Archive for November, 2001
98 – Monsters, Inc.
Posted by frothy in Monsters Inc. on November 29, 2001
In the workaday world of monsters, Monsters, Inc. is the prime power provider. The workers at the company get the energy by emerging from kids’ closets and scaring the beejeezus out of them. The subsequent screams are then bottled and used to power Monstropolis.
The company’s top scarer is James P. Sullivan, aka Sulley (voiced by John Goodman). His sidekick/best friend is Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal). Here’s how it works. Doors from kids’ rooms appear from a giant warehouse in the company’s behemoth building. The scarer opens the door and steps into the kid’s bedroom and scares the heck out of the little tyke. As the screams come, they fill up empty canisters, the kind in which one might find helium for balloons, which the sidekick keeps at the ready. Then the monster steps out, the leaderboard reflects the changes (they’re very competitve there, you know), and another door is procured. The sidekick takes care of all of the paperwork.
There’s one huge rule, though. Never come in contact with one of the kids, or any of the stuff from their rooms. The kids are toxic and will kill you on contact. (At one point, a particularly gruesome monster comes out of the room with a tiny sock velcroed to his fur; an emergency is declared, and a crack Kid Detection team races in to decontaminate the scene – and the monster, who gets quite a nasty shave. It’s all innocuous enough, but it’s also reflective of current events, although the movie was certainly written a while ago.)
One evening, Sulley offers to do the paperwork so Mike can go on a date with his beloved Celia (Jennifer Tilly). There aren’t supposed to be any doors left on the floor after hours, but there one is, and Sulley’s just inquisitve enough to open it. Whoops! A kid comes out. Hilarity ensues. Sulley races to get Mike, and they both panic. I mean, think of it! A KID, there in Monstropolis! They fear for their lives! And of course all the while the kid, whom Sulley names Boo, is being a cute, adorable, curious little rugrat.
This film was done by the Pixar people, the same nice folks who brought Toy Story and A Bug’s Life to you. The animation is wonderful, although I’m not sure it’s quite on par with Toy Story as far as the monsters go. The animation of the little girl, however, is fabulous. The animators must have kids of their own, because every nuance I can think of that a little kid would have was captured beautifully in this movie.
The actors providing the voices are a lot of fun, too. Whoever cast John Goodman and Billy Crystal is probably suffering from a dislocated shoulder from patting themselves on the back so much. The two stars have great chemistry, bordering on Laurel and Hardy-ish.
This is a bellyacher film, although admittedly it’s not one that the intellectual snob would particularly enjoy. While the audience is the teeter-totter set, there is no overabundance of flatulence jokes – in fact, there aren’t any. This is good clean fun.
Monsters, Inc.: 8
97 – Planet of the Apes
Posted by frothy in Planet of the Apes on November 28, 2001
In 1968, the world’s fascination with outer space was still largely in the science-fiction realm. Sure, we’d put some men in space, but no one had landed on any foreign worlds. We imagined, through the voices of such authors as Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov, interstellar travel and advanced civilizations. But all of that seemed to be part of the distant future in 1968.
Here were are 33 years later, and while we haven’t traveled to other galaxies or met any other civilizations (advanced or otherwise, Whitley Strieber’s experiences notwithstanding), we have put a man on the moon and are hard at work on the international space station. In short, in 33 years we’ve come a long way, baby.
Anyone who has seen the original 1968 Planet of the Apes knows that the ending is a real kicker. I certainly won’t give it away here, because there’s an entire generation that hasn’t seen the movie and most certainly should. Suffice to say that the original is unique, not simply another sci-fi flick.
The new one is termed a “rethinking” of the original. Tim Burton, who gave us Edward Scissorhands, Batman, PeeWee’s Big Adventure, and Sleepy Hollow, is the director here, and the film is full of his stylish touch.
Mark Wahlberg is Captain Leo Davidson, an astronaut in 2029 on a small space station that is conduction experminents on chimps. An electrical storm strikes, and a chimp is sent out to survey the cause. When the animal does not return, Davidson launches himself – against his commander’s orders – to find him. Next thing he knows, his space pod is crash landing on an unknown planet inhabited by talking, aggressive apes – with humans as slaves.
Davidson is captured by the apes along with other humans, but escapes. His plan – get back to where his pod crashed, find his GPS-like device that will allow him to locate his mother ship, and get back home. But it’s a long way back to the pod, and he suddenly has thousands of apes after him.
