Unoriginal Bastards

Night at the Museum (Shawn Levy, 2006) - D+

Who wrote this? I really frickin' hate this movie -- it makes no sense, tries to wring laughs out of things that aren't even jokes, and has the most ridiculously abortive romantic subplot ever. Worse, it's directed with zero sense of comic timing, and gags that could potentially have been funny are utterly botched: witness the scene in the employment agency, which has several amusing zingers but is edited so horrendously that the lines just sit there as we stare at Ben Stiller's weirdly inexpressive face. Awful, awful, awful, and it only gets worse once we get to the museum and the movie just starts throwing money at the screen. The worst is the dumbass explanation for why every exhibit comes alive at night: there's this mysterious Egyptian tablet, you see, and it guards this mummy of an ancient pharaoh, but it also gives anyone in the museum eternal youth... Ricky Gervais is solely responsible for the +.

OFCS Nominations

Below, if anyone's interested, is a copy of my ballot for the Online Film Critics Society annual awards. This is at the nominations stage, which is the only time I choose freely from the year's releases. The choices for each category are listed in order of preference, with more points awarded to the films nearer the top of the list.

Best Picture

1. Brick
2. Children of Men
3. United 93
4. Letters from Iwo Jima
5. The Departed

Best Director
1. Alfonso Cuaron, Children of Men
2. Martin Scorsese, The Departed
3. Wayne Kramer, Running Scared
4. Paul Greengrass, United 93
5. Rian Johnson, Brick

Best Actor
1. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brick
2. Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness
3. Ken Watanabe, Letters from Iwo Jima
3. Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson
4. Edward Norton, The Painted Veil

Best Actress
1. Ellen Page, Hard Candy
2. Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada
3. Gong Li, The Curse of the Golden Flower
4. Rosario Dawson, Clerks II
5. Naomi Watts, The Painted Veil

Best Supporting Actor
1. Richard Griffiths, The History Boys
2. James McAvoy, The Last King of Scotland
3. Steve Carell, Little Miss Sunshine
4. Kazunari Ninomiya, Letters from Iwo Jima
5. Sergi Lopez, Pan's Labyrinth

Best Supporting Actress
1. Luminita Gheorghiu, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
2. Emily Blunt, The Devil Wears Prada
3. Meryl Streep, A Prairie Home Companion
4. Shareeka Epps, Half Nelson
5. Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine

Best Original Screenplay
1. Brick
2. The Fountain
3. Monster House
4. Hard Candy
5. Little Miss Sunshine

Best Adapted Screenplay
1. The Departed
2. The Prestige
3. A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
4. Marie Antoinette
5. Letters from Iwo Jima

Best Cinematography
1. Children of Men
2. United 93
3. Running Scared
4. Pan's Labyrinth
5. The Black Dahlia

Best Editing
1. United 93
2. The Descent
3. The Prestige
4. Children of Men
5. Stranger than Fiction

Best Score
1. The Fountain
2. Lady in the Water
3. Pan's Labyrinth
4. Brick
5. Rocky Balboa

Best Documentary
1. The Heart of the Game
2. Street Fight
3. Jesus Camp
4. Deliver Us From Evil
5. Why We Fight

Best Foreign-Language Film (non-English)
1. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
2. Pan's Labyrinth
3. The Curse of the Golden Flower
4. Water
5. The Lives of Others

Best Animated Feature
1. Monster House
2. Happy Feet
3. A Scanner Darkly
4. Renaissance
5. Flushed Away

Breakthrough Filmmaker
1. Rian Johnson, Brick
2. James McTeigue, V for Vendetta
3. Neil Marshall, The Descent
4. Gil Kenan, Monster House
5. Ryan Fleck, Half Nelson

Breakthrough Performance
1. Ellen Page, Hard Candy
2. Shareeka Epps, Half Nelson
3. Kazunari Ninomiya, Letters from Iwo Jima
4. Jodelle Ferland, Tideland
5. Rudy Youngblood, Apocalypto

The Spy Who

The Good Shepherd (Robert De Niro, 2006) - B-

Tries to take you through two decades of CIA history as seen through the eyes of the Agency's chief of counter-intelligence from World War II through the Bay of Pigs invasion and beyond, but though the running time pushes three hours, its trek through the 40s and 50s is depressingly cursory. There's not enough detail to really engage us in any of the spy stuff, and the characters' tragically repressed personal lives can't carry the film. Maybe there's an argument that the obsession with secrecy that is The Good Shepherd's thematic core makes the relative sparseness of the narrative more appropriate, but that doesn't make it any more interesting. (This is not to say that the plot is uneventful -- it certainly isn't that -- but more that not enough information is given to make it satisfying -- maybe I don't know my history well enough?) Matt Damon is characteristically superb, and I can't say I was ever bored, but honestly this is more interesting on paper than on screen.

Blank of the Blank Blank II

Curse of the Golden Flower (Zhang Yimou, 2006) - B

Adultery, betrayal, and plots for the throne in Imperial China -- you couldn't tear me away from this stuff. Zhang's film is in the best costume melodrama tradition, with unrelenting formal courtesies concealing enough cruelty and misery to fill up a year's worth of soap opera plots. Those expecting another Hero or House of Flying Daggers should know that the focus is largely on the royal family's sordid affairs, though Zhang does occasionally, and almost as an afterthought, drop in a martial arts sequence of the kind that's become his calling card. Interestingly, there's more of a physical presence to the fighting here -- metal grinds against metal, shoes scrape the floor, and it feels like people can actually get hurt. The movie concludes with a stand-off between opposing armies that almost reaches a Kurosawa scale. I'm not sure there's enough depth to the characters or the story to make this a classic, in the end, but it sure is a lot of fun.

