Heaven’s Gate.

Well, I don’t think being feverish at the time helped by any means — still, Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven is, well, kinda blah. It’s got its heart in the right place, and I’d say I was mildly diverted by it for the first 75 minutes or so, but after that I was just waiting for it to be over. In terms of recent sword-and-sandal and/or historical siege pics, I’d say it’s better than King Arthur or the woeful Alexander, but probably on a par with Troy or The Alamo.

Put very bluntly, the gist is this: Legolas (Orlando Bloom) is an ornery, grieving blacksmith somewhere in France who, after a visitation from a world-weary crusader, Lord Qui-Gon (Liam Neeson, playing yet another expository mentor/dead-duck), and his hospitaler, Prof. Lupin (David Thewlis), decides to embark to the Holy Land to seek Christ’s forgiveness for the suicide of his wife. Along the way, he makes a Muslim friend in Dr. Bashir (Alexander Siddig) and a Christian enemy in Celeborn (Marton Csoskas), and discovers that zealots are generally rather unlikable people on both sides of the religious divide. Upon arriving in Jerusalem, Legolas is feted at the court of leper King Tyler Durden (a masked Edward Norton), whereupon he makes more friends (Jeremy Irons, Eva Green) and enemies (Brendan Gleeson, hamming it up like a community-theater Brian Cox), all before an interminably long siege against the forces of Saladin (a charismatic Ghassan Massoud.)

Are all those fanboy comparisons unfair? Well, not after sitting through the last hour, which basically played like Helms Deep and Minas Tirith all over again. Yes, the production values are immaculate and all the (fetishized) weaponry is used in suitably historic fashion, but, really, how many historic sieges can one be expected to sit through in a given couple of years? Frankly, Kingdom of Heaven was more interesting in the early going, when there was more acting amid the fighting.

As for the politics, well…the message of the film — religion good, religious zealots bad — is laudable and well-worth hearing these days, perhaps even brave. But, while confessing a near-total ignorance of medieval history, Kingdom of Heaven sure doesn’t seem very historical in its 21st century forward-mindedness. At one point before the siege, Legolas not only makes the case for religious tolerance but completely dismantles the feudal caste system — I was almost waiting for him to institute the ballot box and universal public education while he was at it.

In short, even though I’m in sympathy with the general pluralist worldview of Kingdom of Heaven, the movie could have definitely done with less anachronistic liberal humanism and more dramatic complexity. (In fact, I can’t think of a single character in the film who displayed more than one dimension.) And, even notwithstanding the history, there just needed to be more characterization and less CGI-battling here. As both an historical epic and a summer popcorn film, Kingdom of Heaven felt only a step or two above Purgatory.

Prize Jury.

Neglected to mention this earlier…but last week, I caught Roundabout’s Twelve Angry Men revival at the American Airlines theatre. As with Streetcar, my basis for comparison is fuzzy — I saw the Henry Fonda film years and years ago. Nevertheless, I’d say this version does justice to the material, and is well worth seeing if you get the chance.

Unlike the star-studded HBO version, this 12 Angry Men works as a great showcase for underappreciated character actors. The most famous face is probably the ubiquitous James Rebhorn as Juror #4, although #7’s John Pankow (a.k.a. Paul Reiser’s brother on Mad About You) and Broadway veteran Tom Aldredge (Clooney’s boss in Intolerable Cruelty) as #9 may also elicit a stir of recognition. To a man, this cast performs admirably, with each actor getting his moment in the sun.

Alas, if the show has a weak link, it may well be Boyd Gaines as Juror #8 (the Fonda role.) In a way, it’s not Gaines’ fault – but the fact that he looks like a cross between Fonda and Jimmy Stewart invites comparisons that redound against him, particularly as it seems at times that he’s actually doing a Fonda impression. [Robert Foxworth (formerly of Falcon Crest), does better in the less-iconic Lee J. Cobb role (#3) — if anything, he reminded me of Darren McGavin.] Still, this is a quibble. In general, 12 Angry Men is an engaging night out (and good mental prep for my own jury duty in a few weeks.)

