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05/08/08
The first season of Lost ranks with the best television. The second and third were also good, if not as fresh. Lost's small screen achievement is even more impressive when one considers that Lost could have been a seaside Falcon Crest with jungle love triangles, islandic scandals, and shore "tensions;" a claustrophobic MacGyver action show; or (shudder) a socio-political allegory (How about the islanders standing up to a McCarthy-like leader?). Instead Lost producers reached higher, combining elements of the previously mentioned genres and adding ladles of sci-fi, medium-heavy universal philosophical depth, brilliant use of sophisticated storytelling-fashback sequences, and, now, flash forwards. Their characters have fascinated- from the semi-Survivor-derivative Locke to the compelling and original Sawyer and Hurley.
Sometimes, however, a story collapses under its own ambition (Matrix) and I have the feeling that Lost is swimming towards such a fate. With the time-machine thing, increasingly dizzy flash forwards, triple and quadruple crosses, and gobs of other gunk, Lost has bored me this season. It's a shame that on their way off the island, Lost had to jump a shark.
**Update, the last couple of episondes have been better.
Tags: is lost still good, lost review, lost season four review
05/07/08
The fact of the matter is that the Hulk has never been an interesting superhero. The main reason, I think, is that the Hulk is, essentially, a super-strong raging drunk. He doesn't have any control over himself. That means: No clever escapes; no plotting; no electrocuting robots with an overhanging power line- just "smashing." Hence, the pathetic lineage:
The comic book (except for Hulk 451, which was brilliant):
The "hugely" popular cartoon that nobody remembers and looks like it was animated by the Hulk himself:
The awfully repetitive television show:
The first Hulk film: A movie so bad, they had to make it twice:
Finally, the next sure-to-be clunker. Let me guess: A conflicted, anguished scientist; the amoral, military-industrial complex; an "epic" battle between two similarly-matched supers. It's enough to make me wish for a Hawkman movie.
05/05/08
1 Iron Man (2008) $101M $104M
2 Made of Honor (2008) $15.5M $15.5M
3 Baby Mama (2008) $10.3M $32.3M
4 Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) $6.13M $44.8M
5 Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008) $6.01M $25.3M
6 The Forbidden Kingdom (2008) $4.2M $45.1M
7 Nim's Island (2008) $2.75M $42.5M
8 Prom Night (2008) $2.5M $41.4M
9 21 (2008) $2.1M $79.1M
10 88 Minutes (2007) $1.6M $15.4M
05/02/08
For most of Iron Man's 126 minutes, I was confident that it would overtake Spiderman as the best film adaptation of a superhero comic book. I'm still undecided after a slight intensity and creativity dip towards its end, but I'm certain that anybody with the slightest interest in this genre will find Iron Man as thrilling as a ride underneath an F-22.
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is a hard-partying, frivolous genius- more Mark Cuban than Bill Gates- who applies his considerable smarts towards the world's second oldest profession- making weapons. Militants attack Stark's convoy during a business trip to Afghanistan and take him captive. Another prisoner, Dr. Yinsen (Shaun Toub), saves Stark's life by rigging a car battery to Stark's shrapnel-filled heart. Stark initially refuses to build a “Jericho” missile for the terrorists, but accepts the project after some water-boarding (one of the allusions to current controversies; Blackwater-type guards are another.). Instead of “Jericho,” Stark builds his first mechanized suit of armor and puts his heretofore theoretical arc-reactor (?) power source to good use-replacing both his car-battery chest-magnet and powering the suit.
Stark escapes in a...ahem... suitable fashion. Stark's conscience pangs upon arrival, and he gives up weapons development. Alas, events force Stark to deploy his obsessive hobby: He first goes to Afghanistan to defeat some bad guys, his former captors, who use Stark's weapons for evil. Later, Stark discovers a Stark Industries conspiracy. Iron Man focuses on this conspiracy for its remaining third.
Iron Man has one of the best first halves in action movie history. It uses a genius flashback sequence (36 hours) to introduce Stark's character. The idea of a man fooling his captors into providing him with the raw materials for their destruction is exciting- a sort of fantastical MacGyver and much better than gamma radiation or a toxic bath. The directors combine the hanging-rope-provision concept with masterful tension and a touching relationship between scientists to provide us with one of the truly glorious comic book-based movie segments. His immediately subsequent basement-tinkering is also great fun.
