Movies Tag Archive
For producers, the lure of disaster movies is understandable. They see dollar signs floating in front of their faces when they consider how much money some of the great disaster movies made. So why do so few disaster movies satisfy? Take The Day After Tomorrow, which the wife and I sat down and watched last night. Why is it that despite its impressive special effects and its overall decent acting it sucks so much?
The movie was timely, preceding the documentary An Inconvenient Truth by a full two years. The Day After Tomorrow suggests what might happen if we leave global warming unchecked. What could happen? Why another ice age, of course, and we are not talking about one that takes a few years to get going, but only needs a week to frost much of the top half of our planet.
Yeah, I had a hard time buying that too but apparently when enough glacial ice melts it changes the Gulf Stream, which makes certain spots in the Atlantic cooler than normal, which somehow causes a great atmospheric sucking sound. That would be massive amount of cool air pulled from the stratosphere. Soon the northern hemisphere is awash in super-sized arctic hurricanes. New York City is hit by a massive hurricane related storm surge, which quickly freezes over because the hurricane brings with it super cold air which seems to deep freeze everyone north of the Mason Dixon line.
Frankly, the CGI in the movie is very impressive. It must have taken a few supercomputers to digitize Manhattan and then apply all those fancy special effects that blow out windows on skyscrapers or send enormous a storm surge toward the New York City Public Library. Digitally lodging a Russian ship between skyscrapers must have been quite a trick too. The set for the New York City Public Library alone must have chewed up much of their budget.
Who is acting in this movie? We have a solid cast of actors including Dennis Quaid as Jack Hall, a NOAA meteorologist with a penchant for talking back to the Vice President of the United States. The VP, by the way, has more than a passing resemblance to (and attitude of) Dick Cheney. Jack Hall has a disturbingly bright son named Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) who is visiting New York City to compete is some sort of collegiate version of “It’s Academic”. (Is it only me, or does Jake Gyllenhaal look an awful lot like Tobey McGuire?) Sela Ward plays Jack’s wife Lucy, a physician, who has the unfortunate duty to tend to a young hairless Tiny Tim-like cancer patient at a hospital while a new ice age begins. Sam of course has a love interest, the extremely brown-eyed Laura (Emmy Rossum) who holes up with him (and others) at the New York City Public Library. Will they consummate their affections or is it just too cold for them to generate any heat? Do we care? No, not really.
The problem with this disaster flick, which is true of most of them, is that it depends on spectacle and formula in the hope that we will overlook plot holes bigger than those arctic hurricanes. I am no climatologist but I do not have to be to be skeptical that a sudden massive big freeze across the northern hemisphere is about as likely as my suddenly developing a sixth toe on my right foot. Moreover, it is hard not to laugh rather than feel horror when huge chunks of ice start pummeling pedestrians in Tokyo. Godzilla would be amused.
This movie is full of incidents that require an unreasonable suspension of disbelief. For example, Sam and Laura, on a plane ride to New York are caught up in some amazing turbulence. Baggage pops out of the overhead bins. What really got my attention was that you could hear thunder at 30,000 feet. I never have. There are a couple of ridiculous shots, like airliners flying into massive storm clouds. Hello? Is someone asleep in the cockpit? On every flight I have been on, pilots avoid storm cells. They fly around them.
Then there is the cockamamie subplot. As if dealing with a new Ice Age is not enough, what does the one scientist who knows the most about this phenomenon do? Naturally, he and a couple of his NOAA buddies risk everything and try to high tail it from Washington D.C. to New York City to rescue his son Sam who is very much an adult. You would think they might take a snowmobile, since the drifts are soon dozens of feet deep, but they take an SUV instead and when that goes out, it is time for the skis and snow sled. It must be a hundred degrees below zero out there but they are not intimidated. Anyhow, Jack said he was going to rescue his son and by god, he will do it no matter how insane it is.
I guess it helped that he spent time in the Antarctic retrieving ice cores. Naturally, the movie starts out there where we find Jack and his coworkers. Suddenly the Antarctic ice shelf they are on separates right next to them. Hundreds of miles of ice and naturally it splits between their living quarters and their research station. Um, yeah.
Moreover, what is with the international space station being the only orbiting satellite capable of conveying imagery of the weather from space? The last I heard we had hundreds of satellites up there snapping pictures of the earth but no one at NOAA can seem to figure out what is going on until the astronauts on the International Space Station tell them.
And how likely is it that millions of Americans, after a little grumbling, would find welcome in places like Mexico and that FEMA of all agencies would be equipped to take care of tens of millions of displaced Americans in places like Mexico? Do you think FEMA’s warehouses and people are trained for that sort of emergency? Do you think Americans will be all brotherly when survival itself is at stake? I would like to think so but I am sorry, no, not in today’s “you’ll get my gun when you pry it off my cold dead fingers” America. Perhaps this sort of myopia is due to the presence of Fox News in the movie. As we know, the folks running Fox News think America is back in the 1950s.
Then there is the formula. Of course, there has to be an evil Dick Cheney-like global warming skeptic and of course, the heroic scientist has to be vindicated in his calamitous predictions. As for the love interest between Sam and Laura, it is as predictable and saccharine as it is passé. And of course Mrs./Dr. Hall has to take care of a sick kid with cancer, yet somehow they must have found places for all the other infirmed in the hospital. The movie just would not have the same drama if she just went home and bundled up in her woolies. They amount to many cheap gimmicks to try to ratchet up the tension in the movie. Yet they feel so artificial that the whole movie, which is on a shaky ground anyhow, falls flat. Frankly, I could have cared less whether any of these characters survived and that includes the homeless man and his pet dog. Not to spoil this movie, which is utterly transparent but yes, somehow against all odds Jack does make it to New York City, huffing and puffing. He makes the journey from Philadelphia to New York on foot where he at last reunites with his son Sam.
