Birdman of Alcatraz (John Frankenheimer, 1962) - C
A dose of earnest goofiness from the usually hyper-self-aware Frankenheimer, both straight-up silly (an actor portrays the author of the book about Stroud and speaks directly to the camera; square-jawed Burt Lancaster as an unmitigated badass) and almost charmingly quaint (warden to prison guard after Stroud beats a fellow inmate to a pulp: "I don't give up on a man that easy!"). A relic in the sense that it wants to have a debate about prison rehabilitation -- should the goal be cultivating obedience or dignity and independent thought? -- that's simply not relevant anymore, given that we've given up on rehabilitation entirely. That part is still sort of compelling, but the movie is awfully long at two-and-a-half hours; Stroud's rectitude wears, his conflict with the petty warden is a cliché, and his relationship with his mother scales heights of absurdity. The Oscar noms for Lancaster and Telly Savalas are interesting, since their performances seem so exaggerated today.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
The Walker
The Walker (Paul Schrader, 2007) - B
A film about what it's like to have status and nothing else -- no importance, no real money, no real connections -- and Schrader's cinema-of-repression schtick is a peculiarly good fit for the material. I loved the steely opulence, the art direction just this side of realistic, the warm hues of the dinner parties and rich wives' homes contrasting the overdramatic blue of the interrogation room and all of it highlighting the hollowness of the protag's existence. The image of him taking off his wig at the end of each day is fairly heartbreaking. Harrelson minces a bit too much and the murder mystery is almost completely useless, but the core of the film is solid.
A film about what it's like to have status and nothing else -- no importance, no real money, no real connections -- and Schrader's cinema-of-repression schtick is a peculiarly good fit for the material. I loved the steely opulence, the art direction just this side of realistic, the warm hues of the dinner parties and rich wives' homes contrasting the overdramatic blue of the interrogation room and all of it highlighting the hollowness of the protag's existence. The image of him taking off his wig at the end of each day is fairly heartbreaking. Harrelson minces a bit too much and the murder mystery is almost completely useless, but the core of the film is solid.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Alien vs. Predator: Requiem; Lake of Fire
Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (The Brothers Strause, 2007) - C-
All the set-up is endearing because you can see the movie trying so hard to establish characters and set the interplanetary conflict against a small-town milieu, but the writing's just not there. What winds up happening is that the stock characters force out any actual sci-fi elements, and we learn nothing new about the war between the species that threatens to annihilate the planet (or at least Gunnison, CO). There's actually a more fundamental problem, which is that the notion of alien invaders that are reptilian and slimy just isn't that interesting from a sci-fi perspective anymore; the Alien franchise was always horror, but this movie has nothing to offer in that respect. Climax and ending are sharply distrustful of government (I wonder if the line "The government wouldn't lie to people!" would have gotten as much of a hearty laugh 10 years ago), which is always a nice sentiment, but the last scene doesn't make any sense, and the movie is boring by virtue of being basically content-free. Why are the Aliens fighting the Predators? I think the first AvP explained it, but motivations play no role here; they just beat on each other senselessly. We do get a glimpse of the Predators' home world, if that's your bag.
Lake of Fire (Tony Kaye, 2007) - B+
I'm very sympathetic to what Kaye is trying to do here, because abortion is -- or should be, at any rate -- such a difficult issue for any thinking person living in the 21st century. At two and a half hours, this searing documentary aims to be all but the last word on the subject, which to my mind consists of two distinct goals: 1) exploring the moral, political and philosophical dimensions of abortion, and 2) getting to know the people involved, from the passionate advocates on both sides of the issue, to abortion doctors and the women they treat. When the film engages the first, which it does for several long stretches, it's interesting but dry, verging on droning, maybe because the prim academic talking heads are so out of place next to the firebrands and personalities that grace the screen when Kaye hits up the trenches of the abortion wars. In depicting the activists, Kaye incisively gets at the disingenuousness of many pro-choicers and the batshit insanity of the pro-lifers ("There are four types of people you encounter at the abortion clinics. The first are the satan-worshippers, who will actually roast babies over a barbecue pit..."); he doesn't resolve the moral and ethical dilemmas (though he crystallizes several of them nicely), but he does confirm which side of the debate I'd rather be associated with. Long, and almost crazy with ambition, but a must-see if you don't treat abortion as merely part of a checklist at election time.
All the set-up is endearing because you can see the movie trying so hard to establish characters and set the interplanetary conflict against a small-town milieu, but the writing's just not there. What winds up happening is that the stock characters force out any actual sci-fi elements, and we learn nothing new about the war between the species that threatens to annihilate the planet (or at least Gunnison, CO). There's actually a more fundamental problem, which is that the notion of alien invaders that are reptilian and slimy just isn't that interesting from a sci-fi perspective anymore; the Alien franchise was always horror, but this movie has nothing to offer in that respect. Climax and ending are sharply distrustful of government (I wonder if the line "The government wouldn't lie to people!" would have gotten as much of a hearty laugh 10 years ago), which is always a nice sentiment, but the last scene doesn't make any sense, and the movie is boring by virtue of being basically content-free. Why are the Aliens fighting the Predators? I think the first AvP explained it, but motivations play no role here; they just beat on each other senselessly. We do get a glimpse of the Predators' home world, if that's your bag.
