Mission Compromised.

When writing about Touchstone’s new version of The Alamo, I find myself in a very similar situation as I was post-Hellboy. Part of me really wants to say nice things about this movie. The occasional film flourishes aside (such as Davy Crockett’s last stand), I think The Alamo for the most part tries to get the history right…Dennis Quaid’s Sam Houston is more a whiskey-doused speculator than American hero, Crockett is something of a congressman on the make, and there’s at least a nod to such ugly realities as American slavery and the land-grab nature of the whole Texian enterprise. Moreover, the Mexican view of the battle is also more fleshed out than we’ve come to expect in Alamo movies, even if Santa Anna is played like a straight-up Bond villain. Heck, compared to Gods & Generals, it’s like this movie was written by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky.

But, frankly, The Alamo turns out to be kinda dull through most of the middle hour. The set-up is well-done, the payoff is well-done (notwithstanding the twenty minute foray into the Battle of San Jacinto, which reminded me of the Doolittle Raid in Michael Bay’s lousy Pearl Harbor), but the twelve days of siege that comprise much of the movie is ultimately a bore. “Well, Col. Bowie, we’re all going to die.” “Yes sir, Lt. Col. Travis, that’s correct, we’re dead ducks. What do you think, Davy?” “I’m with you fellers. Mincemeat.” Part of the problem in this second act is that the film keeps slipping away from the history in favor of lapses into movie convention. We’ve got Davy Crockett and fiddle having their “King of the World” moment on the eve of the final battle. We’ve got the vaguely rousing “we will go down in history” speech by Travis. We’ve got Jason Patric — surely, the only actor who’s been poised on the brink of the big time longer than Billy Crudup — dying of consumption for interminable stretches, with all the deathbed movie tropes that entails. (Jim Bowie’s bout with sickness holds very little dramatic impact, given that we know he’s on the way out anyway.) For almost all of this section of the film, even as a history buff, I was fidgeting for the big battle to start, and I couldn’t help thinking (and feeling guilty about it) that all of this men-under-siege grimness was done better a year ago in The Two Towers.

Yet, the one major respite from the middle hour’s blandness is Billy Bob Thornton as Davy (“He prefers David”) Crockett. While Sam Houston is sidelined, William Travis is a (pretty good) unknown, and Jim Bowie is moaning and clutching the sheets, Billy Bob’s Crockett is just trying to keep his chin up, and he’s the only character here who seems both realistic and larger-than-life. Throughout the film, even when forced into the most goofy lines or plot devices, Billy Bob/Crockett has a grim, self-deprecating smile on his face that says both “Can you believe it? I’m Davy Crockett!” and “How the hell did I end up dying in this backwater mission?” And some of the best sequences in the film involve Davy ruminating on his own myth, or remembering his days as an Indian fighter. In sum, Billy Bob is so good here that I spent most of the film contemplating who else I’d cast alongside Thornton for the definitive American History miniseries. Christopher Walken as 1850 Henry Clay? Fred Thompson as James Buchanan? Adrien Brody as Mexican War-era Lincoln? The possibilities are endless.

Hell Hath No Fury.

Well, I’ve only read a handful of issues of the comic over the years, but I could tell Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy looks and feels just about perfect. You can’t really ask for a better Big Red than Ron Perlman here, and John Hurt always brings class to the equation. The film’s got Rasputin, both post-dead Nazi ninjas and evil blonde Nazi temptresses (a.k.a Darth Maul and Indy 3‘s Ilsa Schneider respectively), and even heavy shades of the Cthulhu mythos. What more should a fanboy desire?

And yet, perhaps it was due to a post-orals energy slump, but I found the movie kinda slow and uninvolving. The curse of any first comic movie is the origin stuff (although in Spiderman at least, that turned out to be the best part of the film), and here I thought all of the backstory and character introductions took just a little too long. Then we have Hellboy beating up Sammael the Hellhound over and over again for an hour, followed by a rather cheesy and nonsensical third act in Russia (with heavy borrowing from the Temple of Doom this time, and particularly when Agent Myers has his rosary moment…soon Kali Ma will rule the world!) I probably enjoyed Hellboy most when it was pushing the unfathomable evils of Lovecraft angle, but tuned out slightly whenever it was time to punch out another hellhound, which, sadly, was most of the movie.

Perhaps I’m being too hard on Hellboy. The acting was good all around, and, really, it’s undoubtedly going to be better than 4 out of 5 comic movies this year (Case in point: The Punisher.) Still, while I wasn’t expecting as lyrical as The Devil’s Backbone, I was expecting a popcorn film as fun as Blade II…and in that category, I thought Hellboy was somewhat wanting. Then again, it took a second go for Bryan Singer to get the X-Men popping, so perhaps Del Toro can cut to the chase in a Hellboy 2.

Forget-Me-Not.

While The Ladykillers ultimately fell well short of expectations, I thought Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind lived up to the hype and then some. One part Annie Hall, one part Sliding Doors, three parts Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine is an exceptionally strange take on the romantic comedy, and probably the best flick by the screenwriter in question since Being John Malkovich. (It probably helped that I tend to be a fan of almost all the folks at work here, particularly Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah “Bad Frodo” Wood, and David Cross.) While the movie occasionally lapses into gratuitous symbolism (The “lost and gone forever” name “Clementine,” for instance) and hokey pop psychology (All of the Carrey-as-baby scenes were done more quickly and effectively in the Cameron Diaz-Catherine Keener chase scene through Malkovich’s brain), Sunshine is a fun, thought-provoking look at relationships and memory, and one that definitely holds together better than Gondy and Kaufman’s last collaboration, Human Nature.