So if you find your heart racing from all the excitement, this is likely your first disaster movie. Frankly, I thought The Wizard of Oz was much scarier. It is not quite a disaster spending time watching this movie. As I said, the special effects are awesome and the acting passable. What this movie really needed was a better script and a director more skilled than Roland Emmerich. It needed someone who could take these competent actors and actually make you care about them.
If you liked Twister (1996) you will probably like this movie, but Twister was actually a better movie. At least Twister had some cools lines like, “We’ve got cow!” There is no inspired dialog in this flick.
2.6 on my 4.0 scale. There is nothing that merits your attention except possibly the cool special effects.
June 17th, 2008 at 07:55pm
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Mark |
The Arts |
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This may be my first review for a movie that predates my birth. Even more surprising, I saw this famous Alfred Hitchcock movie in an actual movie theater, specifically the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring, Maryland. Some years ago the American Film Institute, which used to show movies at The Kennedy Center, renovated the old Silver Theater. It is good that they did because otherwise this historic theater would have met with the wrecking ball. My father, whom I took there as a Father’s Day present, remembers taking girls to the Silver Theater as a youth.
This was my first trip to the AFI Silver Theater and I will definitely be back. For a film junkie this theater is something of a nirvana. Here you can see historic (and some modern) films the way they were meant to be seen: on the screen. In this case, Rear Window has been digitally remastered. Even so, the film is surprisingly grainy. Either Hitchcock was using poor film stock or the film degraded considerably over the years. This film is part of a Jimmy Stewart film festival at the AFI.
Rear Window is not one of Hitchcock’s better-known films, nor is it the only one to star Jimmy Stewart. (His best-known Hitchcock role was probably as Detective Ferguson in Vertigo.) Rear Window deserves more attention because it is a surprisingly engaging and well-done film. Current cult director M. Night Shyamalan was clearly inspired by Hitchcock. One only has to see Rear Window to see elements that Shyamalan has borrowed from Hitchcock.
For example, Shyamalan’s movie Lady in the Water takes place in an apartment complex. Rear Window also takes place in an apartment complex. While Rear Window does not have Lady in the Water’s mysticism, both films have a collection of oddball apartment dwellers. Jimmy Stewart, playing L.B. Jefferies, is a convalescing international photographer with a broken leg. He is stuck in his apartment with nothing else to do during a hot, sticky Brooklyn summer than watch his neighbors. His apartment happens to face inward onto a courtyard, giving him an intimate view of the comings and going of his neighbors across the courtyard. These were the days before air conditioners. We find a couple sleeping on their balcony to avoid the heat. Much of the movie literally drips with sweat. At the start of the movie, we find a hobbled Stewart in a leg cast and wheelchair sweltering with his neighbors in 92-degree heat.
For a movie this old, it is surprisingly racy. Indeed, the MPAA belatedly gave it a PG rating. It includes scenes of a dancer always practicing her dance steps through her open window in little more than a bra and panties. It also includes Grace Kelly in lingerie and the (then) shocking suggestion that as an unmarried woman her character planned to spend a long weekend nursing her boyfriend.
Jefferies discovers his apartment complex is a real Peyton Place. The cast of eccentrics include Miss Lonelyheart, who stages elegant dinners for a boyfriend that does not exist, the Songwriter who seems to have parties every night, and the newlyweds who remember to shut the blinds at the last moment. It is at these times that you realize parts of Lady in the Water are homage to this important Hitchcock film. Through Jefferies, Hitchcock quickly draws us into the lives of these strangers across the courtyard. Jefferies’s attention though soon focuses on Lars Thorwald (played by Raymond Burr, who was obese even then). Lars and his wife have a fight. Yet his wife mysteriously is never seen again. Jefferies wonders what happened to her, and through the open window, he watches his neighbor engage in some very peculiar actions. He grows convinced that Thorwald murdered and dismembered his wife.
The movie also stars the entrancing Grace Kelly in her prime. If you have never seen Grace Kelly in a motion picture, this movie is a great one to watch to make her acquaintance. She is both achingly beautiful and an excellent actress. In this movie she plays Lisa (that’s “Leeza”) Fremont who is something of a fashion snob. Their difference in values suggests to Jefferies that their relationship is doomed, but he cannot quite find the courage to end it. An insurance company nurse also visits Jefferies daily. She performs physical therapy, changes his sheets, makes him meals and most importantly gives Jefferies the opportunity to spout his conspiracy theories about his neighbors. Jefferies is also pals with Lieutenant Detective Doyle (Wendell Corey). After seeing enough suspicious activities, Jefferies tries to enlist Doyle’s help for some shoe-leather work.
While Doyle remains skeptical throughout, Lisa and Jefferies’s nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter) eventually become fully engaged in the Lars Thorwald mystery. Did something happen in that apartment or is Jefferies making much ado about nothing? Hitchcock of course keeps you guessing.
The result is a taunt character driven movie that quickly sucks you in. The camera never even leaves Jeffries apartment. Jefferies watches all his neighbors’ comings and going. Since he is a photographer with a telephoto lens, he can also capture much of it. As a suspenseful movie, there is lots of mystery but little in the way of jeopardy until the very end of the movie. Suffice to say that when Stella and Lisa start to become private investigators, things turn dicey quite quickly.
