Archive for March, 2007
Movie quizzes
Quizzes are fun, aren’t they? Especially movie quizzes. Everyone loves those, and there’s zillions of them out there.
First, we have a quiz on Scary Little Girls, i.e., little tykes in horror movies.
Then there’s Name that Movie, in which you play a sound clip and then pick which movie it’s from.
Movie-A-Minute
What’s that? You don’t have time to watch movies? Boy, have I got a site for you to try. Movie-A-Minute, brought to you by the fine folks at RinkWorks, condenses select movies for you to save you the trouble.
Here’s a wonderful example, the condensed version of Speed:
Dennis Hopper
I will blow up the elevator.
Keanu Reeves
Oh no. Not the elevator. (saves elevator)
Dennis Hopper
I will blow up the bus.
Keanu Reeves
Oh no. Not the bus. (saves bus)
Dennis Hopper
I will blow up the subway.
Keanu Reeves
Oh no. Not the subway. (saves subway)
THE END
312 – Clerks II
Sequels almost never work, particularly if the original movie was an independent, no-frills, cinema verite, low-budget “experiment,” like 1994′s Clerks was. There was really no reason to think that Clerks 2 – a film Kevin Smith always said would never be made – would be anything more than a narcissistic vanity undertaking, a movie capitalizing on its predecessor’s coolness and attitude to make a few extra bucks for its creator.
And yet, somehow, it works. Clerks 2 is both funny and poignant, and considering all the history of the characters, most of whom have appeared in other Smith films, this is an extraordinary accomplishment. Because really, who would have thought, after watching Clerks twelve years ago, that Smith could pull off a touching moment or two without making his characters seem clownish? What we got in 1994 was edgy profanity, wry pop-culture observations, and a minimalist plot. And that worked, because we had low expectations to begin with.
Twelve years later, with a much bigger budget and shooting in color, how could Smith possibly allay our fears? I expected bombast where there’d been subtlety, Grand Acting where there’d been witticisms. But in updating the story of Dante and Randal, Smith succeeded in making us give a rat’s ass about the two nihilists, generic standins for every clerk we’ve ever run across.
So it’s all these years later, and when Dante comes in to open up the Quik Stop one morning, he finds it ablaze, taking the next-door video stor down with it. He and Randal subsequently get jobs at a low-rent McDonald’s ripoff called Mooby’s (cute – a hamburger joint with a cow motif). A year later, they’re still there, but Dante’s now engaged to Emma (Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, Kevin’s wife) who way back when wouldn’t give him the time of day; they’re driving down to Florida so Dante can run a car wash owned by her dad. Oh, and her parents are giving them a house, too. Yep, life’s finally getting good for the put-upon Dante. He’s moving on, which involves leaving Randal for the first time in more than a decade. It also means leaving his boss, Becky (Rosario Dawson), and New Jersey in general.
Wait, what? We can’t have Randal and Dante growing as characters – they’re supposed to be slightly lovable, identifiable oafs, comfort-food twits. We know ‘em. We relate to ‘em. We don’t want ‘em to change. They’re supposed to be those people you always see behind the counters, people you don’t wanna know. But a funny thing happens – not only do you care about these guys, you’re grateful they do grow. And they face their future in wholly believable ways – Dante embraces the American idea of a wife, a nice job, a sunny place to live, that sort of thing, while Randal clings a bit more to what used to be.
Oh, don’t despair, though, because the jokes are still there. There’s a memorable bit in which Randal strikes down with great vengeance fans of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Plus a KILLER scene in which a man has sex with a donkey (it’s not bestiality, it’s interspecies erotica!), although we thankfully don’t get to see anything. And an attack on so-called racist terms. Plus cameos by Ben Affleck and Jason Lee, but they’re not the obtrusive, lookit-me-I’m-a-celeb kind of cameos that make no frickin’ sense at all. Affleck’s is a quickie; Lee shows up as an Internet millionaire who went to school with Dante and Randal. Sure, there he is, all rich, and there they are, working at a burger joint at age 33.