I don’t want to say too much about Eternal Sunshine, as I think it’s probably a movie best enjoyed fresh. But just to give a sense of where my own brain was at during the film, there’s a scene near the end where Joel and Clementine are talking in a Barnes & Noble, and as they chat the books around them slowly lose their color and titles, until they’re all just blank. I think this scene unnerved me more than any other in the film…I wanted to shout, “Not until Thursday! Just remember them until Thursday!” Until then, I’d like to keep my mind as spotted as possible, thank you very much.

Lady and the Tramp.

Well, a swing-and-a-miss by the Coen brothers is still more entertaining than a lot of movies out there…nevertheless, The Ladykillers is something of a disappointment. I was amused by the film throughout, and particularly in the early minutes at the sheriff’s office, but, frankly, Ladykillers never really takes off. In fact, given how thinly conceived and surprisingly one-dimensional all of the supporting characters turn out to be, you often get the sense the brothers are slumming it. (Jokes about Irritable Bowel Syndrome? C’mon, y’all…you’re the Coens, not the Farrellys.)

Perhaps most disappointing about The Ladykillers is the realization that Tom Hanks, an actor I normally root for, hasn’t quite found his rhythm in Coenland quite yet. While I’m not quite sure how it could have come off differently, his turn as Goldthwaite Higginson Dorr, PhD doesn’t really work here…he’s more distracting than anything else. (I think there’s hope for Hanks, though…George Clooney seemed much more at ease in Intolerable Cruelty than he did in O Brother.) And as for the lady in question, Irma P. Hall is fun for the most part, but she too could have benefited from better material from the Coens – once the gang of thieves shows up in her root cellar, she has little to do but act affronted. A relatively amusing time at the cinema, to be sure, and particularly if you’re already sold on their sense of humor, but all in all this is a hiccup for the brothers Coen. Here’s hoping next time around is a little more satisfying.

Broken Leg Theater.

*Snap. Crackle. Crunch.* No, that’s not the clattering of carabiners or the sound of snow underfoot you’re imagining in the background of Touching the Void, although there’s plenty of hiking gear and fresh powder to go around. It is, in fact, the bones of the protagonist’s shattered leg, grinding together with every excruciating step, drag, and fall. This central fact makes for a rather grisly viewing experience, but, if you can get past it, Touching the Void is an altogether decent night at the movies (or on the Discovery Channel.)

One part documentary, one part voice-over, Touching the Void tells the true story of two ambitious hikers who aimed to scale Peru’s Siula Grande alpine-style (i.e. connected by ropes and with minimal supplies) in the mid-1980’s. All in all, getting up the mountain wasn’t that bad, but getting down…that was another thing entirely. Soon our dynamic duo of Type-A climbers find themselves in dark and dire straits, where every step might lead to death and survival and betrayal seem to go hand-in-hand.

I knew basically all of this going in, but where Touching the Void surprised me is that it gradually becomes less a hiking disaster movie and more the harrowing travelogue of one man’s existential ordeal. Several critics seem to find the last third of the movie, with its increasingly un-documentary-like camera tricks, to be overdone. And, while it’s hard not to think of Trainspotting (or, as my sis noted, Requiem for a Dream) when the steadicam swooning and blurry dissolves break out in spades, I still thought the movie still worked as an intriguing blend of documentary and film, true recollection and fanciful recreation. Apparently, Tom Cruise’s production house had optioned this story at some point, and I got to think this was a more interesting way of capturing the psychological dynamics of this amazing story than anything that project might’ve come up with.

All in all, Touching the Void has a few problems (perhaps most notably that the fact that the survivors are telling you the tale reduces any real question of how it’s all going to end), but it still made for one of the better survival stories I’ve seen on film recently…in fact, in a strange way, it reminded me of The Pianist. And it makes clear beyond any reason of a doubt that all the Worst-Case Scenario Handbooks in the world aren’t going to prepare you for the moment when shards of your femur begin to grind against your patella in the middle of an icestorm. After seeing this film, I think I’m going to do all my ice-climbing on the XBox, thank you very much.

Dark City.

Bleak Week 2003 continued yesterday, when I finally got around to seeing the much-praised City of God. And while this fierce, hyperkinetic Brazilian film has some serious problems, it’s a much better night at the movies than Sunday’s foray into 21 Grams.

From its very first scenes, in which our young photographer-protagonist finds himself trapped in the midst of a Mexican (ok, Brazilian) standoff between a street gang and the corrupt cops, City of God makes no bones about its debts to Scorsese and Tarantino. In fact, for much of the film, I was reminded of Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, which brought to London much of the same snappy, experimental camerawork, “funny” gunplay, and street gangster-chic that’s on display here in Rio. But that metaphor only goes so far — this increasingly dark film ultimately feels very different than the breezy Lock Stock. In fact, while Scorsese, Tarantino, and Ritchie gangsters all generally find themselves on the wrong side of the law as a calling, the Brazilian youths here are born into it — crime, violence, and murder are an inescapable part of the Cidade de Deus.

Or is it? I know this movie is based on a novel based on real events, but at a certain point, right after the strobelight-marked murder of one of the film’s most likable characters, City of God just gets lost in its own cycle of violence. When L’il Ze, the cruelest hoodlum we meet on our travels, brutally rapes the girlfriend of Knockout Ned (we never see her again — she’s a plot point, not a character), a gang war ensues that drastically escalates the already considerable levels of death and carnage the audience has to deal with. In this final third, the film derails…it’s just too much.(Ken Turan aptly summed it up as “overkill.”) One goes from avidly following the travails of individual characters to watching most or all of them go down in a hail of gunfire.

