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2046 - 5/5

At first glance, there isn’t much noteworthy about 2046. If you’re just watching to watch, you’ll notice the fantastic, artsy cinematography, the excellent soundtrack, and the flat storyline. Hmm… asian film, pretty visuals, empty storyline… pretty much describes every anime film ever made. I was ready to dismiss it after the first 40 minutes as art house eye candy.

However, when I reflected on what I had just watched, I realized at least some of the multiple levels that this movie was operating on. 2046 is also a story of love (not a love story, that is here too), an exploration of the human imperative to be with someone in a world of loneliness, a story of loss, memory and the past, and also an inner existentialist dialogue.

2046 is all of these things, but it is also a eulogy for Hong Kong.
Read more…

King Kong – 2/5

It was OK for the first 14 hours or so, but then it started to drag.

King Kong is a movie in some serious need of editing, I might have liked it quite a bit if it was, oh, 2 hours long or so. I think the movie lost me for good when they got to the native village on Skull Island (hey! look at us! we live amongst rotting corpses!), but it never really grabbed me so there was not much to lose.

The movie is filled with surperfluous scenes that either do not advance the plot (such as much of the first 40 minutes) or are there merely to show off the CGI (velociraptor stampede could have been cut in its entirety). Jackson’s direction is his typical schlocky hackmeister crap, such as the switch to 12fps film with a tilted camera angle zoom in on some crappy skulls with a weak ass roar in the background. That may have worked in Braindead, but here, it’s just crap.

Other annoyances: there is no chemistry, none, between Naomi Watts and Adrien Brody. The natives on Skull Island are all whiteys in blackface (blue eyes, the makeup under the armpit of one of the white white white drummers is missing). Actually, the natives are just embarassingly bad. The first one they meet looks like gollum and the rest look like the orcs from LOTR. The native pole-jumping/kidnap scene is just retarded. Kong would have at least separated Darrow’s shoulders if not ripping her arms off her body when he first takes her. Darrow is remarkably never dirty, her slip never tears, and even in a chorus dress with no coat on the top of the Empire State Building, she never gets cold. Or hungry. The Starship Troopers 3 scene was totally unnecessary, and boring to boot.

Oh, and Jack Black as Carl Denham was the worst casting since Billy Bob Thornton did the voiceover for Jigo in Princess Mononoke. He was awful. Worse than awful.

Good parts: um, Kong was pretty sweet. The score really pushed the maudlin buttons. The Skull Island adventure park just rendered Jurassic Park 4 obsolete.

Saw - 2/5

Not much to say, really. Good concept, poor execution. Intersting lighting is probably the best thing about it. The end, really from the middle of the movie on, is just horrible and ruins everything that came before it.

Of course, if the actors onscreen had taken my advice from the 10-minute mark, the whole movie would have been over by minute 12. Maybe they should consider that next time. I’m smart that way.

Saw could have been a 4 or 5, a shining star of the genre if it had been done right. Like, oh, Se7en. Instead we get a, ahem, hack job aiming for the quick buck. Oh well, c’est la vie.

The more I think about it, the more I want to give it a 1, so I’m just going to think upon it no more.

I’ve decided to pre-review the movies that are coming out this week (or have come out in limited release, etc.). I figure I’m just as informed and conscientious now as I would be had I actually watched them, so why not just say what I want to say about them anyway and get that whole 90-250 minutes of your life per movie thing back?

Rumor Has It – Jennifer Aniston has sex with Kevin Costner. As if that’s not enough to make you choose death by mariachi over seeing this movie, so does Shirley Maclaine. And probably the baby bug-eyed alien/sister Mena Suvari. Wild horses could not drag me to the theatre. Plot summary: fucked up family is un-fucked by fucking the same fucker.

King Kong – probably pretty decent, but 3 hours?!? From a schlocky director? For a movie we’ve already seen? Dude, cut an hour, would ya? My ass is numb.

The Family Stone – family unfeelgood piffle. Man brings uptight woman home to family for holidays, where he intends to propose. Hijinks ensue. Let me spoil the ending for you: Man (Dermot Mulroney) ends up with Sarah Jessica Parker (woman)’s sister (Claire Danes), and Luke Wilson (Mulroney’s brother) ends up with SJP. Shocking.