Other outstanding elements include:
1. A fascinating near-future imagining of technology. The printer-like manufacturing and human motion articulating CAD would make for the most heavily trafficked booth at CES with or without booth babes.
2. Tremendous acting. I was initially skeptical of the Downey choice, but I now see it as an inspired casting. The audience is in total sympathy with him. He's a believable drunk, genius, womanizer, hero, and idealist- truly Oscar-worthy performance. Gwyneth Paltrow is great too.
3. Special effects, of course. I liked the quick targeting, killing mini-scene in Afghanistan.
4. An appropriately detestable villain. The scene where Obadiah Stane / Iron Monger (Jeff Bridges) incapacitates Stark is very nice.
5. The frighteningly realistic convoy scene is scary for reasons that go beyond the movie.
One may quibble that Iron Man's ending descends into "slightly over-matching arch-villain" near-banality (think: Robocop 2, Spiderman 3, the upcoming Hulk, and Six Million Dollar man versus Bigfoot). I say “near” because Stark wins with a cleverly foreshadowed trick.
Very obvious product placement may bother purists.
Characters talk over each other to simulate cleverness.
Spider-Man 3 (Widescreen Edition)
Politics/ Message:
Messages include determination and social conscience and responsibility. Dr. Yinsen induces a Peter Parker-like epiphany in Stark that causes him to question the meaning of his party-animal, stinking-rich life (What has Hugh Hefner, whom Stan Lee portrayed in the movie, accomplished in his life?).
With enough money and genius, even nerds can get girls.
Un-PC alert: Obviously non-British terrorists do bad things because they're bad and not to please corporate paymasters.
PC/world opinion/marketing alert: What's wrong with going into Iraq or Afghanistan and lending a robotic hand?
Iron Man has plenty of political meat on its exoskeleton and discusses controversial issues like the morality of arms dealing without the fatal pedantry of, say, Lord of War. In one exchange, a super-sexy television reporter, Christine Everhart (Leslie Bibb) gives the pacifist, anti-gun point-of-view (If guns didn't exist, neither would war [Don't they use machetes in Africa?]) while Tony Stark replies with a humorous version of what one might call a “realist” response mixed together with a case for the “good guys” having superior weapons.
Like in real life, bleeding heart liberals end up in bed with huge corporations.
People of differing views may leave satisfied that their opinion wins out, but the movie makes clear that “criminals kill people.” In other words, weapons are bad in the wrong hands. We wouldn't need Iron Man otherwise, right?
Tags: compare iron man to other comc book movies, conservative review of iron man
04/13/08
David Ayer wrote Street Kings and Training Day, both movies are about corrupt cops, and yes, both are destined to coexist within the shrink-wrapping of a Sam's Club two-pack; but although Keanu Reeves also has a hot Latina girlfriend, Denzel Washington is clearly taller.** As to their relative cinematic worth, Street Kings is a Geo Metro to TD's Toyota Corolla- essentially the same, but with cosmetic differences and less resale value.
In Street Kings, Keanu Reeves is Detective Tom Ludlow, a loose-cannon cop who's more than willing to take a beating to bring down the bad guys. And bring them down he does. Like some feverish ACLU fantasy, Ludlow breaks into a room of child enslavers and immediately starts picking people off. Luckily, Jack Wander (Forest Whitacker), his task force commander, is there to cover up Ludlow's bloody mess.
Ludlow finds out that his former partner, Terrence Washington, may be snitching Ludlow's more colorful escapades to internal affairs and follows him to a liquor store to "break his jaw." Washington actually gets drilled by two suspects with assault rifles before Ludlow gets a shot at his jaw. Street Kings takes longer to die than Washington, but it's here that it starts to bleed.
For reasons not completely clear, Ludlow hooks up with homicide investigator Paul Diskant to avenge Washington's murder. Things happen (For the nerdiest plot summary since the Search for Spock seminar presenter at the 1983 Star Trek convention "happened upon" an advance script, go to Street Kings' Wiki entry.) and, if you've never seen this type of movie, you may be somewhat shocked by the ending.
