dust-7 Reviews

King Arthur (2004)

Low budget post-Christian revamping of the tale

[14 October 2009]

The Arthurian legends have historically been much abused to attack different Church teachings. But they also served as instruction and reification of a chivalry that still seems the mark of a brave and honest man.

But that's when told straight up. The Knights had to go through Catholic ritual, so the story goes, and receive the Sacrament, the Eucharist. Arthur was a boy given to Merlin, who had another raise him, obviously Catholic and in teaching tolerance and charity toward women, as well as the martial arts. He does marry Guinnevere, but under the image of a Catholic Saint in a Catholic ceremony of matrimony, not with just a few buddies in some nondescript ceremony at some tiny Stonehenge at the water's edge. Again, so the story goes. Even paganism isn't so impoverished (the budget for this film apparently was). Rome doesn't figure in, which was also refreshing about the Connery/Cross/Ormand version - probably still the closest in retaining a sliver of the Catholicity of the Arthurian Legends as they would have been taught centuries and centuries ago.

The round table was massive and a gift that came with the Queen from her father the King. In First Knight, the guy was dead. In the story, not so. And the round table was so large it could seat 150 people. No film retelling seems to want to tell that, for some reason (budgets again, I suppose).

So what you have, instead, is an enemy Merlin of an already grown Roman soldier, Arthur, the latter stationed to Britain as the 'Empire' is dead, so Gwen insists. Yet, the Roman Empire was not only far from dead, but was reborn just on the other side of the channel not so long afterward to meet the new Islamic expansion. Maybe if it's meant just of Britain, maybe the writers here have a point. But they also want to x-out Catholicism. And that's where they cross the line. The history of the region is still that of a famous Catholic, Bede. And those were Catholic monasteries the barbarians targeted along the coast. So. Anyway, Gwen isn't Catholic. She's some blue-skinned pre-Avatar woman-o-the-woods, not a princess of Leoness, or whatever you want to call it. Merlin looks more the savage than the real enemy in this film, the 'Saxons'.

In fact, Arthur is sort of Catholic. But his men are proudly not. And the one most likely to act the barbarian is, of course, the Roman liege lord who is basically a sadist, calls himself Catholic, and is a 'favorite' of the Pope. Gwen is found locked in his torture dungeon as this Private Ryan detail of Arthur's run into Saxon territory to save this guy and his son. Eventually, the guy flakes out one too many times and they run him through. But his son is 'cool'.

So the blue Stonehenge people, we're led to believe, and commanded by Merlin got together with less than ten pagan Arthurian knights from Rome and beat the Saxons prior to 500AD.

It just doesn't make any sense. Stripping the Arthurian Legend of God, of Catholicism, strips out the very point OF the Arthurian Legend. Again, at least there was a nod in the right direction in First Knight. And admittedly, they had a strong cast (though I still think Gere was mostly lost, in that).

Just another effort in this post-Christian world to rewrite the stories and the histories in pagan terms. And suddenly, the stories don't make sense and worse - they just seem a bore.

Twilight (I) (2008)

Book pages omitted - but, gosh - this is a MOVIE!

[11 October 2009]

Lots of reviews here and elsewhere lament the missing pages, or changed plot. Well, if this were Lord of the Rings, they might have a point. But Signs, or Twilight? Maybe even the Time-Travelers Wife (or life? or whatever). There are some well-reviewed novels that make it to film. But . . Twilight? So for films like this I say - the book, who cares about the book? The missing pages . . nobody ever read them to begin with. The changed plot . . what plot, except that one sees on screen. I think that's being more than fair. THERE IS NO BOOK! never was - least not for this kind of book.

Then to take the film for what it is, for what's on screen, I DO agree with many reviews posting here. These aren't vampires. They are something with super-hero strength and the ability to leap (which I thought was the werewolf thing, or the wire-fu thing), who don't age (like Dorian Gray), but who aren't affected by sunlight and who don't really get evil vampire Nosferatu faces or really big teeth. But they do suck necks.

The plot is about a young-leading-effeminate man o the 21st century, I suppose, who is a super-hero vampire and has some school chums and others who are, as well. He saves the life of a girl at school - with his super-hero skills. She's surprised, wants to know more, and . . well, she's just so purty that the fact she's a bimbo and airhead, otherwise, is of apparently no concern.

So they all go play baseball in the middle of nowhere, at dusk. And out of the trees off in the distance comes this trio of growed-up vampires. One is a real freak who sniffs out the airhead and says - hey, that's a snack. Me wants! But the 21st-century man says, she's mine, and this is ours, and you gots to go. So the freak chases him and airhead as they try to escape in their pickup or SUV, I forget.

That is, 21st and airhead decide to make a run. But first thing freak does is go to Mom's house. He picks up on airhead's cell after she had been talking to Mom. We naturally assume Mom is dead. Next up would be Dad. But apparently freak vampire never makes it that far. He tells airhead, get away from doze guys and meet me in an abandoned school you attended as a kid. Mom lives if you do. She says basically, oh thank you Mr. Psycho vampire killer for being so honest and oh, heck yeahs, I'll meet you in an abandoned building at night just as quick as I can, just you betcha.

So she gets beat up, and as freak is about to do her in then 21st century come crashing in and picks a fight. Some of the others of his gang show up. Airhead is all bloodied and near death - or 'the turn' - so much so that one of the girl 'vampires' can barely contain her 'hunger'. Needlesstosay, they take out freak, burn up his corpse in a corner, and airhead is next seen in the hospital.

They conclude this - movie - by 21st and airhead going to the prom. And the final scene has an ally of freak in an upstairs window looking down on the happy couple - just you wait (for the sequel?).

This film was apparently a big hit with the 'tweens'. A sad commentary on adolescent tastes heading toward 2010. It's not even so much the idea of 'good vampirism', which is frightening enough. Even Mr. 21st-century has to refer to himself as a 'monster' at the very end, just to remind the audience what part he's supposed to be playing. What's worse is just the stupidity of the heroine. She IS the girl who falls on the path as the villain is giving chase. She IS the one to walk alone upstairs and slowly turns the knob on the closed door. She's the one making the long-winded speech out in the open with the killer monsters closing in. And so on. And in those films, you tend to root against that stupidity. And that's the catch. It brings that out, intentionally, in the audience - rooting for a character to be brutally murdered. And it's not a good thing.

Signs (2002)

Faith-test film that gets a bit cheesy

[11 October 2009]

Good performances by all. Weird and failed script, though. The film uses space aliens to test one man's Faith in Catholicism. Apparently, a defrocked priest, played by Gibson, takes a wife and has three children. Since the priestly character is never erased, I'm not sure the Church, at least of the past, would have blessed such a union. But these are confusing religious times, and particularly for Gibson in his own real life.

So along come the aliens. And in a flashback, an Indian friend of his (played by M. Knight himself) down the road is spooked by one of the aliens at night, locks the baddie in a pantry closet, gets in his car and proceeds to speed wildly down the road until he hits Gibson's wife who was out for a walk. She's alive when he gets there, and has advice for the kids - particularly for the oldest, 'see the signs'. She probably didn't mean the space aliens who set in motion the events of her death.

Meanwhile, in a previous scene, Gibson has met the Indian friend who is fleeing the area for a lake - the aliens don't like water, he says. And he apologizes - I'm just soooooo sorry - again for killing his wife. Presumeably, with all the space aliens around blocking what at the time were analog TV and radio signals, the guy was released. So he takes off for the lake.

And that's the test. Gibson says he's lost the Faith. He dutifully blames God, sez I'ze-hates-ya, and whatever else. It's all God's fault. Yet there's miraculous deliverance at the end. And Mr. defrocked, living in sin, apparently takes up the collar again and goes - where? Does this 'Catholic' have his own ministry, his own separate congregation (sort of like . . well, like Mel has)? Test - test passed? I . . guess. Was that the plot M. Knight?

And then the aliens are gone. While there, they were War of the Worlds types, sneaking about and trying to capture people. A film about on par with this except for all the fx, the Cruise remake of WotW pretty much depicts the space aliens of this film, as well, at least in terms of behavior.

But M. Knight should have stuck with Wells. He made sense. Bacteria and viruses. That might even sneak into a suit, which they didn't even wear in the Cruise film. Here, they're never seen but for a glimpse in sunlight. But they look like grey mummies just out of the sarcophagus. Either that's their moldy all-together, or that's one goofy space-suit.

At any rate, apparently their Achilles heel is water, even just a few drops. People here have pointed out the difficulty with that. Put a few drop of water on them, 'suit' or no, and it's like stomach acid or something. But, they attack a planet that's mostly - water. They fly around in spaceships at an altitude with cloud vapor - water. They hang around in the middle of the night and early morning. Water. Early morning dew. And where they reach out violently to grab people in some scenes, when Gibson is strolling through his field of corn at night with only a sometimes working flashlight, apparently with aliens hiding all around, not one single grab. I guess M. Knight must have thought light scared 'em before he hit on water.

Such a cheesy film. This M. Knight was once thought to be a great director about to make a name for himself. And I think Signs was even well-reviewed at first. Looking at it now . . .

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

Another of these Spielberg's-lost-it movies

[6 October 2009]

Raiders wasn't the B-movie-serial Spielberg and Lucas thought of it going in. It became more. The whole became more than the sum of the parts. And partly that was due to the subject matter - the Ark of the Covenant. Score and theme music helped at lot. A good cast didn't hurt, either.

Spielberg obviously saw it differently. He literally didn't - get - his own film. He saw it as mere pre-movie serial, same stunts, same hero, same plot, same time, same place, etc. And that's how the other two played, and sort of how this last movie comes across: just cheap efforts on low budget that somehow got a cash infusion for over-production.

Raiders was basically a chase film, secondarily, and a race primarily. Get the goods to safety. Then get the goods back. Get them to safety. That was essentially the plot. And baddies would distract or stop them along the way without a lot of prep. Just - there they are, they got the goods now, gotta get it back. Bing, boom just like that.

