A Frigid, Starry Peak.

Well, I haven’t read the Charles Frazier novel, but I’d say “Cold Mountain” is an apt and colorful metaphor to sum up this film, its stars, and even its director’s entire body of work. For like Nicole Kidman and Jude Law, and as with The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley, Cold Mountain is beautiful but distant, occasionally breathtaking but often chilly, and not so much high as just plain stilted. In fact, the hike up and down this Cold Mountain includes definite moments of grandeur, but more often than not it feels like a bit of a slog. At times, it’s even glacial.

I should say up front that this is a far better Confederate-centered Civil War film than the vile Gods and Generals. The chaos and carnage of the Battle of the Crater that opens the film seems much more real and visceral than anything in the godawful G&G. Whatsmore, the historical aspects of Mountain generally feel right (In fact, much of the film seems like a fictionalization of Drew Gilpin Faust’s Mothers of Invention, which vividly describes how the lives of Southern women were transformed by the war experience and the collapse of the Confederate patriarchy.)

Unfortunately, the respectable versimilitude of the film keeps getting undermined by the wattage of its star power. From Stalingrad to Petersburg, nobody in the business does starving-but-handsome-and-resolute-warrior as well as Jude Law these days, and he’s quite good here despite the frequent accent-slippage. But, frankly, Nicole Kidman feels all wrong here. It’s not that she’s bad per se, it’s just that, like her ex-husband in 19th-century Japan three weeks ago, she never seems like she fits this milieu at all. (It doesn’t help that she spends most of the end of the film in an outdoor outfit that looks Banana Republic-coordinated.) Finally, others have noted the lack of chemistry between Law and Kidman, and I too thought the central romance here was rather uninvolving.

But, even if the two leads’ remarkable frigidity wasn’t distracting enough, Law and Kidman are just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, in the spirit of the film, I’ll go ahead and torture this metaphor even further…Perhap sensing that the romantic low burn here might be too dim a fire to heat the screen for 150 minutes, Anthony Minghella has packed Cold Mountain so full of stars and cameos that it starts to feel like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. From Lucas Black getting bayonetted in the opening minutes to Jack White procuring cider at the very end (in yet another of Minghella’s quintessentially ham-handed symbolic moments, but I’ll get to that later), famous faces keep appearing around every corner of the poor, white backcountry South, and it took me out of the movie almost every time. Basically, I found it hard to become engrossed in the film when I kept thinking things like “So, that’s what Kathy Baker‘s been up to…she got married to the manager from Major League,” “James Rebhorn‘s his doctor? He’s toast,” “Well, Jena Malone didn’t last very long,” “and “Hey, that’s Cillian Murphy. Between him and Brendan Gleeson, this is like a sequel to 28 Days Later…um, except it has no zombies and it’s set in the Civil War South.”

Ok, perhaps that’s an unfair criticism, but I’d think even people who don’t go to the movies much are going to be distracted by all the Hollywood faces flitting about. I should say while I’m on the subject that Brendan Gleeson is very good (as always) here – Not only does he handle the accent like a champ, but he conveys more emotion in one winsome smile or knowing grimace than many of the central characters do the entire film. As for other good performances…Despite lugging around a baby that’s as big as she is, Natalie Portman proves here that she can still act when not forced in front of a bluescreen. (By the way, after the Portman episode, why didn’t Inman take one of the Union horses?) Giovanni Ribisi moves into the frontrunning for the Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel biopic. And, Renee Zellweger…well, she moons and mugs through this film like a Best Supporting Actress award was her birthright, but she still gives Cold Mountain a very-much-needed jolt in the arm every time she shows up. (She’s particularly energetic when compared to the staid Kidman.)

On the flip side of the coin, somebody should’ve told Donald Sutherland that different parts of the South call for different accents…he sounds miles away from a Charlestonian. And Phillip Seymour Hoffman, perhaps the best thing about Minghella’s Ripley, is perhaps the worst thing about Cold Mountain. Completely unconvincing in his role here, he’s a walking, talking anachronism.