Lake of Fire (Tony Kaye, 2007) - B+
I'm very sympathetic to what Kaye is trying to do here, because abortion is -- or should be, at any rate -- such a difficult issue for any thinking person living in the 21st century. At two and a half hours, this searing documentary aims to be all but the last word on the subject, which to my mind consists of two distinct goals: 1) exploring the moral, political and philosophical dimensions of abortion, and 2) getting to know the people involved, from the passionate advocates on both sides of the issue, to abortion doctors and the women they treat. When the film engages the first, which it does for several long stretches, it's interesting but dry, verging on droning, maybe because the prim academic talking heads are so out of place next to the firebrands and personalities that grace the screen when Kaye hits up the trenches of the abortion wars. In depicting the activists, Kaye incisively gets at the disingenuousness of many pro-choicers and the batshit insanity of the pro-lifers ("There are four types of people you encounter at the abortion clinics. The first are the satan-worshippers, who will actually roast babies over a barbecue pit..."); he doesn't resolve the moral and ethical dilemmas (though he crystallizes several of them nicely), but he does confirm which side of the debate I'd rather be associated with. Long, and almost crazy with ambition, but a must-see if you don't treat abortion as merely part of a checklist at election time.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
The Kite Runner; Sharkwater
The Kite Runner (Marc Forster, 2007) - B+
Sometimes you peg a movie as useless Oscar bait and then it comes back and kicks you in the nuts. Could have been really turgid stuff -- child rape, lifelong guilt, intergenerational conflict -- but Forster handles it with uncommon finesse. The movie is deliberate, almost calming, letting "big scenes" happen without needlessly underscoring them; it allows the characters humanity and nuance, letting good people make mistakes and giving them the freedom to redeem themselves. I panicked when, an hour into the film, Amir's father, theretofore painted as a moral giant, seemed about to become one of those movie dads who crushes his son's dreams -- "And what will you do for money?" dad asks when son says he wants to be a writer, not a doctor. "Work with me at the gas station?" But the movie quickly makes clear that this is just a (perfectly understandable) fit of drunken stubbornness, and that Amir's father wants the best for him, absolutely. And Hassan, who could have become a parody of a turn-the-other-cheek Christ figure, is a fully realized human being because Forster and Benioff are smart enough to take their time during the lengthy flashback set-up. Basically, The Kite Runner had me hook, line and sinker; watching my screener DVD at home I actually yelled "Fuck!" at a crucial late-film revelation. A bizarrely contrived climax keeps it out of the "A" range, but this might be the most conventionally entertaining of the season's big pedigreed films.
Sharkwater (Rob Stewart, 2007) - C-
Interesting for as long as it focuses on Paul Watson, the Greenpeace militant who uses his boat to police the oceans against illegal fishers and poachers, ramming and sinking their boats if he has to, and painting the insignias of vanquished enemy ships on his hull. We get to see a little bit of him in action when Stewart briefly joins his crew, and the details of what he does, culminating in an honest-to-goodness speedboat chase, are riveting. As an environmentalist documentary, though, Sharkwater kind of sucks, prone to fuzzy math ("The shark population is estimated to have declined by 90%" -- since when?), weird demagoguery ("No species on this planet has ever survived by ignoring the basic laws of ecology") and dangling participles ("While watching this film, 15,000 sharks have been killed"). Stewart is inarticulate and doesn't have much screen presence, and when he fancies himself a Michael Moore (e.g. getting himself kicked out of a restaurant that serves shark fins) he tends to lose all sense of proportion. Some of his directorial choices are questionable too: what we're supposed to get out of the idiot shark fin company hack who pops up every ten minutes to spout inanities, for example, is unclear. Some great underwater photography (not surprising, since that's Stewart's day job) but everything else is amateur hour.
Sometimes you peg a movie as useless Oscar bait and then it comes back and kicks you in the nuts. Could have been really turgid stuff -- child rape, lifelong guilt, intergenerational conflict -- but Forster handles it with uncommon finesse. The movie is deliberate, almost calming, letting "big scenes" happen without needlessly underscoring them; it allows the characters humanity and nuance, letting good people make mistakes and giving them the freedom to redeem themselves. I panicked when, an hour into the film, Amir's father, theretofore painted as a moral giant, seemed about to become one of those movie dads who crushes his son's dreams -- "And what will you do for money?" dad asks when son says he wants to be a writer, not a doctor. "Work with me at the gas station?" But the movie quickly makes clear that this is just a (perfectly understandable) fit of drunken stubbornness, and that Amir's father wants the best for him, absolutely. And Hassan, who could have become a parody of a turn-the-other-cheek Christ figure, is a fully realized human being because Forster and Benioff are smart enough to take their time during the lengthy flashback set-up. Basically, The Kite Runner had me hook, line and sinker; watching my screener DVD at home I actually yelled "Fuck!" at a crucial late-film revelation. A bizarrely contrived climax keeps it out of the "A" range, but this might be the most conventionally entertaining of the season's big pedigreed films.
Sharkwater (Rob Stewart, 2007) - C-
Interesting for as long as it focuses on Paul Watson, the Greenpeace militant who uses his boat to police the oceans against illegal fishers and poachers, ramming and sinking their boats if he has to, and painting the insignias of vanquished enemy ships on his hull. We get to see a little bit of him in action when Stewart briefly joins his crew, and the details of what he does, culminating in an honest-to-goodness speedboat chase, are riveting. As an environmentalist documentary, though, Sharkwater kind of sucks, prone to fuzzy math ("The shark population is estimated to have declined by 90%" -- since when?), weird demagoguery ("No species on this planet has ever survived by ignoring the basic laws of ecology") and dangling participles ("While watching this film, 15,000 sharks have been killed"). Stewart is inarticulate and doesn't have much screen presence, and when he fancies himself a Michael Moore (e.g. getting himself kicked out of a restaurant that serves shark fins) he tends to lose all sense of proportion. Some of his directorial choices are questionable too: what we're supposed to get out of the idiot shark fin company hack who pops up every ten minutes to spout inanities, for example, is unclear. Some great underwater photography (not surprising, since that's Stewart's day job) but everything else is amateur hour.
