Seabiscuit 7/26/2003
What’s Good: Jeff Bridges, great as always. The film is neutral than anything else.
What's Not: By the end I was asking "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?"
Directed by Gary Ross
Outline: A half-blind ex-prizefighter (Maguire) and mustang breaker (Cooper) team up with a millionaire (Bridges) and his rough-hewn, undersized horse, Seabiscuit. The men bring Seabiscuit incredible heights.

    A little test with this one could be to imagine yourself being deaf while watching Seabiscuit. Orson Wells once said something to the effect of; sound is important… after directing, lighting, acting and editing. What I mean to say is that as the great silent films have proven is that purely looking at any given picture instead of simply listening to it can make one respect the full effect of the craft that goes into a film but can also show you how uninspired some of these products are. Recent films like A Thin Red Line, Monster’s Ball or even Matrix Reloaded work their visual spender to the point where you don’t even want to hear people talk for fear that the spell would be broken. Hell, even a film like Charlie’s Angels 2 or Bad Boys 2 or any crapy film with a "2" in it could still create up there on the screen a playful cacophony of frenetic movement and perrrdy colors and, so, all is not lost within the even some of the lowest forms of cinema. All this cineast gibberish occurred to me during Seabiscuit, a white bread epic that’s so plain, so complacent in it’s pretentious view of the “pure-of-heart” American workingman ethos and so visually bland that I not only wish I was deaf while sitting though this horse racing quagmire but I kind of wish I was blind too.

     Tobey Maguire plays Red Pollard a tenacious ruffian who, yawn, “has a gift” but can’t see the light until he is validated by the man with the most boring name in the universe, Tom Smith (Chris Cooper), his down-on-his-luck trainer who believes in giving disparaged horses and embittered midgets a chance because, ug again, “sometimes a second chance is all a man needs.” Jeff Bridges (the best thing about this and just about any movie) plays Charles Howard (the second most boring name in the universe), the rich and also down-on-his-luck financier who has a big heart and treats Red like the son he lost just a few years ago due to an auto accident (cars baaaad-horses goood). If that wasn’t enough, Elizabeth Banks plays Howard’s wife in a role resembling a beautiful (and beautifully boring) horse saddle. Banks plays the gold digging, er, I mean supportive wife as a woman who's whole life consists of standing around while looking amazed and wide-eyed and bedazzled by these horses. This character has no personality and wears a blank grin so often that one is left to assume if maybe she had a habit of sitting on horse tranquilizer (picture Randy Quade 's character in King Pin after he was startled and you'll have an idea). 
     So that's the cast. So in this language film characters sit around and when they are not training the horse, they are talking about training the horse. And if not that then talking about odds, the fierce competition or, my favorite, looking pensive while talking about a horse, which is our cue wonder in amazement that “they’re mouths may talking about horses but they’re eyes are talking about something deep and personal. Wow, Toby Maguire has two whole layers!” The film is mostly oration, too. Characters like and Red and epically Howard dish out a plethora of perfectly “profound” and perfectly timed declaratory speeches –with or without an audiences, these drama queens don’t much care—and I watched in awe as they spouted out impeccably written pseudo-haiku wisdom that sounded as if they had memorized from food for thought toilet paper, after a nasty bout of TP consuming diarrhea. As an example of the film's Fame-like attention to flamboyant gestures, characters in this film cannot just subtly enjoy his surroundings, he or she must declare with thunderous pleasure: “It’s a glorious day outside!” And, oh, publicly spoken lines like “You show me something that’s perfect and I’ll show you something that’s not” basically add up to the retard logic level of a Forrest Gump, but audience members may be convinced by this film’s artificial humanity purely because the actor’s ardent deliveries are mostly genuine—the cast is real, the material is not.   

     Seabiscuit is a film that, like the underdog jockey and horse, tries a little too hard. That works for the horse, not the movie. Yet both the horse and the movie give it they’re all and as both pass you by you are meet with the faint smell of horse manure. The film didn’t really bother me until I deconstructed it in my head. But know that I didn’t dislike the film. For all it’s pat speechifying about the dusty old dust boll where we learn blank things like, ug, “Americans did what they did best,” this is a film that at least has the best of intentions and wants, really wants, to tell a good story and for the most part the tale was gripping for I enjoyed learning about (A) horses and (B) the mechanics of horse racing and (C) how one trains a horse and a horse rider. I guess I should throw up there that I am not fond of the film’s director, Garry  Ross… the man did the ultra saccharine Pleasantville and the fact that even during that Spielberg-light film I was disenchanted meant that his next film would have to do more than be positive to get my thumbs up.
    Indeed, for the second time in a row Ross fidgets with history and goes ahead and makes falsely obsequious declarations regarding of the golden old times where everything was perfect amidst all the rot of a crumbled economy. In Pleasantville, Ross basically stated that back in the fifties life was so much better… if you were young, and white, and male and Tobey. The film screamed out for a return to the morals and values of those "black and white" days… and was either glossing over that stuff about civil and women’s rights or just saying that people during those times should have been more enlightened and tolerant which is, like, duh optimism. In this film, though, Ross depicts a depression ravaged nation (fully equipped with sad looking Dickensonian actors with one cleanly drawn chalk mark on their cheeks) and basically says that during the late thirties all these broken-willed folks needed was to watch, nay to simply hear about sum good ol’ horse racin’ with Spider Man at the helm. The narrative sentiments practically have us believing that this marvelous news of an small animal who can move really, really fast GAVE AMERICA HOPE IN LIFE AGAIN AND PERHAPS THIS EQUINE WONDER SAVED UNIVERSE FROM UTTER CHAOS—sure, blacks were being lynched, Poland was being invaded by Germany and millions of Jews were about to be sent off to the camps around that time, but us Americans didn’t care because, after all, we could sip Country Time and watch a FUCKING HORSE run around in a circle all day. This animal did more than FDR first he's seen winning races then Americans suddenly have jobs. Seabiscuit brokered the new deal? What's next, sticking a hoof Hitler's ass?

     All throughout the film there are these historical photo montages set along side a heavy-handed period music score by Randy Newman (adjusting his annoyingly authentic score a few note so as to not be sued by John Williams), and the film’s announcer (not narrator, announcer) would chime in with a mellifluously delivered and wholeheartedly condescending slice of American life. The film’s many lessons would be on topics like the great depression, the rise of horse racing, prohibition, the great deal and director would throw this stuff out like we’ve never heard of it before. I guess Ross needed his film to take us out of the experience to remind us of a little thing called history; to which I say, fuck off, give us audience members a little credit. Though I’m short I hate being talked down to. The generous use of these montages are supposed to give us a scope of history in the film’s era but came off like a condescending high school propaganda history lesson taught by a teacher you always wanted to strangle, Ken Burns (oh yes, the film’s style is based on that dude who does those molasses-slow, groan inducing PBS doc’s on the Civil War and Mark Twain). If Seabiscuit could it would slap on a banjo, give us all a big bear hug and tell us to buy American.

     In addition to the fact that the title Seabiscuit sounds like lewd sex act, this is a film that will build in the box office. Build into a quiet hit. Build into a lauded sports yarn that deliverers healthy and productive American messages about perseverance, second chances, entrepreneurship and, oh yeah that timeless American need of money, profit, money profit win, win, win, be #1 or you’re lacking and impotent and all that clichéd jazz (the film is too blindly positive to concern itself with real issues like the compulsive gambling, drinking, violence and robbery of the times). And perhaps, too, the film may build its way into a dark horse (he he) Oscar nomination. All this is perfectly understood by me. After all, amidst a summer full of all this tasteless slop we are now being fed a film with great warmth and humanity—all surface emotions but, hey, at least the film is trying.

seabiscuit C-

Shanghai Knights is a joyful comic action movies with the timeless Chan and pleasantly of-the-moment Owen Wilson staring once again in a film about the same old stuff. The first film came out against Mission Impossible 2 and I raved about how carefree it was. Here was a Chan buddy action film without all that annoying Chris Tucker banter but, rather, some real cleverness as moments between two befuddled action buffoons found some great chemistry. The film was not spectacular or even that memorable but a well crafted yarn and while the second film takes all the best elements of the first film (buddy moments and dialogue over “cool looking” action) something is missing and what’s missing is the fact that nothing is missing if you catch my drift which you probably don’t. Sure the sight of kung fu in Victorian England tickles me propa but perhaps too much of the same thing is here. The sitting is different, sure, but, my god, not only does the film borrow the same formula from the original neuvo-western (what buddy action movie doesn’t have a predictable formula right down to the good cop bad cop shtick?) but it simply takes scenes from the first film (the climax is set in a bellower where the villain falls to his death), presses the backspace button a few times and gives us this new and not so much improved redux of the first (the climax is not set  in a bell tower but Big Ben and, yes, the villain falls to his death). The most distinct thing this film did, in fact, was changing the name from Shanghai Noon to Shanghai Knights (which, admittedly, is more than Bad Boys 2 did).

