Archive for the 'Reviews' Category
(Chronologically Listed)
Christmas recommendation: “Scrooge” (1970)
This remains my favorite Christmas movie (yes, even over “A Christmas Story”). It is a musical version of Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol”, starring Albert Finney in the title role. I am not alone in my praise for this movie; note that of the 406(!) customer reviews for it at Amazon, 366 (90%) give it 5 stars and another 21 give it 4 stars.
“Scrooge” didn’t do all that well when it was released theatrically in 1970. Movie critics didn’t like it, feeling that it was somehow silly in the light of the earlier ‘classic’ versions of “A Christmas Carol” (in particular the 1951 Alastair Sim version). For years after that, if “Scrooge” showed up at all, it was in a chopped-up, pan-and-scan version on TV; I can remember my own profound disappointment when I first saw it on TV. The VHS release wasn’t much better — while not chopped up, it was still pan-and-scan, losing much of the outstanding cinematography and choreography.
But for five years now, it’s been out on DVD in an uncut widescreen version. The movie itself has held up very well. The score and libretto are outstanding; a few of the movie’s songs have crept into the mainstream over the years (I heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing one on their weekly broadcast earlier this year). As mentioned above, the choreography is outstanding as well, as are the cinematography and art direction.
The real key, though, is Albert Finney in the title role. The director cast a young man (Finney was only in his early 30s when this was filmed) as Scrooge, figuring that it was easier to make a young man look old than to make an old man look young. Furthermore, the old Scooge is not played as a stern if elegant patrician; he’s played quite literally as a dirty moneygrubber, with a permanent hunch to his back. His Scrooge is not someone you would want to cross or meet in a dark alley.
The movie shows a bit more of Scrooge’s young life (via the Ghost of Christmas Past), giving a better sense of Scrooge’s descent from a tall, handsome, modest young man to the bent-over miser he becomes. It also adds a scene of Scrooge in Hell (as part of the visit of the Ghost of Christmas Future) that is quite humorous and at the same time chilling (so to speak). And there are a few changes in the final sequence of events as well, but they represent a payoff from things set up early on.
At its core, though, “Scrooge” fully delivers on Dickens’ original message of regret, repentance, and redemption, and it does so in a powerful fashion. I recommend it without reservation. ..bruce w..
“An American Carol”: a brief review w/spoilers
[UPDATED 2134 MDT: Uh, corrected David Zucker's last name. Thanks, Kevin!]
[UPDATED 1604 MDT: Got an Ace-o-lanche going on, with other links coming in -- welcome all! Also made a few minor edits.]
The Devil, the proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked.
– Sir Thomas More
I went into “An American Carol” with guarded expectations. While David Zucker immortalized himself with “Airplane!” (”Joey, have you ever seen a grown man naked?”, “I know how to talk jive.”), “Scary Movie 3″ and “Scary Movie 4″ were his last two outings. I expected some chuckles, some misses, maybe a few laugh-out-loud moments.
I didn’t expect to be howling with laughter — and often simultaneously wincing — through most of the movie. But I was. As was my wife. As were, as far as I could tell, the rest of the people in the theater.
Hollywood likes to think itself brave and groundbreaking as it makes the 3,932nd consecutive film of the past 40 years portraying (conservative) government, war, the military, intelligence agencies, and/or corporations (often all indistinguishable from one another) as evil. Hollywood is not brave; Hollywood is terribly conservative (in its own sense) and very much in lockstep with itself.
David Zucker is brave. Not just because he gleefully mocks the Left (including Hollywood), but because he gleefully mocks radical Islamic terrorists as well. And he is very politically incorrect in how both the Left and radical Islamists are portrayed. When in the first few minutes of the movie you have suicide bomber jokes — not wry or ironic asides, but Airplane!-style, pushing-the-boundaries-of-taste jokes and pratfalls — you know you’re not in West LA anymore.
The actors who appear in this movie — Kevin Farley (as “Michael Morton”), Kelsey Grammer, Jon Voight, Leslie Nielsen and the rest — are likewise brave, especially in light of actual voiced blacklisting threats towards outspoken conservative actors.
Not all jokes in the film were drop-dead funny, but enough were — and the movie moves fast enough to get by the occasional miss or slow moment — to have kept us entertained throughout. And there was at least one moment (”A lot of dust in here…”) that unexpectedly made me tear up.