Star Trek III - The Search for Spock (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition)
For a person of moderate cinema sophistication, however, Street Kings will have succumbed to its wounds ten minutes before the final credits. The last confrontation is a talkative mess with out-of-character actions by all involved and unclever detective flourishes.
Keanu Reeves does fine, but I still get the sense that he's more of a MAD Magazine joke than a real actor. Forest Whitaker overacts.
Message/ Politics:
At one point, Internal Affairs investigator Captain Biggs admits that while society can never officially approve of Ludlow's methods, it needs men of Ludlow's ruthless effectiveness to keep order.
**Other similarities between the movies include a tense gangster-police confrontation inside the gangster's home and a police party.
Tags: criticism of street kings, differences between training day and street kings, positive review of street king
Youtube movie trailer.
Nim's Island is a soft-edged, FAO Schwarz-like couple of hours that kids will find fun, perhaps even adventurous, and parents won't mind.
Nim (Abigail Breslin) is a twelve-year-old girl who lives on a secret (Apparently, Google Earth missed that spot. I actually overheard the coordinates Nim gives to Alexandra, but if I tell you, it wouldn't be secret, now, would it?) South Pacific island inhabited only by her father, Jack (Gerard Butler), and herself. The father spends his time studying sea protozoa while Nim plays with her animal friends and reads Alex Rover books. Alex Rover (Also, Gerard Butler) is a Scottish-burring(?) cowboy and archetypal American action hero: Rough and daring as opposed to a suave or brainy English Holmes or Bond. Alex-fount Alexandra Rover is an agoraphobic priss with an extreme resistance to adventure: Alex's ironic opposite, in other words.
Needing a plausible scenario for her past-due Alex Rover novel, Alexandra emails Nim (as "Alex") with some volcano questions, and later, Nim reaches out to Alex Rover for help when Jack encounters a storm and gets stranded at sea. In surprisingly un-disturbing psychotic delusions, Alex convinces Alexandra to make the long, dangerous voyage to the island. A group of repellent Australian (redundant, I know [just kidding]) tourists whom Nim must repel to save the anonymity of the island complicates the story.
If one ignores the incredibleness of Alexandra's transformation and over-the-top journey as well as the fantastical thinking and human-comprehending animals, Nim's Island is as pleasant as the beautifully filmed island scenery. It's funny, the acting's great, especially from the unrecognizable Jodie Foster, and, unlike, Enchanted, the ending is completely satisfactory.
Message/ Politics:
Very conservative, I think. Nim's island is another father-daughter story, a popular combination for reasons I outline here. Nim's Island suggests that women need real men, not imaginary manifestations of admired but non-possessed auto-traits. It's also good than men should have a helpmate. Refreshingly, Nim's Island subverts no traditions, makes no political points despite the many opportunities, and doesn't teach anybody to "accept."
I like the contrasts Nim's Island makes between thinking, imagining, and physical action. Alexandra writes about volcanoes while Nim actually climbs one. Is one conquest of volcano more valuable than another? Must one validate thought through action? Is caring about a little girl as good as risking one's life to save her? Is faith without works dead?
Tags: good girl movies, good movie role-models for girls, nims island good for kids
03/30/08
Youtube video.
Like Fast and Furious, Tin Men, Quiz Show, Michael Clayton, and others, 21 is a movie that envelopes the viewer in a subculture unfamiliar to all but its participants. The secret to a good Discovery movie is making the audience feel as though the movie's milieu is actually important and that they're actually learning something.
21 succeeds on both counts. For two hours, I only cared about "beating the house." I can see people picking up card-counting books (I penciled one into Nelson Jr.'s reading list.) and Vegas hotels having some heavy booking days as a result of 21.
In 21, genius, nerd, suit salesman, and Harvard Med School acceptee Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) needs $300,000 to pay for Medical School. He tries for a scholarship, but leaves the interview unsure that he can sufficiently “dazzle” the interviewer with his life experience.
After hearing Campbell's impressive analysis of the Monty Hall math problem, college professor Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey) recruits Campbell into a secret team of card players who combine their Ivy League-caliber brains with some sophisticated and deceptive house-busting card-counting techniques to make thousands of dollars. Campbell reluctantly joins the team and soon becomes the star player. The team wins consistently. Eventually, Campbell changes from super-geek to super-stud- on the way gaining a girl, the beautiful Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth), and losing his nerdy friends who are working on some kind of island-of-misfit-Radio Shack-toys Robot.
