Archive for November, 2007
358 – The Mist
Stephen King’s 1983 short story (more of a novella, really) is pretty well realized for the big screen by Frank Darabont (The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption), although the ending might leave viewers cold, not chilled. The effects are excellent, as Hollywood strangely (and wisely!) decided to ease off the overproduced special effects for a change, and the result is that when we do see the creatures, we’re suitably terrified, especially since the camera never lingers long on any of them.
The basic setup is that a storm of the century has shut down the power in a small New England town, and the next morning a thick mist is rolling across the town’s large lake. Dave Drayton (Thomas Jane) gathers his eight-year-old son and, accompanied by his caustic neighbor Brent Norton (Andre Braugher), heads to the supermarket to load up on groceries. When they get there, they find that pretty much everyone else in town has the same idea. And it seems like just the usual bad-weather madness until a local citizen bursts into the store, blood on his chest, screaming about how creature from the mist took his friend, and dadgum it everyone better GET INSIDE CLOSE THE DOOR AAAH THEY’RE COMING, and sure enough, as the doors are closed, the mist comes rolling in, and people stay the heck where they are.
But it soon becomes apparent that this is no ordinary mist, and that old man might have been on to something – something IS out there, but the mist is so thick no one can tell what it is. And that’s where the story really gets under your skin. What manner of creature is outside the store’s walls? Is it faster than a man trying to get to his car? Is it small, but vicious? Or is it gigantic? Is it even benign? (No, it’s not.)
In other, less-deft hands, a story like this would have been a typical monster movie, as our Intrepid Hero saves the world from sure destruction. But this isn’t about man versus the monster, it’s about man versus the unknown – and man versus man.
Almost all of the action takes place inside the supermarket. There are level-headed (but scared) people, like Dave, Amanda Dumfries (Laurie Holden), Ollie (Toby Jones), and Irene (Frances Sternhagen), and then there are the so-scared-they’re-irrational people, like Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden, whom I thought was miscast, possibly because I’d always envisioned Kathy Bates in the role) and Jim Grondin (William Sadler), and Norton. In a lesser movie, the theme would be that all of them must work together in order to survive, but that theme isn’t given a chance here, as would be the case in real life. There’s no rousing speech about how everyone’s in this together; people become unhinged and unwilling to listen to reason at the drop of a hat, because the unknown of the mist is too much to bear.
That’s where Mrs. Carmody comes in. She’s a Bible-thumping fanatic of the Old Testament, and she sees the mist and its denizens as a sign from the Almighty, and as the movie progresses she becomes more and more like a seer to the easily swayed – and sees herself as a righteous martyr who will someday sit beside God. In other words, a disaster like the mist gives a kook like Mrs. Carmody the perfect opportunity to save souls, whether they want to be or not, and her zeal gives the lesser-minded individuals something they can hold on to, rather than using their minds for practical survival.
Dave acts as the de facto leader of the survivors, mostly because no one else steps forward, not even the three almost-on-leave soldiers trapped in the store. But not only must he find a way to get out of the store and past the creatures, but he has to deal with the escalating insanity of Mrs. Carmody, whose rantings attract a larger and larger congregation, ending in tragedy.
The only real issue I have with the movie is the ending, which differs wildly from that in King’s original printed story. You would think that a Hollywood ending would be more tangible, thus giving the viewer better closure. Well, we do get some closure, but the result is that you feel like you’ve been kicked in the stomach. The finale is so unsatisfying, you wonder what the heck the preceding two hours were supposed to be for.
**1/2
Ten best shower scenes (NSFW)
Caution: There be nudity. Do not click at work. I mean, what do you think “shower scene” means, anyway? People are extremely naked!
357 – The Ex
Originally, this movie was titled Fast Track, since it’s about an up-and-coming marketing guy who’s on the proverbial way up at his father-in-law’s firm. But then it was changed to The Ex, which shifted the focus from the workplace to the home. But let’s get this straight: Either name is infinitely better then the unhealthy dollop of mean-spirited junk that appears after the title card on the screen.
