Tag: David Carradine

2004 in Film.

Happy New Year, everyone. Inauspiciously for 2005, it looks like I’m starting the year a day late on the end-of-2004 movie roundup…but better late than never. As you probably already guessed, this year’s film list will be the first in four years without a Peter Jackson Tolkien adaptation in the #1 spot (although I’m still keeping it warm for The Hobbit in 2008.) Nevertheless, my top choice this year was an easy one, and those of y’all who come ’round here often can probably figure it out.

Top 20 Films of 2004:
[2000/2001/2002/2003]

1) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The one true classic of 2004, Eternal Sunshine has only grown in my estimation since its initial release in March. (David Edelstein’s take on it as one of Harvard philosopher Stanley Cavell‘s remarriage comedies is well worth reading.) A heartfelt examination of love, loss, and memory, Eternal Sunshine was also a strikingly adult take on romance and relationships, the kind you usually don’t get from Hollywood. With great performances from a caged Jim Carrey and an electric Kate Winslet, the film managed to be both an earnest, passionate love story and a wistful paean to those person-shaped holes we all carry in our hearts and memories. Along with Annie Hall and High Fidelity, it goes down as one of my all-time favorite films about the mysteries of love. (Why even bother? We need the eggs.)

2) Garden State. Writer-director Zach Braff’s “anti-Graduate” debut was a small but touching ode to home that, along with reviving Natalie Portman as an actress and offering the best soundtrack of the year, delivered exactly what it promised. A bit hokey at times, sure, but Garden State wore its heart on its sleeve and, for the most part, got away with it. It was a witty and eloquent voyage to the Jersey burbs and a testament to the proposition that as Paul Weller put it, it’s never too late to make a brand new start.

3) The Incredibles. Pixar has been delivering well-constructed eye-popping wonders since Toy Story, and The Incredibles is the best of the lot. I figured it might be awhile before a movie topped Spiderman 2 as a sheer comic book spectacle, but, as it turned out, The Incredibles did it only a few months later. One of the best comic book films ever made, The Incredibles was two hours of unmitigated fanboy fun. I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s probably also the best Fantastic Four film we’re ever going to see.

4) Sideways. Like a fine 1961 Cheval Blanc, Alexander Payne’s elegiac toast to California wine country and the regrets and indignities of middle-age has a tendency to linger in the senses. Paul Giamatti must tire of playing depressive, barely sociable losers, but he’s great at it here…Sideways isn’t as funny as Election, but it is a memorable trip.

5) Spiderman 2. A definite improvement on the first adventure of your friendly neighborhood wallcraller, Spiderman 2 was a perfectly made summer film that stayed true to the spirit of Peter Parker. Along with X2, this is the gold standard for comic book-to-film adaptations right now…let’s hope Batman Begins is up to snuff.

6) Shaun of the Dead. Although it lost its footing shambling to its conclusion, Shaun of the Dead was great fun for the first two-thirds of its run, and it’s now probably my favorite zombie movie (everyone should have one.) A much-needed dry British humor fix to tide us over until Hitchhiker’s Guide.

7) The Aviator. A bit on the long side, Scorsese’s life of Howard Hughes is most fun when it stays away from the airfields and lounges about Old Hollywood. Two very clean thumbs up.

8) The Assassination of Richard Nixon. A dark, unflinching 90-minute descent into violent futility. I originally had this before The Aviator, then figured the degree of difficulty on Scorsese’s flick was much, much higher. Nevertheless, this funereal biopic for non-billionaire crazies, while grim and not much fun, was well-made and well-performed, and I expect it’ll stay with me for awhile.

9) The Bourne Supremacy. Perhaps a bit too much like its predecessor, Bourne II was still a better Bond than anything we’ve seen in the past 20 years. Paul Greengrass’ shakicam work here bodes well for Rorshach in The Watchmen.

10) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban. It’d be hard to make a better film of Harry Potter’s adventures at Hogwarts than Alfonso Cuaron did here — Azkhaban managed to capture the dry wit and subversive spirit of the books that’s so missing in the Chris Columbus movies. That being said, Azkaban also made it clear that much of the fun of Rowling’s tomes is uncapturable on film. What was great fun to read on the page ended up seeming like Back to the Future II on the screen. With that in mind, Year 6 begins on 7/16.

11) Ocean’s 12. Two swollen hours of Soderberghian glamour and inside baseball. Not everyone’s cup of tea, I know, but I found it an agreeable improvement on Ocean’s 11. (Don Cheadle’s accent is still terrible, tho’.)

12) Touching the Void. Snap! Aigh! Crunch! Aigh! It’d be hard to forget anything as memorable as Shattered Femur Theater. Well worth seeing, if you can stand the pain.

13) Fahrenheit 9/11. Hmmm…perhaps this should be higher. I definitely left the theater in an angry froth (not that it takes much)…unfortunately, apparently so did all the freepers.