What I also really liked about this movie is the way that Hitchcock so accurately captures life in noisy Brooklyn. You can hear the tugboats wailing on the unseen East River. You hear the constant sounds of the city, and of people noisily engaging in life. It was doubtless all staged on a Hollywood set, but it feels very much like Brooklyn. I also enjoyed its authenticity to period. This was the life my parents knew but that largely passed me by. Hitchcock makes use of his roving camera and shadow to accentuate the film’s engagement and mystery.
While probably not Hitchcock’s most suspenseful film, it may well be his most intriguing. You should see it if the opportunity presents itself.
June 15th, 2008 at 09:59am
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Mark |
The Arts |
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While I wait for inspiration to blog on more compelling topics, I can at least do the public a service by urging you to stay away from two spectacularly bad movies. Remember: you have been warned.
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)
I recently blogged about the movie To Wong Fu: Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995). This was a surprisingly amusing and well-done movie about three drag queens trying to drive cross-country to compete in a national drag queen contest. A year before this movie came out another Australian movie, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, also starring three drag queens on an adventure was foisted on the public. I doubt it was widely seen in the United States, thank goodness. In the case of this film, Priscilla is not one of the drag queens, but the name of a beat up bus that Bernadette, Mitzi and Felicia take across the Australian desert for a gig the city of Alice Springs in Australia’s remote Northern Territory.
If you were ever wondering what it would be like for Hugo Weaving (best known for his portrayal of Agent Smith in the three Matrix movies) to play a drag queen, this movie will satisfy your curiosity. Let me save you the trouble though and tell you: ridiculous. I would hasten to add that he undoubtedly makes the worst drag queen on the screen, except he is assisted by two other drag queens, one played by Terrance Stamp, who is even worse. The only drag queen that is passable in this movie is Felicia, played by Guy Pearce.
While Sydney apparently can tolerate drag queens, the folks in the heartland are a predictable bunch of homophobes. The exception may be a group of Aborigines they encounter in the latter half of the film. I like to think that these outbackers are not so much homophobes as people who cannot stand seeing three drag queens do such a miserable job of portraying drag queens. In To Wong Fu: Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, at least these gals looked like ladies. These three do not come close and Bernadette and Mitzi are frankly remarkably ugly drag queens. As in To Wong Fu: Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, their vehicle breaks down in an inconvenient spot and they have to try to get by with the locals. Since they break down literally in the middle of nowhere, mostly this mean a lot of lizards. They eventually do make it to Alice Springs where we discover Mitzi has a wife and a son.
I am amazed we made it through the movie. I will confess that the sight of Felicia, propped on top of the bus as it moves through the desert, with a train tens of feet long flowing in the desert wind, was a spectacularly strange site and one my burning eyes would like to purge from my memory, but cannot. This is one drag queen movie (and there are not many) to not come within a dozen clicks of. Stay away!
Fool’s Gold (2008)
The airlines are truly in hard times when they put dreck like Fool’s Gold (2008) on as “entertainment” on a three and a half hour flight from Washington Dulles International Airport to Denver International Airport, which was where I saw it. Tess (Kate Hudson) is married to Benjamin (Matthew McConaughey), a walking calamity of a husband who within the first five minutes of the movie manages to sink his wife’s boat while he explores underwater for treasure off the Bahamas. Apparently, Benjamin has only a few talents. One of them is making love and the other is finding (and ultimately losing) deep-sea treasure.
They end up getting divorced but fate of course keeps them together because while the boat sank Benjamin just happens to find a piece of treasure that suggests he and his now ex wife can find dozens of treasure chests hidden in or around the Bahaman island. To make ends meet, Tess works on a yacht serving food to a multimillionaire named Nigel played by Donald Sutherland. Nigel is the unfortunate father of an extremely attractive Valley Girl named Gemma (Alexis Dziena), who manages to be more annoying than McConaughey, which admittedly is a hard act to follow. Naturally, Benjamin, through many implausible scenarios, manages to convince Nigel to facilitate his treasure hunt.
The overacting and shallow stereotypes in this movie are excruciatingly difficult to endure. I know women swoon over McConaughey, but he is one of these pretty boy actors who basically cannot act. Here he serves merely to put eye candy on the screen for the women. This movie allows him to showcase all his stereotypes in all their gratuitous excessiveness. Perhaps he did “act” in the sense that he fit his stereotype to a tee. All the over the top acting, screaming and high pitched voices, as well as the transparent plot, made getting through it a real challenge. However, my flight was so long and so boring that I had little alternative. So I have watched it so you do not have to. Poor Donald Sutherland looks like he would rather be having a root canal. Frankly, I would have too. I hope he was paid well. The only fool’s gold here are the fools who pay to see this tripe. Don’t you be one of them. There are bad movies worth seeing for their badness. This is not one of them. It just reeks of mediocrity. If it arrives on HBO, change the channel. I don’t care how muscled McConaughey is or how much you may think Kate Hudson is cute and charming. Life is too short to squander it with trash like this. Yech.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:48pm
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Mark |
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Back in March, I reviewed the odd 2006 film Once. Once was a one of a kind relationship movie, hard to describe, but easy to enjoy. If it had a defect it was that it felt too real. It was a film full of non-actors acting like non-actors. Filming what feels like real life rarely works in the cinema. At times, Once came perilously close to feeling like a home movie. Yet somehow, it worked.
Love Actually feels at times too much like a three ring circus to work. There is no central plot, just a central theme: in our crazy world, deep, passionate, engaging and meaningful love is everywhere. However, it is so commonplace that we mostly tune it out. It both begins and concludes in London’s Heathrow Airport around the holiday season. Heathrow is where a chain of interlocking multiple love stories intersect at one particular time and place. Each love story is unique and most are engaging.
