This is absolutely one of the best sci-fi and action films ever made. Never dull for a second, this film has intelligence to spare, excellent characters, outstanding action, relentlessly inventive special effects, and just all-around f'ing amazing film making! All this and Summer Glau, who is destined to be a big star. Jane and Mal had most of the best lines, of course, but everyone gets their due. This is a great leap forward from Whedon's earlier work, and shows the value of allowing a young film maker, intent on creating a true classic, complete creative control. I simply have not enjoyed an action film out of Hollywood to this degree for ages; Whedon shows true potential to bring the soul back to a soul-starved formula-driven industry. Now, bring back the show already (on HBO?)!
Reviews
6 Reviews
Ace in the Hole
(1951)
One of my favs
13 July 2001
Way ahead of its time - you can take the theme of this film and apply it to any and all current news stories. As espoused by Kirk Douglas' turn as morally bankrupt reporter, Charles Tatum, nobody really cares about tragedy or genocide on a large scale, but take a kid down a well or a guy in a mineshaft, and then you've got a media frenzy! Like Sunset Blvd. almost every line is a keeper. Wonderful use of symbolism regarding Native Americans seems more like something out of Twin Peaks than a 1951 flick. Loved how the traveling carnival company that eventually shows up is named "S&M," and there are thousands of little moments like this. One of my all-time favorite films.
The Anniversary Party
(2001)
Jennifer Jason Leigh and the aging circle
6 July 2001
I can understand how many will find THE ANNIVERSARY PARTY an indulgent, sneering little movie lacking in focus and ultimate catharsis; but I enjoyed it, quite a bit actually, if only to see some of Hollywood's finest talent freeing themselves from the studios for the intimacy of a digital shoot. I admired Party for being bold, clever, funny, cutting and occasionally brilliant. The ending felt a bit forced at first (the off screen family death as catalyst for conclusion was used to better effect in TWO GIRLS AND A GUY - another actor-driven digital indie), but ultimately it fit for Sally and Joe to end where they began, Narcissist and Echo.
Other comments have provided good synopses; I won't elaborate save for one obvious theme so far missed, that of chasing lost youth. It's quite depressing really, for at this party, Generation X officially goes over the hill. All my life I've been vaguely annoyed at self-obsessed Baby Boomer flicks like The Big Chill and The Ice Storm that seemed to congratulate an entire generation for being so damn dysfunctional. Well (*sigh*), now such movies will be made about my generation, here defined as neither willing nor ready to grow up. Gwyneth as "Skye @#*%ing Davidson" has the one thing all else at the party have lost, and the little pills she brings offers a last, desperate attempt to participate in her "youth culture" (ages 8-29 need only apply). Klein's presence (an obvious reference to the Big C) suggests that some Boomers are still chasing that lost youth. Meanwhile, Gen-X is just getting started.
"So much for Ecstasy."
Other comments have provided good synopses; I won't elaborate save for one obvious theme so far missed, that of chasing lost youth. It's quite depressing really, for at this party, Generation X officially goes over the hill. All my life I've been vaguely annoyed at self-obsessed Baby Boomer flicks like The Big Chill and The Ice Storm that seemed to congratulate an entire generation for being so damn dysfunctional. Well (*sigh*), now such movies will be made about my generation, here defined as neither willing nor ready to grow up. Gwyneth as "Skye @#*%ing Davidson" has the one thing all else at the party have lost, and the little pills she brings offers a last, desperate attempt to participate in her "youth culture" (ages 8-29 need only apply). Klein's presence (an obvious reference to the Big C) suggests that some Boomers are still chasing that lost youth. Meanwhile, Gen-X is just getting started.
"So much for Ecstasy."
