Mission Compromised.

Perhaps it wasn’t the best nightcap to Poseidon — four and a half hours of crashes and explosions tend to run together after awhile — Still, J.J. Abrams’ loud, garish Mission: Impossible III, while assuredly better than John Woo’s miserable M:I:2, doesn’t to my mind improve on Brian De Palma’s slinky, Eurotrashy original. (And I’m by no means a De Palma fan, particular after megastinkers like Mission to Mars and Femme Fatale.) I guess if you’re a huge fan of Alias, this might be your cup of tea — the film definitely plays like every episode of that show I’ve ever seen, what with the in-media-res opener, the artfully named McGuffin, double-double-agents, kick-ass femmes, and the weird, off-putting emphasis on torture. (Ok, there may be dollops of Splinter Cell and The Vanishing somewhere in there too.) Still, I found M:I:3 basically a sleek, well-designed non-starter and, in a word, missable.

It probably didn’t help that the central conceit of M:I:3 involves superspy-turned-desk-jockey Ethan Hunt’s new paramour (Michelle Monaghan), since Tom Cruise’s real love life has become both so creepy and inescapable over the past year. But, here we are (after the flash-forward opener), attending the Hunts’ resolutely normal wedding shower somewhere in suburban Virginia, and once again watching Cruise do his “This woman drives me cRaZy!” schtick. (No couch-jumping, alas.) But, domestic bliss is soon interrupted by an urgent (if oblique) call from Hunt’s new boss (Billy Crudup), and, quicker than you can say “silent birth,” Ethan has gotten the band (Ving Rhames, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Maggie Q) back together again, who then venture off to deepest, darkest Berlin to save a compromised agent (Keri Russell) from, you guessed it, torture. There, he crosses swords with criminal mastermind Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) — or at least his underlings — and the battle is joined, one that will eventually rage from the Vatican to Shanghai to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge (which in this universe seems to be about a 10-15 minute drive from DC.)

If this all sounds a bit campy, well, it is…or, at least, it is at times (such as when Cruise dons priestly vestments to infiltrate the Vatican), and probably should have been for its entire run. But Abrams, in keeping with his usual Marathon Man-ish predilections, has decided to give this film his own brutal gloss, and I for one found all the wallowing in harsh interrogation scenarios a bit much. (Well, at least for this franchise…frankly, Bond could probably use more of it, at least if the Daniel Craig run will verge closer to the books. But I digress.) When you get right down to it, torture scenes not only aren’t very entertaining (by design, I guess), they’re also very close to cheating — Of course we’re going to feel for Cruise and his new ladyfriend when they’ve been put in such a situation. In short, Abrams is substituting visceral reaction for good writing — as someone on Slate noted with 21 Grams back in the day, he might as well have the bad guy kick a puppy while he’s at it.

That being said, the bad guy here, scene-stealing support by Lawrence Fishburne and Shaun of the Dead‘s Simon Pegg notwithstanding, is the highlight of the film. A million years away from his recent turn as Capote (or his prior Cruise pairing in Magnolia…ok, he’s a bit like his character in The Talented Mr. Ripley), Hoffman underplays his soulless and sadistic arms dealer as a man thoroughly bored with his ubervillain station in life, and seems all the more plausible for being nondescript and banal.

Snakes and Cruises.

“Enough is enough! I’ve had it with these snakes!” In the weekend trailer bin, another look at M:I:III, the full trailer for Wolfgang Petersen’s remake of Poseidon, and, yes, some footage from the highly anticipated Samuel Jackson vehicle Snakes on a Plane.

Two for III.

In today’s movie bin, the full trailer for Brett Ratner’s X3: The Last Stand shows up online. Hmm, I’m still not feeling it. To quote an AICN talkbacker, “Too much wire fu makes Homer go something something“…although I did kinda dig the scene with Juggernaut chasing Kitty Pryde. (Insert your own I’m the Juggernaut, b***ch joke if you’d like.) Also out today is the new Japanese M:I:III trailer, now with considerably less Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Point of No Return.

