Archive for June, 2005
213 – War of the Worlds
Posted by frothy in War of the Worlds (2005) on June 29, 2005
Like the giant tripod robots from hell that invade Earth, War of the Worlds is shaky and collapses easily under its own weight. Sure, the effects are typically extraordinary for a Spielberg film, but the invasion itself is illogical and the scenes in which the human characters interact with each other fall flatter than the buildings that the robots stomp.
A freakish lightning storm knocks out all power, including cell phones and automobiles. This shouldn’t have been much of a shock to anyone, since apparently every news report leading up to the storm discussed electromagnetic pulses in other parts of the world that… knocked out all power. I guess that might have been a comment on how Americans don’t pay much attention to world events. As the local denizens scratch their heads in consternation and frustration, giant machines rise up from underground and then obliterate everyone in their paths. Madness ensues.
We see all of this death and destruction through the eyes of Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) and his kids Robbie and Rachel (Justin Chatwin and Dakota Fanning, respectively). Robbie’s a typical sullen teenager, veering between responsible older brother and impudent jerk. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t have a strong relationship with his father, and neither does Rachel. The kids have been conveniently dropped off for the weekend by their very-pregnant mom (the seldom-seen Miranda Otto), all the better for them all to potentially reunite at the end of the movie.
Much of the movie involves ducking and running and running some more, and mobs of angry people who resemble zombies without the cold logic, and tentacles, and aliens, and about a zillion shocked looks on Mr. Cruise’s face. That’s about it. Run, run, take a breath, run some more, peek around a corner. It goes on like this for a while, during which time we see humans alternately being vaporized or eviscerated. In fact, the violence is pretty intense, and I wonder what had to be cut in order for the film to attain a PG-13 rating.
The scariest movies are the ones that have at least a strong hint of realism – the audience, in other words, must feel as if what is happening on screen could definitely happen to them. And it’s easy to imagine the events in War of the Worlds happening. Oh, perhaps not a full-on alien invasion, but a gigantic catastrophe of some stripe. That’s why Independence Day was so popular, and it’s also why Close Encounters of the Third Kind was so special.
Of course, Spielberg was responsible for Close Encounters, but this one doesn’t approach the magic of the earlier film. At least with Close Encounters, we had a vague idea of why we were being visited; here, although we know they’re here to kill us all, we don’t know why, exactly. And how is it that giant machines could be buried underground for millions of years without anyone knowing? Surely we have the necessary equipment to detect giant metal.
While the effects are a huge credit to the movie – and ultimately save it – the script and the acting are two major debits, particularly Cruise and Fanning. Cruise normally plays characters who are the Smartest Guys in the Room, exuding coolness at all times. Ray’s not a smart guy. He’s an idiot and an incredibly bad father, as he seems to have a knack of putting his kids in danger (although he gets better at that as the movie progresses). Unfortunately, Cruise simply doesn’t have the range to play an idiot; Ray comes off as just an obnoxious and selfish. Indeed, he spends much of the movie shocked, shocked at what’s going on – which would be anyone’s natural reaction, of course, but this movie needed a hero of some sort, kind of like Dennis Quaid in the similarly themed The Day after Tomorrow.
Once upon a time, Fanning was cute and talented. She’s all of 11 years old now, and she’s neither cute nor talented. True, her character spends much of the movie fleeing in terror or screaming her head off, but any actress could have done that. Rachel is far too broadly written, and inconsistently so; sometimes she’s precocious, offering Ray advice on dealing with Robbie, and other times she’s dumber than your average 10 year old.
Why couldn’t this movie have been better? Spielberg and Cruise worked very well on Minority Report, and Spielberg’s gone the aliens route before with E.T. and Close Encounters, so why did this one fail? I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect their collaborations to be pretty good, given their track records, and War of the Worlds simply misses the mark. The action scenes are very intense, almost draining the audience of emotion, but the scenes with actual dialog are terribly shallow and predictable, not to mention unintentionally funny.
War of the Worlds: **1/2
212 – Team America: World Police
Posted by frothy in Team America: World Police on June 26, 2005
At first, you think a broad parody of Michael Bay action movies done with marionettes by the creators of South Park would be an instant bullseye. Then you see your hopes dashed when you realize it’s all just an excuse to cuss a lot and show puppets having sex. But more on that later.
