The Best 3-D of 2014

by Vanessa Tottle & Gabriel Valdez

Making movies in 3-D is still more of a science than an art. Most films get the basics done and nothing more: create a few planes of depth for characters to exist on; poke the audience in the eye with something during an action scene; and if you’re post-converting, blur the detail out of anything in the background in a horrific attempt to emulate depth-of-field.

The best 3-D is native, meaning it’s filmed as 3-D instead of being filmed in 2-D and converted later. Native 3-D retains detail and movement qualities that post-converted 3-D does not. When offered a post-converted 3-D film, the 2-D version may actually be more visually impressive.

When we talk about the best 3-D of 2014, we are talking about the visual fidelity – how realistic it looks – but we’re also talking about its artistic use. How much does it contribute to the story and the visuals. 3-D is still new enough that no one’s yet to establish its visual language. There are very few “new shots” that only 3-D can accomplish, and there’s no one pushing 3-D visual language the way Orson Welles once pushed deep focus cinematography.

Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity did this in 2013 by fusing its 3-D, visual effects, and POV sequences together, but this had more to do with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s already established language of the edited long take than with anything extraordinarily new.

Martin Scorsese is the director who’s come closest to writing new cinematographic language using 3-D. In 2011’s Hugo, he treats his scenes as if they’re taking place in dioramas. He resurrects long-forgotten silent film techniques and develops 3-D analogues, most notably replacing the vignette (when characters’ faces are overlit and the corners of the frame darkened) with a 3-D protrusion (when characters’ faces lean unnaturally close to the viewer and the corners of the frame are softened).

Unfortunately, there’s nothing in 2014 that comes close to these two examples. The best 3-D belongs to one film alone, but there are three that stand out:

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2

Animation can take advantage of 3-D in two ways. Firstly, it’s easier to convert and play around with on a computer, since the animation isn’t live action. Adjustments can be made to the actors themselves in order to take advantage of 3-D, before a scene is even finalized. Secondly, the audience is already practicing a visual suspension of disbelief because they’re watching a stylized cartoon. Animations need to do more than just use 3-D to add depth then, and How to Train Your Dragon 2 creates some iconic and mythological moments. That half the film takes place flying through the sky certainly doesn’t hurt 3-D’s ability to play off of our depth perception and kneejerk panic reaction when we’re suddenly dropping through clouds.

(Read Gabe’s review)

EDGE OF TOMORROW

Edge of Tomorrow, also known as Live. Die. Repeat., makes excellent use of 3-D, especially in its action scenes. It uses all the gimmicky tricks – throwing dirt in your face during a battle scene, having objects speed toward you – but this all plays into the movie’s throwback sense of what action should be. The techniques aren’t abused and there’s enough creative use of 3-D, especially in terms of background and edge-of-frame action, to not have to rely on gimmicks.

(Read Gabe’s review)

EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS

Here’s your winner. There’s only one film that really did something brand new with 3-D this year, and that’s Exodus: Gods and Kings. The movie itself is taxing, overlong, and ultimately pointless, but the 3-D is sumptuous. As Moses treads through the desert, sand kicks up and – rather than flying in your face – it shimmers in the evening sun as it drifts back down to the ground. The waters of the Red Sea glitter along the horizon. As the shadow of death falls across Egypt, it travels at unavoidable speed, yet the vastness of the landscape means it still takes its time. This creates a truly visual sense of creeping, impending doom while still giving it the feeling of weight and force.

Whatever other mistakes Ridley Scott made in directing Exodus – and there are many – the 3-D is a resounding success. He uses it to create gorgeous details, especially in the foreground, where filmmakers are often too nervous to place much 3-D.

There are more traditional uses of 3-D in the film, too: crocodiles eating people, teeming hordes of insects and frogs, rock slides, the kind of pomp we’d expect. This is all done well, but it’s really how the 3-D is used in the film’s most quiet and transitional moments that evokes a sense of place and makes us wish the whole film had been about the people and the setting instead of the mythology and the melodrama.

