Mad Max

I finally saw the beginning of my beloved Mad Max franchise. I have to say, I'm a little disappointed. All the superior elements of the franchise are there: a brooding Mel Gibson, spectacular CGI-less car stunts, crazy (CRAZY) villains, and notable cinematography and style. The problem is that all these elements aren't perfected until The Road Warrior. Mel Gibson, despite of all his charisma, shows his lack of experience. The stunts are still there, but they're certainly less necessary. When the cars and/or motorcycles aren't driving across the endless asphalt, there isn't a whole lot to love in Mad Max. There are some very memorable shots in the movie, but these shots only punctuate the droll interlude between them. Thank goodness for Hugh Keays-Byrne's work as Toecutter, the psychotic leader or a motorcycle gang out for revenge after their even crazier former compadre is killed in the film's opening car chase. Toecutter is the snarling, edgy precursor to The Might Wez and Lord Humungous (The Road Warrior) and Master Blaster (MM: Beyond Thunderdome) of subsequent films. While he feels a bit out of place in Mad Max, it's clear writer/director George Miller is honing his world and style here. It's a good film with great moments, but it pales in comparison to its sequels. A great finish to a lackluster beginning.

***

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans is nothing special and doesn't really have anything working for it other than its fanbase and mythology from the previous two films of the franchise. I count myself as a part of that fanbase, and on that basis, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. If you don't give more than a hoot about any of the Underworld movies, you can skip Underworld:ROTL with nary a regret. I enjoyed seeing Michael Sheen reprise his role as Lucian and fight Billy Nighy (though Nighy has abandoned all restraint he may have possessed). The two actors have fun, even when saying the preposterous dialogue. All three Underworld films share a screenwriter, but something is lost when the dialogue is put back into the Medievalish language. Rhona Mitra is a rare beauty, but she cannot fill the heroine role the way Kate Beckinsale does in the first two films. Kevin Grevioux, one of the orginators of the franchise with a strangely deep voice and muscled physique, reprises his Underworld role. However, his talent is sorely lacking and more apparent with a larger role in this installment of the franchise. In the end, the film is a fun diversion on a Friday night and a welcome pleasure for fans who like their vampire films to take themselves seriously without actually being serious. Are there anymore of us out there?

***

RocknRolla

It's nice to see Guy Ritchie get back to his bread and butter, what has affectionately called Mockney crime films. He showed his skill with Lock, Stock and Snatch, then slid away. But RocknRolla, while not necessarily superior to its Mockney predecessors, is again a testament to his exciting talent. The excitement generated is inorganic and a kin to a "fizzy drink." But like my revered can of Diet Coke cooling in the fridge, RocknRolla is exceptionally made. There are a few standout scenes viscerally like the second Wild Bunch robbery, two heavies that won't go down easily, and the Johnny Quid club kill set to the "Rock and Roll Queen" song. Memorable adrenaline shots to the veins. It may not be fair to judge RocknRolla against Ritchie's past filmography. I should judge each film on its own merits, but I'm not gonna. Rocknrolla falls somewhere behind his first two films, but clearly excels over his most recent two ventures. It doesn't have the humor of Lock, Stock or Snatch (you probably won't hear me randomly quoting RocknRolla to pals), but it's a tightly plotted crime picture with finesse and character derived from its writer director and actors. It gets off to a rocky start with large amounts of voice over to hold our hands through the exposition and introduction of the characters, but finds its groove somewhere in the second act. And it just keeps getting better as the characters' situations keep getting worse. The cast's work is memorable and will bring me back for any of the proposed sequels if they ever actually get off the ground. RocknRolla also signals the break through of Toby Kebbel who plays thee rocknrolla Johnny Quid, who is all attitude and mood and a junkie weak enough to crumble and strong enough to strike the fear of Moses into you with a stare and twitch of his pencil.

***1/2

Tim Burton's Batman "The Joker is more of an annoying pest than a villain."

I didn't see this movie until college. I liked it. I thought it was a lot of fun. I asked for it for my birthday. I got it. I watched the excellent special features yesterday afternoon. I got excited to see the movie again. By the time the credits started rolling, I was disappointed. There's no real excuse. I first saw it when my eye for quality was developed. I had seen it several times on AMC (albeit in parts). I hadn't loved the film as a kid, so nostalgia wasn't an excuse for my mistake.

Batman is an exercise in ambition. Tim Burton and the film's producers had big plans for the movie. From the DVD interviews, it's apparent that they thought they had created something really special. The problem is that ambition is nothing without execution. Batman fails in nearly every aspect of its execution.