All the unnecessary star voltage aside, of course, this movie eventually rises and falls on its director, and all of Anthony Minghella’s strengths and weaknesses are present here. (I should say that I loathed The English Patient and enjoyed Ripley until Jude Law was killed, after which the film meandered to its conclusion.) Both Patient and Ripley have some very beautiful and striking moments, but more often than not the imagery is so “artfully” composed as to become hamhanded. The same goes here for Mountain…we’ve got a lamb running around in wolf’s clothing, we’ve got a dove trapped in a church until Jude Law sets it free (you do the math)…in fact, we have enough fluttering, portentous birds on a wing here to make John Woo blush. Perhaps these capital-S Symbols are in Frazier’s novel too, but I’d still think a subtler director could have mined them more dexterously. And, while I didn’t know the ending coming in, Minghella foreshadows the conclusion so laboriously (even having Kidman break it down step-by-step to Zellweger) that I spent the last twenty-five minutes just waiting for the other shoe to drop, which killed any real emotion I might’ve felt about the denouement.

Looking back, I’ve been pretty harsh here, so I should repeat that Cold Mountain is not a bad film at all. In many ways, it’s quite good. But, Oscar buzz notwithstanding, it’s definitely not great…in fact, I even found it less involving than The Last Samurai. In the future, were I looking to recommend a film that captures the despair and devastation afflicting the Confederate homefront in the waning days of the war, I just might pick Cold Mountain. But, as for attempts to give The Odyssey a Faulknerian palmetto-and-spanish-moss recasting, give me O Brother Where Art Thou? any day of the week.

Foggy Winter.

If you can stand being bombarded by endless slo-mo shots of dropping ordnance set to a Phillip Glass pulse, The Fog of War, the new Errol Morris documentary about and extended interview with former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, makes for an interesting evening out. Despite the heavy saturation on screen, there are no real historical bombshells dropped here — The movie doesn’t aim to muckrake a la The Trials of Henry Kissinger, and the picture you get of Vietnam-era McNamara is the same one you’d find in a book like Robert Schulzinger’s A Time for War: Publicly optimistic, McNamara seems deeply cognizant from early on that Vietnam will be a quagmire, but he — like LBJ and almost all of the foreign policy establishment — are too blinded by the fear of falling dominoes to consider withdrawal as a viable option. (McNamara does add fuel to the fire here that Kennedy wanted a full withdrawal by 1965. I guess if anyone would know, he would, but the books I’ve read don’t really bear this out.)

Nor do we ever seem to get under McNamara’s skin here — he remains intelligent and composed throughout, deflecting the tougher questions about Vietnam with a practiced ease. Still, McNamara, a surprisingly spry 86, does offer us some intriguing (and occasionally self-serving) reminiscences here about his experiences in the corridors of power, from his assessment that the Cuban Missile Crisis was defused mainly by simple, dumb luck to his thoughts on the morality of civilian fire-bombing, which he efficiency-maximized for Curtis LeMay during WWII.

As a documentary, The Fog of War sometimes gets clouded by its own cinematic devices — to take just one example, there’s a shot of dominoes across a map of Asia that is striking at first but fast becomes overused. And the continual Phillip Glass cascading over falling bombs and rushing people had me thinking of Koyaanisqatsi outtakes a lot of the time. In sum, the film works best when it’s simply an engaging monologue by an intelligent, evasive, and often frustrating Cold Warrior as he muses over a life perhaps not-so-well lived.

Many Happy Returns.

Wow. If you haven’t seen Return of the King yet, go now. If you have seen it, see it again…There’s so much going on that the film, as great as it is the first time, improves vastly with a second viewing. The rest of this post is going to be full of huge, major spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the movie yet, come back here in three hours and twenty minutes, give or take.

I went into my second viewing of RotK knowing I already liked it better than TTT (which I also thought was superb) and wondering if it was better or just equal to FotR. By the end, I had decided the question was moot. On one hand, Fellowship and King are two very different films: the former a road-trip, men-on-a-mission travelogue of Middle Earth, the latter a full-on, apocalyptic war movie. On the other hand, Fellowship, Towers and King are the same movie, the three chapters of what has to be considered the best ten-hour film ever made.

