Looper, Graphic Novels and The Importance of World Building

Mondo poster per HuffPost

Before we officially start off  I want to point out some of the odd similiarities between Looper and last year's Drive. Both are seemingly mainstream efforts and sold as such, they are made by critically-noted directors and have turned out to be much more than your average "car-chase" movie or Bruce Willis movie. Coincidentally both films were released by the conjunction of Sony and Film District, which suggests both the studio and distributor know what they are unleashing on the audience. What's great about both films is that they are like sneak attacks on the audience, films with an experimental and out-of-the-norm edge sold as blockbuster thrillers. The key difference is that Looper is much more accessible than Drive. Where Drive had a slow European style, Looper is rife with plenty of shooting and explosions. I note this as Looper also includes as many art-house and independent film flourishes as Drive does but under the guise of a science-fiction chase film. At the very least Looper avoids the sub genre of "action movie just happening to take place in cool-looking future setting" such as this year's Total Recall. It is a relief and joy that both films get such wide releases but the problem with that is that the films are often ignored and misunderstood by the public at large.

Looper is well made and highly entertaining but its first half is much better than its second. The last 50ish minutes of Looper become a completely different movie, not one that is bad or doesn't work but feels completely different from the fantastic set-up the first hour prepares us for. But I'm not really here to review the movie, I want to talk the most important aspect of the film, something that's been missing from movies for quite awhile and it's something most movies are too lazy or afraid to do. Or maybe it's something current filmmakers have forgotten to do, world-building. It seems as if in most modern films especially blockbusters set-dressing or set-showing takes the place of world building as if those establishing shots do all the work for them and they have no need to further explore the world they have spent so much time designing and making sure it looks all shiny, pretty and cool. What makes Looper such a great breath of fresh air is not its plot or style but rather its ambition, director Rian Johnson puts so much work into making us believe in this world he's created. Now if you're wondering what this has all to do with graphic novels it's that Looper belongs a unnoticed sub-genre of film I like to call "Graphic Novel films not based on graphic-novels or comic-books" I'm working on something a little more catchy. There's something about the "Look" and style about Looper that makes it feel like a graphic novel which I know more than enough to call its cinematography. While the subject of how graphic novels themselves world build is a large essay on its own for the sake of reader's time and patience I want to focus on films. Just know that graphic novels tend to be really really good at world building for a variety of reasons whether it is the time a reader has to sit and absorb a graphic novel/comic-book or the details of the illustration in a panel. While movies try this with establishing shots of futuristic cityscapes (of which Looper has plenty of) they tend do nothing more than just sit there for the few seconds they're on screen and look cool, not much different than the far away backdrops in video games.

Total Recall per screencrush.com

What I'm trying to say is that these worlds are meant to be involving, places we want to be engaged in which are fundamental parts of any great film, something the viewer is engaged or involved with. I mentioned earlier how Looper is part of a sub-genre I broadly defined "The Graphic Novel Film" and a few choice examples include The Book of Eli, Hanna, Running Scared as well as the Walter Hill trilogy aka The Warriors, Streets of Fire and Last Man Standing but I also should note that just because a movie is hyper-stylized or based on comic-book does not make it a "Graphic-Novel Film" because as noted it's not also the visual style and cinematography that is important but the world-building aspects of the film as well. As a quick example the first Blade film is a graphic novel film but Sin City is not despite being based on a graphic novel and employing an emulation of Frank Miller's illustrations and panels. Sin City is excessively stylish but there isn't much of world there as we intuitively know everything is green screened or tiny sets, sure it looks impressive but ultimately feels like a gimmick. The trick to proper and effective world building is making these things, the sets, the characters, the props feel tangible. And part of what makes Looper great and feel like a rarity these days is its feeling of expanse, over time it gets harder and more difficult to film in real locations giving films an isolated and artificial look* (and I know how that sounds as all films are artifice). While there are echoes of The Terminator in Looper an obvious influence on the film is Children of Men, this a big comparison to make and by no means am I really comparing the two but Alfonso Cuaron's brilliant masterpiece is still to this day one of the expansive and ambitious world-building films in over the last 12 years of film-making. It's more than enough that Looper aims high where most films don't bother. You  needn't look any further than the biggest film of the year The Avengers to see a blockbuster that feels artificial and ultimately small at double the production budget, even the attack on New York is isolated to about two blocks, does this mean Looper is a better film than The Avengers, not really but it is something to note as our bigger films go one route while the other is being phased out for a variety of reasons.