Luckily, he has on his side Ari (Helena Bonham Carter), a kindhearted ape who feels empathy toward the humans. Ari, of course, symbolizes animal lovers on Earth; she cannot understand why her fellow apes treat their humans so badly. “We can learn much from them,” she claims, but her claims fall on deaf ears. Davidson, with the help of Ari, leads a small band of refugee humans (including the Daena, played by the delicious Estelle Warren) to his pod, where he makes some startling discoveries, none of which will be revealed here. (If you’ve seen the original and know the surprise ending, the discoveries Davidson makes are as intriguing as that ending.)
Hot on the trail of the astronaut and his friends is the evil General Thade (Tim Roth) and his fiercest warrior Colonel Attar (Michael Clarke Duncan). The makeup jobs on all of the apes are astounding, and the actors are completely unrecognizable under their disguises. The general has been told by his ailing father (an uncredited Charlton Heston, who starred in the 1968 original) that humans, in the time before time, humans brought violence to their planet; now that apes dominate, humans must be destroyed.
As with the original, this is a fascinating treatise not only on how we treat other animals but on how we treat ourselves. Is it truly accurate to say that humans are civilized and the apes are the savages? The film actually makes you think about such things, but it’s no philosophical hodge-podge of mumbo-jumbo. It’s a exciting, powerful movie, worth watching on just about every level.
Planet of the Apes: 8
96 – Swordfish
The term “no-brainer” usually refers to a decision so simple that any fool can make it correctly. It’s also applicable to this movie, as one is probably better off not having a brain when watching it – or, if one is in possession of a brain, it’ll be all mushy and spongy afterwards.
Can you see where I’m going with this? Swordfish is profoundly stupid, with profoundly stupid characters doing profoundly stupid things. It’s an insult to anyone’s intelligence. While you watch it, your brain turns to jello. Now, granted, this happens with a lot of current action movies, but this one sinks so quickly and so authoritatively into the great abyss of suckitude that you can hardly pause to catch your breath. Oh, but wait – it’s not so exciting that you actually lose your breath.
Gabriel Shear (John Travolta, sporting yet another goofy hairdo), is a megalomaniacal hacker with oodles of cash. He’s reclusive but dangerous; he hires world-famous hackers to break into bank accounts and steal money electronically. He’s ruthless, too, caring more about his single goal (which is thankfully revealed midway through the movie) than about other people’s lives, no matter how many are lost.
Shear picks up ex-hacker Stanley (Hugh Jackman), who went to prison for hacking into the FBI and setting back their computer system two years. Stanley’s forbidden from seeing his evercute daughter by his trailer-trash, porn-star ex-wife, and he lacks the cash to fight the custody in court. Can you see where this is leading?
Shear sends one of his top lieutenants, Ginger (Halle Berry) to pick up Stanley, and she convinces him to sign on. It’s a simple gig – he gets $100,000 just for meeting Gabriel, and he can walk away if he doesn’t like the deal he’ll be offered. Right. Like anyone in a movie like this would say no to that. If Stanley were really bright, he’d sense right off that Gabriel is a Bad Guy – people don’t just give $100,000 away for a meeting, you know. But Stanley’s not too swift, so he goes along. Presumably he also goes because Halle Berry asked him nicely.
At any rate, Stanley accepts the cash to go visit Shear, who needs someone to break an encrypted network in 60 seconds. I’m not going to bog down this review with technical lingo about how Stanley accomplishes it, mainly because I have no idea. The way hacking is almost always portrayed on the silver screen is by having one disheveled (usually young, although Stanley’s in his early to mid-thirties) hacker type really, really, really fast, hitting a million keys in about 15 seconds, then dramatically hitting “enter” and looking triumphant. So Stanley has to pull off this kind of feat, under enormous pressure (in more ways than one).
Now, by this point you’re supposed to be sympathizing with Stanley. He’s the good guy, right? He’s doing this against his will, right? And he only wants to see his daughter, right? The screenwriters don’t leave much out when making Stanley out to be a solid Good Guy. Heck, the only reason he cracked the FBI computer was out of a sense of goodwill. So he’s a hacker with a cause, some morals, and a slight sense of purpose.