By the way, I’m on the Roundabout Theatre mailing list, but if any readers out there know the mailer discount codes for The Glass Menagerie, Hurlyburly, Glengarry Glen Ross, and/or particularly Denzel’s Julius Caesar, the information would be much appreciated. 🙂

Mostly Harmless.

As I said in my Two Towers review, assessing films I’ve been eagerly anticipating since I was ten years old, such as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, can be tough going after only one viewing. And I expect I’ll be popping back into the HHGTTG-verse sometime in the next few days to see how it hangs together after a second go-round. But, for now, I’ll say that I enjoyed much of the Guide…with some reservations. If anything, the experience reminded me of the first X-Men — everybody looks and acts right, and there are several really great moments, but I also wish Hitchhiker’s had spent more time letting the characters be themselves and less time trying to shoe-horn Hollywood-style plot devices into the narrative. (Spoilers to follow)

First, the good, and there’s a lot of good here. I have a feeling people who haven’t read the books are going to be completely lost in very short order, but I kinda liked how quickly the movie got off Earth, without lingering on all the Mr. Prosser stuff. I also enjoyed the numerous Adamsian digressions and visual flourishes throughout, particularly those revolving around The Guide and the Infinite Improbability Drive. (Ok, the bowl of petunias was a mite overdone, and Deep Thought could’ve been funnier, but string-vision was a marvel.) Some of the new stuff worked splendidly, most notably the Malkovich detour. (Others, less so, such as the POV-gun.) I loved the creature designs — not only the Vogons but all the random lo-fi denizens in the queue at Vogsphere.

The central characters are all solid too, I’d say. While Martin Freeman is a bit more frantic than I would have liked — I always envisioned Arthur to be more resigned, laconic, and stiff-upper-lip in the face of all these hypergalactic indignities — Mos Def’s Ford and Sam Rockwell’s Zaphod are pretty much pitch-perfect. Mos Def steals a number of the early scenes, and it’s too bad he kinda falls out of the movie in the second half. And every time I thought Rockwell’s Zaphod was starting to get old, he’d pull out another rock-star-pose or goofy line reading that’d rehabilitate him in my mind. (Alas, Marvin, for his part, isn’t given very much to do…but what did you expect? Everyone always forgets about the androids and their feelings.)

And Trillian? Well, it’s not Zooey Deschanel’s fault — she’s fine, if a bit bland. But for some ghastly reason, either Douglas Adams or his scriptwriting successors made the decision to try and put an Arthur-Trillian romance front-and-center. And it just doesn’t work. From very early on, when we see Arthur and Tricia’s first meeting in flashback, throughout the rest of the film, it’s all, well, fluff. Trillian’s gratuitous shower scene (I kid you not) and the POV-gun stuff end up being bad enough, but when Arthur professes his love for her to the buzzsaw-wielding mice on Earth-2, I found my fingers itching to press the nearest big improbability-eject button.

Arthur and Trillian aside, the film also goes curiously flat at times, particularly once the crew hits Magrathea. In fact, everything that occurs on Earth-2, and particularly the Vogon Shoot-out, seems both lifeless and another rather lame concession to Hollywood plot dynamics. It’s strange, because for the most part, like LotR, Hitchhiker’s feels like a movie by fans for fans. But for one reason or another, it loses its footing in the final reel.

Despite these sizable lapses, though, my thumb is still cocked in the upward direction (That is, if you know what you’re getting into — I’m very curious to discover if non-readers can even make head-or-tail of this film.) Like I said, Hitchhiker’s feels a lot like the first X-Men to me – promising but flawed. Here’s hoping, now that we’ve been introduced to everybody and finished the origin-story, so to speak, that Arthur, Ford, Zaphod, Trillian, and Marvin will get more of a chance to cut loose in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.Update: Ok, after a second viewing, I thought it held together less well. And the score is, well, both terribly distracting and not very good. But, I’d still be up for Restaurant.