I am very well aware of the irony of using an image of isolation while talking about Looper's expansiveness. Although this does illustrate the graphic novel look of the film. (image from aceshowbiz.com)

 Hell, the easier comparison to make is to that holy grail of sci-fi films Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, and just like Scott's film and Cuaron's Johnson is interested in where our current economy might lead us to. The film makes it more than obvious its views on economic disparity but one could also make the point that basically any science fiction film use the world gone to grungy shit as futuristic background, even the recent Cloud Atlas does so. It's hard to say whether or not Looper will join the ranks of iconic classics like Blade Runner or Children of Men but I do know I won't be surprised to see anyone of the next comic-con carrying around Blunderbusses and talking about "TK-ing".







*Looking at all the problems and over-exposure faced during the production of The Dark Knight Rises.

The Raid: Redemption vs. Bangkok Knockout, Discussing Action

The Raid is a good movie. Actually, it's a very good movie but it's not a great one and it's not the best action movie I've seen. Compared to most modern action films it's leagues better and definitely the type of movie we should see more often. The movie deserves all the acclaim it's getting but unfortunately like any movie that gets hyped, it has the threat to be seen as overrated or not living up to expectations. I felt underwhelmed after leaving The Raid. It's not that the movie doesn't live up to the praise it's gotten, it's just the film is more flawed than I expected it to be.

I've seen numerous martial-arts flicks and they all have terrible and simple stories. But we don't watch these films for the stories, we watch them for the fights and the ridiculous stunts. Luckily The Raid has plenty of decent fight scenes (as seen below). The problem is that for something like The Raid to be great, the fight scenes need to be relentless (or rather the pace of the film). As it stands there are a ton of slow moments in The Raid. I get that movie is adding breathing room between the fights scenes but anything other than someone receiving some bodily harm is dreadfully dull. This is what keeps The Raid from being the best action movie ever. The film follows a formula of action scene, talking scene, action scene, talking scene.

Which brings me to talk about the awesome, over-the-top and insane Bangkok Knockout. Directed by Panna Rittikrai, the action choreographer on all of Tony Jaa's films, BKO is the best action movie I've seen. It constantly tops itself and barrels through at a relentless pace from one fight scene to the next. But there's a huge difference in presentation between the two films. The Raid asks to be taken seriously where as BKO is very much a film about the fights and the stunts that doesn't even pretend to give a shit about it's own story. While many people can see that as a negative, BKO works through and through as the most pure crazy bat-fuck martial arts movie ever. There is nothing wrong with a film trying to take itself seriously but the problem is that The Raid doesn't really lend itself to do just that. The incredible fights scenes run polar opposite to the film's dour tone.

#2 Henchman Mad Dog is about fuck shit up.

The only other problem with The Raid is that it feels like 2/3rds of a movie. It essentially ends in its 2nd act and rushes through to an unsatisfying conclusion. The movie delivers on 2/3rds of set-up but with no satisfying pay-off. It's big ending is basically an extended fight with the film's #2 henchman. I know about problems with budget and scale but any action-savvy fan knows that fight should lead to something bigger, but it doesn't, it just sort of peters out. Despite these criticisms The Raid is still a really good film and absolutely worth seeing and better than any major studio action film.

