Romeo + Juliet Review

If you went to high school at any point in the last two decades, there's a statistically significant chance that you may have watched this film.  The rationale makes sense: after reading the play, the teacher wants the class to watch a movie adaptation, and there's an assumption that those wascally kids will understand Romeo and Juliet and enjoy it more if it's in a modern setting, and directed to feel like a 90's music video on a drug trip.

Yes, it's definitely a drug trip.  It's Baz Lurmann's signature style.  It's impossible to watch his films and remain unaware of his fingerprints.  Barraging the senses and trying to overwhelm his audiences with his incessant quirkiness is his schtick.  It isn't just him who seems to be on a high.  Half of the actors look like they've been drugged up out of their minds.  Mercutio, Benvolio, and Tybalt in particular come to mind.

If you don't know Baz Lurmann's signature style, here's a rundown of his tropes: Everything must be over-the-top, to the point of absurdity; everything is seizure-inducing colorful; the editing must be so fast-paced that it obliterates the viewer's attention span; the product must deliver a sensory overload.  This is also Baz when he was first starting out, and he hadn't mastered his style yet.  This is probably the least Bazzy of his films, which isn't saying much, because it's still unlike anyone else's style, but he hadn't quite perfected his art into Oscar-nominated craziness.  Later on, he would go on to make Moulin Rouge! and The Great Gatsby, which sped up the editing and reduced the average shot length to less than a second, which simultaneously made them worse and better movies.

His style, when brought to this classic Shakespearean play, is surreal.  It's basically like he knew what Romeo and Juliet is supposed to be and made an adaptation that was the most opposite of it as possible.  The one thing that he does keep, incidentally, is the original Shakespearean dialogue, but I guess it suits his purposes, since what's more eccentric and bizarre than a bunch of gangsters and thugs speaking in Shakespearean Enlgish?  The whole point is that it's supposed to be weird, make no sense, and be kind of hipster before hipsters were a thing.  I can actually see the pitch being pulled off, because I have seen actors talented enough to make Shakespeare sound natural.  However, Lurmann's cast, as talented as they are, aren't really trying.  They make it blatantly obvious that they're only reciting lines, and they don't make the slightest attempt to make it sound natural.  Everything everyone says sounds like a recitation, and has no emotion to it, except for when scenes call for dramatic over-acting.  I guess this fits with the style of the movie, but I don't get how some teachers think that this will make the play easier to follow.  It really doesn't.

Although it makes me cringe at many points, it's often enjoyable.  The one thing that I absolutely, really don't like is the casting of Claire Danes as Juliet.  I have always loved Claire Danes.  I saw her in several roles when I was young, never realizing that they all belonged to the same actress, and loved her in each of those roles.  She's the best thing about Terminator 3.  She played the titular character in Temple Grandin and rightfully won an Emmy.  I love Claire Danes.  Is she good enough to play Juliet?  Of course she is.  She's talented, and she's also enchantingly beautiful enough for people to make it rathehr believable that a dreamy boy could instantly go heads-over-heels for her.  However, she was sixteen at the time, and I feel very uncomfortable when Leonerdo DiCaprio (who of course was a perfect fit for Romeo at this point in his life) romances her.  He was twenty-six years old.  Does that sound a little creepy to you?  Either they should have cast someone younger than Leonardo, or cast someone older than Claire.  Of the two actors, I think that Leonardo is less dispensable, so it's Claire who shouldn't have been in this film.  However, I can at least appreciate that it could have been worse.  Lurmann almost cast a fourteen-year-old Natalie Portman in that role.  When I did a quick google search to see just how young she looked at fourteen, the corner of my eye twitched.  Young.  Good thing that didn't happen.

The most inspired casting, in my opinion, was a young Paul Rudd as Paris.  He's an incredibly likable guy.  Personally, I thought that he was more likable than Leonardo DiCaprio.  The idea of making Paris a really great person that Juliet was too stupid to see favorably is a cool one, especially since it enhances the tragic nature of Romeo and Juliet's love.  I prefer to read Romeo and Juliet as though the parents were the main characters, or Friar Lawrence, and that the play is about how the puppy love between the titular characters affects them.  It would also be nice to focus a bit on how it affected Paris.  Unfortunately, although the director made Paris an endearing person by virtue of casting Paul Rudd in the role, most of Paris's parts from the play got edited out, so there's never a moment when Paris goes to Juliet's grave, or where Romeo acknowledges, upon Paris' death, that Paris was a good man and an equal.  I would have liked that.