But hold on there my loyal minions, the film is entirely worth a rental. More so than paying ten buckaroos a slight film like Knights on the big screen, this film is perfect suited for a smaller scale. Hell, watch the thing in your car if you can. Considering the action scenes are a bit bland (Chan fights with umbrellas and vases... a great moment but not really cutting edge for action movies or Chan) the dialogue hits some nice small screen notes, i.e. the many overly clever allusions to dime novels, bad teeth, wax museums, Victorian British pop-culture (Chaplin and Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper and Arthur Conen Doyle all hung out at he same time?!!!). In fact, I just wish the film dropped all action and just did what it did best, concentrate on verbiage.

Add to that two pleasant but by-the-numbers commentaries (one by the director and a better one by the writers), some deleted action scenes and failed bits and Shanghai Knights is the perfect summer rental that alleviates boredom and a general malaise towards the crap we are paying to see on the big screen. Not great by any means but a hell of a lot of dusty fun. C+

How to Loose a Guy in 10 Days, on the other hand, may be doing great numbers in Box office and DVD sales but the film is utterly bankrupt of both ideas and chemistry. Kate Hudson and Matthew M play two hipster working types, ya see one’s a cutesy writer at a Cosmo-esq rag (she took the job there but, ya see, really wants to write about politics… uh huh) and the other is a burly add exec (next to cops and hookers probably the biggest movie job of all time) and the two o their wretched bidding for the man in these posh, artificial movie looking work environments (yoga meetings anyone?) have lackey friends who live to follow the film’s protagonists around, and both characters make duplicitous deal with their bosses (M is promised a hot shot diamond add case if he proves he can make a chick fall in love with him and Hudson is forced to write an article on how to loose a guy in ten days and… this is how modern businesses operate? Well, fuck, no wonder we’re in a recession). And to add insult to injury both have about as much chemistry as, well, as Matthew/Lopez in Wedding Planner or Kate Hudson in, well lets see,  EVERY FUCKING MOVIE SHE'S EVER BEEN IN.

Last year Matthew was in two of my top twenty movies (Reign of Fire and 13 Conversations About One Thing) but why-oh-why must he star along side these shrill actresses in films worthy of nothing more than Mat’s gruesome fate in Reign of Fire? I guess the money and exposure is the reason (only 10 of us saw 13) but, still, I’d rather see the once promising/now estrogen sodden chick flick actor in bad Bruckheimer films than movies with Kate “I’m so pretty and funny and smart special with my segmented eyes” Hudson, an actress so tepid, sexually neutral, and full of her anything but funny, Lucy-posing shit that her counterfeit acting practically chokes you. This brat receiving an Oscar nomination is almost as baffling as Beninigni winning one? Never before have I wanted to punch a leading lady and never before have romantic comedies fallen so low in the ideas department. So why am I not giving the film the F it disserves? It made me laugh. Twice, if you can believe that. Where, why, when and better yet, how is the question to ask but I just don’t have the energy to compliment the film. D

Bad Boys 2 7/19/2003
What’s Good: Mr. Martin Lawrence, ladies and gentlemen.  
What's Not: God damn this fucker is long.
Directed by Michael Bay
Outline: Narcotics cops Mike Lowrey (Smith) and Marcus Bennett (Lawrence) head up a task force investigating the flow of ecstasy into Miami...
L: Films this year are bad but what makes matters even worse is that these are bad movies that they’re also getting longer. Insult to injury if you ask me… but here’s Hollywood reasoning: The longer the film is the more apt we are not to talk about how awful it is because the studio's minions (the writers) have wisely made us too sick of these stories to give them another thought. Then we forget the film. Then, a few years later, we go to the sequel because we don't remember hating the last film. Then the studios make money. By my estimates just about every big budget film these days is forty minutes too long. From Harry Potter to Lord of the Rings to Matrix Reloaded to this film. The clock is ticking and we're all getting older... except Michel Bay who is the Devil  incarnate.

Sample Dialogue #1
"You need to… bullets all… they all… damn!!!"

Sample dialogue #2
"The cars… they be all flipping… ahh...shit!!!"

Sample Dialogue #3
“No, you… oh… you… oh shit, no!!!”

    And that's what I liked about the film! But it’s safe to say that Bad Boys 2's saving grace did not come from the preschool logistics of film’s script (the almost nonexistent story apparently needed five writers!!! What… the... fuck? I'm going to list them and wonder, simply, why?: Cormac Wibberley... why? Marianne Wibberley... why? George Gallo... why? Permanent Midnight author Jerry Stahl... why, why, why? And academy award nominee Ron Shelton... you most of all: why, man, why?). Rather, the magic contained in lines like the ones listed above exist entirely in their carrier, Martin Lawrence, who gives the coiled up performance of the year as he revisits a character that can best be described as the wound up Jack Lemmon of black cops. Whiney Lawrence-esq lines like "The cars… they be all flipping… shit!" contain a gleefully game sense of canny urgency as the character puts up with the general malaise of his headstrong partner (Will Smith's too smooth Mike Lorey) whose lackadaisical, rich-boy approach to being a detective irritates Lawrence to no end. I can sympathize, Smith annoys me that much too. But it’s not that Lawrence cares about peoples rights or keeping justice in the streets, and especially not all the poor dead saps left in Smith’s wake. Na, this George Costanza wannabe cares only about himself (and perhaps his family’s wellbeing but mostly his own ass) and that’s why I've loved the guy and have put up with these last two films. It took this film to make me realize that, despite Michael Bay, I keep watching and laughing because of the sheer alazon innocence of Lawrence's perpetually perturbed character. Fact is, the ulcer inducing antics of the physically bloated Lawrence steals this literally bloated show from the figuratively bloated Smith and Bay.

     Which reminds me: Michael Bay has no right to make any other kind of movie than Bad Boys 2. He gone and fucked up his chance to do anything else, be it a Capera-esq period movie (Pearl Harbor), an apocalyptic ode to Americana (Armageddon) and god forbid he ever actually goes ahead and makes that “a small independent film” that he's been talking about, so this is what he gets. Mindless brawn, jokes, guns, slow-mos and ho's. It seems that when Bay attempts to create anything other than mindless popcorn porn he gets shut down by critics who know an insincere mug when they see one. So it’s safe to proclaim that after all these years, the man sill has nary a one original bone in his bony body but all that being said, a film like Bad Boys 2… this is what he can do… long, long (LOOOONGGGG) TV commercials with macho boasting and sweaty action. Say what you will about the film but like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Bad Boys 2 gives audiences exactly what we pay for.

     Calling Bad Boys 2 a fun romp (which I will in a little bit) is all well and good but any flattering remarks must come with a preface or justification because, well, enjoying the film outright means you may have serious psychological issues. You see, this second Bad Boys is homophobic, chauvinist (characters look at a dead female corpse and call her "the bimbo" for no reason besides the fact that she has big breasts) raciest (Blacks, Haitians, Cubans Russians, Whites etc. are all fair game for slams in this equal opportunity offender), Bay does his best impression of Grand Theft Auto: Miami Vice City, plus this is a film that's really angry towards corpses, animals, KKK rallies (come on, they're just having fun), outdoor pools, fifteen-year-old boys, and as one last bonus, really into a sort of Dirty Harry fascist lawmaking philosophy where two men are allowed to take the law into their own hands, be unjustifiably reckless and kill as many men with out consequence or legal ramifications. The PC-be-damned Bad Boys 2 is all that and the funny thing is, if it was anything less I would have been even more offended. Here is a film that that may give new meaning to the term overkill but at least it stays true to what it is. At least it never holds back...