Tom (Zach Braff) has been fired from his job as a chef at a hoity-toity restaurant, so he and his wife Sofia (Amanda Peet) and their newborn baby schlep from New York to Ohio, where Sofia’s dad Bob (Charles Grodin) has not only set Tom up with a new job but also has procured a nice little houe for them to raise their new family in. Aww, ain’t that sweet. But things don’t start off well for Tom at the marketing firm, which turns out to be both new age and, well, wacko. You know, a place where such “creative” aspects as casual dress, unwalled offices, an imaginary ball of ideas or something abound. Tom has some issues with fitting in with the eclectic, quirky crew, but more importantly he clashes immediately with his new supervisor, Chip (Jason Bateman), who just happens to be a former schoolmate of Sofia. Oh, and a paraplegic, of course.
But don’t worry; although it seems like this is a romantic comedy about jealousy and redemption, about a young couple getting past their differences to survive as a unit, it’s set up to be more like a slapstick comedy, with many jokes at Chip’s expense. (Which is okay, because Chip is a real jerk.) The sad reality, though, is that the movie fails at both genres. Women won’t like it, because there’s no real romance, no genuine feelings on anyone’s part. (Sorry to generalize, ladies.) Guys won’t like it, because there’s not nearly enough physical humor. That would be fine, except there’s hardly any subtle humor, either. What you’re left with is just vicious, mean-spiritedness that drains every ounce of humor from an otherwise talented cast.
Braff’s not terrible, but I never got the sense that he was, well, believable as someone women would desire. But what do I know, I’m a straight male. The affection between him and Peet seemed forced, tentative, and unnatural, sort of like unwilling siblings. Peet wasn’t bad, either, but she didn’t have much to work with – on a positive note, she doesn’t come off as icily unappealing as she does in most of her other films.
And man, check out Charles Grodin. I had to check to see who was playing Sofia’s dad – Grodin, who hadn’t been in a movie in 13 years, looks about 85 years old here. I thought he was Bob Eubanks. There’s one scene, too, in which Bob utters the f-word. For no freaking reason other than to have Charles Grodin, septuagenarian, drop an f-bomb.
Interestingly enough, the unrated version of the movie runs about five minutes shorter than the rated one that was seen in theater. And, having seen the unrated one, I couldn’t tell you about any particular scenes that were so raw that they would have pushed the rating to an unwanted NC-17. So I have to assume that the rated one was even tamer, and thus even crappier.
Sad and predictable in its attempt at comedy, The Ex is a waste of time. You’ll be clawing your eyes out at the numbing awfulness.
10 Weirdest Movies
Listverse has an interesting… well, list. A list of the ten weirdest movies of alla time.
I’ve seen exactly half of them: Brazil, Donnie Darko, Naked Lunch, Mulholland Drive, and A Clockwork Orange.
They list Jacob’s Ladder as a notable other weird movie. I’d definitely place that among my weirdest, for sure. Heck, we could also add Being John Malkoovich, or even the recent The Fountain, directed by Darren Aronofsky, who also directed Pi, number six on this list.
I bet there are others, too, that are escaping my mind right now…
356 – Lions for Lambs
Posted by frothy in Lions for Lambs on November 18, 2007
“Whatever it takes,” says Senator Jasper Irving (Tom Cruise) to journalist Janine Roth (Meryl Streep) as he explains his foolproof plan to save the world from the scourge of terrorism. Too bad director Robert Redford didn’t apply the same sort of balls-out approach to this film, because what we’re left with seems more like a commercial, either for the armed forces, the starched-shirt suits who run wars from their armchairs, or the pompous professors who presume to know everything. Bah to all of it, I say.
The movie’s told in three intertwining parts. In one, a college professor (Redford) talks with one of his many apathetic students (Andrew Garfield) about idealism and acting on principles and doing something, even if it is destined for failure, instead of doing nothing at all. To illustrate his overreaching, heavy-handed points, Redford’s Malley talks about two previous students of his (Michael Pena, Derek Luke) who left the friendly confines of college life to enlist in the current Iraq war.
In the second story, Irving grants an interview to Roth (an hour long one-on-one session, exactly mirroring the professor-student talk) in which he will lay out his grand new plan to retake Afghanistan from the Taliban. For Irving, the interview is a way for him to resell the war to the American public through the use of a very-willing American press. For Roth, it’s a way to get information that no one else in the ultracompetitive media world will have, as it’s an exclusive interview. But who is using whom? Redford wants us to believe that the press is being used by the government, but that’s hardly news; he would also prefer that we think that Roth, representing the media, understands now how much of a shill she and her colleagues have become, but Roth’s actions in that direction come much, much too late in the movie. She certainly should have been pushing Irving a lot harder than she was; instead, she seemed content to sit back and ask the occasional probing question. The underlying effect of this is that Irving’s neocon senator gets to make a long, barely contested speech about saving the world from terror is awesome, and by golly if you don’t agree then you must hate freedom, and blah blah blah. Such posturing would make some sense if any of the jingoistic points made by Irving were addressed, even refuted, but no. For some reason Redford just lets the words hang out there.
