“I can do anything I want. And so can you.” So, with or without Frank the Bunny, I went to catch Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut Friday afternoon. While still very enjoyable, a lot of the fun of the film (reviewed earlier here) is in not knowing what exactly you’re in for, so the movie admittedly does lose a step after another viewing. And, like the official website, the Director’s Cut has a Midichlorian problem…elements of the film that are better left unexplained are now laid over with pages from Grandma Death’s time travel tome. As a result, some of the more memorable scenes (particularly the “Mad World” montage at the end) suffer. Still, if you haven’t seen DD (or, like me, saw it only on DVD), it’s a genre-bending marvel that’s definitely worth checking out on the big screen. (The film now also includes the deleted scenes from the DVD, such as the excised Watership Down subplot, and several shots of a 2001-esque eyeball, as seen in the trailer.)
Tag: GitM Reviews
Siege Perilous.
Well, in some other movie Clive Owen would’ve made a really great King Arthur. And he’s definitely very watchable here as the lead in the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced King Arthur. But this project basically feels like a Gladiator meets Tears of the Sun retread, and, aside from the characters’ names, it has very little to do with the Arthurian legend. I’d say the film’s probably better than you’ve heard, but still somewhat disappointing. Workmanlike, but ultimately rather drab.
I must say, I really can’t get my mind around the current trend in epic movie-making. After the wild success of PJ’s LotR, it should be a no-brainer: You can’t tell The Iliad without the gods, and you can’t do justice to the story of King Arthur without sorcerers, enchantments, love triangles or the Holy Grail. Demystify the legend and you end up with…well, I guess you end up with what you have here, which is a lot of grunting and flying arrows and bad hair days along Hadrian’s Wall. Admittedly, I liked the realistic take of a film like The Alamo, but it just seems unnecessary here (particularly when the “realism” portrayed involves 5th century Abu Ghreibs and an Arthur who’s a good 1000 years ahead of the times on the political philosophy front.)
As I said, Clive Owen is pretty solid, though, and he helps his case here as the next James Bond. Keira Knightley is passable given the material, although every time I see her now I can’t help but think of Winona Ryder and a quote by Bilbo Baggins (“I feel thin — sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”) Ioan Gruffudd’s performance as Lancelot was also derailed by my terminal fanboyisms, as I spent most of his screentime trying — and failing — to remove his facial hair and picture him as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic. And the rest of the knights? Well, they’re a dirty, ragged bunch, but Ray Winstone (of Sexy Beast) and Ray Stevenson stand out as Sir Bors and Sir Deadduck respectively. Mention must also be made of a Tom Waits-voiced Stellan Skarsgard as the Saxon Big Bad, who gets off a quality zinger about Anglo-Saxon interbreeding, and who is the only person who seems to be having any fun in this project.
All in all, I suppose this movie is solid enough if you’re looking for a decently well-done entry in the long line of period war movies we’ve had of late. But, if your thoughts on King Arthur run towards Camelot, the Lady in the Lake, Morgan le Fey, or even the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, you might want to wait for the next iteration of the story (or just go rent Excalibur.)
Excelsior.
Here he comes, watch out bud. He’s got genetically engineered blood…and a frozen run of bad luck like you read about. After a series of underwhelming summer films so far, Spiderman 2 is a happy surprise, and a distinct improvement on the decent original (#6). After an up-and-down first outing, both Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire (as well as the gaggle of writers on board, among them Michael Chabon) have clearly settled into the rhythm of Peter Parker’s struggle-filled existence, and the result is the most enjoyable and faithful comic book adaptation this side of X2.
Besides the renewed sense of confidence on display, Spidey 2 is already four tentacles up on its predecessor thanks to both Alfred Molina and the production design of Doc Ock. While Willem Defoe seemed like a great idea for the Goblin, he came off way too hammy in the final product, and that stupid mask eliminated most of his strengths as an actor anyway. Here, however, Otto Octavius is realized to perfection, and as such every fight between Ock and Spidey (particularly the sequence at the bank) carries the visceral thrill of seeing a comic book come to life. (Plus, nobody does evil demented appendages quite like Sam Raimi.) And, if that wasn’t grist enough for the fanboy mill, J.K. Simmons gets to chew the scenery unabashedly again as J. Jonah Jameson, and there’s plenty of nods to the webslinger’s considerable rogues’ gallery, including GG II, the Lizard, and — digging real deep in the well — the Man-Wolf.