     ...which can be an admirable thing, but also a bad thing. You see, the film is long. Really long. Really, really long. As long as Bruckheimer’s way-long Pirates. Granted that's a bad sign, but at least this film doesn't have the same epicly dreary story, just fast dialogue, jumpy close-ups, and bombastic action. “We going to break the record for gun fights in a week” the eternally irked Lawrence laments to his trigger happy partner who, in turn, has an eternal hard-on for selfish vanity and casual destruction —Mike Lowrey is a self-loving and violent prick but, hey, at least characters like Lawrence’s Marcus Burnett and Joe Pantoliano the film’s joyful scenery-chewing police chief call him on it. But the film is also going to break another record: length. Bad Boys 2 overstays it’s welcome by a good hour. A film that should be ninety minutes and change is almost one hundred and fifty minutes long! That's 1-5-0 more minutes that we'll all have to spend watching a Michael Fucking Bay movie. Unfair if you ask me; first MTV-style editing strips this generation of an attention span then they make MTV-style films that are too long for us to comprehend. To which I say, Huh?
      Also like Pirates, just when you think the film should be over, just when your action movie exhaustion has hit critical mass, just when your eyes can’t take any more of Bay's cheesy slow-mo action secretions, the director has this whole other act that he's going to punish us with. The last section of Bad Boys 2 takes place in Cuba… so please allow me a sec to get this straight: after two hours of a series of rousing yet numbing car chases and spin-y gun fights, Bay feels he needs to give us another round of even more numbing chases and bullet battles as he himself is able to set the “record” for the most extraneous number of mindless action scenes in a movie all year--which is an honor considering the freakish Hulk also came out in 03. More is not better, bigger is.

     Hey, I like fast action in my movies. I like these kind of fun romps (see) that move well and hold my attention. I'll even go as far as to say I like lingering shots of once hot chicks that are now dead corpses getting their organs ripped out by two callous cops who laugh at the size of the girl's dead "titties" (when I put it that way, I guess not really). And what I appreciate even more than all that is the clever dialogue and outrageous reactions that emanates from these two cops, who, in a rare turn of recent cops movie events, actually have chemistry together (unlike that other Shelton penned cop-buddy action movie this summer... hear that Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett?) but at the two hour point the film just lost me. I was so exhausted with the fast action and flip dialogue that I turned to my friends and said “all that you saw these last few hours, that was Bad Boys 2” and went on to bitch that “the film has now officially turned into Bad Boys 3 without telling us.” I mean, at least the Wachowski brothers had enough decency to split their painfully long, painfully arch Matrix action movie into two parts. So then what's Michael Bay's excuse for making this endless film instead Bad Boys: Revolutions?

To make your own Michael Bay remember to add:

• Lots of smoke, fire, cleavage, fog and slow motion.

• Spinning the camera makes you look cool because people are too dizzy to realize you're a hack.

• No one shot can last over ten seconds (I dare you to count).

• Shoot the action close-up, very close, very verrry close at all times.

• Shoot low.

• Shoot fast.

• Shoot obscure angels.

• Shoot bullets.

• Move the camera at all times, even if you don't need to.

• Hate and fear women.

• Sell your soul to the devil.

• Hire and overpay many professionals to write your shallow story for you.

• Remember that Jerry Bruckheimer loves black dudes and banter. I mean LOOVES it.

• And repeated process for the more money your film makes the more pompous you're allowed to be.

bad boys 2 B-

Feminist Foreign Films 7/018/2003

     To my surprise the last few foreign film’s I have seen in theaters have contained strong feminist overtones. Could this be a post feminist explosion in cinema throughout the world or the American film market needing to consume films about anything other than ho-hum American films about "tragic" superheroes and their equally "tragic" lady lovers.   
     A film about a young girl who proves her wroth to a patriarchal New Zeland tribe; A soccer story about Indian girl repressed by her family; A visually muted WWII era Russian film about three people stuck in a hut and none of them can speak the same language; a film about Irish nuns abusing young girls… WHO THE FUCK WANTS TO SEE THAT?!!! I do… have you seen the films Hollywood has been rolling out lately? Would you rather seen Pirates of the Caribbean a second time than these international post-feminist gems the first time? Well, maybe so but compared to the shameless Hollywood version of feminist lore Charlie’s Angels 2 Full Throttle and Legally Blond 2? Forget it, a film like Whale Rider, Bend it Like Beckham, The Cockoo and The Magdalena Sisters envelopes the audience with all sorts of fuzzy and sad feelings and come across a tired American moviegoer such as myself like a slice from quirky foreign film heaven. Amidst a callous, boring and blunt array of Hollywood films these four films are worth seeing on premise alone.   

Whale Rider
Directed by Niki Caro
Outline: A contemporary story of love, rejection and triumph as a young girl fights to fulfill her destiny.

    Okay I’ll admit it, this film, like Beckham, is a something I would not have seen on my on. Had the eager word-of-mouth blandishments not spread like wildfire this summer I would have dismissed Whale Rider and, who knows, possibly wandered into Legally Blond 2 instead. Am I’m grateful that listened to this land's ancient spirits by seeing this film over the muddled feminist discourse of Blond? Sure. Will other filmgoers be emotionally moved by Whale Rider? Oh, you bet. Does that mean I liked the film? Not really? 

Here is a film that is unabashedly and unreasonably sentimental yet critics (and audiences) took to it because of it’s go-for-broke heartfelt message about a girl who seeks to be the next in a long line of cheftons prophets but is denied the chance to prove herself by her eternally austere grandfather. Due to the simple fact that she is a girl she is not given the same status as the men in this modern day tribe and the theme is as universal as it gets. That girl is Pai and as played by Keisha Castle-Hughes it’s damn near impossible not to love everything this little hero stands for. This performance disserves an Oscar. Too bad the film’s supporting characters are as bland and predictably diagramed as a Lifetime miniseries; I can’t respect films where the cast gives me the impression that they know they’re characters in a movie working towards a common, fuzzy feeling goal. As directed by Niki Caro the film is tragically one-note for everything that happens, feels like it must happen because the script says it should happen. As such, the writer of the film, who is also Caro (who adapted the story from a popular book), hams it up to the point where this film is as generically inspirational and audaciously manipulative as a Julia Roberts film written by Julia Roberts. I wanted to get into the grand message making of Whale Rider but the director’s compliance to the Drama For Dummies Book of Screenwriting just made the escapism too hard a transition for me. I can’t indulge in exposing my emotional underbelly to a film that feels this stilted and pre-programmed.

I like these kinds of films, I really do and I am drawn to feminist ideology in storytelling on par with this kind of scenic grandeur (everybody, give it up for Kandahar) but the fact remains that a simple episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer contains more spontaneous “magic,” metaphysically worldly wonder (that sounds odd but you get my point), and tough feminist bravado that two hours of this story. My point is that being this territory has been covered before a film like Whale Rider needed to distinguish itself both in it's message and execution of that said message. I’m going to get my share of shit for not recommending this film that everybody seems to love (this will be almost as bad as when I called Braveheart a “piece of period (movie) shit”) but I just can recommend any story that feels like it’s moving on a previously lain track, a film that hits all the proper story beats at all the proper times, a film that just plain seems void of any real signs of life. Again, the character of Pai does her job but what good is a good performance when the character is acting next to the equivalent of shards of drift wood? And since everything that is supposed to take place does and the deeper meaning of the ending is rendered moot in a confused attempt to blend magic and reality that results in neither coming across. The director takes the easy way out by giving us the safe, happy ending while withholding the mythical conclusion to Pai's arc (where-- mini-spoiler ahead-- the girl’s cosmic special-ness turns out to be real as she rides the back of a whale, saves her tribe, and turns into a timeless mythic figure in the process) and resorts to, well, an pedestrian feel-good ending that the writer of Legally Blond would have come up with.  Grade: C-

Bend it Like Beckham
Directed by Gurinder Chadha
Outline: The daughter of orthodox Sikh rebels against her parents' traditionalism by running off to Germany with a football team (soccer in America).