Like I said, I know that much of this tale is based on a real gang war, and that the ridiculously high body count at the end of the film may have a solid grounding in fact. But at times City of God wants to have it both ways. When innocent bystanders are mowed down or child gangsters are forced to make extremely grisly life-and-death choices, we’re shocked sullen by the events depicted here. But when L’il Ze blows away his stooge Tuba in a fit of frustration, it’s a sight gag.

In sum, with swooping camerawork, great performances across the board, and a well-crafted narrative, City of God bridges the gap between Tarantino-cool gangsterism and shocking acts of violence reasonably well for its first two-thirds. Alas, it falters in the final act, and I found myself spending the last thirty-five minutes of a movie I’d quite enjoyed up til then keeping my head down and waiting for the last reports of gunfire to die away. Well worth seeing if you’re a fan of the hyperkinetic gangster genre, but ultimately City of God just can’t quite close the deal.

Sprockets, the Movie.

So I finally decided to make an end run around the January movie slump and catch up on some of the Oscar contenders of last year, and lo! I stumbled upon the most “Emperor has no Clothes” film experience I’ve had in a good long while. To wit, I have yet to see Amores Perros, but 21 Grams, despite pretty solid performances by its three leads, was a ridiculously ponderous and pretentious piece of work and, worse, just a flat-out dull film. It’s hard to talk about without going into major spoilers, so, if that’s a problem, I’ll leave you at this: Elvis Mitchell, who just went screaming down the Murphometer with this “film of the year” rave, owes me $10.25.

Still here? Ok, well, 21 Grams looks very nice, I’ll give it that. And the acting is universally good…poor Naomi Watts comes off rather shrill, but I don’t really blame her. That being said, Grams is a relentlessly downbeat, oh-so-sudsy soap opera for the arthouse crowd. And I do mean downbeat — there’s no joy in Mudville here. These three characters are basically stuck in the last twenty minutes of Requiem for a Dream for two and a half hours. Ok, sure, horrible things happen to good people all the time, even symbolic and portentous hit-and-runs. But the way bad mojo just piles up on these three souls throughout the movie is so deadening and ham-handed that it eventually becomes laugh-out-loud funny. (Seriously, there was a sequence near the end just after Naomi Watts wails about her child dying with (gasp) red – not blue – shoelaces on, and just before she’s simultaneously scolded by a nurse for her drug addiction and told she’s pregnant, where I finally turned on this soap opera of a film, and had to double over in convulsions to stop from breaking out into loud peals of awkward giggling.)

Yes, I know it’s horrible to titter at the tragic intertwining of a drug-addicted woman’s family wiped out in a tragic truck accident, her dying, infertile, heart-transplant lover, and the star-crossed ex-alcoholic jesus-freak recidivist who can’t hold down a job, maintain familial harmony, or drive home without Bad Stuff Happening. But, you know, it’s even worse for a film to milk grotesque amounts of tragedy to try to substitute for honest characterization or real human emotion. As I believe someone mentioned in the Slate movie club this year, it’s a wonder they didn’t bring a puppy onscreen at some point and start kicking the hell out of it.

Finally, just to add to the Sprockets-ness of the whole enterprise, the film’s narrative is completely splintered, with the story flipping back, forth, back, and forth again. For the first fifteen minutes or so, this made for an interesting viewing experience. But, by the end, (a) it adds nothing — you get to realize that there was absolutely no point in telling the film this way other than sheer artistic license — and (b) it’s detracting and distracting: you’re waiting desperately to see the two or three scenes that you know have been coming for an hour, just so the movie will end already. When these scenes finally do happen, of course, they’ve been foreshadowed for so long that they have no power left but the power to annoy.

In sum, 21 Grams was a pretty atrocious swing-and-a-miss. Sean Penn’s other movie last year, Mystic River, did a much better job of rooting tragic events in interconnected lives, mainly because it was grounded by a strong sense of place and a more realistic balance between light and dark moments. But, like its characters, this film just ambles around in its terminally depressed jag for so long that it loses any sense of perspective, and instead becomes just a vehicle for indulging the arthouse fallacy that misery is a substitute for character. By the end of this dull, implausible, flick, I had only one word on my mind: ANTS!

2003 in Film.

Well, it’s that time of year again, New Year’s Eve. So, without further ado…

Top 20 Films of 2003:
[2000/2001/2002]
1. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. If you didn’t see this pick coming, welcome to GitM. Ever since this blog started four years ago, I and it have been breathlessly awaiting Peter Jackson’s trilogy, and, boy, he delivered in spades. Even in spite of the pacing problems mandated by the TE running time, Return of the King is a marvel, the perfect ending to this epic for the ages and easily the best third-movie in a series ever. There’s so many ways these films could’ve turned out atrociously. (To take just three examples, think Brett Ratner doing the Pullman books, or the Wachowskis faltering on the early promise of The Matrix, or how Chris Columbus has made the magical world of Harry Potter so four-color monotonous.) The fact that they didn’t — that they instead shattered all expectations while staying true to Tolkien’s vision — is a miracle of inestimable value. In the post-Star Wars age, when epics have been replaced by “blockbusters,” and most event movies have been hollowed-out in advance by irony, excessive hype, dumbing-down, and sheer avarice, Peter Jackson has taught us to expect more from the cinema once again. Beyond all imagining, he took the ring all the way to Mordor and destroyed that sucker. So have fun on Kong, PJ, you’ve earned it.