The Winslow Boy
(1999)
Mamet Finally Makes a Film For Women
24 April 1999
Terrance Rattigan's oft-produced melodrama THE WINSLOW BOY seems a radical departure for Mamet from the stuff of con-men, losers, presidential conspiracies, sexual harassment and billionaires bear hunting with pointy sticks. In fact, Mamet -- who it was once fashionable to dismiss as a misogynist -- has made his first woman's movie, and a feminist one at that. (No, it's not TITANIC.) At first glance, there would seem little to distinguish it from a dry, little BBC production. But small and dry is just how Mamet likes it, the stiff manners of Victorian England a perfect venue for his controlled dialogue. Language is of course what Mamet is all about and Rattigan's play on a petty-theft trial that became media sensation in Edwardian England, conjures a time when language was the both the finest virtue, and instrument of sexual repression. Words are whispered and obscured by sudden walls. Letters are hidden and read silently alone. Words damn and redeem, leaving the audience to guess just how strongly the characters actually believe in their pursuit of petty justice. Don't expect a riveting court-room drama though, unfortunately Mamet doesn't expand much beyond the walls of the Father Winslow's study -- rather, off-screen events are conveyed by news-boys, maids and other stand-ins for Greek chorus. Mamet was attracted to this convention as it followed the antique rule of `don't show the unshowable.' REBECCA PIGEON shines in the role of Kate Winslow, the suffragette who wants to, and could be, a lawyer. Here she walks about icily sexy (occasionally sporting the same sunglasses she wore in THE SPANISH PRISONER), her wooden intonations ever contrasting with her deeply expressive face and sly manner. (Seeing her in person, I dare say, it seems like Mamet is frumping her up a bit for the camera, I suppose for reality's sake, because in person, she's supernaturally beautiful. There're some great bits on smoking cigarettes, which doubles as sex between her and JEREMY NORTHAM who plays Sir Robert, the arrogant lawyer who takes on the case for publicity, then justice and possibly love. Ultimately, the movie is a handsome, satisfying, if low-key, plea for siding with the common over the great and letting "right be done," but if you found the Spanish Prisoner boring, I would steer clear. I didn't talk to a single woman who didn't like this movie, though. When asked "why this radical departure," Mamet replied, "how so?" and then quoted Major Pat Buckly's most important thing he ever learned, "While life is mostly froth and bubble, two things stand in stone; kindness, mostly trouble; courage and your own."
Run Lola Run
(1998)
RUN LOLA RUN
24 April 1999
This is the one you're all gonna wanna see, I guarantee it, this movie is dope. Pulsating with a nearly non-stop techno-soundtrack, Tom Tykwer's RUN LOLA RUN from Germany is a digital masterpiece of action, suspense and existential intrigue. I don't want to tell you too much about the twisting, relentlessly rewinding plot, suffice to say, that the festival audience was on the edge of their seats throughout, cheering, applauding, and literally, shouting "Run! Lola! Run!." You've got to see this flick to believe it, boasting a visual feast of digital editing and processing techniques. My favorite was at random, the crucial events of the rest of a character's life would flash before our eyes in quick time. Each time Lola runs, racing the clock to the same high noon, seemingly insignificant event change the entire outcome of a person's life. Like I said, you have to see this brilliant, blood-pumping film for yourself. AICN readers will dig it the most.
Saving Private Ryan
(1998)
FOR WAR CONSIDERATION
15 January 1999
January 15, 1999 - Stephen Spielberg's SAVING PRIVATE RYAN seems the stuff of greatness: it elevates cinematic realism to new heights, is a catalyst for passionate discourse on World War II, emboldens new respect for our veterans, and gives Spielberg an early lock on all things Oscar. Conversely, Terrance Malick's THE THIN RED LINE garners equal parts praise, equal parts derision, and is called the product of an expatriate flower-child who's clearly lost his mind. Four days after seeing Malick's film, I am haunted, not by horrible images of war, but something far deeper and beguiling. Seeking truth, I see "Ryan" again, feeling diplomatic and ready to accept each film as two sides of the same coin - SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is the Id, flesh, machination, mission, answer and nostalgic history, to THE THIN RED LINE's conscience, spirit, garden, journey, question, and utopian vision.