Now comes a mid-50s Indy still in leather with the same hat, sans whip, and he's kidnapped by a Natasha character to search a warehouse like that into which the Ark 'disappeared'. This half-mile long warehouse is at 'Area 51', above ground and of course unlike anything seen from satellite on google. And the joke of it is that they're after something other than the Ark, find it, and in the predictable fight and chase through the warehouse, they stumble upon the Ark itself, break it open, and nobody stops to notice. Ha-ha. Just a serial stage prop. See, it was just a prop. See that people? Well - that's not what Raiders was about. It was about the Ark of the Covenant, that which really, in reality, plays into the construction of a real Third Temple in the real Jerusalem in reality. And here Spielberg wants to say - lookie, lookie, I broke the prop, heck with Raiders it was just a dumb film. And to the film-maker, clearly it was. Audiences saw it differently. Not so this film.

So you just can't get 'into' this film to begin with. He's saying, the 'crystal skull' is just some cheap movie prop, too. And unfortunately, it really looks it in this film. There's no suspension of disbelief, here.

To make matters worse, Spielberg adopts the more obviously cartoonish trend of recent films, Tarantino, Marvel, even The Warriors recut, etc. So the coyote falls off the cliff, but bounces back up and stands in the air, etc. Here the stunts recall cartoons, something from Pixar's The Incredibles, not from Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Iquacu Falls, I presume they are, become like a Raiders ride at Disney California Adventure.

So having trashed the Ark and Raiders, what's the big story here? Space aliens are hibernating among us in a giant 'inter-dimensional' spaceship in the Amazon, and all that's needed for them to lift off and catastrophically create a new lake is the head of one of them, called the 'crystal skull' - seems their bodies are glass or crystal in this 'off' state. The head was taken, hidden, and has to be returned to then in order to launch. So Indy and crew are a step ahead of Natasha and her evil Russian gang. They toss up the skull. But Natasha wants all the 'secrets'. Some ray beam attaches to her, all the skeleton aliens kind of slide sideways until one fleshy alien is revealed (maybe Spielberg had just been watching, Blade?). She looks at him. He looks at her. Poof! she goes, somewhat like the baddies in Raiders trying to stare into the open Ark.

And so I said - what the gosh-darned and gee-whiz was THAT? Good work, Steve. Keep showing us you've lost it.

Pitch Black (2000)

Suicidal heroine spoils the drama

[3 October 2009]

Odd sci-fi film about a group of 40, like some group of people on a passenger airline, in suspended animation (like that will ever work) on a log like that in 2001 heading . . somewhere - I guess. They float over what looks like a black hole, but which I guess is intended to show a planet with rings and a large moon or planet (?).

The spaceship flames into the planet/moon's atmosphere. Flames everywhere tearing the ship apart. The Captain jettisons entire compartments from the log and threatens to eject the passengers, as well - to save weight, 'tail-heavy', sumpin like that.

Eventually, the glass breaks and the flames hit her right in the face. Oh, yeah, spaceship lands. And she's fine - not even a blemish on her face. Miracle of miracles, or continuity of continuity error.

They find large dinosaur-like skeletons all over. And they find a base where some small crew had set up a small drilling rig. It's a breathable atmosphere, if a bit thin - which plot point is quickly discarded. Three moons, but not all at the same time.

And one of the passengers is Diesel. At first he seems a maniacal killer guarded by some marshall-type. Turns out he's a lunatic guarded by another lunatic playing at being marshall for the bounty on Diesel. Vin can also see in the dark. So is he the monster, the antagonist? Nope. The seeing in the dark comes into play when they discover that little corner of the planet is infested with man-sized flying killer bats, or whatever. They look more like the 'warrior bugs' from Starship Troopers, or least have that head but more a pterodactil's body. But they are stricken with any light source. So they 'only come out at night'.

The ringed planet causes an eclipse which just goes on and on, and all the flying critters take to the skies, thousands and thousands of them. The group find a small shuttle in need of some 'power packs'. Said packs are on their crashed ship. Shuttle is some distance away. It's dark. Critters flying - what to do? So they find whatever point light or glowing light they can find and set out. Diesel drags the power packs. The others stumble and bumble and cry and argue every step of the way. And of course they periodically fall down. Worse - it starts to rain (kid you not).

In fact, the whining and stumbling and delaying is so annoying that you start to root for the 'warrior bugs' to finish them off and for Diesel to get away. But there's something even worse than that. And that is, the Captain is always carrying on. And with the pitch black of the eclipse, she's always for going ahead here or going back there, and taking five minutes to make her point out where the 'bugs' can swoop down on her. And you keep saying to yourself - puh-lease . . swoop down . . end it already. She's suicidal, though the writers probably didn't intend it that way. And the happy ending is that as our annoying 'heroine' begins yet another five minute soliloquy about heroism and let's move forward and let's go back and I'm not afraid you're not afraid, choke, gasp, etc. one of the 'bugs' swoops in and stabs her, hangs around for half a minute so Diesel can look longingly into her eyes, and off it goes with her body. Yay! Thank you! Finally! Case ended. Diesel installs the packs. And he and the two remaining survivors take off and head for well-traveled space trading routes for a rescue.

Moral of the story. You can be weak and slow and stumble on obstacle courses with thousands of flying killer 'bugs' that can see you but you can't see them. That's okay. But to start a darned fireside chat every time you think of heading out to save the company, or going back to save them, that's what you do when you WANT the monsters to get you.

Rambo (2008)

Change what you can and the rest spins on and on

[3 October 2009]

Surprisingly good film. Stallone still plays the part physically, with all sorts of stage effects and the like. He's the warrior king, anonymous in a foreign land, ready to turn the tide of a battle.

And his theme is that - does any of it really make a difference? And his answer seems to be that if one can change for the better in some specific place, do so, and let others try to impose the old playbook.

So he is asked by some Protestant missionaries to take them to a Burmese village. He does. They get captured. He finds out when a group of mercenaries is hired by 'the church' to bring them back. Apparently no one on the river knows that he's the 'warrior king'. The head mercenary derisively calls him the 'boatman', and thinks he could never keep up with 'real' mercenaries.

Needlesstosay, there's miscommunication in the breakout. The mercs head to the boat with a few freed prisoners. But they get tripped up and penned in by a coordinated mobile hunt with dogs and a river boat. And as the baddies are beating them and about to execute them, there's John grabbing the mounted machine gun, nearby, and going at it. Meanwhile, a sharpshooter, one of the mercs who ran with Rambo and got separated from the others, provides supporting fire. In short order, the mercs still capable and alive take out soldiers and their weapons. And just when one thought it was over, the irregulars come dashing in from the hillside like the calvary and the baddies are done for. Rambo gets to stab the chief baddie.

And calm falls upon the battlefield.

The whole thing is fairly understated, despite the claims of some reviews. The bloodiness is more in the pseudo-documentary footage which sets up the missionary effort at the beginning of the film. The baddies are killing, and chopping, and blowing up and doing everything they can to kill people in various ways. And there's a lot of blood. And they take a lot of sadistic fun in it, laughing at chowtime before going out to torture and murder again. Just one big game - the life they've been taught. Soldiers really in name only. Really just gangsters, gang members with uniforms and military weaponry.

And some complain here that it makes it too cut and dried. But it is. It is clear. It is black and white. The baddies aren't just wrong. They are sadistic and practiced killers, like a hundred Hannibal Lectors if you will.

Now, in the real world, who is to say that the rebel 'calvary', here, don't also play by the same rules? Are there civilized factions at play, here, or just brutal killers on all sides? Script says no. But in reality? Anyhow, since we don't really see the rebels at work in this play, we're left to decide that either way.

Ultimately, while the Rambo character engages for the specific good, in this film it appears his initial advice is also vindicated to a degree. But if one faction are not baddies, are not village-wide killers, then the missionaries can treat sickness and do at least some things, in peace. And so Rambo chose correctly. And the message is likely that peace now reigns for awhile and the military mission and the Protestant mission DID change things for the better.

Resident Evil (2002)

Super-killer zombie virus destroys the world?

[29 September 2009]

Apocalyptic. But it's supposed to be more than just one virus - in terms of the real apocalypse, whenever it might be.

Some here complain about a computer game. I could care less about a computer game. Movies based on comics. I could care less about comic books, and so on.

Here, the movie ends with our 'vampire-slaying' heroine basically emerging into the surface, shotgun in hand, to find zombie destruction and zombies probably about to come out of every open door. Roll credits. Apparently, she got the cure. But the doctors themselves were attacked by remaining zombies, or whatever, or just took to the disease because it was in the air - something. It's not explained. She appears to get the cure. And everyone else seems to disappear before she escapes from the locked OR.

As for how she got there, well apparently there's this big e-ville private corporation, probably tied into the military I'm so sure, that build an overly large Andromeda Strain underground round lab in order to create mutate devil dogs and whatever other sort of monsters - including zombies. Yeah. And so, they succeeded. And 'vampire-slayer' and her SWAT team friends - yes, I kid you not - are ordered by the e-ville company to shut down the problem, blow the lab, etc, etc.

But by the time they get there, the e-ville central computer, the artificially intelligent Eagle Eye/HAL/every other such computer you've seen in movies, has locked down the facility and sees her and the SWATs as part of the problem, not part of the solution.

And the e-ville computer has a terrifying, and kind of silly, weapon to take care of the troops. They walk down a corridor. Lights suddenly come on. Gertrude, or whatever the computer is named, locks doors at both ends and proceeds to scan the hallway with something like an industrial laser beam, cutting off body parts and cauterizing simultaneously. The last guy is about to avoid the beam when he's presented with a hole he can't jump through. Basically the killer laser takes the shape of chicken wire fence, passes through him, and carves him into wee, little diamond-shaped pieces.

So the remaining team shut down the computer, find the zombies, figure they have to turn back on the computer, find more zombies, find a cure, more zombies, and the two remaining survivors stumble topside only to be manhandled and separated by guys in germ protective gear. As I said, the 'CDC' guys mysteriously disappear, the heroine escapes, and finds that zombies now rule - at least in the town around the facility.

Are there plot holes? Well . . golly. Is the mission even sensible given the actions of the computer to essentially do their job? The only guy with any real purpose in being there is the cad, the scoundrel, who wants to 'sell-it-to-the-Ruskies', or just to whomever. And of course, she's there to eventually take the cure. But that's not really her stated mission.

So good film? Not quite even good. But a few moments. Monsters in the dark.

The Devil's Rejects (2005)

Predictable and meaningless

[22 September 2009]

Forsythe's cops are on the trail of a group of fanatical murderers. They're quick, lethal and don't hesitate having committed to crime like a wild animal commits to a kill. So when the victims try to fight back, they're always too slow, or too weak by comparison. There seems to be little or no reason for the killers to prey upon people at random other than they've taken to it as an avocation. And a number of victims do try to fight back.