Alan Rickman plays Harry, who is as close as the movie comes to having a central character. He is a magazine owner and is dutifully but not excitedly married to Karen (Emma Thompson). He is tempted to stray because his secretary Mia (Heike Makatsch) is younger, much shapelier and is doing everything short of a Monica Lewinski act to show his interest in him. His wife just happens to be the sister to the new British Prime Minister David (Hugh Grant). Settling in to his Downing Street digs, the strangely unmarried David finds himself attracted to his caterer Natalie (Martine McCutcheon), and gets protective after the visiting President of the United States (played by Billy Bob Thorton) tries to stick his tongue down her throat. Natalie lives in a part of London that she warns the Prime Minister is “a bit dodgy”.
Karen is also a good friend of Daniel (Liam Neeson), who is just beginning to mourn his wife’s death from cancer. Daniel is too busy grieving to ponder another love life for himself. Rather than being in mourning his ten-year-old stepson find himself instead desperately in love with an American classmate. They have not even reached puberty. How could it be love? Yet the boy’s feelings are sincere. She is close to departing his life forever to return to America. Yet she does not even know he exists. Karen is also friends with Jamie, whose wife humiliated him by leaving him for his brother. Jamie finds it necessary to go to France to escape and try to work on his novel. While there, he is fussed over by Aurelia, a Portuguese housekeeper. She is cannot speak a word of English. They soon find that they love each other, but they have no way to put it into words.
Also in Harry’s office is Sarah (Laura Linney) who for years has had a mutual crush on Karl (Rodrigo Santoro). Neither found the courage to express their feelings until they finally dance at their company Christmas Party. Unfortunately, Sarah is also the sole guardian of her psychotic brother, who lives in an institution, periodically tries to hurt people, and who calls her on her cell phone any hour of the day or night to talk to her. She lets him control her life and in the process finds that the dutiful love she feels for her brother means she cannot have the romantic love she craves.
There is also Juliette (Keira Knightley) who just married Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor). However, Peter’s best friend Mark (Andrew Lincoln) desperately loves her, but cannot express it, so he pretends to dislike her. In addition there is Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) a late-50s something mostly ex-pop star who sells his soul to remake one of his hits to give it a holiday theme, and loathes himself for it. Billy looks wasted, and comes across as spectacularly crass and boorish. This may be because all these years he has harbored feelings for his “fat manager” Joe (Gregor Fisher) rather than the scores of women he has bedded. Then there is Colin (Kris Marshall), the unlucky young male virgin who strikes out with all the women in Great Britain, and makes a desperate trip to Wisconsin to turn his luck around. The most unusual love pairing is doubtlessly the one between John (Martin Freeman) and “Just Judy” (Joanna Page). They meet each other on the set of a soft-core porno shoot, where naked they play body doubles for some other actors and dispassionately go through simulated sex acts together. This is likely the sole reason the film got an R rating.
Who is related to whom or knows whom does not really matter. Yet it does create many, many overlapping love plots. Director Richard Curtis manages to draw many top league actors into roles that individually give them only a few minutes of screen time. Some major actors show up in bit parts. Rowan Atkinson plays a fussy jewelry salesman.
A film like this should fall apart, but like Once it somehow does not. Some of the relationships left me cool (such as the one between Billy and his agent). Others, like the one between Jamie and Aurelia are profoundly moving and take on An Officer and a Gentleman-like dimensions. Richard Curtis is more than a director. Instead, he is also a conductor, and he orchestrates this ensemble into something that, like love itself, is greater than the sum of its parts. If like me you are a sap for a romantic movie, you will especially love Love Actually for how skillfully it is interwoven and how love is expressed in so many strange, subtle (and not so subtle) and charming ways.
Love Actually hardly comes close to a top tier romance movie of all time simply because there are too many relationships here to plumb in any depth. Nevertheless, this 135-minute movie it is both quirky and satisfying. I give it a 3.2 on my four-point scale.
May 30th, 2008 at 07:49pm
Posted by
Mark |
Politics 2006, The Arts |
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Can a 65-year-old Harrison Ford successfully reprise his Indiana Jones roles nineteen years after his last movie? Box office receipts for the movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, now playing everywhere, suggest the answer is yes. For a man old enough to draw social security, Ford still looks virile. How much of this is due to genetics and how is due to stage makeup I am not sure. Also back in the director’s seat is Stephen Spielberg, age 61. After directing heavy movies like Munich and Flags of Our Fathers, Spielberg probably enjoyed returning to familiar territory to direct this belated fourth movie of this series.
In a way, viewers also get a reprise of Spielberg’s 1982 blockbuster, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Oops, gave away the plot, not that it really matters. Yes, it appears the crystal skull in question belongs to an extraterrestrial being. Professor Jones must return it to a cave in the lost city of El Dorado deep in the Amazon so that E.T. can phone home.
Okay, this E.T. is not that E.T., but their skull shapes are not that dissimilar and the original E.T. struck me as more of a boy extraterrestrial than the full grown up version we see near the end of this movie. So maybe the 1982 E.T. didn’t get the message that back in 1957 Archeologist Indiana Jones sent his parents back home. In any event, rest assured that the Professor Henry Jones Jr., a.k.a. Indiana will make sure that these extraterrestrials make it home at last.
Before sending them home though, Jones has to take a few side trips. Against his will, he helps crafty KGB agents find the skull in a secret warehouse in a Nevada nuclear test zone. Heck, before he even leaves the states, Jones gets to be the first American to survive a nuclear explosion, thanks to a convenient lead lined refrigerator in a Potemkin Village. This happens after nearly being accelerated to death by a rocket sled. In short, it takes less than fifteen minutes to discover that Indiana Jones may have aged but he has lost none of his ability to survive improbable escapes. Nor has Spielberg forgotten the Indiana Jones formula. This Jones may have arrived 27 years after the first Indiana Jones movie, but this fourth movie is probably the most satisfying since the first movie released in 1981.