The third story involves Malley’s two former students, now Special Forces rangers in the middle of the new operations launched by Irving. For much of the movie, they’re trapped behind enemy lines, one very badly injured, the other trapped in a snowbank, with Taliban members closing in. They don’t know if their fellow soldiers can get to them in time. In the closing moments of the film, one of them makes a decision so disturbingly stupid that it negates all the evidence seen to that point that the two former students had any kind of wits or intelligence about them.
Watching this movie, you can’t help but feel like Redford is smacking you across the head with a 2 x 4, screaming that we need to stand up or fall down or some such emptyheaded nonsense. Like Jasper Irving, Redford’s film offers no ideas, no real food for thought; he’s selling us an vague concept as political theater. Lions for Lambs is a gelatinous dessert, full of sound, half-empty with fury, and signifying nothing new.
*1/2
Long Day’s Boring into Suck
Posted by frothy in Long Day's Journey into Night on November 17, 2007
Long Day’s Journey into Night (1962)
This movie is very dated. Whoopie, the mom’s a drug addict and the son’s an alky, whee – you see worse on TV every day now. Well, you would if there wasn’t a writers’ strike, but still. The performances are at turns overwrought and hammy – even Ralph Richardson’s, and he’s PLAYING a hammy actor. The dialog comes off as stilted at best, and it’s extremely obvious that it’s basically a filmed play. Plays need to rely on the dialog to tell the audience what’s happening, for the most part, because a typical stage will have exactly one scene in the background – and you can’t use camera angles, or really any kind of special effects that enhance the storyline, rather than detract from it. As a result, when the play is performed in front of camera, most of the time it’s going to come off as if the actors are merely reading off cue cards.
Katherine Hepburn got a crapload of plaudits for her work here as the Tyrone family matriarch, but her performance struck me as just all over the map. She’s literally climbing the walls in some scenes. Okay, so she’s playing a woman addicted to morphine, but honestly, how tough is it to overact? Her performance made me laugh, it didn’t make me feel any sympathy. The rest of the cast (Richardson, Jason Robards, and Dean Stockwell), by comparison, is mostly good, with Robards really turning in the best work of the bunch.
In all, though, it’s a huge, long bore. Can you believe it’s almost three hours long? Felt more like six. I know it’s based on a classic play and all, but this is one play that probably belongs solely on the stage.
Guilty movies
No, not movies that are guilty pleasures, like Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks. And no, not movies about guilty parties, like Guilty by Suspicion, Guilty As Sin, or Guilty As Charged. I’m talking about movies you think you should have seen already, movies that perhaps everyone you know is talking about but you never got around to seeing. For example, maybe you missed seeing Anchorman in the theater and never rented it, so when your buddies quote the movie ad infinitum, you feel out of the loop.
For me, as an amateur critic, the definition expands to include older movies that I feel I should have seen (or should see). I’m talking big-name, everyone-knows-em-even-now classics, timeless films to which people can still relate on some level.
So here are mine:
1. Gone with the Wind. I actually own this movie (I bought it for a Christmas present, but it didn’t arrive in time), but I’ve never seen it and never plan to. If it were half as long, perhaps. But three hours of a Southern soap? Nah.
2. Long Day’s Journey into Night (1962). Watching this now – it’s friggin’ long, too. I don’t think it’s very good.
3. In Cold Blood (1967).
4. A Man for All Seasons (1966).
5. A Streetcar Named Desire (1954).
6. Patton (1970).
7. Metropolis (1927). It’s a silent movie, and I often eschew those, but it’s sci-fi! And I can’t tell you how many times people have said, “Aw man, you’ve never seen Metropolis?”
8. Master and Commander.
9. Scarface (1932 and 1983). I’ll probably never see the Pacino version, but the Muni one is on The List.
10. Anchorman
11. Talladega Nights
12. Blades of Glory (do you see a pattern here?)
13. Billy Madison. Yet, anyway.
14. The Sound of Music (1965)
Most of those are in my Netflix queue. There are probably scads of others I haven’t seen that fall under these criteria, too..
How about you?