The only justice is finally had in a Bonnie and Clyde volley that finally does the bunch in. There's no real message to the film, and no real point to it, either. There's no great sub-text or much to mull over. It's presented as entertainment in the way of the old 1970s slasher films, such as Happy Birthday to Me (which in a way this called to mind, at least for me). Just gratuitous murders, tortures, beatings, accidents, and so on. I caught this on a movie channel, and would not have paid to see it in a theater. If not only the one slasher film, it also called to mind in its dry, morbid style not so much The Wild Bunch, but John Carpenter's Vampires.

Forsythe, perhaps best recently known for playing Al Capone, though hardly looking the part, in the TV 'novelization' of the Connery/et al movie, The Untouchables, gives his performance as a southern hothead 'peace officer', seen in other films. He's gonna get these killers and does. But where similar posses in The Wild Bunch, or Bonnie and Clyde, or Sundance, etc, went after groups with some character, even some seeming decency, the relief is had here when the violently insane killers in this film are shot down like wild dogs. I mean, these guys are Stacey in Seven, and Lector in Silence of the Lambs, on a road trip.

I don't know what the fascination is with Rob Zombie. I know he shot to fame for many after the brief inclusion of perhaps the best part of his hit song in the 'cabaret' scene in The Matrix. But while I understand wanting to see a film for a particular director, or actor, etc, there's no real track record in film for this club artist. There isn't a 'Rob Zombie' film, unless you count this as his greatest work.

Se7en (1995)

Strange and inconsistent

[22 September 2009]

Pitt is miscast. This film is supposedly about a killer finding victims to 'hash' with the seven deadly sins. It's still a rather arbitrary selection. The killer is almost supernaturally agile. When we discover it's Spacey, the audience says - huh? But somehow we believe him in the role, and forget about the agility earlier on. But not Pitt. Freeman narrates (as he does in films) with his dialog to try to paint Pitt as impulsive. But Pitt's character is controlled, and insecure. He's more worried about how people see him than he is to run into a burning building to save a puppy. While Pacino would have been too old to play 'the kid', someone more like Pacino would have been better; nervy, neurotic, quick to assume, etc.

They get a lead on Spacey, after figuring out they have a cluster of serial murders to begin with, by saying to themselves - now what kind of books would a vicious torturer check out of the public library. And I said - . . . . ? wha? I guess we take 'googling' for granted these days. Back in the day, everyone got their info by checking out public library books? What's more, Freeman is tied in to an underground source network that can get him FBI or CIA or whatever data. How does that matter? Well, you see, apparently the FBI or CIA or whatever was keeping track of who checks out which books from - the public library. So they ran a list of books and got back Stacey's name. They go to his apartment, he's coming down the long hallway with some groceries. They see him. He sees them. He pulls a gun and starts shooting. Suffice to say, he climbs the buildings and run the streets of the city better than Spiderman. And he corners Pitt on the ground, puts a gun to his head, but then runs.

Next we know, Spacey comes into Pitt's police station, covered in blood, and surrenders himself. Pitt and Freeman say, they guy's going for seven murders. They had only five at that point. Spacey says, I'll show you guys. But it has to be youse guys. They say - show us.

So they drive out into the desert by a cluster of electrical towers. And they stop for Spacey to lead them off into a field. There's a chopper shadowing them. But only Freeman notices a van barreling towards them. He jumps in his car, blocks the road, and orders the van driver out. Meanwhile, Pitt has Spacey kneel and Spacey takes the moment to reveal his dastardly plan. He's already visited Pitt's home. He's abused his wife, murdered her, and chopped off her head. And he says - that's her head coming now. Van driver says he got $500 to deliver a box. Freeman looks inside the box. Pitt on the radio asks the question. And by the time Freeman drives back to Pitt and Spacey, Pitt is just about to pull the trigger. So Freeman says - don't do it. But he does it and gets hauled away for murder. Spacey was counting on Pitt to shoot him as the seventh - whichever sin Spacey's character associated with himself. I didn't catch which he though was the wife's sin.

Like I said, a Pacino type would have been much better in that role played by Pitt. It's difficult to get the 'message' of the movie. Usually, the cops are shown covering up for one another. So, here, the logical thing to have expected was that the chopper crew saw Spacey lunge for the weapon, with Freeman backing them up on that. Instead, they haul Pitt away. If the 'message' was don't let emotion overcome you, again, in most films the cops are shown covering. So - blam! - dead serial killer . . Pitt gets a trophy, roll credits. At least Freeman might have mentioned temporary insanity - the supposed defense in Gothika where such also wasn't mentioned.

Gothika (2003)

How to put a film into a flat spin

[22 September 2009]

This is a moody, dark (very dark, nothing but underlit sets) story about a shrink in a mental hospital/prison, played by the beautiful Berry who is dealing with a very violent patient named Chloe. The latter has visions. Berry says there must be some rational explanation. Then one night the lights in the prison start to wink in and out. Doesn't bother Berry or the staff. She goes swimming in the institution's pool barely being able to see. She heads out home in a pouring rainstorm and runs into a roadblock - sinkhole they say. The detour is over a small covered wooden bridge. Fine with her. Pouring rain, she's talking ON her cell, in the pouring rain, now barely able to see out the windshield, and some person is standing in the middle of the road, on the other side. Berry survives the crash with barely a bump. She confronts the stranger standing in the road. And it's a bloodied young woman. Said woman screams, attacks - wham.

Berry is now suddenly in one of the cells of the mental hospital/prison. How did she get there? Apparently, she killed her husband, and brutally with knives and finally an axe. And her lawyer comes by to say that temporary insanity might not fly with the jury. So, she's in a state. What's worse, the lights go crazy again, and she sees writing appearing on the glass wall of her cell - "not alone". The same words she slices onto her arm with a razor, prior to that. Then said bloodied young woman appears in her cell and starts throwing her all around until the guards come bursting in. Bloody woman or ghost or whatever seems - upset.

Meanwhile, Chloe, still a prisoner, is talking about the devil, and the devil made her do it, and the devil was coming for Berry, next. It was like they spliced in another film, or something. Chloe didn't say if the bloody girl had thrown HER all around - for really no reason. But there's some connection.

Turns out, bloody girl must have just been trying to get Berry's attention, rather than kill her. That's because she was victim of the husband's serial killer/kidnapper side, which he shared with the sheriff. "Not alone" meant - accomplice (why the ghosts didn't say accomplice - who knows?) Symbols both Chloe and Berry had seen were tatooes of the sheriff. And he'd been an accomplice with the husband in various murders stretching back to their pre-teens years. Mystery solv-ed.

And then the film ends with a young boy, a ghost, getting run over by a bus, reaching out - I guess - to Berry. So she's now a 'ghost whisperer'. They really should have stuck with one plot and run with it, and perhaps not resolved it in a way that suggests a TV pilot. The devil was attacking supernatural angle was one thing. The explanation of the murder is abandoned (one is left to imagine that bloody girl possessed Berry long enough to chop up the sadistic hubby). Again the 'ghost whisperer' thing. It's as if they had some scenes, but no real story, which might be typical of films.

Deep Blue Sea (1999)

VelociJaws is memorable - but it ain't no Jaws (nor JP)

[17 August 2009]

Jurassic Park meets Poseidon Adventure meets Jaws, etc. It opens with a Jaws-like attack on some clueless teens floating in the ocean. They are saved at the last by one of the ultimate heroic survivors of the film. From there on it's more like the JP velociraptors morphed into mako and Shelley Winters is afraid to duck under in order to go . . up.

The sharks are impressive, even if one sees CG. The 'bad' girl/love interest gets hers as she heroically sacrifices herself to these gigantic mako sharks capable of attacking from fifteen feet away in the blink of an eye.

One of the memorable, if somewhat ludicrous popcorn scenes, has Jackson giving a confession/pep-talk as one of these enormous sharks breaches behind him from a pool in which it barely fits and reaches out about six or seven feet to grab Jackson by the torso. It's reminiscent of Jaws, again, but only if 'Bruce' had really been working out. One wonders if they had toyed with the idea of releasing a 3D in the theaters for a few dollars more? The raptors in JP of course were memorable, and have become a part of pop culture around the world. But something about an over-sized mako that can attack from some distance like it had a rocket pack on its back, and that is smart enough to conceive a plan of attack and actually carry it out, is also memorable.

One of the jokes of the film is by LL who remarks that at some point the 'brother' is the one who gets eaten, who doesn't make it out. And at the end, it looked as if that would happen. It's no surprise when the screaming, bitter chick gets eaten. Sam Jackson - you knew he was bait.

So I guess the twist is that the love interest girl DOES get eaten, and the black guy only gets partially chomped, but not enough to stop him blowing up the last of the mighty makos.

Certainly there's some suspense. It's difficult to know how the 'mad scientist' thing plays out. It was always so much more central to the plot in Frankenstein. This movie is really just about these crazy, wild monster sharks, with super brains and super speed, breaking loose and going on the man-hunt, ultimately it appears in order to get the people to inadvertently destroy the complex and make it easy to break out of the shark pens into the 'deep blue sea', the source for the title, I suppose. They want out. The last one almost gets out. And where would fishermen be, then, with these supersharks breeding everywhere?

Star Trek (2009)

Star Wars, if it were written by someone less talented than Lucas!

[20 May 2009]

Voted 1. Should be a 0 - Blair Witch as a cartoon awful. Bangs and thuds, red shirts tumbling to their doom, bangs and thuds, bad guys falling to their doom, black holes that are very selective in what they 'eat' . . and so on. It's a blend of anti-science and fantasy that separates this monstrosity from science fiction, and from Star Trek. That is, much looks similar to Star Trek. But then it becomes an overproduced ripoff of Star Trek themes and designs, similar to some low-budget TV series that never quite gets picked up.

Abrams and the PR campaign had, it's true, told the fans of Trek to stay clear of his film. Wasn't for those who grew up on Trek, he said. This was for a new and credulous 'generation' who, I suppose, have never even heard reference made or seen so much as a parody of the series - which is most unlikely, if I might paraphrase our favorite Vulcan. The boomers who write TV shows have been referencing Star Trek for at least the last 20 years that I've watched commercial television.