     There’s a great scene in the zippy Bent it Like Beckham. At one point in the film after a the girl (the winning Parminder K. Nagra) gets into a racially charged fight during a football match and causes her team to loose a big game. The tenacious girl finds herself paralyzed with anger and if that wasn’t enough this incident occurs in front of her disapproving Indian father. Broken about loosing her cool and letting her teammates down she defends her action against a girl that “…called me a Pakistani." and says "You don’t know how that feels” to her supportive "white" coach (Jonathan Ryus Meyers in his first role where I haven’t wanted to kill him). The coach hits back with “I’m Irish, of course I know how it feels.” This defines the film for me… a semi-realistic girl power ode to the cathartic equalizing qualities of good old fashion sportsmanship but more than that, the notion of how culture and values play into our pastimes and passions is where the interesting stuff occurs. What surprised me most about the film was that it works as an absorbing culture study more than it does than a decent sports movie. The fact that this film is about “soccer” per say is perfunctory, the film could have been about anything (chess, drugs, prostitution) and I still would have taken to it because the characters are what matter here and as such, the characters that inhabit this film are impossible to hate. Unlike Whale Rider, Bend It’s character driven drama has an internal logic that feels real and the film’s often heavy doses sentimental chunkiness at least feel more natural and energized and, more importantly, earned than the dead-in-the-water, drift wood boring emotions contained in the similar female/cultural study film, Whale Rider.

The film would be on my short list for one of the best films to come out this year but the problem is that the director is more interested in melodrama and culturally charged comic jabs (she wants us predictable whities to chant: "oh man, them Indians have themselves sum funny customs… he he") than successful sports movie visuals. Fact is, this is a Soccer, pardon, football film has no kinetic flair—Ladybugs was more exciting for Vishnu’s sake. The film boring to look at to be quite honest. And so the many sports scenes where Nagra's Jesminder is working up a sweat during one big game after another (you see, she needs to forge her own personal identity and does this through football) lay flat on the screen and the director all too often resorts to close-ups when she should instead be giving us a glimpse of the bigger picture. What’s good is that I was more interested in the characters than the sports they played but what’s bad about that is that at a certain point in the film the uninspired football content just got to be distracting and redundant. While a more masculine, Ron Shelton way of visually rendering the high (emotional) stakes sport would have made Bend It the total package as sports films go, the films still stands out as a real winner. Forget Whale Rider this is one of the only solid must-see movies to be released all year. Grade: B

The Cuckoo
Directed by Aleksandr Rogozhkin
Outline: September of 1944, a few days before Finland went out of the Second World War. A chained to a rock Finnish sniper-kamikadze Wille managed to set himself free. Ivan, a captain of the Soviet Army, arrested by the Front Secret Police 'Smersh', has a narrow escape. They are soldiers of the two enemy armies. A Lapp woman Anni gives a shelter to both of them at her farm. For Anni they are not enemies, but just men.

Here is the second film after the award winning No Man’s Land that could help start a new trend in filmmaking: the get-three-people-togethar-throw-them-in-a-pit-and-see-what-they-do genre. Also like No Man’s Land this film is about language, for one, but more than that how humans act and revert to their true nature when stuck in a situation where staying alive is the number one goal. As directed by Russian filmmaker Aleksandr Rogozhkin, Cuckoo is a languorous odyssey of inner strife and communal sharing… three people from three vastly different cultures (two of which, Finland and Russia are warring during the film’s 1944 setting) find themselves in the same area and act out their countries squabbles instead of looking at the individual. “The war is over! Hello, common sense!” the now peaceful Finnish soldier (Ville Haapasalo) says in retort to a Russian soldier (Kiktor Bychkov) that wants to kill him due to the Nazi German garbs he is mistakenly wearing.

Basically, the film explores the rustic, lived-in location of a countrywoman’s humble little lot of land by the sea where she tends to a small farm and lives in a warmly lit hut. One day, the woman (Anni-Kristiina Juuso) finds herself tending to a wounded Russian soldier that she found laying face down in a bombed out hole in the ground. She doesn’t get war, she doesn’t take sides, she is simply a humanist. Next comes a young Finnish sniper who was condemned to die, thrown into German garbs, and after a clever string of scenes where we see him going all McGuiver by trying to escape his foot shackle after being chained to a rock by Russian soldiers, he arrives to this hut in search of chain cutters but ends up staying. Now there are three people visiting with this verial young Lapp widow workhorse who has a wiley look in her eyes as she declares (to herself because nobody speaks her language) that she has “not had a man in four years.” The film brilliantly plays off the smoldering tension of the three characters harbor towards each other and themselves (sexual, cultural, aggressive etc.). Do sparks fly? Does everyone end up have sex? Are shots fired? Yes, oh yes, and yes, but it’s not what you think. This film is not the sensationally terse and heart pounding polemic that No Man’s Land was. Rather, The Cuckoo is a slow meditation of human’s divided by language, war, and regional differences. These characters connect not through a shared dialogue or everyday logic but through action and a sort of magical spiritual transference as all three characters unconsciously end up acquiescing towards a common communal connection that bonds all men (and animals). Indeed, the film may be saying that war and politics have no place in this house.

During one carefully composed shot we see two characters going into a fish damn that from overhead looks like a spiral shell. The young woman has set this contraption up so that during high tide the gate is open and fish go in and when low tide washes over the fish find themselves trapped in this maze and thus die when the tide goes back again. The lonely woman is one with the land and proceeds to thank the fish for their sacrifice. This is mentioned because I feel that visual of the spiral and sacrificial dead fish and characters harvesting those fish is a way for the film to visually represent WWII. People are trapped, circumstance takes over, things spiral out of control, many die but we were able to (literally and figuratively) pick up the pieces only to learn from, be grateful for and (sadly) repeat our actions. The film is full of stunning visuals but I strained to derive meaning. I’m not use to watching films that are more about places than ideas and so perhaps it’s better to just watch this film as opposed to trying to read it.  

The Cuckoo is a sparse gem that works its charms within these gloriously de-saturated vistas that lack color but have you feeling like your watching this from the harshly cold tundra. But amidst all this scenery and Thin Red Line-slow content is a film that’s searching for ideas. Why set a film in this location if you’re not going to say anything? We see a lot but, really, what is the film trying to tell us? One character gets shot by another in the “climax” and we see the spiritual widow bring his soul back into the world of the living thanks to some sympathetic magic and a spirit guide. The man is essentially dead but the woman asks the spirits to help him live. They do. Why??? That scene may be thoughtful but it is a conclusion to these character’s arcs and not the madness they have been enraptured in. I’m working on this but it’s hard not to address the geo-political ramifications in a melting pot film like Cuckoo, yet the film asks me to. The director’s ultimate reluctance to do anything drastic with this microcosm scenario almost left me indifferent. I felt like the filmmaker held back on any implicit message besides make love not war and without that emphatic dramatic oomph one walks away with no lasting memory but, you know what, I’m okay with that because instead I got a slew of starkly brilliant, non-political images that make meaning instead through the heats of it’s characters. Being a westerner this is a hard idea to cope with but I’m going to try anyways. Find this film if you can. Grade: B  

The Magdalena Sisters
Directed by Peter Mullan
Outline: Ireland in the sixties: Four women are given into the custody of the Madgalene sisterhoood asylum to correct their more or less sinful behaviour: Crispina and Rose have given birth to a pre-marriage child, Margaret got raped by her cousin and the orphan Bernadette had been repeatedly caught flirting with the boys. All have to work in a laundry under the strict supervision of the nuns, who break their wills through sadistic punishments. Some of the inmates develop countermeasures, while others perish under the treatment.

