Transformers (***)

TRANSFORMERS

July 3, 2007

Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons

"No matter what happens, I'm really glad I got in the car with you," says Megan Fox to Shia LaBeouf before the giant robot shit hits the fan in Transformers. I know exactly what she means. The line is callback to an earlier scene after LaBeouf's beat up yellow Camaro is revealed as the walking, not talking, transformable giant robot called Bumblebee and he says to her, "Fifty years from now, do you want to look back on your life and wonder, 'why didn't I get in the car?'"  I asked myself that same question, and if it were me, I'd get in the car. At that point, I decided that Transformers was working. As ridiculous, loud, dumb, goofy, and bizarre as it is, Transformers still manages to seriously entertain, hitting the right buttons while blowing and smashing obscene amounts of shit up.

There's a whole lot going on in Transformers to distract from the fact that there really isn't that much at all to the story. The screenplay cuts between four major story threads that converge in the third act: Shia LaBeouf is trying to get Megan Fox to be his girlfriend and discovers his new used car is a giant robot. A bunch of soldiers in Qatar led by Josh Duhamel and Tyrese are attacked by Decepticons and need to get vital info back to the Pentagon. Cyber technicians working for the Secretary of Defense try to figure out what the hell is going on, while John Turturro, in charge of a secret government agency, chews the scenery as he hunts down LaBeouf and Fox and reveals the secret behind what the Transformers are doing on Earth and the device (the Allspark Cube) they are after.  

Transformers could have lost the latter two story threads, consolidated the details among the other two threads, and been a much better movie for it. Does anyone really give a rat's ass what the Australian woman and Anthony Anderson were doing and what happens to them? Every moment away from the Transformers or Fox and LaBeouf meant the movie was spinning its wheels. Transformers worked best when following LaBeouf and Fox around as they realize cars can become robots, there are good robots and bad robots, and they meet the Autobots and their leader Optimus Prime, who explains the details of the Transformers that any kid who grew up in the 80's (including me) knows by heart.

Though giant alien robots walk the Earth, dig underneath it, soar above it, and roll through its streets, Transformers isn't about the wonder of it all. These amazing machines receive little awe and only a modicum of curiosity. While the audience knowingly chuckles at being asked to swallow wholesale the premise of giant transforming robots called Autobots and Decepticons from the planet Cybertron, the humans in the movie are much more immediately accepting. What Transformers is mainly interested in is goofy robot comedy and hardcore robot fighting.

The goofy comedy was abundant. Bumblebee goes all out to help his new driver win his dream girl by playing pop songs and driving her to Makeout Point. When Fox calls Bumblebee a crappy old Camaro, he gets offended and instantly redesigns himself into the newest model. Then there's a long, drawn out, totally asinine comedy sequence where all of the enormous Autobots hang out in LaBeouf's backyard, "hiding" from his parents, and go completely unnoticed by everyone else in the neighborhood. Transformers also shows us a robot peeing on a human, which has to make some sort of AFI list or else there's just no justice in the world.

For comedy not involving giant robots (or, you know, any actual comedy), there's a running gag where everyone mispronounces "Witwicky" and there's Anthony Anderson as the loud black guy, complete with fat cousin and angry mama. They're just about topped by LaBeouf's mother, who prattles on and on during some painful "improv", including over the closing credits. John Turturro left teeth marks on the scenery and the robots with his bizarre secret agent character, although he had the best line in the movie when he assessed Megan Fox: "She's a criminal. Criminals are hot!"

The giant robots whaling on each other action was quite satisfying. Some of the best action scenes take place in Qatar as the soldiers attempt to defend themselves against a giant robot that transformed from a helicopter and another shaped like a scorpion that burrows through the sand. My favorite action sequence is late in the movie when Starscream, the Decepticon fighter jet, takes out the Air Force fighters by transforming back and forth and smashing the planes in mid air.

The biggest issues I have were that the movie waited until the third act to introduce most of the Decepticons, who were all grey, interchangable, and lacking discernable personalities, and that no time was taken to explain what special abilities or weapons they each have. It seemed like they all just shot missiles at each other, except for Optimus Prime, who had some sort of sword and a big ass gun, each of which he used just once. Except for Optimus and Bumblebee, all of the other robots looked too much alike and it was hard to tell them apart.

I was also annoyed that two major battles happen offscreen: we never see how Bumblebee defeats the police car Decepticon before he reveals himself fully to LaBeouf and Fox. Even more annoying, we end up not seeing most of the Megatron vs. Optimus Prime smackdown. We see their initial collision as they smash through a building, which was awesome, but the action cuts away and then suddenly we come back to see Prime on his back, beaten, leaving LaBeouf to save the day. Prime was also way too eager to commit suicide. Basically his plan to beat Megatron was to fight him for a while, knowing he'd lose, and then kill himself with the Allspark Cube, which would hopefully also take Megatron out with him. Transformers' theme, which we're beaten over the head with, is "No sacrifice, no victory", but Prime is a little too keen on the sacrifice part.

The robots are ugly and overdesigned eyesores. When they're in action, leaping, running, fighting, half the time I couldn't make out what I was looking at or what was going on. But, like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, the special effects were so convincing that I never once questioned the robots were real. The one failure was the human sized Decepticon who transformed into a CD player. A Decepticon that isn't several stories tall for the humans to fight is a good idea, but in a movie full of pug fugly robots, this one, which looked like the little paperclip in Microsoft Word that asks you if you need help crossed with a bunch of metal spikes and antennae, was the fug pugliest of all.