What the writers did, after speaking with Nimoy and getting back to him with a script, after his approval that is, was to take the characters of the bridge crew from the original series (TOS) and take them back to childhood, or at least their late teens (except for McCoy who was older). The actors dutifully looked the part, and adopted some of the mannerisms, and more often the clichés of the adult characters who created the franchise. But the adults were in their mid-30 to 40s. The kids are 10-15 years too young to be aboard THAT Enterprise. And it shows up particularly when baby-Kirk, this mock-Kirk from this mock-Trek film, early 20s, no command experience, just out of the academy is promoted to the captain's chair on the flagship of the fleet. All other officers were in the head, at the time, so one must assume.

But then one must assume something similar of an entire race established in the series, the race of Romulans. They looked like Vulcans, except in this mock-Trek, where they look like the post-apocalyptic rabble of Mad Max, Waterworld or Aliens III. They had fleets of ships. But in this mock-Trek, they sit around on Romulus, refuse to colonize other planets or else call everyone back, ground every space ship, one must assume, and wait merrily for a supernova to destroy them - when by all science, a red giant should have done that, long, long before. Apparently, Ambassador Spock of Vulcan is coming to their rescue, in a sort of slow moving rotating shuttle of some kind. Save us, Spock! ? If the Romulans of the story were threatened by their sun dying, they'd not only have plenty of time to evacuate the system - they would have done that, and taken everything that, as it were, wasn't nailed down.

Spock's cure was something called 'red matter'. Apparently, a single drop is all that was needed to somehow stop a supernova. But Spock brought half a quart. It's never explained why. So he falls out, not in, but out of a black hole (that's right), completely intact, and is captured by the villain. The villain takes a drop of Spock's red juice and destroys Vulcan. A couple of members of the high council, so-called, were trading recipes as the cavern they were in was about to fall apart on this utterly defenseless Vulcan (oh my, a giant laser beam from space, what-ever shall we do? Saave us, Spock!), as mock-Spock, the younger self, dashes in to say - HEY! you, navel-gazers, didn't you know the planet's breaking up, get the frick out of this cave - come ziss me if you vant to live? A couple of council members are predictably crushed by falling effects. Now a new 'homeworld' must be found. And the same question - what about the millions of Vulcans on other worlds, or were they also all ordered home at the same time? Didn't they have high councils, and independent governments, etc? The whole film is just a lazy, back-of-the-napkin Hollywood action film. You probably get your money's worth for all the nonsense on the screen, however bizarre and self-contradictory so much is if you stopped to think about it. But it moves along, and explodes, and goes BANG, and seems to be about something - like sports announcers always screaming the broadcast, no matter how boring the game.

But since they changed so much about the backstory, while trying to retain young doppleganger versions of the bridge crew from the original, it's a film that doesn't draw you in. It spits at you. It shrieks at you. It says - fool, you paid to see this roller coaster ride. 'E' ticket. But you'll get bored. And this sure isn't Star Trek. The Enterprise doesn't have an engine room that looks like a brewery or sewage treatment plant - the warp engines run on steam power? The fleet isn't commanded by a bunch of 20-year amateurs who fly right into a closed-umbrella 'death star' space station disguised as a 'mining' vessel.

A mock-Trek may be what some wanted to see. Malicious screen-writing. Malevolent production. Nimoy - WHAT were you thinkg? You are not Spock, your book title. Yeah, we get that. Doesn't mean you have to dump all over the franchise. So you're not Spock. Let it go! Or else, sick of Trekkers. Sick of constant Trek references in sitcoms and whatever else. No more Trek. This isn't your 'Daddies' Trek. This isn't any kind of Trek at all! Not in any way. It's bait n switch, it's theft of a franchise in order to stomp all over it. What's more, it's just bad film-making, which failure and contempt can't be rescued by a floor of competently produced stunts and effects.

Click (2006)

The old formula still brings a tear

[28 November 2008]

The retelling of a Christmas Carol, even more than It's a Wonderful Life, by resort to a gadget - a supernatural remote control that literally alters time for he who operates it. I caught the broadcast premiere, probably in the effort to make this yet another 'holiday' favorite (and which is appropriate, if the 'holiday' meant more than simply - holiday). It's a 'Capra-film' (Frank Coraci, actually), nonetheless, just not quite as good.

A struggling junior architect, happily married with two small children, wishes to become partners in a firm designing large projects. He's having trouble with their domestic squabbling, like George in the 'fixer-upper' after having lost the day's cash, and wants time to himself for an important presentation. More importantly, with the various remote controls around the house, he keeps picking up the wrong one. Finally frustrated, he takes off late one evening to pick one up. For some reason, the device mysteriously appears in a Bed, Bath and Beyond store, down the end of a dark hallway and inside a mysteriously gigantic warehouse - the mystical genie or fortune teller at the carnival that later disappears, as it were. Walken is the 'angel', appearing as some 'nutty professor' at first, that delivers this pact, and this device, without ever quite explaining how it works.

Our hero, Newman, returns to find it operates his TV, but doesn't notice it also operated his wife. Soon he starts to notice that he can adjust the volume, and the world around him becomes mute. He can pause/stop time with the pause button, and so on. He finds he can skip uncomfortable family meals and outings, or skip to a possible promotion day, by hitting fast forward. And as soon as he discovers this power, even someone unfamiliar with Dickens is going to say - that way lies tragedy. And of course it does.

Eventually, he returns to the store, finds the same hallway, and questions the 'angel'. More about the device is explained to him. At this point, he'd rather pass. But now he can't get rid of it. Try as he might to destroy it, it keeps coming back. It does proves its worth, in a way, in overhearing and translating a Japanese contingent complaining about the project he had proposed. He presents their complaints back to them, before they leave, and wins the contract, and is on his way . . eventually . . to partnership and to wealth and power at the head of a large firm before he dies.

In the meanwhile, the remote is firing off fast forward even when he doesn't push the button. He lives his life on 'auto-pilot', it's explained in those periods. He can return as an observer to those times he missed, but cannot do them over. Years are lost to him. He wife leaves him. And at the end, he speaks badly to his father over a game of a 'magic coin' that had always been their secret and bond. Dad leaves the room in tears, and dies not long afterward, all of which our hero missed for fast forward.

Standing at his father's grave, the 'angel' again shows up and says - I am the angel of death. The device had been the trick of the genie, basically. You asked the devil for a favor, and it wasn't quite the bargain one imagined.

Oddly, though, as he dies in the rain, in the street, having run out of his son's wedding to warn him - take time with your family, because his son was up against the clock on yet another project of his own at the same firm - the 'angel of death' for some reason relents and hits the reset button. Our hero awakes in BBnB just before he discovered the hallway that night so long ago. And like Scrooge, like George Bailey, he appreciates what he had that he hadn't before. He gets his second chance. In fact, as a final temptation, the device again appears before him, supernaturally, one last time. He throws it in the trash.

It's the same moral or object lesson. We don't really get do-overs, which is probably the source of pathos in these stories. But we can by such stories learn to be thankful and appreciate our loved ones, and even all those around us. In Dickens, the angels or phantoms were doing as told. In Capra, Clarence got his wings. In this one, however, we tend to forget the 'angel'. Seems like he might just have gotten a reprimand.

Iron Man (2008)

Meets the hype - unusual accomplishment for a summer blockbuster

[2 June 2008]

Spiderman was good. Batman was good until the 'Prince parade' scene. And now Iron Man.

I almost went in not wanting to like the film. Robert Downey is not exactly a popular Hollywood star. JF is not a great director (he casts himself as a supporting player in early scenes). And the promos featured Sabbath's song, which I though would be inappropriate at anything but the closing credits. Sure enough, that's where it was, all the way at the LONNNNNGGG closing credits - what were there? 100, 200, 300 stuntmen, stunt drivers, stunt extra, stunt directors, I don't know? I've never seen credits that long. And the teaser was that if you sat through the longest run of movies credits ever, you'd see a 2min clip suggesting a sequel.

In short, the clip is that our hero comes into his high ceiling 'living'/oceanview room, and there's a black guy with an eye patch who identifies himself as, Nick Fury. He says he has something to do with National/Homeland security, and that Stark is not the 'only hero'. So the sequel is about government agents in Ironman suits? Still, if JF can produce even 3/4 the film he did here in the sequel, that too will be some accomplishment.

The plot of Ironman is that Stark is a technological genius/phenom. He can engineer and build a Learjet from two scraps of paper and a bottle of Sprite. McGiver has nothing on him. His dad was a munitions maker who went into the government-contract game with the heavy, played by Jeff Bridges (I just couldn't help flashing back to Big Z from the surfing penguin movie - his voice was so memorable).

Dad dies, off camera, and the young Stark is in it with Bridges, both self-righteously touting their defense of freedom by superior weaponry - which is fine as far as it goes. But our hero is naive, and doesn't realize that the enemy can grab up weapons on the field of battle, too. Sure enough, on a sales tour to Iraq, his motorcade is hit and he is captured. And sure enough, the bad guys have a bunch of equipment from his company. He even asks, where did you get "my" guns.

Perhaps it's best to think of Jr. Stark as an idiot savant. He builds an ironman suits from discarded rocket parts, basically. His captors know who he is and want him to construct the weapons he had just sold on his sales tour. But it gets to the point where his suit doesn't look anything like the rockets he's supposed to be building.

In fact, the core technology is some sort of reactor. He builds a small version, with parts on hand. And somehow it gives his suit 'super-powers'. He can sustain flight with chemical boosters far longer than there is chemical in the boosters (that he can fly, period, with no control surfaces is bizarre). He is equipped with flame throwers that make the jets from the old island hopping WWII tanks look like toys. And so on. But it's only a prototype. He makes his escape. But he lands a short distance away. He wanders the desert. He gets rescued. But the bad guys find the remnants of the suit.

Cut to chase, he returns home a changed man. He wants a bigger and better suit. Turns out partner, Bridges, is really a psycho, who is invited by the bad guys to Iraq to view the suit. His bad guys kill all those bad guys. And he works on his own suit, sort of the bigger, badder 'robocop', that we've seen before.

Stark's girl Friday, Miss Potts, discovers the secret of area 16 and the super-suit. She gets government agents to close in. But Bridges dons the suit, kills some of them, and goes after her. Sure enough, Stark/Ironman flies in to save the day, and is almost killed himself.

