December, 2005
Aeon Flux
Official Site | IMDb
"Liquid Television" was arguably one of the best
shows MTV ever produced. It showcased animation, half an hour at a
time. You never knew what you were going to get. Sometimes it was the
latest episode of Beavis And Butthead or Aeon Flux. Sometimes they'd
pull something like that trippy half hour of the race car driver who
turned out to be dead the whole time. A decade later, Aeon Flux the live action movie
comes out. It suffers the same problem as most Saturday Night Live
movies in that what worked as a five minute episode doesn't work when
expanded to feature film length.
99% of the Earth's population has been wiped out.
The remaining five million (yeah...the math doesn't make sense to me
either) are walled away in the last city on Earth, while the rest of
the planet has been reclaimed by the wild. The city is, and has been,
ruled by the Goodchild family. Everything seems idyllic, but people
disappear, freedoms are curtailed, the government keeps a tight lid on
things. Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron) is a member of a resistance
organization who want to end this.
Some vital intelligence comes in which leads the
powers that be within the resistance to decide that the time is right
to assassinate Trevor Goodchild, the current leader. Aeon is chosen for
the mission. It is the lazy movie type of mission where Aeon is able to
pull off all phases of the mission without problem and without any
particular need of the vital intelligence. She probably could have
killed Trevor at any point in the past she wanted. Something doesn't
sit right with her and she doesn't kill her target, going on the run
from both her people and his.
Not only does the added length not work, the shift
from animation to live action doesn't go over too well either. The
attempt to recreate the style is uninspired. The cartoon was a wonder
of physical impossibilities which had an impact because it was a
cartoon. The live action version calls unneeded attention to itself.
The physically impossible stuff looks like computer graphics guys
showing off. The sets seemed overly designed for the sake of looking
extra futuristic. Form didn't follow function, form followed the fact
that the story was set far in the future.
Much as I loved the original cartoon, this wasn't a
welcome update. They should have just left well enough alone.
Grade: C-
Rent
Official Site | IMDb
I always had a basic mistrust of the Rent phenomenon. How much of its
blockbuster success had to do with it being a good show, and how much
had to do with the fact that it was about people suffering with AIDS
and was written by Jonathan Larson, a guy whose aorta ruptured the
night of the final dress rehearsal? How much of its nationwide success
was owed to the fact that it was about New Yorkers living the big New
York life and struggling for their art? I would wager that very few of
the show's fans know anyone even remotely like the characters in the
show. I was glad to find this
article by a New York writer soon after the movie's release. Yeah,
I found on article sympathetic to my cause and stopped looking. You
point this out as if it were a bad thing.
I tried to go in with an open mind. The fact that I
can say it wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be is a back
handed compliment and shows that I didn't succeed in seeing it with an
open mind.
The main problem with Rent is the music. Some rises to
the level of halfway decent, most is just God awful. More than once
(more than a dozen times) I shook my head, slack jawed at some of the
awful rhymes and turns of phrase Larson tried to pull off. The music
itself was generic, bland rock music, the kind of stuff so
unimaginative, a band made up of Jimi Hendrix, Keith Moon, John Bonham,
and Bon Scott could pull it off in their current state of
decomposition. It wouldn't be so bad if, every once in a while, a plot
point could have been given through dialogue. Instead, it was almost
constant music. I realize this comes from musical theater, but it was
still tiresome.
The bland, unimaginative music is complimented by
the bland, unimaginative direction of Chris Columbus, master of the two
shot, king of he reaction shot, a passing acquaintance of interesting
camera movement. If you want a project to come in under budget without
any of that pesky artistic experimentation the independent directors
are always on about, he's your man.
There are some moments of real power, mostly
involving Angel (Wilson Jermaine Heredia), the first of the group to
die of AIDS. There are many other moments that offset the powerful
ones, mainly thanks to a bunch of characters I couldn't care less
about. Like Mark (Anthony Rapp), the film maker who spends the whole
movie filming with his oh-so vintage hand cranked camera. His labor of
love movie, which turns out to suck, is played at the end. Or Roger
(Adam Pascal), the songwriter who takes an entire year to write a song.
Or Maureen (Idina Menzel), the performance artist who gives performance
art an even worse name than it already has.
But credit must be given to the cast. In all but one
instance, the same actors from the Broadway cast come back for the
movie. They are all intimately familiar with the material and attack it
with an infectious (no pun intended) enthusiasm. If the material had
come from someone with a little better idea of what he was doing, this
could have been something really special.