Above is a clip from BKO. The clip just gives a taste of how outlandish and bizarre the rest of the movie is. Later on, two guys fight a metal-mask wearing axe-wielder who still fights while lit on fire. Does this mean BKO is a better film than The Raid? No, The Raid is actually probably a better film than BKO, but the later is a better action movie. Another crucial difference is the fights in The Raid are much more brutal and violent. Where BKO is about jaw-dropping stunts, The Raid goes for immediate visceral impact. People get brutalized in The Raid in ways that will make you wince, people get fucked up in all kinds of nasty ways. In the end both films are good for entirely different reasons, BKO is over-the-top insanity while The Raid delivers intense great fight scenes in a not-as-great movie. I can only say to watch both movies as a reminder of what good action movies are and should be.

Rudy's Top 15 Movies from 2011

There was a hell of a lot of movies in 2011 worth watching. I've probably missed more than half of them, which I'll list further down. What 2011 in film represents is probably one of the best years for genre geeks and 2012 will be even more so with big-ass mainstream releases such as The Dark Knight Rises, The Avengers and about every other comic-book property out there. Both Attack the Block and Drive are the type of films that make the whole year worth it, proving that there are directors out there who have talent and take genre films seriously. And while I really enjoy those films, I can tell you that the majority of the films on my list aren't winning any of the big academy awards, not that that truly matters anyway. It's apparently a movie geek challenge to come up with 15 films from the year that are totally worth watching and each year I feel lucky to have and take the time to do just that, now if I could only get paid for it, but that's a whole different story.

Some movies that I missed from 2011 that I really really wanted to watch: Shame, Take Shelter, The Descendents, Carnage, 50/50, We Need to Talk about Kevin, War Horse, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Conan O' Brien Can't Stop, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, The Dangerous Method, Greatest Movie ever Sold, The Artist, Certified Copy, A Better Life, Like Crazy, I Saw the Devil, Tin Tin, Hugo, The Muppets, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Troll Hunter, The Rum Diary, The Debt and whatever important documentaries that came out.

Honorable Mentions: Melancholia, Moneyball, Red State, The Devil's Double, Bellflower, The Future, Source Code, 13 Assassins, Bridesmaids, Fright Night





15. The Ides of March - It's been a great year for Ryan Gosling. With all the varied performances he gave this year he'll be able to shake off being "The guy from The Notebook". He did the romantic comedy thing in Crazy, Stupid, Love, he did the quiet badass thing in Drive and he does the losing idealism and becoming disenchanted thing in The Ides of March. While the film doesn't tell us anything we already don't know about politics, it is a well made piece of breezy entertainment. I realize that "breezy" can be seen as a negative but the film is sharp, quickly paced and well written. Clooney has made a film that doesn't feel like an insulting liberal propaganda piece or topically dated. The film has strong performances all across the board with Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti getting some of the best lines. It's not a great film and it won't blow anyone away but it's a really good one and along with this year's Moneyball, it's the type of dialogue-driven film we need more of.



14. Bangkok Knockout - I am a huge fan of martial arts films. Sometimes they can be repetitive and any scene in between fights scenes can be cringe-worthy and Bangkok Knockout is no different. But what usually happens is that the action and fight scenes tend to be so amazing and jaw-dropping that you're able to forgive the rest of the film's faults. A recent sub-genre in martial arts films are the Muay-Thai films which tend to put an emphasis on real, no cgi, life-threatening stunts that look great on film. I wasn't a big fan of the original Ong-Bak, but The Protector and Born to Fight are probably the best martial arts movies I've ever seen. Panna Rittikrai, who was the action choreographer on those films, serves as director for Bangkok Knockout, and I'm happy to say that his film is just as good and tops both films in the stunt department. BKO is the best kind of over-the-top action film. Each progressive fight scene is better than the last and like all good martial-arts films, it borders on being exhausting. But with a film like this I'd rather have it over-deliver than be disappointing and under-deliver. There are some movies you describe to people as being "so ridiculous you have to see it", Bangkok Knockout is that movie.