Right out the gate, Spielberg is onto something big when he stages the battle of Omaha Beach. Consider that he arrives on location with only five pages of script for the entire invasion of Normandy, then gets busy in his sandbox, re-shooting and fine-tuning the gore until an immaculate vision of carnage is rendered - mostly thanks to Janusz Kaminski stripped lenses and newsreel cinematography. Reading the U.S. Army's technocratic account of D-Day, one is spirited to learn there is a real-life rifle company that lands at Dog Green amidst slaughter and confusion, blows a gap in a mine-field, fights its way to the top of a bluff, and cleans out a machine-gun nest. This incursion actually takes several grueling hours, not twenty minutes - that this should be surprising is testament to the power of Spielberg's false realism.
That Spielberg didn't just tell the whole story of D-Day is a bit of a shame. I suppose he didn't want to remake THE LONGEST DAY (1962), with its ham-and-cheese heroics. I kind of wish he had. Instead, he opts for something more sentimental and personal in scope, but sadly, his vision suffers for it. The very moment Tom Hanks' "Captain Miller" looks back at a beach littered with corpses (body parts curiously absent) the film loses its well-crafted, objectivity. That the eviscerating horrors of the battle still weigh on the mind is no excuse for the parade of stock characters, inappropriate comic relief, and desperate pastiche that follow.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is no rip-off of THE THIN RED LINE, more so, an inversion. "Red Line's" single, gripping battle scene is bordered by metaphysical yearning, while "Ryan" bookends its uneasy spirituality with two scenes of sensational combat. "Red Line" features the hypnotic and ferocious presence of a green jungle, where "Ryan's" palate is leached of all color, save mud, gun-metal and brick. "Red Line" poses unanswerable queries into the nature of human existence, while "Ryan" asks the rhetorical question, "am I a good man?"
All attempts at anticipating Malick's opus would be denied, for up to the second of his film's release, he still worked on it. Here is a man who will never play by Hollywood's rules. Consider that Malick spends twenty years in hiding, is begged out of retirement by a pair of iconoclastic producers (Robert Michael Geisler and John Roberdeau), spends many more years adapting James Jones' novel in secrecy, fires his producers, arrives on location in the wildernesses of Australia and the Solomon Islands with a small army, ditches his script, shoots 1,000,000 feet of 70mm film over a six-month period - most exclusively in evening and early morning light - cuts the film at eight hours, and lastly, writes a haunting, poetic narration to bind the final, three-hour cut.
Those not hypnotized by Malick's vision are finding this film infuriating, though. A common complaint is that the film lacks a central hero to rally behind; but such is the film's belief that there exists a collective unconscious shared by all, and all men are somehow the same. The physical similarities between Privates "Witt" (Jim Cazeviel) and "Bell" (Ben Chaplin) emphasize this point. Both men carry with them memories of a great love, be it sensual wife, or primal paradise; both pass through war never to return to this love. In SAVING PRIVATE RYAN you hear about a soldier's mental island, where one must go in battle to remain sane; but in THE THIN RED LINE, you experience this, and you mourn its passing.
In the end, THE THIN RED LINE is about World War II as much as SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is about Death, the dark, senseless way one is mutilated through war. THE THIN RED LINE is about Life, light, and its fragile presence in all living things.
In conclusion, I must address which film and which director will carry home more Oscars? The Academy faced a similar conundrum in 1978 when considering COMING HOME vs. THE DEER HUNTER for Best Picture. (This was the same year Malick made Days of Heaven, then disappeared). The war in Vietnam, long a taboo subject, was then recognized in mainstream cinema but, who had the supreme vision, Hal Ashby or Michael Cimino? The question is superfluous for neither film is about the war so much as the disintegration of the American psyche. Ultimately, The Academy chose THE DEER HUNTER with its deeply layered character studies over the cloying, P.C. sentimentality of COMING HOME. I am hoping that today's voters are of a similar sensibility. Therefore, I most humbly suggest to the esteemed members of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, for your consideration, for Best Picture THE THIN RED LINE - not because it is the better representation of war, because it is the greater realization of life.
