Stepping into the good ol' erotic thriller genre, Egoyan did a movie that's safe and a little too predictable, but good. A specific plot twist is set up as a surprise but I think most people can see it coming early on. Moore and Seyfried are amazing here, as is Neeson in a performance which demands more mystery than anything else from him. It's a good movie, just not one that delves too deep and, being my first Egoyan, I probably was on the look-out for something a lot more something. I'll soon get to Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter. The framing of certain scenes, particularly in close-ups, reminded me of Cronenberg. Julianne Moore has amazing sexy nipples.
Reviews
24 Reviews
You Don't Know Jack
(2010 TV Movie)
You Don't Know Jack
23 August 2010
Jack Kevorkian is such an awesome personality that this movie was somewhat inevitable. With Al Pacino in the title role, it's better than it could have been. At the same time, I found most of it very average - good and forgettable at the same time, If I can convey my drift. The strongest moments come towards the end, when Kevorkian's stubborn behavior costs him his freedom. I enjoyed the movie, but it felt like something seen many times before. In these cases, I think I prefer a good documentary.
One thought that sprang to mind during this. Cinema has moved into a direction in which a lot of shots and overabundance of coverage is the norm. I was watching a scene with Pacino and John Goodman having a conversation inside a car and the contrast between that and the shots in The Great Escape (showing in the other channel) was incredible. All right, that's an extreme counter-example, but what I mean is that there was no physical action in the scene and yet we had all these separate shots capturing minute gestures of each actors that I instinctively disliked. In my personal taste, that almost shows a lack of trust in the scene, the dialog or the actors, which obviously must not be the case here.
One thought that sprang to mind during this. Cinema has moved into a direction in which a lot of shots and overabundance of coverage is the norm. I was watching a scene with Pacino and John Goodman having a conversation inside a car and the contrast between that and the shots in The Great Escape (showing in the other channel) was incredible. All right, that's an extreme counter-example, but what I mean is that there was no physical action in the scene and yet we had all these separate shots capturing minute gestures of each actors that I instinctively disliked. In my personal taste, that almost shows a lack of trust in the scene, the dialog or the actors, which obviously must not be the case here.
Public Enemies
(2009)
Back to the '30s with Mann
20 August 2009
My grandpa's first reaction when he heard this movie was being released was -why? Why yet another movie about Dillinger? What can it add? My grandpa's question triggered my thinking. Movies and Hollywood filmmakers don't seem to care anymore about adding something to history or the medium. They just seem to compulsively adapt other movies, toy lines or videogames into modern reworkings. It's a culture of thoughtless recycling. Fortunately, and although I haven't seen the '30s or '70s biopics, Michael Mann does have something to show.
The first surprise is how the movie is shot. As one of the most vocal followers of digital video, Mann seems to exploit its handicaps instead of trying to convince us it can look as good as film. Throughout the movie we're treated to 3D video feel, artificial grain and close-ups which show up every pore on the actors skins. It's like someone sent a documentary crew back in time. However, this incongruous approach also made me experience the 1930s in a way I'd never done before, as a reality instead of a postcard. Almost all movie depictions of the "public enemies" era (even the gritty ones, like Bonnie and Clyde) are stylish and sophisticated. Instead, Mann's compulsive attention to prop and costume detail combined with the hand-held camera-work are immediately urging and attention-grabbing.
Mann, as a filmmaker, always seemed to me more interested in technique than depth or story. This is arguably the same film he has made twice before (I'm talking about Thief and Heat), only this time history-based. As I read on about Dillinger and Melvin Purvis after watching the film, I realized the movie's script is very unusual in that it almost seems to strip the juicy bits out of the story. Where is the scene with the people soaking their handkerchiefs on Dillinger's blood, or the '30s era depression portrait? Like you guys were saying, Little Bohemia was in fact an embarrassment to the FBI in which civilians got shot and the criminal walked away unharmed. Except for a weird scene in which Dillinger walks into the Chicago police station and wanders around, there's a very down-to-earth approach to the character, taking away his more mythical elements and leaving us with a career robber who, like James Caan's character in Thief, seems to abstractly decide to fall in love to make up for lost time.
The movie focuses obsessively on this relationship, instead of the more obvious paths it could have taken. Hoover's incompetence and his closet homosexuality are brief side notes. So is Melvin Purvis. The movie strips him of a personality, showing only the professional side of the policeman. This is so evident that when the title card near the end informs us that he later shot himself, I had to laugh it was so random. I seem to be speaking against all of this, but in fact what I'm doing is pointing out how unusual all of these directorial choices are. In fact, I celebrate them. Public Enemies is a movie that might seem frustrating to many, but to me, it was a refreshing, exciting journey into a world too often depicted and too easily neutralized. It's a great thing to see a copmen-and-robbers film without feeling like I've seen it all before. And make no mistake, the film's action scenes are intense.
I'd like to finish by pointing out that the movie has a hell of a cast. Johnny Depp is a revelation in a time when it looked like his awesomeness was exhausting itself. Christian Bale is not given much to do as Purvis, but he's competent, mostly the Bale serious face we see too much of all the time. Billy Crudup's Hoover is great, he deserves his own flick. Marion Cotillard is a great foil to Depp. There are a lot of very famous faces on the film (in fact, maybe too many), and some of them are only in for very brief seconds - Lily Tomlin, Giovanni Ribisi and Leelee Sobieski enter and leave the screen and they're all very good, but none have any big scenes. This might be the artsiest blockbuster I've ever seen. Which, in my mind, is a compliment.
The first surprise is how the movie is shot. As one of the most vocal followers of digital video, Mann seems to exploit its handicaps instead of trying to convince us it can look as good as film. Throughout the movie we're treated to 3D video feel, artificial grain and close-ups which show up every pore on the actors skins. It's like someone sent a documentary crew back in time. However, this incongruous approach also made me experience the 1930s in a way I'd never done before, as a reality instead of a postcard. Almost all movie depictions of the "public enemies" era (even the gritty ones, like Bonnie and Clyde) are stylish and sophisticated. Instead, Mann's compulsive attention to prop and costume detail combined with the hand-held camera-work are immediately urging and attention-grabbing.
Mann, as a filmmaker, always seemed to me more interested in technique than depth or story. This is arguably the same film he has made twice before (I'm talking about Thief and Heat), only this time history-based. As I read on about Dillinger and Melvin Purvis after watching the film, I realized the movie's script is very unusual in that it almost seems to strip the juicy bits out of the story. Where is the scene with the people soaking their handkerchiefs on Dillinger's blood, or the '30s era depression portrait? Like you guys were saying, Little Bohemia was in fact an embarrassment to the FBI in which civilians got shot and the criminal walked away unharmed. Except for a weird scene in which Dillinger walks into the Chicago police station and wanders around, there's a very down-to-earth approach to the character, taking away his more mythical elements and leaving us with a career robber who, like James Caan's character in Thief, seems to abstractly decide to fall in love to make up for lost time.
The movie focuses obsessively on this relationship, instead of the more obvious paths it could have taken. Hoover's incompetence and his closet homosexuality are brief side notes. So is Melvin Purvis. The movie strips him of a personality, showing only the professional side of the policeman. This is so evident that when the title card near the end informs us that he later shot himself, I had to laugh it was so random. I seem to be speaking against all of this, but in fact what I'm doing is pointing out how unusual all of these directorial choices are. In fact, I celebrate them. Public Enemies is a movie that might seem frustrating to many, but to me, it was a refreshing, exciting journey into a world too often depicted and too easily neutralized. It's a great thing to see a copmen-and-robbers film without feeling like I've seen it all before. And make no mistake, the film's action scenes are intense.
I'd like to finish by pointing out that the movie has a hell of a cast. Johnny Depp is a revelation in a time when it looked like his awesomeness was exhausting itself. Christian Bale is not given much to do as Purvis, but he's competent, mostly the Bale serious face we see too much of all the time. Billy Crudup's Hoover is great, he deserves his own flick. Marion Cotillard is a great foil to Depp. There are a lot of very famous faces on the film (in fact, maybe too many), and some of them are only in for very brief seconds - Lily Tomlin, Giovanni Ribisi and Leelee Sobieski enter and leave the screen and they're all very good, but none have any big scenes. This might be the artsiest blockbuster I've ever seen. Which, in my mind, is a compliment.
Drag Me to Hell
(2009)
Sam Raimi, finally away from a Spiderman movie
20 August 2009
Warning: Spoilers
Wow. I can't believe it's been 9 years since the last time Sam Raimi's name was up on the marquees on anything non-Spiderman related. I can't believe his distinctive camera style once again seems so refreshing and potent when applied to other genres other than the naturally bombastic superhero stories.
Drag Me to Hell has a storyline which could have easily been taken from an EC Horror comic from the '50s. In keeping with the nostalgic material, the movie even has the old '80s Universal logo. Allison Lohman portrays the damsel in distress, a loan officer who turns down and humiliates an old gypsy lady for fear of losing a job promotion. The gypsy, as gypsies tend to do, gives her an evil three-day curse. During these three days, the girl will see the old hag's face come out of nearly everything, from a cake to a cell phone screen. She will also be chased around by shadowy horned devils. When those three days are over, she WILL be dragged down to the depths of hell.
As good Horror movies always should, this one uses fantasy as a mask for a message, and that message is about capitalism, greed and what we'd be willing to put at stake for personal gain. Raimi mocks the protagonist viciously, showing her as a blank slate of a perfect, smiling, straight-out-of-high-school girl and then deconstructing that by showing us a nervous being who's desperate to escape her country roots and depressing family life. Although the movie is hardly big on character development, Raimi gives the audience enough hints about this to make it the film's major theme apart from itself. True, Catherine is not a bad person, and ultimately doesn't deserve everything that happens to her, but it's her selfishness what gets her into trouble. And that same absorbed behavior is what she needs to break free of the curse, a process which involves harming others who are no more guilty than herself.