It’s a good time to live in New York: Not only are the Knicks suddenly playing winning basketball again, but Match Point is, as rumored, a return to form for that consummate Manhattanite (and unabashed Knicks fan), Woody Allen. Mining the same misanthropic vein as Crimes and Misdemeanors, the movie nevertheless feels — aside from a few nods to Allen’s usual high-culture influences and the occasional Annie Hall-ish quirk by Emily Mortimer — unlike anything Woody’s done in years. Gone are the Upper East Side setpieces (we’re in London this time) and that quintessential Allen stammer. (Heck, Ewan Bremner, a British Allen analogue if there ever was one, is in this movie and even he’s not doing it.) Instead, we’re left with an increasingly dark amorality play about ambition, adultery, and the considerable, if not terrifying, role of blind luck in organizing the universe.

Unfortunately, Match Point suffered from one of those three-minute summary-type trailers. If you’ve seen it, you probably already know more than you want about the story. If you haven’t, here’s the abbreviated version: Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys Meyers, more believable as a tortured soul than a romantic lead), a former tennis pro who gives lessons at the club by day and reads Dostoevsky by night, befriends Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode) one of his more dissolute upper-crust students, and, over opera and cocktails, wins the heart of Tom’s sister Chloe (Emily Mortimer). Soon, with his good graces and acquired cultural literacy, Chris has managed to seduce the whole Hewett family, including Tom and Chloe’s father (Brian Cox, surprisingly not chewing the scenery) and mother (Penelope Wilton, surprisingly — to me — not chewing on flesh.) But, trouble arises in the second set when Chris meets a kindred spirit in Tom’s fiancee, the vampish American Nola (Scarlett Johansson, better-than-usual). Soon, Chris finds himself laying his new life on the line in order to get closer to Nola, with potentially disastrous results…

As the paragraph above attests, Match Point is in part a tale of scheming class climbers skulking about London’s higher social echelons, a conceit that still paid dividends in Henry James’ day but may seem relentlessly dated now, at least as it’s presented by Allen. And, indeed, what with the high-culture name-drops (Strindberg, Sophocles) and all the old-money accoutrements favored by the Hewetts, this often seems like London by way of Merchant-Ivory more than any real place on the globe. But, I think this stylization is forgivable, particularly since, ultimately, Woody is hunting bigger quarry than class and its pretensions anyway. Giving away the details of the third act would be a crime, but Allen aficionados won’t be surprised to find that Chris eventually finds himself wrangling with an — or the — existential dilemma. And it’s with this final act that the film itself leaps a notch and joins the upper ranks of Allen’s oeuvre. Who knows? Perhaps Woody just got lucky this time. After all, chance favors the prepared mind…or are we all just fortune’s fools?

Mission: Clear.

The new trailer for J.J. Abrams’ Mission Impossible: III is now online, showcasing Philip Seymour Hoffman as Tom Cruise’s new nemesis (And they were getting along so well in Magnolia.) Ving Rhames, Keri Russell, and Laurence Fishburne also star…all I know is that it doesn’t have to be very good to be much better than John Woo’s MI:2.

Vamps of all kinds.

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers has a fatal attraction problem with Scarlett Johansson in the new trailer for Match Point, directed by…well, someone unexpected. (By way of Listen Missy.) Also in the trailer bin are looks at the “remake” of Broadway’s The Producers (What? No Larry David?) and Underworld: Evolution, the unnecessary sequel to a truly terrible film. Seriously, if everyone just sent Bill Nighy $10 rather than seeing this latter flick, the world would be a better place. Catsuit-Kate notwithstanding, he’d be the only reason to sit through this drek.

Death, Revenge, Love, and Slyders.

Some short thoughts on recent DVDs witnessed…

Dead Man: Many cinephiles whose opinions I trust have told me to check out Jim Jarmusch’s stuff, so I figured a good place to start would be this black-and-white western featuring Johnny Depp and a slew of my favorite character actors. Alas, I found Dead Man to be slow, scattershot, and for the most part uninvolving. Depp is William Blake, a fellow who is forced to flee the frontier town run by an industrialist strongman (the late, great Robert Mitchum) after an unfortunate love-triangle mix-up, and who, despite being unrelated to the English poet and mystic of the same name, nevertheless encounters enough shamanist mysticism in the wilderness to make even Oliver Stone blush. Blake’s tour guide on his increasingly bizarre escapades outside “civilization” is an Indian named Nobody (Gary Fisher), who speaks in riddle-like profundities (and, occasionally, passages from Blake) in the manner of filmed Native Americans since time immemorial.