(Read Gabe’s review)

It’s admittedly thin pickings for truly exceptional 3-D this year. The technique isn’t always as solid a selling point at the box office as producers anticipate. As we’ve seen with Interstellar, some major directors just don’t want to accommodate it. Until a pioneering director really starts to create a visual language unique to 3-D, the popularity of the technique will continue to ebb and flow without really taking hold.

Enough viewers also become uncomfortable, nauseous, or develop headaches because of 3-D, that it will take a major technological leap before it threatens to become our primary way of watching movies. If you do experience a negative physical reaction to 3-D, listen to your body. 3-D tricks your brain into interpreting depth on what is still a 2-D surface. People are built differently, and not everyone’s brain is built to cope with 3-D. In very rare cases, it can have adverse effects. If you don’t like 3-D, there’s nothing wrong with you. It’s still a rudimentary technique at this stage, and rudimentary techniques are rarely suited to all.

In the lead-up to the Oscars, we’ve named several other Best of 2014 Awards. These include:

The Best Diversity of 2014

The Best Original Score of 2014

The Best Soundtrack of 2014

The Most Thankless Role of 2014

Not Moses’ Best Outing — “Exodus: Gods and Kings”

by Gabriel Valdez

The Biblical tale of Moses leading the Hebrew tribes out of Egypt has been told countless times on film. Charlton Heston most famously parted the Red Sea. Val Kilmer voiced Moses in the 1998 animated film The Prince of Egypt. Ben Kingsley did it for TV. Now, Christian Bale takes on the mantle in the very serious-minded adaptation Exodus: Gods and Kings, directed by Ridley Scott.

Raised with his brother Ramses (Joel Edgerton) as a son of the Pharaoh Seti (John Turturro), Bale’s Moses is a leader and tactician who hides a secret – he was really born among the Hebrew tribes as a slave to the Egyptians he now helps rule. Exodus is the story of his exile and the mission he’s later given by God – to free the Hebrew tribes from Egyptian rule.

Exodus has some glaring flaws. It treats Moses’ story as a series of spectacles, roaring ahead during times of action, yet practically falling asleep in between them. Scott is respectful to the story and its characters while taking liberties with the narrative, but he fails to find any breathing space in between the film’s largest moments. We never get to see our characters, say, look at the stars or sit down to dinner or even take a deep breath before a sentence.

Focusing only on the famous moments, the whole effort begins to feel like the slowest highlight reel ever created. You can feel the film wanting to take some chances and get philosophical, but it just won’t pull the trigger, perhaps because it’s too afraid of upsetting part of its audience. We have a narrative that takes chances with the character Moses, but then shies away and fails to give us any reason for taking them. We have moments of rare cinematic beauty, but the beauty is never used for any storytelling purpose.

The tone is so serious throughout that we’re left with only one emotionally resonant moment, and this belongs to the villain, Ramses. Not all movies need emotion or a greater meaning, but this is the story of Moses and it feels like anything but a spiritual journey. At times, you even begin to wonder if it’s Moses’ highlight reel we’re watching, or Ridley Scott’s.

Exodus can also begin to feel a little like play-acting at times. I won’t delve into the ethics of casting so many Caucasian actors in Egyptian roles. Instead, I’ll just point out that it can make the biggest movie feel quite small: when accents briefly slip, you can quickly find yourself watching Welsh Moses talking to the Pharaoh from Brooklyn while his brother Ramses is trying so hard to not sound Australian that he doesn’t sound like he’s from much of anywhere.

The performances are good, but even the best performers aren’t immune to moments like this. When these actors face off, relatively small inconsistencies build off each other and create much larger problems that can sabotage whole scenes. Exodus isn’t rife with this, but its slow pace and emotional distance create too much room to avoid noticing.