2. Lost in Translation. It was fun for a while, there was no way of knowing. Like a dream in the night, who can say where we’re going? I still think Sofia Coppola cut a little close to the bone here in terms of autobiography, particularly given her recent split with Spike Jonze. Still, I find this tale of chance encounters and foreign vistas has a strange kind of magic to it, and it has stayed with me longer than any other film this year. Bill Murray comes into full bloom in a part he’s been circling around his entire career, and while I suspect he’ll get some stiff competition from the Mystic River boys come award-time, I’d say he deserves the Oscar for this one. Lost in Translation has its problems, sure, but at it’s best it’s haunting, ethereal, and touching like no other film in 2003.

3. Intolerable Cruelty. I expect I’ll be in the minority on this pick – This more-mainstream-than-usual Coen joint only got above-average reviews, and hardly anyone I’ve spoken to enjoyed it as much as I did. Still, I thought Intolerable Cruelty was a pop delight, 99.44% pure Coen confection. George Clooney is used to much better effect here than in O Brother (gotta love the teeth thing), and everyone else seems to be having enormous amounts of fun along the way. Light and breezy, yeah, but I thought it was that rare breed of romantic comedy that actually manages to be both romantic and hilarious. In the post-Tolkien era, it’s good to know we can always rely on the Coens for consistently excellent work, and I for one am greatly looking forward to The Ladykillers.

(3. The Pianist.) A 2002 film that I caught in March of this year, The Pianist is a harrowing and unique survivor’s tale that’s hard to watch and harder to forget (and I can’t have been the only person who thought post-spider-hole Saddam bore a passing resemblance to Brody’s third-act Szpilman.) Speaking of which, I said in my original review of Adrien Brody that “I can’t see the Academy rewarding this kind of understatement over a scenery-chewing performance like that of Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York.” Glad to see I was wrong.

4. Mystic River.: The waters of the Charles are disturbed, something is rotten in the outskirts of Boston, and it’s safe to say the Fates are wicked pissed. Much like In the Bedroom in 2001 (and Clint Eastwood’s own earlier Unforgiven), Mystic River is inhabited and propelled by a spirit of lumbering, impending, inexorable doom…what Legolas might call a “sleepless malice.” It is that existential malice, rooted so strongly in local color, that gives this River its considerable power. And unlike Cold Mountain, where stars stick out here and there with showy turns, the ensemble cast of Mystic River never overwhelm the strong sense of place at the heart of the film — indeed, they sustain it with consistently excellent and nuanced performances. Big ups for all involved, and particularly Tim Robbins and Marcia Gay Harden.

5. X2: X-Men United. Laugh if you want, but I can’t think of any other movie where I had more fun this year. Arguably the most successful comic film since Superman 2, X2 improved over its rather staid predecessor in every way you can imagine. From Nightcrawler in the White House to the assault on the mansion to Magneto’s escape to Ian McKellen and Brian Cox chewing the scenery in inimitable fashion, X2 was ripe with moments that seemed plucked directly out of the comics, if not straight out of the fanboy id. To me, my X-Men.

6. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. It’s a long title, it’s a long movie. But a good kinda long…in fact, as I said in my initial review, it seemed to move to the langorous rhythms of a long sea voyage, one that I may not take again for awhile, but one that I still thoroughly enjoyed. And I’ll say this for Russell Crowe…somewhere along the way in each of his films, I tend to forget that he’s Russell Crowe. His Capt. Jack Aubrey was no exception.

7. The Matrix Reloaded. If we can, let’s try to forget the resounding thud on which the Matrix trilogy ended. For a time there, five short months, the fanboy nation was abuzz in trying to figure out exactly where the Wachowskis were going after the second chapter. Previous Matrices, previous Ones? How was Neo manipulating the real world? What was Smith up to? It all seems kinda pedestrian now, of course, but at the time Reloaded was a sequel that outdid its predecessor in pizazz while building on the questions that animated the first film. I won’t defend the first forty-five minutes or the ridiculous rave scene. But, right about the time Hugo Weaving showed up to do what he does best, Revolutions found a new gear that it maintained right up until the arc-twisting Architect monologues at the end. And, as far as action sequences go, it’s hard to beat the visceral thrill of the 14-minute highway chase.

(7. The 25th Hour.) Another 2002 hold-over, and the best film yet made about the aftermath of 9/11, (which only seems natural, given that it’s by one of New York’s finest directors.) Haunted by might-have-beens, what-ifs, and what-nows, The 25th Hour feels real and immediate in its attempt to grapple with both 9/11 and the slamming cage in Monty Brogan’s future. Only once, with the Fight Club-like fracas in the park, does the film flounder. Otherwise, it’s a thought-provoking meditation throughout.

8. The Last Samurai: Breathtaking New Zealand landscapes, furious suicide cavalry charges, rustic untainted pre-modern villages…no, it’s not Return of the King, just the warm-up. [And, as I said earlier, I prefer my anti-modern nostalgia hobbit-like (peaceful, environmental, epicurean) rather than samurai-ish (martial, virtuous, stoic)] While I think Cold Mountain got the Civil War right, I ultimately found this film to be the more engaging historical epic of December 2003. So take that, Miramax.