The ending is still pretty good, though.  The one thing that most people I know seem to agree that it did better than the play was the final death scene.  It's no spoiler to say that Romeo and Juliet commit suicide in the last scene.  In case someone hasn't seen the movie, though, I won't spoil the twist that Lurmann added to said scene, but I do think that it's a cool twist that improves the scene.

Overall, I've asked many high school students what they think of the movie, and they say that they prefer the play better.  This is just too weird for them, and it's even harder to follow the lines due the mechanical delivery.  Is it kind of fun to watch?  Yes, but it isn't a good teaching tool.  The emphasis is on the zaniness of Baz Lurmann's directing, not the story or the actors.  The people who are going to get the most out of Romeo + Juliet are those who like to drop the Baz every once and a while and indulge themselves in his works as a guilty pleasure.  I don't think that anybody thinks that every film should be directed by him, but some appreciate it when there's an occasional Baztastrophe to check out, for a change of pace.

As a side note, I was initially going to start off this review in a completely different way by talking about the Alien movies.  If that franchise had continued to make movies following the downward trend of Alien: Resurrection, tell me that Alien 5 wouldn't have looked something like this film.  The only way to get more absurd than an Alien movie with a Joss Whedon script is an Alien movie directed by Baz Lurmann.  Now that the thought has crossed my mind, I actually kind of want to see it happen, even though the existence of such a film would offend me.

Ghost in the Shell Review

The one thing that I knew about this movie going into it was that it had very good aesthetics, and that it was on the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 level of prettiness.  I guess you could say that I also knew that it starred Scarlett Johansson, although that wasn't really a selling point for me.  Actually, that was a point against it, because it made me think that it would be a lot like Luc Besson's dumb Lucy movie.  I enjoyed Lucy, but I didn't want a retread of that.

Now that I've seen it, I can say that it isn't quite as psychedelic or as shallow as Lucy.  The science is a little more believable, the themes a little deeper.  Its editing and mood are significantly less eccentric.  It has a very different story, although like Lucy, I wouldn't say that it's a significantly innovative one in the history of Western cinema.

What I can say is that this was based off of an anime of the same name.  I don't go out of my way to watch anime, or to read manga, but I'm familiar enough with the genre to say that Ghost in the Shell is very loyal to the storytelling style of Eastern anime.  Its mood and atmosphere, its directing, its character types, and its story all feel like something that would specifically come from an anime.  In that sense, if it wasn't for the casting, this is probably as good as any live action adaptation of an anime is going to get for a while.  People who like the feel of anime will get something out of this.

By Western standards, this isn't the greatest movie.  I've seen themes of humanity and robotic played out many times in anime, and that genre has a unique way of going about it, which I can't really describe in words.  It's just one of those things that I know when I see it.  There's usually something moody about it.  In any case, Ghost in the Shell goes through some generic themes that movies have tread over many times before, namely "Humanity good, robotics insufficient," and "Corporations are all like Weyland-Yutani and will sacrifice a ton of innocent lives in order to make a profit."  Nothing new here, nothing that is going to cause someone to think, and ultimately the story seems inconsequential.

The characters are also a bit generic.  They are well defined in the sense that you understand immediately what archetype they belong to, but that's all they are, archetypes.  I actually don't have anything against that form of storytelling.  Sometimes an archetype is all that you need.  I just don't want people hoping that the characters will have more depth than that.  They exist to pull you into the atmosphere of the movie, not to get you invested in them themselves.

The one area where the movie succeeds it that it is indeed very well directed.  Rupert Sanders, for an Englishman, has a good instinct for what feels right for Anime.  His editing, pacing, and atmosphere are all solid.  He makes the world seem very real, and establishes rules for the world that, like everything else, contribute to this movie functioning as a live-action anime.  He has a very good grasp on what this film is.  Above all, he has a sense for visuals.

