Tag: Cinema

Prince of Gotham, son of Krypton.

The first pics of Ken Watanabe as Ras Al Ghul in Batman Begins have been posted on a Japanese site. And, if you prefer your Caped Crusader with a side of Supes, the fan trailer for World’s Finest (by Sandy Collora, the guy who made the somewhat goofy Batman: Dead End short running around awhile back) is now also available. Yeah, the acting’s pretty substandard here, but I have to say, I sorta prefer the Collora cowl to the rubber suit look they’re going with in Chris Nolan’s film.

The Village Idiot.

Having completed my chores in timely fashion this past Sabbath morn, I decided to undertake a sojourn in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, in spite of my apprehension over The Curse of William Hurt and The Mel Gibson Film Which We Do Not Much Enjoy. As you perchance have ascertained, it seems the goodly people of this nonsensical village have experienced some difficulty with the strange and mysterious residents in the nearby woods. Alack, Number Six is nowhere to be found, and Goody Ellen Ripley seems too engaged sweeping and darning at the present time to handle the marauders in her usual efficacious manner. This is highly unfortunate, for M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village is an exceedingly drab and silly place, whose full terribleness can only adequately be described in spoiler-filled invisitext (Note: invisitext turned off — it’s been 15 years):

Hoo boy…grab your torches and pitchforks, village people, cause we’ve got a really lousy film on our hands. (Ok, Van Helsing and Riddick were worse, but they harbored fewer delusions of grandeur…this film is just a pretentious bore.) As a refresher, I liked Sixth Sense, was intrigued by Unbreakable, and loathed Signs, and this one’s probably just as bad as Mel Gibson’s run-in with the water-and-door-averse aliens. Even though the plot twists in this bad boy can be seen a mile away, they still don’t make any sense. As with Signs, this is a film so lame I can only wrap my mind around it in numbered point form:

1) First off, the whole Elders bit. Is it really possible not to see this coming? What other explanation could there be for those big black cabinets in every house? I understand that these Villagers were not exposed to Scooby Doo, but how strikingly incurious could they be?

2) Along those lines, if you call a shed “The Old Shed That Is Not To Be Used” in any human society, no more than a week would pass before some enterprising youth started skulking around it. And why are the creatures called “Those We Shall Not Speak Of” anyway, when everyone is incessantly speaking about them? Surely some other nomenclature would take off at some point.

3) How come not a single Village soul has ever attempted to beat back the not-so-frightening wicker creatures with a block of wood or a stick of fire or something? Hasn’t anyone ever wondered why the Elders never seem to be around when the creatures come out?

4) What is this clipped faux-nineteenth century argot everybody’s speaking in? It’s embarrassing (although A.O. Scott made an excellent point when he noted that this is how William Hurt sounds all the time. Perhaps this actually makes sense.)

5) After our worst fears about the Scooby Doo Elders have been confirmed, why would Shyamalan think the blind girl’s encounter in the woods would be scary in the slightest? The only real question was whether it was Brendan Gleeson or Adrien Brody in the costume.

6) What vested interest would the government have in protecting this village from fly-overs, poachers, etc.? Nada, zip, zero. We already have Colonial Williamsburg.

7) Whatsmore, I find the political economy of this film somewhat repellent. Is the urge to create a rigid, backward-looking, and authoritarian society — where everyone knows everyone else’s business (except of course, the Big Business), where the only people of color are Red, and where the only trouble around is Adrien Brody the Village Idiot — really as worthy and benign as Shyamalan makes it out to be? These people are nutjobs, but they’re portrayed as humanists. If anything, the end of the film makes it seem as if this noble way of life will and should go on. There’s no real critique made at all of the Elder’s impositions, only of its misuse by Jealous Brody.

8) Speaking of which, village idiot? Blind girl who sees auras? C’mon now. You’re not even trying.

9) I see very well how Shyamalan might have intended this as a Twilight Zone meditation on terrorism, what with fear-mongering and color codes and all that. But, if that’s the case, then the film should not have been constructed as a Sixth Sense thriller rife with plot twists in the last third (particularly when the plot twists are so glaringly obvious). It should have shown its cards up front and then attempted to explore this allegory a little more creatively.

In sum, with Goody Weaver and Mssrs. Brody and Gleeson as residents of this unfortunate village, I had thought my brief stay in these woods might be more relishable. As it is, I am headed for the towns and shall not return.

Red States, Blue States, Altered States.

While remakes of film classics are generally a lousy idea (Exhibit A: Gus Van Sant’s Psycho), George W. Bush’s America seems a more than apt time and place for Jonathan Demme to re-tackle The Manchurian Candidate. And, while there’s no scene herein as memorable as the brainwashing in the original 1962 film, the Denzel version actually turned out to be a decent night at the movies, despite a failure to capitalize fully on the potential of the source material and the histrionics of Meryl Streep.

For those looking for quality Bush-bashing from this project, there are some nods in your direction. This version of the film takes place in a post-9/11 election year when “security” is definitely the watchword of the electorate. And Manchurian Global, the new Big Bad for these post-Communist times, clearly “Harkens” to Halliburton and its ilk. Unfortunately, however, most of the politics in this movie aren’t very well thought-out. For example, this would seem a perfect cinematic vehicle to skewer the newsmedia for its inane and/or atrocious political coverage these days. But almost all of the political scenes here — conventions, talk shows, speeches, and whatnot — come off half-baked and unrealistic. Liev Schreiber is undoubtedly a good actor, but it’s hard to imagine him winning a congressional seat as portrayed here, much less the vice-presidency. Speaking of which, the convention backroom scene at the beginning seemed woefully out of date, as by now it should be clear to anybody that any political party worth its salt would have picked a ticket before their Big Show. In sum, most of the politics here seem like plot points to move the story along, when with just a little more tweaking they could have made for some really devastating satire.