The Left, the mainstream media, and Hollywood (but I repeat myself) will absolutely hate this movie. They cheerfully promulgate and perpetuate grossly-distorted depictions and unfair stereotypes of those on the Right (e.g., see the trashing of Sarah Palin), but they cannot endure to be mocked themselves. It is their fatal weakness, the one thing that keeps most clear-thinking people from taking themselves seriously.
And as an old American proverb says: screw ‘em if they can’t take a joke. The rest of us should go see the film, repeatedly. I plan to.
Spoilers (such as they are) after the jump.
“The Dark Knight”: a brief review (w/spoilers)
Actually, it’s hard to write much of a review without giving away key plot points, so this first part will be brief (and spoilers listed below).
Truly an outstanding film. Not perfect (see the spoilers section), but every bit as tense, intelligent, and morally complex as the crime dramas that regularly get Oscar nominations. Put another way: if you took Batman out of the film (but left Bruce Wayne), removed the Joker’s makeup, and toned down the injuries to a certain character — it would be considered one of those Oscar-worth crime dramas, “ripped from tomorrow’s headlines”.
Adding to that verisimilitude is that Gotham City for the first time looks just like a normal city. There’s clearly a lot of effects to make it look both bigger than and different from Chicago — but there are none of the gothic city designs that have dominated the previous five Batman films, including Christopher Nolan’s first one, “Batman Begins”. Ditto for Batman — with Wayne Manor still under reconstruction, there’s no Batcave, just a large, low-ceiling, well-lit expansive workspace buried somewhere in Wayne Enterprises-owned property, while Wayne himself lives in a large, sparse city-center penthouse. If anything, the city and the sets look normal to the point of banality — which serves to intensify the darkness within the people themselves.
That darkness is indeed the theme of this movie, and it’s pretty unrelenting — except for one grace note (or rather two) towards the end. The acting is all solid, with excellent performances by Aaron Eckert (Harvey Dent) and Heath Ledger (the Joker) — and, yes, Ledger’s performance really is Oscar-worthy. (Quick: who so far this year would you rate over him?) The score is likewise outstanding: it doesn’t call attention to itself but it does build the mood of the movie.
Like Harvey Dent’s coin, “The Dark Knight” is the flip side of “Iron Man”. In the few spots where “Iron Man” turns dark, it’s never more than a quip away from lightening up. In the few spots where “The Dark Knight” turns light-hearted, there’s still a weariness in the humor, and it never lasts long.
Highly recommended; spoilers after the jump
“WALL-E”: a brief review (w/spoilers)
You could probably devise an interesting psychological profiling test around a person’s favorite Pixar film; mine happens to be “The Incredibles”, so make of that what you will. What is telling is that Pixar has yet to make either a bad or an unsuccessful movie, a pretty stunning achievement given the river of diluted sludge that generally flows out of Hollywood, and especially in light of Sturgeon’s Law (”90% of everything is crap”). Pixar continues its impossible string of hits with “WALL-E”.
“WALL-E” is something quite different from previous Pixar films: it is not a film so much as a feature-length cartoon. Specifically — as I said to my sweet wife Sandra as the credits ended — this is the longest, best, most exquisitely drawn “Looney Tunes” cartoon ever made.
Think about it. “WALL-E” contains all the classic “Looney Tunes”/Warner Bros. elements: a sympathetic underdog hero, not a lot of dialog, physical slapstick, manic and goofy secondary characters, unrequited (for a while, at least) romance, a melodramatic villian (with sidekick), “classical” music (”Barber of Seville” : my generation :: “Hello, Dolly” : my grandkids’ generation), social satire both broad and subtle — but always sharp and a bit painful, lots of puns (visual and verbal), various subtle homages and cultural references (my wife chuckled every time she heard the Mac OS X boot sound), the triumph of individualism and common sense over mandates from above, and an upbeat ending. While most reviewers have seen the “Buy n Large” corporation as a slam on Wal-Mart, I think it also doubles as a call-out to the ubiquitous “Acme Corporation” from the Warners Brothers cartoons.
