Haiku Movie Review: The Last Airbender

Cool powers, fruity

plot; Jedi, Eastern clichés:

Grasshopper grows up.

(Editor’s note: Cool themes. But from the accents, all the Asians and Anglos come from San Francisco and the Indians from Michigan. Whenever the Water Master speaks, mentally add the word “Dude” to the end of his sentences.)

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: Beyond Haiku

Marigolds: Maggie Smith, Ronald Pickup, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton (Yes, We Know Who You Are), Celia Imrie, Judi Dench, Tom WilkinsonLife holds no more promise for you, if you’re named “John Madden” and you’re given an all-star Brit ensemble cast to direct that includes Judi Dench and Maggie Smith.  

Can anything with both Judi Dench and Maggie Smith ever be really bad?  The answer is, “No,” and that knowledge will sustain you through the rather drab and formulaic first forty minutes or so of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  I can’t promise you’ll have the deepest cinema experience of your life, but there’s a quiet gentle touch to the movie that I loved: it doesn’t rip you wide open.  It suggests feelings, like memories, rather than pounding you with them.

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Haiku Movie Review: The Avengers

Today’s Haiku Movie Review is a tough one: an ensemble cast makes The Avengers a bit problematic.

But we like a challenge….

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Haiku Movie Review: The Countess

Oracle of Delpy. Julie Delpy as Countess Bathory, giving that formidable woman a feminist spin. Note to self: when giving feminist manifesto in historical drama, do not choose as mouthpiece the criminally whack. Delpy says of the movie, which she also wrote and directed, "In a way, [the film] is feminist but also non-feminist. I think that it isn’t ‘feminist’ to say women are perfect. There is no such thing as everyone being great...We’re all individuals. People say that if women ruled the world things would be perfect and I don’t think that’s true.” Well, bleeding young virgins to death for cosmetological benefits is kinda beyond not being perfect, so let's just get that out there now. The incoherence of being "feminist but also non-feminist" translates into bad art.

Feminist script? Check.

Obsessive sex? Sapphic? Check.

Blood of virgins?  Um...

Haiku Movie Review: "Hugo"

Like the film itself, the child-actors Asa Butterfield and Chloe Grace Moretz look great, and they really can act. But like the film, they cannot sustain the emotionally diffuse story, which would have been better had it focused on Butterfield's Hugo and his emotional life. Like so many Scorsese projects, it betrays a belief that the characters are tools for conveying directorial concepts, and not really developed with love or attention to the details that really motivate us. "Hugo" is not a film for kids so much: it's a more muddled and less skilled Cinema Paradiso, an homage to film and especially the wonderful Georges Méliès that aims at the wonder created by that great filmmaker but needing a lot more focus, fewer and better characters, and most of all needing the great French director's heart.

Another Haiku Movie Review.  I saw the visually interesting but muddled Hugo last night, and it actually requires two haikus:

Clockwork world still lacks

heart-key: Méliès homage,

cameo-waste, fail.

Scorsese, French set

and names, talky scenes, smug nods,

require deep edits.

Cleanse the pallet:

Haiku Movie Review: Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallow Part II

"There is something in your eye, Harry Pottah... The boy who lived... come to cry. Visinius Permanenta!"Geeks thick as starlings,

Script, direction labored breath:

Expell.  Meh.  Arm us.

Haiku Movie Review: Tree of Life

After I tweeted a link to my Haiku Movie Review of the Bourne films, Lizzie remarked in the comments: "Perhaps you can Haiku movies like Tree of Life." Your wish is my demand.

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Haiku Movie Review Returns

The Haiku Movie Review returns. In this edition, Spider Man 3, Saturday Night Fever, X-Men, and The Illusionist.

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Haiku Movie Review: The Entire Star Wars Series

In honor of having thought about Natalie Portman for a few seconds today, Riparian Church offers a tribute to his misspent youth: The Star Wars edition of the Haiku Movie Review.

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Haiku Movie Review: Robin Williams in RV

Robin Williams finds
limits of mugging in over
sized, priced, vehicle.