Monday, December 24, 2007
The Devil Came on Horseback; The Stranger
The Devil Came on Horseback (Annie Sundberg & Ricki Stern, 2007) - A-
Astonishing, because it accomplishes something so elusive: a depiction of third-world atrocities from the point of view of a white humanitarian that does not in the process become about the humanitarian or try to make him into some sort of messiah (see, e.g., Born into Brothels). It helps that Brian Steidle, who witnessed the take-off of the genocide in Darfur as a "cease-fire monitor" and returned to try to outrage America, is so humble and sincere: it's not about him, and his ego does not come within a five-mile radius of the movie. His narration sticks to the facts, and the facts speak for themselves. The doc is meant to be a call to action, which would normally make me skeptical of its merits as a film, but it's also an unforgettable portrait of evil, and of indifference that becomes evil. It made the scope of the Sudanese genocide sink in better than anything else thus far.
The Stranger (Orson Welles, 1946) - B+
Welles supposedly considers this his "worst" film, but the first half, at least, is a pretty awesome evil-invades-placid-suburbia noir. (Dig that shift from shadowy skulking through the alleys of some European harbor to sunlit, idyllic Connecticut.) Fascinating, too, because the 1946 film is such an immediate reaction to World War II, and I liked seeing how the conflict was cast: very little about Jews, a quick mention of gas chambers and concentration camps, and mostly dealing in abstract notions of evil -- which might be just as well for a noir thriller. Welles and Edward G. Robinson are in top form; the last act is kind of hysterical and the way the villain is dispatched is a bit much, but this is great entertainment.
Astonishing, because it accomplishes something so elusive: a depiction of third-world atrocities from the point of view of a white humanitarian that does not in the process become about the humanitarian or try to make him into some sort of messiah (see, e.g., Born into Brothels). It helps that Brian Steidle, who witnessed the take-off of the genocide in Darfur as a "cease-fire monitor" and returned to try to outrage America, is so humble and sincere: it's not about him, and his ego does not come within a five-mile radius of the movie. His narration sticks to the facts, and the facts speak for themselves. The doc is meant to be a call to action, which would normally make me skeptical of its merits as a film, but it's also an unforgettable portrait of evil, and of indifference that becomes evil. It made the scope of the Sudanese genocide sink in better than anything else thus far.
The Stranger (Orson Welles, 1946) - B+
Welles supposedly considers this his "worst" film, but the first half, at least, is a pretty awesome evil-invades-placid-suburbia noir. (Dig that shift from shadowy skulking through the alleys of some European harbor to sunlit, idyllic Connecticut.) Fascinating, too, because the 1946 film is such an immediate reaction to World War II, and I liked seeing how the conflict was cast: very little about Jews, a quick mention of gas chambers and concentration camps, and mostly dealing in abstract notions of evil -- which might be just as well for a noir thriller. Welles and Edward G. Robinson are in top form; the last act is kind of hysterical and the way the villain is dispatched is a bit much, but this is great entertainment.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Starting Out in the Evening
Starting Out in the Evening (Andrew Wagner, 2007) - C
The first hour's annoyingly coy, predicated on our being in suspense about whether Lauren Ambrose and Frank Langella will have sex. The second is morose, almost pouty, and basically superfluous. The main problem is a weird circularity: we only get to know Ambrose's ambitious grad student in relation to Langella's aging writer (the film provides literally no details about her life that do not involve the writer or his books), and our only insight into the writer and his life comes from the grad student's bullshit literary analysis. There's also a second plot -- the writer's daughter trying to decide whether to subordinate her desire to have children to her desire to be with a man who doesn't want any -- that's supposed to crystallize Langella's personal and artistic crisis (he used to be a reckless idealist who wrote about liberation but was overcome by cynicism after his wife took his implicit advice and left him for another man) but just feels like piling on top of the already overt subtext. Pathological stodginess doesn't help -- this is a movie where a couple bickers over whether to see The Young Girls of Rochefort or The Battle of Algiers. I hope one of these characters gets a Raiders of the Lost Ark DVD for Christmas, or something.
The first hour's annoyingly coy, predicated on our being in suspense about whether Lauren Ambrose and Frank Langella will have sex. The second is morose, almost pouty, and basically superfluous. The main problem is a weird circularity: we only get to know Ambrose's ambitious grad student in relation to Langella's aging writer (the film provides literally no details about her life that do not involve the writer or his books), and our only insight into the writer and his life comes from the grad student's bullshit literary analysis. There's also a second plot -- the writer's daughter trying to decide whether to subordinate her desire to have children to her desire to be with a man who doesn't want any -- that's supposed to crystallize Langella's personal and artistic crisis (he used to be a reckless idealist who wrote about liberation but was overcome by cynicism after his wife took his implicit advice and left him for another man) but just feels like piling on top of the already overt subtext. Pathological stodginess doesn't help -- this is a movie where a couple bickers over whether to see The Young Girls of Rochefort or The Battle of Algiers. I hope one of these characters gets a Raiders of the Lost Ark DVD for Christmas, or something.