14) My Architect. An excellent documentary on Louis Kahn, brilliant architect and terrible family man. Alas, it’s also a less-excellent documentary on Kahn’s son, and his Oprah-like quest for self-acceptance.

15) Kinsey. Take that, red staters.

16) Hero. A memorable meditation on love, power, and kick-ass kung-fu, until its train-wreck derailing in the last half-hour.

17) The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. As I said yesterday, Aquatic was a jaunty Wes Anderson joyride that nevertheless gets a little lost in its terminal cuteness. When you care more about the leaving-behind of Cody the three-legged dog than you do the death of a major character, there’s a problem.

18) I Heart Huckabees. Huckabees had its heart in the right place, and made for a decently appealing night at the movies…but it also had a terminal-cute problem.

19) Collateral. If the movie had maintained the promise of its first hour throughout, Michael Mann’s Collateral would have been a top ten contender. Alas, it all falls apart once Tom Cruise goes bugnut psycho in da club.

20) Kill Bill, Vol. 2. There was probably one really good movie somewhere in the two Kill Bills. The second half was closer to it than the first.

Not Seen: Bad Education, Before Sunset, Finding Neverland, Friday Night Lights, Harold and Kumar, Hotel Rwanda, Maria Full of Grace, Million Dollar Baby, Ray, Spanglish

Worst Movies of the Year: Van Helsing, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, The Chronicles of Riddick, The Village, Code 46, Closer, Alexander, 21 Grams (2003)

Biggest Disappointment: The Ladykillers

Ho-Hum: Team America: World Police, The Alamo, House of Flying Daggers, Troy, King Arthur, Anchorman, Blade: Trinity, Shrek 2

Worth a Rental: Mean Girls, The Manchurian Candidate,
Hellboy, The Machinist, City of God (2003)

Best Actor: Jim Carrey, Eternal Sunshine; Paul Giamatti, Sideways; Sean Penn, The Assassination of Richard Nixon.
Best Actress: Kate Winslet, Eternal Sunshine.

Best Supporting Actor: Thomas Haden Church, Sideways
Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett, The Aviator; Virginia Madsen, Sideways.

2005: On paper, it’s looking like a better year for film, fanboy and otherwise, than 2004. The slate includes Star Wars Episode III, Batman Begins, The Chronicles of Narnia, All the King’s Men, PJ’s King Kong, Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm, Polanski’s Oliver Twist, Malick’s The New World, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Constantine, Sin City, Fantastic Four, and my own most-anticipated project, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. So here’s to the new year!

Double Billed.

Well, I’ll say this much for Kill Bill, Vol. 2…it’s a vast improvement over the atrocious Vol. 1. Perhaps because, one kinetic trailer park catfight notwithstanding, Tarantino isn’t trying to be an action director this time around, the second half of this revenge tale hangs together much better than the opening act. There’s actually time devoted to character beats here, which, as QT should know, is ultimately his forte as a writer and director. As such, Michael Madsen and David Carradine in particular get a chance to bring some much-needed complexity to the wafer-thin plot around which these films are constructed.

Still, like its predecessor, Kill Bill Vol. 2 has the whiff of a vanity project. It’s obvious Quentin had the time of his life making these two films, and they definitely seem to work as a love letter to a certain subset of grindhouse and chop-socky film fans (a group which includes David Edelstein, Roger Ebert, and Elvis Mitchell.) But, frankly, I thought a lot of Vol. 2 felt sloppy and derivative. I still don’t see why this project had to be two films, particularly as, once again, there’s so many drawn-out, redundant, or unnecessary episodes on display here. What’s up with the Uma car intro? Bud’s boss? Daryl Hannah’s googlesearch notes? Bill’s ridiculously QT-like riff on Superman? The tremendously stupid pregnancy test faceoff? As I noted about the first half of Kill Bill, Jackie Brown moves languidly, but with purpose. For much of these KB flicks, which often feel more like some sub-Tarantino outing (Killing Zoe, for example) than they do Jackie or Pulp Fiction, I was just bored.

Ultimately, there’s a difference between paying fleeting homage to some film influence and constructing a four and a half hour movie that just moves lazily from homage to homage. The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly, some Wu-Tang flick, Oh, look, The Vanishing. I’m sure that I recognized less than 10% of the movies Tarantino was referencing here, and I’m sure that probably invalidates my opinion of the film in many people’s eyes. And, if QT wants to show off his film-geek cred so blatantly and the film-geeks eat it up like candy, who am I to complain? Still, I very much hope that Tarantino had to get this orgy of excess out of his system, and that he’ll now settle down and focus his considerable talents a little more narrowly, instead of jumping all over the map as he does here.

Overkill Bill.

