American Dreamz (no stars)

AMERICAN DREAMZ

April 24, 2006

Shit With A “T”

There are times when I feel that I'm my own worst enemy.  You'd think I'd be on my side all of the time.  I certainly expect myself to be.  Then there are the days when I'm convinced otherwise, like when I somehow botched the time of the Friday afternoon matinee of Lucky Number Slevin .  I arrived at the theatre 20 minutes late for it.  Disappointed, I scanned for whatever was playing next.
American Dreamz .
Despite knowing better, despite the unfunny trailers, horrible premise, and even the insipidness of spelling “dreams” with a “z”, knowing all this and more, I bought a ticket a ticket anyway. I royally fucked myself.
I like Paul Weitz .  I love American Pie and About a Boy .  In Good Company was all right.  I like Hugh Grant .  Mandy Moore ain't not bad-looking.  None of that fucking mattered.  Here is the unfunniest “comedy” I've seen in years – a boneheaded, ill-conceived, incompetently-obvious send up of American Idol and the current administration.
Try to follow the satire here:  Hugh Grant is a Simon Cowell clone.  He's self-loathing and repugnant.  Hilarious!  Dennis Quaid is a George Bush clone.  He's a dumbfuck bumpkin who doesn't know anything but wishes he were smart.  Outrageous!  Willem DaFoe is a Dick Cheney clone.  He's the power behind the Presidency, the puppetmaster.  Oh man, this is too much!  Mandy Moore is a scheming sociopath who wants to be a pop star.  I'm doubling over from the pain of my sides splitting!  That's not all,  Moore 's character's name is Sally Kendoo.  Can-do!  Holy crap, I get it!  What, there's more comedy?  A terrorist named Omer who secretly yearns to sing show tunes is sent to the OC, where he ends up living with his rich relatives, one of whom is an untalented, deluded flaming homosexual who wants to be a contestant on American Dreamz.  Omer is mistaken for his gay cousin and ends up on American Dreamz, where he's ordered to blow up the President, who is a guest judge.  He's like an Arab William Hung with a bomb strapped to his ass - oh man, this is too funny!  There's also a Hasidic Jew rapper who's also a contestant.  I'm laughing on the inside.  By "laughing," I mean "feel the urge to kill."  Inside and out.
Those are the set ups.  Here are the punchlines:  The President may be an idiot but he has a good heart.  He got off easy.  Simon Cowell is an asshole who deserves to die, and does.  Mandy Moore, standing in for the Kelly Clarksons and Carrie Underwoods of American Idol,  is a bitch who deserves to die, but doesn't because she's so pretty.  Here's one that might be news to al-Qaeda: All terrorists secretly wish they were Americans.  They even huddle in their sand-dusted tents in the middle of the desert to watch (and vote!  How does that work?) on American Idol.  The people who try out for American Idol are untalented and pathetic losers.  These are the jokes.  Can you believe they only charge $10 for all this comedy?
I contemplated walking out several times.  If I had, however, I would have missed the following exchange, after Grant, who has a serious hard on for Moore, went to Ohio to meet her.  Grant rolls into Moore 's driveway in a red Ferrari and then makes a crack about how hard it was to rent a Ferrari in Bumblefuck, Ohio.
Hugh Grant:  That was a joke.
Mandy Moore :  I'm aware.
Grant:  You didn't laugh.
Moore :  It wasn't funny.
The whole movie is that Ferrari joke.  This is probably the worst movie of the year.  An embarrassing atrocity.

V for Vendetta (***)

V FOR VENDETTA

"God is in the rain."

I wish Stanley Kubrick were alive and had directed V for Vendetta. The graphic novel, written by Alan Moore, is dense, grim, subversive, and cerebral. I'm not certain the modern style of comic book-slash-action movie was the best way to service the material. V for Vendetta should have been this century's A Clockwork Orange. V would have been transcendant with that type of presentation, instead of what it is: good enough, but not great. Still, good enough is good enough. Of course, a Kubrickian V without the Wachowski Brothers' pedigree likely wouldn't have made $26-million on its opening weekend. 