I do need to highlight the 3-D. There are grand vistas, cityscapes, and thousand-foot views of battlefields. The sequence showing Egypt’s plagues is energetic and captivating. That’s expected. What’s not is the unparalleled use of subtle “before the window” effects: floating embers, glittering flecks of sand, flies, sun glare, dust and smoke. The 3-D here is exquisite. It is beyond good. It is sumptuous. This whole review could have been 700 synonyms for how good the 3-D is.

Exodus itself isn’t good or bad. It’s occasionally great and occasionally terrible. This is a middle of the road film filled with absolutely visionary moments and some very good acting sabotaged by a cold, remote, and homogenized approach to storytelling.

Religious audiences will like how respectfully it’s told, even if they will want to discuss the number of details that are changed. Audiences looking for spectacle will definitely find it, but they’ll have to be immensely patient for long stretches in order to earn it. Film buffs will love the technical elements – costuming, cinematography, sumptuous 3D – but won’t have much tolerance for its lackluster storytelling and stop-and-go pace. For every moment of Exodus that stuns, there’s a longer moment that grinds you down as a viewer. It evokes surprisingly little thought and emotion for its subject matter.

Does it Pass the Bechdel Test?

This section helps us discuss one aspect of movies that we’d like to see improved – the representation of women. Read why we’re including this section here.

1. Does Exodus: Gods and Kings have more than one woman in it?

Yes. Sigourney Weaver plays Moses’ adoptive mother Tuya, while Hiam Abbass plays Bithia. Maria Valverde plays Moses’ wife Zipporah. Indira Varma plays the Pharaoh’s High Priestess.

2. Do they talk to each other?

No. There’s a charged scene involving Tuya and Bithia, but they don’t talk to each other – they talk to the men instead. Even when Moses is saying his goodbyes to family, women may stand next to each other but they only speak to him.

3. About something other than a man?

Well, they don’t talk to each other, so the film doesn’t even get this far. When women speak to men in the film, it’s usually about a man, though they briefly speak of war and plagues.

Final verdict: Ugh. The narrative treatment of women in this film is awful. I could, perhaps, understand women having very little agency in the narrative because the Bible doesn’t give women very much agency in its narratives. That said, film history is full of female characters who still get up to interesting things despite a lack of agency.

In part, this is due to the highlight reel nature of the film. If it doesn’t have to do with Moses or Ramses, it’s not in the film. I understand that approach, but again, Exodus has very little reason for this approach. Look to other epics that didn’t give women much to do – from Lawrence of Arabia to Steven Soderbergh’s pair of Che biopics – at least they had a reason for their restricted narratives. Hell, I don’t believe even Luc Besson’s underrated The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, which almost never leaves its female protagonist’s side, passes the Bechdel Test. But these all used restricted narratives to create a psychological portrait of their characters – at least there’s a reason they do what they do.

Exodus wants to focus on its pair of brothers – that’s fine – but because their story is so grand and epic, and involves women at key points in the film, it seems a complete waste that they have absolutely nothing to do. Women are more often shown standing by, hands folded and saying nothing, than doing anything or speaking a word.

I’ll write more on how ugly a film Exodus is later in the week. I was willing to give Ridley Scott the benefit of the doubt until I’d seen it, but its scripting is sexist, its casting (and arguably its make-up) is racist, and one character is blatantly homophobic.

The 10 Most Anticipated Movies of the Fall

As the summer ends and we begin shifting toward Autumn, we also change movie seasons. Gone are the glossy superhero blockbusters that ruled the hottest months. In their place will come art films, Oscar bait, and more than a few crime thrillers. There are still a few event films left. The next Hunger Games arrives November 21, and I’m sure it will dominate at the box office. It just barely misses my top 10, but this mix of films big and small captures my interest just that much more:

10. Foxcatcher

Nov. 14. While Jon Stewart’s directorial debut Rosewater is the movie that’s gotten all the press, fellow Daily Show alum Steve Carell is the one more likely to get an Oscar nomination. He portrays John du Pont, an unstable millionaire who invested considerable resources into America’s olympic wrestling program, only to kill his friend, olympic wrestler Dave Schultz (Channing Tatum). Director Bennett Miller (Moneyball, Capote) is known for getting singular performances out of his leads.