The Magdalene Sisters is a controversial film about how state, church and family can intersect to magnify a society's hateful ignorance. In this ripe with antagonism film we see how woman in heavily Catholic society get punished for little more than being what they are. The film would have us believe that during this long span of time Ireland (and to some extent Scotland) was a theocratic land that hides behind it's church and lets corrupted officials of the cloth essentially govern the nation. While the characters are fictitious the situation wasn’t. The church would set up these asylums where “sexually deviant” girls were sent there to “work” and be "redeemed" were often wrongfully blamed and wrongfully held against their will by the church. And if that wasn’t enough, the nuns in charge of this holy work camp would hold the girls as unpaid slaves and, on top of that, abuse them and even worse than all of that: the ritualistic abuse would strip away many girls identities and turn them either crazy or crazy religious. Geraldine McEwan in a role that rivals Hannibal Lector plays Sister Bridget the head nun who’s a pedantic zealotry allows her to feel that "purifying" these dirty girls is god's work—she’s like Robert Mitchum’s character in the great Night of the Hunter only even more crazy. Tragic reality aside, the actress is a monstrous delight to watch, as are the other nuns who roam this film’s cold and angry world like vengeful ambassadors of a depraved deity. Director Peter Mullan takes a brave step by taking on this subject, that is not to be disputed, but I feel he takes an even braver step to take the iconic movie visual of a pleasant Sound of Music-esq nuns and turning them into the equivalent of holy Nazis. If Jaws made us afraid to go into the water than this somber drama will make you afraid to go into church.

Yes, we should all look at the film as a cautionary tale about what happens when a society or country allows the church too much power (Mr. Bush and Mr. Ashcroft should take heed) but one could also look at the film as a faithful genre picture, albeit one with a lot of weighty moral speechifying. While this is not entirely a formula religious drama, the film takes all the important elements of the prison movie genre and transports them into this loaded film about innocents being held by agents of false religiosity… the line “he is not a man of god” is spoken 27 times, and that’s not enough for just about every authority figure in this film is a man or woman of god… and they are all depicted as tyrants, monsters, and generally scary people who hate women and have long forgetting what it means to be a “good Christian.” But, yeah, this is a prison movie as much as it is a period movie morality tale. The film takes the point-of-view of four girls who have been unfairly sentenced to life in this condemned fate (one just looked at a boy wrong and the other was raped by her cousin and both were "whores" who are punished) and like any other terse prison thriller, this is a move about escape... both escape from the institution that holds the protagonists prisoner and escape from the people who wish to silence someone’s free will and inner hope. You could call the film The Jesushank Redemption because this is a film that has you rooting for these girls to break free but the film also has you thinking that even if they did break free where could they go? This is a bleak tale with no happy resolutions for the outside of this figurative prison is in some ways worse than the inside because at least the people on the inside know they're being held captive as slaves of the Catholic Church.  

The film is so extreme in its examination of what happened that it almost resembles a horror film—and the director told the audience that he held back because what the nuns did in real life was even worse!  So while watching one gets the sense that monsters inhabit the film and behind any corner could there could be some duplicitous nun frothing at the mouth and just itching for a holy spankin’. An extreme portrayal? Maybe but the fact remains that many priests in the news today (and all those who “protect” the priest when they turn a blind eye to all the corruption, molestation, and greed going on) are no less inhuman monsters than many of the priests and nuns in this film.        

As played by Anne-Marie Duff, Nora-Jane Noone, Dorothy Duffy and Eileen Walsh these girls put even the men of the audience in this situation and have us all asking what we would do if our church and our god betrayed us like this. The Magdalene Sisters is a vengefully thoughtful piece that everyone should see, and if not see than at least be aware of. That the Vatican denied the events that happened in the film ever happened in real life is no surprise because didn't the same institution deny that there was a holocaust going on? Back to the film: besides feeling a bit slow and aimless at times, a problem with the film could be that the nuns never come off as looking human. They are a colorful mix of stock villains (but effective stock villains… like the ones Kubrick gave us in A Clockwork Orange). We never get a sense that these are real humans with real souls (corrupted or whatnot), they are simply seen as villains with no grey area and this makes the drama ever more tense and tragic and makes the girl’s escape even more urgent because there's no way that good can prevail in a dark place where the villains believe that they are in the moral right. The characters in the film know that anyone who believes they're doing god's work simply cannot be reasoned with because, well, they're spreading the word of god and how can god be wrong? And the characters also must know that from the Crusades to September 11 to the events depicted in this film... God has some splain' to do. I am glad that the film never goes easy on us. Even to the end, when a few characters actually do break free and reclaim their identities, Peter Mullan reminds us of all those girls who could not escape and we walk away with an unsettled feeling in our stomach; after seeing this film I felt I needed to to talk about it and this can only mean that Peter Mullan has done his job right.  Grade: B+

Pirates of the Caribbean and 28 Days Later7/11/2003
Pirates Directed by Gore Verbinski
28 Days Later Directed by Danny Boyle
Pirates  Outline: Jack Sparrow (Depp) and Will Turner (Bloom) brave the Caribbean Sea to stop a ship of pirates led by Captain Barbossa (Rush), who intend to break an ancient curse... with the blood of the lovely Elizabeth Swann (Knightley).
28 Days Outline: After a virus wipes out most of the planet, a handful of survivors try to save the human race from extinction.

   “We be two immortals locked in epic battle till judgment day” says Pirates of the Caribbean's grimy heavy, Jeffery Rush, as he poetically pontificates during a tired metal clanging session with Johnny Depp. And that’s kind of what the film felt like, action being promised in a seemingly endless film that is far too generous in the story department. The filmmakers seem to have made the mistake of believing that we care about more about these characters more than we do the action.

     Disney’s new hopeful assembly line piece of blockbuster pap, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of he Black Pearle, feels like one big exposition-athon that never gels into anything rewarding. Characters sit in gorgeously tailored costumes and talk in gorgeously designed rooms and when director Gore Verbinski finally gets around to the Pirate action pulp we all want, the film lets us down by giving aimless action with no treat of death and no sense of horror or doom. Rather, the only thing the action in this film yields is the audience's punishment of more dialogue. The violence in Pirates is handled with winking humor which, I suppose, is the only way to go considering the outlandish material but this irony only added to my boredom during an adventure that should be trying to avoid me looking at my watch at all costs. Hell, I don’t think I’m being an old codger by expecting a summer action film to be lean and hold my attention. I mean, if the fifty-something Arnold can keep me from blinking for two straight hours then this younged-up costume adventure has no excuse for being as period-story dreary as a BBC miniseries.

     Depp stars as Jack Sparrow, a flamboyant (I’m not kidding) pirate, a character that cannot be described better than Ebert’s keen observation: “(he) seems to be channeling a drunken drag queen.” One day Jack sails into shore looking to “commandeer,” more like steal a ship from a British navy fleet stationed in the, duh, Caribbean. After getting caught he evades the bumbling British soldiers that have sentenced him to death and while hiding out gets into a swordfight with a feisty (and prodigal) black smith named Will Turner (Bloom) and proceeds to get caught, once again, and sentenced, once again, to death. Folks, Depp's character gets caught, condemned, imprisoned and freed at least four more times! Eventually, though, Depp breaks free after a nighttime ghost pirate invasion of the island and some more stuff happens but all you need to know about the film is that Depp plays the antihero with a great comic swagger and an even better sense of humor--he's like a cross between his character from Sleepy Hollow and Hunter S Thompson. I have a feeling Depp despises the material and created this eccentric character as a way to keep himself sane. Orlando, or as I like to call my little love muffin, Orley, is Will the “brave” but boring blacksmith with a secret past… Rush (savoring the silly role with scenery chewing and along with Depp making the movie bearable) is the cursed Pirate captain that seeks to be mortal once again so he can… eat apples. Huh? Is that, like, a metaphor for having sex? And finally Kera Knightly calls in a ho-hum performance as the overly feisty heroine who is set to marry a stuffy English officer but, you see, Will realizes he’s in love with her (hey, at least its not Aragon) just as she is taken prisoner by Rush’s goons, thinking she possesses the magical powers that Bloom actually does because he’s the son of a famous pirated named….

