|
External
|
ENTERTAINMENT March 8, 2008 March Movie Madness Some mini-reviews of the movies I've seen since returning from the Across the Hall shoot, now in order of most recently seen. 10,000 BC The First Action Zero Where do I even start ripping on this thing? That in 10,000 BC the cave men had shiny white teeth and stylishly trimmed goatees instead of bushy beards? (Were Gillette and Crest whitening strips invented 10,000 years ago? Apparently.) That everyone spoke the same language, which sounded exactly like English, except the villains, who all had subtitles? How about the ostrich attack? Look out! Giant ostriches! Then there was the big finale in Egypt, where there were no Egyptians. Instead, African slaves and wooly mammonths worked together to build the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids for the main villain, the "god" referred to only as "the Almighty." The Almighty has priests who wandered out of the Kali India set of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Also, the Almighty was an old white guy and went down like a bitch. It's hard to blame the actors for this mess. I actually like the two leads. Steven Strait was Warren Peace in Sky High, a pretty good teen-aimed Disney superhero movie. He plays D'Leh, the hunter who slayed the mighty snuffleupagus. Strait wants to get d'layed by Evolet (Camilla Belle), the only hot, blue eyed girl in pre-history. Camilla Belle gives me a wooly mammoth so I get why Strait chased her across half of Africa, or where ever they were, when she got kidnapped and brought to Egypt. I'd love to see Belle in a good movie one day but who knows when that day will come? The story of 10,000 BC has been told 10,000 times before in 10,000 other shitty movies, and a few good ones. The action involves redundant chases where strategically dirty-looking cave men are attacked by wooly mammonths, giant ostriches and sabre toothed tigers. All the action sequences were already done better in three Jurassic Parks. There are big laughs because the dialogue, characterizations, and well, everything else, are retarded. There's a whole deal where Strait managed to assemble an army of spear-chucking African stereotypes. They watch helplessly as Belle and their friends float down a river on boats. Then they walk through the desert after them and get lost. Hey stupids, why didn't you all just walk along side the river? Later, Strait frees all the slaves in Egypt and they storm the pyramids. There's a giant boat docked in there somehow. So they set fire to the boat. Hey stupids, you could have all gotten on the giant boat and sailed to your homes. Now you all have to walk through the desert. The ending is the biggest laugh riot: Belle is shot with an arrow in the back and dies. Aw, after all that, Belle died?! Strait never even got to do her prehistoric-like. But no, Belle then comes back to life when the old shaman woman from Strait's village the movie kept cutting away to drops dead and magically gives Belle her last breath. Belle opens her eyes and she's fine. Hey stupids, isn't there still an arrow stuck in her back? I didn't see anyone pull it out, is all. The audience at the 10:45am $5 matinee of 10,000 BC hated the movie. (I was the only person in the theatre. It's cold and rainy in Boston and everyone else had the good sense to stay home.) THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL PB&J I was warned The Other Boleyn Girl was horrible so I can't say I was surprised, but dude. Dude!. It's horrible. I can't remember the last time I saw a movie so staggeringly incompetent on every level. Acting, directing, writing, editing, cinematography, all just fucking horrible. Each department competing with the other to deliver the worst movie they could. How does a studio exective see the dailies of this and not pull the plug immediately? People shit all over Elizabeth: The Golden Age a few months ago, but whatever, man. At least Cate Blanchett and Clive Owen can fucking act. Seriously, if the two lead actresses weren't already established, if they weren't already acclaimed actresses Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johannsen, they'd probably never work again. This movie would be a career-killer for actresses not as famous. The casting director should have been the first to be fired, followed immediately by Portman and Johannsen's British accent voice coach. Then everyone else. To cover for the leads' accent troubles, all the British actors in the movie had to turn their accents down and sound more American. The mishmashed result was poison for the ears, the kind that killed Hamlet's father. Eric Bana's Henry VIII was a grouchy, underwritten dumbass. The whole movie he's so irascible, he might as well have turned into the Hulk. It might have improved the movie if he had. But it's not all P, B & J's fault, they got absolutely no help from the crew. The lighting department apparently forgot to bring any lights to the set, creating a gloomy, underlit eyesore. It's edited by a retarded monkey and directed by a blind, deaf-mute. For a sexy tale of Tudor-era adultery based on a trashy novel, where the fuck was the sex? Portman and Johannsen unsuprisingly show nothing, and every time any sex is implied, the movie goes into blurry vision before cutting away entirely. By the end of this turd, they start putting up title cards that added the final insults to the audience's intelligence. My favorites were: "After separating from the Catholic Church, Henry VIII changed the face of England