I heard good things about this film, visually.  Someone even said that it was the prettiest film she had ever seen.  I went in with high expectations.  I wasn't disappointed, but as a point of fact I have seen prettier films this year, namely La La Land and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.  I can't say that every single shot in this movie is a masterpiece.  Personally, I think that the movie is the most beautiful during the opening credits.  The colors and the subjects were captivating and pulled me in, and I was hoping for the rest of the movie to be like that.  The rest of the movie didn't quite live up to the hypnotizing concept art of the opening, but still managed to look very attractive overall.  I won't say that it is one of the most beautiful films of the ages, but its cinematography is still a notch above the style of other science fiction and action movies, and while I don't think that every film can be as beautiful as, say, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 because I have realistic expectations, I do think that blockbusters can realistically aspire to be as good-looking as Ghost in the Shell.

There are two final things that must be said about how loyal this movie is to its anime roots.  No review of Ghost in the Shell is complete without wagging a finger at it and tut-tutting it for casting a white actress, Scarlett Johansson, to play a Japanese character.  That really isn't right.  Of course, the blame doesn't land squarely on the film makers.  It falls on us as well, since the movie American audiences haven't turned out in droves to make any specific Japanese or Japanese-American actress marketable.  The only way that this was going to get a budget and make money was if it had a famous actress at the helm, and if there were any popular Japanese actresses in America, I think that the creative team would have gladly cast her.  Tao Okamoto would have been a good fit for the role, for example, but American audiences don't know who she is, and just because she wasn't in it, that suddenly makes me a fan of her, because now I want to see her in more things.  I swear, I'm going to start bringing her up more often, just to bring about awareness of her so that she just might become popular one day in America, and then we won't have to cast white actresses for Japanese roles anymore.  Outside of the main character, though, the movie had no excuse.  There movie was populated with white actors, none of which were played by people who would have made any difference in the box office, and there was really only one Japanese actor in the entire main cast.  It was a travesty.

But that leads me to something amazing which this will will forever impress me.  "Beat" Takeshi Kitano is famous in Japan, and he played Daisuke Aramaki.  I mentioned that all of the characters were basic archetypes, but some of them legitimately did charm me.  If you're going to have basic character "types" in place of fully developed characters, they might as well be likable.  And so was Daisuke Aramaki.  Beat played him well, and what truly blew me away was that this old businessman had flamboyant live-action anime hair...and actually pulled it off.  I never thought that it could be done, but my hat is off to this film.  Of all of the movie's beautiful visuals, none blow me away quite as much as this guy's hair.  It's magnificent.  I love it.

Alien: Covenant Review

Advertisements have a tricky job to carry out.  First, the advertisements must sell a movie, and get people excited.  Second, it is a good idea for an advertisement to be aesthetically pleasing and a work of art unto itself.  Third, very few people want an advertisement to give away too much.  And finally, an advertisement should set audience expectations so that they know what to look for in order to get the most out of its film.  Advertisements don't always carry through on that last function, in which case it is the job of the reviewer to give a more exact pitch for the movie and inform people on what desires they should have before going in in order to be as satisfied as possible.

So before I break down the film, allow me to first address the perception of the film that has been built up through its marketing department.  There have been some mixed messages.  The studio clearly wants people to believe that this is a return to form, and did a lot of marketing with the Alien, knowing that it would make the movie sell.  Whoever designed the poster for the movie managed to create a true work of art, one of the greatest posters of the year, indicating that the film had a heavy focus on the eerie proto-religion that the Engineers had with the aliens.

Personally, the trailers for the movie didn't excite me much.  It was just another Alien movie, which had been done to death.  The only thing that looked different was that people would get gory in the back instead of in the front.  That didn't seem particularly inspired to me.  Fortunately, I can say that those advertisements did not give away much of the story of the film, and that it wasn't a mere rehashing of the various Alien movies.

As for the poster, I loved it.  That got me excited.  It hinted at a continuation of the themes of Prometheus, and to take me into the disturbing, occult realm of the Engineer's religion.  I really liked the religious aspect of Prometheus and wanted to see a full series dedicated to it, because it was good science fiction.  There was something very primal about it that made it so unnerving.

However, that poster, with all the beauty of its themes and its aesthetic design, had nothing to do with the film.  Let me repeat: the poster has nothing to do with the film.  Nothing in any way whatsoever.  Perhaps it gives us an idea of what the director wished it could have been about, and what it might have been in its first drafts, so it may reveal that much about Covenant, but otherwise it might as well be the poster for another film, one that I truly would love to see someday, if Ridley Scott is given a chance to make it.