    So that’s, uh, the film. There’s more, 134 endless minutes more of dull plot to go over but, really, who sees a film like this for the plot? Am I right? If I am then... AH HA!!! Exactly, who sees this film for the plot… so why must there so much firggen much of it! All that matters to most fan-girls (or fan-boys if you’re my friend Andrew) is that Johnny Depp wears eyeliner and Orlando is the film’s primary protagonist, playing a “hero” that is defined by his N'SYNC-y facial hair and nothing else. I know what you're thinking, a shallow character in a Bruckheimer film is no surprise but somehow the fact that Depp and Rush’s characters were so layered with a wry sense of fun made Bloom look like, well it made him look like Leonardo Dicaprio in “Gangs of New York” when he was standing next to Bill the Butcher. I say why look at Leo when you can loose yourself in the hypnotic menace of Daniel Day Lewis? The answer, I suppose, is that youth and beauty trumps acting depth. Though I admit, I admit… if a naked Rachael Leigh Cook was standing next to Meryl Streep giving the performance of her lifetime I would be like “Meryl who?” So go ahead, dig on Orlando. If that makes the film interesting for you then all I have to say is that you’re luck you’re not a doomed straight man like myself.

     Let us consider the content for a moment: characters talk about what other characters are about; they fret their existence; they talk about what obstacle they should be crossing next; the grandiose and overly astute villains (I liked that he pirates are so far from stereotyped behavior that they come off less like slobbering seaworthy drunks and more like are like eager philosophy scholars who dropped out half way thought he semester) talk about that wacky mystical “pirates curse” that Cortez’s evil deeds spurred, rendering Rush’s greedy immortal skeleton zombies doomed to walk in the light of the moon forever... which is what the film's 134 minutes feels like to us cursed movie patrions unluck enough to buy a ticket to this film. Then the heroes talk about escaping whatever mess they’re in now; and then both good guys and bad guys talk about the nature of being a true pirate, which leads to the cast cracking wise as if to let us know that EVERYONE involved in this Pirate film (except Orlando Bloom) KNOWS it’s a pirate film yet can still have a sense of humor about it. So by the time these amusement ride characters actually get around to actually BEING pirates (no raping and no pillaging… rent Lilo and Stich if you want that), all they do once they’re saddled on that iconic Pirate movie symbol-- a rickety ship-- is talk about where there going; talk about who should be leader; and drone on about the “pirate’s code” of rules (which we learn is “more like a guideline”); and once they get to where they’re going they talk about what they’re going to do to whichever nemesis they’re coming up against—Depp dreams of using his last bullet to kill Rush and Rush dreams about being human so he can eat an apple (seriously, what’s with the apple?). There’s over two hours of this talky crap! What, did I accidentally walk into the first Lord of the Rings? It seems that the only thing worse than the film’s verbose nature is the sword fights which are unrelentingly tedious and never seem to hold my attention despite the film’s brand of PG-13 nonstop yet non-gory violence.

     Methinks that to go along with the humor, Pirates needs an infusion of that good old fashion threat of danger in the mix for tis a film that is about as threatening and scary (and laughable) as the Disneyland ride. The difference is by the end of that ride I actually wanted to go on it again. Which is more than I can say for this film. Hell, I don’t even want to walk past the film’s lame poster again. I can honestly say that Pirates of the Caribbean is the most boring cursed talking ghost pirate zombie movie I’ve ever seen.  

***

What’s not a boring zombie film, however, is the rousing 28 Days Later. And thankfully the zombies can't do anything but groan. This is an epic journey through a post-apocalyptic hell where instead of the nuclear disaster we saw in T3, mankind’s new form of self destruction is an “infection” that renders humans into a tortured coil of mindless flesh with teeth. We see hordes of flesh biting, blood vomitin’ brain eating zombie Brits (as opposed to talky zombie Brit Pirates as in the film above) come at us and not a one of them is urbane and not a one of them ever says paaaardon or asks for Grey Pupon before launching at any "uninfected" agent as if they were starved dogs looking at a blood red steak. Cillian Murphy plays Jim, the film's reluctant hero caught in this world of death. Unlike Orlando, that paper thin pretty boy, Jim is a man who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders and relays his trauma without needing to say a word.

     Jim wakes up naked in a hospital one day (in full nekked Christ-figure mode) and finds himself alone in a once populated London. He gets himself up, has himself a cool refreshing PEPSI tm (ug, product placements in serious zombie movies just don't work… Romario would have himself a shit-fit if he saw this) and the film goes all Vanilla Sky on us when we see his utter isolation while walking the streets of this metropolitan gone ghost town. Except this is no dream, it’s a living nightmare. With that the film starts off as one of the more promising pictures I’ve seen all year. I could imagine a great post apocalyptic adventure where one man fights in the absence of hope yet still manages to find redemption a la Mad Max or Omega Man. Problem is despite any cool plot twist I was hoping for, nothing came close to what actually happens. This film doesn't turn into Mad Max, oh no. It doesn't even turn into Dawn of the Dead.  Like most film's I've seen these last couple of years, the flaws become to glairing to look over. Mistake number one occurs when Jim meets up with a pair of zombie fighting survivors Selena and Mark. Mark dies leaving Jim and the chick alone and against the world. Naomie Harris plays Selena as a tough and empowered character that has “no hope” and "no future" yet she fights for her life because, well, what else is she going to do? Short as it lasts, I liked the existential overtones of these people abandoned by God. They are alone, pilgrims in an unholy land and all that, but not for long. Selena leads Jim around town and at this point I still had high hopes for the film. Yeah, I could see the Adam and Even metaphor materializing into a truly meaningful end-of-the-world pot boiler. But again, that doesn't happen because she falls into a one note generic blubbering movie girl role soon enough.

     Mistake number two: As the masculine Selena and feminine Jim go around town trying to avoid zombies then meet what’s left of a once happy family, Frank and Hanna (the great Brendan Gleeson and Megan Burns). The two come across this physically and emotionally strong guy's house, which is like a fort, and hold up there for a night. As Jim is given a respite from the jittery unknowable fate that lies outside, he shoots the shit with Frank about how fucked up the world has become. At this point the film is moving further and further away from the cool stuff… zombies and apocalypse cynicism but, again, there is still hope. A few scenes later and this new and improved family (at one point Jim even calls Frank “dad” to which I say "ug" again) hears a nebulous radio broadcast from a man who claims to have “the cure.” The voice on the radio gives a location. Again, I like the religious parallels of a preacher promising answers yet failing to deliver on them. The postmodern family logically decide to follow this hopeful beacon and hit the road during the daytime (zombies, like myself, HATE the sun) and come across a series of obstacles that could be easily avoided. First they go through an underground tunnel as a “shortcut.” Jim says using this shortcut is a "fabulously bad idear" and he’s right, but scenes like these are essential to any good horror film. Next scene Jim, again for no reason, has his own fabulously bad idear when he goes into a darkly lit abandon gas station while his mates are gassing up.

     So the group finally finds this zombie-topoia and, again, director Danny Boyle deviates even further from a once fabulously brilliant idear for a film. That’s right, get ready for even less zombies and even less post-apocalyptic cynicism. MISTAKE number three: the "family" comes across a mini totalitarian government, a group of horny soldiers who have constructed a zombie-proof compound in an old castle and now feel a need to jumpstart civilization. They are lead by the voice on the radio Major Henry West, played by Christopher Eccleston. This stern man at first seems to be a savior of Jim but Major West actually has a warped motive for “starting a new civilization” with the two women Jim has brought along with him. To which I say… what does that have to do with zombies!? With this plot development taking up the turd act, woops I mean third act, I was shocked that Transpotting's Boyle could allow his viral horror film to go so far off course.  