forever." Really? Tell me more. And they don't. The worst was the very last title card: "Henry never got the male heir he wanted but he did give England an heir who reigned for 45 years. Her name was..." Seriously, dot dot dot. Wait for it: "Elizabeth." Holy shit, man. MICHAEL CLAYTON "I am Shiva, The God of Death." Took me long enough to see it but I enjoyed Michael Clayton overall. Didn't think it was great or anything but I thought it was mostly solid, if occasionally dull. Michael Clayton's plot is basically the same as Erin Brockovich. After Jumper's youth-pandering dumbassedness though, I rather enjoyed a movie about adults talking about adult problems and doing adult things. The acting was strong throughout. George Clooney was very good, but not Best Actor good. No way he could have beaten Daniel Day-Lewis' performance in There Will Be Blood. Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkenson were real good. The worst thing about Michael Clayton to me, besides that stupid line "I am Shiva, the God of Death" (which is said twice and draws unintended guffaws each time), was its structure: Michael Clayton opens with an attempt on Clooney's life that fails. The rest of the movie is a flashback that takes us back to that point, which then plays out in an extended, music-swelling, would-be nail-biting sequence of "Oh my god! Will George Clooney be killed?!" Oh wait, we already know he isn't because we saw he isn't in the first 10 minutes. Kind of let the air out of the balloon. If I may paraphrase Homer Simpson's observation of the famous bomb in the toilet scene in Lethal Weapon 2: Before Michael Clayton, I never knew there could be a bomb in my car's GPS. But now I check every time. JUMPER Anywhere But Here What if Anakin Skywalker could teleport? The answer is even more banal than you guessed. Jumper sucks, man. It takes the promising idea of people having the ability to teleport and goes nowhere with it. There are two main "jumpers" in the movie, Hayden Christensen and a British guy, and they're both monosyllabic douchebags. I lost count of the number of times they said "Huh?" and "Wha?" Was that actually written in the script or was that shit they added themselves? Turns out there's a war going on between jumpers and people who hate jumpers, lead by Samuel L. Jackson. The Star Wars prequel reunion goes about as well as you think. In the Padme Amidala role is poor Rachel Bilson. She mostly has to stand around looking confused at Christensen. There are no interesting characters, no wit. The action is bland and usually incoherent. There was some interesting stuff in how Jumpers can fight, involving teleporting vehicles and heavy objects at their enemies, but it's not done particularly well. I kind of dug how upon learning he could teleport, Christensen embarked on a career as a bank robber, using his powers to get rich, and quick. That's a more logical thing a high school dropout with superpowers would do than put on tights and fight crime. But Jumper immediately committed two of my biggest pet peeves in movies: 1) voice over narration for no good reason and 2) casting younger versions of the characters in flashbacks who look absolutely nothing like the lead actors. Does AnnaSophia Robb look like a young Rachel Bilson? No. Does this kid look like young Darth Vader? No, he doesn't. Why didn't they hire this kid instead? IN BRUGES "They're filming midgets!" In Bruges is hands down the best movie I've ever paid $14 to see. $14 is what it costs to see a movie in Los Angeles at the Arclight on a Sunday night. I could hardly sit down from the ramming my ass got. Still, In Bruges was a much better movie than I expected. I expected one of those jump-cutting, incoherent Guy Richie shoot-em-ups I normally can't stand. Instead, In Bruges turned out to be an engaging tragic comedy, or comedic tragedy, depending on how you look at it, about two Irish hitmen forced to hide out in Bruges, Belgium, after a job on awry. While Colin Farrell spends the entire movie shitting all over Bruges, the movie shoots the fairy tale city of Bruges so beautifully, they should practically have travel agents meeting the audience at the door when the credits roll. In Bruges is also unexpectedly a Harry Potter supporting cast reunion with Brendan Gleeson (Mad Eye Moody), Clemence Poesey (Fleur Delaceur), and Ralph Fiennes (Voldemort) all present, all doing excellent work outside the confines of Hogwarts. Fiennes in particular has a ball doing his best impression of Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast. He hasn't played anyone this barking mad evil since he shot Jews from his balcony in Schindler's List. Meanwhile, one of my favorite character actors Ciaran Hinds shows up and didn't surprise me in the least by dying violently. In the last few years he's been bloodily killed in Rome, Munich, and now In Bruges. I'm still wondering how he managed to not bite it in Miami Vice. Speaking of Miami Vice, Colin Farrell usually chafes against the heroic types of characters he plays in American films, but In Bruges allows him to play closer to himself: a boyish, cocky, Irish rogue, with surprisingly deep emotions when he isn't drunk on beer and cursing up a storm. Farrell was better than he's been in forever here. In Bruges has pretty much everything: a lovely European setting, dark humor, heaps of blood and violence, sexy European girls, and midgets. Drunk midgets, midgets high on drugs, midgets getting punched in the face. Actually, it was all just the one midget. - John Orquiola |
 |
