Archive for May, 2002
118 – Ice Age
In Ice Age, a wooly mammoth named Manny (voiced by Ray Romano); a dull-witted, chatty sloth named Sid (John Leguizamo), and a fierce saber-tooth tiger named Diego (Denis Leary) join to bring a lost human infant back to his father. What peril over yon hill awaits these merry travelers?
Manny is the linchpin of the trio. He’s a lone mammoth, staying put when all others of his kind (as well as of any other kind) begin their yearly migration to a more arid climate. Manny is morose and a little bitter, but this is quickly recognized as a facade for a warmhearted mammal. He initially wants to stay a lone mammoth, but he’s soon joined by the ever-jabbering Sid, who’s a little short on both brain and brawn power. When a baby human is left behind by his dying mother, Sid convinces the immovable Manny to help transport the tyke back to his family.
The two are joined by Diego, a saber-tooth tiger who was in on the attack on the family and tribe of the young human. Diego’s been ordered to retrieve the baby by the head tiger, who wants to do all sorts of nasty and unspeakable things to the infant. Diego’s plan is to ingratiate himself with Sid and Manny, offering to take them to the area where they can meet up with the human tribe. Which is fine with Manny, who just wants to be rid of the kid – and Sid.
Ice Age, then is a good old-fashioned buddy pic. The three disparate animals, each outcast in very subtle ways, form a bond that has a common goal. Along the way, they face dangers more of the nature type than of the predator type, and each saves and is saved. But this isn’t a movie about great moral lessons; it’s a damn hilarious laugh-a-minute cartoon. It’s aimed at kids, of course, although the style of animation (it looks a little closer to Toy Story than, say, Looney Toons) can be appreciated by adults, too.
But what makes this such a cool movie is that the writing and the timing of the humor – and it’s heavy into physical comedy – are impeccable. Sure, it’s easier to do this with animation than with live action, but any movie at which I can laugh out loud, unprompted, at a near-constant rate is a surefire winner. Of course, at this point most kids have seen this – pardon me for being one of the last – but if you can still spot it in the theater, please do go.
Ice Age: 7.5
117 – The Others
Seems like when folks talk about the good old days of movies, they talk about movies that made you think, movies that scared you not by showing you something scary but by not showing you something at all. The fear of the unknown, conventional wisdom holds, is the ultimate fear. We do not fear the dark because it is dark; we fear it because of what it masks.
The Others harkens back to those oldtime scary movies, a haunted house movie that answers some questions, invites many more, and always keeps you on the very cusp of collapsing into hysterics. It’s not just a neat ghost story told well; it’s practically dripping with atmosphere.
Grace Stewart (Nicole Kidman) lives in a gigantic old mansion with her two young children, Anne and Nicholas, waiting for her husband to return from World War II. The kids have developed a sort of photosensitivity disease, and cannot be exposed to any light more than that of a candlelight. This leads to the house being shrouded in darkness much of the time, and Grace even goes so far as to direct that no door may be opened without the previous door being closed, so as to prevent extra light from shining on the children.
Grace hires a troika of housekeepers and handyman to help around the house and with the kids, but the three older people seem… well, a little off to her. And soon the Stewarts come to believe they are not at all alone in the expansive manse, as daughter Anne insists she has seen and spoken to a little boy named Victor.
Who’s behind the spectre appearances? Is it the hired help? Are the kids fibbing to their stern mother? Or is it all in the mind of Grace herself? Adding to the confusion is the return of Mr. Stewart to the house – like the help, he seems more than a little bit off-center. What is going on?
The mood is positively eerie, and it’s accomplished by a pronounced lack of musical accompaniment. In most horror movies, one hears a melodramatic chord or two, leading up to the victim being slaughtered. Not in The Others. Silence is deadly and heightens the tension and suspense immeasurably.
This is probably Kidman’s finest work, and in my mind it mostly erases the painful memory of watching her attempt to act in Eyes Wide Shut. Stripped of the baggage known as Tom Cruise, Kidman is simply superb, mesmerizing the viewer to the point of feeling a deep empathy for her plight. The plot’s no slouch, either, full of twists, including an incredible denouement. As ghost stories go, The Others is one of the best I’ve ever seen.
The Others: 8
116 – From Hell
A clarvoyant inspector works on the famed Jack the Ripper murder cases in Victorian era London. Inspector Abberline (Johnny Depp) can best be described as troubled, as he is haunted both by his own psychic abilities and his dependence on absinthe. As desititute prositutes are murdered and eviscerated, disemboweled, and worse on the streets of the extremely poor Whitechapel section of the city, Abberline tries to discern the culprit – it’s a learned man, he concludes, one with a distinct knowledge of medicine. Smart lad, that.
As Abberline becomes more and more involved witht he case, he also becomes more involved with one prostitute in particular whose group seems to have been targeted, Mary Kelly (Heather Graham). From the start, one can tell that Mary and Abberline will hook up, because she is the only prostitute who does not look downtrodden and, well, like a bucket of mud. (As a point of fact, love interests never look like buckets of mud, unless the story is about a cure for looking like a bucket of mud, or something.)