It's hard to criticize Jack Nicholson for going over the top with his performance. He's the Joker, for Moses' sake. There aren't any rules for playing a character like that. There should have been, though. Nicholson is clearly having the time of his life playing the role, but I must admit I had very little fun with him. He does anything he pleases and I wish a director would have reigned him more. Nicholson unleashed in any situation is cause for alarm. He's not menacing enough. And somebody tell somebody that Jack Nicholson's little jigs in character are not amusing.

That led to other problems. The screenwriters have to make scenes for Nicholson to do his thing, so they put him in that stupid museum scene. A chance to work in the Prince music ("Partyman" is the title of the song) should have been passed up. A terrible idea. Batman's entrance and exit are good. The rest is hammy junk.

Another scene suffering from failed ambition is the bell tower scene. Great plan. Bad execution. It shows sparks of quality, but crumbles under the weight of Nicholson and Basinger's goofy routines. Seriously, there's nothing less climatic than watching Nicholson ham it up as he dances on that ledge and makes his getaway.

Putting Batman into action is the best thing the filmmakers do. It's when they throw him in the mix with the Joker that things falter. And that's a lot of the time. I actually liked the action scenes for what they were, but again the Joker is more of an annoying pest than a villain. Batman should have kicked the crap out of him twenty times over.

The Bruce Wayne scenes are fairly bad as well. There is no chemistry between Michael Keaton and Kim Basinger, so their scenes together are always a bit awkward. It doesn't help that Basinger isn't a good actress. I'm not saying the role called for her to stretch her acting muscles, but any number of actresses could have added zest to the role. Keaton can play the charming billionaire well, but when he's out of costume, he left me itching for him to jump back into it. His knight in shining armor shtick at Vale's apartment is weak and laughable at best. Put the guy in that suit and let those eyes and that cool, stoic hero's voice do the work.

The sets are great. The first third of the movie is actually quite good. But I'm afraid that the corniness and levity that the filmmakers said they so wanted to avoid eventually crept in and sapped all the entertainment from Batman.

**1/2

The Good German "(Maguire's) adhering too much to the contemporary view of classic cinema - no subtlety, scenery chewing, melodrama."

They don't make 'em like they used to, but that sure doesn't stop them from trying. I am more a fan of contemporary cinema than any of the black and white Hollywood hey day movies. I've tried to branch out in recent years, even making a summer noir series of my own with Laura, The Maltese Falcon, The Third Man, and Casablanca. I mention Casablanca not because it's a great example of noir, but because The Good German wants to be like it so very, very much (only with more swearing). It's a lofty goal it cannot reach.

The Good German is really only an excellent imitation of those melodramatic, love torn, post- and pre-war film noirs. It offers nothing to set it apart from anything that has ever preceded it. Instead, it boldly goes where many, many films have gone before it. Normally, this would be a major detraction (and it still kind of is), but The Good German really wants to be those movies you saw before. It loves those movies. It hopes to Moses you love those movies, too.

I had problems from the start with Tobey Maguire. He must have been told to "explore the studio space" because he's adhering too much to the contemporary view of classic cinema - no subtlety, scenery chewing, melodrama. He plays an unsavory character with constant strain in his voice and face. He can't handle the dialogue or the character. It's outside the realm of his abilities. Hey, I love the guy (Go, James Leer!), but he's pretty awful in this movie. Luckily, he doesn't factor much into the major storyline later in the movie.

Thankfully, George Clooney and Cate Blanchett know what they're doing...most of the time. They handle the dialogue pretty well, save the normal difficulties you'd expect from actors trying to speak old timey/edgy/cool dialogue from a script emulating someone else's script. Clooney and Blanchett's scenes together are the best in the movie and I think everybody knows it because they get tossed in each others way a lot.

Clooney doesn't have to do anything he hasn't had to do before, and he appears to be the most comfortable in the world of the film. And the world of the film and the camera love him...a little too much. The camera almost fetishizes Clooney in that soldier uniform and hat - from behind, from afar, from above, from the ground, from the front (oh, it loves looking at ol' Clooney's dashing hero gaze). Clooney does have trouble in one scene in particular where he has to grab Blanchett by the arms and shake her and say, "Why won't you let me me help you!" in his best noir impression. That's the thing with The Good German - it's more than happy just to be an impression of anything real though its depict real moments in history.