Still, I had a really good time watching Transformers, a much better time than I expected to have going in. The core story of a teenage boy getting his first car to impress the girl he likes, which turned out to be a giant transforming robot, won me over. In the middle of all the frenzied action, LaBeouf provided a central character who was believable and relatable for the audience. He also had the thankless task in act three of spouting lines like, "That's Megatron, the harbinger of death" and providing exposition on the Cybertronian Wars for the other humans in the room. The Autobots meanwhile had personalities pulled straight from the cartoons I adored as a child and outgrew once I hit puberty. Both the Autobots and Deceptions have charmingly simple worldviews, summarized by Optimus' line "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings", and by Megatron's "I'll kill you!!" (I'm paraphrasing.)

In the end, the Transformers came to Earth to smash and to entertain, both of which they succeeded at in abundance. Transformers 2 was suitably set up before the credits rolled out. Bumblebee chooses to remain in disguise as LaBeouf's car, allowing, probably even encouraging, LaBeouf to have sex with the very hot Fox on his hood. The movie essentially closes with a bizarre implied three way with a robot car, his driver, and his driver's girl. That is one kinky alien robot. There should have been a closing scene where Bumblebee asks Optimus, "Why was I programmed to feel aroused?" I have a feeling Optimus would rather roll out than tackle that one.

Read Essay: More Than Meets The Eye

Live Free or Die Hard (**1/2)

LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD

July 1, 2007

I'm an old school Die Hard fanatic. One of my fondest moviegoing memories is watching the original in the theater with my dad when I was 13. To me, the first Die Hard, along with Lethal Weapon 1 and 2 and Robocop, set the standard for action movies during the 80's that only Terminator 2 met and exceeded in 1991. Nothing else calling itself an action movie since has been in their league. Certainly not Live Free or Die Hard. The first 30 minutes or so, it didn't feel like a Die Hard movie at all. Remove the physical presence of Bruce Willis and I might as well have been watching Enemy of the State or some other fast edit, jump cut cyber-thriller. It really didn't help matters that the choice of desaturating the color so that the movie looked like Underworld or Minority Report is all wrong for a Die Hard movie. Len Wiseman can't direct for shit, the movie was poorly edited, and either Wiseman doesn't know how or just didn't bother to spend the time to build the appropriate dramatic tension during the action scenes so the audience gets drawn into it as opposed to shit just blowing up one after the other like they're trying to win a race.
It wasn't until the action sequence where John McClane launched the car into the helicopter that it started to feel like a Die Hard movie. When McClane came out of that action sequence all bloodied up and hurt, I thought to myself, "There he is! There's John McClane. Finally, this is Die Hard." And then I wondered how he'd survive the next two hours when he was already so injured. The answer: this newer, older, bald John McClane (why couldn't he have worn a wig like in The Sixth Sense?) is a Terminator crossed with Wolverine. He heals superfast and never stops coming at you, even telling Timothy Olyphant several times he was coming for him. Then Terminator McClane fights Maggie Q, his own Terminatrix, who can survive being hit head on by an SUV at high speed through several walls and shake it off. Then McClane fights a harrier jet with a semi truck, survives a fall and explosion that should have not only killed him but smashed him into pieces and burned those pieces into char, but he gets right up immediately, perfectly fine. In fact, Live Free or Die Hard reminded me a whole lot of Terminator 3 -- it felt like fan fiction cribbing on the name and reputation of the original, doing just enough to barely scrape by with enough credibility to call itself a part of the franchise.

The story was equal parts preposterous but still kind of cool and fun, and the movie did get better as it went along. Bruce Willis I thought was inconsistent; his physical presence aside, sometimes he was like a stern faced robot but occasionally, flashes of the old John McClane we know and love would come through, just not enough or often enough. Justin Long started off annoying me something fierce and had a really bad "comedy" scene where he tricks OnStar into starting the car they had stolen, but he also became more sympathetic and likeable as the movie continued. He actually had the best character arc in the movie and was the only one who understood what the cyberterrorists were doing and genuinely felt bad about it.. Timothy Olyphant couldn't hold a candle to Alan Rickman or Jeremy Irons, but he also got more interesting as McLane fouled up his plans. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is an actress I find very attractive and appealing. She didn't have a whole lot to do as Lucy McClane except require rescuing but her character arc and performance did just enough to evoke that she is indeed the daughter of John McClane.

Overall, I liked Live Free or Die Hard well enough. I was expecting a total piece of crap initially. It was entertaining enough and I enjoyed it, but it falls far short of the bar set by the original Die Hard.