So, in short, I loved it. As in the past two years, my inordinately high expectations were met, even surpassed. Of course, I had some problems with the film (which I’ll get to in a bit), but I’d be doing PJ & co. a great disservice if I didn’t make it emphatically clear that the positives far outweigh the negatives. In that spirit, some of the stuff I really liked:

Fear and Loathing in Minas Tirith: I thought one of the biggest surprises of RotK was seeing PJ’s background in horror films come to the fore. To take just one example, one of my major concerns going in was that Shelob wouldn’t seem qualitatively different from your average Kong-sized monster (for example, the Watcher in the Water in Fellowship.) After building Her Ladyship up since the end of Towers, it was crucial that She seem more ancient and malevolent than anything Frodo and Sam had yet faced, with the possible exception of the Balrog. And, while I think her lair was too brightly lit (there’s not much point in having the light of Earendil if we can already see around the place), Shelob seemed just as cunning and dastardly as I’d hoped. (It was also a nice touch for PJ to have a little fun wth the purists, and make it seem Frodo had escaped.)

From cascading heads to Grond to the pyre of Denethor to everything having to do with Minas Morgul and the Witch-King, PJ’s horror maven cred was put to great effect in Rotk and greatly enhanced the apocalyptic dread necessary to make the third book work. In fact, I thought Jackson made a great decision to place one of the most chilling moments in the movie right at the beginning. “We even forgot our own name…”

The Tides of War: Another concern I had going in was that Jackson would short-shrift Tolkien’s characters in favor of long, drawn-out, and indistinguishable battle sequences. And, while some might think this is in fact the case (no Houses of Healing, for example), I was surprised by how engaging the battle scenes turned out. When you think about it, Pelennor Fields is written a lot like Helm’s Deep…a siege that, just when all seems hopeless, is turned by the arrival of the cavalry. But it is to Jackson’s credit that I not only found myself enthralled by the ever-changing course of combat but also oblivious to the memory of Helm’s Deep. There are plenty of searing images herein — the Ride of the Rohirrim (made sublime by the return of Howard Shore’s Rohan theme), the chunks of masonry flung from Minas Tirith, the berserker trolls leading the charge at the gate, the Nazgul air support diving down over the White City like Stuka bombers. Speaking of which, there’s a shot of a fell beast lunging for the head of one of Faramir’s retreating Gondorians that made me swing my head out of the way both times.

High Fidelity: One of the main reasons why I found RotK more enticing than TTT (other than the obvious plot resolution here) is that it seemed a return to Tolkien’s vision after the warg attack/Helm’s Deep-wallowing of TTT. (There are some notable exceptions, of course, which I’ll get to in a bit.) In particular, the Professor’s inimitable turns of phrase breathe through many more scenes here: “Did you think the eyes of the White Tower were blind?” “No tomb for Denethor and Faramir. No long, slow sleep of death embalmed. We will burn like the heathen kings of old.” “Come not between the Nazgul and his prey!” “Don’t go where I can’t follow.” “We set out to save the Shire, Sam, and it has been saved, but not for me.” Towers has its share of great Tolkien moments too, of course, but — as in Fellowship — I was continually reminded during King of how great the original books are, and how unique and absorbing Tolkien’s deliberately archaic prose can be.

The Crack of Doom and Beyond: “I’m glad you’re with me, Samwise Gamgee, here at the end of all things.” And, of course, there’s the payoff. While I thought Frodo and Sam hopped and skipped across Mordor entirely too quickly (I expect this will be rectified in the EE), I thought the failure of Frodo at the Sammath Naur was dramatized just about perfectly, right down to the evil smile on Frodo’s face and Gollum’s ecstatic Superbowl dance. As for the “too many endings” issue that seems to be a focal point of the criticism, I did feel it went on a bit long the first time (perhaps because it was nearing 3:30am by then), but thought it was paced very nicely the second time around. And, though the Scouring of the Shire (while critical to Tolkien’s narrative arc) seems justifiably expendable here, the film just couldn’t do without the Grey Havens. In fact, if anything, I thought Frodo should have been more recognizably damaged at the end of the film. He seemed all smiles at the Green Dragon and Sam’s wedding, which to me is something of a problem…I figured the idea, as befitting Tolkien’s “Lost Generation,” was that he never really made it back, and I don’t think this is emphasized enough in the film. Still, for the most part, I thought Jackson handled the resolution quite well, paying homage to the arch-Christian overtones of Frodo’s death and rebirth without necessarily wallowing in them.