Stella!

Last night, my sister and I went to go see the most recent revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, with Natasha Richardson as Blanche and John C. Reilly as Stanley. And, while I don’t claim to be an expert by any means — At the risk of looking like a rube, I’ll admit I went in with only vague impressions of the Brando-Leigh version, which I found had been interpolated, embarrassingly enough, with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof — I quite enjoyed it.

At turns willowy and brittle, Richardson’s Blanche DuBois has, as Michael Stipe once put it, that “knowing with a wink that we expect from Southern women.” A pampered schemer whose delicate flower act obscures the grim realizations borne of an all-too-tragic life, Blanche is a fading memory of the Old South — She seems lost without a mint julep in hand and completely out-of-place in rough-and-tumble post-war New Orleans. I expect Richardson’s take on the role is probably slightly less sympathetic than in some other versions — no one deserves Blanche’s horrible fate; nevertheless, Richardson’s DuBois, so insufferable at times in the early going, does an exemplary job in Act 1 of proving Benjamin Franklin’s adage that “fish and visitors stink after three days.”

For his part, John C. Reilly is also memorable as the vindictive, animalistic Stanley (although nobody would argue, except perhaps Stanley himself, that this iteration of Kowalski has any of Brando’s physical magnetism.) Reilly’s Stanley is a hard-living working-class schlub who becomes increasingly more dangerous as the “Every Man a King” prerogatives he expects of domestic life are affronted by Blanche’s continued presence. Most of the time, he sits coiled like a snake, bottle in hand…but, when the moment strikes, Reilly lashes out with a feral fury that’s all the more frightening for being unexpected (he’s definitely not the type of guy you want in your poker game.) And, when Stanley finally gains the upper hand on his unwanted houseguest, his predatory instincts take hold in brutal and remorseless fashion.

At any rate, a good show. I can’t compare it to earlier iterations of Tennessee Williams’ play, but I can say that Richardson, Reilly, and the rest of the cast at the very least do Streetcar justice.

Reveling in Sin.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned…and, whatsmore, I liked it. Without a shred of redeeming social value, Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City is a film very noir. It’s a sick, depraved, and smutty ride into a crime-ridden hellhole of a metropolis, exactly as it should be. Trust me — Mos Eisley ain’t got nothing on this wretched hive of scum and villainy. The alleys of Sin City are infested with sadistic, blood-smeared torturers, psychopathic, half-naked prostitutes, and trigger-happy, two-timing murderers…and those are the good guys.

As I said of the trailer, I was worried going in that the unique comic book style Rodriguez was attempting here would fall flat (no pun intended), and all that greenscreen work would mean Attack of the Clones-itis or Sky Captain redux: otherwise-good actors looking lost and bored in a muddy CGI-mess. Well, I’m pleased to announce that my concerns were unfounded — Sin City turned out to be a visual marvel and easily Rodriguez’ best film since El Mariachi (for which Frank Miller probably deserves much of the credit — virtually every shot in the film was storyboarded in his graphic novels.) And, a few hiccups notwithstanding (I’m looking at you, Michael Madsen), the wide-ranging and talented cast are all vibrant and alive here (even, as in the case of Benicio Del Toro, when they’re not.)

In fact, in a sinful sea of memorable performances, particularly Del Toro and Clive Owen (who have a great repartee in the Tarantino sequence), Nick Stahl as That Yellow Bastard, and Elijah Wood (continuing the post-Frodo deterioration he began in Eternal Sunshine) as Kevin the ninja-quick cannibal (no relation), the surprising standout of Sin City is a back-from-the-dead himself Mickey Rourke as Marv — even behind a putty nose, a swath of Band-Aids, and a continually applied sheen of blood and viscera, Rourke succeeds in making a (literally) hard-nosed and ultra-violent character compassionate. (There’s also great cameo work by, among others, Powers Boothe, Rutger Hauer, and Nicky Katt, the latter of whom may well be reprising his role from Full Frontal.)