I spent Wednesday and Friday of this past week working freelance for a market research company hired by FOX to do instant audience polls for Live Free or Die Hard. We gave out hundreds of surveys and I was pretty surprised at how positive the feedback was, overwhemingly "excellent" or "very good.". But that was nothing compared to what really amused me: By far, the strongest positive reaction to the movie came from women between the ages of 45-65. Even more than teen boys or adult males. In fact, I lost count of the number of middle aged women who told me personally that they were there to see Bruce because they "just love Bruce!" When they came out of the theatre, the most common thing those same women said to me was "It was excellent! I love Bruce!" So there you go, middle aged women love the Bruce. It makes perfect sense since those are the women who've liked him since Moonlighting. Obviously, Bruce won't be drawing the teen girls to the theatres. But boy, do their moms love him.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (**)

FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is not worse than the original Fantastic Four movie. The bar was set so low that it would have been a supervillainous feat for Rise of the Silver Surfer to have sucked more than its predecessor, which incidentally I'm watching on Starz HD as I write this. To Rise's credit, it lacks the truly profound stupidity that Fantastic Four had, which I wrote about in detail in my review. But to be definitively clear: Rise may not be quite the stinky turd the original is but it still really blows. 

Rise does have a better story than the original, which ain't hard since the original had no story. The Silver Surfer has come to Earth to prepare it for consumption by Galactus. Reed Richards and Sue Storm plan to marry and the sudden global threat inconveniently disrupts their nuptials. Meanwhile, the Surfer's presence inadvertantly resurrects Dr. Doom. The Fantastic Four fail to capture or glean any answers about the Surfer and reluctantly team up with Doom, who has his own agenda. The Fantastic Four are able to capture the Surfer, who forms a friendship with Sue Storm. Doom betrays everyone and takes the Surfer's power source, his surfboard, for himself as Galactus arrives to destroy the planet. The Fantastic Four help the Surfer regain his surfboard so he can confront Galactus and save the Earth. That story sounds like it could be pretty good, but of course, they managed to louse it all up. 

Rise of the Silver Surfer is an 89 minute(!) a slapdash rushjob of a superhero movie. It's in a hurry for a reason; if the audience has questions it wants answered about anything they're seeing, the movie has no answers, it just wants to get you out of there as quickly as possible. (However, one very pertinent question actually is brought up by the Human Torch to the Thing: How do he and his blind girlfriend... you know... get fantastic? The Thing's answer: "None of your business!" Typical.)

The comic book pseudo-science is again laughable. Mr. Fantastic actually boasts that he is "one of the greatest minds of the 21st century" but he's again written like a dumbass. Concepts like "tachyon pulse", "rearranging molecules" and "converting matter into energy" are bandied about and not for one minute is it believable that any of the characters, much less the filmmakers, have any idea what they're talking about.

The movie is maddeningly unwilling to linger on even its most intriguing elements, like Galactus. The coming of Galactus had such potential. No, Galactus is not a fifty foot man wearing a big purple helmet. Frankly, I wish we saw that version of Galactus on the big screen. Sure, it would be kind of stupid but these movies are already stupid so what would they have had to lose? Instead Galactus is presented as a cosmic tornado, the kind of space menace the Starship Enterprise has tackled more than once. Galactus turned out to be nice visual, but that's all.

The concept for the movie's Galactus is basically brainless. Galactus has no personality, there is no reason stated for its existence. Nothing is ever explained: Why does Galactus want to consume Earth? Why not a different planet? Galactus is shown blowing right by Saturn on its way to Earth; why didn't it eat Saturn? Neither Reed Richards, the "greatest mind of the 21st century", nor Dr. Doom, scientists both, exhibit any curiosity about such a creature.

The entire plot hinges on the Silver Surfer deciding to turn on Galactus and save Earth from destruction. The Surfer comes to this fateful decision because Sue Storm was really nice to him, compared to all the other humans who shot missiles at him, drugged him up, and stole his surfboard. How the Surfer decides to fight Galactus was incredibly lame. The Surfer somehow not only beating but completely destroying Galactus in seconds was shitty. And that's it, everything's cool again. Earth is fine, all smiles, no worries.

The superhero action is substantially stepped up from the first movie but still fails to impress, especially when compared to the action bar being raised by Spider-Man 3 last month. The vaunted chase sequence between the Surfer and the Human Torch is the best action the movie has to offer but even that ends up rushed and dumbed down. For example, the Surfer defeats the Torch, takes him into orbit and throws him back towards Earth. How the Torch managed to breathe or even survive once he left the atmosphere is never dealt with. When the Torch falls, instead of showing us an epic plummet, which would have made the audience feel for the Torch possibly dying, the movie jump cuts to him suddenly flaming on and then bouncing onto the ground, fine and dandy. His survival is played for a joke.

Late in the movie, the Torch absorbs all of his teammates' powers to take on Dr. Doom, who stole the Surfer's board. What could have been an epic fight is over in a few moments. Two immensely powerful creatures are unleashing staggering amounts of power at each other and none of it has any impact on them or the audience. It doesn't mean anything. Doom is defeated and plummets into the sea. The FF and the movie totally forget about him.

One virtue of Rise of the Silver Surfer is that the scope of the story is truly global, with the Fantastic Four chasing the Silver Surfer and later Dr. Doom all around the world. But of course there is a lot of retarded shit in there as well, like how the U.S. Army seems to have jurisdiction in every country on Earth. When the Surfer attacks England, the U.S. Army and the Fantastic Four are on the scene but apparently, they couldn't be bothered to check in with the British government or military.

Late in the movie, the Fantastic Four free the Silver Surfer from captivity in a secret U.S. base in Siberia of all places. Doom had already stolen the Surfer's board and disappeared, so Mr. Fantastic summons the Fantasticar.** The Fantasticar is shown taking off from the Baxter Building in New York. Minutes later, the Fantasticar arrives in Siberia. How fucking fast is that thing to have traveled from New York to Siberia so quickly? Then the FF hops in the Fantasticar and zooms off after Doom high in the sky. Reed Richards is some genius to invent an open air supersonic flying vehicle that has no roof. How were Thing, Reed Richards and Sue Storm even breathing up in the rarified air? Hell, what good is the Fantasticar if it rains?