John Carpenter's The Thing
John Carpenter's The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982) - B+
Like most of Carpenter's best, a triumph of truly unpleasant practical effects, and in fact an excellent case study in what works and what doesn't about the top-notch computer effects you see in today's sci-fi and horror. The make-up, goo and puppetry on display here is both more and less real than the CGI stuff: more real because it's an actual physical presence, and less real because it's so limited in its movement. But it serves for what Carpenter is trying to do, which is freak you out in short bursts; he doesn't try to make you jump, but there are moments here of the sort of visceral and immediate horror that's hard to come by in the movies, moments where you feel yourself in the shoes of the character watching this horrible, disgusting alien abomination unveil itself, and holy shit can you imagine seeing that in real life? Quintessential Carpenter in other ways too, not all of them positive: the drab and ugly look, the somewhat interchangeable characters, the abundance of soft testosterone (his characters are macho in kind of a gentle way, though maybe that's just the 80's mentality generally); even Ennio Morricone is aping the synthy, pulsating scores Carpenter wrote for his other films. Very effective but not transcendent; I actually think the opening shot of the flying saucer spoils some of the fun, since as an alien invasion movie it's pretty unimaginative (they traveled light years to bury themselves in the ice for millenia and then spray people with goo?), while as horror it's awesome.
Like most of Carpenter's best, a triumph of truly unpleasant practical effects, and in fact an excellent case study in what works and what doesn't about the top-notch computer effects you see in today's sci-fi and horror. The make-up, goo and puppetry on display here is both more and less real than the CGI stuff: more real because it's an actual physical presence, and less real because it's so limited in its movement. But it serves for what Carpenter is trying to do, which is freak you out in short bursts; he doesn't try to make you jump, but there are moments here of the sort of visceral and immediate horror that's hard to come by in the movies, moments where you feel yourself in the shoes of the character watching this horrible, disgusting alien abomination unveil itself, and holy shit can you imagine seeing that in real life? Quintessential Carpenter in other ways too, not all of them positive: the drab and ugly look, the somewhat interchangeable characters, the abundance of soft testosterone (his characters are macho in kind of a gentle way, though maybe that's just the 80's mentality generally); even Ennio Morricone is aping the synthy, pulsating scores Carpenter wrote for his other films. Very effective but not transcendent; I actually think the opening shot of the flying saucer spoils some of the fun, since as an alien invasion movie it's pretty unimaginative (they traveled light years to bury themselves in the ice for millenia and then spray people with goo?), while as horror it's awesome.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Awake; Enchanted
Awake (Joby Harold, 2007) - C+
Ludicrous, and would have fared far worse had it not also been fascinating -- this is one of those movies I respond to because of how utterly whacked they are, on the theory that weird is almost always better than boring. Message here, believe it or not, is that the ultra-rich need to stick together, lest the not-as-fortunate hungrily converge on their livelihoods, if not their lives; and if you think it's not plausible for that to actually be the subtext of a Hollywood film, then, uh, you need to see this. Add to that the intense Oedipal overtones of the central relationship -- Christensen and Olin, not Christensen and Alba -- and what you've got is strange, strange, strange; had it also been competent, it might have been brilliant. But the first-time director sadly botches the high concept -- Christensen's panicked voiceover is at an obvious remove from the surgery (you can imagine him in the sound booth, trying to sound terrified), and having an invisible version of the protagonist haranguing people who cannot see or hear him is just not a potent dramatic device, as I thought we had learned from The Invisible. Are the interludes in the last act supposed to take place in some sort of afterlife? Who the hell knows. Christensen and Alba are both terrible actors, though the latter has a nice moment late in the film that I can't really describe without giving away the ending. Oh well. Probably doesn't work in any way that a reasonable moviegoer would appreciate, but I can't be too hard on anything this bizarre.
Enchanted (Kevin Lima, 2007) - C+
Cops out like whoa -- sets up a terrific prototypical fairy tale universe, with a maiden whose singing voice calls to action a platoon of helpful woodland creatures and who yearns only for "true love's kiss," an egotistical Prince, an evil witch wielding poison apples, an eager-to-please chipmunk sidekick, etc., but then can't bring itself to skewer it properly, preferring instead to insist in all sincerity that our world should be more like a storybook. Should have been funnier; I'm not sure there's much use for a movie where Patrick Dempsey finds true love with a fairy tale princess, but there could have been room for it in the context of an actual comedy, something like a live-action Shrek. Amy Adams is awesome, there are a few amusing moments, and the big musical number is surprisingly dynamic and rousing, but the tacked-on final fifteen minutes involving a truly pointless CGI dragon sealed the thumbs-down.
Ludicrous, and would have fared far worse had it not also been fascinating -- this is one of those movies I respond to because of how utterly whacked they are, on the theory that weird is almost always better than boring. Message here, believe it or not, is that the ultra-rich need to stick together, lest the not-as-fortunate hungrily converge on their livelihoods, if not their lives; and if you think it's not plausible for that to actually be the subtext of a Hollywood film, then, uh, you need to see this. Add to that the intense Oedipal overtones of the central relationship -- Christensen and Olin, not Christensen and Alba -- and what you've got is strange, strange, strange; had it also been competent, it might have been brilliant. But the first-time director sadly botches the high concept -- Christensen's panicked voiceover is at an obvious remove from the surgery (you can imagine him in the sound booth, trying to sound terrified), and having an invisible version of the protagonist haranguing people who cannot see or hear him is just not a potent dramatic device, as I thought we had learned from The Invisible. Are the interludes in the last act supposed to take place in some sort of afterlife? Who the hell knows. Christensen and Alba are both terrible actors, though the latter has a nice moment late in the film that I can't really describe without giving away the ending. Oh well. Probably doesn't work in any way that a reasonable moviegoer would appreciate, but I can't be too hard on anything this bizarre.
