"the first one now will later be last..."
The Watchmen
The same way I am the only person on Earth who didn't care for "The Dark Knight" I have a feeling I will be one of the few wholehearted cheerleaders of "Watchmen." It helps that I'm familiar with the source material but not married to it-- I read the graphic novel about three months before watching the film, so I knew the story but couldn't remember every detail.
It's true, also, that not everything worked. But the film had me going from the opening montage (in my opinion, the best scene of the film, which made it hard to watch the movie go slightly downhill afterwards.) I always appreciate a film that can be a straight-up actioner and also be well-plotted and meaningful, and I feel as though "Watchmen" succeeded in just that, thanks in large part to its source material. The film handily balanced kick ass action sequences with strong character moments. It says something that the film made me cheer for Rorschach in the jail break scene where in the comic I was simply disgusted. (Although, maybe Moore meant that to be the case?)
What didn't work, however, were specifics and perhaps I'm nitpicking, so bear with me. "Watchmen" suffers from "A.I." syndrom, where every ending scene seems to give birth to another, longer ending scene. The film begins to slacken about 3/4 of the way through, from when Manhattan and Laurie talk on Mars. A few kickass fighting scenes and big reveals help pick up the pace, but by the time the bomb (literally) has been dropped, the film is wearing out its welcome. At 3 hours long, that's not surprising. My issue is that all of these ending moments-- Nite Owl and Rorshach deciding what to do, Manhattan coming back to Earth, Manhattan offing Rorshach, the final newspaper bit-- hold thematic and story significance. But time-wise they are just too long. I saw that a bit in other moments in the film, as well. Because Snyder didn't want to compromise the film he shot far more material than the theatrical version could ever hope to contain, planning to put the rest on DVD. But that means that the scenes that might have been trimmed in the production had to be trimmed in post, and when they couldn't they just stayed overlong. I would compare it to the thematically important but way too long Farahmir scene in "The Two Towers" extended DVD. One wishes the original film could have kept it, but its just too long. Snyder took the opposite tact and I'm hard-pressed to argue those bits should have been on the cutting room floor, but I still feel they lingered.
Ending problem #2, the one everyone seems to be talking about. For me, the comic's strongest moment was the ending. It came out of nowhere and gave no pat solution, but it seemed the best ending for the melancholy that came before it. And it seems a stroke of genius that Snyder made the film ending not come out of nowhere and be even more of a betrayal than the original's. Yet, logicially, there are flaws in making Dr. Manhattan's power the villain. Dr. Manhattan worked for the US-- wouldn't the world blame the US for the bombings? And Dr. Manhattan is known quantity, unlike the mysterious alien of the original. That's less time to waste researching and more time to get back to fighting one another with human weapons. I find it hard to accept the ending in the film because Veidt's plan is meant to be the final solution. The change makes it seem a little more temporary.
I also have to congratulate the film on its improvement of Laurie as a character. Though her actress was not the film's strongest (Superhero films, take note, your actress' always suck. It is not enough that they are hot, there's acting involved too.), film-Laurie becomes less of a confused, constantly crying woman-child to a still-confused but more willing to do something about it superheroine. I'm also pleased that the male/female nudity balance was about equal; if anything there was more male than female nudity. I was pleasantly surprised with the treatment of the female characters in "300" and Snyder seems to continue on that path for "Watchmen."
But the most compelling reason I can give in praise of the film is that it takes the graphic novel's overarching vision of recent American history and amplifies it on film. If an alien ever does land in New York City, "Watchmen" might be the best film to explain this strange land mass to him.
Addendum: Listening to the AV Club's commentary, I remember something I neglected previously. I think the overarching feeling of paranoia and the connections to modern day issue's such as terrorism, links I felt strongly in the comic, disappeared almost entirely on screen. Although everyone spoke of nuclear annihilation, few moments captured the terror of a world brinking towards collapse and I have to imagine that the lack of the people on the street, captured in a storyline that was filmed but will be released separately on DVD, was a main cause. "The Dark Knight" was much stronger on the overarching sense of terror front, I will give it that.
Grade: A-
The Reader
In the 90s, prestige pictures seemed to be (1) historical and (2) boring as hell. "The Reader," not quite as dull as film's like "The English Patient," still seems to fit in that category. It seems as though only Kate Winslet's acting keeps it from that group entirely.
The film deals with a complicated matter in a complicated way and the choices of its protagonists are really the only things that will stick with the audience. Although it doesn't attempt to exploit the horrors of the holocaust like other films have, the whole film feels a little staid and might have been more powerful for it. Winslet's final moments in the film also seem telegraphed and therefore not as shocking. And though they hardly ever work, I would have liked a closing monologue from Winslet's character to make her a bit less distant.
Ralph Fiennes' relationship with his daughter might also have been more poignant and I wonder if there was material from those moments and the scenes with his law school teacher that were cut-- both seemed to be asking the audience to empathize more with these little-seen characters than was possible.
Overall, this film was a marked improvement from "Benjamin Button" but I still hold that "The Visitor" was the year's best prestige pic.
Grade: B