Bareback Mountin’ – gay cowboys in love. There’s mountains and pretty scenery and sociological claptrap and clenched jaw-scenery chewing by Heath and Jake. Or the Brawny paper towl guy and the Marlboro Man, I can’t really tell the difference which set of dudes is in this film. Lee’s direction is just this side of Eastwood-soporific, but those mountains sure are purty. No actual sex is shown, and the movie is offensive only to those who would rather exist in a world where homosexuals did not. Big Oscar noms, but destined to go the English Patient/Titannic route of zzZzZzzZZZZ/crapfestola.

I’ll be here all week, ladies and gents. Feel free to forward me any tidbits you would like me to PREreview for you. Offer void where prohibited by law.

I’m also going to take this moment to step aside and pat myself on the back for “fucked up family is un-fucked by fucking the same fucker.” That’s the best sentence I’ve written in months!

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow – 4/5

Let’s get the negatives out of the way first: there is no plot, Gwyneth “fishsticks” Paltrow, the characters are hackneyed, Gwyneth “fishsticks” Paltrow, it’s ridiculous, Gwyneth “fishsticks” Paltrow, and the digital look they applied makes everything slightly fuzzy so you feel like the cameraman either needs to focus or you need glasses. Also, Gwyneth “fishsticks” Paltrow.

That said, Sky Captain is unique and I love it for that. The movie is meant to be a ridiculous swashbuckling adventure, straight from a comic book or those mid-century cliffhanger serials. An uber Buck Rogers, if you will. Similar to Sin City, almost the entire movie was bluescreened, and with this fredom, Sky Captain carves a world of its own. Unlike Sin City, Sky Captain was a box office failure. I blame fishsticks. (I expect the movie was surprisingly cheap to make, what with no location shoots and all, so it probably did alright, profit-wise. I expect a slew of CGI-primary movies coming up. Sort of like “reality” TV, the studios have an accelerant for their ROI)

The visuals styling is amazing, consisting largely of golden age scifi; the aftorementioned Buck Rogers, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and art deco. There are also minor homages to the Wizard of Oz, King Kong, RKO pictures… and Buck Rogers. The movie was directed with a visceral impact and the fantastic unreality of the universe is thrown in your face – submersible airplanes, miniature elephants, smoke hole ray guns, dinosaurs, and a complete disregard for the laws of physics. The sound is fantastic, too. It’s the greatest movie I’ve yet to play that gives one of those “wow!” demonstrations to my 8-channel receiver. Booyah.

The story, as mentioned previously, is nothing. Cotton candy filler. You’re not here for the destination, though, you’re here for the journey. Giovanni Ribisi, Jude Law, and Angelina Jolie all have pretty decent chops (and Jolie almost steals the movie. Now there is some charisma). Not that they need them, I could act in this movie and get away with it. Fishsticks Paltrow, on the other hand… that her appearance in this movie could be both nails-on-chalkboard grating and her acting be awful says as much about her skills as it does about my revulsion for uncharismatic schmoozers who only received their jobs and awards through nepotism. Was I editorializing? Oops, my bad. Fishsticks. Hate her.

Any movie that involves flying riveted robots with laser eye beams, Shangri-La, flying aircraft carriers, rockets, and a P-40 Warhawk is A-OK in my book. If you can accept the movie for what it is, rather than what you think it (or a “Movie”) should be, then you’ll find an emminently enjoyable ride.

At least, I did.

so I don’t have to. He dislikes it for a subset of the same reasons that I would. Thanks for doing the heavy lifting, Filthy.

The reason I bring up Santa is because he makes a cameo appearance in the dull-as-prison-flatware Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Right smack dab in the middle, jolly Old Saint Nick pops up as a Deus Ex Machina to hand out some gifts that double as badly needed tools later in the story. I don’t remember the C.S. Lewis novel being so stupidly obvious, but I do remember it having Santa.

His presence is the most powerful reminder that The Chronicles of Narnia are stories for children about minotaurs, talking animals, wicked witches and folklore. It’s fantastical shit, fun for kids, but hardly suitable for the plumped-up epic-striving entombment that it gets in this movie. It’s pretty damn hard to take seriously any movie that has him making a cameo and wants you to go “ooooo.” But the makers here want you to. They don’t want to entertain you nearly as much as they want you to think you’re seeing something epic. It tries so hard to be The Lord of the Rings that they even film it in the same New Zealand wilds and weigh it down with just as many sweeping panoramic shots.
…
It continually fails as a story because it feels more like the cold, calculated construction of someone building a franchise series with big budgets. So, it takes even the silliest portions of the slim novel, like Santa, totally seriously. The dialog is sentimental claptrap. It is also nearly humorless, but the few occasions it makes an attempt are tired and trite. In fact, almost all the secondary characters are corny. The old professor the kids go to live with is doddering and “charming”. A pair of squabbling beavers are like fourth generation Xerox of Married… with Children.