One of the most deplorable aspects of these Fantastic Four movies are that the filmmakers are under the misguided idea that these movies are comedies. Not good comedies either, but bottom feeding sitcoms. The opening scenes with the FF involve them hanging around an airport and being forced to fly coach on a commercial airliner. What a goldmine for "comedy": The Thing can't fit into a coach seat, Mr. Fantastic stretches to put his suitcase away in the overhead bin before another passenger can. Why were the FF flying commercial anyway? Where were they coming from? The movie doesn't know.

Later, exposure to the Surfer gives the Human Torch the ability to switch powers with his teammates. This becomes the jumping off point for a lot of really shitty comedy: Sue Storm accidentally flames on and burns all her clothes off, since it's now a runner of the Fantastic Four movies that the audience has to be teased with a naked Jessica Alba, which they will not deliver, especially since Rise is rated PG. The Torch and the Thing switch powers so Johnny Storm becomes an orange rock man and bitches about it. The Torch decides to throw Mr. Fantastic a bachelor party, and Mr. Fantastic uses his stretching powers hilariously to dance with some bimbos. (Just what we need in another Marvel movie - more dancing.) And wouldn't you know it, he gets busted by Sue. It's hilarious, I tells ya. The rest of the comedy comes from the endless bickering between the Fantastic Four, which grates on the nerves as the movie careens forward. The old Batman TV show in the 60's was famous for sound effects like "POW!" and "ZAP!" but for Rise of the Silver Surfer, all we hear is "THUD!", which is the sound all the "comedy" lands with.

Character development is again simplistic. The Fantastic Four were annoyingly incompetent superheroes throughout the entire movie. Reed Richards still doesn't come off as either the leader of the team or the "greatest mind of the 21st century." The high point of his team leadership is when he yells at the Torch and the Thing to shut up.

Johnny Storm is still an arrogant dolt but this time he's more aware of his screwups. His girlfriend is Vanessa Minillo in one scene and she's never mentioned again. He spends the rest of the movie hitting on sexy army lieutenant Beau Garrett, who shuts him down each time. Then in the very last scene of the movie, she's suddenly his girlfriend. Still, the Human Torch was given a whole lot to do compared to the Thing, who's really just a background player with no character arc to speak of.

Sue Storm starts off the movie wanting to marry Reed and live a normal life but she learns to embrace their lives as superhero world saviors. Something unexpected actually happens to her at the end that was a bit of a bold move, but the movie quickly reverses the outcome so that it ended up not mattering.

Meanwhile, Dr. Doom is back, and he still wants power, but once he has it, he has no new ideas or ambitions. He's as dumb as ever. The movie Dr. Doom is no mastermind. He's never one step ahead, just two steps to the side.

The Silver Surfer turns out to be a monosyllabic disappointment. The Surfer has minimal screen time, plodding bits of dialogue and doesn't make much of an impact. The Surfer did not come off as interesting enough to deserve his own spinoff movie. It was a truly difficult challenge to create a computer generated character that has to undergo a complex philosophical, empathic change and the effects team wasn't up to it. What really sucks is that the Fantastic Four end up on the sidelines as the Surfer takes on Galactus, reduced to gaping up at the sky wondering what the hell was going on. Some heroes the FF are. They rely entirely on the guest star to save the world for them. That's good writing, geniuses.

Despite all the crapocity, I actually have two favorite moments in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. The runner up is when the Fantastic Four are traveling in an Army helicopter to London to try to stop the Surfer. The Four bicker endlessly like a bunch of six year olds until the general played by Andre Braugher finally has enough and yells at them to shut up! Thank you, general.

My favorite moment comes when Andre Braugher, who's sick of the Fantastic Four's incompetence, brings in a ringer, the resurrected Victor Von Doom. As the Fantastic Four gawk at the enemy they assumed was dead who they now have to work with once more, Doom stared them all down and said:

Dr. Doom: "Let's get one thing straight. I hate you. All of you."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

** Sean writes: "Stupid question: If the Fantastic Four have a supersonic jet of their own, why would they be flying anywhere coach?  Was the Fantasticar useless that day because it was raining?"

At the beginning of the movie, they didn't have the Fantasticar.  It was because of their frustrating experience with the airline that Reed decides they need a flying vehicle of their own.  The very next scene , the Fantasticar is nearly complete even though only hours or at most a day had passed since the airline scene.  Conceivably, the Fantasticar had been under construction prior to that, but it's purposely kept under wraps until the pivotal moment of its reveal, which was to bail the FF out of a jam in Siberia. I should point out that Sue, Ben and Johnny had never seen the Fantasticar as Reed kept it as a surprise from them.  But when the Fantasticar is split into separate components, Ben and Sue magically know not only how to pilot them, but to pilot them in battle against Dr. Doom. (Johnny was flamed on and flying on his own.) They're the quickest studies when it comes to wonderful toys since Alicia Silverstone's Batgirl.

There are no stupid questions, just stupid movies.