The movie makes more sense than Clerks did – it oughta, since the sequel doesn’t have the luxury of seat-of-one’s-pants filming. It tracks linearly, and rather than be a series of Incidents of Note, there’s much more cohesion and credulity involved. It also helps that everyone does a great job in front of the camera, particularly Jeff Anderson (Randal), Brian O’Halloran (Dante), and Dawson, who also looks ravishing and adorable at the same time (it’s the glasses).
Clerks 2 was hilarious, proof that indie auteur Kevin Smith not only hasn’t forsaken his roots, he’s embraced them wholeheartedly and has enhanced them to keep us all wildly entertained.
***
Technorati Tags: Clerks 2
311 – Rocky Balboa (**)
Posted by frothy in Rocky Balboa on March 24, 2007
I was all prepared to buy into this new Rocky movie. I was ready, because it’d been 16 years since the last one, a movie Stallone himself said was kind of the worst of the bunch. Yeah, kind of. I was ready for Rock to come back against all odds and persevere, beating some rip-snortin’ champeen of the world to reclaim his dignity. But although this sixth Rocky film has most of the elements that a winning sports movie will have (underdog story, friends/relatives who don’t want him to do it, theme song), the result is flat, coming to life only during the requisite big fight at the end of the movie.
It’s been a long time since Rocky fought Tommy Morrison. Since then, wife Adrian has died and son Robert is now all grown up working at some highfalutin job. I can’t remember what the job was, but it was some kind of white-collar Important job, the better to juxtapose it with Rocky’s self-made lifestyle. But Paulie (But Young) is still around and, as it turns out, so is Duke (Tony Burton), who’s been Rocky’s cut man in all of the films thus far. But wait, with no Adrian there must be some kind of romance, right? Someone who can push Rocky a little, make him really want to succeed? So enter bartender Marie (Geraldine Hughes), who’s from Rocky’s old Philly neighborhood and has a son of her own. Sure, the son’s a teen who looks more like a twentysomething, and he’s a tall, gangly dude instead of an adorable waif, but you takes what you can gets.
Anyway, at this point in his life Rocky’s settled down. He has a restaurant, at which he spends a lot of time reminiscing and schmoozing with boxing fans. Trouble is, Rocky lives in the past. Several times we see him visiting Adrian’s grave or standing in front of old gyms or bars or other haunts, just trying to soak in some of what used to be. If there was an Olympics for wistfulness, ol’ Rock would surely win the gold each time out. He’s had much success, and yet here he is, living in the past. Paulie’s not of the same mind – he asks Rocky to change the channel, stop living backwards, and any other cliche he can come up with.
Meanwhile, the current champeen of the world is one Mason Dixon, who’s something like 35 and 0 with 33 knock outs. The slam on him is that he’s not really fighting anyone of any caliber – he’s just beating up bums. Sort of the same knock against Mike Tyson back in the day (Tyson even shows up in a ringside cameo), and Dixon gets roundly booed at his bouts. Then a computer simulation is run pitting Dixon against an in-his-prime Balboa. When the results give the edge to Rocky, brother, it is ON! Promoters figure here’s their change – people hate Dixon and aren’t coming to his fights, so taking on a sentimental fave like Rocky in an exhibition should spike sales.
So after some deliberation, Rocky decides to go for it, because that’s what Rocky would do. His son, who’s had to spend his life in the wide shadow of his father, is wholly against the idea, but naturally he comes around in time. Paulie’s against it to, sort of, and even so, he notes he can’t really help Rocky train, what with his job and all. But fret not, because that plot complication is handled easily enough, too.
I’d almost be able to forgive Stallone (who also wrote and directed) for the exponential schmaltz factor if there’d been more actual boxing, but the final battle with Dixon is it. There are no prelim bouts, no fights to get Rocky in shape, nothing. So he basically moves from the gym to the ring for his big fight. In reality, if he pulled that crap in his fifties, he’d be splattered by Dixon within one minute of round one. I won’t tell you precisely how it ends, to preserve that air of mystery, but I’ll note that the ending adds nothing different to the massive oeuvre of sports movies. Seriously, if you can’t figure out how this one’ll end, you’ve probably never watched a movie before.