New in this movie is Mutt Williams (played by Shia LaBeouf) who is a 1950s motorcycle greaser obsessed with combing his hair and who ends up following Indiana Jones on his adventure. If there are times when Mutt seems a chip off the old block, your instinct will be confirmed when Jones’ ex flame from the first movie Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) eventually appears deep in the Amazon. It turns out that Captain James T. Kirk was not the only famous fictional adventurer leaving fertile presents in the wombs of comely females. By the way, Karen Allen still looks good at age 56.
Still, by this point you have a good idea of what to expect from an Indiana Jones movie. Perhaps the 19-year gap was necessary to make it feel a bit fresh again. There must be plenty of improbable escapes from death, many nefarious people trying to keep Jones from succeeding, secret caves, snakes and bugs by the billions (preferably both), hidden chambers and of course animated map overlays showing his plane trips from point to point. Also back and thankfully not retired is composer John Williams (now age 76) to score the movie which, unsurprisingly, does not sound that much different from his scores for the other three movies.
Formula it may be but Spielberg keeps it both humorous and enjoyable. The antagonist this time is Irina Spalko, a super-smart KGB agent played by Cate Blanchett. Spalko is not only dedicated and smart, but never sweats. It is amazing to see her careening through the Amazon rainforest in her Stalinist garb, yet her pressed blouse never wrinkles in the slightest. I think Blanchett is wasted in this movie. It is not that she does a bad job in this movie, but any one-dimensional actress would have sufficed for this part.
We go to see Indiana Jones movies for pure entertainment and escapism, so it is unlikely you will be dissatisfied with the movie. There are times in the middle of the movie where the plot feels a bit muddled but overall, like Jones himself, the movie does not stay in one place very long for it to matter.
Look for supporting roles by John Hurt as Jones’ old friend Professor Oxley and the well-known character actor Jim Broadbent as Dean Charles Stanforth. This movie marks the start of the mindless summer blockbuster movie season. Let’s hope the summer season ends on as high a note as it began.
3.3 on my 4.0 scale.
May 26th, 2008 at 06:29pm
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Mark |
The Arts |
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You would not be surprised to learn that as a heterosexual man I am not particularly into the drag queen scene. In fact, I can think of few things less likely to interest me. Still, even though the topic does not interest me I can sit through any two-hour movie with a decent plot. I was surprised to find this oddly named movie about three drag queens, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar both fun and a little poignant.
Vida Boheme (Patrick Swayze), Chi-Chi Rodriguez (John Leguizamo) and Noxema Jackson (Wesley Snipes) are three New York City drag queens lusting to be named the city’s drag queen of the year. Granted, with the exception of Chi-Chi, they look more like Xena but Amazons make attractive women too. A tied vote though meant that both Vida and Noxema win the award. Consequently, both are sent to Hollywood to compete in a national drag queen competition. Afterward, in the hallway, they try to assuage Chi-Chi’s hurt feelings. Poor Chi-Chi was also hoping to win, primarily to boost her low self-esteem. Vida feels awful over her hurt feelings, and persuades Noxema to let her come along. In order to cut costs they will have to drive to the west coast. Being New Yorkers, they do not own cars, so they use their modest winnings to purchase a convertible off a used car lot. Off the three girls go to Hollywood, in drag, with of course the top down.
As you might anticipate, when three drag queens drive across the heartland they are likely to experience some hostility from less broadminded folk. A libidinous sheriff somewhere in the Midwest pulls them over. When Sheriff Dollard (Chris Penn) gets Vida alone behind the car, he tries to make out with her. To his utter shock, he quickly discovers Vida comes with a sort of package he does not expect. That, plus a stiff right from Vida (who when out of costume must box for sport) puts Sheriff Dollard flat out on the pavement. Their initial assessment that they killed him freaks them out, so they hustle away. Shortly thereafter, their car sputters to a stop in the middle of nowhere.
The kindness of Midwestern strangers gets them a ride to a nearby town that is so small they have only one event a year: a strawberry festival. The folks in this small town are so out of touch that it appears they can pass themselves off as ladies. Their car conveniently cannot be fixed until a part arrives on Monday. Meaning Vida, Chi-Chi and Noxema have to hang out all weekend in this oppressively backward little town in the flatlands.
Needless to say, they are by magnitudes the best dressed people in town. The townies are a dull, sullen and occasionally hostile bunch. The local rednecks apparently are having a hard time discerning that the women are actually guys. Chi-chi attracts the most attention. Vida has to avoid a group of rednecks who look like they want to assault her. The situation does not look promising, but among the townies are some good, stouthearted Midwestern women with traditional values, but who are also bored with life.
Vida, Chi-Chi and Noxema end up breathing something very unusual into this little town: a little life. They decorate their hotel room to make it fashionable. Noxema discovers a cache of 60s clothes in the general store. Soon they have most of the women in the town dolled up in a 60s retro style. This is just as well because the Strawberry Festival is almost upon them.
So yes, there are the sorts of laughs that you would expect when a car full of drag queens encounters a back corner of the Midwest. Yet the laughs are done with a light touch. Curiously, everyone in the movie, with the possible exception of Sheriff Dollard come across as plausible. (We discover the sheriff is indeed alive. Moreover, he becomes obsessed with the injustice that happened to him and goes in search of them.) Vida, Chi-Chi and Noxema are as flamboyant as you would expect, but every single member of the town feel authentic. It is also a town with a few bad apples, including the local mechanic Virgil (Arliss Howard), who abuses his wife Carol Ann (Stockard Channing). Pretty much everyone in this small town will learn a few lessons from these “girls” before they resume their trip to Hollywood.