Blanchett has a German accent throughout and it's really only a glaring bump because it's Cate Blanchett speaking in it. The same could be said for her Katherine Hepburn accent in The Aviator. I just think the accents are "so not her" that they remove me from the world of the movie. She does deliver the most consistent performance. She knows how to milk a scene for all it's simmering heat (milk the heat?). I never really think of females as brooding, but Blanchett certainly does brood.

Story stuff: Blanchett plays Lena, this German femme fatale that was so memorable and alluring in a pre-war affair with Jake (Clooney) that he purposefully heads back to Germany after the war to find her. The big problem for me is that she's not really all that great. I can't really imagine what's so great about her that all these men are wanting her so much. For Tully (Maguire), it's clear his thrill is in possessing her; but for Jake, it seems he's helping her out of some nostalgia for feelings that I can't imagine pretty much anyone having for her.
(edit: Perhaps this is the point the movie is trying to make - the woman Jake fell in love with has been ruined by the war.)

Also, Clooney gets involved in three skirmishes in his hunt for a mysterious man everyone's after. He gets beat up pretty bad by his assailants, but they just leave him there writhing in pain or knocked out or what have you. Nobody ever really gets the idea that "Hey, this guy's always turning up and gumming up the works...maybe we oughtta kill the jerk." He dusts himself off and goes back to the search.

Also, that ending! No! Don't do it! It involves a revelation that should have happened earlier, and not so awkwardly spoken or located. The movie should have ending in the crowd of all the people. Whenever I watch the movie again, I'm going to stop it there. That's a decent movie. It's still pretty decent anyways, but it would have been decenter (decenter?).

But, lo and behold, I am recommending this movie. I really enjoyed the entire second act and much of the third. Once Maguire faded into the background and the intrigue really started, I committed to the movie and was mostly satisfied despite all the words above to the contrary. It's a solid movie. I commend its ambition. It's hard to call a movie that emulates other movies ambitious, but it's really quite an undertaking in this day and age to evoke the atmosphere and spirit of another day and age.

Clooney's good. Blanchett's good. Maguire's bad, but the rest of the supporting cast is good in spite of him. I actually even liked the story for its simplistic storyline that masqueraded as a complicated web.

I LOVED the cinematography. If I loved the movie, I'd find a way to make a poster of some of the shots and put them up on my wall. Gorgeous black and white picture.

So...

***

Across the Universe

Across the Universe is one of the worst films that I have seen in the theater in a long time. It is a mess of a movie.

The film follows a rag tag group of young people during the turbulent 60's. Our protagonist is a English lad named Jude. He goes to America to find his dad, but stays after meeting Max and his sister Lucy. Lucy and Jude are destined to be entwined in young love.

That's really the story. It is as thin as a paper cup and just as disposable and recyclable. Everyone who has seen a movie about the 60's has seen this plot or elements of the plot before. It tries to touch on everything - hippies, music, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War and the struggle of the "radicals'" protesting at home among every other instance of 60's nostalgia you can imagine.
The characters are also 60's stereotypes masquerading as memories.

The problem is the filmmakers love The Beatles (whose music makes up the entire musical's soundtrack) too much. The story exists because of the songs, not the other way around as it should be. The story is thin because it merely bides its time with a loose narrative as an excuse to fill time between musical interludes. Those small pieces of narrative cannot sustain the audience's interest, so the filmmakers chose to make the time in between songs short and forgettable so we can push right on through to the next number.

Some of the musical pieces serve as bold interpretations of The Beatles musical catalogue and contain interesting images, but most stick out like sore thumbs in the context of the narrative. A few of the musical numbers did stand out as quality pieces of filmmaking including "Let it Be" during race riots, "Strawberry Fields Forever" in a Vietnam and artist freak out montage, "Across the Universe" on a subway car, and "Because" lying in a field of tall grass.

Still, the film has no subtlety in its purpose: to use as many Beatles songs as possible. That means having characters named Jude, Lucy, and Prudence. Max might as well been named "Eleanor Rigby" to keep the trend going.

Certain things bothered me above all. There was use of a heightened reality common to film musicals, but that was no excuse for a lifeless and bland film in the midst of all the vain attempts to shower the audience with vibrant life. I have never seen a better example of style over substance.

Another annoyance was the love story. I could not be invested in the two lovers' fates at all. Perhaps I have been spoiled by the recent indie musical Once with its wonderful characters and lovely love story. The big deal is that the love story is really the meat and potatoes of the narrative. If I could not care about the love story, I was doomed to not care about the whole movie.