Paris Je T'aime (**1/2)

PARIS, JE T'AIME

June 12, 2007

Paris, je t'aime ("Paris, I love you") is a series of five minute short films about love in Paris, each one set in and representing a different arrondissement of the city. There were 18 shorts in all, each directed by a different director, including Wes Craven, Alfonso Cuaron, Gus Van Sant, Joel and Ethan Coen, and Alexander Payne and featuring an international cast that included Nick Nolte, Natalie Portman, Elijah Wood, Rufus Sewell, Emily Mortimer, Juliette Binoche, Gerard Depardieu, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ludivigne Sagnier, Bob Hoskins, Willem Dafoe, and Steve Buschemi. I guess there were supposed to be 20 shorts for the 20 addrondissements of Paris but two fell through. Frankly, they could have cut maybe 14-15 of the ones that did get made and been better off for it.

The best one by far was the final short film directed by Alexander Payne, 14e arrondissement, about a single, middle aged letter carrier from Denver (Margo Martindale) who was visting Paris alone. She narrated her tale in French as a letter to home as she explored the sights of Paris. It was the best written, acted, directed, and conceived short of the entire collection. In five minutes you got to know and feel genuine empathy for this average American woman who is lonely in a foreign land. The ending was simple, evocative, and wonderful. They really saved the best for last. It's a shame we had to endure so much crap to get to it.

Another one of my favorites was one that took place in a cemetary directed by Wes Craven, Père-Lachaise. Emily Mortimer is engaged to Rufus Sewell and questions whether she can marry a man who cannot make her laugh. The ghost of Oscar Wilde makes a pivotal cameo, a gimmick that muddied the waters a bit. But sometimes you just just see a couple of actors on screen who you like so much that their mere presence can lift material that isn't so great into something very watchable. Sewell and Mortimer are two such actors for me. I really enjoy both of them. I'd even enjoy watching them play Battleship against each other for a couple of hours.

Same goes for Ben Garazza in Quartier Latin, Bob Hoskins in Pigalle, and Nick Nolte in Parc Monceau. None of the shorts they were in were very good (the Nolte one was directed by Alfonso Cuaron in a single unbroken shot but was a disappointment, especially in how Ludivigne Sagnier didn't get naked for some reason. Sure they were on a public street but when did that stop her before?). Garazza and Hoskins were especially charismatic in their roles. Those old fogeys sure know how to act.

The Coen Brothers' short, Tuileries, didn't work for me but Steve Buchemi was really good in it. Then there was Faubourg Saint-Denis starring Natalie Portman as an aspiring actress who falls in love with a blind French musician. It wasn't very good but might have been more interesting were they able to develop the characters for more than five minutes (Portman's boyfriend was blind but could run around Paris like Daredevil). But at least having Natalie Portman to look at for five minutes was a welcome distraction from all the other lousy shorts.

It wasn't long into Paris, je t'aime before I started to wish Paris didn't have so many neighborhoods. At its lowest points it felt like being stuck in an amateur foreign short film festival that just wouldn't end. The shorts generally ranged from decent to passable to terrible. Many of them had only faint slivers of story and some didn't even have endings.

The worst for me included one about Elijah Wood running into and falling in love with a vampire, which was an ill-conceived homage to Sin City that was jarringly out of place with the rest of the short stories. The one with Maggie Gyllenhaal as an actress who wanted to hook up with her pot dealer but was stood up seemed like a waste of time and talent.

There were many others that were lame or pointless, but le bottom of le barrel for me was Tour Eiffel, which was about a couple of mimes falling in love. God, I hate mimes. All mimes should be executed. 

Paris, je t'aime also ended with an unnecessary coda where it's revealed that some of the characters know each other. It would have been much better if Alexander Payne's short's ending also served as an ending to the entire movie.

If you're interested, there's an even better movie set in Paris with "I love you" in the title. Traci, I Love You, has Traci Lords as an American lured into Paris by a shadowy narrator. Everyone she encounters has all kinds of sex with her until she gets kidnapped and brought to the narrator's underground lair. After Traci is all cleaned up and then endures a lengthy gangbang, the narrator has the funniest line in the movie -- maybe in any movie. When he decides to reveal himself to Traci and finally have sex with her, he declares: "There will be no foreplay!" Christ, I should hope not, after what he'd already put her through.

Ah, Paris.

Ocean's Thirteen (***)

OCEAN'S THIRTEEN

Boys' Night Out

I love Las Vegas. The high class visage, the lowbrow edge, the casinos, the towering hotels, the beautiful people, the seediness underneath it all, the elegance and the chintz, the excitement, the desperation, the reverence for Sinatra, I just love it there. Ocean's Twelve didn't work for me for a few reasons, one of them being that Danny Ocean and his crew belong in Vegas, not in Europe. Ocean's Thirteen also loves Vegas and reveres Sinatra.

The filmmakers did a phenomenal job with digital effects to intergate Al Pacino's fictional casino into the Las Vegas strip. I was just in Vegas three months ago and I know that there is no red glass spiral tower next to the Aladdin/Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino, but watching the movie and looking at the numerous shots of Pacino's casino from multiple angles, they could have fooled me.