About the only time the movie’s worth caring about is that final fight, though, because it’s pretty well done. Fight of the century, even. A lot of traded blows; it’s well orchestrated without being unbelievable. I mean, it’s not as if Rock is bleeding profusely from the eyes, mouth, nose, and neck and still manages to land a lucky punch to win it all at the last second. That would be stupid. But really, that’s the shred of credibility to which this movie clings.
Most egregiously, we don’t get to hear the awesome, iconic theme song in its entirety until the movie’s mostly over. On the other hand, a movie without the screeching ineptitude of Talia Shire can’t be too awful.
Hopefully, this will bury the ghost of Rocky Balboa for good. It’s not a terrible way to go out, but it’s by no means a knockout.
**
310 – Blood Diamond
Posted by frothy in Blood Diamond on March 23, 2007
Blood diamonds are pinkish in nature, and the term “blood diamond” refers to the blood spilled by those who were killed during its mining or transfer from the heart of Africa to stores around the world. That much I learned from the movie of the same name, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as an amoral smuggler who teams up with a native fisherman (Djimon Hounsou) and an American journalist (Jennifer Connelly). I also learned that huge multinational companies control the diamond market by hoarding all the diamonds. Actually, I knew that part already.
Denny Archer (DiCaprio) sells guns to rebels in Sierra Leone in exchange for diamonds, which he then turns over to a diamond cartel. Pretty nice gig, really, especially since apparently everyone in Sierra Leone is in on it except for the poor souls who have to mine the stuff. The revolutionaries rampage through villages, killing most of the citizens, including the women and children, and taking the men to work in the diamond mines. Some of the male children are taken to be “baby killers” among the rebels. So you see, everyone has a nice job.
Until the day that Solomon (Hounsou), mining in a creek for the rebels against his will, comes across a pink stone described as being about the size of a bird’s egg. (It’s never mentioned which bird, though.) As the rebels are being bombed by the government, Solomon buries the stone. But of course he’s been spotted, and the rest of the movie is spent by everyone trying to get his or her hands on it to get out of Africa in one piece.
One of those people is Archer. At first you get the impression that he’s sort of a summa-cum-Indy, an adventurer who looks like he’s out for himself but deep down is a right respectable bastard who’ll save a pretty girl and prevent an innocent man from being stabbed. Well, he’s sort of that person, in that he’ll save the pretty girl (Connelly), as long as he still gets his money. Kind of a low-rent Han Solo, really, only without the cool ride. At any rate, while in jail in Sierra Leone, Archer overhears a captured rebel commander accuse the also-imprisoned Solomon of hiding a big ol’ diamond. And that, apparently, is all Archer needs to know, as he gets Solomon bailed out for the sole purpose of getting him to lead Archer to the diamond.
To accomplish this, Archer joins forces with Maddy (Connelly), a journalist looking for the real story of the rape of the African continent. She knows the diamond cartels are behind all the mayhem but can’t print anything without anyone willing to go on the record with names and dates and other information. Of course, the swaggering Archer might be that person. Might they strike a deal? Oh, even better yet – perhaps they’ll fall in love with each other, running through the jungles and plains?
Leonardo DiCaprio could wear a four-foot beard and still look about sixteen years old. He can’t disguise his youthfulness with a somewhat-acceptable Afrikaans accent (Archer is supposed to be from Rhodesia, aka Zimbabwe). And were we supposed to root for him or against him? In the hands of a skilled actor, ambiguous intentions can lend an air of mystery to a character, but it’s a delicate chore; otherwise, you wind up not really caring if the guy’s supposed to be good or bad. Such it is with Archer. I got it. He’s in it for himself. Okay, I wondered, now what? Give me a reason why I should care if he dies, if all he’s after is the diamond, no matter the cost of human life.
On the other hand, Hounsou is exceptional as a man who’s quiet life has been incontrovertibly rent asunder by the invading rebel forces, which kidnap his son and turn him against his own people, and the government itself, which quarantines all refugees with the idea that it’s too tough to tell which refugees are with the rebels and which are not. Having lost nearly everything save his own dignity, Solomon does not break, but bends when he must. His urgent need is to reunite with his family and restore order to their lives. Nothing else matters; he sees his diamond as a way out of everything.