Ultimately, though, Drag Me to Hell is all about the set pieces. It's a loud, shrieking movie from beginning to end and it features talking goats, swallowing embalming fluid and eye-stapling. Although definitively not as gory as any of the Evil Dead films (even less than Army of Darkness), there's a trend of extreme slapstick physical violence which is bound to get most movie audiences (that is, people not as desensitized as me) to cover their eyes and go "ewww" - which is what most were doing at my showing. Raimi's magic is how he can get a scene to be physically intense and morbid while at the same time showing the ridiculousness of the fictional movie strings that are holding it together. On that balance, the only one who can claim to challenge him is Tarantino. But QT loses because he never capped off a Horror scene by stealing a trick out of the Looney Tunes.
Drag Me to Hell has a storyline which could have easily been taken from an EC Horror comic from the '50s. In keeping with the nostalgic material, the movie even has the old '80s Universal logo. Allison Lohman portrays the damsel in distress, a loan officer who turns down and humiliates an old gypsy lady for fear of losing a job promotion. The gypsy, as gypsies tend to do, gives her an evil three-day curse. During these three days, the girl will see the old hag's face come out of nearly everything, from a cake to a cell phone screen. She will also be chased around by shadowy horned devils. When those three days are over, she WILL be dragged down to the depths of hell.
As good Horror movies always should, this one uses fantasy as a mask for a message, and that message is about capitalism, greed and what we'd be willing to put at stake for personal gain. Raimi mocks the protagonist viciously, showing her as a blank slate of a perfect, smiling, straight-out-of-high-school girl and then deconstructing that by showing us a nervous being who's desperate to escape her country roots and depressing family life. Although the movie is hardly big on character development, Raimi gives the audience enough hints about this to make it the film's major theme apart from itself. True, Catherine is not a bad person, and ultimately doesn't deserve everything that happens to her, but it's her selfishness what gets her into trouble. And that same absorbed behavior is what she needs to break free of the curse, a process which involves harming others who are no more guilty than herself.
Ultimately, though, Drag Me to Hell is all about the set pieces. It's a loud, shrieking movie from beginning to end and it features talking goats, swallowing embalming fluid and eye-stapling. Although definitively not as gory as any of the Evil Dead films (even less than Army of Darkness), there's a trend of extreme slapstick physical violence which is bound to get most movie audiences (that is, people not as desensitized as me) to cover their eyes and go "ewww" - which is what most were doing at my showing. Raimi's magic is how he can get a scene to be physically intense and morbid while at the same time showing the ridiculousness of the fictional movie strings that are holding it together. On that balance, the only one who can claim to challenge him is Tarantino. But QT loses because he never capped off a Horror scene by stealing a trick out of the Looney Tunes.
Juno
(2007)
Juno
22 March 2008
Movies about quirky, off-beat characters have been a staple of American indie cinema for years. And lately one of them has been a fixture as filler Oscar nominee, usually snabbing Best Screenplay. But what makes Wes Anderson movies different from Punch-Drunk Love, and what makes those different from Little Miss Sunshine, Napoleon Dynamite and this year's Juno? Well it depends on the degree of sell-out quality which, in the script, translates into how much do the off-beat, quirky characters end up happily integrated into conformity. Little Miss Sunshine, for example, is an idiot's feel-good movie, about a bunch of subnormal losers ruining a girl's life, and finally getting their chance to shine in an extended candy-flavored, undeserved, overlong catharsis scene. I think Tim Burton is the most honest (ironically a Hollywood director) craftsman of this type of story - his characters are unapologetically weird and they never end up accepted and subdued by society under any circumstance.
Juno is about a so-called geek, sarcastic teenage girl that ends up pregnant after having sex with a meek, feminine looking boy she's secretly in love with. Unlike what might be expected from a lesser movie, her parents accept the burden with maturity and actually collaborate with their daughter in her goal of giving the child to adoption. In trying to find the perfect couple, Juno comes into contact with a pair of yuppies, played by Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman. She's so crazy about having a child I'd never, ever in my life allow her to even touch one, while he lives mostly in the relics of his past, when he didn't have to hide his rock memorabilia and comic-books from view in a room, specially prepared by his wife for that purpose. Problem will not arise from conventional sources in this script, and that was one of the things that made me judge Juno above the type of garbage it definitively looks like from the ads and trailers. This is not the Little Miss Sunshine type - nothing will get so wrapped up by the end, neither can you see every scene coming from the first one onwards. Also, I gotta admit Ellen Page is an ugly-looking nothingness, but she's not without her acting chops.
And still, the Cody/Reitman team manages to fall into some of the independent director's traps. For example, in a movie written by a blogger, I guess it's to be expected that every character talks like they're press articles instead of people. This is not being intelligent, this is being annoying - if I knew someone who talked like this, I'd kick him/her on the genitalia. "Honest to blog", "silencio!", "your eggo is preggo" and other unneeded cutecisms populate every single line of dialogue. Every character is some kind of quirky pop culture savvy talking head. Of course, Juno is the worst - you're supposed to relate to her because she's covering a heart of gold under that stand-up comedy exterior. How come a cashier at an abortion clinic has her face covered by body piercing and cracks jokes at Juno's condition? Is that supposed to be so out of place it's funny? I see it more as overcrowding in a movie that's already bursting with forced oddity.
And still, the drama exhibits a level of maturity rarely seen in that colorful, rock-soundtrack sub-Hollywood that's "edgy" US film nowadays, most of it evident on the script's surprise development about the adoptive couple. Even though she's a psycho and he's an inmature dork, we understand both of them and the effect they have on Juno's already troubled mind. I also thought it was nice that Juno's parents weren't a couple of ogres. That her hero's journey has her saving the day by the end is predictable yet to an extent needed, but it brings to me another pet peeve - Juno has not in her one inch of the insecurity that's to be expected in any teenage girl, not only a knocked up one. That makes her a way too convenient protagonist and of course, smarter than everyone else around to an unrealistic extent.
I remain lukewarm on this one, although it's not a bad movie by any means. The soundtrack, the characters and the dialogue are annoying as all hell, but the actors really elevate the material (specially J.K. Simmons) and the script finds itself comfortable in that moral grey area where none is too perfect or too lousy a human being. I guess it's not good stuff either, but I can't bring myself to hate it 100%. I've seen far worse.
Juno is about a so-called geek, sarcastic teenage girl that ends up pregnant after having sex with a meek, feminine looking boy she's secretly in love with. Unlike what might be expected from a lesser movie, her parents accept the burden with maturity and actually collaborate with their daughter in her goal of giving the child to adoption. In trying to find the perfect couple, Juno comes into contact with a pair of yuppies, played by Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman. She's so crazy about having a child I'd never, ever in my life allow her to even touch one, while he lives mostly in the relics of his past, when he didn't have to hide his rock memorabilia and comic-books from view in a room, specially prepared by his wife for that purpose. Problem will not arise from conventional sources in this script, and that was one of the things that made me judge Juno above the type of garbage it definitively looks like from the ads and trailers. This is not the Little Miss Sunshine type - nothing will get so wrapped up by the end, neither can you see every scene coming from the first one onwards. Also, I gotta admit Ellen Page is an ugly-looking nothingness, but she's not without her acting chops.
And still, the Cody/Reitman team manages to fall into some of the independent director's traps. For example, in a movie written by a blogger, I guess it's to be expected that every character talks like they're press articles instead of people. This is not being intelligent, this is being annoying - if I knew someone who talked like this, I'd kick him/her on the genitalia. "Honest to blog", "silencio!", "your eggo is preggo" and other unneeded cutecisms populate every single line of dialogue. Every character is some kind of quirky pop culture savvy talking head. Of course, Juno is the worst - you're supposed to relate to her because she's covering a heart of gold under that stand-up comedy exterior. How come a cashier at an abortion clinic has her face covered by body piercing and cracks jokes at Juno's condition? Is that supposed to be so out of place it's funny? I see it more as overcrowding in a movie that's already bursting with forced oddity.
And still, the drama exhibits a level of maturity rarely seen in that colorful, rock-soundtrack sub-Hollywood that's "edgy" US film nowadays, most of it evident on the script's surprise development about the adoptive couple. Even though she's a psycho and he's an inmature dork, we understand both of them and the effect they have on Juno's already troubled mind. I also thought it was nice that Juno's parents weren't a couple of ogres. That her hero's journey has her saving the day by the end is predictable yet to an extent needed, but it brings to me another pet peeve - Juno has not in her one inch of the insecurity that's to be expected in any teenage girl, not only a knocked up one. That makes her a way too convenient protagonist and of course, smarter than everyone else around to an unrealistic extent.
I remain lukewarm on this one, although it's not a bad movie by any means. The soundtrack, the characters and the dialogue are annoying as all hell, but the actors really elevate the material (specially J.K. Simmons) and the script finds itself comfortable in that moral grey area where none is too perfect or too lousy a human being. I guess it's not good stuff either, but I can't bring myself to hate it 100%. I've seen far worse.
Cloverfield
(2008)
Cloverfield
22 March 2008
The kaiju genre is one of the best inventions ever dreamed up in Japanese soil. It literally translates as "strange monster", and that's exactly what it is, movies centered around the sudden arrival of a giant-sized, spectacularly ugly and scary monster in the middle of Tokyo. Staples of the genre are crumbling buildings, the giant foot of the beast stepping on a poor jap that stumbled while running, mayhem and generally useless military activity. I think the first Asian movie I ever saw was Mothra, which is about a giant butterfly monster invoked by the strange chantings of miniature twin geishas. Of course, the most famous kaiju monster is the reptilian anti-hero Godzilla. On his first movie he's a destroyer of humanity, yet on subsequent films he saves Earth from a gallery of creatures, presumably so he can earn back his title as its main nuclear nightmare. In 1998, there was an unfortunate American version of Godzilla which pretty much was an attempt at Jurassic Park on NYC. The movie featured an unrealistic evacuation of Manhattan. Now that US has been through 9/11, I think they've sort of earned the right to make a Godzilla movie. After all, Godzilla is nothing but a '50s metaphor for nuclear horror.
