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ENTERTAINMENT January 6, 2007 2006 Movie Wrap Up I was on vacation during the holidays and I used my free time watching a shitload of movies. I mostly caught up on everything I wanted to see in movie theatres that was available to me. Unfortunately, neither Letters to Iwo Jima nor Pan's Labyrinth are playing in Boston yet, which sucks. I've been trying to get motivated to see Blood Diamond in the theatre but that probably just isn't going to happen. I kind of wanted to see what kind of trash Black Christmas is but that is an ideal choice for catching on one of the high def movie channels in a few months. I missed Little Children unfortunately. No way in hell will I see Dreamgirls. I don't care how good it is, I'm not interested. Everything else I've seen I've liked, with one exception. Nothing has been truly great this season and of all the Oscar bait I've seen, nothing comes close to dethroning Borat as the Best Movie of 2006 in my eyes. If I had membership in the Academy, my votes for Best Picture goes to Borat and Best Actor goes to Sacha Baron Cohen. Best Director is Martin Scorsese for The Departed and Best Actress to Helen Mirren for The Queen. I also came across my Best Supporting Actress choice, which I'll describe below. CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER
Of Zhang Yimou's last three pictures that received wide release in the United States, I think Curse of the Golden Flower is the least, with Hero second and House of Flying Daggers being the best. (A lot of people would reverse the top two, but I like Daggers better.) I didn't know anything about what Curse was about going in so I was pretty surprised when I realized there isn't a lot of kung fu in the picture, mostly saved for the awesome battle scene in the end. Curse is about betrayal and intrigue in the Chinese Imperial Family, a clan even more incestous and disfunctional than the Bluths or the McMahons. Chow Yun-Fat's emperor was sort of a Chinese Vince McMahon. Watching Curse was a stange experience as there were about 40 people in the theatre and I was one of the 7 or 8 non-Chinese in attendance. The Chinese girls in the audience reacted to Chow Yun-Fat and the other actors in the movie as if Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin Timberlake were all sitting in a sauna together. Also, at least one Chinese dude in the audience was pretty slow on the uptake. The unwitting incest between one of the princes and his secret half-sister was pretty well spelled out long before the dude audibly gasped and put his hand over his mouth after putting it together. I bet he was equally disturbed when he saw Return of the Jedi and learned Luke had the hots for his sister in Star Wars and Empire. ROCKY BALBOA
If Rocky Balboa were real and actually owned an Italian restaurant, I'd hang out there all the time. I'd love it sit down to a plate of Italian food made by Mexicans in the basement and listen to Rocky tell the same stories over and over about how he knocked out Clubber Lang and won the title from Apollo Creed. Rocky Balboa is a strange movie; it's about 70 minutes of a first act, a ten minute second act of training for his big fight, and then the fight itself is the third act. And it doesn't matter one bit because the movie works. It embraces the nostalgia those of us who grew up idolizing Rocky have for the character. To see the old man train and go for one more fight where he's the underdog who overcomes impossible odds was awesome. I liked how Rocky was brought into the modern boxing world with all the trappings a real HBO fight would have, including the announcers and the Mike Tyson cameo. I didn't care for how Stallone went for the Sin City-style black and white with color splashes during the fight scene, but that's a minor quibble. It was great to see Rocky one more time and see him resume his place as one of my heroes.. He's one of the best movie characters ever. I actually went back and saw Rocky Balboa again the next day just to hang with Rocky once more. BABEL
I might have been inclined to put Babel up there as one of the best pictures of the year alongside Borat and The Departed if Babel didn't overstay its welcome. The last half hour or so was a grueling excerise in audience frustration. Babel is a movie about people who made bad choice after terrible choice and suffered the compounding consequences. It's beautifully shot, amazingly acted, and powerful but after a while, the endless misery got to be too much. Of the three main storythreads, including Brad Pitt caring for his wife Cate Blanchett who was shot in Morocco and their children being taken to Mexico by their nanny and almost killed in a ridiculous series of events, the most intriguing by far was the tale of the deaf-mute Japanese girl who is desperate for sexual contact. Rinko Kikushi gets my vote for Best Supporting Actress. For the first time ever, thanks to Babel, we the audience can experience what it feels like to be a deaf-mute teenage Japanese girl living in Tokyo. It's a hell of a lot more compelling than the life of a Morrocan shepherd or a dumbass Mexican illegal alien who's a nanny to two rich white kids. CHILDREN OF MEN
When I walked out of Children of Men, I thought it was pretty good but not great. However, I haven't been able to get it out of my head since then, which is a mark of an effective motion picture. Children of Men paints a harrowing possible future of how the world would degenerate if women were suddenly unable to get pregnant. Clive Owen, in his first movie since he drove a BMW that I've enjoyed all the way through, has to awaken the idealist in himself and protect the first pregnant woman on Earth from enemies on all fronts. In a broken world, with the human race 50 years from extinction, society has all but imploded with only England maintaining a sense of order, at the expense of the immigrants trying to reach its shores. Moe Syzlak: Immigants, I knew it was them! Even when it was the bears, I knew it was them! Children of Men is riveting speculative fiction. And it doesn't need the gimmicks of bald Natalie Portman or a guy in a trick or treat mask who spends his nights blowing up buildings and his days frying eggs in toast. But either way, when the badness finally hits, I'm getting on a boat or plane and going to England. The movies say that's the best place to be when the world comes crashing down. And the movies never lie. The big question for Children of Men 2: So, who gets to nail the world's first black baby? THE GOOD SHEPHERD
And here's the part where I get pissed off. I'd been on a hell of a streak. According to both my memory and my star ratings, I hadn't seen anything I ranked at less than three stars since November. I saw eight straight movies that were all good or really good. I was riding high. And then I made the mistake of seeing The Good Shepherd and my movie high crashed right into the ground face first. The Good Shepherd is Robert DeNiro's fictionalized account of the birth of the CIA. It stars Matt Damon as the head spy. He's married to Angelina Jolie, who he isn't attracted to at all. Say what? How could that be? One reason the movie gives is that Damon's character is a member of Skull and Bones, the Yale secret society. The Good Shepherd goes out of its way to depict Skull and Bones as an exclusive haven where affluent white boys get naked, lie on a stone table, confess their darkest secrets, and then take turns peeing on each other. The Skulls starring Joshua Jackson and Paul Walker painted a cooler and more heterosexual picture of Skull and Bones, if you can believe that. The biggest gripe I have against The Good Shepherd is that it's three hours long and it's fucking boring. Real spies can't be this uninteresting and I know movie spies are a hell of a lot cooler than this (see: Bond, James and Damon's own Bourne, Jason). Hell, I complained about it in MI:3, but The Good Shepherd could have seriously benefited from some latex masks, a lot of rappeling, and a helicopter chase or two. Also Damon has a perpetually nervous son in the movie who's about 10 years younger than he is. The Good Shepherd spans about 30 years of Damon's life but he hardly ages a day. What's his secret to perpetual youth? It must be the golden showers he received in college. -John Orquiola |
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