If you want a proper set of expectations for Covenant, go in expecting something that carries on the tradition of being a genre shift.  The first movie was a claustrophobic horror movie about an unexplainable menace.  The second was an action movie.  The third was an emo film.  The fourth was a bad movie (oh, and I think it was trying to be a Western or something).  AVP was PG-13 fan fiction.  Prometheus was a classic sci-fi commentary on religion, higher powers, and man's place in the universe.  Alien: Covenant introduces some very new elements into the mythology, and a new kind of conflict.  What that conflict is, I won't say, but I'm telling you to expect a new kind of story.

Covenant does continue some of the deep thinking of Prometheus, but they aren't as relevant thematically because most of the characters aren't out in space seeking answers.  These thoughts don't lead to a quest, and they don't strike me emotionally as much as Prometheus did.  After seeing Prometheus, I definitely had a lot of thinking to do.  What if we were to travel a great distance to seek God, only to find out that not only did God not exist, but His nearest equivalent was the most terrible thing that we could imagine, so frightening that it made us sick, and wish that we had rather not known?  I am a huge fan of Prometheus for prompting such a strong emotional and spiritual reaction in me, and discovering a new primal fear that the other films hadn't touched upon.  While Covenant carries over some of those themes, it does not exploit them as its main theme, and doesn't use them as a means of accentuating the primal horror.

Instead of being driven by spiritual questions and unknowns, Covenant's main theme has to do with character development.  At the end of the day, I actually think that this is what the film is all about.  This does involve some discussions on faith and belief, as with Prometheus, but in the case of this movie those questions aren't asked to the audience, but rather to the characters so that we become invested in them.  Character development in this movie is important enough that I'd say that you should be more interested in that than the aliens.  In my opinion, the aliens are almost incidental.  Almost.  They're still obviously very important, but if I were to go watch the film again, they would not be the main draw.

That's not to say that past Alien movies didn't have an important human element.  All of them did, especially the ones that we all universally like.  However, this does approach the humanity of its characters in a new way, and it creates a new kind of conflict.  I won't tell you which characters to look out for, because I don't want to give anything away.  I went into the movie having no idea how relevant each character was, or who the main characters would be, and I would like people to go in the same as me.

With all that talk about what the advertisements didn't give away, I should admit that they did give away some fairly important things.  Some neanderthal in marketing decided to give away many of the death scenes, so right off the bat I knew that certain characters were doomed from the start.  That did ruin some of the experience for me.  The other advertisement, a web featurette called Crossing, gave away a major plot detail that I would have considered a spoiler, although in fairness is does give people a much more honest portrait of their future viewing experience.  I would personally discourage people from watching any of the featurettes, and only watch them later as deleted scenes.

Due the the genre shift, I didn't really consider it a horror film.  It is certainly the bloodiest of the Alien films by a slight margin, but I don't consider it as creepy.  It will creep some people out, but it didn't scare me even a tenth as much as the original Alien did.  So don't go in with the expectation of being scared.  If by chance you are, then consider that an added bonus.  The advertisements suggested that it might be a horror film, especially when they show death scenes, but it's definitely more sci-fi, and furthermore, because of those scenes in the trailers, it makes it impossible to be scared when characters die.

Even the deaths that didn't occur in the trailers were a bit predictable, because people still walk off on their own.  It's excusable at first, before they realize that they're in danger, but after the action gets started, it becomes kind of dumb.  It only bothered me at certain points, and overall I would say that the people are smarter in Covenant than they are in Prometheus (perhaps that's because they're have a less obnoxious demeanor and actually act like they're taking their mission seriously), but a lot of people who hated Prometheus for this reason will probably still hate this movie for that reason, so if you're one of those people, just accept it as a fact of life that horror victims will be stupid before going in to this movie.  If you don't think you can accept it, then there's no reason for seeing it, and you'd better pass this time around.