The catch here is the Blair Witch Project gimmick, in which the movie is actually "found" home video material from a camera with seemingly unlimited batteries and capacity, in which a group of friends go from late-night partying to kaiju chaos. It's a great catch, actually. Like in Blair Witch, we get to know the protagonists before seeing them in dangerous situations. Our friends here are saying good-bye to Rob, who's trying to return to a relationship with Beth, and the main survivor group is composed of his friend Hub (the one who "documents" all the misadventures, a nerdish, annoying, comic relief presence), Marlene, the best character in the movie (it goes without saying she's a wino), and a hot black chick. I can't be arsed to remember her name. They find themselves in the disorder of the (slightly more realistic than in Godzilla '98) Manhattan evacuation, and suddenly decide they're gonna help Rob find her girlfriend Beth, who's trapped and suffocating, somewhere in the island that's being destroyed by a reptile the size of the Empire State. Smart bloody thinking.
As you're probably guessing by now, I wasn't too in love with this movie. Its main problem was that, despite the superficial pains they took to make it a "realistic" witness home video (the recording over previous Coney Island footage, the date and time, the opening government disclaimer), it played exactly like a by-the-numbers Hollywood movie. Worse, actually. The characters in any teen slasher are more logical than these ones. If some guy loses his nerve and decides that the best course of action (instead of, you know, immediately calling his parents and close relatives) is to run into the danger area looking for some short-breasted chick who's probably dead, I think his mates have a moral obligation to knock him unconscious and save him. I can't believe in characters who are faced with a gigantic lizard and don't want to save themselves. That's not what's being a hero is all about. That's definitively not what a fireman was doing during 9/11. That's being a tool in a poor scriptwriter's mind. And some military guy suddenly decides that their suicidal tendencies are worth encouraging? Come on.
Now, technically, this movie is so cool it's a shame it got lost in a bad script. Even if it has been shot in obviously high quality, the constant jerking of the camera (although, gimme a break, this is not seizure-inducing for anyone who has ever watched an '80s videoclip) and the filters made me believe I was watching a first-person account of a giant monster tearing down a city. The way the monster is introduced is clever enough - we see the inmediate consequences of its rampage, and eventually (with a little help from the parasites that climb off him) we get to know it in increasingly irksome detail. But none of this technical (and creative) wonder is any good if the story the filmmakers are telling us has so many logical holes and unrealistic behavior. There are a million plot devices that could realistically set the survivor group apart from military aid and into the claws of the monster. There's no need to turn the protagonists into self-righteous cardboared figures who mumble Garfield jokes (ok, I laughed at that one) while wandering into the unknown. Basically, why do we need a comic relief cameraman? Cloverfield doesn't trust the audience to be smart enough to endure the "found" footage without a C-3PO hanging around? So it wants to be realistic, yet everyone is a bloody stereotype? I'll admit it, it's a concept that's easy to explain and sell, but hard to actually film in a realistic manner. I'd say the closest they can come to make a great kaiju in this postmodern style is to combine footage from news and various recording devices into one edited narrative. That way, it wouldn't look so staged and it would offer a bird's eye view of the story with the added "reality" element. Of course, that's not what Cloverield, Abrams and company try to do, but I'd recommend a change in priorities. Maybe for the sequel. Who knows?
The catch here is the Blair Witch Project gimmick, in which the movie is actually "found" home video material from a camera with seemingly unlimited batteries and capacity, in which a group of friends go from late-night partying to kaiju chaos. It's a great catch, actually. Like in Blair Witch, we get to know the protagonists before seeing them in dangerous situations. Our friends here are saying good-bye to Rob, who's trying to return to a relationship with Beth, and the main survivor group is composed of his friend Hub (the one who "documents" all the misadventures, a nerdish, annoying, comic relief presence), Marlene, the best character in the movie (it goes without saying she's a wino), and a hot black chick. I can't be arsed to remember her name. They find themselves in the disorder of the (slightly more realistic than in Godzilla '98) Manhattan evacuation, and suddenly decide they're gonna help Rob find her girlfriend Beth, who's trapped and suffocating, somewhere in the island that's being destroyed by a reptile the size of the Empire State. Smart bloody thinking.
As you're probably guessing by now, I wasn't too in love with this movie. Its main problem was that, despite the superficial pains they took to make it a "realistic" witness home video (the recording over previous Coney Island footage, the date and time, the opening government disclaimer), it played exactly like a by-the-numbers Hollywood movie. Worse, actually. The characters in any teen slasher are more logical than these ones. If some guy loses his nerve and decides that the best course of action (instead of, you know, immediately calling his parents and close relatives) is to run into the danger area looking for some short-breasted chick who's probably dead, I think his mates have a moral obligation to knock him unconscious and save him. I can't believe in characters who are faced with a gigantic lizard and don't want to save themselves. That's not what's being a hero is all about. That's definitively not what a fireman was doing during 9/11. That's being a tool in a poor scriptwriter's mind. And some military guy suddenly decides that their suicidal tendencies are worth encouraging? Come on.
Now, technically, this movie is so cool it's a shame it got lost in a bad script. Even if it has been shot in obviously high quality, the constant jerking of the camera (although, gimme a break, this is not seizure-inducing for anyone who has ever watched an '80s videoclip) and the filters made me believe I was watching a first-person account of a giant monster tearing down a city. The way the monster is introduced is clever enough - we see the inmediate consequences of its rampage, and eventually (with a little help from the parasites that climb off him) we get to know it in increasingly irksome detail. But none of this technical (and creative) wonder is any good if the story the filmmakers are telling us has so many logical holes and unrealistic behavior. There are a million plot devices that could realistically set the survivor group apart from military aid and into the claws of the monster. There's no need to turn the protagonists into self-righteous cardboared figures who mumble Garfield jokes (ok, I laughed at that one) while wandering into the unknown. Basically, why do we need a comic relief cameraman? Cloverfield doesn't trust the audience to be smart enough to endure the "found" footage without a C-3PO hanging around? So it wants to be realistic, yet everyone is a bloody stereotype? I'll admit it, it's a concept that's easy to explain and sell, but hard to actually film in a realistic manner. I'd say the closest they can come to make a great kaiju in this postmodern style is to combine footage from news and various recording devices into one edited narrative. That way, it wouldn't look so staged and it would offer a bird's eye view of the story with the added "reality" element. Of course, that's not what Cloverield, Abrams and company try to do, but I'd recommend a change in priorities. Maybe for the sequel. Who knows?
Diary of the Dead
(2007)
Diary of the Dead
22 March 2008
The fifth installment of the Dead series by Romero, a man who needs no introduction, is a step up from his very recent Land of the Dead and a re-invention of the saga - what's more, it's a fitting ending for it, right back where it started. We're at the outbreak of the zombie invasion, following a group of film students shooting a lame mummy movie in the woods. When news get to them about the strange sightings of living dead, they panic, but instead of merely trying to survive, they decide to do a documentary on their situation. Romero's previous four zombie movies have been, respectively, about racism, consummerism, military and corporations (I guess) - this time he attacks the media and the internet which makes any atrocity available for anyone to watch, and for free too.
What makes this movie different from its partner in release dates, Cloverfield, which is also a common genre menace (giant monster) told through home video? Well, first of all, Diary of the Dead is a smarter movie which uses its gimmick as an expansion of its themes. It's also more believable, since instead of being "found" footage, it's an edited mockumentary taken from various sources. The device doesn't make the story clumsy or implausible that way. It's funny, though, that Romero thinks it necessary to have the characters explain many of their recording capacities, like the batteries or one instance where there's a lenghty explanation on how they got footage from the security camera which, frankly, I didn't really care about.
The script is a killer, and it's a shame that the performances are sub-par. You quickly get used to every actor sucking, though, although it did make me think about the complications of creating an illusion of reality/fiction in cinema, something that's common and easier to achieve in literature. Overall, though, it's the treatment of its elaborate themes that makes the movie worth watching. That treatment is not exactly subtle, but it never is with Romero, right? The movie is about the way the access to anything and the overload of information makes us insensitive to brutality. Not only as an audience, but also as filmmakers - Jason, the cameraman, is ready to film anything without, of course, taking an active part in aiding his fellow mates. This seems strangely inhuman, yet we've seen war footage where the cameraman does exactly the same thing.
There's also a big satire element going on. This is the funniest Dead movie so far, including a crazy scene with a badass dynamite-wielding Amish named Samuel who steals the movie. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard in the cinema as with that scene. Not only that, but by making his protagonists film students with an interest in Horror, Romero is able to make them more conscious of what a zombie can and cannot do, including having them saying out loud that dead people most definitively CANNOT RUN and challenging many other Horror topics.
Long story short, George has done it again. Although I'd liked Land of the Dead back on its cinema days, many TV watchs have made me realize it's the weakest of the saga apart from a few clever details. This is the social commentary living dead movie the '00s actually needed. Get ready to shoot the dead.
What makes this movie different from its partner in release dates, Cloverfield, which is also a common genre menace (giant monster) told through home video? Well, first of all, Diary of the Dead is a smarter movie which uses its gimmick as an expansion of its themes. It's also more believable, since instead of being "found" footage, it's an edited mockumentary taken from various sources. The device doesn't make the story clumsy or implausible that way. It's funny, though, that Romero thinks it necessary to have the characters explain many of their recording capacities, like the batteries or one instance where there's a lenghty explanation on how they got footage from the security camera which, frankly, I didn't really care about.
The script is a killer, and it's a shame that the performances are sub-par. You quickly get used to every actor sucking, though, although it did make me think about the complications of creating an illusion of reality/fiction in cinema, something that's common and easier to achieve in literature. Overall, though, it's the treatment of its elaborate themes that makes the movie worth watching. That treatment is not exactly subtle, but it never is with Romero, right? The movie is about the way the access to anything and the overload of information makes us insensitive to brutality. Not only as an audience, but also as filmmakers - Jason, the cameraman, is ready to film anything without, of course, taking an active part in aiding his fellow mates. This seems strangely inhuman, yet we've seen war footage where the cameraman does exactly the same thing.