9. Finding Nemo. Oh, my…I almost forgot about Nemo. (Just like Dory sometimes.) Pixar’s films have been so consistently good that there’s a danger of taking them for granted. They hit another one out of the park in this tale under the sea. As with the Toy Stories and Monster’s Inc. before it, just an all-around solid kid’s movie filled to the brim with eye-popping wonders.

10. Dirty Pretty Things. Although it becomes more conventional as it goes along, DPT starts very well, features a star-making turn by Chiwetel Ejiofor, and manages to include a Audrey Tautou performance that isn’t fingernails-on-the-blackboard bothersome. As with Hugh Grant in About a Boy last year, that deserves plaudits if nothing else.

11. L’Auberge Espagnole. Hmm…two Tautous in a row….perhaps I should stop playa-hatin’. At any rate, while Lost in Translation trafficked in existential detachment, L’Auberge Espagnole showed the fun Scarlett Johannson could’ve been having, if she’d just lighten up and get out of the hotel once in awhile. This paean to the pan-Continental culture of the EU captured the excitement and possibilities of youth in a way that was both sexier and funnier than any of the teen shock-schlock emanating from our own side of the pond. Road Trippers, take a gander.

12. The Quiet American. A bit by-the-numbers, perhaps, but Phillip Noyce’s take on Graham Greene’s novel was blessed with timeliness and two great performances by Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser, both of whom expertly exemplified their homelands’ diplomatic tendencies without becoming overly tendentious. I’m not sure if giving away the end before the credits was the right way to go, but otherwise the film rarely falters.

13. The Fog of War. From Alden Pyle to one of his real-life counterparts, Robert McNamara, who now only remains quiet when questioned about his own culpability over Vietnam. Despite this central failing, a spry McNamara succeeds in penetrating the fog of time to examine how he himself became lost in the maze-like logic of war. If you can withstand the frequent Phillip Glass-scored barrages, it’s worth a see.

14. Pirates of the Caribbean. My initial upbeat opinion on this one has faded somewhat over the autumn and winter months. Still, at the time PotC was a surprisingly good summer popcorn flick, and rollicking fun for about two of of its two and a half hours. Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush were great fun, Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom make for great eye candy, and Sam Lowry was in it. I’m just going to assume it was much, much better than The Haunted Mansion.

15. The Station Agent. Ok, it’s got Sunday afternoon bored in front of the IFC Channel written all over it. And not much happens for the last forty minutes or so. Still, The Station Agent proves that if you write a few interesting, well-rounded, complicated characters and throw them in a situation together, the story almost writes itself.

16. American Splendor. The first of a couple of movies that I seemed to like less than most people. Sure, I thought Splendor was well-done, but it never really grabbed me, and I’d be more impressed by its breaking-the-fourth-wall daring if it hadn’t already been done twenty-five years ago in Annie Hall. (Similarly, I thought this kooky underground comic world was captured better in Crumb.)

17. Spellbound. Could you use it in a sentence? Again, people seemed to love this flick, and I was definitely entertained by it. But, when you get right down to it, what we have here is kids spelling for two hours…I couldn’t imagine ever sitting through this one again. And, as I said in my original post, I thought Spellbound was more manipulative than it lets on. Less kids and more complexity would’ve made the film more satisfying. S-A-T-I…

18. Cold Mountain. I’ve already written about this one at length today, so I’ll just refer you to the review. To sum up, occasionally beautiful but curiously uninvolving and way too top-heavy with star power distractions.

19. 28 Days Later. Great first third, ok second third, lousy finish. The film was much more interesting before our team makes it to Christopher Eccleston’s countryside version of Apocalypse Now. And I can’t stand horror movies where the protagonists make idiot decisions, like driving into tunnels for no reason or taking downers when surrounded by flesh-eating, spastic zombies. But the cast — particularly Brendan Gleeson — do yeoman’s work, and the opening moments in an empty London are legitimately creepy.

20. T3: Rise of the Machines. Before he was the Governator, he was the T-1000 one (last?) time. Let’s face it, this movie is mainly here by virtue of not being bad. I mean, c’mon, it was better than you thought, right? Well, me too. Claire Danes was insufferable, but Nick Stahl and Kristanna Loken give it the ole college try, and the story takes a few jags that weren’t immediately apparent. Bully to Jonathan Mostow for not running James Cameron’s franchise into the ground.

As Yet Unseen: 21 Grams, Bad Santa, The Cooler, House of Sand and Fog, In America, Love, Actually, Something’s Gotta Give.

Best Actor: Bill Murray, Lost in Translation. Sean Penn, Mystic River. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Dirty Pretty Things. Michael Caine, The Quiet American.

Best Actress: Scarlett Johannson, Lost in Translation (who’s sort of here by default…I expect competition from Diane “Something’s Gotta Give” Keaton, Samantha “In America” Morton, Jennifer “House of Sand and Fog” Connolly, and Naomi “21 Grams” Watts.)

Best Supporting Actor: Tim Robbins, Mystic River, Sean Astin, Return of the King, Billy Boyd, Return of the King, Ken Watanabe, The Last Samurai.

Best Supporting Actress: Renee Zellweger, Cold Mountain, Marcia Gay Harden, Mystic River, Patricia Clarkson, The Station Agent.

Worst Films: 1. Gods and Generals, 2. Dreamcatcher, 3. Scary Movie 3. 4. Underworld.

Worst Disappointments: 1. The Hulk, 2. The Matrix: Revolutions, 3. Kill Bill, Vol. 1.

Ho-Hum: 1. LXG, 2. Bubba Ho-Tep, 3. Big Fish, 4. Masked and Anonymous. 5. Tears of the Sun. 6. Veronica Guerin, 7. The Core.