Problems? Sure, there’s a few. Kirsten Dunst still screams Gwen Stacy, but makes for a rather implausible MJ. (Y’all webheads out there know what I mean.) As my brother pointed out, Spidey should be quicker with the quip…it’s half of his battle strategy and most of his charm. Most of the saving-the-train sequence, from Tobey’s uber-clenched look to the Passion of the Spider ending, was just plain goofy (and why fashion this elevated train sequence anyway? Spidey lives in NYC, not Gotham City or Metropolis, and the writers should’ve stuck to the real Big Apple.) And perhaps some of the longer heartfelt speeches (Aunt May’s in particular) were overdone. All in all, though, Spidey 2 is a rollicking success, one that gives me hope that Marvel’s movie run may not be over quite yet. Now how we’re doing with FF…?
Turning up the heat.
Well, I’m a bit behind on this one, but I finally got out of the apartment to catch Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 yesterday afternoon. And the verdict? Well, it’s undoubtedly an extremely powerful piece of cinema. And, judging from the reactions of the afternoon crowd, it looks as if it might do some real good in crystallizing popular discontent with the Bush administration outside of the blog-world echo chamber. Still, even though I know Moore is playing by the rules set by right-wing freak shows like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, I found myself wishing at times that he had played F911 a little straighter. Simply put, Dubya and his cronies are guilty of so much blatant incompetence and documentable malfeasance that it’s disappointing that Moore feels he has to rely on cheapshots and push-button emotions some of the time.
If you’ve been keeping up with pretty much any lefty blog since 2000 (including this one), the central and most powerful allegations made here — that Dubya and the Neocons played bait-and-switch on the American people in Iraq and used 9/11 as a pretext for all kinds of terrible legislation, while doing pathetically little to minimize the actual threat of terrorism — will not come as a surprise. Still, when the data is laid out before you here like ducks in a row, from the Florida fiasco in 2000 through to the recent stonewalling of the 9/11 commission a few weeks ago, the continued pattern of incompetence and mendacity that has characterized this administration becomes unmistakably clear. As the story unfolds, Moore offers plenty of intriguing footage — Bush’s 7 minutes of Pet Goat superfluousness may perhaps be overemphasized by now, but it’s still out-and-out eerie. Equally damning is footage of Dubya at the ranch a month prior to 9/11, in which he has absolutely no clue what his agenda is for the day and, whatsmore, doesn’t seem to much care (particularly when contrasted with his obvious enthusiasm for armadillos exhibited a few scenes later.)
But while there are plenty of blows landed, I ultimately thought that Fahrenheit 9/11 would have been much more impressive if it had focused more closely on the facts and avoided the more obvious attempts at sentiment. For example, instead of examining in detail the clear civil liberties transgressions occurring at the Gitmo Gulag and elsewhere under the Patriot Act, or noting the discrepancies in its enforcement (no gun checks?) under Attorney General-cum-balladeer John Ashcroft, Moore spends too much time interviewing an aging weightlifter and various Fresno peace activists — all of whom have run afoul of goofy anti-terrorist inquiries — for laughs. Similarly, instead of talking about Dubya’s spiking of the Nunn-Lugar act or his continued cutting of First Responder funding, the film dinks around Western Oregon with two underfunded deputies – as a result, I thought the larger point about Bush’s failure to protect the homeland was lost.
As the film moves overseas, the problems with F911 become more evident. Regarding the war in Afghanistan, Moore talks about a proposed UNOCAL pipeline to the exclusion of virtually anything else, which I think invites charges of shrillness (Exhibit A: The Bonanza riff) and blurs one of the most serious charges against this administration – that it gave up a chance to catch Osama Bin Laden in order to play regime change in Iraq. Speaking of Baghdad, I think Moore would have done better to talk more about missing WMD and lies to the UN and spent less time with Lila Lipscomb, the mother of a deceased US soldier. This last section of the film is undeniably powerful, but it also feels extremely manipulative, particularly as it’s hard to envision very many situations where a mother’s grief wouldn’t be harrowing to behold. (The same goes for the grisly scenes of charred bodies and horrifically wounded Iraqi children.)