There's also a big satire element going on. This is the funniest Dead movie so far, including a crazy scene with a badass dynamite-wielding Amish named Samuel who steals the movie. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard in the cinema as with that scene. Not only that, but by making his protagonists film students with an interest in Horror, Romero is able to make them more conscious of what a zombie can and cannot do, including having them saying out loud that dead people most definitively CANNOT RUN and challenging many other Horror topics.
Long story short, George has done it again. Although I'd liked Land of the Dead back on its cinema days, many TV watchs have made me realize it's the weakest of the saga apart from a few clever details. This is the social commentary living dead movie the '00s actually needed. Get ready to shoot the dead.
There Will Be Blood
(2007)
There Will Be Blood
22 March 2008
Warning: Spoilers
WARNING - MINOR SPOILERS - WARNING
Paul Thomas Anderson, like his idol Altman, is known for his epic movies with huge ensembles of character actors, stories set in the modern world about desperate people hooked on addictions caused by unsolved traumas like Magnolia or Boogie Nights. By contrast, this Oscar-nominated period piece seems a departure, and I've read many comments complaining that it's a more conventional turn from the Anderson man. Nothing could be more far from the truth. There's absolutely not a second of this incredible movie that can be called conventional. From its overbearing and unusual soundtrack made by Johnny Greenwod from Radiohead to the crowded shot composition to its surprising, brilliant ending, this movie is far more daring and inventive than it seems - like an experimental version of Giant.
Most of the time the screen is occupied by Daniel Plainview, a character who enters the movie almost breaking his back looking for silver and ends it living in a palace bought by oil, an outcast of the world, hating everything, everyone and himself above all things. The movie is the chronicle of Daniel's misantrophy, but that's not a trait he acquires due to any dramatic turn of the movie. It's who he always was inside. For Daniel, people are always means to get to something, usually money and power. His kindness is a tool. Early on, when he adopts an orphan (then always introduced by him as "my partner and son H.W."), it's the only noble, primal act he does in the entire movie and he even blows that afterwards. We're led to believe that Daniel loves the kid, yet his unfriendly, bitter side gets the better of him after a tragic accident changes their relationship completely. Daniel Day-Lewis shows Plainview like a hunching, smiling bulk of a man who rarely shows his emotions. When he does, it's usually in a bout of rage and he ends up punching somebody. He's "an oil man", and he's nothing more, desperate to become powerful for power's sake. He sleeps a lot and is hard to wake up, like a man who's not eager to see the real world. He likes inventive pranks and is an expert intimidator and spokesman.
While it's a performance worthy of all the praise and the Oscar it got, another one that doesn't stay far behind is given by Paul Dano. He has two characters, twin brothers. One of them, Paul, gives Daniel the information about where to search for oil. The other brother, Eli, living in the land that Daniel wants to drill, becomes his lifelong antagonist. He's a priest in a strange fanatical church where he screams like a madman and heals evil with his hands. Plainview hates everyone by his own admission, but he hates this man more than any other. It might be because they're so alike. Like Plainview, Eli is a manipulative, disgusting, baby-faced con artist. Daniel can smell the rat because he does the same. The beginning of their war is a funny moment where Eli makes Daniel promise that he will allow him to bless the drill before they start looking for oil, and at the next day waits in the first line of the crowd, ready to do some preaching. Daniel completely ignores him and the blessing. In a way, while Plainview is the obvious protagonist, the movie is the portrait of the hatred between these men with no soul.
This is a long movie, over three hours, and an extremely slow one. Shots linger on, and there must be surprisingly few of them if you decided to count 'em. During conversations, there are very few cuts. Either the shot shows all of the characters or it focuses on one for longer than it's customary, having the other one say his lines off camera. Sometimes characters walk great distances on screen and there are frequent soaring, impressive landscape takes. Anderson has said the movie is inspired, apart from the Sinclair novel, by Huston's Treasure of Sierra Madre. While that's true about the theme of greed, I see a lot of John Ford in the style. There's even a shot that resembles the famous closing image of The Searchers.
Paul Thomas Anderson, like his idol Altman, is known for his epic movies with huge ensembles of character actors, stories set in the modern world about desperate people hooked on addictions caused by unsolved traumas like Magnolia or Boogie Nights. By contrast, this Oscar-nominated period piece seems a departure, and I've read many comments complaining that it's a more conventional turn from the Anderson man. Nothing could be more far from the truth. There's absolutely not a second of this incredible movie that can be called conventional. From its overbearing and unusual soundtrack made by Johnny Greenwod from Radiohead to the crowded shot composition to its surprising, brilliant ending, this movie is far more daring and inventive than it seems - like an experimental version of Giant.
Most of the time the screen is occupied by Daniel Plainview, a character who enters the movie almost breaking his back looking for silver and ends it living in a palace bought by oil, an outcast of the world, hating everything, everyone and himself above all things. The movie is the chronicle of Daniel's misantrophy, but that's not a trait he acquires due to any dramatic turn of the movie. It's who he always was inside. For Daniel, people are always means to get to something, usually money and power. His kindness is a tool. Early on, when he adopts an orphan (then always introduced by him as "my partner and son H.W."), it's the only noble, primal act he does in the entire movie and he even blows that afterwards. We're led to believe that Daniel loves the kid, yet his unfriendly, bitter side gets the better of him after a tragic accident changes their relationship completely. Daniel Day-Lewis shows Plainview like a hunching, smiling bulk of a man who rarely shows his emotions. When he does, it's usually in a bout of rage and he ends up punching somebody. He's "an oil man", and he's nothing more, desperate to become powerful for power's sake. He sleeps a lot and is hard to wake up, like a man who's not eager to see the real world. He likes inventive pranks and is an expert intimidator and spokesman.
While it's a performance worthy of all the praise and the Oscar it got, another one that doesn't stay far behind is given by Paul Dano. He has two characters, twin brothers. One of them, Paul, gives Daniel the information about where to search for oil. The other brother, Eli, living in the land that Daniel wants to drill, becomes his lifelong antagonist. He's a priest in a strange fanatical church where he screams like a madman and heals evil with his hands. Plainview hates everyone by his own admission, but he hates this man more than any other. It might be because they're so alike. Like Plainview, Eli is a manipulative, disgusting, baby-faced con artist. Daniel can smell the rat because he does the same. The beginning of their war is a funny moment where Eli makes Daniel promise that he will allow him to bless the drill before they start looking for oil, and at the next day waits in the first line of the crowd, ready to do some preaching. Daniel completely ignores him and the blessing. In a way, while Plainview is the obvious protagonist, the movie is the portrait of the hatred between these men with no soul.
This is a long movie, over three hours, and an extremely slow one. Shots linger on, and there must be surprisingly few of them if you decided to count 'em. During conversations, there are very few cuts. Either the shot shows all of the characters or it focuses on one for longer than it's customary, having the other one say his lines off camera. Sometimes characters walk great distances on screen and there are frequent soaring, impressive landscape takes. Anderson has said the movie is inspired, apart from the Sinclair novel, by Huston's Treasure of Sierra Madre. While that's true about the theme of greed, I see a lot of John Ford in the style. There's even a shot that resembles the famous closing image of The Searchers.
No Country for Old Men
(2007)
No Country for Old Men
22 March 2008
Warning: Spoilers
How many times can you reinvent a genre? I'm guessing Joel and Ethan Coen would answer "a lot". From their first movie, Blood Simple, they've been grabbing the essentials of film noir and tweaking them in unexpected ways, making the same old material feel fresh. What's more striking is that they've usually taken their inspiration not from the endless noir classics filmed between 1941-58, but from the literary beginnings of the style - the Dashiell Hammet gang wars in Miller's Crossing, the "detective" myth created by Raymond Chandler in The Big Lebowski, which replaced Philip Marlowe with an aging hippie nicknamed The Dude, and the ironic James M. Cain dramas where the plot is moved forward by criss-crossing plans motivated by greed in The Man who wasn't There. And this without mentioning Fargo, an anti-noir set in a scenario that's completely white. Now, with their Oscar-winning No Country, for the first time they've adapted a novel and confessed to doing so instead of being "inspired by", and reportedly (I haven't read the Cormac McCarthy original) they've been extremely faithful to their source, while still directing a true Coen Bros. movie.
The story is a three-way conflict. There's Lewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a blender living in a trailer park who finds 20 million in unmarked cash abandoned in the afternath of a gang shooting in the middle of the desert. Then there's Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a soulless hit-man with a bizarro haircut and a silent cow-stunning gun, who's charged with retrieving the money, following Moss around. Following them both is aging Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), an intelligent, laconic man with one foot on retirement already. These characters rarely share screen time together, and when they do, they don't talk, since one of them is crouching behind a hiding place, shotgun in hand, or stalking each other from the distance. Like many noirs, this western-themed one is not about the resolution of the crime. That's a red herring planted by the writers so that we want to get to the end of the story, which is actually about a bleak, cynical world without any redemption on sight.
The verbal exchanges between Coen characters range from hysterical to cryptic, alluring and mysterious. They've always had a great ear for accents, which they've incorporated as part of the comedy in each of their movies, which always feature a different U.S.-based setting. In this movie, everyone is a Texas reject, and so they ramble on, sometimes not making much sense, but always pleasing the ear. The actors all do an incredible job, and Bardem really had that Oscar coming. His geeky look paired with his deadpan performance are the heart of the film and its most recognizable symbol. Unusually for the Coens, there's almost no music that can be heard throughout the film. There are subtle chords here and there, but until the end credits there isn't anything resembling a musical theme. The editing is crisp and the pacing leisurely. In suspense scenes, the ambiance sound and the deliberate slowness of the characters movements are seriously unnerving. There are a couple such scenes that are truly deserving of being called Hitchcockian.