The film did manage to find some level of balance and relative skill in the third act, but by then it was too late. I was turned off by the movie early on and had no hope for reinvestment.

*1/2

Ocean's 13

I felt pretty indifferent to this movie for over half of its runtime. The filmmakers expect us to be familiar with their characters already (which I was), so they jump into the plot with reckless abandon. It's too quick even - rushed, forced. The setup whips by the viewer too quickly to invest in the characters. I'll admit the filmmakers must have been setting up the slights of hands to come in the film's loaded third act, but I would have liked to follow the action better.

By this third film, the actors involved can sleepwalk through their parts, and they mostly do. I would say that the first film of the series is surface oriented, a unqiue kind of cool. But the third film finds the characters even less fleshed out. On top of that, many of the film's thirteen namesakes make minor ripples in the film with Pitt, Damon, Clooney, and Cheadle doing the heavy lifting. I did love the workers' strike in Mexico involving Casey Affleck and Scott Caan's characters.

Ocean's Thirteen suffers from a zaniness it embraces too tightly, giving itself over to it. Especially strange and awkward is Ellen Barkin (an old favorite of mine from Diner) punch-drunk in lust of Matt Damon's odor. I know the film is not meant to take itself too seriously, but her fawning over him wastes the actress and asks the audience to give too much up in terms of believability.

I also find it interesting that the producers and writers have been able to come up with two more situations after the original where the Ocean gang has to steal or con over $100 million from big pockets. The fact that two of the targets of the film are casinos in Vegas also shows a lack of development in the character and planning of their lives.

All this complaining, but I must recommend the film. I had fun. Once I caught up with what was happening, I was in. Sure, there's all that awkwardness, but what works actually works pretty well. After a while, I just relaxed and let myself fall into the holes the film had dug itself in. The film strives a bit too hard for the cool of the first film, but it still manages to slick through on its own merits.

***

Grindhouse

Grindhouse is a blast. It's entertainment without substance. Don't let anyone tell you different. But it is fun...a lot of fun.

Death Proof has been the film of this double feature to receive most of the accolades, but I must say I enjoyed Planet Terror more. It embraced its unique ridiculousness and the ridiculousness of its genre, having fun with corny dialogue, fluff love stories, and blood and guts galore. I should say that I could stomach the gore in Planet Terror because, unlike 28 Weeks Later, it was over-the-top, unbelievable, almost cartoonish. Disgusting, yes, to say the least, but never beyond a level of obvious zany-gore. Bubbling faces make me squirm, but, oddly, they also make me laugh.

Death Proof's ending was the best of the two and really saved that film for me. I really laughed my face off. But the dialogue blandness of the film never was very fun for me. I love Tarantino. I love his dialogue. I could listen to his characters talk about foot massages and European fast food for a long time, but there is no real cleverness in the words Death Proof's characters share for the majority of the film. It's just...talking. And for a double feature that definitely seems to want to entertain, that's not good. Still, the actresses are capable, even when they say nothing. Rosario Dawson should be the star of a new Tarantino flick...one where she, you know, gets to say or do something worthwhile. The car chases are good.

I saw the whole thing for a buck at the local dollar theater and it was a steal. The package was presented with a fun bit of retro cool, though the fake trailers before and in between the two features weren't very good.

Side Note: Kurt Russell cannot act. Even when he is expected to act badly, as he must have been in Death Proof, he still fails to hit any sort of skill note. He's tone deaf when it comes to talent. (Still, Tombstone Kurt Russell is better than any other Russell).

Grindhouse: ***
Death Proof: **1/2
Planer Terror: ***

Wings of Desire

This film is beautiful to look at. It is also boring as all get out. I tried very hard to give the film time to develop, to get better and bring my attention back. It barely happened during the film's final twenty minutes or so. All that preceded it was philosophical posing. The film would have made a better short or work of fictional literature. On screen, it merely is a chore. I had to make myself sit through it. Again, the cinematography is gorgeous, but the story (thin as it is, which can be okay, but wasn't) didn't earn my time. I did watch the making of doc on the DVD, and it allowed me to have some respect for what they were attempting to do. But the idea wasn't translated into a very good film. Shorter might have equaled better, but I'll never know. I sat on my bed watching, giving time limits for the film - "It's been a long time. Nothing's really happened. It'll end soon." "I was wrong last time. But it has to end soon. Nothing has changed." "Dear Lord, help me. Finish it."

Maybe one day I will give it another chance. Someday far off in the future. You can't even see it from here.

**