Tyco R/C Cars Lightning McQueen 1:16
Campbell has inter-group conflicts with Fisher (Jacob Pitts), the usurped “big player,” and Jill. The whole team has issues with Mickey Rosa. The uninteresting nerds and a Cole Williams (Laurence Fishburne)- led security firm that identifies card counters add some external-to-the-group conflict
The security firm subplot is both exciting and, surely, unrealistic. Williams doesn't go the counters and politely asks them, as one might imagine, to leave- he beats them up in the boiler room. I'm not a legal expert, but if a casino extra-legally beat me up, and I didn't even break the law, I'd sue.
21's best moment is when Rosa leaves the team after Campbell loses $250,000 in an “emotional” outburst. The director creates real tension as the team decides to go it without Rosa.
Besides the annoying, smart-aleck dialog- especially by the intense Rosa and Asian Choi, the been-there nerd humor, Campbell's mysterious pangs of conscience prior to joining the group, and a lackluster love story, I didn't catch any huge flaws in the movie. 21 is a solid, if unspectacular film.
Politics/ Message:
21 faintly urges loyalty amongst team members and friends, as Campbell regrets losing his nerd posse and stays loyal to his counting crew. The real lesson could very well be the healthy, “Do your homework and be a genius millionaire that gets hot chicks.”
Not too much in the way of politics. Barack Obama may have wanted to help Campbell with his tuition bill, although Campbell would still be $284,000 short with Obama's college welfare program.
Rosa doesn't explain why he doesn't trust girls to gamble, but ultra-feminists may pick a bone with that.
The Fast and the Furious - Tokyo Drift (Widescreen Edition)
Michael Clayton (Widescreen Edition)
03/15/08
Whatever the future holds for us, any loss of confidence in societal institutions will effect a resurgence of punk music. Or, at least, punk-style flourishes like piercings, tattoos, and spiky hair. And that's just one of the brain-dead sci-fi stereotypes in Doomsday.
Doomsday is the second best apocalypse-themed movie in theaters this week behind Horton Hears a Who and probably worse than the alcohol inspired Cyberpunk LARP you filmed with your friends. In Doomsday, a virus breaks out in Scotland, forcing the government to fence it off from society (Frankly, not a moment too soon: I'd isolate those warm-beer-chugging, burring, skirt-wearing Philistines today.). When the virus re-surfaces in England, the government sends a crack team led by Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), a Scottish plague survivor with a hugely significant name, to retrieve the cure they believe exists because three-year-old satellite photos prove that people still survive. Yes, it takes three years.
Even though I wasn't quite comfortable with sending just eight people into a vast, unknown wasteland for such a critical mission (Why not send a thousand? Why go in Strykers instead of helicopters? Why...ahh!), I expected a quick operation. I was shocked, shocked! when things go awry. The elite team runs into a group of survivors called the "Marauders," the aforementioned punk rockers. Once free of them, Eden finds another survivor band, Renaissance faire geeks led by Kane (Malcolm McDowell).
The story is a mess with loose ends flagellating viewer sensibilities like a Marauder S and M whip. It would have been cool if the one of the survivor groups were good and the other bad and Eden helped one. Instead, she just bounces from one to the other and then back again (To be fair, the movie hints that she'll make a difference. I wish I would have seen that movie.). I'm guessing that the punk rock Marauders leader, Sol, is just nuts (horribly overplayed by Craig Conway), but what's Kane's motivation? He's a scientist: He should know that one can extract a cure with immune blood or DNA.
Other story issues:
Why doesn't the government want the cure- just so the movie can have some sort of conspiratorial intrigue? Well, the resultant corrupt-government subplot is too banal to describe.
Eden has a robotic eye of sorts, which she, to the audience's great discomfort, uses to look around corners and such. First, it makes absolutely no sense: Why not have another device in her pocket, say, and keep the eye in her head? Second, the eye plays no significance in the main part of the movie. James Bond uses everything he's given at the beginning!
