Alexmagnet Reviews Movies: Love · 8:41pm Mar 29th, 2013
Some of you may have seen some of the reviews I've done of under appreciated ponyfics as part of the Seattle's Angels group here on FiMfic, and you may have joined our group and posted in our forums or asked us some questions. If you haven't though, then, what the hell, man!? Go join right now! You're missing out on all kinds of whimsical fun. There's a whole community just waiting to say hi. I promise I won't bite, can't make promises for the others though, 'specially Sock, that guy's like a rabid dog. Anyway, my point in bringing all this up, and shamelessly plugging our group, is to provide some background as to why I'm about to do what I'm about to do.
You guys (and possibly gals) can probably surmise a few things about me just from the stories I write. I have an unabashed love of Trixie, and a special place in my heart for [Dark] fics. But what you may not know about me, is that I'm a bit of a movie buff. Outside of ponyfics, it's probably my biggest hobby. I've always been fascinated with the unique style of storytelling that movies afford. I'll watch just about anything too, foreign, silent, arthouse, shit, basically anything I can get my hands on. Anyway, I really enjoy reviewing lesser-known ponyfics, and reviewing in general, so I decided, in my infinite wisdom, to start blogging reviews of semi-obscure, or lesser-known, movies. I doubt there'll be much of an audience for this, or much interest, given that this is a My Little Pony fanfiction website, but as Seattle_Lite told me, regarding this idea, “Hey man, if it appeals to you, fuck everything else”, so that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to write these reviews because I want to, and fuck everything else.
Anyway, now that I got that little pre-amble outta the way, let's mosey on over to the inaugural review of “Alexmagnet Reviews a Bunch of Movies You've Probably Never Seen”. Shit's gonna be rad, yo...
Love
See, the bench symbolizes how alone he is... because he’s alone.
I would say that most devilish things occur when large groups of men decide to force the hand of mortality upon one another...
For this first review, I’ll be looking at a film produced and scored by the band Angels & Airwaves, so you know it’s gonna be preachy. Anything with Tom DeLonge is bound to have obvious metaphors and in-your-face lessons, right? Well, yes and no. Love does some things extraordinarily well, and others... not so well, and a lot of that can be credited to first time director, William Eubank. But, regardless of its shortcomings, Love is still an interesting movie, and I’m going to talk about why.
(Fair warning: there’s gonna be spoilers... lots of ‘em)
Now, Love is a movie about what exactly? Well, it should be pretty obvious given that the subject matter is the title of the friggin’ movie. See, that’s one of the unfortunate things about Love; it’s not very subtle. It frequently beats you over the head with the idea that love and social connections are necessary for our well-being, and are in fact so ingrained into our minds that we literally cannot survive without them. This is not a new idea, and it has been explored many times before, but I can at least say that Love manages to restrain itself just enough to not make it eye-rollingly obvious what its message is going to be.
Are you getting it yet? No? I think you need to be beat over the head with it a few more times.
The film’s main strength comes in the form of its protagonist, and ostensibly the only real character, Captain Lee Miller, an astronaut sent to International Space Station after a 20-year absence. Played by Gunner Wright, Miller struggles to keep his sanity after spending six years aboard what has basically become a derelict vessel. Abandoned by his command, and with nowhere to go, he spends his days playing card games with himself and talking to polaroid pictures of previous ISS astronauts, all while hallucinating the voice of one particular astronaut who is far too attractive to be a real ISS staff member. Gunner Wright manages to make the ISS, which was literally built in Eubank’s parent’s backyard, feel real, and he portrays his slipping sanity so convincingly that it provides much of the film’s structure. Without Wright, I can’t really see this film working, plus, hell, he’s just a likeable guy.
What’s really interesting about Miller is that, from what we can gather from the bits of information scattered throughout the film like breadcrumbs, he was more or less alone even before he was alone. He doesn’t have a wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, mistress, dog, goldfish, anything. The only family he appears to have is one brother who sends him one message. So, in a way, Miller was always isolated, just never so literally. I’m not sure if that was intended, because it doesn’t really seem like his previous life plays much of a role in the film, but it definitely makes his realization of the importance of social connections seem that much more meaningful.
Gunner Wright spends much of this movie looking at things, and a surprising amount shirtless.
But now that I’ve talked somewhat about the actors and Lee Miller’s character, what’s the actual story? Well, while aboard the ISS, Miller loses contact with Mission Control and ends up spending the next few years stretching his life support systems to sustain him for as long as possible. For a time, we are not told why he lost contact, and never are we told explicitly, but through what those in the literary world would describe as “showing”, we see the Earth grow dark. Areas that were once lit with millions upon millions of lights fade away into blackness. Occasionally, we’ll hear clips of news reports, or radio pieces talking about ambiguous “wars”, and eventually we come to realize that Lee Miller may well be the only person left. We finally did it; we blew it up! Goddamn us all to hell!