The Satan Bug (1965)
Posted by frothy in Satan Bug (1965) on November 13, 2007
The movie’s dated, yes, but the theme isn’t. There’s a supersecret lab in southern California that’s creating viruses and the like in order to study them, sort of like what they do at the CDC in Atlanta. The worst of these is basically a botulism-type virus. Then one night there’s a break in, and flasks are stolen. And it’s discovered that there was an even more advanced virus that the center had created – called the Satan Bug, because it can kill anyone nearby within five seconds. A few weeks after a flask is broken, all life would cease.
The center calls in an expert, played by George Maharis. Some of you old timers might remember him from the old Route 66 show; he left that show in order to pursue a film career. Sadly, this was his best movie. Anyway, it’s up to Barrett (Maharis), Anne Francis from Forbidden Planet, and crusty Dana Andrews to find those flasks! Ed Asner, by the way, plays on of the bad guys.
It’s a gripping thriller – you really don’t know what’s going to happen next. The twists and turns are eminiently plausible, and even 42 years later they don’t seen trite or played out. You honestly feel like the world could end at any moment during the film. It also boasts a wonderful period score by Jerry Goldsmith.
So, apparently it’s NOT about a possessed Volkswagen.
***1/2
355 – Evan Almighty
Posted by frothy in Evan Almighty on November 10, 2007
Evan Baxter is movin’ on up to the capital side of things. Baxter (Steve Carell) has been elected to Congress as a New York representative, leaving Buffalo and his old job as news anchor behind (as we last saw him, in Bruce Almighty). He’s schlepped his prettier-than-he-deserves wife (Lauren Graham) and his three sons down to Washington. Shortly after he arrives there, though, God (Morgan Freeman) appears to him and tells him to build an ark.
Why, you ask? Why, to drive the plot, of course. Back in ye olden times, Noah was told to build an ark so that when God flooded the planet, the humans and the animals could repopulate. That’s not quite the scope of the task at hand here, though we don’t find that out till near the end of the movie.
Building an ark in this day and age is disconcerting enough, but Evan has ancillary problems. He prides himself on his appearance, but lo and behold, once God has Spoken to Evan, he notices he can’t shave in the morning. Or anytime. The beard grows right back. His hair also begins to grow at an alarming rate. And pairs of animals, from gophers to birds, are following him everywhere. Not a good turn of events if you’re a freshman congresscritter.
Naturally, no one believes that God has spoken to Evan, thus making for awkward moments when a powerful congressman (a hammy John Goodman) wants Baxter to cosponsor some kind of land rights bill, and every time he runs into Evan he sees animals and hair. Bad impression!
Not that the movie’s completely lacking in cleverness, however. Evan’s wife is Joan (Joan of Arc, get it?); the Baxters’ realtor is Eve Adams (an annoying Molly Shannon) (Eve, Adam, get it?); God His Own Darn Self wears a name tag when he appears to Joan that says “Al Mighty.” Oh, and the company that drops off the wood that Evan’s supposed to use to build the ark is the “Go 4 Wood” company. Because the original ark was supposedly made of gopher wood.
For the most part, the movie is pretty formulaic. No one believes him, especially his family. Then they sort of do, but no one else does. Then people ridicule him while he builds the arc. Then the flood happens, and suddenly everyone’s a True Believer. Har. Oh, and then there’s the obligatory sideplot of the supposedly nice politco who’s actually up to dirty tricks. In Washington, of all places! I know!
Carell isn’t too bad, and neither is his supporting cast, and that may actually be the problem – they’re just “not bad” instead of “pretty good.” This isn’t a movie you’ll remember in a few years, in other words, except when you think of movies that had pretty good CGI scenes (check out the flood!). Freeman is as smooth as you’d expect Morgan Freeman to be, really, and there’s no one else who could have done a better job than he did. But really, everyone else in the movie was sort of bland and could have been replaced by another, similarly innocuous actor. (Except Wanda Sykes, who plays Evan’s executive assistant – she could be replaced by someone who’s not a major irritant.)
The end does compensate for an otherwise grayscale movie, with a wonderful staging of The Flood. Except, you know, on a much smaller scale, which sort of undermines the whole idea of The Flood in the first place. In Bruce Almighty, God wanted Bruce (and HIS not-understanding girlfriend, Jennifer Aniston) to gain understanding. Here, He’s asking Evan to solve a political/social crisis. Bruce Almighty, it turned out, taught us about free will; Evan Almighty teaches us that if you put your mind to it, you can achieve anything. Evan Almighty’s overall message just doesn’t feel as all-encompassing or rich as that of Bruce Almighty, which makes it feel a little flat.