My biggest criticism for the movie has to do with Ridley Scott.  I liked the job that the writers did, and the actors, and for the most part I really liked the job that Ridley did.  After all, the film is beautiful.  It has very good cinematography, and he does an excellent job of directing darkly-lit scenes.  I always appreciate it when directors can do that.  However, it is not tonally as distinct as his previous to films in this franchise.  It doesn't have the same sense of cinematic atmosphere.  At times, if it wasn't for the cinematography, I thought that you might have changed Ridley Scott with another blockbuster director and found a similar result.  Perhaps it isn't Ridley's fault, but the result of executive meddling.  I'm not really sure.  But in some ways, this definitely feels like a blockbuster film released in 2017 and isn't as distinctly a member of the Alien franchise.  That isn't to say that it doesn't have plenty of atmosphere!  It's just that it doesn't have as much as Prometheus and Alien.  It also saddens me to say that it doesn't have any distinct, memorable music queues, as with Prometheus and Alien, although it does acknowledge those two by using both of their themes throughout the movie, indicating that this film is where the two films begin to meet.  As a lover of film scores, though, I wish that this film had its own fully developed theme to go with it, especially one that would emphasize the thematic differences between this and past films.

Speaking of atmosphere, there's a flashback in this film.  I don't like flashbacks in general, but since they have never been used in this franchise before, I especially didn't like it here.  It's not that the flashback was done terribly, but I do think that it made this movie a little bit more like the average blockbuster and not quite as distinct as the other Alien films.

Overall, I'd say that it has a lot of the atmosphere of Prometheus, and we're getting the Ridley Scott from that film, but people are going to be debating whether or not we are to think of this as a Prometheus sequel or an Alien prequel.  It picks up more immediately from Prometheus, and its characters are more closely tied to the Prometheus timeline.  It feels like a Prometheus sequel in a lot of ways, but as many fans of Prometheus have pointed out, it answers almost no questions from Prometheus, and reveals more about the movie Alien.

Regarding the answers that it does give us, I would say that the questions are more related to characters and details of the plot of the series, and not so much metaphysical questions that play into the horror.  Alien, for example, gave us questions about what we would be better off not knowing as we explored deep enough into space, and Prometheus gave us questions about what we would rather not know as we began to explore ourselves and our origins.  Both are a bit disturbing.  Covenant's questions aren't quite as mysterious and are things that we can expect more concrete answers on, questions on where the story and the characters are going.  Some people might dislike it, but it works for this particular film, since I do think that Ridley Scott understands how this one is different.

Alien: Covenant might not answer all of our questions, and in fact it has sabotaged some of our such hopes, but it does leave a big footprint in the Alien universe, because its story has some far-reaching ramifications.  Although I wouldn't say that its themes are as deep as its predecessor's, the actual story is a little more ambitious.  In the previous films, the immediate consequences in their stories was the safety of the crew members.  Ultimately, once one takes away the deeper themes, they boil down to survival stories.  Covenant branches out a little more than that, and it absolutely affects the way that we are to see any films set after it, which is one reason why I think that fans of the series probably ought to see it.

There are a final couple of things for me to say:

First, Michael Fassbender was the best part of Prometheus and Ridley Scott, the writers, and the studios all knew it.  That man deserved an Oscar for his role in that film, where he was last seen with his android head ripped from his body, but otherwise still functioning.  His role as David is what first brought him to my attention.  Yes, he has been excellent as Magneto, and he has received Oscar nomminations for other roles in 12 Years A Slave and Steve Jobs, but I believe that David was truly his best role to date.  This is the one role that he takes the most complete ownership of.  He wasn't featured much in Alien: Covenant's advertising, but everyone behind the making of this movie knew that fans loved David and made sure to do him complete justice.  The last time we saw an amazing character brought back after having his head ripped off, it was in Alien 3 and it was a bit of a disappointment.  However, I can assure people that David is a pure pleasure to watch, and that Michael Fassbender is given a chance to shine.  Like a god.

The other performance that I must call out is Billy Crudup's.  From what I saw in the advertisements, I thought that this actor was going to be completely wasted in this movie, but I was pleasantly surprised.  I had seen Billy in some other things, but never bothered remembering his face.  However, I fell in love with the movie Rudderless, in which he stars and gives a performance that many actors would kill for.  It is also possibly my favorite indie film in the last five or so years.  Since then, I've paid attention to all of his upcoming films.  He also had the most fortunate opportunity to star in The Stanford Prison Experiment, another great indie film.  If there's anyone like me who would have watched Covenant just because of Billy Crudup, but was afraid that his character would be insignificant and forgettable, I think that the writers gave him a decent amount of character, and that this role helps his career.  It won't be iconic like David or Ripley, but there's plenty of scenes where I found myself appreciating the character.