One place where perhaps the film goes off-note is when Bridges team so effortlessly kills the bad Arabs who had been threatening locals with Stark's weapons. It's a little too easy. Should have been a fight. And the other is the big plot hole as to why Stark needs a hole in his chest. At first, it was to prevent shrapnel from sinking into vital tissues. But he could have had that fixed upon his returns. He continues to wear the reactor in his chest, which is how he 'powers' his suits. And it's not explained why the reactor is there, or could itself be damaging soft tissues with radiation. Bridges 'super-robo' suit uses the same reactor. And he doesn't have to wear it in his chest.

But apart from that, it's interesting to see the tie in to the terrorist problem in Iraq and frontier regions there. It's interesting to see the sets. The pacing is good. The acting is fine. Marvel and JF did quite a job with this. But, dang, those are some long closing credits.

The Counterfeiters (2007)

Has its moments, mostly 'on the other side of the wall'

[22 May 2008]

A somewhat interesting effort attempting to fictionalize - for 'film's sake (isn't it always) - Himmler's attempt to either flood Britain and the US with counterfeit paper currency, or use it themselves pending the fall of the Reich. Our 'hero' is a Jewish loan shark and counterfeiter, as the movie opens with him gambling at a table presumeably at Monte Carlo just after the war, flashing back to his time in another casino before the war.

This guy wants to produce perfect US notes - or rather the fed notes, I assume. He can't quite do it. But he's one of the best, even so. He's caught by German police. Off to jail. At some point, one of the inmates remarks aloud, this isn't a jail - they're killing us. I don't know if that's for the player's benefit, or the audience. But one is sort of led around in this fable.

Years later, and apparently years after Himmler's program was begun, our 'hero' is introduced to this Nazi operation by the cop who arrested him, now a high-ranking Nazi. They produced forged documents, passports, what have you. But Himmler is supposedly telling this ex-cop, produce a perfect set of British notes. And sure enough, thanks to our 'hero's quality control, as they describe it, the group is able to start running off notes good enough to fool inspectors literally at the Bank of England.

But for the dollar, the local Jewish communist in the camp is dead set against providing any more help. The new dollar plates produced by our hero are badly photographed, intentionally, by the communist. Soon, everybody in the working group knows it. A few of them come by, one day, and beat him up. No good. In fact, as the camp is abandoned by the SS at the approach of the Allies, the communist is quickly touted as the 'true hero', who held up production of pretty decent counterfeit US currency. Three cheers. And don't kick him while he's down.

Oh, the irony. Another of these is the behavior of the ex-cop. He does what he needs to do to rise and thrive in Nazi Germany, even if not a true believer. He 'blows with the wind', he says. But he's not above murder and brutality in order to fit in. Our 'hero' verges on such, himself, though he seems constantly torn, unlike the Nazi. At the end, the Nazi sneaks back for some of the US currency for himself. Our 'hero' gets the drop on him, and gets his gun. The ex-cop whimpers, I'm like you, I'm a survivor, etc. Our 'hero' lets him go.

Another thread is this subplot of a kid, an artist, who comes down with TB. Our 'hero' tries to win favors from the ex-cop, and eventually gets some needed medicine. Unfortunately, at that very moment, the more sadistic and stupid Nazi second in charge corners the kid in one of the many alleys of the camp. He makes polite conversion. He quickly tells the kid to kneel down, and shoots him in the head. He proceeds quickly to the working group's barracks to inform them of his murder, that the kind died 'like a man', and that he did it to 'protect' them from the dreaded TB. Our 'hero' is beside himself. By the way, this super-sadist never actually gets his, not that we see, anyway. That's actually more 'satisfying' to a viewer. It seems more life-like.

For the assorted life lessons, the hypocrisies, the turning of the tables, the regrets, and so on, it's an interesting film. Something is still missing. I don't know. I wish I could rate it higher. Perhaps more should have been done with character, a little over-acting here and there, like in the old films. I don't know.

The Siege (1998)

The way it was - before 9/11 changed everything

[4 November 2007]

There are a LOT of political and politicized comments on this film, understandably. So let me be no different.

This is a snapshot of lame-brained Clinton-era thinking about how to deal with international terrorism. Terrorism was exclusively a police issue, a matter for local cops and the FBI. The military were mad, crazy, power hungry and eager to torture anyone for anything - I mean, just LOOK at Bruce Willis, the mad general - when in fact all one had to do was trust the cops and the FBI to weed out all the terror cells. Sure J. Edgar supposedly wore a dress. But you can count on Agent DenZEL.

Well, history didn't go that way. Whether advisable to coordinate as they did after 9/11 in 'homeland security', and who in this entire country came up with the word - homeland - instead of - national (which always had been used, previously) - the fact is that the FBI not only didn't know, the CIA didn't know, just as in the film, but they didn't stop anything either, without such coordination. Not in real life. No running down the street. No brave heroics. Rather, four teams of hijackers managed to board domestic aircraft, full with fuel for long flights, without the FBI saying - boo. That's what happened in real life.

As for the film, it doesn't make a lot of sense. The pretty, cute Benning, outspoken anti-USA activist in real life, shows up as a sort of narrator in the film, and almost 'love-interest'. What is it she actually does, other than parade around screen as Miss 'super-secret-agent'? - and I can make that phone call, she says. Of course, Willis plays an ever sillier character, who is for it, against it, for it before he was against it or vis-versa. Perhaps if the film is 'prescient' as some want to say, it foretells the saga of John Kerry's Presidential bid.

True enough, Benning does have some useful intel. She seems to know that there are exactly four terrorist cells operating independently of each other. How she knows, isn't revealed. Just move the plot along. The play's the thing. Gotta get to those detention camp scenes. That's the money. But she apparently mistakes yet another 'love interest' for a 'civilian' without realizing that he, alone, is the 4th cell? I think.

The '4th cell' is shot by DenZEL, and she gets her lingering death scene with a gut shot. I think they missed a bet with manipulation. That same evening, the Cold Case replay, a TV show, had an e-ville nun story about electro-shock and abuse in a convent back in the 1930s. And the final scene is strings as background to a funeral, with fade-in/fade-out quick cuts to the victims as kids, running free, playing. It was to bring a tear to the eye. After '4th cell' got his, I half expected to see just such a funeral scene with strings, and half faded flashback. But, no.

Anyway, for a snapshot of why Clinton DIDN'T seem to think terrorism was international, but a job for the FBI and local police, watch this film. Understand why the towers fell. Understand why taking the fight to the enemy, instead of relying solely on the FBI just within this country alone, has probably been responsible for no more falling, for no theaters getting bombed, for no buses being bombed, etc, or even whatever else they wanted to include in the movie but lacked time or budget. In The Siege, a Clinton fantasy, America is rocked on its heels, at home, practically ready to accept surrender or offer terms to the terrorists. In real life, in a non-Clinton world, the terrorists are begging and pleading not to be shot and/or kicked out of neighborhoods right in Iraq, itself, by their own people, likely no thanks to Benning and the usual sort who would most probably have opposed such opposition to terrorism every day, every month, every year and every step of the way.

Surf's Up (2007)

It's a surfing documentary, with a story - but the surfers are cartoon penguins

[9 June 2007]

Big wave riding in Tahiti - with penguins Imagine someone wanted to make a cartoon version of Riding Giants, the excellent surfing documentary, and wanted to throw in some documentary footage of 'Chopes' in Tahiti from the films, Blackwater and May Dayz, and other surfing documentaries, but said - hey, wait a minute, let's make it about penguins. We'll follow them with a film crew, sit them for interviews, have them talk about surfing. That's the angle. We see much of the film from the unseen documentary photographers. The penguins wax eloquent for their scribes, until at the end our hero finally says - I'm bored with talking about myself - and goes surfing.

So what you have to start out are not Emperor penguins, as seen in the documentary - the hit documentary - March of the Penguins. You see another sort, Imperial penguins I think they are, with yellow fur and hair on their heads. I believe they are seen in the other great avian documentary, Winged Migration (staged though the shots may be with captive birds). So these yellow-topped penguins chase eggs and balance them on their feet, just as in March of the Penguins. The background looks like an animated version of that film. The penguins cluster in similar fashion. And so on.

But they quickly move out of Antarctica. And the twist - it's a surf film. Two of the minor roles are named, and voiced by, two competitive big wave surfers - Kelly Slater and Rob Machado. They play penguins. The protagonist is young penguin whose father is killed, and who looks with amazement at a penguin named, Z, who was a competitive big wave surfing . . penguin . . when he was a youth. I can't help but think that our little hero is somewhat modeled after Laird Hamilton. In short, this is a surf film by those familiar with actual surfing, involving those who actually do surf, and aimed I think at a much more mature audience than five year olds. When I watched, many kids were present. And they seemed bored, except at the big stunts and sound effects, only occasionally used in the film, and for the dramatic climax. Maybe I read them wrong, I don't know.

So a real surf film, by surfers, probably for surfers, but featuring penguins. I don't know. But it sort of works. The effects mimic what you'd see in real surf documentaries. The waves look the same, break the same, and so on. The penguins ride in the same 'slots', and the underwater shots are what you'd see in the documentaries, except that these are humanized penguins, and it's animated. The detail in this animation, in mimicing the real look of a surfbreak, is really something. You even get to ride inside 'the pipe' with our heroes, at certain points. I can see the video game out there even before the film. That's what I was thinking when I saw that.

The voice actors are fine. There are some pauses that might have been best trimmed. The film could be a little punchier. It is also a bit clichéd. The main story is that our hero is the belittled lone surfer in his Antarctica group. A promoter comes by to watch him, and he grabs ahold of the 'boat' and is off to the contest. They don't spend much time in the land of March of the Penguins. Instead, they head to a south Pacific island, with a wave that looks suspiciously like that at Tay-a-who-poe, or 'chopes'. So, there they are in 'Tahiti', debating whether it's the contest that matters, or just surfing that's important. He finds a love interest in a tall 'lifeguard' penguin (Laird Hamilton's wife is quite tall, a beach volleyball player) - no surf patrol here, that's her job. She introduces him to an aged 'Geek', who turns out to be the long-lost 'Z', his boyhood hero; but who ran away by ducking into a wave and disappearing because he was bested by the villain, a big penguin named, Tank, and champion surfer. Tank is also to compete in our hero's contest. He also befriends a - chicken. A chicken. The chicken is a surfer from the upper midwest USA. And he's on 'the circuit'. He's sort of the absent minded, inattentive surfer dude. All those clichés are placed pretty much just on his character and none of the others.