Where the movie is far from Hitchcock ground is on its moral palette, which is uniquely grey. We root for Lewellyn because his crime is understandable - he finds money which seemingly belongs to none, and he wants it for himself. Yet the ironic truth is that he could've gotten away with it hadn't he decided to compensate his thievery with an act of kindness, aiding the dying "agua" man in the truck. True story here. When I left the cinema and went to have a leak, there were two senior moviegoers (no country for them) heatedly arguing about the morals of the movie. One of them said it was inadmisible that the bad guy walked away at the end, having killed many innocent people, while the other said over and over that the movie was prophetic. I decided to say something while I finished my duty, pointing out that movies have no obligation to be better than real life. At this, the angry oldster said I was the reason why corrupt politicians won re-elections and that youth was generally lost. I left the bathroom on the run, looking for some kind of weapon to bludgeon him to death.
Seriously, though, it's not that Old Pants hadn't understood the movie, it's that he was unable to deal with the grimness of its message. On other Coen movies which were equally unapologetic with the greed and generally worthlessness of human life, there was at least one redeeming character. Fargo had a sort of heroine in Sheriff Gunderson. Sheriff Bell, on the other hand, is a survivor. He has no intentions of getting himself killed and, though he wants justice, he suddenly realizes there is nothing to be gained from looking for it and a lot to be lost. For all the dark humor that goes on through the movie, the ending is stone-faced serious and humane, with the old couple quietly talking about dreams, a wall clock ticking on in the background. Anyone who claimed the Coens were all style and no substance stands to be proved wrong with this incredible movie. Poetic and inspired, it's a great comeback from the brothers after two stinkers in a row (Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers) did nothing but harm to their reputations as great storytellers with one of the most unique and literate comedy styles. Like always, great comedians are the ones that create the best tragedies.
The story is a three-way conflict. There's Lewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a blender living in a trailer park who finds 20 million in unmarked cash abandoned in the afternath of a gang shooting in the middle of the desert. Then there's Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a soulless hit-man with a bizarro haircut and a silent cow-stunning gun, who's charged with retrieving the money, following Moss around. Following them both is aging Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), an intelligent, laconic man with one foot on retirement already. These characters rarely share screen time together, and when they do, they don't talk, since one of them is crouching behind a hiding place, shotgun in hand, or stalking each other from the distance. Like many noirs, this western-themed one is not about the resolution of the crime. That's a red herring planted by the writers so that we want to get to the end of the story, which is actually about a bleak, cynical world without any redemption on sight.
The verbal exchanges between Coen characters range from hysterical to cryptic, alluring and mysterious. They've always had a great ear for accents, which they've incorporated as part of the comedy in each of their movies, which always feature a different U.S.-based setting. In this movie, everyone is a Texas reject, and so they ramble on, sometimes not making much sense, but always pleasing the ear. The actors all do an incredible job, and Bardem really had that Oscar coming. His geeky look paired with his deadpan performance are the heart of the film and its most recognizable symbol. Unusually for the Coens, there's almost no music that can be heard throughout the film. There are subtle chords here and there, but until the end credits there isn't anything resembling a musical theme. The editing is crisp and the pacing leisurely. In suspense scenes, the ambiance sound and the deliberate slowness of the characters movements are seriously unnerving. There are a couple such scenes that are truly deserving of being called Hitchcockian.
Where the movie is far from Hitchcock ground is on its moral palette, which is uniquely grey. We root for Lewellyn because his crime is understandable - he finds money which seemingly belongs to none, and he wants it for himself. Yet the ironic truth is that he could've gotten away with it hadn't he decided to compensate his thievery with an act of kindness, aiding the dying "agua" man in the truck. True story here. When I left the cinema and went to have a leak, there were two senior moviegoers (no country for them) heatedly arguing about the morals of the movie. One of them said it was inadmisible that the bad guy walked away at the end, having killed many innocent people, while the other said over and over that the movie was prophetic. I decided to say something while I finished my duty, pointing out that movies have no obligation to be better than real life. At this, the angry oldster said I was the reason why corrupt politicians won re-elections and that youth was generally lost. I left the bathroom on the run, looking for some kind of weapon to bludgeon him to death.
Seriously, though, it's not that Old Pants hadn't understood the movie, it's that he was unable to deal with the grimness of its message. On other Coen movies which were equally unapologetic with the greed and generally worthlessness of human life, there was at least one redeeming character. Fargo had a sort of heroine in Sheriff Gunderson. Sheriff Bell, on the other hand, is a survivor. He has no intentions of getting himself killed and, though he wants justice, he suddenly realizes there is nothing to be gained from looking for it and a lot to be lost. For all the dark humor that goes on through the movie, the ending is stone-faced serious and humane, with the old couple quietly talking about dreams, a wall clock ticking on in the background. Anyone who claimed the Coens were all style and no substance stands to be proved wrong with this incredible movie. Poetic and inspired, it's a great comeback from the brothers after two stinkers in a row (Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers) did nothing but harm to their reputations as great storytellers with one of the most unique and literate comedy styles. Like always, great comedians are the ones that create the best tragedies.
Darkness
(2002)
Darkness
28 November 2004
I had hopes for this movie, but it just happened to be the most derivative Horror piece I've seen in my life. You have little annoying brats being kicked around by ghosts ("The sixth sense"), goody girls facing supernatural forces on their own ("Nightmare on Elm Street"), creepy murdered kids in hallways and dads going wacko ("The Shining") and big conspiracies where you have to guess which friendly character is in fact part of the plan, and you guess it pretty easily. I understand all those elements can be used and you can still get people interested in them if you have the necessary craft. Hell, I'm a "Secret Window" defender, I'm not against clichés. But when a whole bunch of them are thrown together without anything original or interesting to counter-balance, it all seems a bit pointless.
This movie also features one of the stupidest moments in history, when Anna Paquin tells her boyfriend to get her family out of the haunted house and she enters alone because she has "something important to do". A few messy cuts later and she's sleeping on her bed. There are also details that I don't know if they are deliberately ambiguous or if they're just confusing because the script is too convoluted. There's a moment where the boyfriend clearly seems to be a conspirator while everything he does later contradicts this vehemently.
It's a shame, because when I heard there was a Spanish haunted house movie with Lena Olin, Giancarlo Giannini, Fele Martínez and Anna Paquin out there, I honestly thought I was in for a good ride.
P.S.: I'd hit Lena Olin. Old and all. I'm serious.
This movie also features one of the stupidest moments in history, when Anna Paquin tells her boyfriend to get her family out of the haunted house and she enters alone because she has "something important to do". A few messy cuts later and she's sleeping on her bed. There are also details that I don't know if they are deliberately ambiguous or if they're just confusing because the script is too convoluted. There's a moment where the boyfriend clearly seems to be a conspirator while everything he does later contradicts this vehemently.
It's a shame, because when I heard there was a Spanish haunted house movie with Lena Olin, Giancarlo Giannini, Fele Martínez and Anna Paquin out there, I honestly thought I was in for a good ride.
P.S.: I'd hit Lena Olin. Old and all. I'm serious.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
13 November 2004
There is more than one way to build a cultural product on the context of many others, the Tarantino move. "Jackie Brown" is and isn't blaxpoitation. "Kill Bill" is neither a spaghetti western nor a samurai movie, but it is. "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" isn't that interesting at all. It's a servile imitation of clichés with the lonely attractive of spotting all of the tangential background references.
Anyone who reads comics and knows about Alan Moore's ABC imprint and series like "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and "Tom Strong" knows that the world of pulp from the '30s (well, of classic fantasy novels in the former, but with an added pulp flavor) is still a rich field for exploring and making interesting stories about. "Sky Captain" is completely devoid of anything remotely like characters, sense of humor and style. Oh, sure, it's completely CGI and has a couple of stunning drawings, but that doesn't equal directing style. And to be fair, the script attempts a kind of Howard Hawksian chemistry between the leads that doesn't work very well.
I dunno. One thing, though. Sky Captain and his kingdom are the opposite of cool (once again, read "Tom Strong") and so is Polly something, the unbearable tramp from the newspaper. But one appealing character the movie had was Angelina Jolie's Frankie, that was so criminally underused. A stand-alone Frankie movie with a smarter script and an actual director storyboarding the thing, I'd probably be raving about.
Anyone who reads comics and knows about Alan Moore's ABC imprint and series like "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and "Tom Strong" knows that the world of pulp from the '30s (well, of classic fantasy novels in the former, but with an added pulp flavor) is still a rich field for exploring and making interesting stories about. "Sky Captain" is completely devoid of anything remotely like characters, sense of humor and style. Oh, sure, it's completely CGI and has a couple of stunning drawings, but that doesn't equal directing style. And to be fair, the script attempts a kind of Howard Hawksian chemistry between the leads that doesn't work very well.
I dunno. One thing, though. Sky Captain and his kingdom are the opposite of cool (once again, read "Tom Strong") and so is Polly something, the unbearable tramp from the newspaper. But one appealing character the movie had was Angelina Jolie's Frankie, that was so criminally underused. A stand-alone Frankie movie with a smarter script and an actual director storyboarding the thing, I'd probably be raving about.
Croupier
(1998)
Croupier
9 November 2004
"Croupier" is a British neo-noir. It has a detached character (or even better, two characters) who progressively get involved in a shadowy world from an apparently safe beginning, it has voice-overs, lots of artistic and original swearing, a depressing atmosphere and if you don't feel like lighting a cigarette with a Zippo after the movie is over, you're dead. Clive Owen gives an amazing performance as the croupier of the title, who is very conscious of his split personalities: Jack, a gambler, the writer who works in the casino to pay the bills, and Jake, a croupier, a man who enjoys watching his customers losing all his money and who makes sure he's always dealing the cards. In the end, Jack loses and Jake wins. The message is delivered in the least subtle way possible, Hell, the voice-over is practically an intellectual analysis on the movie's meaning, but it works because Jack/Jake is an amazingly engaging character and because the movie is so well directed. The crime plot, although not surprising in the least, develops itself smoothly and contains lots of unexpected sources of humor. "Croupier" is a very stylish and criminally underrated neo-noir that beats the living crap out of most of recent Hollywood releases centering about a big robbery or con. It might be heavy-handed, but it's conscious of where its strenghts lie, and Wilson is great. Why it's so criminally underrated... I don't have the faintest about.