Basically, I thought Dead Man was kinda goofy. It never established much of a rhythm or a narrative, and as an episodic travelogue, it’s hit and miss. Billy Bob Thornton as a lonely trapper and Alfred Molina as a priest peddling smallpox blankets probably make the most indelible impressions, but other quality actors (particularly John Hurt and Gabriel Byrne) needed more to do. Frankly, I just don’t think I got it. Why does long-winded, cold-blooded killer Michael Wincott sleep with a teddy bear? Why is frontiersman Iggy Pop dressed like a Willa Cather heroine? (Presumably, the answer for Jarmusch fans is “Why Not?” I suppose I could just as easily question David Lynch’s dwarves or the Coens’ similar non-sequiturs.) Perhaps I went in with abnormal expectations, but I found Dead Man‘s “funny” parts stiff and the “profound” parts stilted. I’ll definitely get around to the rest of Jarmusch’s oeuvre, but, sadly, this counts as a strike against him.

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: Mike Hodges’ reinvention of Get Carter was also a disappointment. It strives mightily to be a somber, Unforgiven-like tale of unfulfilling revenge and redemption denied, but turns out instead as a slow, plodding affair that feels a bit like Eyes Wide Shut, in that a great director’s once-pioneering vision now sadly comes off as somewhat stale and antiquated.

The movie throws you in in media res, with pretty-boy n’er-do-well Davy Graham (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) dealing to and scamming the London glitterati while his brother Will (Owen) seems to have taken a page from Matt Foley and is now, literally, living in a van down by the river. Very shortly, horrible, droogie-like things are done to Davy by none other than Malcolm McDowell, resulting in the former’s suicide, and lean, mean wildman Will blows back into town to settle the score. The rest of the film consists of Owen slowly seething (to impressive effect) while his former mates and enemies cringe, cower, and — like us — await the inevitable denouement. It eventually happens, but lordy does it take awhile to get there. Jamie Foreman (soon to be Bill Sykes in Polanski’s Oliver Twist) deserves marks as the Graham boys’ flawed and frantic lieutenant, but otherwise there’s not much to go on here. If you want to see Hodges direct Owen, rent Croupier instead.

Love Actually: Oof, where do I start? Ok, I knew going in that this probably wasn’t going to be my cup of tea. But a good friend of mine had it sitting on his TV, he recommended it as “like Sliding Doors” (which, much like Next Stop Wonderland, was a romantic comedy that I really enjoyed), and it had a bunch of actors I like (Liam Neeson, Keira Knightley, Emma Thompson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and much of Team Hitchhikers: Martin Freeman, Alan Rickman, and Bill Nighy.) But, as many of you probably already know, Love Actually is, actually, godawful dreck, a schmaltzfest of grotesque proportions. I was complaining about the occasionally saccharine taste of In Good Company only yesterday, but Love Actually makes that film look like Requiem for a Dream.

The film follows multiple couples in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and is set in an alternate universe where no love goes unrequited (among the beautiful, of course), at least without a wink and a kiss. In fact, in this Fairie-England, where Hugh Grant (doing his pre-About a Boy faux-self-effacing schtick) is the new Prime Minister, it’s even considered somehow romantic to make an unabashed play at your best friend’s wife. Look, I know I’m a cynical sort, but my heart warms to certain well-made fare. But this…um, not so much. From a wholly implausible joint press conference (Billy Bob Thornton cameos as a prez who combines the worst of Clinton and Dubya), to Grant cavorting around 10 Downing Street a la Risky Business, to Liam Neeson constantly interacting-cute with his Padawan stepson, to Colin Firth venturing to 19th century Portugal, to the, um, musical numbers, this film all too often made me want to claw my eyes out. Most of the time, I was hoping I’d see more of Bill Nighy, the movie’s saving grace, as an aging rocker trying to make one, last improbable comeback with a sellout remix of The Troggs’ “Love is All Around.” But, by the end, even that storyline gets smothered in sugary sweetness. For the love, actually, of Pete, stay away from this lousy film.