With Al Pacino as the villain, I enjoyed the obvious odes to The Godfather movies. Elliot Gould has a line where he homages Vito Corleone asking Tom Hagen to tell him Sonny was killed. When Andy Garcia enters the picture to finance Ocean's scheme to take Pacino down, it was fun to see Vincent Mancini Corleone plot against Michael Corleone 17 years after The Godfather III. I also liked the quickie riff on The Bourne Supremacy. There's about 20 seconds of Matt Damon in London where Steven Soderbergh turns on the blue filters and shakes his camera like he's having a seizure, poking fun at Paul Greengrass' shooting style. When Damon wears his prosthetic nose, he's dressed like Dr. No or Dr. Evil, take your pick. There are references to other movies but those are the ones I liked. 

Ocean's Thirteen isn't quite the movie Eleven was but it's better than Twelve. I'd have an easier time explaining the plot of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End than I would for Ocean's Thirteen. Just about everything in the movie is preposterous. The whole thing with the two giant drills that dug the Chunnel Ocean buys to cause an earthquake under Pacino's casino is beyond ridiculous. Like in the previous films, there's no real tension. Is there ever any doubt George Clooney and company will win at the end? Thirteen also tries to do a little too much; Vincent Cassel shows up and you hardly care. It doesn't really matter either way if he's there or not and if you missed Twelve, you wonder why he's there at all. I did see Twelve and I wondered the same thing. The movie is froth; bright lights, pretty colors, all flash and show with not much underneath. But it's all very entertaining as it's happening.

Just the boys were on board for lucky Thirteen; Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones were written out with some quick banter at the beginning. They weren't missed. Without the women, Ocean's Thirteen is less personal. There's no love affair between Danny and Tess or Rusty and Isabelle. Ellen Barkin is the only woman in the movie not counting a few floozies here and there. Normally, I'd complain about the void of women (could have used a few more floozies at least) but that's all right. Sometimes it's more fun to leave the women behind and let the boys be boys.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (***)

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END 

May 25, 2007

Yaaaaaaarrrr-ha-har-har-haaaaaaaarrrrrrrr.

Last year, I wrote of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: "Over the top, mateys. Over the top. I don't like seeing quite so many loud clanging things in my movies, not even my summer blockbusters. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was a model of restraint compared to this sequel."

But here now is Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, which makes in turn makes Dead Man's Chest seem like a model of restraint.   Every complaint about Dead Man's Chest applies even moreso here.  The words "too much" are not enough to describe the excess.  As for being over the top, At World's End is so far from the top that they've completely lost sight of the top. At best, the top is a speck of dirt somewhere far below. 

At World's End is three hours of non-stop action and total fucking absurdity where the characters spend the precious few moments in between swordfighting, leaping, swinging, falling and more swordfighting making bargains with each other and then betraying each other ten minutes later. The configurations of the allegiances in the movie shift and move constantly until your head spins from the whirlwind. And then there is an actual whirlwind, and then a whirlpool. And whatever else the movie decides to throw at you, which is everything they can think of and that's before the giant woman turns into a million crabs.

Sounds like I'm complaining, but this time, I'm actually not.  After Dead Man's Chest I abandoned all hope for this franchise to return to the relatively lean and mean storytelling of Curse of the Black Pearl.  In approaching At World's End, I decided to take the advice Eric Cartman gave to Butters about what to do when two girls start lezzing out: "Just go with it." It was the best advice I could have followed because, surprisingly, I had a really good time, which is I suppose my own kind of reversal and double cross.

It's next to impossible to summarize the plot of the movie without a treasure map but I will say that as it happened I followed all of it without much trouble. Promptly forgot it by the time I hit the rest room afterwards because my brain needed the space back to remember things like my full name, my shoe size, and the names of my friends and family. But I did understand the plot of the movie. I might even be able to pass a test on it as long as it's multiple choice and there are no essay questions.

Actually, a lot of it is coming back to me now:

I liked how the opening in Singapore where Elizabeth Swann and Captain Barbosa visiting Sao Feng echoed the Jabba the Hutt scenes in Return of the Jedi . I liked how Elizabeth was forcibly disarmed, the comedy of their pirate friends below looking up Elizabeth 's skirt and their launching swords through the floor into her and Barbosa's hands.

Naturally, every man in the movie desired Elizabeth. That comes from Princess Leia syndrome, being the only girl in the franchise.  Of course in Star Wars, the only guys who wanted Leia were Han Solo, her brother, and a disgusting giant slug on Tattooine. Between Will, Jack, Norrington, Beckett, and Sao Feng, Elizabeth Swann turned out to have far better choices.

Now that I'm deep in making Star Wars comparisons, one of the pleasures of the Pirates franchise is that they've taken the place of Star Wars as the new big fun adventure movies of the 21st century.  And Pirates lovingly apes the Star Wars archetypes.  We have Will (Luke) and Elizabeth (Leia), lovers instead of brother and sister, Jack (Han Solo) and Gibbs (Chewbacca), the fat pirate and the one eyed pirate are C-3PO and R2-D2, Davey Jones serves as a stand in as both Jabba the Hutt for Jack and Darth Vader for Will, Will is chasing after saving his father from damnation like Luke, Lord Beckett is the Emperor, the Pirates are the Rebel Alliance, the East India Trading Company the Empire, and Barbosa is a form of Lando for Jack with the Black Pearl as the Millennium Falcon, the vessel our heroes use to take us to far-flung, exotic places where they get into endless fine messes that's just one damn thing after another.