V for Vendetta had as many "radical" and "dangerous" political ideas as a Lucky Charms box has red moons, orange stars, green clovers, blue diamonds and purple horse shoes. Most of what the movie had to say was interesting on the surface and compelling if deeply explored, but if you felt like deeply exploring, the movie generally left you on your own after kicking you in the ass to move you along. There were a lot of ideas floating around in the movie. It was like one of those wind chambers that blow money around while you stand in it. The ideas were basically the money and whatever you felt like grabbing was yours to keep. V's basic agenda was reasonably clear and the dynamic backstory of how V and the fascist government of High Chancellor Adam Sutler came into being was explained well.

The movie did certain things better than any comic book - written by Alan Moore or not - could ever do. Evey was much, much hotter in the movie than in the graphic novel. I suppose so was V, for that matter. And Chancellor Sutler too. Rrowrr. The Million V March that climaxed the movie was more powerful on film than even your mind's eye could deliver while reading the graphic novel. And I loved the Benny Hill stuff. Benny Hill music should be in every movie; in Munich, Crash, Brokeback Mountain... Especially Brokeback Mountain.

The most interesting stuff in V For Vendetta was not necessarily V's plan or the relationship between V and Evey. No, the best aspect of V was the B-plot, the investigation by Stephen Rea as the government's man-on-the-job. Assigned to hunt down V, Rea instead slowly unravels the hidden truth behind the creation of both V and the very government V is attempting to destroy. Little by little Rea's belief system in his government crumbles as he uncovers how the government created a biological attack on its own populace to scare them into letting Chancellor Sutler and Norsefire take power. 

Hugo Weaving did remarkably empathetic work from behind the rubber Guy Fawkes mask. At times, V speaking bordered dangerously close to the Green Goblin talking to Spider-Man on the rooftop of the first Spidey movie. Weaving succeeded in making you feel and believe V; not just in V's awesome fighting prowess, but his equally awesome domestic prowess. When V cooked Evey breakfast, it looked like a guy in a Halloween mask was hosting a Food Network cooking show. They should have showed V cleaning his bathroom in full costume too, waxing philosophically about the best cleansers to get rid of hard water and mildew stains in the shower.

I think what I was disappointed in the most was the lack of stylization with which V was depicted. There were only two shots that delivered what I was looking for visually: one where V, his black cloak swirling dramatically, leaps onto the church rooftop on his way to kill the bishop - an image straight out of a comic book panel. The second was V spectrally appearing in the shadows as he waited to kill the coroner who'd once imprisoned him. The rest of the time, V sort of just stood around. 

As the star billed above the title, Natalie Portman is an easy target for complaints regarding her performance and British accent. To her credit, Portman anchored every scene she was in. She hammered home all the emotion and did the work for two in her scenes with V due to the restrictions of V's mask. She never caught a break, never had a form of laughter or release - she didn't even get to laugh at the Benny Hill stuff. 

The sequence where Evey is captured, tortured by V, and discovers the letter of the dead lesbian is the most riveting of the entire picture. Although, going back to an earlier complaint, when Evey is being shaved bald, you feel the sympathy for Evey entirely because of Portman's performance but a great director like the late Kubrick would have gone further, would have been able to make us feel her pain as if it were our heads also being shaved.

Though the reveal was inelegantly handled, I did like V's elaborate ruse of kidnapping and torturing Evey. Although I didn't quite buy V's explanation for torturing her.

V: "Evey, I can't tell you how difficult it was for me to string you up by your wrists, strip you naked and hose you down like you were headed for the gas chamber.  You must believe me: It took everything I had not to hose you from your front. And to use a real hose."

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (***1/2)

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE 

November 21, 2005

Another year at Hogwarts and a one hundred million dollar opening weekend. They've got the magic, all right. Everyone involved with the Harry Potter movie franchise deserves every penny and much more. In no particular order, here’s everything I liked, a few things I disliked, and most everything that crossed my mind as I watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. 