13. Fast Five - With each progressing year, it seems like action fans get the short end of the stick in terms of quality. While I am a fan of Jason Statham, most of his films turn out to be the B-quality indecipherable shakey-cam crap that is popular these days, making the action scenes dull (The Mechanic, Killer Elite). Which is a huge issue for modern action films, many of them turn out to be unexciting and lifeless. Fortunately Fast Five came to the rescue this year, proving there is hope for big blockbuster action movies to be fun and exciting again. The movie is a blast from start to finish with set pieces that have build-up and payoff instead just being a quick succession of out of context money shots like anything out of Transformers or any other action film this year. Fast Five is just plain fun and a reminder that sometimes they do make them just like they used to.



12. Hobo with a Shotgun - This is the type of movie that seems to be tailor-made for me and there are many ways this movie could've been disappointing. The movie doesn't seem pandering or insulting or filled with cute nods and winks to other cult films. Hobo with a Shotgun never seems like it's trying too hard which is a problem for any wannabe cult film. Where the film could've been over-indulgent about referencing other horror films, it actually feels like it's own thing, a film that could've actually came out sometime during the 80s and was just now recently discovered. Recent cartoonish action films like Drive Angry and Machete have the right attitude toward being ridiculous and over the top but always fall short of just even being passably entertaining. I can comfortably say that Hobo with a Shotgun should be the standard for juvenile ludicrousness on film.



11. Captain America: The First Avenger - Captain America is a corny a movie, there are things about it that don't work, the war montage in the middle of the film has some of the worst cgi I've seen in a big budget studio movie but despite some glaring issues, the film's spirit and tone work so well that they make the negatives forgivable. The things that do work are great, like Chris Evan's sincere and earnest performance, the war bonds montage that proves that the people making this movie did really know what they were doing, and a relationship in a comic-book movie that didn't feel like by-the-numbers set dressing. Captain America is easily my favorite Marvel Studios film, even besting Iron Man. It's probably not the Captain America film most people were expecting and there's a sweeping of history that seems questionable, but the film succeeds in delivering throwback pulp entertainment to a cynical modern era.



10. Rise of the Planet of the Apes - There's no reason this movie should've worked. A prequel to a dead franchise from 20th Century Fox, the worst studio in Hollywood, who go out of their way to produce less than mediocre films. A laughable premise and a goofy trailer, this movie had no right being as good as it is. The film's biggest strength is Andy Serkis' performance as Caesar. The audience is able to empathize and understand Caesar who is more of an interesting and developed character than any of the actual humans in the movie, I'm not sure if this was intentional or not. Either way, the movie plays like a biopic of a cgi ape and it works. That's more than enough to recommend it.



9. Super -Super is exactly the film that Kick-Ass should've been, it is dark, cynical, and uncomfortable without being mean-spiritedly juvenile or ironic. James Gunn's second film since 2006's Slither is probably the most personal film of 2011. It is often sad, and downbeat with Rainn Wilson playing a character who is desperately pathetic. While some of the cutesy "indie" moments of the movie are flat out terrible, luckily they are few and far between. The film is filled with self-loathing and hate and gets superheroes and comic-books more than any other super-hero film. While the film is gory and violent, it never feels like a power fantasy since the movie shows us many times that Rainn Wilson's character is never empowered or confident, he's just pathetic, depressed and mentally-unhinged. This is not so much a dark comedy as much as it is just plain dark.



8. Hanna - Hanna much like 2010's The American (another Focus Features film) represent the marriage of quiet independent moody character studies and violent action films. Both movies have struck a perfect balance between the two. Hanna is easily more badass than Colombiana or any other superficial equivalent. All the performances are great, from Eric Bana's caring father, Cate Blanchett's cold-hearted villain, to Saorise Ronan's aloof performance as the titular character. The film is quickly-paced, stark, stylish and plays like a dark fairy-tale. I can honestly say that Hanna is a perfectly crafted piece of entertainment.