Well, I’m probably going to lose some fanboy cred for this, but I found Kill Bill (billed everywhere — even, ridiculously, in the credits — as “the 4th film by Quentin Tarantino”) to be a considerable disappointment. The movie starts off well…Uma’s The Bride covered in blood, some choice words, a gunshot, fade to black, Nancy Sinatra…so far, so good. Like an old friend back in town, it almost seemed at first we’d be getting something missing for too long, something along the lines of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown. But then, alas, it becomes all too clear that QT has ventured deep into George Lucas territory. In other words, Kill Bill is an overripe, overlong flick by a director infatuated with his own cleverness and brilliance, one who’s clearly surrounded by entirely too many sycophantic yes-men. To wit:

1) The Editing. Perhaps it’s a result of chopping the film in two, but there are several scenes here badly in need of shortening, which is doubly strange given how perfectly — languidly, with occasional jolts and rushes — QT’s first three films move. Take, for example, all of Chapter 4 (The Man from Okinawa), and particularly the sake-pouring nonsense. Ok, I get it — it’s Sonny Chiba (and, I’ve since been informed, Gordon Liu)…but let’s move on. Jackie Brown moves at a leisurely pace, yet I was and am never bored. In Kill Bill I was stifling yawns. Or take the introduction of Buck’s Pussy Wagon (which at best is a sophomoric, throwaway joke anyway.) Uma gets the keys from Buck, beats him a final time, looks for the car, finds the car, looks at the keys, looks at the car, gets in the car. All this could’ve been condensed into one edit (from the hospital floor to Uma dragging herself into the Wagon), particularly as the joke was already made in Chapter 1 anyway.

2) The Dialogue. With the possible exception of Lucy Liu’s words of wisdom for the Yakuza council — one of the best moments in the film — there is hardly a single memorable line in all of Kill Bill. Again, this is bizarre for a Tarantino flick, which as everyone knows have been distinguished by their dialogue. Ok, so samurai are generally strong, silent types…that doesn’t forgive the banality of what’s actually being said most of the time. “Silly rabbit…Trix are for kids”? C’mon. And, aside from the ridiculous number of grindhouse chop-socky in-jokes, most of the pop-culture visuals in Kill Bill seem lazy and off-hand (For example, the fellow in the Charlie Brown kimono – which not only added nothing to the film but could be seen coming a mile away.)

3. The Action. Of course QT has no obligation to make movies like the ones he’s made previously, so both the editing and dialogue problems could have been overlooked if Kill Bill had succeeded in its main intent. But, sadly, it doesn’t. Amazingly, given the input of Master Yuen Wo-Ping, almost all of the action sequences in Kill Bill are dull, stilted, and boring, and none more so than the much-hyped House of Blue Leaves. Really. I was shocked at how off they seemed to be. Perhaps its because Uma Thurman couldn’t handle the martial arts choreography for extended shots, but I think it’s more likely that QT just isn’t a very good action director. Too many quick edits, too many goofy shots (the blue silhouette sequence was embarrassing, as was the spanking at the end.)….It’s just sad. Even fights that held great promise (Go-Go Yubari, a homicidal Japanese schoolgirl with a tricked-up mace…really, how can you screw this up? Same goes for O-Ren-Ishii in the snow) seemed flat and lifeless. Somewhere down the pike, QT must’ve decided that gore is the end-all, be-all of a good action sequence, but arterial sprays aside, there’s really not much to see here (and the whole hilarious gore bit was done better in films like Dead Alive anyway.) QT made a point recently of attacking the fights in The Matrix movies, but I’ll take those anyday over the jumbled morass of bad wire-fu and chop edits on display here. And one needs only to recall the breathtaking wire-fu fights of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where the camera pulls back and allows the combatants to strut their stuff in extended takes, to see how badly misplayed QT’s action edits are here.

The Upside: Well, not much, really. There’s some great opportunities here, and I’d say Tarantino squanders most of ’em. I liked the anime sequence in the middle of the film, and the introduction of O-Ren-Ishii’s squad (Go-Go, Sofie Fatale, etc.) had a great comic book flavor to it at first. I thought RZA’s work on the soundtrack was superb. The critics on the film geek end of the spectrum (David Edelstein, Roger Ebert) adored all the in-jokes scattered throughout the film, and I’m sure most of ’em went over my head. (I don’t think, however, that this excuses the film by any means — LotR, for example, is filled with Tolkie in-jokes while still being accessible to laypersons.) Who knows? Perhaps if Kill Bill had just been another film, I might not be so harsh about it. But I expected more from this much-heralded return of Tarantino…I hope this was just an inglorious misstep, and I’ll probably go see Vol. 2 (word is the second one is more character-driven anyway). But I thought Quentin drank his own Kool-Aid with Kill Bill: Volume One, and hopefully he’ll return to his senses someday soon.