Still, The Manchurian Candidate is an entertaining ride, in no small part due to several quality performances. The characters from the original Candidate are scrambled in this version, but remain more or less intact, with Denzel as Sinatra, Liev Schreiber as Lawrence Harvey, Kimberly Elise as Janet Leigh, and Meryl Streep as Angela Lansbury. (Alas, no Queen of Diamonds.) All in all, I’d say most of this bunch do a solid job (particularly an almost-unrecognizable Jeffrey Wright as Cpl. Melvin)…with the very notable exception of Meryl Streep. I’m not sure what she was going for here — some sort of uber-Karen Hughes or something, I guess — but she’s more over the top than Hoo-ah Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman. At one point in the middle third, she even out-JonVoights Jon Voight, which I didn’t know was possible. While everyone else seems to be working hard to make the film seem remotely plausible, despite all the talk of implants and such (i mean, why bother with implants when you can just throw up a malleable dupe like Dubya?), Streep seems to be just playing it for camp. (It didn’t help that her first speech, in the aforementioned smoke-filled room scene, is completely hamhanded and improbable…however the choice of a veep goes down, I highly doubt it goes down like this.)

All in all, The Manchurian Candidate is worth seeing, but it’s nowhere near the league of the original. Which is too bad, really, because I think with just a little more effort, this could have been quite something.

Beauty in the Breakdown.


While I may not have been in the right frame-of-mind for Anchorman, writer-director-actor Zach Braff‘s debut Garden State later that evening settled over me like a cool, refreshing breeze. Other than Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (and, for sentimental fanboy reasons, Spiderman 2), I’d say Garden State has leapt to the top of my 2004 list so far. I could see some people finding it overly talky and pretentious, others too choppy, drug-ridden, and episodic, but, well, it struck a chord with me.

Seduced in by this teaser (and the accompanying song, Frou Frou’s “Let Go”, which has been flitting about my head for days now), I entered expecting a stylish but showy and self-indulgent film, as befitting a first-time triple threat. (At worst, I feared something along the lines of a Whit Stillman or P.T. Anderson flick.) But Garden State feels not only intelligent and confident but grounded, understated, and, like its dazed, over-medicated protagonist, even somewhat self-effacing. More than anything, I found the movie a sweet, quirky, and good-natured tone poem about awakening to both the pain and the possibilities of the life around you.

Admittedly, there are elements of the movie that don’t work very well. The father-son angst with Ian Holm doesn’t amount to much, and its resolution is the closest the film ever gets to derailing. Zach Braff and Natalie Portman have a lot of conversations in this film, and occasionally they do seem like movie people talking. (Nevertheless, this film resurrects Portman as an actress in my mind…she’s so flat and awful in the Star Wars films, yet she’s effervescent and adorable here. What is it about those blue screens?) Let me put it this way: There’s a scene (on the poster) where the three main characters — Braff, Portman, and an excellent Peter Sarsgaard as the local stoner/gravedigger — scream into a void (to the strands of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Only Living Boy in New York”…yes, comparisons to The Graduate are apt.) This will either come off as pretentious hooey or seem kinda touching…I obviously bought into it.

In other words, I doubt it’s everybody’s cup of tea, but I found Garden State an eloquent little film that’s at turns playful and poignant, one that — like Eternal Sunshine and Lost in Translation last year — manages to capture some of the elusive magic and tentative self-discovery inherent in relationships old and new. Plus, it’s got Natalie Portman briefly interacting with Method Man…that’s gotta be worth close to the price of admission, right?

Meet the Press.


Well, perhaps I wasn’t in the right mood for it (everyone else in the theater seemed to think it was gut-bustingly funny), but I finally caught Anchorman, and, frankly, it kinda passed me by. I think Will Ferrell can be really hilarious at times (here as Dubya, for example), but, for the most part watching The Legend of Ron Burgundy felt to me like being trapped in a 12:45am SNL skit for two hours.

Ok, the Gangs of New York riff was pretty rich (although by this point, Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, and the whole “Frat Pack” crew are utterly overexposed…they should take a cue from Janeane Garofolo and disappear for awhile), and Steve Carell’s weatherman had some choice moments. But, I thought most of the set pieces — jazz flute, panther scent, dead dog, afternoon delight, etc. — fell totally flat. Which didn’t stop Ferrell & co. from remorselessly beating them into the ground, of course. I guess I should give them credit…the cast clearly did anything they could to extract humor out of the jokes and situations here. Unfortunately, I still didn’t find the end product all that funny. Ah well. (Dubya Ferrell link via Value Judgment.) Update: Ok, having watched this again on HBO, it’s definitely funnier than I gave it credit for at first. My b.

The Light of Earendil.

It is long since we had any hope…until now. At long last, details of the extended Return of the King are officially unveiled by New Line at Comicon: Apparently due out December (Some reports say the 10th, but that’s a Friday), the film will be fifty minutes longer, and the deluxe version will feature this spiffy Minas Tirith model. Now, hopefully the four minutes of Comicon preview footage will make it on to the official site in the next few days. Update: Until then, we’ve got a shaky Kramervision version online (replete with aggravating shrieking fangirls) and a frame-by-frame analysis…booyah. I’m particularly liking Sam seeing the star in Mordor and the Witch King’s cruel boast.