The Matrixish trailer for Timur Bekmambetov’s Wanted is now online. Based on a Mark Millar graphic novel I haven’t read, it stars James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Terrence Stamp, and Thomas Kretschmann. Well, that’s a solid cast, but I dunno…this looks goofy, and I didn’t really cotton to Night Watch.
Tag: Angelina Jolie
The ghost of ‘lectricity howls in the bones of her face.
In case you missed it or were otherwise dissuaded by the lousy format last time, the teaser for Todd Haynes’ off-kilter Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There is now officially online, along with a new red-band trailer for Robert Zemeckis’ stab at Beowulf. Definitely catching the former, probably seeing the latter.
Sharpening the Knives | She Laughs Last?
“I find it amusing that those who helped to authorize and engineer the biggest foreign policy disaster in our generation are now criticizing me for making sure that we are on the right battlefield and not the wrong battlefield in the war against terrorism.” The attacks grow more pointed among the Dems at last night’s AFL-CIO debate (which I missed), and it sounds like both Obama and Edwards got in some good zingers. (Edwards: “The one thing you can count on is you will never see a picture of me on the front of Fortune magazine saying I am the candidate that big, corporate America is betting on.“) And yet, a new poll finds Senator Clinton widening her lead over Obama to 18 points and enjoying huge advantages in big states like Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Hmm. Is the race already over? The inveterate pessimist in me says definitely maybe, but let’s remember, Howard Dean was looking pretty solid in August of 2003. We have a ways to go yet. (I mean, the critical Jolie and di Caprio endorsements are still up for grabs, for example. And Obama does have Bourne and Clooney locked up.)
Fan Team Assemble! | World of Beowulfcraft.
The fanboy/fangirl nation is once again congregating in San Diego this weekend for Comic-Con, so expect a lot of news on that front over the coming days, including more word from Indy 4 (including probably the title) and maybe even (fingers crossed) a Dark Knight teaser. First up, tho’, the new trailer for Robert Zemeckis’ CGI-animated version of Beowulf, with Ray Winstone (CGI-buffed), Angelina Jolie (using her Alexander voice), Robin Wright Penn, and John Malkovich, poses this hypothetical quandary: Can they create an Anthony Hopkins out of pixels that’s hammier than the real guy? We’ll see. I gotta say, it looks a little “WoW cutscene” at times, but my curiosity is piqued.
Secrets of the Hive.
Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd, the first entrant in my ongoing end-of-2006 movie marathon this week, makes no secret of its Oscar-bait aspirations. Basically the WASP version of The Godfather, as told against the creation and Cold War consolidation of the CIA, Shepherd boasts a crisp look, a grand historical sweep, high-quality production values, and a stellar cast (including Best Supporting Actor-type turns strewn all over the place, like the wreckage from a better, more interesting movie.) But it’s also a film that never lets you forget how serious and sober-minded it aims to be. As such — however well-meaning and nice to look at, with all its chiaroscuro fedoras on hand — it’s also sadly a bit of a bore. Throw in an occasionally clunky script (note the particularly egregious God/CIA line near the end, for example) and some considerable miscasting issues (Matt Damon is a good actor, but is thoroughly implausible as a middle-aged man, and Angelina Jolie is too much of a star presence to be wholly believable as the ignored wife) and you have a respectable but ultimately somewhat pedestrian night at the movies. Shepherd gets the job done, I suppose, but it takes no pleasure in it.