A Frigid, Starry Peak.

Well, I haven’t read the Charles Frazier novel, but I’d say “Cold Mountain” is an apt and colorful metaphor to sum up this film, its stars, and even its director’s entire body of work. For like Nicole Kidman and Jude Law, and as with The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley, Cold Mountain is beautiful but distant, occasionally breathtaking but often chilly, and not so much high as just plain stilted. In fact, the hike up and down this Cold Mountain includes definite moments of grandeur, but more often than not it feels like a bit of a slog. At times, it’s even glacial.

I should say up front that this is a far better Confederate-centered Civil War film than the vile Gods and Generals. The chaos and carnage of the Battle of the Crater that opens the film seems much more real and visceral than anything in the godawful G&G. Whatsmore, the historical aspects of Mountain generally feel right (In fact, much of the film seems like a fictionalization of Drew Gilpin Faust’s Mothers of Invention, which vividly describes how the lives of Southern women were transformed by the war experience and the collapse of the Confederate patriarchy.)

Unfortunately, the respectable versimilitude of the film keeps getting undermined by the wattage of its star power. From Stalingrad to Petersburg, nobody in the business does starving-but-handsome-and-resolute-warrior as well as Jude Law these days, and he’s quite good here despite the frequent accent-slippage. But, frankly, Nicole Kidman feels all wrong here. It’s not that she’s bad per se, it’s just that, like her ex-husband in 19th-century Japan three weeks ago, she never seems like she fits this milieu at all. (It doesn’t help that she spends most of the end of the film in an outdoor outfit that looks Banana Republic-coordinated.) Finally, others have noted the lack of chemistry between Law and Kidman, and I too thought the central romance here was rather uninvolving.

But, even if the two leads’ remarkable frigidity wasn’t distracting enough, Law and Kidman are just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, in the spirit of the film, I’ll go ahead and torture this metaphor even further…Perhap sensing that the romantic low burn here might be too dim a fire to heat the screen for 150 minutes, Anthony Minghella has packed Cold Mountain so full of stars and cameos that it starts to feel like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. From Lucas Black getting bayonetted in the opening minutes to Jack White procuring cider at the very end (in yet another of Minghella’s quintessentially ham-handed symbolic moments, but I’ll get to that later), famous faces keep appearing around every corner of the poor, white backcountry South, and it took me out of the movie almost every time. Basically, I found it hard to become engrossed in the film when I kept thinking things like “So, that’s what Kathy Baker‘s been up to…she got married to the manager from Major League,” “James Rebhorn‘s his doctor? He’s toast,” “Well, Jena Malone didn’t last very long,” “and “Hey, that’s Cillian Murphy. Between him and Brendan Gleeson, this is like a sequel to 28 Days Later…um, except it has no zombies and it’s set in the Civil War South.”

Ok, perhaps that’s an unfair criticism, but I’d think even people who don’t go to the movies much are going to be distracted by all the Hollywood faces flitting about. I should say while I’m on the subject that Brendan Gleeson is very good (as always) here – Not only does he handle the accent like a champ, but he conveys more emotion in one winsome smile or knowing grimace than many of the central characters do the entire film. As for other good performances…Despite lugging around a baby that’s as big as she is, Natalie Portman proves here that she can still act when not forced in front of a bluescreen. (By the way, after the Portman episode, why didn’t Inman take one of the Union horses?) Giovanni Ribisi moves into the frontrunning for the Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel biopic. And, Renee Zellweger…well, she moons and mugs through this film like a Best Supporting Actress award was her birthright, but she still gives Cold Mountain a very-much-needed jolt in the arm every time she shows up. (She’s particularly energetic when compared to the staid Kidman.)

On the flip side of the coin, somebody should’ve told Donald Sutherland that different parts of the South call for different accents…he sounds miles away from a Charlestonian. And Phillip Seymour Hoffman, perhaps the best thing about Minghella’s Ripley, is perhaps the worst thing about Cold Mountain. Completely unconvincing in his role here, he’s a walking, talking anachronism.

All the unnecessary star voltage aside, of course, this movie eventually rises and falls on its director, and all of Anthony Minghella’s strengths and weaknesses are present here. (I should say that I loathed The English Patient and enjoyed Ripley until Jude Law was killed, after which the film meandered to its conclusion.) Both Patient and Ripley have some very beautiful and striking moments, but more often than not the imagery is so “artfully” composed as to become hamhanded. The same goes here for Mountain…we’ve got a lamb running around in wolf’s clothing, we’ve got a dove trapped in a church until Jude Law sets it free (you do the math)…in fact, we have enough fluttering, portentous birds on a wing here to make John Woo blush. Perhaps these capital-S Symbols are in Frazier’s novel too, but I’d still think a subtler director could have mined them more dexterously. And, while I didn’t know the ending coming in, Minghella foreshadows the conclusion so laboriously (even having Kidman break it down step-by-step to Zellweger) that I spent the last twenty-five minutes just waiting for the other shoe to drop, which killed any real emotion I might’ve felt about the denouement.

Looking back, I’ve been pretty harsh here, so I should repeat that Cold Mountain is not a bad film at all. In many ways, it’s quite good. But, Oscar buzz notwithstanding, it’s definitely not great…in fact, I even found it less involving than The Last Samurai. In the future, were I looking to recommend a film that captures the despair and devastation afflicting the Confederate homefront in the waning days of the war, I just might pick Cold Mountain. But, as for attempts to give The Odyssey a Faulknerian palmetto-and-spanish-moss recasting, give me O Brother Where Art Thou? any day of the week.