Fist of Legend - 5/5

One of the best recent-era modern arts films. There are political and social overtones (Chinese-Japanese hate/love, etc.) that act as more than the typical bridge-to-the-next-fight-scene window dressing, but they don’t get in the way too much.

The first fight scene is what really makes the movie. There is maybe one scene afterwards that approaches the brutality and brilliance you see there in the first 4 minutes.

The fights were choreogaphed by by Yuen Woo Ping, before he became Yuen Woo Ping!!!! in the west (for his work with the Matrix series, and more recently, Kill Bill). So the choreography is good. Jet Li is still in his high energy phase (his work in Once Upon a Time in China is more amazing, but he’s still a quick little guy in this 1994 film).

By “the choreography is good,” I mean… the fight scenes are amazing (even if the “boxing like a westerner” thing never went anywhere). The wire work is unobtrusive, the action is explosive, the fighting is stellar. None of those punch-missing-by-a-mile things you see all over western cinema. The precision here is remarkable; misses are by mere inches, at most. The speed is remarkable as well. No big windups, just flurry after of flurry of this stuff. Amazing.

There are tons of continuity and story problems, of course (this is a kung fu action flick, after all), but nothing sufficient to bring the rating down a notch. Good times.

The DVD is another weirdo: there are subtitles… but the only audio option is english! So you can… have your english subtitles… with your english-dubbed movie? Definitely not the Criterion treatment. No frills, no extras, and dubbing make the DVD less than stellar, but the movie still r0x0r5.

Ran – 5/5

King Lear, as interpreted by Akira Kurosawa, and done so brilliantly. I think Throne of Blood (Macbeth) is possibly better, given the technological limitations when Throne of Blood was made.

Nevertheless, Ran is brilliant. A masterpiece. The first half is slow and ponderous and full of much acting and buildup. Then BAM one of the greatest war scenes ever put to film. Kurosawa’s use of color throughout the film is brilliant.

A technical note: there are no closeups the entire film. I think a telephoto lense was used throughout. Even when Ichimonji (Lear, played brilliantly by Tatsuya Nakadai) is shown solo on the screen, it’s not a true closeup; there are no I’m-a-star face shots.

If you know Lear, you know the plot. If not, old king has epiphany, divides his kingdom amongst his sons, the corrupt ones turn on him, take everything, and he wanders the world crazy and alone.

Unfortunately, I saw the old DVD version which has no special features and, this is funny, no subtitle options. Instead of using the built-in DVD subtitle features, the makers of the first DVD moved the picture up and filmed the English subtitles. So, there’s no option for other language subtitles, or no subtitles, or other audio, just… a filmed subtitle track along with the movie. It’s fun-nay.

There’s a masterworks DVD version which takes care of these things. Unfortunately, Netflix doesn’t carry it, so I can’t check out the extras. Bummer.

Catch Me If You Can - 2/5

Pros: Leo, Tom
Cons: everything else

Uninteresting, typical moralizing/moronic Spielbergian slants (robodirector: You. must. hate. the. mother. She. is. a. whore.), unimaginatively shot, no energy. People typically love these rogueish rapscallions who break the conventions of society and get away with it in a charismatic way. Even when they’re later caught.

Here, it’s just presented a tragedy, and that takes away the joy that should be present. A younger or more energetic director would have been a better fit. Except they would have done jump cuts and just ruined it in a different way.

Spielberg’s moral of the story: parents, don’t get divorced or your kid will run away and become an international criminal jetsetter. (from my point of view, that’s a pretty good tradeoff, actually.)

Oh, and the Jennifer Garner/whore scene? Painful. Absolutely the worst single scene I’ve encountered in recent memory. She can’t act, the lines were awful, and it was nails-on-chalkboard painful. Leo does his best, but Ollivier couldn’t save that scene. Just… ouch. And the deus ex machina in re: Walken? Puh-leese.

Frankly, I would much rather watch Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Sure, one’s imaginary and the other is based on real events. Sure, one is a rogue and the other a supersecret CIA agent/game show host. At least Confessions is interesting and fun. Plus, Kaufman.

A Knight’s Tale – 4/5

It’s pop schlock, but I liked this movie quite a bit. Perhaps it was the zero expectations I had for it, or the presence of Alan Tudyk (Wash in Firefly/Serenity, Steve the Pirate in Dodgeball), or the surprise appearance of Laura Fraser (Neverwhere) as the Farrier… but it’s just a pleasant, fun, movie. In the Blade sort of way.