Enchanted (Kevin Lima, 2007) - C+
Cops out like whoa -- sets up a terrific prototypical fairy tale universe, with a maiden whose singing voice calls to action a platoon of helpful woodland creatures and who yearns only for "true love's kiss," an egotistical Prince, an evil witch wielding poison apples, an eager-to-please chipmunk sidekick, etc., but then can't bring itself to skewer it properly, preferring instead to insist in all sincerity that our world should be more like a storybook. Should have been funnier; I'm not sure there's much use for a movie where Patrick Dempsey finds true love with a fairy tale princess, but there could have been room for it in the context of an actual comedy, something like a live-action Shrek. Amy Adams is awesome, there are a few amusing moments, and the big musical number is surprisingly dynamic and rousing, but the tacked-on final fifteen minutes involving a truly pointless CGI dragon sealed the thumbs-down.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Oldies
Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977) - B+
Not much to contribute, but I just want to note: wasn't disco infinitely better than what passes for music in clubs these days?
Latter Days (C. Jay Cox, 2003) - D-
Rented this solely for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is brilliantly hateful in the few scenes that he has. Sadly he outclasses everyone and everything else here by a factor of roughly 500, and when he departs the film roughly 50 minutes in, everything goes to hell. Misconceived from the start, as it clearly should have been about the missionary instead of the playboy, but it doesn't even really matter, since the film is incredibly stupid and thinks we are, too. Most of it is just painfully sappy and laughable, but there are no words for the cruelly manipulative monstrosity of an ending, except maybe "outrageous." I don't watch many gay niche movies -- are they all this terrible?
Not much to contribute, but I just want to note: wasn't disco infinitely better than what passes for music in clubs these days?
Latter Days (C. Jay Cox, 2003) - D-
Rented this solely for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is brilliantly hateful in the few scenes that he has. Sadly he outclasses everyone and everything else here by a factor of roughly 500, and when he departs the film roughly 50 minutes in, everything goes to hell. Misconceived from the start, as it clearly should have been about the missionary instead of the playboy, but it doesn't even really matter, since the film is incredibly stupid and thinks we are, too. Most of it is just painfully sappy and laughable, but there are no words for the cruelly manipulative monstrosity of an ending, except maybe "outrageous." I don't watch many gay niche movies -- are they all this terrible?
Friday, November 23, 2007
Hitman; The Mist
Hitman (Xavier Gens, 2007) - C-
It's dumb as a rock and nearly incomprehensible, but the dealbreaker is how inconsequential it all feels; the backstory has no weight whatsoever (sorry, Xavier, but color-drained flashbacks of a little tattooing don't equate to pathos), and Agent 47's "mission" -- to figure out why a Russian politician he's assassinated has come back healthy and happy -- has all the emotional pull of, well, a level in a video game. Paramaters of the film's universe are unclear -- we're not even sure if Agent 47's "brotherhood" of assassins is secret or not (I'm guessing not, judging by the enormous bar codes tattooed on the back of the members' shaved heads), for-profit or not (they have "ties to every government" but what the hell does that mean?), or mandatory or not (I'm guessing they don't ask those little outcasts and orphans whether or not they'd like in) -- which makes the main character even more problematic: it's already hard to build a movie around a protagonist intended to be a cipher, but even harder when he doesn't have a convincing context to play in. Timothy Olyphant has nothing to work with, and the action is ho-hum and uninspiring. A loud, confused bore.
The Mist (Frank Darabont, 2007) - A
"There's something in the mist!" Holy fuck! A dream come true -- horror made as more than a lark, with real scares and suspense, attention to character and detail, something on its mind, and a wide-eyed sense of wonder. This is the Stephen King adaptation that 1408 wasn't, filled with terror at something otherworldly and utterly beyond human comprehension, which, for all that King can get sappy and ponderous sometimes, is a brand of horror he understands and does extremely well. First and foremost, a masterful piece of survival horror, with the sort of lucidly thought-out logistics I haven't seen since the original Dawn of the Dead. Then, awe-inspiring sci-fi, with a premise no less frightening for its simplicity -- mostly because the film convincingly conveys that there is infinitely more that we don't know simply by virtue of our perspective. Finally, an unforgettable, pitch-black parable about human nature, with an ending that's both incredibly upsetting and strangely optimistic, suggesting that, though it may sometimes not seem like it, we're better than the worst among us. Blisteringly anti-sectarian, too, which is particularly gratifying this fall given the sterilization of The Golden Compass.