So the movie has a light comedic touch with an odd feeling of plausibility. Granted, the climactic scene was quite unlikely, but it was deliciously satisfying.
What does Julie Newmar have to do with the movie? Very little, except Vida is obsessed with her figure and idolizes her as the ideal woman. You actually do briefly see Ms. Newmar playing herself at the end of the movie.
Undoubtedly, these roles were quite a stretch for Swayze, Snipes and Leguizamo, but that is part of the fun because they are quite convincing. For the first thirty minutes, my wife found the movie annoying and I was afraid she would give it up. Eventually though we both warmed up to it, and were glad we made it through the movie. It was amusing, fun and satisfying all at the same time.
This is not a B movie in the traditional sense, but neither is it close to being on anyone’s A list. It falls somewhere in between, but is much closer to a B movie than an A movie. It gets a solid 3 points on my 4-point scale, which means “better than average and worth seeing, but nothing overly special”. Unless you are very stuck up, you will probably enjoy it.
May 13th, 2008 at 07:08pm
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Mark |
The Arts |
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It may not be summer yet, but there is mindless summer-like entertainment in the movie theaters, if you look for it. One movie that definitely qualifies and which I saw over the weekend is The Forbidden Kingdom, yet another martial arts movie but with an American flavor.
A proper martial arts movie must have a martial arts star or two in it, and this one comes with Jackie Chan. His selection may be appropriate because Enter the Dragon (1973) was arguably the first American made martial arts movie blockbuster, and Chan starred in it. Here Chan plays two roles. First, he plays a very old man who runs a Boston Chinatown pawnshop specializing in Kung Fu films. A somewhat obsessed American teenager named Jason (Michael Angarano) haunts his shop for obscure Kung Fu DVDs. While Jason would like to be a kung fu phenomenon, in fact he would have trouble mastering the Macarena. He is easily pushed around by bullies, who use his friendship with the pawnshop owner as way to execute a robbery of his store.
The pawnshop owner Old Hop just happens to have a very cool fighting stick in the back room that is seeking a way of getting back to its rightful owner in China. Jason tries to use it to defend himself in a fight. By doing so, he is suddenly transported back to China at some indeterminate time in the past. There he encounters Lu Yan (Jackie Chan), an aging kung fu expert, who just fortunately happens to speak English as a second language. When Lu Yan sees his fighting stick, he realizes it is the fighting stick of the legendary Monkey King, who apparently turned himself into stone some centuries back to avoid losing a fight. Jason does not quite realize it when he first arrives, but he has to bring the stick back to its master so The Monkey King can be resurrected and, coincidentally, he can get back to Boston. Needless to say there are plenty of others along the way who also want his fighting stick and they do not ask nicely for it. Lu Yan has the unfortunate job of trying to turn Jason into the Kung Fu master he always wanted to be. Given his ineptness, it seems an impossible task.
So this movie is yet another heroic quest movie with yet another implausible plot. Nevertheless, for Kung Fu addicts, it delivers plenty of martial arts as well as plenty of fighting moves that seem to defy the laws of gravity and which were doubtless executed with plenty of piano wire. In that sense, it is a bit like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon just of course not nearly as good. It is also a movie that does not take itself very seriously. A Kung Fu movie must come with a fighting chick and potential love interest, and this one includes Yifei Liu as Golden Sparrow who follows Jason and Lu Yan on this improbable adventure.
Sadly, I do not have much of an appreciation for Kung Fu movies but of those that I have seen this one seems average. There are many, many fights in this movie, which is fine because what plot exists is very thin so you might as well fill the time in with fights and special effects. It is all choreographed quite competently. You may find yourself like me and after the first ten minutes or so of fighting find it all rolls right over you. Thus, you may find yourself fighting sleep. I never quite nodded off though because there was enough humor in it to keep me reasonably engaged.
If you are looking to spend about two hours on a movie that will take your mind off more pressing earthbound issues like high gas prices or the skyrocketing cost of food, this movie will probably do the job. If you enjoy watching the martial arts, you will find even more to enjoy in this movie.
For me this movie while it has some humorous moments, it came across as largely vapid and formulaic. Since it was clear that Jason was going to succeed in overcoming evil, there was nothing resembling suspense. Clearly, you do not expect blockbusters movies in April, and this one does not come close to being in the blockbuster category. For April you could do a lot worse than The Forbidden City. Likely, you could do a lot better too.
2.7 on my 4.0 scale.
April 27th, 2008 at 08:03pm
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Mark |
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As regular readers know, I am definitely not the sort who likes bloody and gross movies. That was one reason I avoided seeing Sweeney Todd in the theater, despite its rave reviews. Somehow all that blood didn’t seem in the holiday spirit. Sometimes though you have to grit your teeth (or in my case, fuzz my eyes during the worst parts) and watch a movie that otherwise obviously has plenty of merit. With renowned actor Johnny Depp playing the role of Sweeney Todd, plus a host of first rate familiar and not so familiar actors (including Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin and Sacha Baron Cohen as Pirelli), it was a movie unlikely to disappoint. It also helped that my 18-year-old daughter Rosie was a big fan of both Depp and the movie and had recently purchased the DVD.
Also providing impetus to view the movie was the reputation of its director: Tim Burton. Burton and Depp are quite a duo. It seems that Burton wants to cast Depp into all of his movies. Their relationship is now at least eighteen years old, when Burton first cast Depp in his breakout role of Edward Scissorhands. I correctly suspected I would need more than a few Rolaids to make it through Sweeney Todd.