If I have any qualm, it’s that the best stories came first, and the film may have run a little long. There’s really not much to the Bruce Willis-Jessica Alba tale that closes the film, although I don’t think it wears out its welcome. Speaking of which, I might well have preferred it if Alba and Brittany Murphy could’ve taken a page from a fearless Carla Gugino…But, see, that’s the sin talking. A few hours in this vile, shameless, beastly sinkhole and you too’ll become infected with it, and I mean that in the best way possible.

In short, despite all the odds (and be warned — despite a grotesquely debauched moral economy that some people may never get over), Sin City is easily the best movie of 2005 so far, and a welcome omen for other outside-the-box comic adaptations such as The Watchmen. (Graphic Novel-to-Film comparison link via LinkMachineGo and Neilalien.)

Ring-ewww.

When you die, you see the ring. When you’re bored, you see The Ring Two. I thought the first American installment was truly frightening at start and finish, but suffered from an expository middle hour that brought the film to a standstill. I said then that “what everybody involved seems to have missed is that the movie would’ve been much scarier, at least to my mind, if some portions of the tape had just been left unexplained.” And it is with that caveat in mind that I went in to Part Two, hoping just to see this devious little ghost in the machine inflict carnage on more unsuspecting viewers. Oops, my bad. As it turns out, The Ring Two does not explain every little detail that comes up — In fact, it doesn’t explain anything, and the result, after another creepy prologue, is an incoherent, sprawling mess that follows absolutely no rules at all — it’s Thunderdome, Jerry!

The upshot is this: Apparently, Samara now has something of a crush on Naomi Watts, and she wants out of the well and into the body of her son (David Dorfman) for good. To accomplish this nefarious deed, she manifests all kinds of strange and awesome powers that have nothing to do with a videotape, seven days, a well, or anything else that’s come before. Instead, she turns into a cross between Damien from the Omen movies and Freddy Krueger before the wisecracking, dispatching anyone who gets in her way whether or not they still own a VCR (including Elizabeth Perkins, in a brief but welcome sighting as a doubting shrink.)

As it drags on, the film makes less and less sense (unless you can recall the very similar bathtub scene from Constantine), and plot holes emerge that you could throw a larger child than Samara through. How did the studly reporter guy end up back in his truck? The “Dead Don’t Sleep” but they eat PB&J’s? For what it’s worth, Naomi Watts gives this cut rate material as much as she can, but, even with expectations set very low, The Ring Two turns out to be a considerable disappointment. Still, hopefully this burgeoning Scream Queen might soon find the Great Ape on Skull Island a bit more scream-worthy.

Inflated Currency.

Hmmm. A million dollars sure doesn’t go as far as used to. (And you’d think with that kinda cash Clint could have invested in a few more lights around the set.) At any rate, I’m willing to bet I might have thought more of Million Dollar Baby if I had seen it before the hype machine kicked in (and before I knew the twist, since I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.) But, well, MDB was a harmless helping of manipulative schlock, I guess. But even if I hadn’t seen Aliens of the Deep just beforehand, this film would have come off as a woefully two-dimensional enterprise.

At this late date, you probably know the story. Grizzled archetypal trainer Clint Eastwood and his grizzled archetypal sidekick Morgan Freeman run a dark and dilapidated boxing facility, without benefit of loyal title contenders or fluorescent lighting. Into this duo’s endless Who’s More Grizzled repartee steps Hillary Swank, a plucky, gosh-darned-don’t-that-girl-have-heart boxer-wannabe from the wrong side of the tracks, who’s burdened with the scariest, goofiest redneck family this side of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. (And don’t even get me started on Cletus, or Forrest, or Danger, or whatever that gimpy kid’s name was.) Soon enough, plucky Swank has even managed to thaw the heart of frosty ole Clint, and together they make that long-awaited title run, until…ack!