I look forward to every visit to the Harry Potter cinematic universe. It’s such a richly realized world, so textured, interesting and inviting. With each movie, everything gets richer and deeper. This is the rarest of movie franchises where things just get better and more involving with each chapter. It’s a joy to spend time at Hogwarts every year or so.

I’m glad the filmmakers chose not to omit the opening scene of the book (and now of the movie) where the old caretaker of the Riddle house discovers and is murdered by Voldemort and his giant snake. It’s probably the most frightening and interesting of any of the opening scenes of the Harry Potter novels and was the first big moment that opened up the greater Harry Potter universe outside of Hogwarts, the Burrow, the Dursleys and Diagon Alley.

The Quidditch World Cup was an awesome spectacle. The Quidditch arena as a concave dish dug miles deep underground is fantastic production design. It’s as amazing to look at as anything George Lucas’s people designed for Star Wars, in some ways even better since it's believably a magical part of our world.

The Death Eaters’ hoods and robes maybe not so accidentally invoke the Ku Klux Klan as they marched into the screaming hordes of Wizards. Ah, it warmed my Slytherin heart to see the followers of Lord Voldemort assembled once more. Er, I mean, those Death Eaters were horrible, weren't they?

Nothing against Michael Gambon’s fine work as Dumbledore, but I miss Richard Harris.

After four years together, the equivalent in time of a high school career, you can see the young actors have all bonded from the shared experience of bringing Harry Potter to cinematic life. All of them have been there since the first movie, from the three main kids to the actors who play their supporting classmates and their chemistry and ease with each other is evident. It adds to the realism that they are indeed students at a boarding school. They’re the longest running class of students in movies. I hope all of them, including the actors who play Seamus Finnegan, Neville Longbottom, and all of the Weasleys, stick around for the completion of the entire saga.

All of the romantic and sexual tension is great. It’s probably even more interesting than all the magic and dragons and Voldemort. Like any high school, there are a number of attractive young people at Hogwarts and they’re all discovering attractions to each other. It’s really about time. As Cowboy Bill Watts used to say in the old UWF, “Let’s hook ‘em up!” One thing that occurred to me though is that Hogwarts must be the most inconvenient place imaginable for two teenagers who wanted to steal away and have sex. Every room has sentient portraits and there are always ghosts or other beings fiddling about. Where can two young, horny Wizards get some privacy in that castle?

Fred and George Weasley are the two unsung heroes of the Harry Potter series. They’re terrific supporting characters who need more attention than they get. I always enjoy all the scenes with the Weasley twins, both in the books and in the movies. As troublemakers, they create mayhem and chaos in a world already brimming with it. They’re a lot of fun. I can’t wait to see them to declare war on Delores Umbridge and quit Hogwarts in a blaze of glory in the next movie.

Ginny Weasley is also coming along nicely. She isn’t as prominent as she will be in the next two movies, but the filmmakers found ways to put her in scenes and give her some bits of business. She ought to be very interesting to watch in the coming movies, as she’s the only major young female character to rival and compliment Hermione.

Cho Chang was always a favorite of mine from the books but it sure is jarring to hear a thick Scottish accent coming out of a pretty Asian girl’s mouth.

I always thought Fleur Delacour was more ethereral, and by that I mean hotter. That goes for all the female French witches. I liked the gratuitous ass shot of the Beauxbaton girls arriving at the Hogwarts assembly hall and only the Hogwarts boys applauding them.

Loved the way Hermione said, “It’s not going to wo-ork!” when George and Fred Weasley tried to trick the Goblet of Fire into accepting their names. Cute. I think the actors need to play with the dialogue a bit more like Emma Watson did there, find different nuances and ways to interpret their characters.

The Triwizard Tournament was fantastically realized and executed. The Potter films have long needed an injection of action and visceral thrills. Harry’s headlong battle with the dragon and with the mer-people (which was a visual delight – there’s your Aquaman movie) were amazing, amazing sequences. However, and this was a weakness of the book as well, after the dragons and the mer-people, the evil hedge maze as the third challenge was a bit of a letdown that failed to up the ante.