Not too grand, doesn’t take itself too seriously, not overwrought with emotion… just fun with faint trappings of Grand Hollywood Hero on top. I hated Shannyn Sossamon (she does diva bitch really well, for a reason. Also, her handmaiden was waaaay hotter than the “beautiful princess”, so take that you hipper-than-thou DJ-ite! Sorry, got catty). I take that back, I hated her in the first half when she played a Heather, then when her character changes to the supporting love goddess girlfriend she was OK. I think I just hate hipsters, but that’s my cross to bear. Anyhoo, Heath is dreamy and appropriately charismatic. The bad guy is not over-the-top malevolent bad in a Potter-sense, just bad.

And I liked the 70s rock anthems thrown in there. Good times.

Zatoichi 9 – Adventures of Zatoichi - 5/5

This is one of the better Zatoichi’s, during that fertile middle part of the Zatoichi ouevre. Post the slow, heavily choreographed early movies and pre-the body-count-is-all-that-matters old ones.

This one has at least 4 intertwining plot threads. Zatoichi’s helping a girl who’s father has been murdered, and another who is trying to hide her brother, and helping the town out for their winter celebration, young hothead out to see who’s the biggest pistol in the west… you know, your typical Zatoichi. There’s some gambling involved, of course, and the twist here is that Zatoichi (an orphan) thinks he may have found his father.

Like I said one of the better Zatoichis. Short, well paced, good choreography, well-acted, compelling characters, well-shot. It’s a genius of pacing, really. There isn’t a single scene that doesn’t advance the plot. They convey more information and complicated story lines in 90 minutes than the entire Harry Potter series has done to date.

Anyway, I’ve played it 3 times tonight in the background; I’m just listening. This is my attempt to improve my japanese by osmosis and half attention. I’d already be a decent tourist, but if you watch enough Zatoichi movies, you’ll pick up words and usage like…

anma – masseur (also, a blind man)
zato – blind man (also, a masseur)

See! And here people just keep telling me that my Zatoichi thing is just a geek obsession and I should really just keep quiet about it. To them I say… baka! Baka *slap* baka *slap* baka *slap*!

(anma is also the specific form of massage which has since developed into shiatsu, but it ruined the parallelism of the joke above, so it’s down here)

Destroy All Monsters – 3/5
I always wanted this movie to be the Godzilla Gone With the Wind. It’s got all the set pieces – buncha monsters, world invasion, space aliens – and the love story in the form of a mind control/love thing of the kind that drive Japanese audiences into apoplectic fits of lust… but it doesn’t quite make it. Destroy All Monsters coulda been awesome, but I forgot that they spend the majority of the movie with the humans. Screw that! I wanted the big monster battle royale!

As Godzilla movies go… Destroy All Monsters is not too bad. Plus, there are bunches of the big rubber suit monsters and both the Kremlin and the Arc de Triomphe get wasted. The best part is the humanity of it all; even though there are many evil things between the protagonists, they never off each other. And no thought, ever, is given to the thought of doing anything but capturing the monsters so they can go back to monster island (as opposed to killing them and having a big barbeque). Also, Rodan eats entire pods of porpoises, an act that would never make it past the studio front door these days (dolphins have some kicass PR flacks). So, for the Rodan-eats-Flipper part alone, I’m giving it a 3.

Of note on the DVD – no menus, no chapters. You put the disc in and the damn thing just plays. That’s crazy, that is. I must have one of the early el cheapo pressings or something.

Also, I developed a theory watching it. This is just a theory, mind, and I’m working it out here as I type. You’ll have to bear with me. So here it is… I think Godzilla’s kid has Down syndrome. Discuss.

(this is the original baby Godzilla. The new ones look more like a gremlin or anime character than the doofus above)

I mean, the little fucker can only blow smoke rings that do nothing but roll off the spider’s back. It may have been mothra in caterpillar form, I don’t remember. He only has a cameo in this movie, and it’s the principle not the particulars that are important here.

Back to what I was saying, baby Godzilla’s smoke rings don’t do shit… and he is praised beyond all measure for that measly and ineffectual effort. Godzilla, when s/he is not imprisoned due to baby Godzilla’s complete lack of asskicking worthiness, jumps up and down clapping his/her claws and going eeeeaooooouuuwwww. You know, the Godzilla sound. Seriously, Godzilla’s worse than little league parent on meth when the anklebiter hiccups out some visible air.