Anyway, after spending years floating aimlessly, with his apparently limitless food supply, Miller ends up having to reroute power to the life support systems in order to continue living his pointless existence. While doing this, in a very overt 2001 referencey way, he happens upon a 200-year old journal. Yes, you read that right. He finds a journal from the Civil War, written by a man with a name conspicuously similar to Lee Miller’s, inside the International Space Station. How did it get there? Why is it stuck inside a tube-like thing in the wall? That sort of implies someone put it there, right? Who put it there? Well, the movie doesn’t feel like telling us, so we’re left to just accept it and move on because the plot demands that he find that journal.
If there's one thing Love does well, it's aping Kubrick's 2001.
It’s implied that this journal is hella long, but we’re only really ever shown snippets of it through voice-overs done by a guy with a pretty cool voice. Captain Lee Briggs (see?), the author of this journal, pops up periodically throughout the film to explain why war is bad, albeit in a very indirect way, which I liked... a lot. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the Civil War sequences in Love are some of my favorites in any independent film. They’re done so beautifully, and it’s clear that a lot of their special effects budget went into making these shots look absolutely stunning. However, that’s not to say the rest of the film looks bad, per se. No, I would say on the whole, Love is one of the best looking independent films I’ve seen in a while, and the last few scenes, while completely ripped from 2001, are also gorgeous. They just lack the gritty detail and surprising depth of some of the early scenes.
What you don’t see is that 90% of all the Civil War scenes take place in slow motion, making them infinitely more cool.
So anyway, after Miller reads the journal, he expresses his unhappiness with the ending, though we aren’t told what that ending is for some time. He reads through it multiple times, speaking to himself throughout, and eventually we find out that it ends with Briggs looking over a ridge to see... something. It’s around this point when Miller has gone completely bonkers and has covered up all the windows with paper, presumably so he’s doesn’t have to see how utterly alone he is. However, after hearing something, he tears the paper away from one window and he stares out at... something. As his eyes grow wide, and the camera refuses to show us what he sees, we realize that we have become Miller, at least in some respects. Now we’re the ones wanting to know what Miller saw.
So, what does Miller see? Well, [spoiler alert] he ends up finding a massive spaceship that somehow crashed on Earth so that Briggs could find it, yet now is back in space because reasons. When Miller finds his way onto the ship, we find out that it’s basically a big record book of all the people from Earth, like a cosmic yearbook. It holds all their memories and its implied that Miller is actually dead at this point because he finds his name in a space phonebook that we can only assume has the names of all the dead people from Earth. It’s at this point he’s told be an ethereal voice that he’s the last human alive, which, as I said, I don’t buy. I think he’s dead, but whatever. Next, after more 2001 references, is a cool space scene where Miller just kinda stands around the vastness of space playing with nebulae and stars and whatever. While it is a very cool scene and it has some amazing music, it left me feeling slightly disappointed, like the movie just kind of ends and that’s that. Credits roll and we’re told that love is important, for the billionth time.
75% of their budget went into this scene.
Overall, I liked Love quite a bit. Gunner Wright really sells the character so well that I was able to forgive some of the story weaknesses. The music is just as beautiful as the cinematography, and the subtleness with which the fragility of Earth is handled is enviable. There’s a lot to like about Love, but I strongly suspect that it’s not a movie for everyone. If no other reason than to see the first few minutes of incredibly well-done Civil War scenes, you should give Love a shot. It’s on Netflix and it’s only an hour and half, so really, you’re just being a dick if you don’t go watch it...
Arbitrary SomethingAwful-Style Score System
Cinematography - Did you even see how well-constructed some of those shots were?/10
Music - Fry meme/10
Gunner Wright - Is a badass/10
Chekhov’s Guns - Just the one/10
Liberties Taken With Plot - “Meh, people won’t care”/10
OVERALL - 35/50
Note: There was one thing I didn’t really talk about in the review, and that’s the randomly intercut bits that are interviews with seemingly meaningless people. See, I liked them cinematically, and the dialogue especially is very strong here, but they feel like they’re only there to further punch you in the face with “RELATIONSHIPS GOOD. WAR BAD.” I mean, they are more relevant when you realize they come from the spaceship, but still...
While I'm on a commenting role here...
A very nice and balanced review here. Was a bit curious about what this movie was. But I'm sure you got a long list of really terrible movies you'd like to review and share with us!
956965
Well, actually, now that you mention it. I have a handful of movies I want to review, like maybe 4 or 5, and none of them are terrible. So, if you, or anyone else, were so inclined, I would be more than willing to take suggestions on movies to review. All movies are welcome. Good, bad, great, awful, so long as they're not super well-known, like I'm not gonna review Das Boot or something.
Have you considered the idea he was hallucinating by the time he found the journal, ie there is no journal, just a crazy guy all alone thinking about how war is terrible? And dressing up the thoughts as the war he studied in school because he doesn't know what happened down there?