Harry and Ron fighting with each other was long overdue. I liked Harry calling Ron a git and Ron telling Harry to piss off. Again, it’s realistic for even two best friends to have at it now and then. The movie did not really explore the source of Ron’s anger with Harry, his secret jealousy of him that came bubbling to the surface when Harry was entered in the Triwizard Tournament, but the two best friends going at each other was interesting while it lasted. I also liked Hermione’s exasperation at how Ron and Harry eventually made peace.

The entire extended sequence leading up to and through the Yule Ball was worth the price of admission by itself. Halfway in the movie all thoughts of magic and the Triwizard Tournament and Voldemort stop so that the kids could face something truly terrifying: asking each other to a dance. Here’s stuff everyone can relate to. Everything was priceless, from Harry and Ron stressing over not having dates, Harry ignoring the Patel girls constantly right there trying to get his attention, Harry finally bucking up, and asking Cho Chang, and getting shot down, and the ball itself, with everyone’s reactions to Hermione being Viktor Krum’s date. This sequence was the equivalent of Prisoner of Azkaban’s time-traveling third act and was a breath of comedic and teen soap operatic fresh air to the Harry Potter movies. All of the stuff where the kids acted like kids in love or with crushes was gold.

Harry and Ron being such total assholes to the Patel girls at the Yule Ball is funny because it’s true. At fourteen, when you’ve got a crush you can’t be with, that’s really all you think about and you disregard whomever you happen to be with.

Hermione angrily ordering Ron and Harry to go to bed after the Yule Ball and Harry’s reaction to her were hilarious. I like how Harry just rolls her eyes at Hermione sometimes, but he also knows deep down that she’s probably his greatest ally of his friends when it comes to all the people trying to kill him.

I like Harry more in the movies than in the books. He seems smarter and more heroic in the movies, not as stubborn and dumb as he’s written sometimes. Harry is more of a superhero in Goblet of Fire than in any other, especially when he chooses to save both Ron and Fleur Delacour’s sister from the mer-people. And his sucking it up and turning to face Voldemort in a duel at the end, then beating him and bringing back Cedric’s body to Hogwarts was bad ass. I believe in the movie Harry Potter more than I do the Harry in the books.

Some scenes in Goblet of Fire fell flat or ended poorly. Some transitions were awkward and the entire movie did not quite flow together as Prisoner of Azkaban did.

However, there’s still so much good stuff in this movie. If it’s a notch below Azkaban, that still makes Goblet the second best so far, a remarkable achievement for the fourth film of a franchise.

Mad-Eye Moody was a bit of a disappointment. I envisioned the character in the book as more frightening and dangerous, not nearly as comical as he was portrayed in the film. Some of that was the makeup and his googly eye getting laughs that may have been intended but weren’t beneficial. His drinking polyjuice potion from his flask was a runner that made him seem like a goofy drunk, but when if you think about it, a teacher constantly drinking on the job should be seen as dangerous.

Needs more Severus Snape. He had one of the best comedy scenes in slapping Harry and Ron’s heads in study hall, but it wasn’t nearly enough business for the most interesting of Harry’s teachers.

Ralph Fiennes played a good, scary Voldemort. He was still recognizable under the snake’s head makeup and was generally the villain we were expecting to meet after four movies. While Fiennes spoke all his dialogue in a sinister whisper with a snake’s lisp, I did think maybe digitally enhancing his voice somehow might have made him more menacing. He came dangerously close to a Darth Vader “Nooooooo!” when Harry escaped his clutches.

Whenever Cedric Diggory was on the screen, I kept hearing Dr. Zoidberg in my head: “Such a man he is!” Diggory’s father wailing in anguish over his son’s dead body was heartbreaking and haunting.

While the visual ending of the Bulgarian ship submerging in the black lake and the French carriage soaring in the air was beautiful, Goblet kind of limped to a finish. It certainly lacked the exhilaration of Azkaban’s ending, with Harry’s closing line “I solemnly swear I’m up to no good.” The final exchange between Ron, Hermione, and Harry about writing letters over the summer was clumsy, when the last lines should probably have been Hermione asking, “Everything’s going to change now isn’t it?” and Harry responding, “Yes.” I did like how Daniel Radcliffe said “Yes,” without an ounce of trepidation, understanding full well what lies ahead for him. This Harry is much more heroic than in the books.