When we first meet intelligence analyst Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), the bespectacled Everyman and titular shepherd of the film, it’s the spring of 1961, the Bay of Pigs invasion has just gone FUBAR, and America’s new president is looking for a few heads to roll over at Langley. In this middle of this spate of job anxiety, Wilson is mysteriously sent a photo and audioreel of a couple in the throes of passion, seemingly somewhere in the Third World. As he sets to work on deciphering this arcane message, Wilson’s thoughts wander all the way back to 1939, when he — a young, idealistic student of poetry at Yale — was recruited first by the infamous Order of Skull and Bones (a.k.a. preppy fratboys gone wild) and then, after war breaks out in Europe, by the OSS. Along the way, he takes on a number of varied mentors, ranging from a Nazi-sympathizing poetry professor with then-shocking proclivities (Michael Gambon) to a congenial if hobbled general and spymaster (De Niro, playing a variation on Wild Bill Donovan) to a gaggle of fellow scions of the WASP Old Boy Network (representing the Eli’s, William Hurt and Lee Pace; representing the Oxford-Cambridge crowd, Billy Crudup with a slipping accent.) He also falls in love, with a (note the symbolism!) kindly, open-hearted deaf co-ed (Tammy Blanchard), and falls, in lust, with a needy, easy, and borderline-psycho socialite (Angelina Jolie, verging on typecasting in a terribly written role, but still quite good.) As the years drag on and the world freezes into Cold War, Wilson finds himself not only engaged in high-stakes cloak-and-dagger gamesmanship against his Soviet counterpart, codenamed Ulysses (Oleg Stefan), but inexorably ceding more of his dreams, his morality, his family, and his very soul to that hungering bastion of the Eastern Establishment mafia, the Central Intelligence Agency. And every time he tries to get out, they keep pulling him back in…
Comparisons to The Godfather are probably as unfair as they are inescapable. Still, for all the striving and sweating on display here, Edward Wilson is ultimately no Michael Corleone. In fact, Damon, while trying admirably, can’t plausibly sustain the second “middle-aged” half of the film, and portrays Wilson as too much of a blank (clearly De Niro’s decision) to garner much in the way of sympathy or empathy. More resonant in The Good Shepherd are many of the supporting turns, particularly Gambon, John Turturro as Wilson’s tough-talking (non-WASP) #2, and Alec Baldwin in a minor role as a hard-living G-man. But they’re not enough to put Shepherd over the top, and for every vignette in the film that contains real emotional power — most notably the interrogation of defector “Valentin Mironov” (Mark Ivanir) — there are two that, through a combination of directorial straining and an overly intrusive score, spill over into overcooked blandness. (See for example, the plane and letter-burning sequences at the end of the film, both of which are carried for several beats too long and which suffer from paint-by-numbers swelling strings on the soundtrack.) The Good Shepherd is by no means a bad film, but, alas, it’s not particularly a good one either. Like a veteran CIA hand, it fades effortlessly into the background, and offers little that might be considered truly memorable.
Secret Agent Man.
Angelina Jolie feels neglected while Matt Damon looks to a long future of waterboarding and cherry-picking intelligence for political reasons in the new trailer for Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd, also starring De Niro, John Turturro, Alec Baldwin, William Hurt, Billy Crudup, Joe Pesci, and Michael Gambon.
Love is a Battlefield.
Ok, I know that I shouldn’t have been expecting much more than some eye candy, a few decent action sequences and two hours of air conditioning. But, I’ll admit, I was disappointed by Mr. & Mrs. Smith — Director Doug Liman did a great job with The Bourne Identity a few years ago, and I generally root for both Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. But, while Pitt is as aw-shucks amiable as usual (his stint in Troy aside) and Jolie is, as always, very easy on the eyes, there just isn’t much here. Sure, marriage as war is a metaphor that’s been mined pretty thoroughly over the years…but one can usually still find choicer nuggets than the ones making up this flick. In short, the script is half-baked and the action is overdone.
Beginning with a marriage counselor interview intercut with the credit sequence (it plays a bit like the opening to The Incredibles) followed by a meet-cute in Colombia “five or six years earlier,” Smith seems intriguing enough at first glance…sort of an actioner by way of a Steven Soderbergh film. But the movie then takes way too long establishing its central conceit — we’re a good forty minutes in before the spy vs. spy angle is worked out — particularly given that Pitt and Jolie seem so woefully out of place in the burbs.
That being said, the early going is probably the film’s better half. Once the two start going after each other, and particularly after the big marital mano-a-mano, the movie takes several increasingly graceless lapses into absurdity. Most of the big action setpieces, particularly the finale in a department store, not only don’t make any narrative sense but have zero danger to them. (Really, what was the point of setting up these two as crack shots at the Coney Island fairground, if they continually miss each other from point-blank range? These Agents Smith are even more bullet-proof than Hugo Weaving in The Matrix.)
Action aside, the script also takes a turn for the hammy as Mr. & Mrs. Smith progresses. The more Pitt and Jolie begin to discover about each other, the less and less they sound like a married couple. And, after awhile, the movie’s ingratiating penchant of doing just about anything for a laugh, from funny faces to cat sound effects to Air Supply and “The Girl from Ipanema,” gets kinda tiresome. (Particularly egregious in this regard is every scene with Vince Vaughn, where the same “living at home with mom” joke is made over and over again.) By the time The OC‘s Adam Brody flaunts his Fight Club T-shirt while getting grilled by Pitt, I had had enough already. What can I say? I really thought Mr. & Mrs. Smith was gonna work out, but eventually, the thrill was gone.
Shadow of the Bat.
A good deal of movie and fanboy news came down the pike this weekend. First and most importantly, the new Batman Begins poster is out (and a new trailer is rumored in front of Ocean’s 12 this Friday.) As one AICN wag put it, it’s very Passion of the Bat. In other news, Harrison Ford says Indy IV is moving again, Chris Columbus is directing Sub-Mariner (uh, oh), and Kevin Spacey is seriously considering Lex Luthor. Finally, the teaser posters for Mr. & Mrs. Smith (a.k.a. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in War of the Roses meets True Lies) are now also floating around the ether, along with the new trailer. Update: The international poster for Batman Begins is now also online.
Team Alexander: World Police.