Many Happy Returns.

Wow. If you haven’t seen Return of the King yet, go now. If you have seen it, see it again…There’s so much going on that the film, as great as it is the first time, improves vastly with a second viewing. The rest of this post is going to be full of huge, major spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the movie yet, come back here in three hours and twenty minutes, give or take.

I went into my second viewing of RotK knowing I already liked it better than TTT (which I also thought was superb) and wondering if it was better or just equal to FotR. By the end, I had decided the question was moot. On one hand, Fellowship and King are two very different films: the former a road-trip, men-on-a-mission travelogue of Middle Earth, the latter a full-on, apocalyptic war movie. On the other hand, Fellowship, Towers and King are the same movie, the three chapters of what has to be considered the best ten-hour film ever made.

So, in short, I loved it. As in the past two years, my inordinately high expectations were met, even surpassed. Of course, I had some problems with the film (which I’ll get to in a bit), but I’d be doing PJ & co. a great disservice if I didn’t make it emphatically clear that the positives far outweigh the negatives. In that spirit, some of the stuff I really liked:

Fear and Loathing in Minas Tirith: I thought one of the biggest surprises of RotK was seeing PJ’s background in horror films come to the fore. To take just one example, one of my major concerns going in was that Shelob wouldn’t seem qualitatively different from your average Kong-sized monster (for example, the Watcher in the Water in Fellowship.) After building Her Ladyship up since the end of Towers, it was crucial that She seem more ancient and malevolent than anything Frodo and Sam had yet faced, with the possible exception of the Balrog. And, while I think her lair was too brightly lit (there’s not much point in having the light of Earendil if we can already see around the place), Shelob seemed just as cunning and dastardly as I’d hoped. (It was also a nice touch for PJ to have a little fun wth the purists, and make it seem Frodo had escaped.)

From cascading heads to Grond to the pyre of Denethor to everything having to do with Minas Morgul and the Witch-King, PJ’s horror maven cred was put to great effect in Rotk and greatly enhanced the apocalyptic dread necessary to make the third book work. In fact, I thought Jackson made a great decision to place one of the most chilling moments in the movie right at the beginning. “We even forgot our own name…”

The Tides of War: Another concern I had going in was that Jackson would short-shrift Tolkien’s characters in favor of long, drawn-out, and indistinguishable battle sequences. And, while some might think this is in fact the case (no Houses of Healing, for example), I was surprised by how engaging the battle scenes turned out. When you think about it, Pelennor Fields is written a lot like Helm’s Deep…a siege that, just when all seems hopeless, is turned by the arrival of the cavalry. But it is to Jackson’s credit that I not only found myself enthralled by the ever-changing course of combat but also oblivious to the memory of Helm’s Deep. There are plenty of searing images herein — the Ride of the Rohirrim (made sublime by the return of Howard Shore’s Rohan theme), the chunks of masonry flung from Minas Tirith, the berserker trolls leading the charge at the gate, the Nazgul air support diving down over the White City like Stuka bombers. Speaking of which, there’s a shot of a fell beast lunging for the head of one of Faramir’s retreating Gondorians that made me swing my head out of the way both times.

High Fidelity: One of the main reasons why I found RotK more enticing than TTT (other than the obvious plot resolution here) is that it seemed a return to Tolkien’s vision after the warg attack/Helm’s Deep-wallowing of TTT. (There are some notable exceptions, of course, which I’ll get to in a bit.) In particular, the Professor’s inimitable turns of phrase breathe through many more scenes here: “Did you think the eyes of the White Tower were blind?” “No tomb for Denethor and Faramir. No long, slow sleep of death embalmed. We will burn like the heathen kings of old.” “Come not between the Nazgul and his prey!” “Don’t go where I can’t follow.” “We set out to save the Shire, Sam, and it has been saved, but not for me.” Towers has its share of great Tolkien moments too, of course, but — as in Fellowship — I was continually reminded during King of how great the original books are, and how unique and absorbing Tolkien’s deliberately archaic prose can be.

The Crack of Doom and Beyond: “I’m glad you’re with me, Samwise Gamgee, here at the end of all things.” And, of course, there’s the payoff. While I thought Frodo and Sam hopped and skipped across Mordor entirely too quickly (I expect this will be rectified in the EE), I thought the failure of Frodo at the Sammath Naur was dramatized just about perfectly, right down to the evil smile on Frodo’s face and Gollum’s ecstatic Superbowl dance. As for the “too many endings” issue that seems to be a focal point of the criticism, I did feel it went on a bit long the first time (perhaps because it was nearing 3:30am by then), but thought it was paced very nicely the second time around. And, though the Scouring of the Shire (while critical to Tolkien’s narrative arc) seems justifiably expendable here, the film just couldn’t do without the Grey Havens. In fact, if anything, I thought Frodo should have been more recognizably damaged at the end of the film. He seemed all smiles at the Green Dragon and Sam’s wedding, which to me is something of a problem…I figured the idea, as befitting Tolkien’s “Lost Generation,” was that he never really made it back, and I don’t think this is emphasized enough in the film. Still, for the most part, I thought Jackson handled the resolution quite well, paying homage to the arch-Christian overtones of Frodo’s death and rebirth without necessarily wallowing in them.