Miscellany: The categories above just can’t do justice to all the moments and flourishes I loved about RotK. All of Smeagol/Gollum’s scenes were top-notch, even the film-added-framing of the fat one. I loved the dressing of the witch-king and his sonic scream atop Minas Morgul. The lighting of the beacons was great. Theoden seemed like he was missing a scene (he goes from anti-Gondor to pro-Gondor too quickly), but Bernard Hill was a standout (along with Billy Boyd’s Pippen and Sean Astin’s Sam…heck, everyone was good, except for a few minor players.) Minas Tirith was a marvel (and, unlike the too-small Edoras, seemed like a capital city.) Merry and Pippen at the gate of Isengard. “In fact, it’s probably best if you don’t speak at all, Peregrin Took.” Peter Jackson dolled up as a Corsair Captain. LotR: Return of the Moth. The angelic eagles come to rescue Frodo…

Well, I could go on for awhile here, but perhaps it’s time to accentuate the negative a bit.

Editing/Pacing: In the theatrical Fellowship, only one scene seemed cut all to hell, and that was Lothlorien. Here in Return of the King, though, the movie keeps eliding over cut moments in a way that can be seriously distracting. I’m not going to harp on this too much, because I expect a lot of this will be solved by the Extended Edition. But, still, it was clear here more than ever before that we weren’t seeing the whole story. How did Theoden change his mind about coming to Gondor’s aid? Why does Denethor talk about the “eyes of the White Tower” without showing his palantir? (For that matter, does Aragorn challenge Sauron in the palantir?) Why does the Witch-King claim he will “break” the white wizard without confronting him? (It was even in the trailer!) Why set up a head orc like Gothmog (Slothmog, the Elephant Man) and not show him killed? Where were the Easterlings (whom Frodo and Sam saw entering the Black Gate in TTT)? Why do Sam and Frodo get in and out of orc armor? How do they cross Mordor in a day? What happened to Eowyn and Faramir? Where was the Mouth of Sauron? Who’s wearing the three Elven Rings?

And so on and so on. I know PJ has to make some cuts for the theatrical version (although some might say that he’d have more time here if not for the warg attack/Aragorn’s fall in TTT), and some of the cuts — Voice of Saruman, the Scouring — just make cinematic sense. But others not only seem integral to Tolkien’s book but also integral to the story Jackson is telling here (particularly Denethor and the palantir.) Speaking of which…

The Steward of Gondor: I’m not going to complain too much about what’s not in the film until I’ve seen the EE. But, as for what’s actually in the film, Denethor is the biggest problem. I’ve never really been bothered about the changes made to Faramir (or, as the purist wags refer to him, Filmamir/Farfromthebookamir) in TTT…they heightened his dramatic arc. But I think Denethor kinda gets screwed here, and only in part because of the lack of palantir. John Noble is surprisingly good as the Steward, and does a great job with what he’s been given. But the single worst moment in the movie for me is Gandalf clocking Denethor to take over command of the White City. It’s goofy, it’s slapstick, and it cheapens both characters (Is all of Gondor really just going to stand around and let Gandalf exercise what is now basically a coup?) Similarly, I thought the pyre of Denethor was handled quite well until the last few moments, when Gandalf/Shadowfax kick Denethor to his doom!! That’s completely botched…Gandalf was trying to prevent Denethor’s suicide, but here he acts like the wizard Kevorkian. If the palantir is reintroduced in the EE, some of this is forgiven, but still…those two choices are the only times I was taken out of the film.

Miscellany: Not much in this department. I thought the whole Paths/Army of the Dead subplot was a deus ex machina and, as others have noted, Haunted Mansion goofy…but, y’know, that’s also a problem with Tolkien’s book. (I did like Stephen Hunter’s take on ’em here, though.) Very occasionally, one of the minor players came off like community theater (I’m thinking particularly of Shagrat (or is it Gorbag?), the orc who explains that the Shelob-stung Frodo isn’t dead.) As in TTT, we seem to spend a lot of time in Osgiliath, and perhaps some of it is unnecessary given the other cuts. Hugo Weaving has a Father of the Bride simper on his face at the coronation that’s completely un-Elrond-like. Um, yes, Legolas, we are talking about a diversion. Etc. etc.