Completing the troika is Connelly, who offers a somewhat distaff performance as the naive, unlikeable journo Maddy. Why would Maddy feel compelled to help Archer? Oh, that’s right, he’s Leonardo DiCaprio. The blunt sexual tension gets to be a bit too much at times; try to avoid screaming “oh, just get on with it, already!” at the screen. Connelly’s done much better work than here, of course. It’s just that she seems so listless, almost bored at times by the proceedings, like she can’t quite believe she’s in this junky, pseudoaction movie.
We’re supposed to take away from this movie the central message that Diamonds Are Bad, at least if people died in order for them to make it to us. As soon as the movie came out, various diamond companies announced they were upstanding companies who’d never, ever do anything like this. I don’t know what I should believe, because I’ve always sort of thought that buying shiny rocks was a dumb thing to do, anyway. But overall, the impression one gets is that this is just another dumb Hollywood message/action movie. A lot of the time, the scenes are basically people running from one explosion to another; luckily, the fine acting of Hounsou allows the audience to track what’s going on rather effectively. And of course, in the end Things Are Solved, as I’m sure they are in real life.
**
3 Women, Tomorrow
Posted by frothy in 3 Women (1977), Tomorrow (1972)P on March 20, 2007
Sounds like a porn title, doesn’t it? Ok, maybe a bad porn title, but still. Anyway, these are two older films I saw recently via the good people at Netflix. I can recommend them both, although they’re not for all tastes, definitely.
3 Women (1977) seems, at first glance, to be misnamed, as much of the movie deals with the relationship between Millie (Shelley Duvall) and Pinky (Sissy Spacek). Pinky, new to California, gets a job in a convalescent home. Millie is the seasoned employee who shows her the ropes. But this is much more than a new girl learning how to do things on her own with the help of a mentor, oh yes. You see, Millie fancies herself as quite the social butterfly, but she’s oblivious to the opinions of basically everyone else, that she’s much more pest than paragon of excellence. For example, as the employees file in and out of the home, they’re paired off – except for Millie, who follows them alone and carries on a conversation with the others, even though no one’s listening to her. She also takes her lunches at the hospital across the street, the better to pick up guys, although the scene repeates itself there – she brays on and on about anything and everything while the interns and doctors and residents merely continue their meal, virtually ignoring her.
By contrast, Pinky is terribly shy and naive and sort of idolizes the more-worldly Millie. Looking to latch on to Millie’s brash personality, Pinky moves in as Millie’s roommate. Although the girls do clash on some issues, they more or less get along, although we get some glimpses at Pinky’s more-subversive attitude.
And then tragedy strikes, and everything you know goes out the door. Then the movie really takes off. To tell you more would be a crime, really, but let’s just say the tragedy isn’t something as banal as “girl gets in car accident, gets new outlook on life.” No, some serious stuff goes down in Millie’s and Pinky’s lives. And the ending – the final fifteen minutes or so – are golden.
Oh, did I mention that Robert Altman directed this little gem? This would be after Nashville (1975) but before Popeye. Altman got the idea for the film from a series of dreams he had. Imagine that; you dream about something, and you go to a Hollywood studio to make a movie about it. They’d laugh at you. They didn’t laugh at Altman, because he’d recently made Nashville and he had a friend in the studio in the person of Alan Ladd, Jr., who cared that Altman the auteur got his vision made into a film. And so it was.
***1/2
Then we have Tomorrow (1972), a verrrrrrrry slow two-character study starring Robert Duvall and Olga Bellin. Duvall is a cotton farmer/handyman who lives a solitary life in a small shack as he waits for his new home to be built. One day, while warshin’ his pans, Jackson Fentry hears moans and groans and comes across a pregnant woman coming to. Seems her husband abandoned her months before when he learned she was expecting, and the other day she decided to just walk and see where she got to. Well, she got as far as Fentry’s home before collapsing. Rather than leave Sarah to fight the bitter cold winter, Jackson takes her in and nurses her to health. She eventually gives birth and they marry, and that’s when things go a little haywire.