Alexander the Great. Seeker, despot, conqueror, legend…and who knew he anything to do with the Kennedy assassination? Ok, Oliver Stone’s Alexander doesn’t actually pin the events of November 22, 1963 on the Macedonian conqueror, but, to be honest, I kinda wish it had — it might have injected some much-needed energy into the film. Over the past two decades, Oliver Stone has made films that are stunning, controversial, wrongheaded, and unforgettable, but never before has he made one so flat-out dull.
To its credit, I guess, Alexander shows signs of being an absolute train wreck right from the first reel. After a very brief nod to Citizen Kane, which suggested we may at least be getting a gloriously over-the-top outing from Stone this time around, the film settles in to Anthony Hopkins wandering around the set of the “Losing My Religion” video and spitting out long, interminable chunks of Basil Exposition. (Speaking of which, Stone must have been watching his VH1-Classic…there’s a scene on a mountaintop later that seems lifted straight out of Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence.”) Then, we’ve got Mommy Dearest Angelina Jolie writhing around with snakes for a bit (women = serpents = temptresses = deceivers, get it? Don’t worry, in typical Stone fashion, the point will be beaten into the ground over the next three hours.) Twenty minutes in, by the time young Alexander is channeling the Horse Whisperer, it’s pretty clear we’ve got a real stinker on our hands.
From there on, it’s just a pile-up. Other than a neat camel charge or two, the battle setpieces are completely inscrutable, and not in a good “Fog of War” kinda way. For some reason, the men all speak with Irish brogues, while both women (Jolie and Rosario Dawson) sound like Brides of Dracula. Give them credit, though. Jolie, Dawson, and Val Kilmer (as Phillip of Macedon, by way of Dr. Moreau) seem to be the only three people involved with this project who saw it for what it was and racheted up the hamminess dial to 11.
Much has been made in some reviews of Stone’s decision not to shy away from Alexander’s bisexuality — namely his love affair with the doe-eyed Hephaistion (Jared Leto, who fulfilled close to the same function for Tyler Durden in Fight Club) — and I suppose he should be applauded for it, given the recent trends in Red State country. But, frankly, what with all the earnest looks and pre-established Freudian baggage, it all comes off as high camp, and not nearly as open-minded as it thinks it is. Not that heterosexual relations fare much better, mind you…when Colin Farrell and poor, lovely Rosario Dawson hiss, scratch, and wrestle naked on their wedding night (yes, you guessed it, snake flashbacks are involved), it’s just about the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever seen.
To sum up, Alexander is a flat-out disappointment and easily the worst Oliver Stone film I can think of offhand. This review notwithstanding, it’s not even fun-bad. Think of it more as Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Movie.
World Gone Wrong.
Well, admittedly writer-director Kerry Conran’s Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow — which I finally caught on Sunday afternoon — doesn’t look much like a film shot in a tiny blue room, but, lordy, it sure as heck feels like it. Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Michael Gambon…they’re all fine enough in other situations. But, alas, pretty much everyone here, with the possible exceptions of Giovanni Ribisi, Bai Ling (who doesn’t speak), and the dead Lawrence Olivier, have contracted Portmanitis, and what considerable acting chops they usually possess have been sucked into the CGI machines and spat back out as a deathly dull flatness.
I don’t blame the cast, though. Because, however pretty the movie looks on occasion, the upshot is Sky Captain is as terribly written as Stephen Sommer’s ghastly Van Helsing this past summer. Seriously, this film makes zero sense whatsoever – the scenes of robots, planes, flying carriers, etc. just pile up on each other with no underlying sense of plot or development. Meanwhile, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow are forced to deliver C-movie boilerplate that would’ve seem dated in Buster Crabbe’s day. I know we’ve reached an age where visual effects technology can spruce up even the lamest of tales, but still…I just don’t understand how a script this bad makes it out of Quality Control.
Perhaps to compensate for the wooden script, Conran packs his film chock-full of genre homages and fanboy cues, and one would think these would help alleviate the boredom. But, to be honest, they came so thick and so hamhandedly that even I, who usually has a high tolerance for this type of in-joke, started to feel beaten down by them. Oh, look, Metropolis, The Iron Giant, Office 1138, the SS Venture, Indy, Dagobah, Shangri-La as Rivendell…no, wait, Naboo…by the end of it, Sky Captain seemed less a full-fledged film than a 120 minute attempt to impress Harry Knowles. (Apparently, it worked. Harry is producing Conran’s next film (sigh), A Princess of Mars.)
As with Van Helsing, arguing that Sky Captain is a nod to the serials of the 1930’s is really no excuse. So was Raiders of the Lost Ark or even a B-movie like Big Trouble in Little China, and they held together a lot better than this overstuffed claptrap. In sum, the view out Sky Captain’s cockpit may be oh-so-pretty and genrefied, but the story here is strictly World of Yesterday.