The opening scene is brilliantly executed, the end credits as well. Making the villain an actual person who sweats and faints also made for interesting cinema. I will have to see “Duplicity” against the advice of two favorite critics to see if this writer/director got lucky here; I hope not, I do fancy the writer/director species.
30 Mar 2009 • 11:13 am 0
Macintosh is a type of apple.
We really should be offended when a corporation advertises that we are their product–”I am a Mac”, “Which iPod are you?” for instance–but we aren’t.
Filed under: Uncategorized
29 Mar 2009 • 1:54 pm 0
Dead Calm (4/5)
Usually a thriller is only as good as its hero is foolish–to the extent your lead makes idiotic choices to empower the bad guy, the more you’re cringing or yelling at the screen. Not so in “Dead Calm”, a compelling ride that pits wits against madness. Kidman’s character is a refreshingly resourceful and fearless hostage at sea with a boyishly sinister Billy Zane. I feel compelled to list the extraordinary things that Kidman’s character was capable of, but I will look like a chauvinist prig–ok fine, she knows how to use a gun and steer a sailboat. I am well aware of the latent misogyny I bring to films; really, I’m trying my best to grow up and respect women, but after engrossing myself in decades of male-centered film it is no surprise I have a warped view of the fairer gender. (That comment about the “Twilight” director was sarcasm, for the record.) We would all certainly be better served with a diverse crop of folks taking the director’s chair and in turn, seeking out the creations of those on the fringes.
28 Mar 2009 • 2:22 pm 0
The Story Of The Weeping Camel (5/5)
• 8:30 am 0
JCVD (2/5)
Guest reviewer and conceptual designer of this particular double feature (JCVD & Eagle Eye), Mr. Chad Brian:
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Riding the swell of the biggest hit of his career, “Timecop”, Jean Claude Van Damme gave an interview to Movieline magazine claiming he was just one movie away from being as big a star as Stallone or Schwarzenegger. The movie, he went on to explain, would have to be slick, a lot of smoke, some comedy, some action, team him with a strong female lead “because I have so much appeal with the ladies”. And boom, it’s Jean Claude’s “Oceans 11″ or something like that. One would question his appeal to the ladies as I can’t imagine many women were doing a double feature of “Death Warrant” along side “Beaches”. The interview was a great look into the hubris that was Van Damme at the time. A raging drug addict with a goofy accent making a steady stream of B-movies should have no problem becoming a huge star. Right? Land of dreams of all.
So it’s with the hindsight of Van Damme’s failed supernova we come to “JCVD”, a mash up of “Being John Malkovich” and “The Last Action Hero”, where the more-human-than-human Jean Claude stars as himself, hard up, shooting movies for indifferent wunderkinds from Asia and losing his kid in a custody battle and oh, by-the-way, he’s broke. In a ‘shit rolls downhill’ moment he ends up part of a bank robbery where the police and media believe The Claude is the one robbing the bank and not the actual sub-Dog Day Afternoon robbers. I never quite got what the film makers were going for here. That action film stars are actually human and bleed and cry just like us? That we build up stars just to tear them down? Is this news? The centerpiece of the film is when the ‘story’ actually stops for a couple minutes so Van Damme can give us a teary, self-indulgent monologue about how he just wanted to entertain us and he wishes everyone in the world had money or something. Very meta, but to what purpose? If his early films were sound and fury signifying nothing, at least they had the sound and fury. This film just has the nothingness.
27 Mar 2009 • 2:28 pm 0
Eagle Eye (2/5)
You have your protagonists running about and doing all sorts of wild stunts and apparently figuring something out, but when the final plot point hits you’re left rather disappointed and wishing everyone just stayed in bed that day and saved us all millions of dollars hassle. It reminded me a bit of “I, Robot”. That story, if you actually pay attention is a total waste of time: Will Smith is put on this wild Sherlockian mystery caper, which effectively leads him to discover the robot plot about 2 minutes before it actually happens. In other words, a lot of action and plotting for no actual benefit (lots of perceived benefit mind you). “Eagle Eye” has nearly equal vacuous effort. And, I’ve never reared a child, but when the heroine was willing to assassinate the entire executive branch to save her one kid, I got a bit distracted.
26 Mar 2009 • 1:51 pm 2
Fallen (4/5)
Some tremendous old fashioned touches made this a better than good film–the highlighted sentence in the letter, choice canted camera work, classic score and pace. The “spirit” camera was the most modern bit and did a disservice to the film aesthetic and feel. A lovely and surprising theological overtone, which crested in a convincing conversation on the point of life between Washington and Goodman, all in the dark hovel of their detective office. This film was part two in my double feature, following the tragically crap “Iron Mask“, and I must say the music here was near perfect: haunting, sparse, occasionally quick. And, never could have guessed where this film ended.
• 1:35 pm 1
Joy Ride (2/5)
• 12:10 pm 0
The Man In The Iron Mask (1/5)
How do such fine actors produce such repulsive results–do we also blame the director, the writer, editor? In the pivotal “Gigli” for example, Pacino doesn’t actually act poorly, it is just the overwhelmingly bad content before and after his scenes that make his scene stink; and perhaps the actual line reading was poor–I can’t recall exactly, I was having too much fun coughing up chocolate milk. So, in “The Iron Mask” we have some of the greatest screen actors money can buy (DiCaprio, Malkovich, Irons, Byrne) all making fools of themselves in this feast of saccharine; mawkish through and through. They can’t all be having off days. I am certain that Wallace (director here; of “Braveheart” and “Pearl Harbor” writing fame) is to blame for many of the artistic choices, but I decided that the composer (Glennie-Smith) should take a good brunt of it as well. His score is painful cheese that had me rolling my eyes, ears, internal organs in nearly every scene. One star for maintaining a coherent plot and for… ah hell, costume & makeup? Why not, I’m a simple man.
25 Mar 2009 • 5:13 pm 0
City Of Ember (2/5)
Many good aesthetic choices and photography; surprisingly gloomy material for the young audience it was aiming. Much like the shortcomings of “Temple Of Doom”, where the weight of the underground setting requires a remarkable work of magic and sublimity–one that is rarely achieved.
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