The hero's last name is Maverick. This south island wave they ride, while looking like 'chopes', breaks into a 'boneyard' of sharp rocks. Mavericks, in Half Moon Bay, CA, breaks right up to a reef of sharp protruding rocks, coming out of something called The Boneyard. The heroic 'Z' saves our hero, clutching him from the water, as a gigantic open ocean type of wave breaks way over on the boneyard, the massive lip, with full sound effect, coming right down on our heroes from 70 feet up or whatever it looks like. You couldn't hear a sound in the theater when the film suddenly went quiet. The promoter is quick to eulogize on the beach, and prepares to auction off the fallen surfer's boards. But it's a cartoon. So they survive, and come walking up the beach. 'Z' is recognized. Everyone is happy. And heck with the contest they say, there's surf over in the north lagoon - everybody, let's go - with the promoter screaming at them from behind.

This is a film that might not actually appeal to little kids. And there are some unsettling moments. Wiping out, etc. But for kids who are no longer toddlers and up, and even for adults, I think the film will be appealing. As I said, an animated film about competitive surfers, who are penguins, apparently by surfers, voices by some surfers, and probably aimed at surfers. I liked it.

Blue Crush (2002)

A bit of a generic sports flick, but interesting actresses and locales

[31 January 2007]

The rather cute story of some surfer chick/bums, perpetually broke, living the dream in Hawaii. One of them is a former competitor and champion. But she hit bottom, literally, and can't get on the bike again. So that's the plot. Get her back in competitive women's surfing.

She and her two friends work as maids in one of the hotels. She has a younger sister who goes to a local school, and generally acts up. But she's a cutie, too. They all are, basically. So it's around February, and the NFL Pro Bowlers come to town. There's the QB and his lineman, presumably from his own team. The QB sort of looks the part, because QBs generally are not that built. They're not all Terry Bradshaw. And the offensive lineman sometimes can have a belly and still be all-Pro - think Larry Allen. So I found the casting just barely believable in that. And she and the QB sort of hit it off. And eventually she offers, with the help of her friends, to teach them how to surf.

It's a comic scene after scene as they learn to surf. But the point is to make the payoff. She goes to his hotel room, and he practically propositions her with a wad of bills. But she takes it home, pays the rent, etc, and we're on to the competition. Of course, she starts having sex with the QB, too. But it's for love, not the money. Certainly not any suggestion of actual marriage.

The heart of the story is the competition. She has to get over her fear. She has to brave a number of waves. And of course - she wins in the end, gets the sponsorship deals, etc. That is success.

The film really, that is, didn't have much of a story to tell. The story really was surfing itself, a sort of lifestyle, and that people would devote time to this, and to the competitions. The Pro Bowl backstory, while providing the 'love interest' only served to show their interest in this thing called - surfing.

Despite surfers complaining that it wasn't just one big wave ride after another in this film, the film, nonetheless, is all about surfing - because it really is not about anything else. It's light-hearted. The actresses are almost always smiling, which is attractive. It's just a film with a lot of cute scenes, and at least one 'gross-out' scene. And when they do hit the water, there are some clever following shots right into the water showing the 'washing machine' that grabs the surfers who fall.

I suppose the actresses have other commitments. I suppose Rodriquez will be about done with, Lost (which looks on the verge of getting cancelled). And I'm sure many would wonder, even though 'Penny' is now much older and very different, if the three other actresses are looking to reprise a Blue Crush II?

Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)

Moving, yet very dishonest film

[25 January 2007]

Supposedly the story of the Japanese in their tunnels, preparing for and withering the Allied assault on Iwo Jima, the closest island to mainland Japan and the perfect base for B29 and Mustang cover squadrons had full scale invasion not been forestalled by the success of the Trinity test.

The Japanese actors are good. There's always the slight tendency of Japanese to overact, as seen in many films. Eastwood keeps them in control, here, and offers us a faded, almost sepia, tone to most of the film, both to suggest the antiquity of the events and the drabness of the soil of Iwo. There is a moving scene where an American is pointlessly shot by one of the Japanese in the caves. He is quickly retrieved and one of our many Japanese heroes makes nice. "How you feelin?" Yeah, I know, we just shot your . . But "how's the wife n kids?" And a letter is found before the American, Sam, dies of his pointless wound. In reading the letter aloud, translated for his men into Japanese, one finally sees it dawning on the mind-numbed Imperialist grunts that Americans are people, too. But it is profound.

Apart from that, it's a low budget film that couldn't show much. Iwo Jima, means Sulpher Island. It was the site of a huge sulpher mine, which tunnels honeycombed Surabachi on the south, and worked all the way to the plateau 3-4 miles north. The Allies thought of Iwo as being basically hollow. The Japanese weren't on Iwo - they were in Iwo. And Eastwood does keep them in the tunnels, save that the tunnels and caverns in Eastwood's vision are - huge, cavernous, not at all like they really were, or like any mine would be. The Japanese added much more to the tunnels. But the film suggests that nothing substantial already existed - no mine shafts, etc. I don't know what Eastwood was trying to do with that omission. Perhaps as with so much of the actual history, Eastwood could have cared less.

So the omissions continued. The island's commander is portrayed in a Saintly fashion in the film. But he was a fanatic, who wanted his soldiers to kill every American, not to win a battle - which he knew he'd never win (and which fact Eastwood lies about) - but to send a message that Americans would face such terrorism and fanaticism in any mainland invasion. So Japanese on the island would fake surrender, holding live hand grenades. Obviously, Eastwood found it inconvenient in portraying his Japanese 'Saints' to show this. Other Japanese strapped explosives to their bodies, and similarly walked out with white flags. Eastwood doesn't show this. He does show Americans taking care with a corpse. But nowhere in the movie is a corpse shown being booby-trapped. We're almost left to say to the screen - foolish Americans, why would you think heroic and Saintly Japanese would booby-trap dead bodies - foolish Americans.

What we do see, however, is Eastwood's foolish attempt to find some equivalence between the behavior of forces under a flag of free nations and that of tyrannical Imperialism. Clearly, Japanese engaged in atrocities, and are shown mercilessly stabbing an unarmed American captive in their tunnels, even in the film. But then Eastwood invents a scene where two Japanese, healthy soldiers more or less, wave the white flag and peacefully offer themselves up. The American platoon moves on, but leave two to guard the captives. Instead, those left behind ruthlessly gun down the two unarmed Japanese. See - those foolish Americans. They're just as bad as the Imperialists. Don't you see? It's right there in the movie.

But I have never heard of such happening on Iwo. Maybe at the liberation of a certain Nazi death camp. But not on Iwo.

Indeed, the Japanese are portrayed as mostly helpless captives of the Japanese secret police and a few fanatical commanders. But the troops, while old men and boys, and peppered with new units, were eager to assault Allied troops just as ordered. It was said that most all those Japanese captured alive were too weak to pull a pin, or squeeze a trigger. No so in this film. Heck, most of the Japanese troops are looking for a way to run over the hill and surrender - at least in Eastwood's history.

Because it is so dishonest, one has to recommend against the film. It looks good. The acting is believable. There is that one moving scene. But the story being told does a disservice to BOTH Japanese and Allies who fought for that island. The truth be told - Eastwood's film is simply a lie.

Apocalypto (2006)

Most Dangerous Game runs into Cortez (or someone)

[5 January 2007]

This isn't historical fiction. People keep talking Mayan this and Mayan that, and was it faithful or not to Mayans. But all that's mentioned in the film is - North America. They supposedly speak Mayan, but we don't know that. We see the stair-stepped pyramids of the antagonists, but we don't know when or where. We don't know who anyone is. None are identified, save for the Spanish in the rowboats, near the end. We know they are Spanish, but we don't know which century, or which coast on North America.

Some are upset that Gibson is Catholic - and apparently take every opportunity to disparage him because of that. But this film has nothing to do with Catholicism. The only subtext is the part that some seem to wish weren't there - the 'prophecy' of the diseased little girl as the bad guys walk their bound captives on the 'death march' to slavery or decapitation. I suppose some might notice the padres in the rowboats. But that's believable, and even historical, where so much of the film tries to go - apart from history, or uses only some costume or behavior from history, and that's it.

Instead, this is a film about a guy in a tribe. It starts out with him trying to put one over on his impotent brother, whose mother in law apparently is complaining that her daughter isn't yet pregnant. The brother is also the strongest warrior in the tribe, perhaps next to himself. So you see them on the hunt, and they are startled by a group making its way through the forest. These folks warn of another tribe that burned them out, yet somehow these people managed to escape.

And sure enough, when they get back to their village, they are attacked by the same 'Mayans', or whoever they are, who are vicious savages, in the mold of those thugs in Gibson's The Road Warrior (someone else beat me to that connection). A couple of them are sadistic killers, one of whom kills the hero's father before his eyes.

They round up the group, save for the hero's wife and child who he lowered down a well, but where the rope also is cut (and there are a number of cutaways, during the rest of the movie, to her not only trying to escape, but also giving birth to a another child - he returns at the last possible moment at the end and rescues her from the well, at the end of the film). And the bad guys proceed to march their captives through the forest, on a sort of 'death march'. One who was severely wounded, ultimately can't continue, and he is thrown off a cliff, to the chagrin of the pack's leader. And as they come into a clearing of burnt out hovels, presumably which they themselves had torched, one little girl remains with one of the dead. She is diseased with 'hives' suggesting some contagion. And she prophecies that the captors will have the tables turned, in some particular ways.

Ultimately, that's what happens. The hero is spared being killed by an eclipse, which the priest sort of cynically looks over to the king while it's happening, and then 'predicts' it will get light again, as the moon passes through. Sure enough. And they say enough with the killing, the 'gods' are appeased. The crops will be good. And just 'dispose' of the remaining captives. That's when the original hunters/thugs begin the manhunt of our hero and the girl's prophecies start to come true, until only two of the original hunting party remain.

The final two chase our hero out onto the beach as the Spanish are coming ashore from four ships at anchor. So they go out to meet the Spanish, and nothing more is shown. One suspects they are about to try to make nice with the 'new gods', get on their right side. Meanwhile, the hero saves his wife from the well, and the family head back into the forest, rather than try to go and meet the strangers on the beach.