We Are! Kind of Retarded!

We Are Marshall (McG, 2006) - D

I was SOL on this one from the get-go, since there are few people I'd like to watch for two and a half hours less than Matthew McConaughey and Matthew Fox. And they're both just terrible here, McConaughey trying mightily to create a unique character and coming up with nothing more than hemming, hawing and frantic gestures, and Fox recreating his tortured soul from Lost and calling it a day. As if throwing up its hands in futility, the movie around them abandons all pretense of storytelling and attempts to get by on a constant stream of speeches, heart-to-hearts and dramatic confrontations. It's all so stupid, both scene-by-scene and on a fundamental level: it was never clear to me why the hell the Marshall University football program couldn't "rise from the ashes" by taking a year off to properly reconstitute itself, and thus why all this ado was necessary.

On the bright side, I got to play the Nintendo Wii for the first time before heading out to see this disaster, so I broke even for the day.

Dragons and Self-Mutilators

Eragon (Stefen Fangmeier, 2006) - C+

I do understand the virtually unanimous complaints -- it kind of sucks, trite and hokey, to be compared to Dungeons and Dragons while ripping off Star Wars. At the same time, I think these sorts of Lord of the Rings-lite movies are productive in that they introduce young'uns to the archetypes of the genre in a PG-rated setting they can appreciate. For that, Eragon serves -- everything is here, from fearsome dragons to magic swords to resistance armies setting off to fight an evil king (played by a hilarious John Malkovich, no less) -- and really, it's far from repulsive for a fleeting 90-minute adventure. I don't think I can recommend the movie on its own merits (especially not during this busy season, filled with truly fine films), but if kids can engage with this sort of mythology, so much the better.


In My Skin (Marina De Van, 2002) - B+

This is extremely disturbing. I'm not sure what else I expected from a movie about a woman who develops a deep psychosexual obsession with her wounds, to the point of auto-cannibalism, but there it is. That said, after you come to terms with its demanding gruesomeness, and the fact that shouting "see a psychiatrist, lady!" at the screen will not be productive, you ought to be able to settle in for what's really a compelling exploration of (hackneyed as it sounds) what it means to be human -- to be stuck inside a body made of flesh, skin and bone, which isn't something one tends to think about existentially, but something De Van (who wrote, directed, and stars) nonetheless manages to make jarring. The film avoids reductionism at every turn, and Esther's obsession emerges and progresses organically, almost logically, as she succumbs to her urges while trying to maintain her middle-class existence. The ending is as ambiguous as possible, lending itself to two diametrically opposed and equally plausible interpretations. Rent it if you're feeling adventurous.

Yo Adrian

The History Boys (Nicholas Hytner, 2006) - B+

The reason I love British humor is that it sneaks up on you from around corners rather than announcing its presence from miles away. This wordy and intelligent film is filled with wordy and intelligent characters, and consequently jokes (and insights) that come from nowhere and quickly disappear into the ether. It's unforgiving to those who don't hang on the screenplay's every word, and rewarding to those who do. There is sometimes the sense that this worked better on the stage, but no matter the medium, it's a frank and engaging look at education in general, and British education circa the mid-80's in particular, latent homosexuality and all. I do wish that Nicholas Hytner, whose "The Crucible" was one of my favorite films of the 90's, would start making actual movies (rather than direct stage-to-screen translations) again.


Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone, 2006) - B+

Contender for movie moment of the year: finally, nearly 90 minutes into "Rocky Balboa," we hear the triumphant strains of Bill Conti's "Gonna Fly Now" as Rocky, now nearing 60, hoofs it laboriously along a snowy Philadelphia expanse. (Philly looks terrific here by the way.) I loved seeing this story on screen again in all its schmaltzy, underdog glory. Stallone directs and, god help us, writes with a sure hand and impressive attention to detail; those who expected the 60 year-old actor and his film to look ridiculous are eating crow about now.

12/23/06

Unaccompanied Minors (Paul Feig, 2006) - B

I complain about Christmas movies a lot, to the point where I wonder why I bother with them anymore -- for the record, I refused to see Deck the Halls -- but this one is bright, spare on the "Christmas Spirit" pandering, and legitimately pretty funny. Though it's aimed squarely at the 8-12 set, there's enough non sequitur silliness (the slinky-obsessed security guard, the disturbingly cheery and possibly alcoholic sister/aunt) to amuse the rest of us; Feig was an integral part of Freaks and Geeks and Arrested Development, and there's the added treat of two guest appearances by the latter show's now presumably out-of-work stars. The whole thing runs a little long at 90 minutes, but there's some decent slapstick, a charmingly adolescent performance by Dyllan Christopher, and the utter joy of watching Lewis Black as the airport "Director of Passenger Relations" harangue his underlings about security, "from the Latin securitas." Mileage may very, but for a modern Christmas movie, "unobnoxious" may be the highest praise of all.