     Sadly, the military men go semen crazy and try to kill Jim so they can take possess the girls. So now Jim goes from fighting brain dead zombies to brain dead soldiers and he goes all Solid Snake on them to protect the chaste honor of his two ladies. Fine, but this subplot belongs in a different movie. This macho persona is out of character for Jim and besides, the zombies take a back seat to this overripe plot and end up only as devices who pop up no and again but don't actually serve any purpose to the plot. Tragic, really, that this zombie film and Pirates both forget by the end that they are zombie films. The reason I have talked about so much plot (believe me when I say I hate talking about plot) is because I need to work out exactly what the film is about for myself. The first half has some real substantial messages about "people killing people" and the world "returning to normalcy" now that the humans are gone. Great stuff. In these early scenes the gritty digital video look and still moods put me so completely into this world that I could just feel the frightful isolation emanating off the main character's back. While trying to figure out the message in the the later half where Jim fights military zealots I have come to the conclusion that it is about… you know, I have no idea. I don’t think it IS about anything except a zombie movie buried under to much story.  
 

***

     Last year's Resident Evil… now that’s a zombie movie dun propa; no apologies, no bloated story, just an ultra violent kill-as-many-damn-dirty-zombies-as-possible movie with a lot of campy style to boot. 1971's Omega Man, another film 28 Days Later must be base on is about Charlton Heston waking up in a post-apocalyptic world where everybody is gone except the zombies looking creatures who also hate going out at night. Here is a brilliant film that never forgets it’s b-movie roots and skips the we are all zombies speechifying. Then there's Day of the Dead, a really good zombie story that proves that these kind of films can juggle horror and meaning with a great comment on the sad nature of hollow commercial society. And the zombie action flick Army of Darkness seems to be the inspiration for Pirates but that film is Evil Dead brilliant. There's lots of humor, lots of action, and little distracting story... this is how one does a zombie movie. All this leads me to the two films in this review. Pirates has these deranged, undead pirates growling on and on about gold (fucking capitalists) while the heroes yap about stopping the growling pirates from getting their gold, and 28 Days Later is a sincere cult film that fails on a grand level. Both films take the zombie movie formula, both involve plodding Englishmen and a purblind English military, both show us solid first act and both fall flat on their over zealous arses.  

pirates of the caribbean C-
28 days later B-

 Okay, bad zombies movies this year seem to be gaining on bad heist films. Sure the zombies movies need a couple more stinkers to catch up on the fallen heist film genre but with House of the Dead and Resident Evil 2 slated to come out this year brace yourself for a smack down of corpse rotting filmmaking.  Here's the review for a film I was too embarrassed to write about earlier this year but now figure it's safe to come out of hiding.

House of 1000 Corpses is a phantasmagoric romp through absolute hell. And I use the word "hell" in both a figurative and literal sense. The film opens as a campy zombie movie parody (at least I think it's a parody) and ends up being the exact bad movies that the film is satirizing. Bottom line is the film is painful to watch. The overkill or visual stimulus reaches almost Gilliam levels, except without any of Gilliam's coherency within the chaos.

House is about four twits going, what else, cross country and end up getting stuck in a sort of Texas Chainsaw Massacre situation where crazy family members are holding, well, just look at the title. I kind of enjoyed the beyond awful, film school performances which made me laugh at even the most pedestrian of lines, but the dialogue soon disperses when the pulpy gore takes center stage. Then… the zombies. Then… the limbs. Then... the blood. The film would have ended up looking like the last hour of the From Dusk Till Dawn except Rob Zombie has 1/10 the visual bravado as a director like Robert Rodriguez. The film is obviously nowhere near as confidently silly as Dusk. Given. But even the director, Rob (he he) Zombie knows this. Like a pig in shit this film rolls around and wallows in sloppy action where, no doubt, more fake red blood was used than Dead Alive” and Evil Dead 2 combined. Few directors can deliver manically paced filmmaking well (Oliver Stone is one who can) but even the one's who can't (Michael Bay and McG) seem skilled in their failed attempts to turn thirty second television commercials turned into feature length movies.

I could piss on this film more but if you’ll notice, my grade isn’t as low as even a glossy film like Daredevil. Why? Firstly I saw the movie for free (what, you thought I’d pay to see this dreck?). Secondly the film has a real game sense of humor. I'd almost call it entertainingly bad. Zombie is able to laugh at the genre while displaying is cruddiest filmic elements. The problem is that even if film's ability to laugh at itself kept me awake, I’m just not sure if Zombie had a sense of humor or was sincere in recreating the tone of 80's horror films. If he was sincere then god help him.

house of 1,000 corpses D+

T3: Rise of the Machines7/05/2003
What’s Good: Lots of laughs that lead up to a great ending. Give me more Terminator movies!
What's Not: A lame villain that is anything but menacing.
Directed by Jonathan Mostow
Outline: John Connor is now in his early 20's, and a female terminator, called T-X or Terminatrix, is after him . Another T-800 is sent back through time to protect John once again on the verge of the rise of the machines.

     Two terminator machines arrive, one a top-of-the-line android is sent to kill John Connor the future leader of a post apocalyptic world and the other is an antiquated model here to save Conner… again.  This is what you're paying for: Exposition— joke—joke—chase scene—explosion—joke, joke—chase scene—joke—redundant chase scene—explosion—joke, joke, joke— redundant chase scene—more chasing, more running, more fooling the dumb as silicon new Terminatrix—whoa, a really big explosion—joke—chase scene—joke, joke, joke— one last redundant chase scene— and, POW, we’re hit with totally serious, twist ending. T3: Rise of the Machines needs to decide what to be. Either it’s (A) a daft Terminator parody where, as in this film’s hilariously odd first scene, a naked android Arnold (yes, we have to see his ass again) accidentally walks into a Ladies Night strip club and asks the leather clad male dancer to “take off your clothes” or (B) a film about fate and “feeling the weight of the future bearing down on me” or (C) a grim polemic on the future of globalization and the threat of one source (power hungry robots who I guess are metaphors for American imperialism) controlling the flow of information in an increasingly unstable nuclear world. With that it should be noted that the film is 90% A. a self aware Terminator comedy mixed with one chase scene after another that’s all basically derived from the first chase scene model and 10% B and C  with it’s jolting denouement where John Connor’s fate comes at the expense of, well a lot, as the title, Rise of the Machines, actually comes to fruition in a way that few films have been brave enough to actually show us. Not to give anything away but I’m hyped for a sequel that’s set in a world that I’ve always wanted to see a Terminator movie set in... the future. The last scenes are a gimmicky ploy to set up the franchise, sure, but the development gets you thinking in a film that, sadly, could use more broad ideas and less, well, stone faced Terminator broads.

     Besides John Connor, the other JC, James Cameron, is sitting on his ass and still dreaming about a bloody stupid sunken ship. He has nothing to do with the film so we'll have to settle for U-571's Jonathan Mostow. And with Mostow's summer sequel mega franchise staring a fifty-something fascist, the flaws are clearly present but the film doesn't crumble under the weight of them. That I didn’t hate the film has me feeling the bitter sting of guilt. That I actually liked the film has me bewildered. In a way to justify my grade, though, I have come up with this model. Just put this film about mankind’s foolish reliance on machines that end up biting them in their orga asses against that other man v. metal saga, Matrix Rebloated. Matrix was a pompously beautiful mess that was full of meaning yet felt meaningless. T3 is a high energy B-action movie that is simply what it is, nothing more. No pretentious discourse yet the film has wit to spare and a big ideas ending that will blow yo top. Edge: T3. Matrix has great, classic chase scenes that leave you breathless and spent. T3 has one too many superfluous ones that leave you snickering. Edge: Matrix 2. Matrix 2 shows Keanu’s ass. T3 shows Arnold Schwarzenegger's ass. TWICE!!! But it also shows Kristanna Loken’s booty so the edge goes to: do I even need to answer that… Keanu, er, Lokin but of course. Winner: T3.