9. Men, Women & Children

Oct. 1. Director Jason Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air) is known for using his comedic eye to plumb the dramatic depths of everyday life. His latest centers on the role technology plays in our modern romantic lives. Like Carell above, Adam Sandler has hinted at a dramatic core – most notably in Punch Drunk Love – that’s rarely been tested. Jennifer Garner is one of the most underutilized actresses of her generation.

8. Inherent Vice

Dec. 12. P.T. Anderson directed There Will Be Blood, arguably the greatest American film since the turn of the millennium. With Josh Brolin, Jena Malone, Joaquin Phoenix, Owen Wilson, and Reese Witherspoon, Inherent Vice has the pedigree of a captivating, off-beat mystery. This really should be higher, but the sheer lack of information about it makes it difficult to form any expectations.

7. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Dec. 17. Who hasn’t wanted to see Peter Jackson’s treatment of J.R.R. Tolkien’s defining moment – the battle between human, elf, dwarf, giant eagle, and goblin? There’s also that pesky dragon, the One Ring, and an evil necromancer left to deal with. If any movie has ever guaranteed three straight hours of high-fantasy swordplay and magic battles, this is the one.

6. The Guest

Unscheduled. You’re Next was one of the hidden gems of 2013, a smart horror movie that was intensely frightening and profoundly funny at the same time. Director Adam Wingard’s The Guest follows a young man who claims to be the friend of a family’s dead son. He moves in to “protect” them and takes the duty much too far. Wingard puts complex psychological storytelling into his horror movies, evoking humor and empathy. Being scared is so much more fun when it’s not the only emotion you’re feeling.

5. Fury

Oct. 17. Ever since I watched Clint Eastwood command his tank crew deep into German territory in Kelly’s Heroes, I’ve had a fond fascination for tank warfare in movies. It’s not tackled often, which is why the Brad Pitt vehicle looks so captivating. The tale of one surviving tank crew left to hold off a full company of German soldiers echoes the brilliant Sahara, and what they’ve shown of the tank warfare thus far looks frighteningly realistic.

4. Exodus: Gods and Kings

Dec. 12. If anyone can tackle the epic of Moses, it’s director Ridley Scott. Christian Bale remains an odd choice to play Moses, and trailers make this look like a fantasy-hued reboot of Gladiator. That’s a lot of flavors to chuck in one pot, and Scott’s storytelling can sometimes suffer at the hands of his art. I have hope, but even if it’s a disaster, it’s going to be one of the most fascinating disasters in movie history.

3. Nightcrawler

Oct. 31. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a freelance reporter who, in the name of ratings, dresses up the crimes he reports to make them appear more fantastic. In an age of networks reporting narratives instead of news, it’s a metaphor that hits close to home for all. At some point, we’ll have to recognize Gyllenhaal in the pantheon of great American actors. This role looks to get him one step closer.

2. Gone Girl

Oct. 3. Arguably the most important director since Alfred Hitchcock, no filmmaker has changed film in the last 25 years as much as David Fincher. From Madonna music videos to Fight Club and The Social Network, he’s consistently re-invented both himself and the technology and storytelling of film. Gone Girl investigates a husband (Ben Affleck) whose wife has gone missing. We’re left to figure out whether he’s guilty of her disappearance or not.

1. Interstellar

Nov. 7. The Dark Knight. Inception. Memento. Director Christopher Nolan needs no introduction. His tale of humanity reaching out to the stars as the Earth dies looks inspirational, chilling, thought-provoking. It sparks of Golden Era science-fiction, when ideas were bigger than the people who thought them. When a two-minute trailer can completely command your emotions and attention, you know you’re in for something truly special.