7. Tree of Life - I find it odd when a film is exactly what you expect it to be. If you're familiar with Terrence Malick's previous films such as The Thin Red Line or The New World, you should know to expect something that is visually beautiful, abstract and "airy". This means that Tree of Life is the most Malicky of all of his films and is the most ambitious. I can't tell you what any of it means, the whole film kind of sweeps over you and is a lot to take in. But I can say there was no movie in 2011 that was as visually enthralling as this one.



6. The Guard - John Michael McDonagh's directorial debut is a sharp and funny movie. Following in the steps of his brother Martin McDonagh who directed 2008's In Bruges, my personal favorite movie of that year, the McDonaghs are striving to make movies that feel like both celebrations and criticisms of Irish culture. The Guard takes the tired and true buddy-cop formula and uses every opportunity to poke fun at stereotypes, genre tropes and generalizations. While Don Cheadle is second billed, this is more Brendan Gleeson's film and he delivers a hilarious dry sardonic performance.



5. Contagion - Contagion is the scariest and most thrilling movie of 2011. It feels epic and has the scale that other films attempt to achieve but never quite get there. Director Stephen Soderbergh is riding the style of The Social Network hard, with a cool electronic soundtrack and a sharp visual style. Soderbergh seems to be challenging Fincher at his own game. Fortunately the film is well-written and balanced that you're able to let Soderbergh's visual imitation slide by. There's a lot of information being thrown a you during the movie but the most powerful scenes are the quick subtle moments of humanity that are shown from each character. I hope Contagion is on it's way to becoming a new classic, it deserves it.



4. Young Adult - I'm not a fan of Jason Reitman's first two films, Thank You for Smoking and Juno. They felt smug and insincere. His third film in 2009, Up in the Air felt like a step in the right direction. Even though I dislike Juno, I will defend Diablo Cody, I was one of the few people who was ready to hate Jennifer's Body only to realize it wasn't all that bad. With the re-teaming of Cody and Reitman, I was expecting Young Adult to be a pop-culture fest enamored with its own cleverness. Luckily, the film is the complete opposite of that. It eschews hip irony in favor of uncomfortable, unglamorous, and pathetic naturalism that works in its favor. It is seriously an amazing film that feels like a vicious indictment of a culture and people lost in utter self-absorption. Young Adult is pin-point accurate about what it's like to live the media super-saturated culture and is probably the saddest movie I've seen all year.



3. Drive - It's hard to talk about Drive without repeating what everyone else has said about it. It's cool and stylish, the synth 80s sounding soundtrack is incredible. Deceptively simple and rich in theme. It's perfectly cast, Mulligan is sweet and vulnerable, Brooks is slimy evil, Gosling does a whole lot by doing very little. It is a film for film geeks but is easily accessible for anyone who is patient for its payoffs. It's easily the coolest movie of 2011 and one you find yourself repeatedly engrossed in.



2. Attack the Block - Attack the Block is probably the most fun I had watching a movie in the theater in 2011. A movie for genre fans by genre fans. It's exciting, fun and adventurous, and feels like a big event movie with probably a third of the budget. There's an ill-advised attempt at social consciousness in the middle of the movie that seems ham-fisted, preachy and out of place. While it's a shame the movie couldn't find a balance between its genre parts and its "Spike Lee" parts, it's still the kind of film that genre fans should be glad exists.



1. Warrior - While this may be an odd pick for #1, I'm going with the film that affected me the most this year. While the set-up of the film seems gimmicky; two estranged brothers enter a mixed martial arts competition only to find they must face each other in the final fight sounds eye-rolling and trite but within the first scene of the film you forget all that and are completely grabbed. Previous MMA films such as Never Back Down and Fighting have been aimed at teenage mall crowds, Warrior is a film aimed a growing adults. This isn't a sports movie, it's a dramatic movie that happens to have fights in it. It is a movie that engaged me in ways that neither The Wrestler or The Fighter could. Nick Nolte's performance is fantastic and heartbreaking and he deserves a nomination for best supporting actor. Warrior is a film that puts story and character first accompanied by powerful performances. It reminds us what great movies are made of.