Wrong Turn
(I) (2003)
Wrong Turn
23 October 2004
What we have here is one classic Horror movie. Six people with predictable personalities, trapped in the woods, with a monster of choice lurking around waiting to dismember them.
This kind of movies usually are fun, even if they are bad. I enjoyed the camera work of "Wrong Turn", which included a couple of inspired shots. It failed to create even a remotely suspenseful scene, but maybe I'm just desensitized.
The cast doesn't provide much hope. Eliza Dushku is hittable and she finds herself tied to a bed in the last quarter of the movie. Apart from that, it's all expendable meat. Jeremy Sisto is the best one in the bunch, and he gets the only character capable of inspiring some sympathy.
There are better, much better movies to spend your time with, but if you favor this type of plot, it's not all that bad. Go for it.
This kind of movies usually are fun, even if they are bad. I enjoyed the camera work of "Wrong Turn", which included a couple of inspired shots. It failed to create even a remotely suspenseful scene, but maybe I'm just desensitized.
The cast doesn't provide much hope. Eliza Dushku is hittable and she finds herself tied to a bed in the last quarter of the movie. Apart from that, it's all expendable meat. Jeremy Sisto is the best one in the bunch, and he gets the only character capable of inspiring some sympathy.
There are better, much better movies to spend your time with, but if you favor this type of plot, it's not all that bad. Go for it.
Exorcist: The Beginning
(2004)
Exorcist: The Beginning
13 October 2004
So, director/writer Paul Schrader was in charge of directing a money stealing prequel that had actually a point to begin with (explaining the previous exorcism Father Merrin had done in "The Exorcist"), and the producers didn't like his so-called "psychological horror" approach. They re-shot the movie with Renny Harlin, the guy from that shark movie where they ate Samuel Jackson in a hilarious way.
Not nice. Not nice at all.
But, the movie is entertaining. I had a good time with it, even in the dumbest parts. It had a nice directing flair. And, if anything, it made me even more anxious to see Schrader's take.
Sure, the end result is so uncompromising it hurts, an awkward combination of Indiana Jones and "The Omen", nothing that even resembles the poignant tone of the Friedkin classic (I never found it really disturbing, but the way, but I love it anyway), but Harlin is not one to take his job too seriously and makes a formula movie endurable through some overdone but exciting camera-work. The final third of the movie is an enormous nod to "Evil Dead" and the rest of it has some rather effective scenes. The acting is correct and Vittorio Storaro sure can film a landscape. It has also classic cheesy moments like Father Merrin painting a cross on his forehead and getting up with a "I kick ass for the Lord" expression on his face before fighting the Demon. Hilarious bit.
I don't know, I didn't think I would like it, but I did. I'm almost positive that the original version is a hundred times more worth seeing and I look forward to the DVD edition, though.
P.S.: has anyone noticed how easily a protagonist in this kind of movies is convinced to open graves? A religious man, even an ex-religious man, would think twice before digging on supposedly sacred ground, but this guy just goes ahead and does it. The movie is campy enough so that you don't have to worry about this kind of detail, but I just felt like pointing it out.
Not nice. Not nice at all.
But, the movie is entertaining. I had a good time with it, even in the dumbest parts. It had a nice directing flair. And, if anything, it made me even more anxious to see Schrader's take.
Sure, the end result is so uncompromising it hurts, an awkward combination of Indiana Jones and "The Omen", nothing that even resembles the poignant tone of the Friedkin classic (I never found it really disturbing, but the way, but I love it anyway), but Harlin is not one to take his job too seriously and makes a formula movie endurable through some overdone but exciting camera-work. The final third of the movie is an enormous nod to "Evil Dead" and the rest of it has some rather effective scenes. The acting is correct and Vittorio Storaro sure can film a landscape. It has also classic cheesy moments like Father Merrin painting a cross on his forehead and getting up with a "I kick ass for the Lord" expression on his face before fighting the Demon. Hilarious bit.
I don't know, I didn't think I would like it, but I did. I'm almost positive that the original version is a hundred times more worth seeing and I look forward to the DVD edition, though.
P.S.: has anyone noticed how easily a protagonist in this kind of movies is convinced to open graves? A religious man, even an ex-religious man, would think twice before digging on supposedly sacred ground, but this guy just goes ahead and does it. The movie is campy enough so that you don't have to worry about this kind of detail, but I just felt like pointing it out.
The Terminal
(2004)
The Terminal
2 October 2004
Take a clue for "Being there". If you take a Tatiesque, deadpan approach to comedy, putting in some corny, off-putting drama story about the protagonist isn't gonna work. It feels like a betrayal, in fact. The first hour of this movie or so is very entertaining and, although it trusts way too much on its ability to get natural laughs from the audience (and it reiterates some "funny" situations too much), it still manages to create some hilarious moments with a great sense of pacing.
Then it goes horribly downhill. Victor Navorski starts learning English, and we discover that what he has to say is not interesting at all, in facts it reads like a deleted scene of "Forrest Gump". A romance with Catherine Zeta-Jones comes out of the blue, and we can foresee the "romantic comedy" strategies of delaying the kiss and having a convoluted and pointless discussion before the final reconciliation. So, it doesn't end in a happy hug. But that fact makes this subplot even more pointless.
So, if you ask me, it's a convoluted, poorly written and ill-conceived mess of a movie, with a few occasional comedic achievements.
Then it goes horribly downhill. Victor Navorski starts learning English, and we discover that what he has to say is not interesting at all, in facts it reads like a deleted scene of "Forrest Gump". A romance with Catherine Zeta-Jones comes out of the blue, and we can foresee the "romantic comedy" strategies of delaying the kiss and having a convoluted and pointless discussion before the final reconciliation. So, it doesn't end in a happy hug. But that fact makes this subplot even more pointless.
So, if you ask me, it's a convoluted, poorly written and ill-conceived mess of a movie, with a few occasional comedic achievements.
Alien vs. Predator
(2004)
Alien vs. Predator
29 September 2004
I'm a hardcore Alien fan and I merely like Predator. I have never collected the card game or played the PC games, nor read the Alien vs. Predator comics. But any Alien sequel will have me buying a ticket.
So, this is a poorly written thriller with no real thrills for everyone who has seen at least one supposedly scary movie from the past ten years. Unlike "Freddy vs. Jason", which turned the limitations and the corniness of a cross-over movie into gold, it tries to achieve moments of true tension and suspense, and it fails. Badly.
One can enjoy the thing on a campy level, of course. And actually, the background information of the relationship between Aliens and Predators is not bad at all. I mean, sure, it doesn't make sense historically (Antarctica has been frozen for a long time, longer than the other Paul Anderson seems to be aware of), but who cares? I'm not sure if we have to credit that idea to the writers of the movie or to those who worked on the Alien vs. Predator universe. Sorry, can't help you there.
It's crap. And there's more entertaining crap to see out there.
So, this is a poorly written thriller with no real thrills for everyone who has seen at least one supposedly scary movie from the past ten years. Unlike "Freddy vs. Jason", which turned the limitations and the corniness of a cross-over movie into gold, it tries to achieve moments of true tension and suspense, and it fails. Badly.
One can enjoy the thing on a campy level, of course. And actually, the background information of the relationship between Aliens and Predators is not bad at all. I mean, sure, it doesn't make sense historically (Antarctica has been frozen for a long time, longer than the other Paul Anderson seems to be aware of), but who cares? I'm not sure if we have to credit that idea to the writers of the movie or to those who worked on the Alien vs. Predator universe. Sorry, can't help you there.
It's crap. And there's more entertaining crap to see out there.
Hero
(2002)
Hero
9 September 2004
"Hero" is a great example of how movie footage can be used to mislead the audience. Now you think I'm going to talk about the flashbacks, the color scheme or something like that. No. I'm talking about the trailers. This is currently the #1 movie in the box office, but I think most people out there rushing to see it based on the posters and the trailers will be seriously disappointed. The movie is not about a romantic or heroic plot. It's a deconstruction of that kind of plot.
First of all, this has to be one of the most visually ambitious films I've ever seen. There is a scene where the largest number of archers you've ever seen together in the same frame throw arrows to a calligraphy house, and the master of the house orders his pupils to patiently accept death while writing in the sand. Writing and fighting are not different. And writing will survive the fighting.
Now that we've got the drooling about the visuals out of the way, let's talk about the plot. Yes, it follows a "Rashomon" approach to storytelling. That means different characters retell the same plot and the stories are shown on screen as accepted fact. But the intentions are very different from the ones in the Kurosawa classic. "Hero" isn't so much a storytelling experiment as an attempt to discern the nature of the so-called hero and the rules of honor that guided the historical battles in China.
In that regard, I think this movie has much more to say than I was able to catch on during my first viewing. Jet Li, who plays the hero, has to face a decision in the end, and the man he fights for the entire duration of the movie (only with words instead of swords) has to face yet another one. At the end, who was the winner? Who was the hero? What did the death that occurs at the very end of the movie mean?
Many people are saying that the movie is a visual landmark but that it's emotionally detached (unfair comparisons to "Crouching tiger, hidden dragon" abound) and pretty shallow. I think this opinion is wrong and that it's caused by the unusual approach to storytelling the movie takes and also by the expectations caused by the misleading advertising. This isn't a movie where we have to root for one or another character. We are watching one very big scope of things and we're being asked to think. Think real hard.