The sad truth is that Team America doesn’t live up to its own hype. Sure, the use of marionettes is cute, but it’s just a novelty, one whose appeal fades during the first twenty minutes or so.
South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut seemed to me to be what Trey Parker and Matt Stone wanted the television series to be – if they didn’t have to bother with censors and sensibilities. The movie was a giant middle finger to Hollywood and the MPAA, too. Team America merely repeats the gesture, only with the puppet novelty.
The story goes thus. Gary Johnston, a Broadway actor, is recruited by Team America, an organization dedicated to ridding the world of evil dictators and terrorists. The team, with the wheelchair-bound Spottswood as its leader – needs an actor who can get them into and out of situations seamlessly. Once they’ve thwarted a terrorist meeting in Cairo – laying the city to waste in its wake – they learn of a bigger plot involving the use of WMDs.
The plot is fairly topical – will anyone remember who Hans Blix was, 20 years hence? – but for the moment it’s not a hindrance. It’s quite simplistic, but of course it’s meant to be, since the movie is parodying simplistic Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster extravaganzas.
But even if you get past the dopey plot, you quickly notice that the jokes aren’t terribly funny; they’re scattershot, much like the ubiquitous machine guns employed in the film. And the songs aren’t all that memorable, unless you count remembering that there was a plethora of profanity as being memorable.
In essence, Team America is what you might expect to be produced by a first-year film student with no morals. Crude and graphic, it fails on its most appealing level: satire of both the worldview of the United States and the propensity of Hollywood to make loud, meaningless action movies. The jokes and ideas aren’t sly and knowing, they’re obvious and pointless.
There’s nothing wrong with being offensive, of course; Parker and Stone do it for a living. But in the past, they’ve been offensive with a greater purpose – often the satire of commonly held mores or institutions.
Which brings me to the puppet coitus. It’s not amusing. It’s not titillating. It just kind of makes you uncomfortable, like catching monkeys at the zoo going at it. The difference here is that as audience member you’re sort of captive, whereas in the zoo you can keep on walking.
Keep walking, folks. Nothing to see here.
Team America: World Police: **
211 – Assault on Precinct 13
Posted by frothy in Assault on Precinct 13 (2005) on June 25, 2005
This stylish remake of John Carpenter’s 1976 low-budget thriller is a fair shade better than most remakes, nearly approaching the edginess of the original. If not for the bigger budget, it might have even been as good.
It’s New Year’s Eve at dilapidated Precinct 13, which is closing down. Just about all on-duty cops have been reassigned to other precincts, and all that’s left are Sergeant Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke), Jasper O’Shea (Brian Dennehy), and Iris Ferry (Drea de Matteo). And all is pretty quiet, in the midst of a thick snowstorm, until a bus of convicts is rerouted to lucky Precinct 13. One of the convicts is gangster Marion Bishop (Larry Fishburne), who’s due to testify in front of a grand jury.
Wouldn’t you know it, the placid precinct is infiltrated by two masked men who are quickly thwarted by Roenick. The intruders – quickly joined outside by a posse of similarly disguised thugs – aren’t there to bust Bishop out, however – they’re there to kill him. And they’re not criminals, exactly; they’re cops.
So Roenick has to fend off the corrupt cops and keep his team from killing each other. He has to rely on the talents of the other convicts and must explicitly trust Bishop – the baddies outside have superior numbers, headed by Marcus Duvall (Gabriel Byrne), and they’ll stop at nothing to kill Bishop, along with everyone else in the building.
Hawke, who looked pretty handy with a gun in Training Day, is really good here, as his Jake keeps his head while all those around him lose theirs. And, lucky fella, he has not one but two hot women to serve and protect – de Matteo’s Iris and Maria Bello’s Alex Sabian, Roenick’s shrink. Toss in Dennehy as the grizzled veteran about to call it a career, John Leguizamo as a hyperactive junkie, and Ja Rule as… well, Ja Rule, and you have all flavors of cliche.
But funny thing about this unoriginal piece of work – it’s pretty good. Director Jean-Francois Richet does an admirable job with the atmosphere, with close-up cinema verite angles that make you feel the cops are breathing down your neck. The movie’s well paced, too, with little letup in action; luckily, there are no slow moments of restful contemplation. No sir, this is not an action movie for tenderhearts.