Some of the violence is definitely cartoonish while others were too explicit for either my taste or my stomach. Fortunately, this is the kind of movie where you have a good idea when someone is about to die, since they have to be sitting in Sweeney Todd’s barbershop chair. Todd’s shop is conveniently located on the floor above Mrs. Lovett’s meat pie shop where she markets third class meat pies. I suspect you already know the gist of the plot. There is no point in filling up those pies with meat from dead cats when the psycho barber upstairs can provide a convenient fresh set of corpses, all for ready butchering.
The story of the demon barber of Fleet Street goes back to 1846 when this gruesome story was first published in serial form. It was likely written by the English author James Malcolm Rymer. Most Americans learned of Sweeney Todd from its musical adoption. Stephen Sondheim composed the lyrics and music to the highly successful Broadway musical, where it first arrived in 1979. Tim Burton’s task was to translate this successful and often performed musical to the big screen.
While I have yet to see Sweeney Todd in the theater, I can confidently say that I would be more comfortable with the musical on stage. On the stage, any depicted violence would be much less realistic and I would be much further removed from the action. Of course, in a movie the camera gives you an intimacy you cannot get in a theater. When necessary, which is too often for my tastes, Tim Burton is quite willing to let you see the gore first hand. This includes graphic shots of corpses in oversized meat grinders. The movie definitely deserved its R rating. There is no way I would have let any child of mine sees this movie until they were an adult, despite its obvious artistic merits.
In short, the movie, like its corpses, is a bloody well done, providing you can avoid retching. The movie is perfectly cast, led of course by the phenomenal Depp, but ably assisted by Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett. You will not need Smell-o-vision to smell the stench of London in the mid 19th century. Burton nails the time with uncanny authenticity, which is enhanced by the ever present London chimneys bellowing black smoke, which are seen out the grimy windows of Sweeney Todd’s barber shop. With the omnipresent rats, roaches and blood running in the sewers you feel the need to disinfect yourself when the movie is over. Of course, part of the magic of Sweeney Todd is how it mixes touches of macabre humor in its music and lyrics. Only there is nothing really to laugh over in the sick and diseased world around Fleet Street in London.
Sweeney Todd is a pseudonym for a barber who was pressed into being sailor. In the process, he lost his wife and daughter at the whim of an evil judge, spent fifteen years at sea and then finally made it back to London to wreak his revenge. Depp portrays Todd as a man obsessed with lashing out, not just at those who inflicted this injustice upon him but at all sorts of people in London he feels would be better dead than alive. Despite the measured attempts at a macabre humor throughout, Sweeney Todd is really a sick tragedy. As rendered by Burton, Sweeney Todd takes on Shakespearean dimensions. One can imagine William Shakespeare wistfully wishing he had the opportunity to write something as spectacular as the tragic tale of Sweeney Todd. Having seen many of Shakespeare’s tragedies, including likely his bloodiest, Richard III, Sweeney Todd still somehow seems bloodier.
In short, aided by Sondheim’s original interpretation, Burton does an outstanding job of bringing this story to the screen. Part of the problem is that he does too good a job. In fact, this is such a good movie that I really would like to see it again. The problem is I think I am too squeamish. So instead, I will wait to see it in on stage, and enjoy listening to the music from this wonderful musical. I am grateful for having seen this film once, and I will probably rue my own squeamishness that I cannot find the stomach to enjoy it a few more times.
In my humble opinion, this was a far worthier candidate for Best Picture than what actually won, No Country for Old Men. I really think it is a landmark film of some type. It is one of the few films I have ever rated at 3.5 or above.
I give Sweeney Todd 3.5 out of 4 stars.
April 19th, 2008 at 08:40pm
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Mark |
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Just who are we, really? Many of us remain mysterious even to ourselves. We do not really know who we are because our mettle has never been put to the test. Instead, we lead comfortable lives safe in our cocoons. Others take chances in life and in the process discover just whom they are. That is the premise of The Crying Game (1992).
Fergus is a dutiful Catholic living in Northern Ireland who joined the Irish Republican Army. He thinks he knows who he is. It is not until he gets embroiled in the kidnapping of a British soldier (Jody, played by Forest Whitaker) and is required to kill the soldier to prove his mettle that his true nature is revealed at last.
Unfortunately, joining the IRA is a bit like joining the Mafia. You cannot just quietly resign. You are tied to the IRA for life. The kidnapping goes badly awry. His victim ends up dead anyhow when he is run over by a British Army truck during an escape. The British Army, which has been tracking them, discovers their hideout and violently destroys it along with seemingly everyone else engaged in this plot. Fergus is lucky to escape with his life. He moves to London in the hopes of escaping the IRA and his own trauma. Yet he remains haunted by the British soldier that he came to know. He carries Jody’s wallet with him. It contains a picture of his British girlfriend, Dil (Jaye Davidson). Jody figures that he will be killed. He begs Fergus to look up his girlfriend and tell her that he loves her.
Not coincidentally, Fergus ends up doing construction work in London not far from the beauty salon where Dil works. He is too embarrassed to tell her of his relationship with Jody, but does have her cut his hair. He then follows her to a pub where she sings after hours. Perhaps in reaction to the shabby way the IRA treated Jody, he feels protective of her. When an abusive man enters her life, he steps in to protect her. A relationship develops, but Fergus, like the rest of us, is clueless that Dil is no ordinary woman. In fact, she is not a woman at all. She is a transvestite, which Fergus discovers this in the worst possible way.