But let’s not miss Fangorn for the Huorns. Return of the King is an amazing conclusion to a trilogy that’s surpassed all expectations and, I say this without hyperbole, redefined the medium — From the technical breakthrough of Gollum to the seamless intertwining of jaw-dropping FX and character-driven emotion throughout, these films have expanded our vision of the possible and set a new standard for epic filmmaking, one left by the wayside since the days of David Lean. I am eternally thankful to Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens, Alan Lee, John Howe, Richard Taylor, Barrie Osborne, Andrew Lesnie, and everyone else involved in The Lord of the Rings for making these films as good as they are. When so many eagerly-awaited movies have proven disappointments, perhaps none so glaring as the Star Wars prequels, it’s a beautiful thing that these films came along, surpassed even my extremely high expectations, and restored to me the type of cinematic thrill I once feared I might have grown out of. In sum, Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Return of the King — inarguably the best fantasy trilogy in the history of cinema — are a priceless gift not only to filmgoers and fantasy readers but to the memory and words of J.R.R. Tolkien himself, and it is one I will love and cherish until the end of my days.

It’s funny, though. I expected to suffer from some form of fanboy post-partum after seeing The Return of the King. But, in fact, I’m thrilled…I can now go see this movie any time I want to. And then there’s the Extended Edition to look forward to in November, and perhaps, some day in the not-so-distant future, The Hobbit (Being the tale of Bilbo Baggins and the Finding of the Ring of Power) will make the screen. Even after the end of all things, the road goes ever on.

Gasping for Air.

Well, having seen Big Fish the other night, I can safely say it’s better than 2001’s Planet of the Apes, and I enjoyed it more than 1999’s Sleepy Hollow. Still, I expected more from this most recent outing by Tim Burton. You’d think Burton would be the perfect guy to construct a tale of fantastical, overgrown whoppers, but half the time I was wondering, “Where’s the beef?”

It’s not the cast’s fault, really. Ewan McGregor is charming as ever in the lead (even if he and Jude Law seem to be in a dead heat as to which son of the Isles can strike the goofiest Southern accent this Christmas), Albert Finney is fine, Billy Crudup does what he can in a thankless role, and most if not all of the supporting players are solid.

But the writing…I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know how close it adheres to the original stories. But I thought the film was hit-or-miss and, well, episodic. Some of the fish tales, like Ed Bloom’s mission to Korea or his tear through his small town, are pretty funny and enjoyable. Others, like his sojourn in Spectre, go on for far too long. And others, like the secret in Danny DeVito’s trailer, never really get off the ground and seem throwaway.

Of course, the larger problem here is the saccharine nature of the whole project, which is particularly surprising given Burton’s normal talent for subversiveness. He’s always been good at creating dark, edgy, temperamental worlds (Beetlejuice, Nightmare before Christmas, Batmans 1&2), but somehow this sickly-sweet, frothy, straightforward story turned Tim Burton into Chris Columbus. Sure, the denouement of the film is moving in its own way, but only because Burton hits you over the head with hospital bed tearfulness and graveside eulogizing…I’m surprised he didn’t kill a puppy while he was at it.

In sum, the movie seems to be missing that imaginative spark I once expected from Burton. What could have been an imaginative Ed Wood-like fusion of the mainstream and the perverse ended up coming across as a rather bland and staid studio project (As Buck Henry might put it, “On Golden Pond meets O Brother Where Art Thou.”) The thing about Big Fish is, I didn’t dislike it in the end. I just ended up feeling rather ambivalent about it. Hopefully, Burton will bring more of his trademark minor-key mischievousness to the table in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Risky Business.

An angry and confused American man, disgusted by the valuelessness, rapacity, and interminable selfishness that he believes characterizes the United States in the throes of unfettered capitalism, finds meaning and community overseas in an antimodern movement dedicated to tradition, discipline, martialism, and fighting Westernization. Taking arms against the side his mother country supports, this scruffy, bearded fellow watches proudly as his comrades-in-arms attempt to achieve honor and purity through a wave of suicide attacks against superior American-backed firepower. The John Walker Lindh story? Nope, The Last Samurai. Funny how the same narrative looks completely different once Tom Cruise gets involved.

Ok, ok, I should say that The Last Samurai is both very well-made and for the most part very enjoyable. Despite having the straightest teeth in the nineteenth century, Cruise is quite good in the lead (give or take the first five minutes — somebody should have already figured out by now that, after Jerry Maguire and Vanilla Sky, Cruise should never, ever, play a drunk.) Moreover, Ken Watanabe in the semi-fictional title role is a revelation — he commands the screen’s attention and suggests comparison with some of Kurosawa’s stars of yesteryear. There’s tons of solid supporting performances here, particularly by the residents of Katsumoto’s village. The cinematography and the New Zealand scenery (while obviously recalling Middle Earth) are often beautiful, and the action scenes (if not the CGI) are first-rate. And, there’s ninjas in it, and, let’s face it, that’s pretty cool.