Among the supporting case, de Matteo, Ja Rule, Leguizamo, and especially Fishburne come off best; not so much for Bello, Byrne, and Dennehy, although they don’t seem to have had much to work with. Bello’s character in particular is annoying and probably didn’t need to be in the movie, although her raison d’etre is apparent late in the film. Byrne looks as stonefaced as always, as evocative as a damp sponge. But that’s Gabriel Byrne’s own raison d’etre.
Intense, well-directed and filmed, this remake of a remake (following 1959′s Rio Bravo) is likeable on many levels. If the idea of a remake was tackled with as small of a budget as its 1976 predecessor, this might have been quite a work of art. As it is, still very entertaining.
Assault on Precinct 13: ***
210 – Batman Begins
Posted by frothy in Batman Begins on June 23, 2005
Despite a world of hype and great word of mouth, Batman Begins kind of fizzles, beginning tediously and nearly saving itself with an excellent second half. It’s good, not great, Caped Crusader pulp fiction; better than Batman and Robin and Batman Returns, but not quite as good as the second original Batman.
A well-known comic book character has an albatross around its neck: its own history. Since we know a lot about Batman, the movie about his genesis has to really convince us it’s the same guy – it has to be sincere. Well, Batman Begins is awfully earnest – perhaps much too earnest – and the origins of certain of his trademarks are well explained, but the movie suffers from a noncharismatic lead and a tone that seems more suited to a generic James Bond movie.
Let’s star with Bats himself, Christian Bale. Bale is perhaps best known as the serial killer in American Psycho, and while playing a psychotic might well prepare one for being Batman, he simply doesn’t provide enough oomph to the role. Remember, the role demands that the actor be hidden in a lycra suit for a good deal of the movie, so he has to be expressive with his face, commanding with his voice; a strong presence, in other words. Bale doesn’t quite accomplish any of this – he comes off as more of a poor man’s Tom Cruise, with limited facial expressions and emotions. Plus – and I don’t mean to be unkind here – Bale has a gigantic lightbulb for a head. Bruce Wayne’s supposed to be somewhat suave; I kept looking for the dangly chain to make him light up.
Moving on, we see the highly publicized Katie Holmes as the requisite love interest, Rachel Dawes. Holmes is amusingly miscast, far too much of a lightweight for the role. Her character is supposed to be in her twenties, but poor Katie acts and looks like she’s still in high school. As with Bale, I looked in vain for something – a class ring, in Holmes’ case. At any rate, she’s about as convincing as Chris Farley as the Pope. There’s not much chemistry between her and Bale in the few scenes they share, and she seems like she’s only four lessons into a ten-lesson course of Acting with an A.
Luckily, the supporting gang is quite good; this is what happens when you hire talented veteran talent. The elegant Michael Caine is onboard as Alfred, Bruce’s butler and muse. Caine was born for the veddy proper role, and one can easily see the latter-day Alfred (Michael Gough in the other films) in Caine’s portrayal. Morgan Freeman is Lucius Fox, the scientist who gets Bruce his Cool Gadgets, and Rutger Hauer is the nominal boss of Wayne Enterprises, megalomaniacally trying to take over the company, or something. Hauer’s sort of wasted – any Eurotrash would have done as well in the role. But most of the other major supporting characters are the underwire to the bra of the plot. That’s a good thing, for all you virgin males out there.
Director Christopher Nolan is the guy who gave us Memento and Insomnia, but the trouble here is that there’s nothing Christopher Nolan-like about the movie. Tim Burton’s Batman had Tim Burton written all over it, and that’s one thing that made it as successful as it was. But normally, with movies in a series (for example, the Bond films) it’s not necessary to get a Big Name director to do the deed; you just need someone who will be true to the oeuvre; the Bat universe, in this case. So although it’s nifty that they got the hot Nolan to direct, I don’t think it was necessary.
Batman Begins isn’t badly written at all, but the first half does seem awfully slow. Get to the good stuff, you may whine. Let’s lay off this James Bond crap and get to the avenging-death-of-parents bit. It’s good that we learn why Bruce chose the Batman name, how he came upon his cape and gadgets, where the Batmobile came from, and when the Bat Signal was first used… but we need to see all that mystical be-the-one mumbo jumbo? I felt like I’d stumbled upon an old Mountain Dew commercial.