Overall, I liked it.  The people who want to get the most out of seeing this movie are the ones who will be okay with changes to the formula.  There were some changes to what I thought an Alien film should be that, a decade ago, was once adamantly against, and thought that Alien films should never go in such a direction, but surprisingly it did embraced these changes with enough deftness of acting, writing, and directing to pull it off.  I'm excited to see where the Alien franchise goes from here.  I am also excited to someday see a deeper exploration of the proto-religion seen in Prometheus, because the poster for this movie makes me realize just how cool that would be.

Homeward Bound Review

1993 was a good year.  Steven Spielberg released two of the best films ever, Jurassic Park and, especially, Schindler's List.  Harrison Ford starred in one of his best movies, The Fugitive.  Tim Burton directed presented The Nightmare Before Christmas.  Child friendly films like The Sandlot became classics.

And there's also this one, Homeward Bound, a Disney remake of their 1963 film The Incredible Journey.  I just watched it today, and nearly cried.  It's been...a long time.  What was I?  Five?  Four??  To my surprise, I remembered quite a bit.

It's very simple, and so it won't take me too long to review it.  It's a simple, feel-good film with a lot of heart.  It didn't take a lot of imagination to create, but it did require a personal sense of goodness.  I'd say that the film is filled with humanity, but that would be an ironic statement, because in many ways the film is about something that humanity is not.

Shadow, Chance, and Sassy (A Golden Retriever, an American Bulldog, and a Himalayan Cat, respectively), are left behind with a caretaker when their owners go on vacation.  The owners take much longer than expected, and after a couple of weeks Shadow gets worried.

You see, Shadow is a slightly older dog, older than the recently adopted Chance.  He's had time to develop a bond with his kid.  He understands the importance of the relationship between dogs and humans.  He is defined by his loyalty for his boy.

Chance, recognizably voiced by Michael J. Fox, is much less mature.  He's eager for fun, and impulsive.  He's definitely a dog, enjoying life moment by moment, and delighting in gross things like eating smelly old shoes, but he hasn't figured out his relationship with humans yet.  He liked it when they take him in, but the relationship has no deeper meaning to him like it does with Shadow.

Then there's Sassy, who lives up to her name.  She doesn't like getting dirty, and thinks that cats rule and dogs drool.  She's definitely family with the dogs, but her relationship dynamic with them is almost exactly what little kids would expect.

Following Shadow's lead, the three pets leave the farm where they're being kept to travel across the wilderness to find their family.  Chance and Sassy can get distracted, but they keep on going because of Shadow's simple love for his boy.  At one point, in the middle of a forest of pines, sitting before a river with a sunset reflecting off of it, Chance observes that "Looking at him that night, he seemed so wise, and ancient, like the first dog who ever walked the earth.  I just hope that one day I can be like him."

Shadow was always my favorite character.  I'm not sure if, when I was a kid, I was aware that he was older.  Watching this again in my twenties, that detail doesn't seem familiar to me.  When I was a kid, I'm sure that my reason for loving Shadow was that he was of that most beautiful breed, the Golden Retriever.  I still absolutely love him for that reason.  Rewatching the film, though, I admire his deep appreciation of the purpose of being a dog, and how he made found a home in this purpose.

On the way, they see many great beauties of nature, from river rapids, to waterfalls, to rocky cliffs, to mountains and valleys, panthers, bears, and so on.  The film takes no shame in being beautiful.  That sums up most of the film: authentic shots of nature at its best, and of dogs at their best.  And a cat.  Can't forget the cat.

That sums up the movie.  You know exactly what you're going to get.  It's one of those films that captures the old-fashioned Disney spirit quite well, and has a Normal Rockwellian quality.  It's Norman Rockwell for dogs.

Logan Review

This is probably the first time that the main draw for a superhero film (if you can call Logan such) has been its cinematography.  For those of you who saw the one-time-only black-and-white showing of Logan, congratulations; you saw something truly beautiful.  For the rest of you who missed out, too bad, but at least it will be available on blue ray.

Before I go into Logan itself, the subject of quality black and white cinematography demands some address of color photography.  They require two completely different mindsets.  It isn't simply a matter of one having color and one not having color.  They completely alter the way that a film is made.  They each require unique talents from a cinematographer.  When you compare amazing color cinematography to black and white cinematography, it's comparing apples to oranges.  To me, they are two distinct art forms.