But, still, something about the film ultimately left me hollow, and it wasn’t just the drawn-out, increasingly Hollywood-y ending. In some ways, the movie seemed like a textbook-case fictionalization of T.J. Jackson Lears’ No Place of Grace: An American seeks meaning and refuge from the vicissitudes of Gilded Age capitalism in the antimodern, the martial, and the Orient. So, in that sense, the history checks out.

But, as Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club points out, many – if not most – Americans who’d fought in the Civil War had soured on the purported romance of dying for a cause (In fact, Menand argues, perhaps a bit dubiously, that it is this realization, borne of Antietam and Cold Harbor, that undergirds the philosophy of pragmatism.) And you’d think that after the carnage of Pickett’s charge and Petersburg, most Civil War veterans — particularly ones as disillusioned as Tom Cruise’s Algren — wouldn’t think charging a Howitzer is a particularly valiant way to go out. (Although I haven’t read the book, I expect Cold Mountain to make some hay of this come Christmas Day.) Besides, c’mon y’all, didn’t we learn anything from WWI?

I know, I know, I’m probably thinking about this way too much. After all, the “fight to the last man in the name of the cause” suicide charge is a staple of both samurai films and war movies (including Edward Zwick’s own Glory), and The Last Samurai is both a very good war movie and a superlative samurai flick. And, of course we’re going to see a few variations on this trope next week in RotK, a film I was lavishly anticipating just one entry ago — in fact, change the costumes a bit and we’ve got the Ride of the Rohirrim here.

But…riding against Sauron is one thing — riding against the United States is (hopefully) another. (For that matter, while they both embrace the antimodern, I’d say the overarching theme of LotR is fighting so your friends can live, not fighting for the sake of dying with honor.) I suppose it’s probably good for a lot of people’s sense of perspective to see an American-made Alamo-type story where the US are the imperialist heavies rather than the freedom fighters (even if nobody seems to be taking it as such.) Still, something about the naked adoration this film displays for its suicidal warriors against Western modernity struck a discordant tone with me.

In short, I thought the movie goes only half the distance — it makes the West morally ambiguous without doing anything but idolizing the martialistic, traditionalist, and antimodern culture of the samurai. In our time, when the clash between antimodernism and the West seems more pertinent than ever, you’d think a movie like this one wouldn’t find so much to relish about suicide charges against American values. And, while Western modernity undoubtedly has a lot to answer for in Japan, there has to be some sort of irony to the fact that US audiences thrilled to the final scene in the Emperor’s chambers on the same weekend as the 62nd anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Be careful singing the praises of anti-Western martialism, because it may just come back to bite ya.

But, in case you get the wrong idea from my post here, the film is definitely worth seeing. If you see only one movie about Americans in Japan this year, see Lost in Translation. But I’d check this out before Kill Bill. And, in case I didn’t make it clear before, this film’s got ninjas, y’all, ninjas.

This Film is On.

As an hour’s distraction, I’ve created a central clearinghouse for movie reviews on GitM and added it to the sidebar at left. Unfortunately, some of the older ones (written during the hand-coded Geocities days) may be hard to find, but they’re in there…somewhere. I’ll also probably try to reconstruct the 10-point ratings at some point, but that’s an improvement for another day.

Pacific Heights.

So I caught Peter Weir’s Master and Commander last night and, if you have little trouble discerning the differences among a gaggle of grubby British salts (One looks like Eric Idle, another talks like Captain McAllister, and who knew Pippen was coxswain material?) and don’t go in expecting the action-fiesta promised in the ads, you should come out satisfied. Like pretty much all of Weir’s other films, Commander is an extremely competent piece of work, in some ways even masterful. And, while Crowe’s Captain “Lucky Jack” Aubrey is yet another variation of the strong, silent type he’s done several times elsewhere, he nevertheless commands attention and seems plausible as the glue that holds the creaky H.M.S. Surprise together.