Batman Begins: **1/2
209 – National Treasure
Posted by frothy in National Treasure on June 12, 2005
National Treasure won’t surprise you, but thanks to a rather appealing performance by Nicholas Cage and some choice location shooting, you forget that the plot is nonsensical and illogical, and all is well with the world.
The appropriately named Benjamin Franklin Gates (Cage) comes from a long line of wacky theorists who believe that the Founding Fathers of the United States buried a ton of treasure somewhere, and that a clue to its whereabouts is on the back of the fabled Declaration of Independence. So, with his trusty sidekick Riley (Justin Bartha) and a reluctant expert, Abigail (Diane Kruger), he sets out to steal the treasured document and discover the cache of loot for which he and his own forefathers have been searching for decades.
Cage makes like Indiana Jones here, and while he’s no Harrison Ford (even a younger Harrison Ford), he’s a spot better than you might expect. He’s never quite believeable as an action hero in this movie, but he seems authentic as a man of letters, a clever conniver, a sly sleuth. Good thing, because he’s pretty much the entire show here, save for the awesome footage of Genuine American Historical Monuments. Anytime you can sneak in recognizable landmarks, your film will stand apart from the others in the genre; it’ll be more memorable. Check out a minor Hitchcock film, Saboteur, and you’ll see excellent use of the Statue of Liberty.
The movie is apparnetly based quite loosely on the Dan Brown novel The DaVinci Code. I haven’t read the book yet, mostly because I’m too cheap to go buy it and it’s always, always out on loan from my library. But I’ve heard from very reputable sources that National Treasure is basically a ripoff of the DaVinci Code story, albeit supercharged as an action thriller extravaganza. I bet the book didn’t things blowing up all the time, but that’s what you have to expect from a Jerry Bruckheimer film. I’d advise you to read the book instead, for I hear it’s clever and entertaining; the movie gets it only half right.
Although the logical train Gates follows from clue to clue seems somewhat implausible at times, don’t let that distract you from a fun time. Don’t let the cliches of a hot-but-smart female sidekick; a smooth, superrich Eurotrash villain; and a wisecracking computer-whiz male sidekick deter you, either. But wait, don’t shut your brain off entirely. You want to see how many of the clues you’ll understand before Gates does. In fact, make a drinking game of it. Everytime he says, “I’m working on it!” or looks exasperated, do a shot. I guarantee you’ll be snockered in no time.
One other minor debit is that there really isn’t much chemistry between Cage and Kruger. I mean, every hero has to have The Girl, and they just don’t seem to click. Maybe they didn’t like each other. Maybe Cage tried to put the moves on Kruger and she slapped him silly. Whatever the reason, they just don’t seem too into each other, as they’re supposed to be.
In all, it’s not too bad, and probably best seen on a big screen, the better to see Stuff Get Blown Up.
National Treasure: **1/2
208 – The Final Cut
A wannabe thriller with a fantastic premise sinks under its own weight, complete with overacting, a muddled plot, and a cliched script.
Alan Hakman (Robin Williams) is a cutter, responsible for editing the recorded video of people’s lives (they’ve been implanted since birth with a recording device) into an upbeat, hero-building “Rememory” for surviving loved ones to enjoy. But Alan’s cold life takes a downward turn when he discovers one of his own repressed memories in the video of a client.
When Alan was ten years old, something dreadful happened that affected him the rest of his life, including his choice of vocation. He’s grown up to be the best cutter there is, a real whiz with splicing good memories to good memories. He gets all the high-profile contracts, yet he’s able to remain aloof, emotionless, with a null-and-void soul. Then he thinks he recognizes someone in the background of a Rememory he’s working on, and his childhood memory resurfaces.
Does sound like a intriguing idea, doesn’t it? In the hands of a real sci-fi writer, it might have followed through on its own promise. But writer-director Omar Naim’s story quickly dissolves into a by-the-numbers thriller, complete with Jim Caviezel as a former cutter out to bring down the entire industry while working for an opposition group. It’s not that Naim’s script is so terrible, it’s that there aren’t really any surprises. Aside from the gee-whiz aspect of the whole “cutting” idea, there’s really nothing else that’s all that exciting.