**1/2
Martin Scorcese and ….. Liza Minelli?
Yeah, I don’t get it, either. Was she ever attractive? No way.
For those of you who don’t subscribe to Mental Floss magazine (or who don’t get the awesome RSS feed of its blog), there’s a brief entry on the many battles Scorcese underwent back during his salad days (and even beyond).
It’s all based on Peter Biskind’s book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. Definitely something to add to the ol’ Amazon wish list.
354 – Knocked Up
Posted by frothy in Knocked Up on November 7, 2007
Knocked Up is one of those movies that seems to get instant cult status, based partly on its pedigree (guys from The 40 Year Old Virgin and recent Will Ferrell movies) and its appeal to twentysomething stoner/slackers. But although some of the jokes are pretty good, and the performances are mostly spot-on, the film’s pretty uneven; the funny parts are mostly funny, but the so-called sincere parts come off as maudlin or treacly.
Ben (Seth Rogen) is the slacker/stoner in question here. He and his not-all-there buds (ha! check out the double meaning) are in the process of launching a website dedicated to finding nudity in mainstream movies. If you immediately said, “What, like Mr. Skin?” you’re in the target audience. So basically, Ben has no job, and neither do the rest of the man-children in his posse.
Contrary to that is Alison (Katherine Heigl of Grey’s Anatomy), an E! entertainment producer-type who’s just been given a shot at working in front of the camera. So she heads out to a club with her sister Debbie (Leslie Mann) and winds up hooking up with Ben. Of course, she was drunk at the time – Heigl is a pinup model and Rogen is a fat slob. So you know it’s sort of true to life in that sense.
Fast forward eight weeks later, and Alison’s preggers. Whoopsie daisy. Now how will these two lustbirds reconcile the fact that they don’t really know each other with this impending birth? Or, for that matter, the fact that while sober neither has anything in common with the other?
As I said, scenes that are supposed to be funny usually work, because Rogen is just doofy enough to pull it off; the film works when it pokes fun at Ben’s slacker proclivities or the idiosyncrasies of his friends. It doesn’t work so much in the way the women are portrayed, however. Look, we’ve all enjoyed movies in which women are mere objects, right? Porky’s, I’m looking at you! Done right, that sort of approach can be raucously entertaining. But in this movie, the womenfolk alternately come off as wildly bitchy or just humorless. Alison was never really shown to have much of a sense of humor (although there’s one scene in which she helps the boys spot nude scenes in films for their website).
That’s all well and good regardless, because some movies can manage to have “bad” female characters off of which the males can play. But that’s where the schizophrenia of this movie comes into play; is it a low-brow, misogynistic comedy or a relationship movie? Too often, it opted for the latter, and if you’re trying to show the trials and tribulations of two crazy kids who aren’t even in love with each other, you shouldn’t make one of them unlikable and irrational. Even if, you know, that’s how it’d be in real life.
Judd Apatow, who brought us similarly flawed The 40 Year Old Virgin, compares the burgeoning Ben-Alison relationship to the marriage of Debbie and Pete. Oops, looks like Pete’s an inconsiderate jerk! Looks like Debbie’s an overreacting, hyperactive nitwit! Of course, Apatow’s not saying theirs is the ideal relationship for which Ben and Alison should strive, but he makes it seem as if just having an relationship is a bad idea.
And I know I might be in the minority here, but I’ve never liked humor that serves only to humiliate someone. So when Ben or Alison launches a profanity-laced attack on the other, that’s not funny. It’s not even entertaining. It’s annoying.
(Another recurring theme was that Debbie feels unappreciated. Check out the scene in which she and Alison are turned away from a club – Alison because she’s pregnant and Debbie because she’s, um, old. Leslie Mann is two years younger than me, it should be noted; anyway, the scene is presumably supposed to show the sisters bonding over their respective rejections, but all it did was show Debbie as whiny.)
One plus, though – good to see Alan Tudyk (Wash from Firefly) getting some work; here, he’s Alison’s boss. His rotten-bitch-sycophant assisant has to go, though. She, like some of the other secondary and tertiary characters, was just thoroughly obnoxious and useless – not funny in the biting, sarcastic way, just caustic and off-putting.
**
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