I’d never read any of the Patrick O’Brian novels, so I can’t attest to the movie’s literary veracity. But the historical details seemed right to my landlubber’s eye, and I thought the languid, episodic pacing of the film — which some may find boring, particularly after Jack Sparrow’s romp earlier in the year — helped to convey the rhythm of life at sea in the Napoleonic era, when it took forever and a day to get from place to place. Speaking of which, there’s not all that much suspense about where the film’s going — like the crew of the Surprise, you can see the destination long before Commander gets there. But most of the detours, from the woeful tale of an accursed Jonah to the pre-Darwinian excursions in the Galapagos, are gripping in their own way. In the end, I left Master and Commander feeling like I’d sat through a longer film, but also feeling that I’d traveled somewhere. And while I doubt Commander will spawn many sea epic sequels, nor do I think I’d want to see this film again anytime in the very near future, kudos go out to Peter Weir & crew for making a picture as engrossing and transporting as this one.

Attack of the Clone.

UGH. Well, the keyboard just fell to the ground and I lost a really long Matrix: Revolutions review in one errant keystroke. As Neo might say, “Whoa.” So here we go again…Spoilers to follow throughout.

Like most of the fanboy world, I checked out Revolutions on Wednesday and, well, I guess Andrew O’Hehir of Salon might’ve said it best: It “isn’t a terrible movie, but it is a tremendous disappointment.” (Many people I’ve spoken to think that even this proclamation is being charitable.) As y’all may or may not remember, I actually liked The Matrix: Reloaded, and forgave it many of its considerable faults (the interminable first forty minutes in Zion, for example), because I assumed that much of the drier, talkier scenes were necessary for setting the stage for the final installment. And I thought that the Architect scene that closed Reloaded also opened many intriguing doors that promised future mind-bending plot twists in Revolutions.

But, sadly, Revolutions capitalizes on barely any of this promise. Instead the Wachowski, um, siblings give us a closing chapter that is almost breathtaking in its inanity. For one, much of the time spent in Reloaded making the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson), Persephone (Monica Bellucci), and for that matter, the phase-shifting albino twins (“We are getting very aggravated”) decently compelling adversaries seems to have been completely wasted. None of Merv’s existential menace or Persephone’s prophetic allure comes to anything here — instead, they’re used as throwaway devices to set up an exchange in a goofy S&M joint which I suppose is meant to approximate Hell but comes off more like the Prague nightclub in Blade 2. As with the characters, so with the plot twists — Virtually every one of the intriguing questions dropped at the end of Reloaded (multiple Matrices, Neo’s real world powers) are either completely left by the wayside or just accepted by the story — Neo has powers in the Real World now because he does. Hmm, that’s not that interesting. It eventually seems that the only point of the film’s first half-hour (aside from the introduction of karmic programs, which I’ll get to later) is to rectify the Neo-in-a-coma cliffhanger of Reloaded, a cliffhanger that ends up having little or nothing to do with the trilogy’s main arc.

Speaking of the main arc, I’d think even the most rabid Matrix fanatics out there have to admit that almost all of the fanfic endings to Revolutions turned out to be more intriguing and well-thought-out than the real thing. Now I don’t have a problem with the peace treaty aspect of the conclusion – after watching the Animatrix prequels, that seemed almost inevitable. But, as J. Hoberman noted in a mixed-positive review, what we end up with here is one-part Christ allegory (perhaps Mel Gibson should’ve taken the role), one-part Return of the King, with Neo and Trinity rushing to Mordor before the White City falls. There are no interesting permutations to this formula along the way, no Matrix-like plot twist to take the film up a notch — instead Revolutions just grinds along inexorably to its rote conclusion. It would’ve been well nigh impossible for the Wachowskis to match the shock of Neo’s pod awakening in the first Matrix, but I think they could’ve approximated something along the lines of the Architect scene if they’d just tried a little harder.

Moreover, Revolutions as written fails to engage us in the characters we’ve been following along the way. One of the main three is reduced to little more than a Nien Nunb impression, while another dies (slowly) in what amounts basically to a Keymaker-like chauffeuring mission. Instead, we spend most of the movie watching the exploits of a Zion filled with uninvolving stock character tropes — the can-do kid, the grizzled sergeant, the take-no-guff officer, the scrappy girlfriend — take your pick. Frankly, the Wachowskis should be ashamed at the depths of cliche wallowed in here, in both the dialogue and the characters. Just grisly stuff.