Ordinarily, you’d think a movie about hacking into computers would be dull – and it would be if all we had to look at was a computer screen. So Shear crashes some cars, takes hostages, comandeers a bus and a helicopter, and do on. It’s kind of like Speed, but not ON speed, if you catch my drift. There’s only so many of the same old crashes and smashes before the old consciousness decides to take an extended nap.
On the video and DVD boxes for Swordfish, there’s a warning about the violent content. The warning notes that the movie was made before September 11, 2001 and that there are some scenes in the movie that might be unsettling for some people. I’ll save you the trouble – those scenes are when Gabriel acts like a terrorist overtly, rather than just subtlely, and while it is possible people who lost loved ones on September 11 might feel a little uneasy with them, I think they’d react more strongly to the mind-numbing stupidity of the entire movie. Why focus on just a couple of scenes when the whole thing is like a giant drone bee, buzzing endlessly and saying nothing?
A quick look at the cast. The good guys look good, the bad guys look bad. Ginger’s on the fence – is she good? Is she bad? Is she both? Do we care? Halle Berry hasn’t had a good role in a few years, but this one should have been easy for her. It just seems to me that the sole reason for having her there was for her to look pretty. She’s not bad at that – and even does a gratuitous topless scene – but lends little in the way of substance to a movie that was already sorely lacking it.
Parents: There’s a lot of violence in the movie, and although most of it is cartoonish, some of it might hit too close to home. Most adults can see through violence in movies with no problem, separating it from reality, but kids don’t always have that ability.
Swordfish: 4
95 – Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Posted by frothy in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider on November 18, 2001
Based on the obscenely popular video game, this movie covers the adventures of one Lara Croft, supersmart run-abouter, detective, archeologist, and overall minx. Perhaps you’ve heard of her. What, you haven’t? Have you been under a rock? Her darn Taco Bell commercials run every three seconds on TV, as per her deal with the devil.
I know, I’m being a little harsh on Ms. Croft. After all, she acts as a great role model for little girls, doesn’t she? And we certainly do need role models for girls other than Barbie. Croft is strong, determined, and intelligent – we should all aspire to be so. Of course, if girls are to emulate Ms. Croft, they should all wear skintight clothing that reveals the most cleavage this side of Anna Nicole Smith. This movie’s marketed to kids, but trust me – the dads and older brothers will get a special thrill out of this movie, too.
But enough about the demographics. Let’s hear about the plot. What’s that? The plot centers around a secret talisman that will give the owner control over time – if two parts of an ancient triangular object are found. And as luck would have it, Lara finds one, cleverly hidden in her own mansion by her late father (played, Obi-Wan style, by Jon Voight). Say, there’s a coincidence – her father was into this stuff, too. Sounds a bit like Indiana Jones, perhaps.
Naturally, an evil secret society called the Illuminati are after this object, so they can RULE THE WORLD! How come they never just want to retire to the Cayman Islands? What is it with this ruling the world stuff? And you know, how come you rarely see woman wanting to rule the world? Probably because they’re generally smarter than men.
Now a word about the casting. Angelina Jolie, fresh off her Oscar turn in Girl, Interrupted, is quite good here – even her Briticized accent. She certainly sounds more British than other Americans who have attempted the Queen’s English, like Kevin Costner and Richard Gere. And Jolie seems well up to the acting task, too. If you’ve ever played the Tomb Raider game, you know that Jolie is quite the spittin’ image of the virtual heroine. She’s also quite good at conveying the various sultry heroine looks – mysterious, alluring, sneaky, devious, and so on.
The rest of the cast is really not all that memorable. She has a sidekick of sorts, and he’s one of those technological whiz kids who can’t handle a knife or a gun but can hack into the mainframe at NORAD in about thirteen seconds. And the bad guys are those nondescript evildoers who have good haircuts, good clothes, and bad attitudes. Nothing exceptional about any of them.
What you’re basically looking at here is the special effects. This is a fast, kinetic movie, packed for 100 minutes with high-octane fun. Suspend disbelief, and you’ll have a blast. Just don’t blame me if you find it too derivative of earlier movies, such as Indiana Jones and The Mummy.
Now, since this movie was heavily marketed to kids, one might think it’s a kid’s movie. It’s not precisely a kid’s film, although it is PG-13. There is a brief glimpse of Lara’s breast as she leaves the shower. And of course there’s scads of cartoon violence. In my opinion, it’s probably safe for the older kids.
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: 6
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