Emma Watson feels differently, but I couldn’t be happier there are no house elves in the movie, sorry.

I can’t wait to see Delores Umbridge take over Hogwarts and Harry lead the D.A. against her. How long until the next movie? Too damn long.

Pride and Prejudice (***1/2)

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

November 13, 2005

I’m gonna put this is the most macho, manly way possible: I thought Pride and Prejudice was really good. At about 135 minutes, the movie is a bit overlong and the pace flagged as the movie zeroed in on its second hour, but it’s pretty fucking romantic at the end. I see a lot of movies that want to be romantic or claim to be romantic but have no idea that they aren’t. Pride and Prejudice is romantic. There are three scenes that were total knockouts: Early on when Keira Knightley had her first dance with Darcy, when Darcy and Keira argued in the rain, and a fantastic scene where Keira was in Darcy’s house looking at his marble statues at there wasn’t a single piece of artwork in that room more beautiful than she is. Three great scenes, no bad scenes, and Keira Knightley = really good movie in my book.  I’ve never read Jane Austen and I never will, so it took me a little while to understand who everyone was, why Mrs. Bennett was so eager for her daughters to get married; how to women in that time period, marrying for money and security was more important than marrying for love and it was assumed love would follow when money and security were found. What won me over was Keira Knightley’s performance as Elizabeth Bennett. Everything about her was dreamy; her beauty, her intelligence, her wit. She’s just fucking gorgeous. With today’s abundance of hot actresses in movies and TV, it’s very easy to fall in lust with whoever the piece of ass of the moment is, but you don’t come across too many mergers of actor, character and performance that just captures your heart like Keira did mine.

Into the Blue (**)

INTO THE BLUE

Into the Blue is the Aquaman movie that will never be made. The season-long running gag in Entourage involves James Cameron directing Adrian Grenier as Aquaman, but if there’s one thing Into the Blue made clear, it’s that Paul Walker is the best man for the role. Not only does the blonde-haired, blue eyed, and chiseled Walker look the part, he practically portrayed Aquaman; he could hold his breath underwater practically indefinitely and found himself fighting drug dealers and salvage pirates 60 feet below sea level. Walker even had finny friends; the sharks in the movie don’t attack Paul Walker, but they will attack Walker’s enemies when he needs them to. Jessica Alba also makes a much better Aquagirl than Mandy Moore would. Director John Stockwell has made two of the better pop movies in the last five years dealing with young female characters, crazy/beautiful and Blue Crush, the latter being a well-crafted and underrated pop movie about female surfers. Into the Blue is comparatively a disappointment, with a bad script that dived headlong into the waters of absurdity without an oxygen tank. Acting-wise, Scott Caan and Ashley Scott were smarmy and terrible, mostly terrible. Walker was exactly what he always is. The best performance of the leads came from Jessica Alba, with a big assist coming from her bikinis. No, seriously, this is probably the smoothest and most balanced performance Alba has given in any of the movies she’s done to date. When the question of whether Jessica Alba can act is raised, I'll defend that I watched her grow into the role of Max Guevara and she did some layered and subtle work on her two seasons on Dark Angel. I'm not saying Alba turned into Meryl Streep by any means, but she was better here than she has been in her last few movies. Compared to her performances in Honey, Sin City, and Fantastic Four, Into the Blue is her cinematic coming out party.