The rubber-fetish guy is a strait rip-off of “the gimp” from Pulp Fiction.
The fights are predictable and boring, except for one semi-exciting subway chase scene (The Marauders couldn't follow the train tracks to the Ren lair? Dumb.).
And, so it goes- a simple movie that trips upon any sort of complication.
The dialog is action, tough-guy (gal) one liners.
What's worse is the gratuitous violence. O.K., people of a certain entertainment threshold like decapitations and brain splatters, but exploding bunny rabbits? Have Scots no shame?
Message/ Politics:
Euro-nihilism, mostly. I very much doubt that the Scots, an admittedly uncivilized population group, would degenerate to such an extent. I'd consider it more likely that Scots would turn to religion, not Frankie Goes to Hollywood for civilization guidance. Precedence? Europe did suffer under numerous wars and plagues without reverting to barbarism.
Pulp Fiction (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)
Horton Hears a Who is the most disturbing of Dr. Seuss' books. I remember reading it as a child and agonizing over the picture of Horton looking for the worlded flower in an enormous field of similar ones.
The movie version contains that excruciating scene, but turns out to be much more delightful than frustrating.
If you couldn't spare the 10 minutes to read the book, Horton Hears a Who is about an elephant who finds a speck of dust that contains, deep in its core (the animation does a wonderful explaining the speck-world's isolation as well as why only Horton can hear the Whos- his elephant ears.), another world. Conflict arises when Sour, a busybody kangaroo, demands that Horton renounce his belief in the speck people. Horton refuses Sour, of course, but agrees to relocate the speck world when Whoville's mayor, Ned O'Malley, informs Horton the the speck's original move can have a dire environmental impact.
Sour and a Russian vulture named Vlad try to stop Horton.
The animation is bright and not live-action realistic, especially effective for little children, I think. The story proceeds at a brisk pace and despite some moaners, the movie is sufficiently humorous. Vlad sticks out as especially funny character and Horton's bridge crossing scene is brilliant.
Message/Politics:
The movie has a “follow your heart” message: Horton's writers see Horton as defying the controlling Sour and the Whoville mayor's paternal expectations as repressing Jojo, the mayor's son. On the other hand, Horton and the mayor both feel a duty to their fellow “men” in Whoville.
More important is why they feel a duty: "A person's a person, no matter how small.” Pro-lifers have used the line to promote their agenda which is quite understandable. One can also add that a belief in universal human worth- because of each person's soul- is very Christian.
Is the movie conservative or liberal? Well, Horton's a perfect example of how liberals see themselves. Sour is the judgmental homeowner association president demanding conformity within her jungle development; Horton and Jojo are the kind, non-conformists who battle the narrow-minded and old-fashioned system; and the Wickersham brothers are the easily roused, mob-following yahoos whom liberals associate with conservative NASCAR fans or talk-radio listeners. Jojo and Sour's son or “joey,” Rudy, teach their respective parents (Hey, where's Rudy's dad?) a lesson in tolerance, the kind of childhood behavior that brings tears to the eyes of leftists. Whoville runs smoothly, but the writers don't make any political hay over that fact. The most overtly liberal line in the movie is Sour's declaration that she “pouch schools” Rudy.
Which is ironic since homeschooling is one of the most non-conformist decisions a citizen can make. In the spirit of Jonah Goldberg's conventional wisdom inversion in Liberal Fascism, one can say that Sour doesn't represent community standards, but national standards. Or, national socialistic standards, if you get my drift. In the same way that that liberals fury over deviations from orthodoxy and demand apologies from or expulsion of PC offenders (Lawrence Summers, for one.), Sour rouses the community to condemn Horton's supra-empiricism (“You shouldn't believe in what you can't see.”), or because he mentions his faith in a public school (Sour as ACLU attorney).
As for the Rudy and Jojo's defiance of their parents: It's not always as innocent as children reprimanding their parents for not accepting their gay friend. One of the old Soviet Union's greatest heroes is Pavlik Morozov, the good communist who truned in his parents for "hoarding" grain.
Any Russian civil-rights group worth its press releases would complain about Vlad and the mayor's secretary seems to be a sassy person of color.
Horton Hears A Who! (Classic Seuss) by Dr. Seuss