What the 'moral' might be is anyone's guess. It depends on what one thinks the Spanish represent, or what the original tribe or 'Mayans' represent. It seems simply a tale of a man coming into his own, learning to survive in 'his' forest and going off to find another tribe, or even some of the children who were not killed but left behind. But it's anyone's guess.

It's certainly a visually interesting film, with bold stunts over a waterfall, clever wire-camera shots through the canopy tracking our amazingly swift runners (the hero outruns a mountain lion/panther/jaguar, a big one, too). A lot of care went into the costumes, the storyboarding, camera angles, and so on. But it is an admittedly strange story, about a strange place almost outside of time and only barely touching on history.

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

Classic, often overlooked, film

[24 December 2006]

People think of Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Oz, Godfather, Patton, Sound of Music, even Duck Soup - whatever. They forget this.

This is a witty, sharply written drama, the antithesis of socialism to answer others here, about the triumph of good over evil, of conservative stability and justice over corruption. The entire town, the whole world, has more soul, is better off, with George around to help counter gross misunderstanding and greedy manipulations of the 'the system'.

Potter doesn't believe in people. He doesn't ultimately believe his own rhetoric. But George shares his father's belief that people can better themselves, through hard work, diligence, but with the corruption of 'Potter's rules' removed as a barrier. George represents the American Dream, as always understood. Potter is the oppressive evil that imagines itself to be 'more equal' than everyone else, whether represented as the self-satisfied oligarch or the 'Barbary Coast' decadence of Potterville, with its 'workers slums'. George represents the spirit of self-sacrifice, putting his own dreams aside so that others might thrive, so that 'the system' works for people, and not against them. It's the will of the middle class aspiring not just to home additions, and third cars, but to long-lasting, just and peaceful stability and appreciation of others, shown in so many ways.

But there is bitterness. George does the right thing, but still bears a burden. And when his 'silly Billy' literally hands Potter the bank's cash, George is furious and begins to forget that he is loved and admired for putting his faith in others. The irony is that he succumbs to a host of misunderstandings, himself, which is precisely what his role in the community has tended to cure when it comes to others. At his lowest, he loses faith in them by losing faith in himself. And in that confusion, enter the angel.

Here's the twist on Dicken's A Christmas Carol. And the angel shows how people suffer, not because of a man's life, Scrooge, but if that man never lived, George Bailey. Without the need to retell A Christmas Carol in that way, they could have cut immediately to the party at the house, and the cash, all the credit, but no angel would have 'gotten its wings'.

The Christmas Carol angle is there not just so that George sees that he is loved but so that we see the same in our friends and relatives. The lesson is that even in little things, like the boring life of running some small town savings and loan (cause they still had those), not only might he be better off, but so is everyone who has benefited from being associated with him.

It's no coincidence that such a film, and such a message, is associated with Christmastime.

Baby Face (1933)

Good over evil, redemption better than sleaze

[20 December 2006]

Pre-Hayes code movie with not the swearing so typical on South Park (which is aimed at kids), but more a message that evil might pay - as one finds in the earlier Harlow film of a similar sort, Red Headed Woman.

Here, it seems, as another pointed out, that some resent the idea of redemption, or that good can triumph over evil, that riches can seem only like meaningless baubles in the end. But that is the most realistic conclusion when a woman abused in this way, become an abuser, finds something beyond herself. It would be the logical conclusion for Red Headed Woman, if the story just played out in France.

Here Stanwyck, with the generic wavy 'perm' of the era, and looking like the other white actresses of the era, as well (there was almost a cookie cutter similarity to so many others), starts out in a walk-up 'speak easy' that opens when the mill workers next door clock out. They're big, tough, and apparently her father has been 'lending' her out. He makes his final mistake when a local politico stops by, and he leaves her alone with the guy for the same purpose. She takes him out with a beer bottle, the father is threatened with having his 'speak easy' shut down, and then a fire breaks out in his private still down behind the building. Stanwyck says he was a terrible father, just as he dashes down the stairs, and is blown to bits when the still blows.

She is introduced by a 'professor', or whatever, who comes to the 'speak easy' to books by Nietchze, talking about looking out for #1, being ruthless, 'man of steel', stuff. And she is seen reading Neitchze throughout the movie.

So after the fire, she takes the serving wench/maid for her own maid, a black girl who seems to like singing St. Louis blues, about a manipulative woman who does 'men wrong'. And the pair hop a freight to the big city. They are discovered in the car, and she proceeds to have sex with the guy rather than have him turn them in, as the maid sings the song in the corner. Of course, nothing is shown, as it would be in modern films, with strings, and soft lighting, and closeups on the faces.

They get to town, spot the Gotham Bank building and she strides in for a job. She goes in the back with the first 'hiring manager' she finds, again all suggested not actually depicted, and next scene she's at work filing or in the mail room, or something.

One of the guys she has a sexual affair with is a young John Wayne, playing a middle management type, though with the same western drawl as in his B-westerns. And as she moves up the ranks in managers, the exterior of the Bank building is shown, going up from the mail room, to mortgage, and up to accounting - which apparently is at the top in this 'corporate ladder' circa the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Eventually, she reaches the corporate suite, having rejected the previous managers when they come calling - some in a desperate state having been discovered cheating on their wife. But the next to the top won't give her up, and finally confronts the top boss - and shoots him. Then he commits suicide - both off-camera (unlike what you'd see today).

A new guy is appointed to run the bank, who suggests a low level job for her in their Paris branch, and basically a one-way ticket. But she has him, then, in her sights. She does the job, moves up a bit, and sure enough he comes to Paris and she's nice, he's nice, and they start to hook up.

The bank back in 'Gotham' starts to go bad, and he gets blamed just as they agree to marry, and she seems to have 'gone straight'. But indictments come, and suddenly he doesn't have cash on hand to get out of it and needs some money and certificates he'd given her. She says no. She has to look out for herself, she says.

But she has a change of heart after leaving. This is the redemption, the change. She rushes back, finds that he attempted suicide, but failed. Nearly unconscious, she holds him in her arms, accompanies him in the ambulance, and when the jewels and cash and certificates she brought tumble out of a case she says, basically - never mind, that's not important.

The dialog holds up well. The interiors and sets certainly date the piece, but do so convincingly, from the 'speak easy' to 'park avenue'. It looks like it would have been. But then, this was shot well over 70 years ago.

The film moves very well, and keeps the viewer interested in the increasingly repetitive story. Again, the payoff, the moral, is much more realistic in redemption than that the 'red headed woman' here would forever continue in her ways.

Jaws (1975)

Classic film, Spielberg's first hit and arguably Spielberg's best

[31 October 2006]

The fearsome cartoon shark, Bruce, from Finding Nemo wouldn't have exited without Jaws. So many people's fear of the ocean, and particularly shark infested waters near otter and seals (such as up and down the California coast), wouldn't be what it still is (save for the gotta-cowabunga surfer-dudes), thirty years later, if not for this blockbuster summer hit that was Spielberg's breakthrough film.

The 26 foot great white is introduced slowly, as a blur killing the little boy, more as bird's eye under the water killing the guy in the 'pond', but fully at the stern of the Orca, at last, and which then proceeds to attack the boat and its crew as if this fish were the equal of Rommel writing on tank tactics, and were as unstoppable as any terminator juggernaut - four barrels!, says Shaw's Quint, in disbelief. The barrels represent the shark, of course, when they pop to the surface (a sort of black humor).

Schieder as the chief is very believable. Spielberg said he looked to cast an elderly Sterling Hayden, the nutty general from Kubrick's, Dr. Strangelove. But Hayden had other plans. Schieder is good. Dreyfuss is the same, for a guy whose characters veer into the annoying. He gets excited, and sometimes doesn't know what to say to bullies. But he's brave, at the last, and shows that he is paying attention. And Shaw's Quint does the same. Sure, he has the bluster of one who just doesn't like or trust people, as with the classic nails-on-the-blackboard scene where he negotiates his price of ten thousand, which eventually they pay. But when Dreyfuss tells Schieder to watch it, on the Orca, or else tip over some compressed air tanks (to introduce the essential plot resolution, later), after sort of dismissing Dreyfuss, Shaw in more hushed tones tells Schieder's character to watch it, as well - ask if you don't know what you're doing. So he's paying attention. But the character flaw of Quint, suggested by his general demeanor and craziness, is that he copes poorly under stress. He just flakes out. He becomes dangerously unglued. One could only imagine his difficulty in the water after the sinking of the Indy in WWII, which his character in this story was said to suffer.

As for the script, it seems much was opportunistic. Spielberg was up against it. Things weren't going well, it seemed. He thought they might stop production, and that would be it - and his career it might have turned out. But as others have pointed out, and I think Spielberg's friend and close collaborator, George Lucas, should take note, the success of the film was due not merely to the outstanding and appropriate score, but to what you didn't see on screen. It succeeded not because of the hard fought effort to get the effects to work, but because for the longest time, they didn't, forcing the filmmakers to improvise. What you got, instead, was an almost clean, theatrical encouragement to imagination - film-making as substitute for radio serials. Crissy, the opening victim, doesn't even seem to bleed. Something is happening to her, but there are no bloodpacks in the mouth, as later with Quint, when you've already seen the shark. She just, literally, gets jerked back and forth and is pulled under. It's much the same for the mannequin, the remains of the fisherman found in the dead of night as Dreyfuss confesses that he's rich and bought that boat/yacht, himself. The dead head is obviously a prop. But the reaction shot, the pacing, and importantly that Spielberg has your suspension of disbelief at that point, might make it work. At lot is left to the imagination for you to ignore that it's obviously a prop, a dummy.

Looking on the shark, now, in 2006, it's difficult not to see that it's obviously a mechanical prop. But in 1975, if you'd said to most people, they're building a large mechanical shark, people might have said - why? Great whites were known to those who would know. Those around Martha's Vineyard knew, of course - and that it didn't work, most of the time. But I think to most, this was the introduction of a creature they didn't know existed. So caught up in the film's suspense, the pacing, the direction, I think it was easily possible not to see this as a mechanical thing, but literally by imagination to overlook the obvious and make it seem what it was supposed to be - a live, gigantic, smart as an elephant, shark. But again, fortunately for the filmmakers, the fake shark was broken much of the time. And some of the key underwater footage was of real great whites, sometimes attacking a small model of the shark cage, scaled down. And Spielberg even shot a few brief shots of 'Dreyfuss' in the cage at the very last in someone's swimming pool.