Invidentally, only a week and a half before Logan Noir was released, Marverl released Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.  This movie had many strong points that I must praise it on, and when I began writing a review on it, the very first thing that I had to mention was its cinematography.  I have nothing but praise for its cinematography.  It's a miracle, because this was not something to be expected from an MCU movie.  The MCU is notorious among cinematography nerds for being an ugly franchise.  The colors are bland and uninteresting, and there are rarely ever any solid black values onscreen.  It's still a step up from DC's Man of Steel, which went out of its way to put a lifeless filter on it, but it's still uninspired.  Basically, the MCU embodies every bad stereotype of digital cinematography.  While they take great care in their special effects department, they severely overlook their regular effects department, that is, making sure that every shot looks  special regardless of whether or not there's an effect in it.  That doesn't really come naturally, because you have to carefully light the scenes, and then adjust your cameras accordingly.  You also have to make sure that all of the colors in the scene are just right.

And you have to have those black values.  The camera must pick up actual contrast, and this must include shaded areas that are nearly completely black.  Especially if you're creating a comic book movie.  The DCU, for all its faults, figured this out after Man of Steel and didn't make that mistake again.  Batman v Superman looked like an actual comic-book movies, with actual shadows and contrasts that looked hand-crafted.  It was also shot on film, which helped.  Marvel, meanwhile, continued to shoot on Red cameras, which have some absolutely amazing capabilities, but they didn't seem to know what to do with them, and they basically used the Red series like they were any other digital camera, only with a higher pixel count.  Fans of cinematography had reason to be disappointed, because they know the potential that a superhero gives cinematographers.

Then Marvel finally released Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and something changed.  The first Guardians film indicated what it could be, but its sequel took it to the extreme.  Vol. 2 is an example of a film that understands color photography down to its core.  Every single shot felt vibrant.  It used color to its fullest advantage, and without feeling like there was a filter.  Yes, there probably was a filter, but the beauty is that I didn't notice it.  It felt to me that the world simply was more colorful, and was alive.  It also balanced colors with great black values to guide your attention to the form of the colorful things.  Director James Gunn not only made sure that the cinematographer did his job right, but ensured that the production value matched this cinematographic vision, and that there was plenty of on-set color to work with.  It was everything that I wanted in a Marvel film, in glorious 8K.

I have a great deal more to say on Vol. 2's cinematography that goes beyond just the color, but the point I wish to emphasize is that it had the best cinematography I had ever seen of any superhero film.

Which means that I've been having a really good couple of weeks with cinematography.  A great year if you count all those times I watched La La Land in January and February, which is another amazing example of what can be accomplished with color photography, but that's a tangent.  I've been having a good week because right after watching Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, the comic book film with the greatest cinematography thus far, I drove down to the only Alamo Drafthouse theatre in the Midwest to watch an exclusive showing of Logan Noir, which then immediately replaced Vol. 2's spot at the top.  I have never seen cinematography this beautiful in a comic book movie.

First, I should say that you will not get the same experience that I did merely by turning down the color balance on your television set.  Director James Mangold publicly explained why that didn't work, because all that does is turn the film gray.  That's okay if you want a gray film, but if you want a black and white film, you need to see the version that Mangold and his crew carefully crafted.  They had to edit it frame by frame to ensure that they had the contrast in the scene exactly where they wanted it, to give it as classy of a look as possible, and to ensure the maximum emotional impact.  Every single frame of this film is a work of art.  When watching this movie, I wished I was capable of pausing after every third shot and taking a screenshot so that I could make what I saw onscreen my desktop background.  Logan looks that good in black and white.

In order for you to understand my appreciation of this, I'm familiar with what the film looks like in color.  The shapes and the features of the characters' faces didn't stand out at much, or carry as  much weight.  I can easily imagine how bland that would have looked if one had merely converted this film to black and white by removing the color.  It would have been just as bland, just blander.  On many occasions, I have taken a color photograph and dropped it into basic photo editing software, where I proceeded to take out the color, add some contrast, and then sometimes apply a filter.  The results usually aren't as amazing and as striking as I'd like.  In order to get what I want, I literally recreate the photograph in a lifelike charcoal drawing.  I used to use graphite, but have since found charcoal ten times superior.  Only after all that messy charcoaling, which takes hours and hours of labor over the course of a month, do I finally get a black-and-white picture that really does the subject matter justice.  No filter can match the results of that kind of work.

