My instincts told me not to go see I Am Legend. I'm skeptical of movies where big beautiful Hollywood actors play scientists (Elisabeth Shue in The Saint, Bridget Moynahan in I, Robot, etc.). But I had a free evening, and I'm a total sucker for zombie flicks, so I decided to take a chance.

I'm glad I did. I Am Legend turned out to be a very good movie. I especially appreciated the pace. I was worried during the very first scene when Robert Neville (Will Smith) was hunting caribou from a red Mustang Shelby GT in New York City at insanely high speeds, however the movie then really slowed down, really took its time, and really did a great job of exploring what it might be like being the last person in the world. That's primarily what I wanted out of I Am Legend. Sure, zombies, weapons, and gore are all cool, but what's far more interesting is seeing how Neville learns to adapt to isolation, and maintain as much normalcy, routine, and civility as possible.

There are several scenes where I Am Legend tries to explore the madness of isolation which I felt were a little forced, and several times when Neville is compelled to utter to himself or dictate to his computer things that he probably wouldn't have if not for the fact that he was trying to clue the audience in on something. But the flashback scenes were very well integrated (something difficult to pull off), and overall the movie was good enough that it was very easy to overlook the few questionable scenes. I also have to mention that post-apocalyptic New York was extremely well portrayed.

Will Smith was good in I Am Legend, but his German shepherd, Sam (played by canine actors Abby and Kona), absolutely stole the show. These dogs can act circles around most of the Hollywood A-list, and certainly drew far more of a reaction from the audience than any human actors I've seen recently. In fact, this movie may be to German shepherd breeders what Top Gun was to Air Force recruiters. Funny how you can kill people onscreen by the dozens, hundreds, or in this case, even by the billions, but put a single dog in harm's way, and the audience gasps with horror.

I Am Legend was a great balance between action, gore, special effects, and deliberate exploration of solitude with an ending that I thought was both tidy and unexpected.

Review of "No Country For Old Men"

See it? Yes, but first understand what you're getting into (keep reading).

I don't know how movie trailers are made, but I envision a bunch of marketing types in suits sitting in a boardroom brainstorming on how a movie should be pitched to audiences. After a bunch of whiteboarding and a few lattes, guys half their age wearing tee shirts and headphones go off to their Macs to make the vision a reality. There are a few iterations until the suits are happy at which point the trailer gets shipped off. The end result is often a work of art in and of itself, even though it most likely has very little to do with the movie it's supposed to be advertising. Trailers, after all, are marketing material designed to sell a movie. They are not designed to help viewers pick movies that are right for them. The purpose of trailer is to convince as many people as possible to see a movie as quickly as possible before word can spread about how crappy the movie actually is.

(If you have any doubts about the ability of a trailer to misrepresent a movie, just watch the preview for this wonderfully inspirational family film called Shining.)

My point is that No Country For Old Men is an excellent movie that, as its hart, is almost nothing like its trailer suggests. So misleading are the previews, in fact, that at least two people in the theater actually booed the ending. I admit to being somewhat confused by how the story ended myself (think Sopranos), however by the time I got to my car, it had sunk in enough that I thought I understood it. By the time I got home, I really liked it. And by the time I finished explaining the movie to my wife, I loved it and already wanted to watch it again.

I'll start with the easy points. The writing is great. The dialog is simultaneously fun, colorful, and eerie. The monologue at the beginning masterfully written and delivered by Tommy Lee Jones. And the acting and characters are, without exception, nearly flawless.

Now for the plot (don't worry -- no spoilers yet). No Country For Old Men is essentially about a drug deal that somehow goes south, a man who mistakenly comes across the money (Llewelyn Moss), and the attempt of a psychopathic killer (Anton Chigurh) to hunt him down. On the periphery, you have an old Texas Sheriff (Tom Bell) who is more trying to make sense of the violence than actually solve the case, and a combination hit man and bounty hunter (Carson Wells) who is hired to intervene. But don't confuse the plot with the meaning. As far as I can tell, there are no real heroes in No Country. There is no crescendo which builds up to a climax from which the good guys triumphantly walk away. In fact, I'm not entirely sure there are really any good guys. There is only misdirection and unpredictability, which I believe are the primary themes of the movie.

Review of "28 Weeks Later"

See it: Yes

I loved the movie 28 Days Later. I don't remember how I coaxed my wife into seeing it with me, but I somehow managed to, and we were really surprised by how good of a movie it was. I don't just mean how good of a horror movie it was, or how scary it was, or how gruesome it was — I mean it was genuinely a great movie with a great story, great actors, and amazing cinematography.

Plain and simple, 28 Weeks Later does it again. The story overlaps 28 Days Later slightly, then jumps 28 weeks ahead to a time when all the infected were thought to be gone, and the British government (with the help of the US military) was just beginning to repopulate London. I don't think I'm giving anything away when I say it was obvious that the repopulation wasn't going to go as planned, and somehow the virus was going to find its way back into the population. This I already knew. This everyone knew. What we didn't know was how clever, intriguing, and unbelievably tense the ride was going to be.

See 28 Weeks Later. If you haven't seen 28 Days Later, see it first. They will probably be the best (and most disturbing) horror movies you have ever seen. Be prepared for the fact that they will haunt you, but not in the way you might expect. You will remember them for the characters, plots, cinematography, and even the music as much as for the gore and terror they instill.

Who knew the zombie genre could reach these heights?