Duvall is superb; his accent reminds me a bit of Billy Bob Thornton’s turn as Karl Childers in Sling Blade, although certainly Jackson is a bit more intelligent. Jackson Fentry is a man of few words but myriad emotions; he loves Sarah and wants to protect her and her baby but is helpless to prevent tragedy. By contrast, Bellin’s Sarah is loquacious, friendly, outwardly loving. Both actors do a lot with very little, which happens often in movies adapted from stage presentations. Horton Foote adapted his own play, based on a story by William Faulkner, and this stands as probably the best adaptation of Faulkner’s work to film. It’s slow, but engaging, thanks to wonderful performances by the two leads.
***1/2
Manly directors
Are you a director? Are you a male? Are you on this list?
What, no John McTiernan? I can see leaving James Cameron off, what with that crappy boat movie. What about Robert Aldrich?
Good choices, though. I’m glad people have an appreciation for Sam Peckinpah, who did seem like he wanted to kick everyone’s ass. Hey, how about Herbert Ross? I’m kidding; the dude did chick flicks.
309 – My Super Ex-Girlfriend
Posted by frothy in My Super Ex-Girlfriend on March 19, 2007
Uma Thurman is a superheroine who falls for schlumpy everyman Luke Wilson, who then dumps her, and we find out the True Meaning of a woman scorned. This makes no sense, of course, since she’s supposedly the Good Guy, but it’s explained away by the unassailable reasoning that all ex-girlfriends are certifiable.
In fact, the movie’s conundrum is that because Thurman’s G-Girl/Jenny Johnson is wacko, should we be rooting for her or against her? And when Wilson’s Matt falls for a cute coworker (Anna Faris) instead, are we supposed to be on her side, or Jenny’s?
The women in the audience, of course, are probably supposed to think Jenny’s in the right, because she’s been wronged. If I’d seen this in the theater, I’d probably hear endless “You go girls.” This is what passes for self-actualization, the empowerment of women by way of destroying men. Watching the movie, you know full well that somehow, even with all the violence and insanity perpetuated by Jenny, she’ll wind up on the good side of things.
Meanwhile, the men are all nodding their heads in sympathy. “I hear ya, man,” as they watch Matt put up with Jenny’s crap. And then wincing as she zaps him with heat vision. Man, that’s gotta hurt.
Wilson is underwhelming in the lead; it’s almost as if he’s playing the role of the sincere best friend instead of the charming (if ordinary) Everyman. He doesn’t have the effortless charisma of his older brother Owen, and that strong personality is missing. Then again, Thurman’s acting style is to underplay most roles, even tough ones like Beatrice in Kill Bill. That would be fine here if her role wasn’t that of a psychotic, neurotic superhero; instead of giving the character some depth or nuance, Thurman’s performance felt superficial and artificial, as if it were spit out of the RoboActor 4000.
Adding to the dull leads were Rainn Wilson as Best Bud Vaughn, an incorrigible womanizer, and Faris as Hannah, Matt’s actual Tru Luv 4 Evah. Wilson’s okay, although poor writing makes his character more annoying than you’d think he’d be. Faris is blah. She’s always blah, though, so I wasn’t disappointed. She does look good, though, so there’s that.
Getting a special dishonorable mention is the terrible, constipated performance by Wanda Sykes. With her nails-on-a-chalkboard voice combined with a cranky, bitchy attitude, Sykes does grievous harm to the movie. Take her useless character out of the equation (she plays Matt’s boss, who sees sexual harassment everywhere, so you know right away she’s annoying as can be), and you could bump this rating up a half star.
Even the effects were kind of lame. So G-Girl can fly. And of course, there’s the obligatory bring-the-not-flying-dude-up-above-the-city thing. But so what? Considering how many superhero movies there have been lately – and this was released right after Superman Returns – the action scenes aren’t anything you haven’t seen before. Add to that the fact that G-Girl (the reason for this moniker is never explained) indiscriminately wrecks cars and buildings while trying to avenge the breakup, thus putting innocent people in constant mortal peril, and you get a convoluted mishmash of shady, ambiguous motivations.