I know some folks have complained about the apparently heavy-handed message — anti-consumer, pro-environment — but that falls under the broad-yet-sharp satire. “WALL-E” didn’t have Bugs or Daffy or Elmer to make asides to the audience, so the storyboards had to do it.
Because it is a “Looney Tunes” cartoon rather than an animated film, “WALL-E” doesn’t have quite the personal emotional resonance (read: “tugging at parents’ heartstrings”) of some of the previous Pixar films, such as “Finding Nemo” and “The Incredibles”. But it is, I think, Pixar’s finest work to date. I find myself humming “Put on Your Sunday Clothes” and smiling two days after seeing WALL-E; I’m not sure when was the last time that a film had me doing that.
Spoilers (such as they are) after the jump.
“Indiana Jones and the City of Gods”: a brief review (w/spoilers)
Oh, for things that might have been.
I saw “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” on opening day, and — for all the grumblings that I’ve seen in other reviews — I actually liked it. Shia LaBeouf wasn’t as bad as I feared, and it was a joy seeing Karen Allen — the only real heroine of any of the Indiana Jones movies — appear again. The film was a bit goofy here and there, but it was fun.
And then in just this past week, I began to see rumblings about Frank Darabont’s original screenplay for Indy IV having been leaked to the ‘net in PDF form. I did some poking around, found it, downloaded it, and began read.
I didn’t stop until I had finished it, despite my wife’s best efforts to drag me away from my laptop.
The screenplay isn’t perfect, but scene-for-scene, line-for-line, it’s a far better script that what Lucas and Spielberg eventually filmed. I don’t know why Lucas and Spielberg (and it may well have just been Lucas) rejected this script; on the other hand, given what Lucas did to the Star Wars prequels, I’m not sure any explanation is necessary.
This film does not have the Cate Blanchett or the Shia LaBeouf characters. The Ray Winstone character is actually Russian (and turns out to be a Russian spy). Marion is married (!) when Indy runs into her in Peru, and — contrary to what Wikipedia says — she does not have a 13-year-old daughter from her liaison with Indy in “Raiders”. There are giant ants — even bigger than the ones in “Crystal Skull” — but there’s actually a rational for them — and I regret not seeing the hummingbirds. Oh, and Sallah and Dr. Henry Jones are both still alive.
Yes, there is one (only one) former Nazi — hiding out in Peru — in the movie, but he’s a relatively minor character and could have been easily written out or changed to something else, so it makes no sense to say (as Wikipedia does) that Spielberg rejected the whole Darabont screenplay because of that one character.
It’s a great read, even in screenplay form, and a great insight into the craft of screenwriting. If Spielberg had filmed this screenplay, I think that “City of Gods” would have blown past “Iron Man”.
But, hey — that’s Lucas and Spielberg for you. A few “spoilers” after the jump.
“The Andromeda Strain”: a brief review (w/spoilers)
OK, I wrote an initial review after watching Part 1 of A&E’s miniseries, “The Andromeda Strain”. It was goofy and heavy-handed in its political agenda, but was still a bit fun, and I was waiting to see how Part 2 went.
So now I’ve watched Part 2, which (IMHO) descended from goofiness into full-blown stupidity. It’s hard to explain why without giving away spoilers, so I’ll detail my reasons after the jump. But the result of the constant stream of varied idiocies, big and small, robbed Part 2 of any tension or verisimilitude.
The irony was that the people who made this miniseries appeared to try hard to make the scientific dialog sound accurate and feasible, yet they repeatedly tripped up over relatively minor items. In the end, the whole miniseries came across as a 3rd-rate X-Files knock-off — some nice effects and production values, but hackneyed dialog and tired plot cliches.
Overall, I give it a ‘D’. Seriously. More after the jump.
“The Andromeda Strain” (pt. 1): a brief review (w/spoilers)
OK, Sandra and I just finished watching the first two hours of A&E’s mini-series, “The Andromeda Strain”, based on the Michael Crichton novel.
Sandra, about 45 minutes into tonight’s showing, turned to me and said, “This is like a SciFi Channel movie, but made with better actors.” What makes that really funny is that she said independently, almost word for word, what Charlie Jane Anders wrote over at io9 in his review. Actually, this miniseries also has much better effects and (for the most part) better writing than the various SciFi films.