And that's one of the things I love the most about movies. When one viewing isn't enough to figure it all out. When you can talk for hours about the way you see it and the way a friend sees it and the way the video store nerd sees it. But it isn't quite enough.
First of all, this has to be one of the most visually ambitious films I've ever seen. There is a scene where the largest number of archers you've ever seen together in the same frame throw arrows to a calligraphy house, and the master of the house orders his pupils to patiently accept death while writing in the sand. Writing and fighting are not different. And writing will survive the fighting.
Now that we've got the drooling about the visuals out of the way, let's talk about the plot. Yes, it follows a "Rashomon" approach to storytelling. That means different characters retell the same plot and the stories are shown on screen as accepted fact. But the intentions are very different from the ones in the Kurosawa classic. "Hero" isn't so much a storytelling experiment as an attempt to discern the nature of the so-called hero and the rules of honor that guided the historical battles in China.
In that regard, I think this movie has much more to say than I was able to catch on during my first viewing. Jet Li, who plays the hero, has to face a decision in the end, and the man he fights for the entire duration of the movie (only with words instead of swords) has to face yet another one. At the end, who was the winner? Who was the hero? What did the death that occurs at the very end of the movie mean?
Many people are saying that the movie is a visual landmark but that it's emotionally detached (unfair comparisons to "Crouching tiger, hidden dragon" abound) and pretty shallow. I think this opinion is wrong and that it's caused by the unusual approach to storytelling the movie takes and also by the expectations caused by the misleading advertising. This isn't a movie where we have to root for one or another character. We are watching one very big scope of things and we're being asked to think. Think real hard.
And that's one of the things I love the most about movies. When one viewing isn't enough to figure it all out. When you can talk for hours about the way you see it and the way a friend sees it and the way the video store nerd sees it. But it isn't quite enough.
The Village
(2004)
The Village
4 September 2004
OK, so I'm not a big Shyamalan fan. I thought "The 6th Sense" was dull. "Signs" was more daring and more interesting, but as a whole it amounted to so little I felt cheated. But for some reason I really loved "Unbreakable". That's as far as my recognition for his talent goes. Or maybe his stuff just isn't made for me.
"The Village" certainly wasn't made for me. I'm as big of an Ebert hater as you're gonna find, and when I read his one-star review my interest for the movie grew considerably. Sadly, I agree with him. If there is a word that describes "The Village" perfectly, it's "miscalculation".
Miscalculation of what, you ask? Of Shyamalan's talent for creating suspenseful moments? Yes. I understand this is kind of a show-off, "I'm-so-good-I-can-scare-you-shitless-with-a-ridiculous-guy-in-a-red-cloak" kind of thing. Well, that failed, at least for me. I found those guys laughable, although I admired the gimmick that was done with them in a scene that involves the forest and a blind girl surrounded by the color red.
Miscalculation of the power of the final twist of the movie? Yes, indeed. I know it's his thing. But sometimes when you try to make those "I-pulled-your-rug" endings on a great scale, it ends up with a cheated, unsatisfied audience. That would be good if the twist was really clever. Case in point, the most under-appreciated movie ever, "Femme Fatale". I was cheated with that movie, but it worked because the surprises made me appreciate what I had seen previously on a different light. This isn't true with "The Village". The twist amounts to absolutely nothing and I felt profoundly indifferent towards it.
There is someone out there who will love the crap out of "The Village". It's not bad to the point where it can't be enjoyed. But it left me as cold and uncaring as I've ever been with a movie.
"The Village" certainly wasn't made for me. I'm as big of an Ebert hater as you're gonna find, and when I read his one-star review my interest for the movie grew considerably. Sadly, I agree with him. If there is a word that describes "The Village" perfectly, it's "miscalculation".
Miscalculation of what, you ask? Of Shyamalan's talent for creating suspenseful moments? Yes. I understand this is kind of a show-off, "I'm-so-good-I-can-scare-you-shitless-with-a-ridiculous-guy-in-a-red-cloak" kind of thing. Well, that failed, at least for me. I found those guys laughable, although I admired the gimmick that was done with them in a scene that involves the forest and a blind girl surrounded by the color red.
Miscalculation of the power of the final twist of the movie? Yes, indeed. I know it's his thing. But sometimes when you try to make those "I-pulled-your-rug" endings on a great scale, it ends up with a cheated, unsatisfied audience. That would be good if the twist was really clever. Case in point, the most under-appreciated movie ever, "Femme Fatale". I was cheated with that movie, but it worked because the surprises made me appreciate what I had seen previously on a different light. This isn't true with "The Village". The twist amounts to absolutely nothing and I felt profoundly indifferent towards it.
There is someone out there who will love the crap out of "The Village". It's not bad to the point where it can't be enjoyed. But it left me as cold and uncaring as I've ever been with a movie.
The Triplets of Belleville
(2003)
Les Triplettes de Belleville
3 September 2004
Let me start by saying that this is one of the best animated movies I've ever seen, right up there with "Nightmare before Christmas" and "Spirited away". But let me also say that it's a movie very liable to get a lot of hate. But not from me. I totally connected with it. Even more, I wish I had this movie around when I was a kid.
Many people grow up and forget how it was to be a kid. So, some kids are dumb and like saccharine-filled stories filled with politically correct humour. But most are not. There's an essential cruelty to being a little kid. Everyone underestimates your opinions, keeps secrets from you and looks at you tenderly even while you're thinking of different ways your grandma could choke on a muffin. Very few people remember that sort of thing. Roald Dahl and Tim Burton comes to mind. And the director of this wonderful film.
It's hard to describe the experience of watching it, really. It's practically a silent animation movie with a very deadpan, "Pink Panther" meets Saki comedy vibe. It doesn't try to meet expectations and all. It just does whatever it wants. Bare tits and exploding frogs are all over the place, sharing space with more tender and innocent jokes and the natural appeal of the expertly drawn characters. There's a very dreamlike sense in the way events happen. The three old hags of the title, the boy who rides a bycicle, the grandma and her dog, the gangsters, they are all creatures that seem to be imagined by a young kid who doesn't understand the world, or understands it too much for its own good. Sometimes a naive person can do a wonderful cynic.
Just watch it. Not all movies are made to talk about them. This one eludes commentary. It is what it is, and it's perhaps one of the most brilliant achievements of the new millennium.
Many people grow up and forget how it was to be a kid. So, some kids are dumb and like saccharine-filled stories filled with politically correct humour. But most are not. There's an essential cruelty to being a little kid. Everyone underestimates your opinions, keeps secrets from you and looks at you tenderly even while you're thinking of different ways your grandma could choke on a muffin. Very few people remember that sort of thing. Roald Dahl and Tim Burton comes to mind. And the director of this wonderful film.
It's hard to describe the experience of watching it, really. It's practically a silent animation movie with a very deadpan, "Pink Panther" meets Saki comedy vibe. It doesn't try to meet expectations and all. It just does whatever it wants. Bare tits and exploding frogs are all over the place, sharing space with more tender and innocent jokes and the natural appeal of the expertly drawn characters. There's a very dreamlike sense in the way events happen. The three old hags of the title, the boy who rides a bycicle, the grandma and her dog, the gangsters, they are all creatures that seem to be imagined by a young kid who doesn't understand the world, or understands it too much for its own good. Sometimes a naive person can do a wonderful cynic.
Just watch it. Not all movies are made to talk about them. This one eludes commentary. It is what it is, and it's perhaps one of the most brilliant achievements of the new millennium.
The Motorcycle Diaries
(2004)
The Motorcycle Diaries
16 August 2004
Sometimes a movie comes with so much excessive praise weight that I wish I could've tackled it by itself, without knowing anything about it.
I say this because this average, run-of-the-mill movie about the young years of Ernesto "Che" Guevara was sold to me as the eighth wonder of the World, and it doesn't come even close. Based on Guevara's diaries relating his journey with his close friend Alberto through South America, it focuses specifically on Guevara's acknowledgement of political problems and lack of justice. However, it's far from being a political movie, and it works better as a genre piece, a combination of "buddy" and "road" movie with a real background. Of course, the latter half of the story focuses more extensively on Guevara and not on his buddy, and attempts to show the inner transformation on his soul. It's not bad, it's just too cliché to seem really important.
So, does it work as a genre piece? For most of the time, kind of. It's always entertaining enough to keep you on your seat waiting for something better to happen. Unfortunately, nothing really groundbreaking or important happens. The movie follows its formulaic route until an ending which cleverly cuts from the movie Alberto to the real Alberto, who is still alive and living in the same place where the movie ends and supposedly still has fond memories of Ernesto.
So, a big, fat "meh". Maybe it didn't work for me because I've never been part of the people that worship "Che" Guevara, despite respecting him quite a bit. But good historical movies concern you with the characters, even if you don't really have a well-formed appreciation for them. This one, perhaps because it favored traditional and safe storytelling too much, fell flat on that regard.
I say this because this average, run-of-the-mill movie about the young years of Ernesto "Che" Guevara was sold to me as the eighth wonder of the World, and it doesn't come even close. Based on Guevara's diaries relating his journey with his close friend Alberto through South America, it focuses specifically on Guevara's acknowledgement of political problems and lack of justice. However, it's far from being a political movie, and it works better as a genre piece, a combination of "buddy" and "road" movie with a real background. Of course, the latter half of the story focuses more extensively on Guevara and not on his buddy, and attempts to show the inner transformation on his soul. It's not bad, it's just too cliché to seem really important.
So, does it work as a genre piece? For most of the time, kind of. It's always entertaining enough to keep you on your seat waiting for something better to happen. Unfortunately, nothing really groundbreaking or important happens. The movie follows its formulaic route until an ending which cleverly cuts from the movie Alberto to the real Alberto, who is still alive and living in the same place where the movie ends and supposedly still has fond memories of Ernesto.