It's dumb as a rock and nearly incomprehensible, but the dealbreaker is how inconsequential it all feels; the backstory has no weight whatsoever (sorry, Xavier, but color-drained flashbacks of a little tattooing don't equate to pathos), and Agent 47's "mission" -- to figure out why a Russian politician he's assassinated has come back healthy and happy -- has all the emotional pull of, well, a level in a video game. Paramaters of the film's universe are unclear -- we're not even sure if Agent 47's "brotherhood" of assassins is secret or not (I'm guessing not, judging by the enormous bar codes tattooed on the back of the members' shaved heads), for-profit or not (they have "ties to every government" but what the hell does that mean?), or mandatory or not (I'm guessing they don't ask those little outcasts and orphans whether or not they'd like in) -- which makes the main character even more problematic: it's already hard to build a movie around a protagonist intended to be a cipher, but even harder when he doesn't have a convincing context to play in. Timothy Olyphant has nothing to work with, and the action is ho-hum and uninspiring. A loud, confused bore.
The Mist (Frank Darabont, 2007) - A
"There's something in the mist!" Holy fuck! A dream come true -- horror made as more than a lark, with real scares and suspense, attention to character and detail, something on its mind, and a wide-eyed sense of wonder. This is the Stephen King adaptation that 1408 wasn't, filled with terror at something otherworldly and utterly beyond human comprehension, which, for all that King can get sappy and ponderous sometimes, is a brand of horror he understands and does extremely well. First and foremost, a masterful piece of survival horror, with the sort of lucidly thought-out logistics I haven't seen since the original Dawn of the Dead. Then, awe-inspiring sci-fi, with a premise no less frightening for its simplicity -- mostly because the film convincingly conveys that there is infinitely more that we don't know simply by virtue of our perspective. Finally, an unforgettable, pitch-black parable about human nature, with an ending that's both incredibly upsetting and strangely optimistic, suggesting that, though it may sometimes not seem like it, we're better than the worst among us. Blisteringly anti-sectarian, too, which is particularly gratifying this fall given the sterilization of The Golden Compass.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
P2; Finishing the Game
P2 (Franck Khalfoun, 2007) - C+
Aggressively insecure villains in horror movies are hard, because they tend not to be terribly menacing, and there's usually not much satisfaction in seeing them dispatched. Wes Bentley busts out a pretty generic, dimestore crazy here, and Rachel Nichols makes for a pretty boring woman in trouble; the concept, on the other hand, is nifty and simple -- those underground parking garages can be pretty creepy in the off hours, can't they? Bottom line, then, is that there's some suspense but not much catharsis -- the heroine is nowhere near aggressive enough until the very end, and the villain is never really that scary, since he's really just a shrimpy guy with some keycards, handcuffs, and a mean dog. Profoundly unremarkable and instantly forgettable, though Khalfoun's peers should take note of the good, judicious use of gore here; it really is so much more effective when it can surprise you.
Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee (Justin Lin, 2007) - B
Even when it's trite, it's bizarrely so -- e.g. we get the lily-white guy who insists that he is half-Chinese and writes turgid poems about the oppression of the yellow man in America, but then we see his mother and it turns out he really is half-Chinese; the casting director has a prototypical Christopher Guest vibe -- unshakeable confidence + complete incompetence -- but then the movie gives her an inexplicable crush on a comically average-looking Asian dude. Generally very sharp and self-aware (the boom mike joke toward the end had me rolling), but weird enough to be interesting even when the gags veer toward the cheap and easy. People seem to really dislike this, and I can't figure out why; I suspect anti-Asian bigotry.
Aggressively insecure villains in horror movies are hard, because they tend not to be terribly menacing, and there's usually not much satisfaction in seeing them dispatched. Wes Bentley busts out a pretty generic, dimestore crazy here, and Rachel Nichols makes for a pretty boring woman in trouble; the concept, on the other hand, is nifty and simple -- those underground parking garages can be pretty creepy in the off hours, can't they? Bottom line, then, is that there's some suspense but not much catharsis -- the heroine is nowhere near aggressive enough until the very end, and the villain is never really that scary, since he's really just a shrimpy guy with some keycards, handcuffs, and a mean dog. Profoundly unremarkable and instantly forgettable, though Khalfoun's peers should take note of the good, judicious use of gore here; it really is so much more effective when it can surprise you.
Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee (Justin Lin, 2007) - B
Even when it's trite, it's bizarrely so -- e.g. we get the lily-white guy who insists that he is half-Chinese and writes turgid poems about the oppression of the yellow man in America, but then we see his mother and it turns out he really is half-Chinese; the casting director has a prototypical Christopher Guest vibe -- unshakeable confidence + complete incompetence -- but then the movie gives her an inexplicable crush on a comically average-looking Asian dude. Generally very sharp and self-aware (the boom mike joke toward the end had me rolling), but weird enough to be interesting even when the gags veer toward the cheap and easy. People seem to really dislike this, and I can't figure out why; I suspect anti-Asian bigotry.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
30 Days of Night; The Darjeeling Limited
30 Days of Night (David Slade, 2007) - B-
Slade knows from scary, and gets off to a dynamite start -- it helps that Barrow, AK is a killer setting, becoming sort of supernatural in its own right as we see 2/3 of its population catch the last plane out before the sun can drop below the horizon, not to be seen again for a month. The frigid melancholy of the first twenty minutes, as Hartnett's Sheriff Oleson makes the rounds in preparation for the annual shut-down, got under my skin a hundred times more than the armies of vicious blood-sucking creatures Slade busts out shortly thereafter. But at first that too seems promising -- Slade has a knack for recognizing unsettling imagery, an understanding of why a momentary glimpse of something in a corner of the frame can be much scarier than a full view, and a sense of what it is about vampires that makes them so enduringly frightening. A third of the way through, I was genuinely excited. Then the movie becomes a pretty generic piece of survival horror, without any characters that really connect, and I started to get bored. On the whole 30 Days of Night is still kind of awesome -- I love the fact that Danny Huston plays the lead villain, Josh Hartnett is effortlessly believable as the Barrow sheriff, the movie is imposingly gory, and the first act portended the best movie of the year -- but it can't sustain momentum, and at 113 minutes, that stings.