But the plot is simultaneously goofy and heavy-handed, with a blatant political agenda/slant and some truly bad science. What made the original novel (and movie) so effective was the lack of villains and the low key scientific verisimilitude that didn’t attempt to explain everything.
But, you know, it’s still more watchable than most of the SciFi Channel movies, and I’ll definitely watch the final two hours tomorrow (Tuesday) night. Note that if you missed tonight’s Part I, it will show on Tuesday night just before Part II. [UPDATE: Here's my review of Part II.]
Spoilers after the jump.
“Sweeney Todd”: a brief review
I missed seeing Tim Burton’s “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” while it was in theaters. It was not for a lack of desire; it’s just that I don’t like going to the movies by myself, especially if my wife isn’t out of town — and she just wasn’t that interested in seeing it. Sigh. But it came out on DVD this week. I picked up a copy today while shopping for my very large scale barbecue (VLSB) this weekend. I sat and watched it once; watched the ‘making of’ documentary; and have had the movie playing a second time while taking care of various tasks around the kitchen/living room. It’s playing as I type this review.
Stephen Sondheim is perhaps my favorite theater songwriter, and “Sweeney Todd” is definitely my favorite Sondheim work. That said, I’ve never had the opportunity to see it produced live on stage. I’ve listened to the 1979 Broadway cast recording (Angela Lansbury, Len Cariou) any number of times, and I’ve watched the slightly later DVD of the Broadway production. So I was thrilled when I learned that Tim Burton was filming it, but wondered just how it would turn out.
My verdict: it’s great. Johnny Depp (Benjamin Barker/Sweeney Todd) is no Len Cariou — but, then, Len Cariou is no Johnny Depp. Depp looks like a character form a horror film (deliberately so on Burton’s part), and he acquits himself quite well with the singing — though his singing tends to sound a bit more modern (rather than operatic) in spots. I had far more concerns about Helena Bonham Carter (Mrs. Lovett). Angela Lansbury did such a stunning job with this role on Broadway (for which she won a Tony, and did Cariou). Carter makes the role her own, and there’s a natural chemistry between her and Depp. Alan Rickman’s casting as Judge Turpin is also wonderful,. Seeing Timothy Spall as Beadle Bamford is a bit disconcerting, since I’ve most recently seen him play a similar — but comedic — role in “Enchanted”, which makes it hard to take him seriously in this role. The rest of the cast is great.
The movie cuts several numbers, scenes, and characters, while collapsing or shortening a few other plot elements — and, frankly, that’s not bad. My one criticism of the stage version of “Sweeney Todd” is that it’s, well, a bit long and repetitive. The movie does a good job of stripping the story down to its essentials, so that it never drags. The only music I miss is the chorus number, “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd”, which (in the stage version) starts the show, is reprised several time during the show, and then ends the show. An instrumental version appears at a few spots in the movie, but I think it could have been used effectively in either the opening or closing credits. Overall, Sondheim’s music permeates the film and meshes very, very well with Burton’s direction and the film’s art design.
I do have one criticism, which quite frankly applies to the stage version as well. The dialog and songs in “Sweeney Todd” are fast and complex — often with two people singing different lyrics simultaneously — and are usually done with lower-class English accent; as such, it’s often hard to understand just what’s being said and/or sung. And here’s where the DVD has a big advantage over seeing the movie in a theater: you can turn on English subtitles. If you’re not really familiar with the music and libretto of “Sweeney Todd”, you may want to turn them on. Heck, you may want to turn them on, anyway (they’re on as I type this).
“Sweeney Todd” the movie — like the show — is about 70-80% singing, with the rest spoken dialog (though often with music in the background). This gives it a major advantage over most other DVDs: it’s something you can simply listen to without having to actually watch the movie itself. Which, as noted, is exactly what I’ve been doing while writing this review. Most of my DVDs get played once or twice, then put away and are pulled out only occasionally.
This one I will play a lot. ..bruce w..