There are a couple of key scenes. The set up for the shark eating the guy in the dingy, in the 'pond', apparently goes to some theme of the novel of the greedy businessmen who would overlook their civic duty and responsibility for the sake of not shutting down business on the big holiday. And then the 'shark fin' attacks, the frightened adults paw over the kids floating in their way, and trample the oldsters who can't get out of their way.

Another is the first view of the shark, showing that it is as big as the boat. That's the key scene because Quint jumps into attack mode, rather than abide the advice that they should retire from the scene - they need a bigger boat. This isn't a shark - it's Moby Dick.

And the last, obviously, was the one set up by the air tanks falling. Jaws bites one, holds it in its mouth, and policeman Scheider gets off a lucky shot. Otherwise, the movie ends as it should have ended.

Flashdance (1983)

Influential classic, not just for its day, but still flawed.

[31 October 2006]

Spoilers! Very influential film, at the time, about a PA girl from Altoona who grows up to be a stripper/ballet dancer, with a personality so split it looks like a different woman doing the dancing - but, of course . . .

The stand in for Beals, Marine Jahan, is not listed in the credits. She's listed here on IMDb, but only if you know enough to scroll down to the bottom of the "other crew" list. No mention is made of her in any other on-line store for the vid or CD! From that, it's as if she never existed. In addition, supposedly another woman performed as the bike rider, and a man performed the flips (according to a couple of Usenet messages I found). From that standpoint, clearly Cynthia Rhodes, who later starred with Travolta in a less successful dance film, and then later with Swayze in Dirty Dancing, steals the show as 'Tina Tech'. But part of the criticism of the film might be that the dance numbers seem almost sparingly employed, that more of Rhodes could have been written in, and that the courtship of Nouri and Beals almost drags at some points.

On the other hand, to call the women strippers, while true, misses the point of the sort of acts found at Mawby's, as opposed to the evil Zanzibar. These are virtuoso dance interpretations cut into the degrading ethos of a strip club. This is Jezebel in a hundred variations, doing her belly dance in the tent, with uncluttered pre-drum n bass dance music and one note 'crying' guitars as 'mood enhancers'. It's the music video, as from Easy Rider, and many films before, in parts. And here it's just in parts, too. The cleverer it gets, the more pretentious it seems, as with 'Beals' final number against the white tile wall. Even Rhodes' performance seems a little silly. And the water splash on Beals has been parodied so often that to review the film, today, one is tempted to call it silly, as well. At the time, it wasn't a cliché. And what Rhodes did seemed something new, as well. Beals, in a recent interview, very widely copied to various sites on the net, remarks that she saw the influence of this little film in young women all over the world, at the time, not only in some newfound desire to become a dancer, but that trendy meant torn 'Alex' garb and the suggestion of good life for a young girl in a dust choked, ear-shattering mill or machine shop.

The film makers attempted to be true to steel town, no doubt. And there are many shots of the dank atmosphere, but also the almost cozy mill, welding there, and machine shops covered over in dust and grit and mostly unused, as the light streams in again in an almost comforting, artistic fashion. It's cold, more than dusty. But it's difficult to convey that on screen - without icicles or snow banks, perhaps. So it's really, kind of warm. And it's still, when walking through the rooms of grinders, when frolicking in the abandoned mill. And the 'dancer's loft doesn't seem so disgusting as Nouri's character seems to suggest when first invited in. The mood set is one of quiet and gentle isolation, perhaps in some sense to suggest that of the dancer alone before an audience. Or that might be unintentional. And so Beals comments on the effects of the film, are understandable. The young women saw what was on screen, whatever the film makers otherwise intended.

The plot isn't so much filler as a number of key scenes in the 'dancer's life, from the Zanzibar owner's assault in the parking lot, to Jeanie's falls on the ice and subsequent fall to the Zanzibar, literally on her back, to the radiator breaking as 'Izod'/Ritchie bids his goodbye, for the moment, and so on. The scenes are carefully designed and lit. There's a music to much of this non-dance filler that seems to hold up perhaps better than some of the so often parodied dance numbers, from now over 20 years ago. (In real life, the actress portraying Jeanie unfortunately died shortly afterward, I believe from a rupture strangely similar to that which in real life also killed the woman singing that very song as Jeanie ice dances).

All the actors command the screen very well, if not necessarily with much depth. It is difficult to believe that Beals is a welder, for ex. Yes, it's possible - maybe. To the witness on the stand - but you DO allow for the remote possibility, do you not Mr . . And as a remote possibility, sure. The film almost works because of that 'fantasy' aspect, where the women who hang with Alex are all strikingly beautiful. That's already a step away from any reality. Then there's the question of how did the former ballerina and Ziegfield dancer, Alex's/Beal's teacher, train the stripper to be a ballerina? Her audition before the panel is the sort of heavy, bouncy thing the strippers at Mawby's would be famous for, not what someone applying for the city ballet would perform. And of course, as mentioned first here, it is just annoying and distracting to see the noticeably different appearance of the stand-in, Jahan, from Beals. This surely was a complaint of the film, even at the time. And it's still something that takes one out of the story, and back to the reality of just watching some movie. Beals may have fit the role of doe-eyed manipulator for this film. But to see her, and then another 'Darren', back and forth from scene to scene, is what perhaps hurts even more than the rest.

South Park (1997– )

The Peanuts gang - after suffering years of abuse

[31 October 2006]

Trey and Matt want to take themselves seriously, at times. And it seems many of their fans do, as well. But they can't manage it. The pair always have at the ready an infantile stimulus when the writer's block sets in. There is always the self-referential 'Terrance and Phillip' cartoon within the cartoon, but which unlike the Itchy and Scratchy complaint by the Simpson's writers, is not here presented as something to be avoided. They play with their feces, in a somewhat recurring family of characters which literally were anthropomorphized excrement, with mouths so they could talk, which some felt was the 'shark-jumping' moment for the show. Other characters attempt to defecate out of their mouths, perhaps a not so vague self-reference to the sort of thing coming from the writers. That's pretty much the level of the show, South Park. It just never escapes that, from mockery in 'Bloody Mary' to the offensive vulgarity mumbled by the Kenny character, right past the censors. It's shock value for its own sake, in the guise of an almost Peanuts-world of wide-eyed, round-headed toddlers.

The one thing on which they have prided themselves is timeliness. With their cutout animation, now computer driven though it may be, and requiring really just a sequence of lip movements and eye expressions, they have occasionally been able to make some vaguely incoherent comment on current issues, within days, or hours, of the event. But there are no real details. There is at best just outright misrepresentation of events. They end up wanting to say - that's . . stuff. It's just all . . stuff. Stuff it will be. And golly can't we all just get along? Profound. And then they'll vomit, engage in sex talk, Kenny says something, or else they'll show something concerning the toilet bowl. It's also how religions are boiled down, as well - can't we all just get along - Islam and Judaism are basically just the same anyhow, etc. Why can't everyone just live in peace, and misrepresent each other's religion? It's all a joke, anyway. That's the 'serious-side' of South Park. That's the cutting-edge wisdom on current events.

Without that, what might make the show interesting are the trials and tribs of the five or six or more main characters. The infantilism and scatological humor, forced onto a make-believe world of children by aging adults, does make the thing seem creepy. But if you ignore that context, and helped by the fact that these are wide-eyed 'Charlie-Brown' characters, and not the more thuggish and creepy incarnations to be found if they were drawn in more lifelike fashion, as suggested by some artwork at the wikipedia site on this from one of the latest episodes, then there remains Eric Cartman, who might have been better given the name, Stan. He's a wily survivor. He's absurdly bright. He's an 8-year old child, and so self-absorbed. He despises the PC of his Colorado world, but only from the selfish point of view of a brat, essentially. And as the episodes ticked by, Trey and Matt made him so loathsome that any earlier sympathies might have been destroyed. He transforms from indifferent friend into a dangerous enemy. In the early years, Cartman might save the day. He might coin a catch phrase. He might be adorable and pitied, even, as his erstwhile girlfriend says they may only be friends, as little Eric shuffles off screen right. Again, this is helped by the babyish talk, the attempts to be cute with little catch-phrases, and again the round-headed, wide-eyed appearance of his cutout. I think the writers imagine Cartman to be much more along the lines of, Chucky, the doll from the horror films. Cartman's friends/enemies are Stan Marsh and Kyle Brof-something, themselves best friends, who also struggle to survive the adult recklessness in this Colorado, but without quite Cartman's skill (these two never get their own amusement park, or lead the town in a Dixiecrat recreation of the Civil War - but Cartman does, etc). Even more oppressed is little Butters, last name Stotch (as in . . ), who is both friend and object of ridicule, a happy-go-lucky and supremely honest 'dweeb', discovering in his own 'Butters Show' episode that his father is a bath-house frequenting homosexual and his mother's means of coping with that was to attempt to drown little Butters in her car (failing at it, obviously).

And that leads to this odd thread in that Trey and Matt keep trying to come out of the closet, it seems, by premising more than a few episodes upon some homosexual subplot. Either Kyle's Dad masturbates with another father, or the soul of Saddam Hussein is 'doing it' with Satan himself, in hell, there's Butter's Dad, or a 'gay guy' mysteriously appears and disappears, or the freakish puppet-toting teacher, Garrison, has to discover his own homosexuality, all the while the kids deride this and that by calling it, gay. Quite a conflicted group of writers, at the very least.

And the last oddity in this dancing cutout cartoon is named, Kenny. He is supposed to be a poorly adjusted 'redneck', basically, who mumbles epithets that the censors aren't supposed to get. But the gimmick is, or was, that Kenny is killed. He dies in every episode, or at least did in the early years. Then he'd return in the next episode, and be killed once more (typically by being crushed).

In sum, the boys/characters are the show, and are genuinely engaging for a time, inspiring parodies and the like, but then fall off into nothingness, and depravity. People prefer Charlie Brown - not a drunken Chucky, cursing and defecating. The very people who should not view this, young children, can be the very ones to whom it appeals. So the reevaluation, or antithesis, phase for people first seeing this show must be rough. Popular for the first few months. Then suddenly no one wants to talk about it.