Harold & Kumar go to White Castle: White Castle…hmmm, those are some fine little burgers, particularly in quantity. I haven’t had a 12-pack of Slyders in a dog’s age. In fact, I think there’s a Castle a couple of blocks over at 125th and 7th. Man, how awesome would that be right now? I…I, uh…oh yeah, Harold & Kumar, right. Yeah, that was pretty a funny movie.

Admittedly, Harold & Kumar is for the most part a check-your-brain-at-the-door kinda film. For all of its clever 21st century savvy about 80’s-movies racial tropes, H & K is still ultimately a lowest-common-denominator college comedy. Yet, while some of the vignettes definitely fall flat, I found Harold & Kumar just enough of a variation on the age-old After Hours road-trip formula to be really amusing. John Cho and Kal Penn are both charismatic and engaging as our wayward, famished, and thoroughly stoned protagonists, and Neil Patrick Harris earns special plaudits for showing up as himself (albeit more-than-slightly tweaked) and just going for it. All in all, I highly doubt H & K is everybody’s bag, but — despite the gross-out gags and retro thinking — it is at times a rather intelligent dumb movie.

Team Alexander: World Police.

Alexander the Great. Seeker, despot, conqueror, legend…and who knew he anything to do with the Kennedy assassination? Ok, Oliver Stone’s Alexander doesn’t actually pin the events of November 22, 1963 on the Macedonian conqueror, but, to be honest, I kinda wish it had — it might have injected some much-needed energy into the film. Over the past two decades, Oliver Stone has made films that are stunning, controversial, wrongheaded, and unforgettable, but never before has he made one so flat-out dull.

To its credit, I guess, Alexander shows signs of being an absolute train wreck right from the first reel. After a very brief nod to Citizen Kane, which suggested we may at least be getting a gloriously over-the-top outing from Stone this time around, the film settles in to Anthony Hopkins wandering around the set of the “Losing My Religion” video and spitting out long, interminable chunks of Basil Exposition. (Speaking of which, Stone must have been watching his VH1-Classic…there’s a scene on a mountaintop later that seems lifted straight out of Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence.”) Then, we’ve got Mommy Dearest Angelina Jolie writhing around with snakes for a bit (women = serpents = temptresses = deceivers, get it? Don’t worry, in typical Stone fashion, the point will be beaten into the ground over the next three hours.) Twenty minutes in, by the time young Alexander is channeling the Horse Whisperer, it’s pretty clear we’ve got a real stinker on our hands.

From there on, it’s just a pile-up. Other than a neat camel charge or two, the battle setpieces are completely inscrutable, and not in a good “Fog of War” kinda way. For some reason, the men all speak with Irish brogues, while both women (Jolie and Rosario Dawson) sound like Brides of Dracula. Give them credit, though. Jolie, Dawson, and Val Kilmer (as Phillip of Macedon, by way of Dr. Moreau) seem to be the only three people involved with this project who saw it for what it was and racheted up the hamminess dial to 11.

Much has been made in some reviews of Stone’s decision not to shy away from Alexander’s bisexuality — namely his love affair with the doe-eyed Hephaistion (Jared Leto, who fulfilled close to the same function for Tyler Durden in Fight Club) — and I suppose he should be applauded for it, given the recent trends in Red State country. But, frankly, what with all the earnest looks and pre-established Freudian baggage, it all comes off as high camp, and not nearly as open-minded as it thinks it is. Not that heterosexual relations fare much better, mind you…when Colin Farrell and poor, lovely Rosario Dawson hiss, scratch, and wrestle naked on their wedding night (yes, you guessed it, snake flashbacks are involved), it’s just about the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever seen.

To sum up, Alexander is a flat-out disappointment and easily the worst Oliver Stone film I can think of offhand. This review notwithstanding, it’s not even fun-bad. Think of it more as Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Movie.

It’s All Greek to Me.

The final trailer for Oliver Stone’s Alexander hits the web. I dunno…I like Stone’s movies more than most, but I’m getting a serious Moreau-vibe from Val Kilmer, and Angelina Jolie appears to be channeling Kate Beckinsale in Van Helsing.

Irkutsk from Yakutsk…

Ok, I’ll take a card. The teaser for Oliver Stone’s Alexander hits the web and, while I generally enjoy Oliver Stone movies, this look doesn’t differentiate the film from Troy, King Arthur, or any other recent Gladiator meets RotK-CGI type flick. Uh oh.