Like I said, MDB was ok enough as a hammy diversion, but I’d say its emotional resonance wasn’t too far removed from the Touched By an Angel melodrama of last week’s The Jacket. It’s a by-the-numbers boxing movie that turns into a by-the numbers Lifetime movie-of-the-week. Sure, the acting is polished across the board, but I thought the characters were for the most part shallow and cartoonish. (In fact, Morgan Freeman is barely even playing a character — he’s a Shawshank voiceover tinged with a touch of Bagger Vance.) And the plot barely holds together — I’m sorry, but, Evander Holyfield’s ear notwithstanding, you’re just not going to get away with that many sucker punches in a title fight.

I’m probably being a bit too hard on this flick — it made for a reasonably engaging two hours, sure. Perhaps it even works as an homage to the Hollywood of yore — at times this felt like a Karl Malden vehicle from 50 years ago. But, simply put, this was in no way the best film of last year — I’ll take Eternal Sunshine, The Aviator, Sideways, The Incredibles and a host of others over MDB any day of the week and twice on Sunday. This isn’t even the best Clint film in recent years – Mystic River was much more well-realized, and obviously Unforgiven is head-and-shoulders above this drek. How MDB won the Oscar bout is beyond me…Call McCain — the fix was in.

King of the Underworld

Despite feeling kinda rotten, I did venture out to the movies on Saturday night (armed with a hefty bag of throat lozenges) for an impromptu double feature. At the top of the bill was James Cameron’s IMAX extravaganza Aliens of the Deep and, all I can say is, if Cameron wants to make Battle Angel Alita using this funky 3-D technology, hail to the King. Granted, I haven’t seen a 3-D movie since the days before Captain Eo. Nevertheless, the effect was much improved, and made what could have been a staid underwater documentary comprised of what look to be outtakes from The Abyss into a riveting, jaw-dropping wonder.

I’ll admit, I was also fond of Cameron’s central conceit here, which is that our best bet for finding life in this solar system — at Europa, say — would be of the kind inexplicably thriving around thermal vents in the darkest, deepest parts of the ocean, where the sun never shines (and thus photosynthesis never takes place.) And what strange life it is! Innumerable swarming shrimp scuttle between ice-cold and boiling-hot water with nary an antenna twitch. Strange symbiotic tube worms ensnare food for their inner bacteria, which digests for them. Ethereal jellyfish float by, improbably yet undeniably alive. And, thanks to the 3-D, it seems you can reach out and touch all of these creatures just before your eyes — in fact, you can see them better in their natural habitat than any human being possibly could. It’s really quite amazing.

Like I said, I don’t know if Aliens of the Deep would be everyone’s cup of tea — most of the film just involves young astrobiologists and underwater explorers enthusing over their wild and crazy jobs in tiny little subs. But, whenever a strange new animal popped up on the screen, and particuarly when the camera hurtles past the moons of Jupiter on its CGI-way to far-flung Europa, I thought to myself, “Now, that’s Edutainment!”

No Jacket Required.

Attentive observers of the sidebar might have noticed that I caught The Jacket over the weekend. If I don’t write about it now, I just might forget it completely. Amiable enough as a genre exercise, The Jacket is ultimately a fluffy, ephemeral B-flick. While containing elements of Jacob’s Ladder, 12 Monkeys, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, it ends up falling somewhere between an average episode of Quantum Leap and any episode of Touched by an Angel.