Miscellany: The categories above just can’t do justice to all the moments and flourishes I loved about RotK. All of Smeagol/Gollum’s scenes were top-notch, even the film-added-framing of the fat one. I loved the dressing of the witch-king and his sonic scream atop Minas Morgul. The lighting of the beacons was great. Theoden seemed like he was missing a scene (he goes from anti-Gondor to pro-Gondor too quickly), but Bernard Hill was a standout (along with Billy Boyd’s Pippen and Sean Astin’s Sam…heck, everyone was good, except for a few minor players.) Minas Tirith was a marvel (and, unlike the too-small Edoras, seemed like a capital city.) Merry and Pippen at the gate of Isengard. “In fact, it’s probably best if you don’t speak at all, Peregrin Took.” Peter Jackson dolled up as a Corsair Captain. LotR: Return of the Moth. The angelic eagles come to rescue Frodo…

Well, I could go on for awhile here, but perhaps it’s time to accentuate the negative a bit.

Editing/Pacing: In the theatrical Fellowship, only one scene seemed cut all to hell, and that was Lothlorien. Here in Return of the King, though, the movie keeps eliding over cut moments in a way that can be seriously distracting. I’m not going to harp on this too much, because I expect a lot of this will be solved by the Extended Edition. But, still, it was clear here more than ever before that we weren’t seeing the whole story. How did Theoden change his mind about coming to Gondor’s aid? Why does Denethor talk about the “eyes of the White Tower” without showing his palantir? (For that matter, does Aragorn challenge Sauron in the palantir?) Why does the Witch-King claim he will “break” the white wizard without confronting him? (It was even in the trailer!) Why set up a head orc like Gothmog (Slothmog, the Elephant Man) and not show him killed? Where were the Easterlings (whom Frodo and Sam saw entering the Black Gate in TTT)? Why do Sam and Frodo get in and out of orc armor? How do they cross Mordor in a day? What happened to Eowyn and Faramir? Where was the Mouth of Sauron? Who’s wearing the three Elven Rings?

And so on and so on. I know PJ has to make some cuts for the theatrical version (although some might say that he’d have more time here if not for the warg attack/Aragorn’s fall in TTT), and some of the cuts — Voice of Saruman, the Scouring — just make cinematic sense. But others not only seem integral to Tolkien’s book but also integral to the story Jackson is telling here (particularly Denethor and the palantir.) Speaking of which…

The Steward of Gondor: I’m not going to complain too much about what’s not in the film until I’ve seen the EE. But, as for what’s actually in the film, Denethor is the biggest problem. I’ve never really been bothered about the changes made to Faramir (or, as the purist wags refer to him, Filmamir/Farfromthebookamir) in TTT…they heightened his dramatic arc. But I think Denethor kinda gets screwed here, and only in part because of the lack of palantir. John Noble is surprisingly good as the Steward, and does a great job with what he’s been given. But the single worst moment in the movie for me is Gandalf clocking Denethor to take over command of the White City. It’s goofy, it’s slapstick, and it cheapens both characters (Is all of Gondor really just going to stand around and let Gandalf exercise what is now basically a coup?) Similarly, I thought the pyre of Denethor was handled quite well until the last few moments, when Gandalf/Shadowfax kick Denethor to his doom!! That’s completely botched…Gandalf was trying to prevent Denethor’s suicide, but here he acts like the wizard Kevorkian. If the palantir is reintroduced in the EE, some of this is forgiven, but still…those two choices are the only times I was taken out of the film.

Miscellany: Not much in this department. I thought the whole Paths/Army of the Dead subplot was a deus ex machina and, as others have noted, Haunted Mansion goofy…but, y’know, that’s also a problem with Tolkien’s book. (I did like Stephen Hunter’s take on ’em here, though.) Very occasionally, one of the minor players came off like community theater (I’m thinking particularly of Shagrat (or is it Gorbag?), the orc who explains that the Shelob-stung Frodo isn’t dead.) As in TTT, we seem to spend a lot of time in Osgiliath, and perhaps some of it is unnecessary given the other cuts. Hugo Weaving has a Father of the Bride simper on his face at the coronation that’s completely un-Elrond-like. Um, yes, Legolas, we are talking about a diversion. Etc. etc.

But let’s not miss Fangorn for the Huorns. Return of the King is an amazing conclusion to a trilogy that’s surpassed all expectations and, I say this without hyperbole, redefined the medium — From the technical breakthrough of Gollum to the seamless intertwining of jaw-dropping FX and character-driven emotion throughout, these films have expanded our vision of the possible and set a new standard for epic filmmaking, one left by the wayside since the days of David Lean. I am eternally thankful to Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens, Alan Lee, John Howe, Richard Taylor, Barrie Osborne, Andrew Lesnie, and everyone else involved in The Lord of the Rings for making these films as good as they are. When so many eagerly-awaited movies have proven disappointments, perhaps none so glaring as the Star Wars prequels, it’s a beautiful thing that these films came along, surpassed even my extremely high expectations, and restored to me the type of cinematic thrill I once feared I might have grown out of. In sum, Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Return of the King — inarguably the best fantasy trilogy in the history of cinema — are a priceless gift not only to filmgoers and fantasy readers but to the memory and words of J.R.R. Tolkien himself, and it is one I will love and cherish until the end of my days.

It’s funny, though. I expected to suffer from some form of fanboy post-partum after seeing The Return of the King. But, in fact, I’m thrilled…I can now go see this movie any time I want to. And then there’s the Extended Edition to look forward to in November, and perhaps, some day in the not-so-distant future, The Hobbit (Being the tale of Bilbo Baggins and the Finding of the Ring of Power) will make the screen. Even after the end of all things, the road goes ever on.