The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, 2007) - C
Bite me.
Slade knows from scary, and gets off to a dynamite start -- it helps that Barrow, AK is a killer setting, becoming sort of supernatural in its own right as we see 2/3 of its population catch the last plane out before the sun can drop below the horizon, not to be seen again for a month. The frigid melancholy of the first twenty minutes, as Hartnett's Sheriff Oleson makes the rounds in preparation for the annual shut-down, got under my skin a hundred times more than the armies of vicious blood-sucking creatures Slade busts out shortly thereafter. But at first that too seems promising -- Slade has a knack for recognizing unsettling imagery, an understanding of why a momentary glimpse of something in a corner of the frame can be much scarier than a full view, and a sense of what it is about vampires that makes them so enduringly frightening. A third of the way through, I was genuinely excited. Then the movie becomes a pretty generic piece of survival horror, without any characters that really connect, and I started to get bored. On the whole 30 Days of Night is still kind of awesome -- I love the fact that Danny Huston plays the lead villain, Josh Hartnett is effortlessly believable as the Barrow sheriff, the movie is imposingly gory, and the first act portended the best movie of the year -- but it can't sustain momentum, and at 113 minutes, that stings.
The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, 2007) - C
Bite me.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
The Seeker; The Last Season
The Seeker: The Dark is Rising (David L. Cunningham, 2007) - C-
You can attribute my absurd optimism about this one to Post-Harry Potter Stress Disorder, but I really should have known once studio marketing drones changed the title from the simple and elegant The Dark is Rising to the nonsensical and ugly (but less depressing!) The Seeker: The Dark is Rising. None the wiser, I remained vaguely intrigued until roughly 40 minutes into the film, when I thought it might be playing around with the question of why most modern fantasy involves a retreat into something resembling the Middle Ages, with swordfights and horseback riding accompanying the sorcery. And it does sort of address it -- the first scene is the last day of school, accompanied by the entire student body flipping open their cell phones in unison; we then transition to the 14 year-old protagonist's house, where an XBox and a flat-screen tv blare across the room while the huge nuclear family tries to have dinner; meanwhile our hero, who will soon discover his supernatural powers and destiny to save the universe, is forced to move up to the rustic attic by the arrival of his big brother from college; soon enough the menacing Rider makes his appearance and we're off to the Medieval races -- but that doesn't really excuse the arbitrary mish-mash of fantasy clichés that, it turns out, comprises the storyline. My heart sank as the serviceable half hour of what-the-hell-is-going-on set-up turned into useless blather about battling forces of light and dark (a scientific concept, apparently, though the film only feints toward explaining it), Old Ones, Chosen Ones, six signs (one of which may or may not be locked away in someone's being), etc. Silliness isn't the problem (surely you know me better than that); the problem is how lazy, thin and insubstantial all of it is, with the fantasy elements seeming totally random and the characters uniformly worthless. Even Frances Conroy and Ian McShane can't give this stuff any weight. Can't speak to the Susan Cooper novel, which is apparently pretty good, but kids will forget the movie within minutes.
The Last Season (David Mickey Evans, 2007) - D+
I almost never walk out, but I would have bolted had I not read (in the Chicago Reader, no less) that The Last Season pulls itself together in the last act. That's sort of true, at least insofar as the Big Game focuses on the baseball rather than school consolidation or the purity of Sean Astin's soul. But this is still the most overbearing sports movie I've ever seen, demolishing all rationality and common sense in pursuit of its anti-consolidation message, preferring to manufacture absurd villains and a symbolic underdog story that's just not there rather than acknowledge that maybe the merits of its cause are kind of ambiguous. Astonishingly, insufferably corny, dragging in a pointless love subplot to supplement all the sickening hero worship and (for the first 90 minutes at least) ignoring the baseball altogether. Most movies about "underdog" teams at least address the mechanics of the team rising from zero to hero; The Last Season doesn't give a damn. Footnote: since when is Michael Angarano getting the reverse-prestigious last-in-the-credits spot? Is Sky High that popular?
You can attribute my absurd optimism about this one to Post-Harry Potter Stress Disorder, but I really should have known once studio marketing drones changed the title from the simple and elegant The Dark is Rising to the nonsensical and ugly (but less depressing!) The Seeker: The Dark is Rising. None the wiser, I remained vaguely intrigued until roughly 40 minutes into the film, when I thought it might be playing around with the question of why most modern fantasy involves a retreat into something resembling the Middle Ages, with swordfights and horseback riding accompanying the sorcery. And it does sort of address it -- the first scene is the last day of school, accompanied by the entire student body flipping open their cell phones in unison; we then transition to the 14 year-old protagonist's house, where an XBox and a flat-screen tv blare across the room while the huge nuclear family tries to have dinner; meanwhile our hero, who will soon discover his supernatural powers and destiny to save the universe, is forced to move up to the rustic attic by the arrival of his big brother from college; soon enough the menacing Rider makes his appearance and we're off to the Medieval races -- but that doesn't really excuse the arbitrary mish-mash of fantasy clichés that, it turns out, comprises the storyline. My heart sank as the serviceable half hour of what-the-hell-is-going-on set-up turned into useless blather about battling forces of light and dark (a scientific concept, apparently, though the film only feints toward explaining it), Old Ones, Chosen Ones, six signs (one of which may or may not be locked away in someone's being), etc. Silliness isn't the problem (surely you know me better than that); the problem is how lazy, thin and insubstantial all of it is, with the fantasy elements seeming totally random and the characters uniformly worthless. Even Frances Conroy and Ian McShane can't give this stuff any weight. Can't speak to the Susan Cooper novel, which is apparently pretty good, but kids will forget the movie within minutes.