MirrorMask (****)

MIRRORMASK

 October 9, 2005

One of the best movies of the year. A lovingly-crafted, sumptuously-designed work of staggering imagination, centered around the tale of a 15 year old girl entering her own dream world, learning about the darkness within herself, and choosing which path her life will lead. MirrorMask is adapted by Neil Gaiman, writer, and Dave McKean, director and artist, from their graphic novel, which I haven’t read. I was rather surprised after I saw it and loved it that the reviews were more than a little unkind. My feeling on the matter is if you enjoyed Gaiman’s The Sandman, which McKean did all the covers for, then you have a leg up on everyone else for seeing MirrorMask for the joy that it is. MirrorMask shares much of The Sandman’s sensibilities when it comes to visuals and storytelling. Furthermore, when compared to similar movies involving all-CGI environments like Sin City and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, MirrorMask is superior. Sin City may be “cooler” with its gigantic cast and its hip director, but the main difference is I cared a hell of a lot more about MirrorMask’s main character Helena (Stephanie Leonidas in a dreamy performance) than I did about anyone in Sin City. MirrorMask is a touching and haunting jaunt into the magical dream world of a whip-smart, conflicted, but bright and charming girl. It reaffirms the importance of family, the thrill of imagination, and redemptive qualities of the goodness in a person’s heart. MirrorMask has its slow sections and its flaws, quirks, and eccentricities but it’s honest and true. A great dream movie.

The Great Raid (**1/2)

THE GREAT RAID

August 16, 2005

Rallying the Peeps

Directed by John Dahl (Red Rock West, The Last Seduction, Rounders, Joy Ride), The Great Raid is about the combined US/Filipino effort to liberate 500 American POWs from Japanese forces in the Phillippines in 1945. It's based on an actual historical event. It's shot in the Philippines and uses local Filipino actors. Given my family’s history - my late grandfather, Col. Andres P. Orquiola, was a decorated WWII veteran and founder of the Philippine Air Force - I felt compelled to see it and have spread the word to the other members of my family.

The title is a little misleading; the raid may be great, but The Great Raid not a great movie. Its first half drags quite a bit, splintered into three subplots involving a fictional American POW (Joseph Fiennes in a rare performance where I didn’t want him dead on sight), a real-life crusading nurse (Connie Nielsen) working with the Filipino underground against the Japanese, and the real-life Army Rangers (Benjamin Bratt, James Franco) who plotted and lead the raid to liberate the American POWs. It’s a long slog until the raid actually begins, then the movie gets good. Good, but not great.

The stuff that really stood out to me, besides the history of it, is that the Filipino actors totally blew the American and British actors away. They were far more charismatic and interesting, it’s kind of a shame the movie didn’t focus on them instead of the American characters. The Great Raid is not a "Hollywoodized" depiction of World War II and for once, it was nice to see a WWII movie that isn't about Europe, Hitler, Nazis or the Jews. If all you know about World War II is what you learned from Senor Spielbergo’s movies, it's as if there wasn't a Pacific theatre of World War II at all.

Soon after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, the Japanese occupied the Philippines, General Douglas McArthur was forced to retreat to Australia (my grandfather was part of his entourage and escorted McArthur during the retreat) and a Filipino underground resistance comprised of both military and civilians rose up to oppose the Japanese. I thought it was a cool change of pace to see a WWII movie about the Pacific theatre in general and about Filipinos specfically for once. (I think the last major Hollywood release dealing with the Pacific theatre of World War II was Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line.) The Great Raid gives full credit to the Filipinos for their role in the raid the movie depicts and in fighting the Japanese during the war.

Something that amused me is that the Filipinos in the movie speak tagalog throughout, and sometimes they translate into English and other times they use subtitles. The funny part is that the subtitles at best overly simplified or at worst wrong. Like a woman will say, "That's all the money I have" in tagalog and the subtitle reads, "The money is coming tomorrow." What? That's not what that Pinoy said!

The closing credits run over actual newsreel footage from 1945 of the people and places depicted in the movie and that's fascinating to look at. Again, while not a great movie, there's a lot to appreciate about The Great Raid and you'll learn a little something about Filipino history. I've never been one to rah-rah about the Philippines, but I enjoyed this history lesson about the old homeland. Gave me a little bit of pride in my peeps.

Hell, when was the last time you saw a Hollywood movie where a) there are real Filipinos b) you hear them speak tagalog c) you see them fight a war and d) you see them win a war?