Still, what do I know? Perhaps Fahrenheit 9/11 needs these human touches to get its point across to a larger audience, a goal which it so far seems to be accomplishing with great aplomb. The fact is, Michael Moore can undoubtedly be a blowhard with grating populist pretensions, but if we had any semblance of a functioning national media these days, Fahrenheit 9/11 would have been a non-event. In the absence of anything like an independently critical television press, and given the existence of such a well-oiled, well-funded right-wing propaganda machine these days, perhaps somebody out there had to co-opt conservative talk-radio techniques to get the message out. I’m more of a “destroy the ring” than a “use the ring” kinda guy, but, as I said, what do I know? I could write in this space a hundred times over and still never reach an infinitesimal fraction of the people who will see this film and be newly angered by the idiotic and unethical behavior of this administration.
In short, if a picture is worth a 1000 words, this film is worth 10,000 blogs – by stringing so many of the Bush-bashing beads together in such entertaining and moving fashion, Fahrenheit 9/11 should bring the heart of the anti-Dubya critique right to the Heartland. I just wish it had covered its flank a little better by sticking to the cold, hard facts about the national embarrassment of historic proportions that is George W. Bush, rather than indulging every so often in cheap laughs and reflexive sentiment.
Beat Box Bjork/The Beasties Bash Bush.
On her upcoming album Medulla, due out at the end of the summer, Bjork goes acapella (with the aid of The Roots’ Rahzel and Faith No More’s Mike Patton.)
Found while perusing the five star RS review of the all-new (and very old skool) Beastie Boys album, To the Five Boroughs, which is very much both a post-9/11 ode to NYC and a virulently anti-Dubya album (“Put a quarter in your ass, ’cause you played yourself.”) As has been the case since Ill Communication, MCA gets a bit too preachy at times (For example, “We’ve got a president we didn’t elect/The Kyoto treaty he decided to neglect” on “Time to Build,” or “Never again should we use the A-bomb/We need an international ban on/All W.O.M.D’s gone/We need a multilateral disarm.” on “We’ve Got The.”)
Nevertheless, I think the new Beasties project is a success, redeemed by (1) the catchy mid-eighties beats and samples (Check out “Rhyme the Rhyme Well”) and (2) the unleashing of the B’s perennial secret weapon, the King Ad Rock, who seems to be having more fun in the game than the other two guys by miles. (For example, “Yo, what the falafel/You gotta get up awful early to fool Mr. Furley“ on “Oh Word”, or when he channels a mean Smooth B on “Crawl Space.”) You already know by now if the Beasties are your bag, so if you want Licensed to Ill-era beats with Hello Nasty rhymes, To the 5 Boroughs is worth picking up. But, one word of warning from “3 the Hard Way”: “If you sell our CD’s on Canal before we make ’em, then we will have no alternative but to serve you on a platter like Steak-umm“) Hey, don’t say you didn’t know.
Riddickulous.
(I know, that pun’s been made everywhere – still it applies.) I neglected to mention last update that I saw the truly terrible Chronicles of Riddick last Friday. Between this and the just ever so slightly worse Van Helsing, there seem to be some considerable quality control issues over at Universal Pictures these days.
Life’s too short to spend a lot of copy on this flick, so I’ll keep it brief. I generally like Vin Diesel, I thought Pitch Black was an enjoyable, low-key B-movie, and I liked the first 80 minutes or so of David Twohy’s submarine ghost movie Below. But The Chronicles of Riddick doesn’t make a lick of sense…it’s just a lot of glamour poses and wrestling moves. The only thing that stands out is the goofy, over-the-top art direction, which comes off as a pastiche of David Lynch’s Dune, the Joel Schumacher Batman movies, and the video to Duran Duran’s “Union of the Snake.” There’s a long, drawn-out, and unnecessary sequence in the middle of the film where Riddick and his motley band of Road Warrior castoffs are trying to outrun the fatal sunrise of the planet Crematoria, and, frankly, I haven’t seen something so nonsensical in a movie since Keanu Reeves outraced an atomic blast wave in Chain Reaction. (Ok, I never saw Chain Reaction, but you get the point.) Simply put, this film is embarrassing to all involved and will probably give I, Robot and The Stepford Wives a serious run for their money as the worst science fiction film of 2004.