“Shutter”: a brief review (with spoilers)
“Shutter”, which just opened on Friday, is an Americanized remake of a Thai horror film named “Shutter” (or whatever the equivalent is in Thai). It (the remake) stars Joshua Jackson (”Ben Shaw”) and Rachel Taylor (”Jane Shaw”) as a newlywed couple that moves from New York to Japan so that Ben can take a job as a professional photographer of Japanese fashion models. While driving (with Ben asleep) to their honeymoon cabin somewhere near Mt. Fuji, Jane hits — or think she hits — a young Japanese woman who suddenly appears in the road ahead. The car veers off the road and crashes, knocking out both Jane and Ben. When they wake up, there is no trace of the girl, even after the police arrive and search the area thoroughly. But strange streaks of light start showing up in Ben’s photographs, both personal and professional, while Jane starts hearing strange noises — and then thinks she sees the girl she hit outside a subway window while traveling from one stop to another. Jane is afraid that the ghost of the girl she hit has come back to haunt her. But the truth is more complicated than that….
I do have a few quibbles about the setting in Japan. (I’ve only been to Tokyo three times, but that’s enough to pick up on a few things at least.) All the individuals — who all live in Tokyo — have large houses/apartments. Ben and Jane’s apartment is explained as being a loft in a currently-being-renovated building; that’s somewhat plausible. But Bruno’s apartment and Adam’s house seem awfully, awfully large for being within Tokyo itself. (On the other hand, I have the same complaint about most movies and TV shows set in Manhattan.) A lot of the interior settings seem awfully dim, more dim than I remember Tokyo building interiors being. Also, Jane seems remarkable at ease using the Tokyo subway system and wandering through its streets, especially for someone who doesn’t appear to speak or read any Japanese. Finally — and I don’t want to give too much away — Ben and Jane are repeatedly involved with the police, yet the police don’t seem to regard them as persons of interest.
“Shutter” is actually not a bad film. Not great, and nowhere near the scary/creepy factor of, say, the original Japanese versions of “The Grudge” and “The Ring”. It has fewer “You idiot(s)!” moments than a lot of scary films (though it does have some; see after the jump) and has some genuine creepy/scary moments, plus a few unexpected developments. Sandra and I got to see it for free thanks to some movie ticket coupons being offered by our local Safeway for having bought a certain amount of frozen food — and that’s about right. There’s only one scene that I can think of that merits seeing the film in a real theater; frankly, you may be better off waiting for the film to come to DVD.
SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP — DON’T KEEP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW HOW THINGS END UP!
“I Am Legend” redux
Having seen and reviewed “I Am Legend” (2007) last month, and having re-read the original novella by Richard Matheson, I thought I’d watch the two earlier movies based on that same novella: “The Last Man on Earth” (1964) with Vincent Price, and “The Omega Man” (1971) with Charlton Heston.
I now have a much, much greater appreciation for Will Smith’s version, my complaints about the film’s ending notwithstanding.
“The Last Man on Earth” is much closer to Matheson’s novella than the other two films, but that doesn’t make it any better. It was filmed in Italy, and the production values are low, to say the least. Ditto for acting and directing and, oh, just about everything else. Even Price doesn’t do himself any credit with his performance. I dozed off briefly while watching it, but did wake up in time to see Price discover first the dog and then the woman, then run around ahead of a group with guns, then finally die saying “Mutants! Freaks!” Bad film. Bad, bad film.
“The Omega Man” is so much a film of the 1970s that it hurts. The music (which is wretched in and of itself, not to mention horribly inappropriate for most scenes where it is used), the clothing, the styles, the camera angles and moves, the lighting — Ack! Thbbt! And then we get to the script itself: “He has the stink of oil, of electrical circuitry about him.” “I just made my move.” “I’m not sure I remember how this goes.” (Thank you, thank you, thank you for not for not putting that last sequence in “I Am Legend”.) “Where did you ever see a stream full of fish in Harlem?” “It works! It works!” “Tonight! Tonight! Tonight!” And so on.
Plus Charlton Heston keeps taking his shirt off and wearing clothes that no sane adult would wear. (At least I like to believe that, though evidence suggests otherwise.) Oh, and the word “honky” is used in a straight line. And the female lead has a serious afro and wears a shiny leather (vinyl?) pantsuit with a turtleneck. And there’s a slo-mo motorcycle jump. And a really stupid kid who screws everything up. And lots of unsubtle Christ/crucifixion symbolism and references (sweet little girl to Heston: “Are you God?”), including the infamous final shot.
I watched these films so that you don’t have to. I may go out and see “I Am Legend” again just to cleanse my palate. ..bruce w..