As if dealing for his feelings for Dil were not enough, the IRA tracks him down in London. Against his will, they involve him in the assassination of a British official. They learn of Dil and use his relationship with him as leverage. Fergus discovers that Dil may be a guy, but he cares deeply for Dil. He does his best to protect him. Dil may not be a woman, but he is a special wounded soul. Fergus feels the need to protect him, not just as penance for his role in Jody’s abduction and death, but because there is something worthy of cherishing.
In short, this is a movie full of surprises. Fergus’s character is stretched like so much Silly Putty. He unwillingly learns a lot about who he is in a very short time. His real values are quite different from those he has espoused. He may have been caught in the political firestorm for Irish unification, but his essence is to be a loving and healing man.
This was a challenging movie to film and direct. It is also a difficult film to watch, because it is full of violence and uncomfortable sexual situations. It is full of wonderful character actors including Jim Broadbent, as the pub’s bartender and Miranda Richardson as Jude, the pretty yet fanatical IRA lieutenant. This is not entertainment. The Crying Game is meant to make you think and challenge your predispositions. It succeeds.
The Crying Game won two Oscars for Neil Jordan, its screenwriter and director. There is nothing particularly fancy about the movie. Like the 1960s TV series The Prisoner, The Crying Game is really about discovering the depth and breadth of one human soul. Occasionally, as in Ferguson’s case, his soul is far more expansive and caring than he could even begin to grasp.
I rate the movie 3.2 on my 4.0 scale.
March 23rd, 2008 at 11:14am
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Mark |
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Sometimes the judgment of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences leaves much to be desired. That appears to be the case this year. The motion picture No Country for Old Men somehow won Best Picture. Either 2007 was a terrible year for films in general or the 6000+ members of AMPAS were high on something. This movie is certainly suspenseful but unworthy of its Best Picture status. In fact, it does not come close.
It is not that this movie is bad. It is just that the Coen Brothers have done much better work that has garnered far fewer awards. So what is so special about No Country for Old Men that it receives Best Picture when its far better cousin, the 1996 Fargo, did not. (Fargo did win two Oscars, for Best Screenplay and for Best Actress in a Leading Role.) No Country for Old Men though not only won Best Picture, but also earned the brothers Oscars for Best Directing and Best Screenplay, as well as a Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role to Javier Bardem. Bardem plays a crazy psycho killer whose quirky means of dispatching people to their reward is to use a compressed air cattle gun. Hey, at least it is quick death. Maybe states will adopt it for condemned prisoners instead of lethal injection.
The story takes place in West Texas in 1979. Hollywood has short shrifted this is a part of the country. The Coen Brothers at least do us a favor by giving that area of the country its overdue screen time. As you might expect it is desolate yet pretty in its own way. If it were not for its many amoral residents, it might be a nice place to retire. You could certainly stretch your retirement dollars with all the illegal immigrants running around. The Coen Brothers portray that part of Texas as half-lawless. Unfortunately, its citizens do not give the sheriff much money, so it is hard to rustle up a posse to track down psycho killers like Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). One thing for sure: if you find two million dollars in drug payoff money surrounded by a bunch of dead or bleeding people at a remote location in West Texas, you had best resist the temptation to abscond with the loot. You do not want Chigurh to track you down because he is focused, relentless and utterly amoral.
Male hunk Josh Brolin plays Llewelyn Moss, the taciturn guy who first discovers the drug loot. Apparently, drug deals gone badly are par for the course out in West Texas. He does have enough sense to send his wife Kelly Jean to visit her mother, and to make sure she takes a Greyhound bus to get there. To a killer like Chigurh, tracking his wife and mother in law down is straightforward stuff. Llewelyn’s life quickly becomes one of a man constantly on the run. In Chigurh’s nutty mind, anyone he is intimately involved with is fair game for murder. Llewelyn has his Texas wiles to give him strength and his stoical nature to carry around two million dollars as if it were no big deal. Nonetheless, from Chigurh’s trail of carnage he quickly infers that he will be dead meat unless somehow he can kill him first.
Tommy Lee Jones plays Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, the old man of the movie’s title. Jones is an excellent actor. His quirky and craggy face makes him a natural for the part of sheriff of this remote part of the country. As sheriff, he has the dubious privilege of bringing Chigurh to justice. Given Chigurh’s innate ability to find people and plug them with slugs from his compressed air cattle gun, viewers can sensibly ask how much time the sheriff has left on his life clock. It is time for the sheriff to take a sudden retirement, if he knows what is good for him. He should definitely stay far away from people carrying around oxygen canisters.
I am not sure why Javier Bardem won an Oscar for his role. His part required him to be a one dimensional, slightly philosophical psycho killer and little else. Similarly, the men in this movie are too low key by nature to break into much of a sweat, even when death is very close. This results in a movie that is far less suspenseful than it could be.
In fact, Coen Brother movies are becoming increasingly formulaic. You know there will be one or two characters that are exceptionally odd in some way, and Bardem gets to play him this time. Surrounding the odd character is a menagerie of regular scruffs like us trying to deal with the weirdness of the events happening to them. A Coen Brothers movie is like looking at the world through a distorted glass. Few do it better but their formula may have become played out in No Country for Old Men.
Some would argue (and I am one of them) that the movie is ruined by Sheriff Bell’s rambling philosophical dialog at the end of the movie. As best I can figure out it is a bunch of nonsense. It is unclear exactly who is still alive at the end of the movie including Chigurh. If he is then Sheriff Bell will not have long to enjoy his retirement.
No Country for Old Men is certainly not a bad movie and it will engage your attention easily enough. Its violence is realistically portrayed, but it was not too bloody for my normally squeamish stomach. In short, it is average Coen Brother fare, worthy of renting but nothing all that special, with an ending that is likely to disappoint.
3.0 on my 4.0 scale.
March 9th, 2008 at 11:34am
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Mark |
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