Grade: C
Syriana
Official Site | IMDb
The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The
Witch, And The Wardrobe
Official Site | IMDb
Talk about a movie with an unfair, ready made
comparison. Look at both The Lion,
The Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Lord of the Rings. You have
reluctant heroes, who travel to a far away place. There, they learn of
a great evil which threatens all the land. A great and powerful leader
emerges who dies and comes back from the dead. Good and evil meet in a
final, cataclysmic battle, where evil holds overwhelming numbers.
It's not fair to compare the two works, as they were
written by different authors, at different times, and were intended for
different audiences. But nobody's paying me to do this, and I can write
whatever I want, fair or not.
As I watched The
Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, I recognized it as a very
good movie. I also couldn't stop thinking that in every aspect, from
directing, acting, costume, monster design, special effects, fight
choreography, even source material, Lord
of the Rings did it better.
It's a shame, really.
Grade: B+
The Producers
Official Site | IMDb
Funny story: when I heard about The Producers Broadway show being
made into a movie, I was skeptical of how the material would translate
to the big screen, and, in a post Rent
funk, bemoaned the growing practice of throwing anything that was
successful on stage on to the big screen. Then I saw the trailer which
mentioned Mel Brooks and I felt dumb for forgetting that the material
came from a movie in the first place.
Speaking of post Rent
funk, The Producers reminds
us that musical theater can actually have good music. Unlike Rent, The Producers features clever
lyrics and rhymes that don't induce vomiting. It also features
plot advancement through dialogue, something missing from that other
work.
Max Bialystock (Nathan Lane) is fast becoming a joke
on Broadway. He produces bad plays that close quickly. They are
financed by wooing little old ladies. His accountant Leo Bloom (Matthew
Broderick) shows up with an offhanded observation - you can make more
money with a flop than with a hit because the IRS doesn't care about
flops. Max has a revelation, Leo has a dream to become a Broadway
producer. It's a match made in heaven.
The first job is to find the worst play ever
written. "Springtime For Hitler" fits the bill. It's writer, Franz
Liebkind (Will Ferrell) wants to show what a swell guy Adolf was. To
direct, how about Roger DeBris (Gary Beach), a has been who has not yet
been informed he's a has been. Check out the evening gown he's wearing
when he meets Max and Leo.
The stage is set: a bad play, a hack director, a
rank amateur in the lead role. It's bound to fail, right?
This is the musical for people who don't like
musicals. It is full of clever, funny songs which all act in service of
a good story. Broderick and Lane have a great chemistry, even though
Lane is his usual annoying self. He seems to have forgotten he's not on
stage and is still acting BIG so that that person sitting in the last
row of the theater can hear him. But that's okay. To compensate, Will
Ferrell steals the show.
To get the most out of your price of admission, be
sure to stick around for the credit cookies.
Grade: B
King Kong
Official Site | IMDb
Cellphones are usually bad things in movie theaters.
I go to most of my movies on empty weekday afternoons, so they're
usually not much of a problem. Cell phones actually provided an
entertainment while sitting through the 187 minute ordeal of Peter
Jackson's King Kong. At about
the one hour mark, when the film crew finally made its way on board
ship headed to Skull Island, the cell phones started opening up to
check the time. I was in the back row and the effect was much like at a
baseball game when the flashbulbs start going off in the crowd. For a
solid two hours, a constant stream of lights went off as people all
over the theater opened their phones.
To call King Kong
overly long is like calling Bill Gates slightly well off. The phrase
doesn't even begin to describe it. Jackson takes every opportunity to
pad his story. It's almost as if this were a master class to show
aspiring film students how to do it. Scenes have too much dialogue,
plot threads are fleshed out too far, chases go up an extra three
streets, fights last a couple extra rounds.
Speaking of the fights, they are what save this
movie from being unwatchable and makes it a worthwhile time. If Lord Of The Rings gave Peter
Jackson a blank check to do whatever he wants in Hollywood, King Kong should give the digital
effects houses blank checks to do whatever they want. The monster
fights are breathtaking, if (again) a couple minutes too long. This is
quite simply the best creature combat I have ever seen on the big
screen.
The script faithfully follows the King Kong story you've already seen
in the other dozen King Kong
adaptations. Carl Denham (Jack Black) take his film crew to a
"deserted" island to shoot his new film. There, they find all sorts of
giant, prehistoric creatures. Kong, the gorilla, develops an attachment
to Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) and takes her away. The crew rescues her,
captures Kong, and takes him back to New York.
It says a lot when I can describe a movie as having
the best creature combat ever and still give it only a moderately
positive grade. The movie is far too long for its own good. I'll let
the bored audience I saw it with review it for me.
Grade: B-