So, a big, fat "meh". Maybe it didn't work for me because I've never been part of the people that worship "Che" Guevara, despite respecting him quite a bit. But good historical movies concern you with the characters, even if you don't really have a well-formed appreciation for them. This one, perhaps because it favored traditional and safe storytelling too much, fell flat on that regard.
I, Robot
(2004)
Ugh.
3 August 2004
"I, robot" is loosely based on Asimov's sci-fi universe. I've never been a big fan of Asimov (Phillip K. Dick beats him pretty badly), but from the little snippets of interviews I caught (and good old Asimov's daughter quoted on the posters stating that the movie was faithful to her fathers vision) I was expecting, I dunno, an Asimov adaptation.
On the other hand, while it does use the 3 laws of robotics as a basis for the plot, the movie is pretty far from being a Frankenstein-like meditation on current technology, even while it rather ineptly references Frankenstein during the dialogue. It's actually something resembling a cross between a film-noir and a Will Smith vehicle. Unfortunately, it's more Smith than noir.
Crammed with terrible, terrible expository dialogue and some of the lamest jokes I've ever heard (we're talking about Akiva Goldsman here; mr. Freeze, anyone?), the movie takes too long to say too little and makes twists that are so predictable that I stared in disbelief at how much of the plot I was able to foresee. The final fight, including more Will Smith one-liners surrounded by another one of those "epic" battles that just have too much CGI to impress anyone, is painful to sit through.
I am sorry, but this movie sucks badly.
On the other hand, while it does use the 3 laws of robotics as a basis for the plot, the movie is pretty far from being a Frankenstein-like meditation on current technology, even while it rather ineptly references Frankenstein during the dialogue. It's actually something resembling a cross between a film-noir and a Will Smith vehicle. Unfortunately, it's more Smith than noir.
Crammed with terrible, terrible expository dialogue and some of the lamest jokes I've ever heard (we're talking about Akiva Goldsman here; mr. Freeze, anyone?), the movie takes too long to say too little and makes twists that are so predictable that I stared in disbelief at how much of the plot I was able to foresee. The final fight, including more Will Smith one-liners surrounded by another one of those "epic" battles that just have too much CGI to impress anyone, is painful to sit through.
I am sorry, but this movie sucks badly.
I, Robot
(2004)
Ugh.
3 August 2004
"I, robot" is loosely based on Asimov's sci-fi universe. I've never been a big fan of Asimov (Phillip K. Dick kicks his ass), but from the little snippets of interviews I caught (and good old Asimov's daughter quoted on the posters stating that the movie was faithful to her fathers vision) I was expecting, I dunno, an Asimov adaptation.
On the other hand, while it does use the 3 laws of robotics as a basis for the plot, the movie is pretty far from being a Frankenstein-like meditation on current technology, even while it rather ineptly references Frankenstein during the dialogue. It's actually something resembling a cross between a film-noir and a Will Smith vehicle. Unfortunately, it's more Smith than noir.
Crammed with terrible, terrible expository dialogue and some of the lamest jokes I've ever heard (we're talking about Akiva Goldsman here; mr. Freeze, anyone?), the movie takes too long to say too little and makes twists that are so predictable that I stared in disbelief at how much of the plot I was able to foresee. The final fight, including more Will Smith one-liners surrounded by another one of those "epic" battles that just have too much CGI to impress anyone, is painful to sit through.
I am sorry, but this movie sucks badly.
On the other hand, while it does use the 3 laws of robotics as a basis for the plot, the movie is pretty far from being a Frankenstein-like meditation on current technology, even while it rather ineptly references Frankenstein during the dialogue. It's actually something resembling a cross between a film-noir and a Will Smith vehicle. Unfortunately, it's more Smith than noir.
Crammed with terrible, terrible expository dialogue and some of the lamest jokes I've ever heard (we're talking about Akiva Goldsman here; mr. Freeze, anyone?), the movie takes too long to say too little and makes twists that are so predictable that I stared in disbelief at how much of the plot I was able to foresee. The final fight, including more Will Smith one-liners surrounded by another one of those "epic" battles that just have too much CGI to impress anyone, is painful to sit through.
I am sorry, but this movie sucks badly.
Shrek 2
(2004)
"The position of annoying talking animal has been filled."
2 August 2004
I've always been curious about "Shrek". The first movie was praised beyond belief, went to Cannes and was regarded as a great example of a sense of humour that was rarely seen on mainstream animation. For one reason or another, I never saw that movie. Just this year a "Shrek"-loving girlfriend dragged me to see the sequel ... and it's nothing short of awful.
Apparently, by the end of the original "Shrek", both the green ogre and the Princess Fiona are living happily in the swamp, until they get an invitation from Fiona's parents. This seems to foresee a series of intelligent, double entendre joke that finally arrive, but too late, when we are painfully aware of how lame and predictable they were. Then the movie gets lost in a meandering plot, and I mean meandering in a very bad way. Some hope arises with Puss with Boots, played by Antonio Banderas. He gets some real, honest laughs for a change but he's still just one secondary character, and the screenwriters seems more concerned with making a thousand movie spoofs a minute than with having a good array of supporting characters. A good movie spoof, well timed and appropriate, can be wonderful. But in "Shrek 2" they are placed constantly in a way that's just too annoying. If that is what is so innovating about its jokes, then, well, it sucks.
Also, the voice cast is just badly used and it shows a decidedly strong tendence to show off the quality and the high-browness of the production, instead of doing actual comedy. Julie Andrews stars as the Queen, a role that could've been played by absolutely anyone with the ability to speak, since it has no real development and her only moment in the limelight is at the end, just so she can get tender and leave a good moral to the kids. And what is it with hiring John Cleese to do, well, nothing special, like in the Harry Potter movies? And what is it with John Cleese accepting? Why can't I laugh my dear ass off with Cleese like in the Monty Python years.
This is just bad. Towards the ending it gets mildly amusing, with Shrek turned into a Bruce Campbell look-alike in a scene that features some solid jokes for a change. Of course, it's all set so the filmmakers can do a "Ghostbusters" satire in the meantime, combined with an "E.T." and a "Godzilla" joke.
Just lame.
Apparently, by the end of the original "Shrek", both the green ogre and the Princess Fiona are living happily in the swamp, until they get an invitation from Fiona's parents. This seems to foresee a series of intelligent, double entendre joke that finally arrive, but too late, when we are painfully aware of how lame and predictable they were. Then the movie gets lost in a meandering plot, and I mean meandering in a very bad way. Some hope arises with Puss with Boots, played by Antonio Banderas. He gets some real, honest laughs for a change but he's still just one secondary character, and the screenwriters seems more concerned with making a thousand movie spoofs a minute than with having a good array of supporting characters. A good movie spoof, well timed and appropriate, can be wonderful. But in "Shrek 2" they are placed constantly in a way that's just too annoying. If that is what is so innovating about its jokes, then, well, it sucks.
Also, the voice cast is just badly used and it shows a decidedly strong tendence to show off the quality and the high-browness of the production, instead of doing actual comedy. Julie Andrews stars as the Queen, a role that could've been played by absolutely anyone with the ability to speak, since it has no real development and her only moment in the limelight is at the end, just so she can get tender and leave a good moral to the kids. And what is it with hiring John Cleese to do, well, nothing special, like in the Harry Potter movies? And what is it with John Cleese accepting? Why can't I laugh my dear ass off with Cleese like in the Monty Python years.
This is just bad. Towards the ending it gets mildly amusing, with Shrek turned into a Bruce Campbell look-alike in a scene that features some solid jokes for a change. Of course, it's all set so the filmmakers can do a "Ghostbusters" satire in the meantime, combined with an "E.T." and a "Godzilla" joke.
Just lame.
May
(2002)
"I love weird".
1 August 2004
May surprised me. Very much. It looks and feels like a "Carrie" type of film, where an outcast gets abused a lot and finally gets a gruesome revenge. But it's in fact a much more meditated (not that I have anything against De Palma's "Carrie") attempt to make an involving, honest and disturbing study of a lonely girl who looks for a strange kind of an acceptance. Disfigured herself on account of a lazy eye, she feels imperfect. Her quest for a perfect human being who can understand her and caress her makes for the best part of the movie, where the script makes a brilliant twist on the immortal Frankenstein theme.
This is seriously a film that has to be experienced. It's simply perfect. Hilarious, thought-provoking, disturbing. Angela Bettis, who was also impressing in "Girl, interrupted" and that infamous "Carrie" remake for TV, makes a major improvement here. Every gesture she makes it's perfect, because it looks like she really takes control of the character and makes it three-dimensional, instead of simply doing a caricature of the lonely, disturbed girl. The rest of the actors are also quite great, everyone bringing a particular manner to their characters. In a lesser movie the script would've put a mindless jock as May's love interest. In this movie we have an intelligent, believable character, a filmmaker who makes morbidly funny student films and is attracted by May's weirdness on a superficial level. This is true for every single character in the cast.
The director is Lucky McKee, a guy whom I'd never heard about before. Right now he's making a Horror with Bruce Campbell. How tasty does that sound? If this guy isn't destined to do great things, I'll slice off my eye.
This is seriously a film that has to be experienced. It's simply perfect. Hilarious, thought-provoking, disturbing. Angela Bettis, who was also impressing in "Girl, interrupted" and that infamous "Carrie" remake for TV, makes a major improvement here. Every gesture she makes it's perfect, because it looks like she really takes control of the character and makes it three-dimensional, instead of simply doing a caricature of the lonely, disturbed girl. The rest of the actors are also quite great, everyone bringing a particular manner to their characters. In a lesser movie the script would've put a mindless jock as May's love interest. In this movie we have an intelligent, believable character, a filmmaker who makes morbidly funny student films and is attracted by May's weirdness on a superficial level. This is true for every single character in the cast.
The director is Lucky McKee, a guy whom I'd never heard about before. Right now he's making a Horror with Bruce Campbell. How tasty does that sound? If this guy isn't destined to do great things, I'll slice off my eye.
Tell Your Friends