At any rate, as Abberline investigates further, he runs into his ultraconservative, image-conscious boss, who even asks him to destroy evidence and suspends him (how come so few police chiefs and the like actually act in concert with their detectives and officers on the screen? How come the cop has to go beyond regulations to get at the truth?). Abberline does have the help of his colleague Peter Godley (the always-reliable Robbie Coltrane), but in general he’s on his own. Can he solve the crimes?
Depp attempts to disappear into the role, and for the most part he succeeds, right down to what sounds to me like an authentic Cockney accent (but what do I know?). The problem is, the story’s weak, and when the lead actor’s just trying to blend in, the movie comes off as rather pedestrian. In other words, folks, you’ve already seen this movie in one form or another. There are some twists, but they’re minor ones. It’s a rainy, cold, dark, dreary movie, much like I imagine London itself was back then (and perhaps still is, at times). There’s simply not much unique with this movie, and it could have been just as well done with lesser-known stars. Graham, in particular, is wasted here – she’s a fine actress, but she’s left to do little more than be a victim. In addition, the ending is pretty unsatisfying, although the killer is named.
From Hell: 5
115 – Spider-Man
Posted by frothy in Spider-Man on May 14, 2002
Is he strong? Listen, Bud
He’s got radioactive blood!
Can he swing from a thread?
Take a look overhead!
The long-awaited big-screen version of the Webslinger, your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, is finally upon us! If you’ve been under a rock for the past few years or were suffering at the hands of the Taliban, Spidey is in real life Peter Parker, a nondescript high school student who is bitten by a radioactive spider while on a field trip. And zowie! He has spider senses, and can climb walls and shoot webbing from his hands! How cool! Chicks dig the web.
The movie concentrates on Spider-Man’s origin and beginnings, including his relationship with his soon-to-be-beloved, Mary Jane. In the movie, Mary Jane goes from the hunky rich kid to the nerdy rich kid… to Peter. Yes, that’s right, folks, she goes through three men in one movie, faster than a Cuisinart on acid. That slut! But she’s very well played by the growing-up-before-your-very-eyes Kirsten Dunst, who once upon a time was the little kid in that Tom Cruise vampire movie that virtually no one with a brain liked. Dunst is respendant in a not-bad red dye job (although there’s one scene that contains some gratuitous faux nudity; she’s braless), and she performs the task of measuring up to the comic-book MJ admirably. In fact, Dunst is rapidly becoming a more complete actress; she has an infectious laugh and a twinkle in her eye, something this movie definitely needed.
As Peter, Tobey Maguire is… well, he’s Tobey Maguire. Thankfully, he’s behind a mask a lot of the time and therefore is not called upon to emote very much. He’s bland. He was hired because he was bland. No one expected a master thespian, and no one (hopefully) was disappointing. Sure, he brings some flavor to the role, as long as you consider vanilla a flavor. But all jests aside, the kid did okay.
Spidey wouldn’t be a superhero if he didn’t have an arch-nemesis, and in this flick it’s Dr. Osborne (Willem Dafoe, campy but effective), who runs this super-hi-tech lab that’s trying to hold onto a government contract. But Osborne’s haunted by his own inner demons, one of which manifests itself as…. (cue dramatic music) … the Green Goblin, who rides around on what looks like a glorified trash-can lid, throwing exploding balls and whatnot. In the comics, if memory serves, the Goblin looked less human and more …. well, more goblinic. In the movie, his costume is like knight’s armor, only green. But he’s played with maniacal glee by Dafoe, and it’s that kind of over-the-top scenery chewing that makes evildoers so appealing in superhero movies. Go Willem go!
Familiar faces from the comic book populate the movie, too; Peter’s Aunt May, his Uncle Ben (who knew he had one??), and the newspaper editor, J. Jonah Jameson. All are pretty well performed (J. K. Simmons as Jameson was a real hoot), but more often than not their presence only detracted from the main plot of the movie. I mean, it’s cool that Peter’s just like the rest of us (as opposed to the superhuman strength of Superman or the batbrains of Batman), but sometimes the movie lagged because the plot was concentrating on something other than Spidey saving the day.
Also, the movie wasn’t as funny as it could have been. Now, don’t get me wrong; it’s not as dark as any of the Batman movies, but I kind of missed those pithy comments that, say, James Bond might spout. Those are all the rage now, those pithy comments. Peter has a few of ‘em, but they’re not all that interesting. The director, Sam Raimi, has been down this road before, albeit on a much smaller scale (Darkman, with Liam Neeson, in 1993), and that film also could have used a syringe full of funny. This isn’t much of a knock, though; the action was pretty good. I just wish Spidey had whooped it up a little, let loose. I mean after all, he’s a kid.
My biggest complaint about the movie is the ending. If you haven’t followed the comics at all, you might be okay with the ending (although it unquestionably opens up the possibility of a sequel or five). If you know anything about the comic, however, it’s a horrible ending. Really crappy. A huge disappointment, and completely unnecessary. In short, a shame.
Spider-Man is a good movie that doesn’t try too hard to please. It’s not a great film. It may make $4 billion, but it’s still not a great film.
Spider-Man: 6
-
You are currently browsing the archives for May, 2002
People Had This to Say