I think that if about 20 minutes had been chopped out of this Ivan Reitman film, it might have been palatable. There’s too much standard romantic-comedy crap in there. Of COURSE Jenny has to screw up Matt’s Big Day at work, with his Big Presentation in front of the new Chinese clients. I mean, duh. And of course, at the denouement, every freaking secondary character except Sykes’ shows up, some for no particular reason at all. It’s as if there were several writers, each working in his or her own trailer on separate planets, and the results were fed into the Script Generator O’ Awesomeness, and this is what we get. Same for the editing, come to think of it.
Bah. Worst part of it all is that Matt doesn’t break up with Jenny until the movie’s halfway over! I mean, it’s in the title! Look! That’d be like having a movie called Superman Returns, only he doesn’t come back until Metropolis has already had its ass kicked and the plane’s crashed, and General Zod rules the world. When a movie can’t even deliver effectively on its own title, you know you’re in for a world of hurtin’.
*1/2
Technorati Tags: My Super Ex-Girlfriend
308 – The Prestige
The prestige, we’re told, is the third and final part of a magic act, the one in which the twists and turns occur, the denouement of the act. Bet you didn’t know that, did you? Apparently magicians analyze and study their craft endlessly, trying to improve, compete, excel, and dominate. The Prestige is about two lifelong competing magicians in 1900s London who are constantly trying to discover each other’s secrets. Eventually, as they top each other, there’s death, perhaps murder, placing everyone they know in mortal danger.
Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) is the showman, the magician with a flair for the dramatic. Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) is the moody technician with the creativity and intelligence to pull off the most remarkable stunts. They would seem to be fine complements for each other, but each is so set on beating the other that all pretense of camaraderie is abandoned.
What follows, of course, is a couple hours of twists and turns, with so and so turning out to not be what he or she was purported to be. One of Angier’s tricks goes horribly awry, and Borden is blamed for the result and is jailed. Is he guilty? How did he accomplish it?
Linking the two masters is the aged Cutter (Michael Caine), who’s been training them both since they were just starting out. A veteran of the gritty, no-holds-barred magic world, Cutter Knows Things. With a glint in his eye and a crusty grin, he reminded me more of Long John Silver, except without the eye path or the walking stick. Nothing like a crusty ol’ sage to keep everyone in check, right?
The heart of the animosity between Angier and Borden is that it’s thought that Borden somehow was responsible for the death of Angier’s wife during their act. Then Borden goes on to fame and fortune while Angier has nothing. Even Borden’s tricks kick the ass of Angier’s tricks, so much so that the latter journeys to, of all places, Boulder, Colorado in the United States to seek out Nicholas Tesla (well played by David Bowie), who’d built a funky device for Borden to use in his own act. All that’s missing is Angier shouting, “Vengeance will be mine!”
Enter Olivia (Scarlett Johansson), a trollop/assistant who joins Angier’s act. They fall in love, surprisingly. (That sentence brought to you by the word “sarcasm.”) Meanwhile, Borden falls in love with HIS assistant and knocks her up. So it’s sort of like real life.
Perhaps where the movie really lost me is in its science – one must suspend quite a bit of disbelief in order for key parts of the film to be acceptable. That’s one of the risks of a story about magic; modern audiences know a lot more about science than did those at the turn of the last century, so there’d be much more skepticism. If Angier’s trick were shown today, people would have myriad guesses as to what really happened, whereas in the 1900s it was all magic and wonder and crap like that. Still and all, the way in which Angier accomplishes his trick seems like a shaggy dog – it’s in the story merely to move the plot along.
I like movies with twists and turns, but when there are so many of them I no longer know what’s right and what’s wrong, I kind of lost interest in the movie. I hate not knowing which way is up, because when the credibility of each character – and, by extension, their own reality – is called into question, then the viewer has nothing to go by, and truly Anything can happen. Which makes me wonder what the point really is.
On the plus side, you have the subtext of Batman (Bale) versus Wolverine (Jackman). Even Alfred from Batman is there (Caine). And both actors are pretty good, but the movie plods along in places. I’ve never really liked Bale, though, who has a giant head.
See The Illusionist instead, a movie covering some of the same ground but more effectively and believably, with scarce, credible turns.
**1/2
Technorati Tags: Pretige
-
You are currently browsing the archives for March, 2007
People Had This to Say