I liked how the East India Trading Company gained control over Davey Jones thanks to Lord Beckett coming into possession of Jones's heart at the end of the last movie.  I liked how Beckett used the Flying Dutchman as a weapon to exterminate the pirates.

I liked the waterfall in the middle of nowhere that lead Barbosa, Elizabeth, Will, and company to Davey Jones' Locker. I liked Jack's line to Tia Dalma: "You add an agreeable bit of macabre to any delirium."

I liked the back story between Davey Jones and Tia Dalma.  I figured out right away that she was really Calypso by the Law of Economy of Characters (only two women in the movie and Calypso wasn't Elizabeth.)  I liked how Davey Jones's betrayal of Calypso echoed Elizabeth's betrayal of Jack in Dead Man's Chest.

I liked the Mexican stand off between Jack, Will, Barbosa, and Elizabeth, and how alliances were hastily forged purely out of immediate convenience. And I liked the double crosses and betrayals.  Which ones?  Take your pick.  There's like a dozen.

I liked the sea of dead souls abandoned by Davey Jones and Elizabeth meeting her father there.

I liked rocking the Black Pearl upside down so that sunset became sunrise.

I was sad to see the Kraken was dead on a beach, but then the Kraken already had its movie.

I liked Sao Feng making Elizabeth Swann captain and how she chose to remain with her Singapore pirates instead of leaving with Admiral Norrington.  That's every Asian man's fantasy right there.

I liked the visual of Shipwreck Cove (and the dialogue about how uncreative pirates are at naming things.)   I also dug the reveal of the Pirate Lords' Nine Pieces of Eight, the joke about how it sounds cooler than "the nine pieces of whatever they happened to have lying around," and how Barbosa's Piece of Eight was the one-eyed pirate's wooden eye. Little details like how the one-eyed pirate spent three movies trying to keep that eye safe paid off with a cool reveal.

It was cool that Calypso showed us Davey Jones' human form and I'm glad that Bill Nighy got to have his real face on screen if even for a few moments so the audience got to see the man beneath all of the CGI tentacles.

I liked the vote for the Pirate King and Jack's surprise vote:  "Elizabeth Swann. Curious, isn't it?"   Also Jack's line when his father Keith Richards showed him his mom:  "She looks great." I think for all of the hype and anticipation of his appearance, Keith Richards was just kind of there. He blended in with the scenery but didn't really have as much impact as expected.

I liked the parley and negotiation (and side switching and betrayal) on the wisp of sand island in between the pirate fleet and the East Indian Trading Company fleet.  The Pirates franchise has always been fantastic at finding white sand island locations surrounded by crystal blue waters that are dazzling to the eye.

I liked the ridiculous proposal and marriage of Will and Elizabeth in the middle of the ridiculous battle with fish monsters and British Navy troops in the middle of a maelstrom. I like that Will became the one who stabbed Davey Jones' heart and replaced him as Captain of the Flying Dutchman (I had figured Barbosa would get that job).

I liked the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchman teaming up to destroy the East India Trading Company flagship. I also liked how the other 8 ships in the pirate fleet stayed out of the fight altogether and just cheered when it was over.

I liked that Will and Elizabeth finally got their wedding night (because if she had to wait ten years for Will to return, she'd have been forced to end up as a 30 year old virgin). The bonus scene after the credits was a nice capper, showing Will returning "ten years later" to an Elizabeth who hadn't aged a day and their ten year old son. Good to see those two crazy kids got their happily ever after.

And I liked the set up for the fourth Pirates movie and the Fountain of Youth. Wait, did I like that? I thought this was the last one. Aw, who cares. I'll show up if they make one.  By if I mean when.

Spider-Man 3 (**)

SPIDER-MAN 3

Spider-Dickery

Spider-Man 3 contains the best superhero action I've ever seen in a motion picture.  Sam Raimi and his effects team have outdone themselves.  When Spider-Man fights the New Goblin or Sandman or Venom, the quality of the comic book-style action is far beyond what's in the previous films and for that matter, any other comic book movie thus far.  The camera swings around with Spider-Man, gets us as close to him as possible, and we feel his movements, his agility, his strength and stamina, and the mortal danger he's constantly in.  And yet the fights are comprehensible, not just a series of close ups and jump cuts.  

The CGI used to bring the Sandman to life, extreme close ups of every particle of sand pulling back to reveal the fluidity of movement of a creature composed of and able to manipulate sand, was jaw dropping.  As were the effects used to bring to eerie life the black, oily, alien symbiote that possesses Peter Parker and Eddie Brock.  For living comic book action, Spider-Man 3 is top of the line.  Watching Spider-Man's first fight with the Goblin, gunning web bullets at his pumpkin bombs, and his rescue of Gwen Stacy from a crane gone awry was pure comic book geek joy.

The rest of Spider-Man 3 is bloated, off-putting mess that goes off the rails completely by the third act.  The nice word for Spider-Man 3 is "ambitious." But it's far more accurate to say the movie is "out of control" and "all over the fucking place." One example is in the final fight scene where all we in the audience care about is how Spider-Man and the Goblin are gonna beat Sandman and Venom, while the movie cuts to a completely unnecessary jokey scene with a kid cheating J. Jonah Jameson out of $100 for a camera without film.