The Last Season (David Mickey Evans, 2007) - D+
I almost never walk out, but I would have bolted had I not read (in the Chicago Reader, no less) that The Last Season pulls itself together in the last act. That's sort of true, at least insofar as the Big Game focuses on the baseball rather than school consolidation or the purity of Sean Astin's soul. But this is still the most overbearing sports movie I've ever seen, demolishing all rationality and common sense in pursuit of its anti-consolidation message, preferring to manufacture absurd villains and a symbolic underdog story that's just not there rather than acknowledge that maybe the merits of its cause are kind of ambiguous. Astonishingly, insufferably corny, dragging in a pointless love subplot to supplement all the sickening hero worship and (for the first 90 minutes at least) ignoring the baseball altogether. Most movies about "underdog" teams at least address the mechanics of the team rising from zero to hero; The Last Season doesn't give a damn. Footnote: since when is Michael Angarano getting the reverse-prestigious last-in-the-credits spot? Is Sky High that popular?
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Elizabeth: The Golden Age (Shekhar Kapur, 2007) - C
The mistake is straining to turn Elizabeth (or "Lizzie," as I like to call her) into a full-fledged, sentimentalized hero -- and sometimes, as when she stands on a cliff in a flowing dress, overlooking the burning Spanish Armada, nearly a superhero. I just wasn't feelin' it; Kapur seems awed by his protagonist more than anything else this time around, which would be okay except that it apparently prevents him from treating her thoughtfully. He makes some token nods to the ambiguity that made Elizabeth so compelling in the first film, with a few scenes were she laments giving up her life for England, or gets really angry, or what have you, but the movie is mostly interested in lionizing her without doing the legwork. Kind of oppressive in its opulence, with lots of expensive costumes and birds-eye-view shots from 50-foot vaulted ceilings, and ultimately makes a hollow noise when you thump it. The portrayal of King Philip II is hilarious, as he walks around dark corridors clutching rosaries and calling Elizabeth a "blood-soaked virgin." Lovely guy.
The mistake is straining to turn Elizabeth (or "Lizzie," as I like to call her) into a full-fledged, sentimentalized hero -- and sometimes, as when she stands on a cliff in a flowing dress, overlooking the burning Spanish Armada, nearly a superhero. I just wasn't feelin' it; Kapur seems awed by his protagonist more than anything else this time around, which would be okay except that it apparently prevents him from treating her thoughtfully. He makes some token nods to the ambiguity that made Elizabeth so compelling in the first film, with a few scenes were she laments giving up her life for England, or gets really angry, or what have you, but the movie is mostly interested in lionizing her without doing the legwork. Kind of oppressive in its opulence, with lots of expensive costumes and birds-eye-view shots from 50-foot vaulted ceilings, and ultimately makes a hollow noise when you thump it. The portrayal of King Philip II is hilarious, as he walks around dark corridors clutching rosaries and calling Elizabeth a "blood-soaked virgin." Lovely guy.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
In the Valley of Elah
In the Valley of Elah (Paul Haggis, 2007) - B
Oh boy could this have been worse. After watching Haggis bamboozle everyone from my neighbors to Roger Ebert with the screenwriting grad student's wet dream that was Crash, I panicked upon learning that, apparently having defeated racism, he was now taking on Iraq. And in some ways, he is indeed up to his old tricks -- most reasonable people will agree, I hope, that the stunt with the flag is basically unforgivable. That aside, though, this is a surprisingly strong effort, reminding us that the wounds of Iraq, like the wounds of Vietnam, are going to remain long after the next presidential election is a distant memory. The interesting thing is how immediate it is -- the basic thesis is "the Army fucks people up," but what makes the film powerful is everything we know about Iraq that goes more-or-less unsaid here. It's hard to imagine Elah working in 10 years, but it sure as hell works now. Tommy Lee Jones is remarkable, though is the idea here that the last generation's career officers simply became emotionally constipated OCD-ers while today's wind up charred and decapitated? Jesus.
Oh boy could this have been worse. After watching Haggis bamboozle everyone from my neighbors to Roger Ebert with the screenwriting grad student's wet dream that was Crash, I panicked upon learning that, apparently having defeated racism, he was now taking on Iraq. And in some ways, he is indeed up to his old tricks -- most reasonable people will agree, I hope, that the stunt with the flag is basically unforgivable. That aside, though, this is a surprisingly strong effort, reminding us that the wounds of Iraq, like the wounds of Vietnam, are going to remain long after the next presidential election is a distant memory. The interesting thing is how immediate it is -- the basic thesis is "the Army fucks people up," but what makes the film powerful is everything we know about Iraq that goes more-or-less unsaid here. It's hard to imagine Elah working in 10 years, but it sure as hell works now. Tommy Lee Jones is remarkable, though is the idea here that the last generation's career officers simply became emotionally constipated OCD-ers while today's wind up charred and decapitated? Jesus.
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