Prisoner of the Medium?
During my cable outage, I caught the long-awaited Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban last weekend, and as hoped, Alfonso Cuaron’s version of Hogwarts far outshines the staid and two-dimensional previous outings by Chris Columbus. Unlike Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban contains tons of small witty flourishes (the bus conductor, housekeeping, and the bald assistant, to name just a few in the first twenty minutes) that finally bring both magic and realism to Harry’s world. For once, Hogwarts seems like an actual boarding school where kids live, work, play, and goof around eating animal-noise chocolates, rather than just the largest blue-screen-equipped castle in the British Isles. And, unlike the first two, this movie feels cinematic – the camera swoops, cranes, and dollys like a camera should. Heck, even Quidditch was exciting this time.
But, despite the directorial skill on display here, Prisoner eventually runs aground on the inherent unfilmability of the source material. Rowling’s books are joys to read partly because they’re so episodic and incident-driven. But what works wonders in writing seems long and needlessly expository on film. For example, the scene where Wormtail is unmasked in the Shrieking Shack, great on the page, didn’t resonate at all here, even in spite of the prodigious talents of Spall, Thewlis, Oldman, Rickman, and the kids. (Although I’ll go ahead and say it – Gary Oldman seemed like a good idea as Sirius Black, but he’s miscast. He played it entirely too crazy at first, and never really warmed to Harry thereafter.) As a book the denouement of Prisoner was intriguing, but as a film, it feels like twenty-five minutes of a Back to the Future 2 retread. And, since certain crucial details from the book are missing (such as the origins of the Marauder’s Map), the movie paradoxically feels both too long and too abbreviated.
Not to end on so dour a note, there’s a lot to like here. Michael Gambon’s wry Dumbledore is a considerable improvement over the late Richard Harris, Robbie Coltrane finally looks appropriately huge as Hagrid, the Dementors are both creepy and un-Nazgulish, and all the adults acquit themselves well, particularly Emma Thompson as Trelawney. Plus, the kids have grown into the roles and, while they still can’t emote very well, they can churn out exposition like the best of ’em. Who knows? Perhaps I’m becoming muggle-hearted, but I spent much of the last ninety minutes of Cuaron’s otherwise splendid Prisoner of Azkaban counting off the remaining plot points that had to be explained. Still, given that Goblet of Fire is twice as long and is being headed by Mike Newell, who’s never made a movie that’s impressed me very much, this may just be the closest we get to capturing the spirit and magic of Harry Potter on film. Until then, I’ll be waiting for Book VI.
Ogling the Ogres.
I was remiss in noting in my last update that I — like most of America — caught Shrek 2 over last weekend. Not much to say about it really…I thought it was as entertaining, eye-popping, and effervescent as the first outing, if ultimately somewhat insubstantial. I enjoyed myself while Shrek was on, then promptly forgot about it, but what more can you really expect?
Antonio Banderas as Puss-in-Boots (at left) was a quality pickup for the franchise, and I particularly liked the COPS takeoff and anything involving the blind mice. Still, if I have a beef with Shrek 2, it’s mainly that the movie wouldn’t stop trying to sell me the associated soundtrack of easy listening tunes and contemporary standards. Enough already! I prefer my fairy tale adventures without merchandising tie-ins…there’s only so many Versarchery, Farbucks and Old Knavery jokes one can make before the film feels complicit in the commercialism it’s sending up. But, that’s the ogre talking…All in all, Shrek 2 is 100 minutes of solid escapism, which is more than you can say for a lot of films so far this summer.
Freaks and Greeks.
Well, with Wolfgang Petersen, Tyler Durden, Eric Bana, Brian Cox, Brendan Gleeson, and Sean Bean, among others, I had high hopes beforehand that Troy would be the gem of this summer movie season, a film that built on LotR‘s recent success in using solid ensemble acting and state-of-the-art technology to bring classic works of epic literature to the screen as never before. Alas, those hopes have been dashed on the plains of battle like so many CGI Greeks. To be fair, though, Troy may not be one for the ages — in fact, it’s probably only a very small step above the Gladiator movies frequented by Captain Peter Graves in Airplane! — but I’d say it’s still a reasonably entertaining two and a half hours, as summer movies go, and a far cry better than last week’s monstrous Van Helsing, once you lower your expectations suitably.