So why, after all these issues, am I still giving Reloaded a 2-star (6/10) review? Well, for one, I guess I am a sucker for big sci-fi spectacle, and the Zion invasion sequence does undoubtedly make for some compelling eye candy. It’d have been nice if the machines had relied on a variety of military mechs rather than just the ubiquitous Squiddies, but they are kinda creepy, and I did like the moment when they pour out of the dock breach like the blooming of a poisonous rose. And then there’s Agent Smith, who as per usual steals scenes every time he opens his mouth — His scene with the Oracle may be the high point of the film. Hugo Weaving (and Ian Bliss’s wicked Weaving impression) deserve high marks for bringing the type of grade-b, meglomaniacal fun to the table that this ponderous film so often needs (More Joe Pantoliano would’ve benefited both sequels too, I should think.) Alas, the rain battle between Smith and Neo at the end of the film also feels like a bust. It’s never as engaging as their fracas at the end of the first Matrix, and it definitely could have benefited from more Superman stylings (punching through buildings, swinging streetlamps like baseball bats, etc.)

But I’m trying to accentuate the positive here. I did enjoy the Philosophy 102 lectures, even if they also seem inserted in as usual. To add to the existential and behaviorist disquisitions of Reloaded, we now have an emotive program discoursing on karma (also one of the better moments of the film) and Smith making a case for nihilism. You could read Neo’s final fate as representing the necessity of all philosophies to grapple with the inevitability of death, although it seems more pertinent to explain it as simple messiah martyrdom, given all the throwing around of words like “faith” and “belief” through the film. (The kid’s “I believe in Neo!”, for example…ugh.) Actually, trying to interpret the ending of the film brings me to my biggest problem with Revolutions: the movie turned out to be so pedestrian in its execution that it almost undercuts the intellectual legitimacy of the earlier films.

Put another way, while I think David Denby should be taken to task for the ridiculous snobbishness exposed in his Revolutions review (Denby writes that it is “far too late to bemoan the obvious truth that…college-educated gents, and millions of others like them, will spend many hours debating the apocalypse as revealed by the Brothers Wachowski but would die before reading a single story by Chekhov or Cheever dealing with the sensual and spiritual quandaries of ordinary people“), the film does suggest that much of the philosophical ruminations on the meaning of the Matrix trilogy may have been misplaced when the writer-directors are so glib and ham-handed as to finish it off with a mighty dollop of Christ-figure bathos, a sunset, and a little girl.

In sum, while the intriguing but flawed Reloaded suggested that the Wachowskis were going to swing for the fences in the final installment, ultimately it seemed that — action spectacle aside — they were content to settle for a bunt. Boo hiss.

The Talented Ms. Ripley.

Also caught the director’s cut of Alien this past week. The film hasn’t changed much, but after all, why should it? It did look and sound great (especially in the digital theater I was in.) Check it out – once you get past the A v. P trailer, you’ll be in for a scary good time.

Secret Agent Man.

So I caught The Station Agent the other night and, while it’s not the type of film that’ll set the world on fire, it is an eminently enjoyable rumination on loneliness, friendship, and trains. (As such, it was also a movie worth seeing at the Angelika, since for once the omnipresent subway sounds below the theater added to the film experience.)

The Station Agent works best when it lets its three main characters — a distant (and distinctly short) train-enthusiast (Peter Dinklage), a divorced artist (Patricia Clarkson), and a gregarious food-vendor (the scene-stealing Bobby Cannavale) — hang out and get to relish each other’s company despite themselves. In these scenes, the movie has a nice, unforced air and a great sense of wit about it.

The train derails in the second half, however, when Agent feels the need to introduce dramatic tension by foisting “real life problems” on this funny trio…almost all of which come across as forced. (This is also the point in the film when the don’t-pick-on-little-persons consciousness-raising comes to the fore and, well, frankly I think I’m part of the problem. There’s a key scene where Dinklage ties one on at a local bar, jumps onto the counter, and angrily denounces the staring eyes all about him, and all I could think was “Wow, this is just like Bree…I wonder if Dinklage should’ve played Frodo.”) At any rate, despite the stock emotional issues wedged into the second act, the film ends well, returning to the low-key, believable, and funny tone of friendship that dictated the first hour, and all in all, The Station Agent makes for a good time at the movies. If nothing else, it’s worth catching on The Sundance Channel in a few months.