A bunch of new characters are introduced who make various degrees of impact, not all of them successful. Bryce Dallas Howard as Gwen Stacy is useless. She has no personality and no function in the story except to be rescued and then become a device Peter uses to make Mary Jane jealous. Her father Captain Stacy has nothing to do besides break some bad news to the Parkers about who killed Uncle Ben. 

Sandman and Venom were hardly criminal masterminds, more in vein with the evil-for-evil's sake Green Goblin than with the brilliant and charming scientist corrupted by technology Dr. Octopus was. As amazing as the visual effects were, the Sandman was a disappointment as a character, a monosyllabic brute just out for money for his sick daughter. Eddie Brock being an opportunistic dick and a threat to Peter would have been more effective were Peter not behaving as an even bigger son of a bitch than Brock was. We waited the whole movie to see Venom and when he finally arrived, he was underwhelming. It's disappointing to say the least that the movie took every opportunity possible to show Topher Grace wearing goofy Halloween fangs rather than Venom's fearsome visage. Venom and Daredevil have one thing in common: they don't like loud noises, man. That shit hurts their ears.

Beyond the sheer excess of the movie, the biggest crime is that Spider-Man 3 – "Now with More Singing! More Dancing!" – recklessly squanders just about all of the good will I had for those characters. When Spider-Man 2 ended, I loved Peter Parker. I loved Mary Jane Watson. I loved them finally being together, willing to make their love work despite the mortal dangers always lurking just outside Peter's apartment window. By the end of Spider-Man 3, I couldn't have given a crap for either of them. I'm not even sure how much of a crap they give for each other.

This is a mean-spirited movie at its core, with its loveable, good-hearted characters putting each other through as much hateful, emotional pain as they could cram into 2 hours and 10 minutes. And those 2 hours and 10 minutes felt like 3 hours of Peter embracing his inner asshole and inner Travolta concurrently while a confused and lonely Mary Jane lashes out foolishly at him. Oh good!  The Peter-MJ-Harry love triangle is back.  We sure didn't get enough of that in the first movie.

I was never quite clear whether the movie was implying that Peter was already an asshole before the alien symbiote became his secret flatmate or whether the proximity to the symbiote was what brought his negative aspects out. It sure seemed like he was already a dick before the symbiote made sweet alien love to him and dressed him up in his new black skins.  When Spider-Man received the key to the city (thankfully Macy Gray didn't show up to this party) the way he egged Gwen Stacy on to replicate the famous upside-down kiss with MJ in the rain was more than mean enough. When Evil Peter shows up, complete with the same bangs in the eyes Peter Petrelli has on Heroes, and pulls shit like dirty swing dancing Gwen Stacy right in front of MJ, it becomes hard to fathom how this can be forgivable. Evil Peter was played for laughs, but I found the entire presentation offputting and unpleasant. "I don't want to watch this shit" offputting and unpleasant. Also, just too much dancing.

It turns out to be long-suffering Harry Osborn who is the real hero of Spider-Man 3. The Peter-Harry friendship and rivalry is the best aspect of the movie. Harry's scenes where he was an amnesiac learning how to paint, cook, and enjoy the creepy portrait of his father in his study were goofy fun. The two fights scenes the Goblin had with Spider-Man were the action highlights, with real emotional stakes as these lifelong best friends let loose their resentments and had at it. Harry teaming up with Peter and making the big Han Solo rescue was great and I liked the Goblin's tactics in how to fight an enormous sand monster: launch missiles at it. Missiles never fail. I also liked the weird scene with Harry's butler that started, "I've seen a lot of strange things in this house..."   Hilariously awful. Why didn't he give that exact same speech to Harry at the start of Spider-Man 2?  What was up with Harry's funeral? I saw Peter, Aunt May, MJ, his butler, but who where the black people in attendance? Why were Gwen Stacy and Captain Stacy there?  They didn't even know Harry. 

Spider-Man 3's New York is a dangerous place with all of those murderous super villains roaming around but its population seems mostly comprised of hot chicks and supermodels. Every scene not held in a main character's residence was crammed with hot chicks. Hot chicks were everywhere, on the street, in bars and restaurants and even standing around in J. Jonah Jameson's office in the Daily Bugle. I've never seen anything quite like that.

There is so much shit going on in Spider-Man 3 that a lot is left dangling by the end. Venom was destroyed but Dr. Curt Conners still has a sample of it in his lab. Sandman suddenly sees the error of his criminal ways and has an emotional heart to heart with Peter.   You know, if they'd only had that tearful talk a couple of days earlier, it'd have saved everyone a lot of killing and webbing taxis to skyscrapers.  Peter is totally cool with him becoming dust in the wind despite the fact Sandman knows his secret identity.   Sandman also knows Peter is a big crybaby.  Did Sandman ever get the money he stole to his sick daughter? Does anyone care?

Everyone still alive is worse off then they were before. None of the main players are heroic by the end, except Harry, and his reward is a dirt nap. Missing from the final scenes was Mary Jane's line from the trailer: "We've all done terrible things to each other, but we have to learn to forgive each other or everything we ever stood for will mean nothing." Maybe the line wasn't necessary but I think it would have helped. There is a lot to forgive, maybe too much. What's next for Peter and MJ? They going to audition for Dancing With The Stars?

The end of the movie reminded me of a line from The Simpsons:

Homer: "Marge, I'm confused. Is this a happy ending or a sad ending?"

Marge: "It's an ending. That's enough."