It’s also a shame to see a couple of rather poor performances from Williams and Mira Sorvino. Remember, once upon a time Sorvino won an Oscar, and she hasn’t done a heck of a lot since. Williams has been nominated four times, winning for Good Will Hunting in 1998. Both, then, have some credentials. So why are they in this junk? Sorvino overacts outrageously in the few scenes she’s in. Sometimes this is called “stealing scenes,” but only when the overacting seems appropriate for the particular scene. Needless to say, Sorvino’s performance is never really appropriate.
Williams isn’t a lot better. Sure, he’s not Manic Robin, dancing all over the screen like he has ADHD; he’s Serious Robin, the kind we saw in One Hour Photo and Insomnia. This Robin is a fantastic actor. He’s not terrible here, but he just seems out of place. He seems to be sleepwalking through the role.
All in all, The Final Cut is a fairly low-key movie that doesn’t live up to its own premise.
The Final Cut: **
207 – Ocean's Twelve
Posted by frothy in Ocean's Twelve on June 2, 2005
Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and his band of idiosyncratic thieves are tracked down, one by one, by casino owner Terry Benedict, from whom the Eleven stole $160,000,000. Benedict wants his money back – plus interest – or else. In this milder, innocuous sequel to the 2001 film (itself a remake of the 1960 film), the Eleven-Plus-One must pull off three major robberies in Europe to satisfy Benedict.
It’s an intriguing premise, and yet for some reason I thought the idea was that they were going to perform all three capers at the same time, which would have been a neat feat to watch, what with the gang having only eleven members. But alas and alack, that’s not how it shook down. What we do get are three separate robbery attempts, each running into greater difficulty than the previous. Kind of like the logistics of getting a whole mess o’ Big Stars to rearrange their schedules so they could work on this floppy film at cut-rate prices.
Danny and his boys have their work cut out for them, because they also have a rival – the Night Fox, a wealthy man-about-town who effortlessly steals, steals, steals. Seems he’s the best there is, ever was, ever will be, or something like that. And he’s one step ahead of Ocean all the time. Don’t you just hate people like that?
Meanwhile, Linus (Matt Damon) wants a larger role in the planning of heists and such, perhaps as a sidekick/apprentice to Danny and Rusty (Brad Pitt). Why director Steven Soderbergh thought Linus needed more screen time is beyond me; the whole secondary plot of the misfit Linus trying to assert himself seemed a bit out of place – and quite a bit of a stretch for Movie Star Matt Damon.
Which kind of brings me to another slightly annoying aspect of the movie – all the Movie Stars. Sure, I know they all took way-smaller salaries to work on this film, and bravo to them. But you could never get away from the fact that this was a star-studded affair, something a little above “Battle of the Network Stars” but not quite as good as, say, Chicago. Pitt and Clooney usurp most of the screen time anyway, although Damon and Julia Roberts are a close second. Luckily, there are plenty of other familiar faces: Elliot Gould, Don Cheadle, Carl Reiner, Scott Caan, Casey Affleck … Oh, and did I mention Catherine Zeta-Jones? She’s an intrepid Interpol agent who shares a past with Rusty, and she’s hot on the trail of the Ocean Gang. Unfortunately, she’s a bit underused, although a late subplot about her works fine, if perhaps shoehorned in.
The plot gets a little complicated at times, and you might well ask yourself, “Where are they now? Why are they doing that?” and so forth. I liked the intricacies of the plot of the 2001 film, but for some reason this script left me a little cold. Complex is fine, but the plot still needs to draw you in, and it just didn’t do so this time around.
The first half of the movie kind of dragged a bit for me, but I’m glad I stuck with it. In the second half, there are a couple of excellent cameos – both surprises to me – and some clever twists indeed. The action in the latter half of the movie did make up for the torpidity (look it up!) of the first half. Kudos to George Nolfi’s script, albeit somewhat grudgingly.
The acting isn’t bad at all; in fact, the players all seem to be enjoying themselves immensely, which is kind of what all-star movies are all about.
Ocean’s Twelve: **1/2
-
You are currently browsing the archives for June, 2005
People Had This to Say