The story doesn’t make much sense, even by the liberal standards one must accord time travel tales. But here goes: After befriending a small child and her mother (Kelly Lynch, looking haggard) along the side of the road, recent Gulf War vet Jack Starks (Adrien Brody, better than the material deserves) manages through a series of unfortunate events to get himself locked up in a mental institution somewhere in what looks to be Stephen King’s Maine. At this asylum, despite the concerns of the resident Good Doctor (Jennifer Jason Leigh, not HST), the staff Bad Doctor (Kris Kristofferson, grizzled-as-ever) insists on pumping patients like Brody and Daniel Craig (crazier here than Rhys Ifans was in Enduring Love) full of drugs and locking them in a morgue cabinet for hours at a time. During one of these sessions, Brody’s Starks finds he can visit “the future” (2007), where he encounters the girl he met by the side of the road…all grown up, Knightley-esque, and troubled to the core (you can tell she’s troubled, I presume, because her mouth is open all the time — Knightley pulls off a decent American accent, but that’s about it.)

Got all that? Well, if it doesn’t make sense on the page, it doesn’t do much better on screen, and there are several more narrative jags to go. I don’t want to give the ending away, because that’s all there really is here, but it has very little to do with the first half of the film, in either tone or content. What begins as a dark psychological thriller — the audience spends a lot of time as a mote in Brody’s eye while he writhes and whimpers in the dark — becomes a rather saccharine (and creepy, given Brody and Knightley’s first meeting) romance along the lines of Always. All in all, The Jacket looks menacing but turns out to be harmless — I guess it might make for a decent enough afternoon rental if you’re bored enough. (And here’s one last tip, Brody, next time you find you can travel back and forth through time, think Biff in Back to the Future II.)

Let Me Clear My Throat.

As both a path-breaking porno flick and a Nixon-felling secret informant, it may have been surprisingly successful. But, unfortunately, as a documentary, the one-sided Inside Deep Throat is a superfluous and self-congratulatory tale that’s more frustrating than fulfilling. Forgoing any attempt at analytic rigor, the movie seems designed mainly to make the audience feel enlightened and blue-state cosmopolitan just for showing up. The most you can say for it is that it’s Kinsey without the nuance.

In the opening moments, the documentary tries to establish its serious pedigree with a motley crew of left-leaning talking heads remembering their “first time” at Deep Throat: Norman Mailer, Erica Jong, Camille Paglia, Bill Maher, Dick Cavett (looking very well-preserved), Hef, Gore Vidal, John Waters, etc. Ok, so far, so good. But, then the interminably smug Dennis Hopper voiceover kicks in, and the movie begins its slow lurch into irredeemable goofiness.

By the end, that lurch has become a full-on tailspin. The upshot of the film seems to be this: Deep Throat was no mere skin flick. It was about art, freedom, liberating female sexuality, and breaking restrictive social barriers…in short, it was about America.(Conversely, all subsequent porn, particularly in the post-Boogie Nights VHS-era, has been about commerce, exploitation, degradation, and, well, you know.) Moreover, the release of Deep Throat marked an epochal moment in the burgeoning culture wars, and this movie leaves no doubt which side it’s on — various would-be moral arbiters straight out of right-wing central casting are interviewed at times, and naturally they all make Ken Starr look like Larry Flynt. Meanwhile, the admittedly-dubious conviction of Deep Throat-star Harry Reems is treated like the worst threat to constitutional liberty in decades, a cross between the Hollywood Ten and the trial of Sir Thomas More.

While I think Deep Throat‘s artistic merits are vastly overrated here — it’s a ludicrous porno that improbably tapped into the zeitgeist and fell ass-backwards into crossover appeal, no more, no less — I’m generally sympathetic to the case being made in this documentary about First Amendment freedoms and the snickering, adolescent way our culture handles adult sexuality most of the time. But Inside Deep Throat‘s bullheadedly partisan and hyperbolic tone does a disservice to its central arguments. In other words, like the stereotype of the industry it sought to illuminate, Inside Deep Throat turned out to be breathless and brainless…you’d probably be better off watching whatever’s on Skinemax.