That's how I feel looking at this film.  I'm reminded of those times that I've created charcoal drawings.  It's amazing.  No filter, no formula, was used in order to get these results.  The visual editors had to labor in love to create a custom-made frame each time that would deliver the maximum effect.  They do all of this while hardly being recognized, because in the end it all looks quite naturally like it was the image picked up by the camera, and that the scenes were originally lit this way.

There are many moments in the film's original release that don't look particularly visually stimulating, but after their Noir conversion, captivate the eyes.  One of them is of Daphne Keene looking out the window while its drizzling.  Other times, people are simply indoors, but the light hits their faces in such a way that you completely see their character.  Just about every shot of Patrick Stewart's aging countenance, and the deep lines running across it, speaks volumes.  When tears well up in his eyes, it looks so surreal.  In so many instances, Logan sits alone in the darkness, and you feel that you know what the character is all about.  Sometimes light will hit them in ways that give them a halo.  Sometimes the characters verge on becoming silhouettes.  Daphne Keene's simple features stand out the least of anyone's, but her smooth dark hair takes on a whole new texture when in black and white.

Again, as the film went on, there were so many moments that made me think "I wish I could take a screenshot and do a charcoal drawing of this!"

One thing that I noticed right away about Logan Noir, is that there's almost always somewhere in the shot that is nearly all-black.  In many indoor scenes, a lot of areas in the background are black, drawing your attention to the character.  It doesn't feel unnatural in the slightest, or that any visual tricks are being performed, but the trained eye notices it and appreciates it.  Good black values do something that many people usually try to accomplish through film editing.  Filmmakers often use editing to draw the audience's attention to something, to help set up a narrative.  I think that good black values often do that, but in an even subtler way, and often in an even more emotional way.

Perhaps where this conversion is at its weakest is when the characters are in the wide open, in broad daylight.  In those moments, briefly, there are no solid black values.  It isn't as visually expressive.  When I do charcoal drawings, I almost always choose a subject matter with dark values, such as hands playing on piano keys, or an ocean reflecting the Milky Way, or a woman casting a shadow as she's walking across the desert.  No matter what, I find a way to have fun with contrast.  However, while the scenes that I'm alluding to don't have these shadows, there's still a beauty to them.  Sometimes it's the scenery, and other times it's the context of the scene itself that makes it beautiful, without the help of black values whatsoever.

Many people went to Logan Noir for this reason, because the story enhanced the black and white images.  They might not have even been connoisseurs of black and white, or have even known the amount of artistry that went into this conversion, but went anyway because they thought that the story of Logan was well-suited for black and white.  The very fact that it was black and white, even if it hadn't been the best quality, seemed an appropriate and emotionally pleasing way of presenting the movie.  It made it more adult.  I concur.  This was an amazing decision that caught be serendipitously.  If there is one hero film that can pull off black and white, it's this one.  And I'll say it right here, that the black and white version of Logan is definitely the preferred one.  If you haven't seen the movie yet, but plan on buying it on Blu-ray, make sure to buy a version that has Noir on it, and watch that one.  James Mangold said that there is a preferred version, because he shot it in color and then retroactively made a black and white version after encouragement from the fans.  Perhaps due to his baises he can't come down and admit just how amazing Noir is, but I'll say it for him.  I'm free from the sentimental connection of having it shot in color first: black and white is the version to watch.  Not only is it beautiful, but it is truly befitting in Hugh Jackman's heartfelt and vulnerable sendoff for this beloved character.

In spite of my love of the color in La La Land and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, this was the real treat for me.  By now, the reader will have learned that I love black and white art, and almost by default choose to express reality through it.  It's one of my loves.  I love it so much that I'd rather have the option between seeing a movie in color and monochrome instead of seeing it in 2D and 3D.  This should be a more regular thing.  Perhaps, just maybe, Logan will win Best Cinematography, and directors will begin to seriously consider shooting films in both color and monochrome in the future.  The chances are small, but nothing would make me happier.  I can always hope that this art form which is so near to my heart will be rediscovered and resurrected.