*****
Right out the gate, Spielberg is onto something big when he stages the battle of Omaha Beach. Consider that he arrives on location with only five pages of script for the entire invasion of Normandy, then gets busy in his sandbox, re-shooting and fine-tuning the gore until an immaculate vision of carnage is rendered - mostly thanks to Janusz Kaminski stripped lenses and newsreel cinematography. Reading the U.S. Army's technocratic account of D-Day, one is spirited to learn there is a real-life rifle company that lands at Dog Green amidst slaughter and confusion, blows a gap in a mine-field, fights its way to the top of a bluff, and cleans out a machine-gun nest. This incursion actually takes several grueling hours, not twenty minutes - that this should be surprising is testament to the power of Spielberg's false realism.
That Spielberg didn't just tell the whole story of D-Day is a bit of a shame. I suppose he didn't want to remake THE LONGEST DAY (1962), with its ham-and-cheese heroics. I kind of wish he had. Instead, he opts for something more sentimental and personal in scope, but sadly, his vision suffers for it. The very moment Tom Hanks' "Captain Miller" looks back at a beach littered with corpses (body parts curiously absent) the film loses its well-crafted, objectivity. That the eviscerating horrors of the battle still weigh on the mind is no excuse for the parade of stock characters, inappropriate comic relief, and desperate pastiche that follow.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is no rip-off of THE THIN RED LINE, more so, an inversion. "Red Line's" single, gripping battle scene is bordered by metaphysical yearning, while "Ryan" bookends its uneasy spirituality with two scenes of sensational combat. "Red Line" features the hypnotic and ferocious presence of a green jungle, where "Ryan's" palate is leached of all color, save mud, gun-metal and brick. "Red Line" poses unanswerable queries into the nature of human existence, while "Ryan" asks the rhetorical question, "am I a good man?"
All attempts at anticipating Malick's opus would be denied, for up to the second of his film's release, he still worked on it. Here is a man who will never play by Hollywood's rules. Consider that Malick spends twenty years in hiding, is begged out of retirement by a pair of iconoclastic producers (Robert Michael Geisler and John Roberdeau), spends many more years adapting James Jones' novel in secrecy, fires his producers, arrives on location in the wildernesses of Australia and the Solomon Islands with a small army, ditches his script, shoots 1,000,000 feet of 70mm film over a six-month period - most exclusively in evening and early morning light - cuts the film at eight hours, and lastly, writes a haunting, poetic narration to bind the final, three-hour cut.
Those not hypnotized by Malick's vision are finding this film infuriating, though. A common complaint is that the film lacks a central hero to rally behind; but such is the film's belief that there exists a collective unconscious shared by all, and all men are somehow the same. The physical similarities between Privates "Witt" (Jim Cazeviel) and "Bell" (Ben Chaplin) emphasize this point. Both men carry with them memories of a great love, be it sensual wife, or primal paradise; both pass through war never to return to this love. In SAVING PRIVATE RYAN you hear about a soldier's mental island, where one must go in battle to remain sane; but in THE THIN RED LINE, you experience this, and you mourn its passing.
In the end, THE THIN RED LINE is about World War II as much as SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is about Death, the dark, senseless way one is mutilated through war. THE THIN RED LINE is about Life, light, and its fragile presence in all living things.
In conclusion, I must address which film and which director will carry home more Oscars? The Academy faced a similar conundrum in 1978 when considering COMING HOME vs. THE DEER HUNTER for Best Picture. (This was the same year Malick made Days of Heaven, then disappeared). The war in Vietnam, long a taboo subject, was then recognized in mainstream cinema but, who had the supreme vision, Hal Ashby or Michael Cimino? The question is superfluous for neither film is about the war so much as the disintegration of the American psyche. Ultimately, The Academy chose THE DEER HUNTER with its deeply layered character studies over the cloying, P.C. sentimentality of COMING HOME. I am hoping that today's voters are of a similar sensibility. Therefore, I most humbly suggest to the esteemed members of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, for your consideration, for Best Picture THE THIN RED LINE - not because it is the better representation of war, because it is the greater realization of life.
*****
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