I’m all for affirmation of success and encouraging the youth to be all they can be and all, but c’mon, if you’re a monster, and your special power is blowing smoke rings – not city-destroying smoke rings, not melt-your-skin smoke rings, mind you, just… smoke rings – you’re not much of a monster. Celebrating the complete lack of monsterness with an over-the-top display of appreciation and affection… if that’s not the monster Special Olympics, then I don’t know what is. Hey, everybody’ a winner!

Maybe it’s fetal alcohol syndrome. Does Godzilla drink? I don’t know. Godzilla’s hermaphroditic and self-reproducing, so s/he has only her/himself to blame if it’s FAS. Gotta be careful with the liquor, baby! Call me.

Harry Potter 4: Goblet of Fire – 3/5

HP4 is the best of the Potter movies to date, but that’s not saying much. So far, they’ve been execrable exercises in unimaginative storytelling. Snoozefests nonpareil. So HP4 is better than that, at least. Then again, it has the strongest source material from which to work.

In the end, HP4 is a thoroughly average movie. It’s not offensive, but it’s unnoteworthy as well. Just like the namesake protagonist.

Oh, and the actors are still way too old for the parts they are playing. Ron Weasely is a man grown by HP4 and by the next movie, Hermione’s going to have to have botox shots to hide the crow’s feat.

Shrek 2 – 2/5.

Someday, someone will tell the geniuses at Dreamworks that pop culture references do not a story make. They don’t add tension, drama, arc, development, or exposition. They may add a pinch of wit to the recipe, but you can’t build a movie on a foundation of marbles. That the best shot in Shrek 2 – the ring falling on the princess’ finger – was lifted from/referenced to the hacktacular Peter Jackson says all you need to know about the movie. References such as these are tools for the lazy and hacktackular. And I should know, what with being the laziest mofo in a seven county radius, so I use pop culture references alllll the time.

The difference in worth between Shrek and, say, The Incredibles is vast. Whereas Shrek is an entirely derivative series reliant upon the unthinking acceptance of bazillions of kids and the push of a huge marketing effort, and a series that also buys into the horseshit idea of hiring name actors for the voice roles (does anyone care that it’s the vastly-overrated-and-unfunny-except-in-bits Mike Myers as the ogre? Cameron Diaz as the princess? If anything, the known voices of these people (except Diaz, who has a voice as bland as her “acting”) distracts me from what the movie is trying to say). The Incredibles, on the other hand, is a work of art.

If you don’t believe me, listen to the director/producer commentaries for the two and tell me you can spot the difference.

Less easy pop references, more genius artists, please.

A Feast for Crows – George R. R. Martin – 3/5

A Feast for Crows is like Middle School – it’s that uncomfortable bridge between the two better bookends of your primary education. You have to muddle through it, but it’s not very fun while you’re in it, and you are unlikely to look back upon the time fondly.

It’s hard to like a bridging novel, and the loftiest role A Feast for Crows could hope to fill would be that of bridging novel. You see, it’s not really a novel, it’s a novel that’s been cut in half. It shows. There’s no arc, very little tension, and even less action. Much of the interesting bits that I really want to know about (such as Ser Loras’ assault on _____ (don’t want to spoil it)), or characters I am interested in (such as the Onion Knight), happens off-page and you just read the summary after the fact. It’s still Martin, so it’s interesting and a good read, but… nothing much happens. The other half of the unified novel – A Dance of Dragons – will hopefully make up for all of this waiting and buildup.

A Feast for Crows feels like it was a tough novel to write, like Martin was sweating and fighting through every page. The lack of ease shows and strains what little goodness there is in this book. All of which is not to say that I’m any less enthralled with the series; I’m still eager for A Dance of Dragons. Quite eager. Hurry it up, Martin! Chop chop!

For the Martinologists, here’s what you can expect from A Feast for Crows:
Jaime, Cersei, Brienne (lots and lots of Jaime, Cersei, and Brienne), two Sansa chapters, two Arya chapters, some Samwell, some Iron Men, and some Dornish bits

… and here’s what you don’t get:
Tyrion, Danaerys, Jon Snow (except for a tiny portion in Samwell’s chapter), Stannis, Melissandre

Oh, and the ending? Is excruciating. It’s almost like a mid-sentence stop. An interrupted kiss. A yawn half-finished. Quite jarring and, worst of all, not a cliffhanger. George! You’ve got to have a cliffhaaaaangeeerrrr!