I only knew the Edith Hamilton cliffnotes-version of the The Iliad coming into Troy (I know, I know, it’s on my summer reading list), so the many changes to the story, such as the fates of Menelaus and Agamemnon, the removal of the Gods, or the addition of the equestrian ending, honestly didn’t weigh on me all that much. Still, I knew enough to find myself waiting for the next shoe to drop through almost every scene of this almost three-hour movie, which I’d say reflects pretty badly on the film here. It’s well-made, to be sure, and it’s got great production values, although even I’m starting to sour on ridiculously-large-CGI-army fighting at this point (I think you hear me knocking, King Arthur.) One would think that a movie based on The Iliad should be at least somewhat enthralling, but I found myself detached and slightly distracted during much of the film. More than anything else, give or take the occasional monologue or well-executed mano a mano, Troy just felt long.
Is it the actors’ fault? No, I don’t think so…more the wooden dialogue. Still, the acting is hit or miss. Brad Pitt tries hard here, but frankly he could make 100 more movies and he’d still always remind me of Tyler Durden now. Similarly, it’s hard not to think of Legolas when Orlando Bloom, mostly convincing as pretty-boy Paris, starts showing off the archery skills again. As Agamemnon, Brian Cox is more hammy and over the top here than he was in The Ring and X2 combined – it’s like he’s channeling Anthony Hopkins in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. On the opposing side, Peter O’Toole adds a touch of class as King Priam of Troy, although with his goofy mane, gaunt cheekbones, and still-piercing blue eyes, I spent most of the movie remarking to myself his now-eerie resemblance to Berkeley. And Brendan Gleeson and Sean Bean, Menelaus and Odysseus respectively, don’t have all that much to do (pending the sequel, of course.) As it turns out, the standout performance turns out to be Eric Bana, who, despite having an Aussie accent quite unlike that of his brother Paris, shows much more personality and verve here than he did in The Hulk or Black Hawk Down. (Hector’s still no Chopper, though.)
In sum, Troy is a decent summer movie, I guess…probably more worth seeing than any other studio flick this side of Eternal Sunshine. But, given the quality of the source material and the money being spent here, it really had the potential to be a good deal more than just an intermittently engaging sword-and-sandal flick. That it’s not feels like a letdown, no matter how Troy works as two hours of escapism. So, as Homer himself might’ve put it, “D’oh!”
Dead on Arrival.
Writer-director Stephen Sommers had best lock his doors at night, ’cause I have a feeling a very angry and very dead Peter Cushing may just be thinking of paying him a visit. Some movies are bad-funny, others are bad-bad…However much it may seem like one of the former from the previews, Van Helsing emphatically falls in the latter category. This movie is so loud, dumb, and nonsensical that it makes Kate Beckinsale’s last vampire movie seem like The Shining. In short, I’m ashamed that my ten+ bucks helped this godawful piece of claptrap make $54.2 million over the weekend.
What else is there to say, really? One of the early AICN reviews summed Van Helsing up as a “big, gawdy, dumb disaster,” and I think that pretty well encapsulates it. Hugh Jackman, so promising as Wolverine, seems bored and distant. Kate Beckinsale and Richard Roxburgh duel it out for the lousiest accent this side of Don Cheadle in Ocean’s 11. David “Faramir” Wenham’s bookish friar sidekick might’ve worked in a different movie (John Hannah played the same part in The Mummy)…it doesn’t here. And the CGI throughout — particularly that of the Wolfman and Dracula’s demon incarnation — is cartoonish and terrible. We’re talking Hanna-Barbera .
But I guess you can’t fault the actors and FX guys too much for phoning in such a terrible script. After all, everyone’s forced to chew out extended passages of completely clunky exposition, except during the long, interminable bouts of rope-swinging. The amount of time CGI characters spend swinging, flying, or falling in this film (with the camera invariably positioned just behind their CGI shoulder, so as to complete the roller-coaster effect, I guess) is flat-out ridiculous, and particularly given that the laws of physics never seem to once apply. And the denouement — which takes forever and a day to finally happen after all the flying, swinging, and falling — makes no sense in a number of ways. (How long is midnight again?) Trust me, Van Helsing is as terrible as you’ve heard…Abandon all hope all ye who enter here.