Love

Love (2011)

What a weird mixed bag of a movie. With a zinger of a misleading title.

Yes, okay, this ultimately is about what a man abandoned in the space station starts to think about--not sex (according to the movie) but love, some idealized love with a hot babe on a Malibu beach.

And oh yeah, this guy has dreams--or some kind of astral travel memories--of fighting heroically in the Civil War, surround by buff guys being equally heroic and doomed. Gradually the mental state of the one main character shifts and becomes unreliable, and dreams and daydreams become hallucinations, or perhaps some kind of actual revelation of another existence, and it gets surreal.

So the big picture is this is an overly simple movie with a couple well-worn ideas worn further and sometimes to the point of actually boredom. On that level, don't see it.

But, as is typical these days (in a good way), there are some visual and technical moments here that are amazing. Really amazing.

The first of these is a series of scenes of Civil War battles with really complex, layered, smoky, dusty clashes of men and bodies--in delicious slow motion. There's no point to these moments except the drama, but the drama is self-sufficient. They echo the best epic paintings of war of any kind.

And there are other moments with drawings that become moving pictures (again of the Civil War), and some general photography of that past era that works well. Plus the station itself is reasonably interesting, if a little awkwardly uncomfortable (compared to pictures I've seen of the real thing).

Which brings us to the final problem--there is no weightlessness. Almost the entire movie is this single man in an empty space station around Earth, and there would be zero gravity. Not a hint.

What should anyone make of all the derivative stuff here, mainly borrowing (appropriating, stealing?) from the fabulous "2001" and possibly the not-fabulous "Marooned," both from the late 1960s? I don't know. The ending here is an especially, painfully faint echo of Kubrick's great statement about the loneliness of the universe. And the slight romanticizing of this man's isolation (with his visions of a woman with lots of skin showing) reminds me of Soderbergh's romantic remake of "Solaris."

There are better movies about being lost in space.

Typically I have a soft spot in my heart for Indie and low budget films. When I saw that this film had a decent user rating (at the time of this writing) I thought I might be in for a treat much as I was when I watched other great Sci-Fi Indie films such as "Moon", "Pandorum", "The Man from Earth", "Melancholia" and "Another Earth".

Sadly, I had to force myself to watch this through to its end, in the hope there would be something redeeming to justify the agony of watching what I had already put myself through. While I did not anticipate the "revelation" at the end, it certainly did not leave me whole.

Great films, even if only moderately good, take you on a ride of ups and downs… I am very sorry to say this was just plain boring and full of unnecessary scenes and shots.

The cinematography of this movie was beautiful. The dialogue also, especially that introductory scene, I wish there was more of it. A&A did a terrific job with the score. And the idea of the plot was also really interesting: comparing the isolation of a man deep in space who loses contact with Earth, to a soldier in the civil war hundreds of years in the past who must leave his regiment to perish.

I only wish these stories had tied together more strongly. The parallels were there, but there wasn't enough exploration. There were only a few times the astronaut is even reading the journal, and I felt that should have been the focus. Instead the two stories were tied together using a very unnecessary and bizarre deus ex machina type plot element.

That is my main complaint. My second complaint is the pacing of the movie was very irregular. I'm sure this had to do with the fact that it was made over a 4 year, inconsistent, time span.

I feel this movie had amazing potential, and obviously Will Eubank is extremely talented, but these inconsistencies took away a lot of the beauty of the movie for me.

I was hopeful and enthusiastic to see this film but what a disappointment! I wanted to give my benefit of the doubt until the very end but, with all do respect… this film has not a single original thought or frame. Surely, for a beginner-director it may have been a triumph or even just a good effort but for any informed viewer (yet along movie buff), it's has less value than a bubble gum. Orange space suit in Victorian hotel? Really? Come on! Kubrick is spinning in his grave. We already have Space Odyssey 2001. And Moon after that. The only worthy thing was soundtrack - good atmospherics, even though mismatched at times. Sigh… Please, do make anymore of these.

I think Angels & Airwaves has only gotten better with every record. This film continues the upward trend. While it's not the best movie ever and I have my issues with it, I think the fact that it is a narrative film that stands on it's own with or without that band's involvement is a real testament to the artistic creativity of this band. This is not a visual interpretation of the record or some completely avant garde piece -- it's a real film with the score done by the band that produced it.

There are very few tongue-in-cheek references to Angels' song titles and themes but where they are, they are appropriate and feel organic. This film was made not to blatantly promote the band but to make a film based on a story they wanted to tell. The music contributes to the story best when the instrumental versions of the songs the fans know the words to accompany the scene they are backing and vice versa.

This film is well shot, production value is high, visuals and sound are stunning, and Gunnar Wright takes us through this space odyssey with grace and poise with direction from freshman director Will Eubank.

I cannot wait to see the scenes that were cut and great the commentaries on the DVD/Blu- Ray.