    While I’m going there Loken plays T-X a impenetrable force from the future who has been assigned to stop the future leader of a post-apocalyptic world, Conner (Nick Stahl replacing Edward Furlong), and his future wife/second in command played by Danes (overacting but still a good fit here). Loken the Teutonic beauty is in theory a great foil for Arnold and co. I mean if computer effects can equalize the playing field to the point where those three yapping twits from Charlie’s Angels can kick an army’s ass then it makes just as much sense to pull off that vintage American exploitation movie by mixing violence and sexuality until the two are one in the same. A super strong model goes on a killing rampage? Brilliant! This gets the young teens off while at the same time giving them plenty-a action. Plus, this new Terminator is, well, hotter than T2's Robert Patrick. Problem is this “terminatrix” character is as vacuous as she looks. If Patrick was the Jaws of robots then Loken is the Britney Spears of robots-- an annoying presence that can't be killed and never goes away.

    After the first elaborate set piece chase where the "unstoppable" T-X chick got played by the robotic equivalent of a Beta (Arnold's antiquated Terminator model who has a heart of wirey gold), a scrawny Jesus figure hero (Stahl's Conner) and Clara Fucking Danes, the predictability of the following scenarios was painfully clear. The T-X can never be destroyed, she can never even get a scratch or change expressions but the makers of the T-X seem to have forgotten the effing thing's intelligence chip for this idiot-droid can always be fooled yet is supposed to be scary because she will never stop pursuing her target. Needless to say the treat of JC’s death was gone by the first act and it got to a point where the question was no longer “Is IT going to kill them?” as in the palpably scary first two Terminator films but “how is she going to get her ass handed to her this time?” Time after time either Arnold or JC would come up with some ingenious plan to slow the leather-clad villainess down enough to get away and crack a couple more jokes. First we see the beautiful T-X slammed into a brick wall, face first, by a truck-- kidna funny. Then slammed with another huge truck that flipped over and had her landing, face first again, into the not-so-unforgiving cement. Then shot in the head. Then hit with a rocket. Hit with a deluge of bullets. Hit with a helicopter. Nailed to a huge magnet. And after all that scratch-free abuse we see her get a super powerful mini nuke reactor thingy shoved down her mouth. Um… okay, like, guys totally wrote this film. I mean there's a definite reason why Loken gets as many shots in the face as Christina Aguilera at a MTV Music Awards after party: mixing sex with violence looks cool and sells tickets. The suits up at Warner Brothers wanted this film's antagonist to be really hot and really scary but the the filmmaker only got the first part right. Dr. Evil could kick this sleek, zero-personality robot’s ass but don't get me wrong, this reality is not a reason to dislike the film for it only all adds another layer to how (accidentally?) funny the picture is. Arney is a super-serious wise cracker and the T-X is a one note kill-bot... the result is a brilliant cheese fest. 

    T3 takes the cutting edge nature that we ate up in the first two Terminator films and instead of spinning the series on it's head or reinventing sci-fi action movies the film is content in just being another cookie-cutter casualty of Hollywood high action-- $170 million worth of it in fact. Unlike the second film, what seems to be valued now over the long lasting respect of a well made product is a big first weekend draw. Still, this film has a fancy-free ability to wallow in what people (well, I) liked about the series. Deadpan Arnold Android cracking wise. The T-100 is at his jocular best and Arnold seems to be having fun with this material because the burden of James Cameron's grandiosity has been lifted. And while Mostow has not created a masterpiece of technological feats, he wasn't really aiming to. Again, the aim is for a easily accessible movie with lots of action to appeal to everyone in that vital first weekend. Plus, as I mentioned, at least the film is not pretentious. At this point that goes a long way with me. I mean, after the violation of my wallet and mind that the turgid Hulk and Matrix 2 were the aggressors of, I guess a film like T3, dumb as it was, is at least a summer film that feels like a summer film. Bottom line: this is a high calorie action comedy with a lot of upward mobility. A lot was forgiven when I kept that in mind.

t3: rise of the machines B

Life of David Gale7/01/2003
What’s Good: A twist ending that's actually intriguing.
What's Not: Trite and often muddled.
Directed by Alan Parker
Outline: A man against capital punishment is accused of murdering a fellow activist and is sent to death row.

     Amidst the earliest plot grumblings of The Life of David Gale you can just hear the plot point grinding along like clockwork. Yes the death penalty genre has become a formula and yes this death penalty genre can have an ending where the prisoner gets the axe while still being unoriginal. How so you ask, well just watch Alan Parker’s last film Life David Gale a film about the death penalty in Texas that’s officially about the Death Penalty In Texas only the film doesn’t explore these pert issues as much as it uses them as the backdrop of a thriller.  

     Clint Eastwood’s dead in the water reporter/death penalty yarn True Crime showed us anything it's that just because a film is about a man who is going to be wrongly put to death in X amount of days then this doesn’t always make that said man or that said cause any interesting. By that logic, then, this film shows how just because we are watching a film about a man on death row, this doesn’t mean we will automatically care how or why he got there if the story is not engaging. Yes, even if that dead man blabbing is Kevin Spacey and that reporter is Kate Winslet I still need a story with heart to back up the content. 
     Point is, the reporter film has gone extent (no more His Girl Friday and no more The Paper) but that genre still lives on in the form of the reporter/death penalty mysteries. Fucking wonderful. These films ask the same questions: did he do it or not? Can he be saved? Is he a good man. And most yield the same answers from me: Who fucking cares. What I care about is the morality held in the concept of killing a man, not the last minute reversals. Why make a death penalty film that doesn’t engage the viewer. Dead Man Walking was a long time ago and that film, shamelessly liberal as it is, at least got people talking. Life of David Gale in comparison simply uses the death penalty as a front for a bad reportin’ detective movie. And as much as I like a film that rips into Texas (which kills more people than cancer the film tells us) this film seems to trip over its ideology because a half-assed thriller got in the way of some real meaty ideas (the cool beat-the-system ending had great promise but is only used as a gimmicky twist and not a logical what-if). In the film Spacey plays a brilliant Philosophy Professor who is accused of a murder in Texas during a time that looks a lot like Bush’s governorship where more people were hanged than in any other state or even country. Oddly enough in a film titled THE LIFE of David Gale, though, the film shows every boring detail about the man's life except (A) how and why he got arrested and (B) his execution. That's right, (spoiler ahead... oh shit, the spoiler was in the last sentence, er, I mean sentence) this is the first death penalty thriller I've ever seen where the real juicy stuff, the execution, occurs behind closed doors. Odd. Before that, though, the film opens with Winslet being told that David Gale has requested her reporting services and she grants him an interview. She meets with the calm Gale, likes him, believes in him (he's calm so he must be), and is kind enough to listen to him tell his story only we never actually get to see him tell his story—all we get is Spacey starting his story and then Parker cuts to a generic movie flashback.

Spacey has a penchant for greatness but also inspirational crap. The abhorred Pay it Forward, about a healing teacher, is the kind of film that just makes you wish it was actually about teaching and not heavy handed preaching. And while this film is nowhere near as stodgy as Forward, Spacey has that same smug teacherly bravado and in both films he has no real personality even though he has real screen presence. Speaking of no real personality, the usually riveting Kate Winslet plays this “brilliant” reporter searching for clues that will exonerate Gale only, as a reporter, the one thing we don’t see her doing is reporting. Not once did I see Winslet in front of a computer screen typing her notes out. And for that matter, not once can I even recall her writing any notes! So, then, Winslet is either playing the worlds best reporter or the worlds laziest reporter. Either way, the character just runs around and instinctively searches for clues in the exact places where there are clues. No dead ends, false leads, time wasters, no people are interviewed that don’t have a dark, dark secret past and no down time, just a lot of handy movie luck that leads her preternaturally boring “reporting” down to the wire to that point in this generic picture where this thin character must literally race to free the inmate… by foot (not car, cab, bus, skateboard, rollerblade, or bike). And there it is; not one character in the LIFE of David Gale seems to have a life outside of what their assigned to do in this picture and that's including David Gale's life.

Is this thriller a zero star picture as Roger Ebert espoused, later calling it the worst film so far this year? Heavens no. The film, despite its sins of blunt unoriginality and blank sentimentality did hold my attention (though my choice was either watching this film or staring at the grey haired pigs next to me eating airplane pretzels), and the film does have a twist ending that, while far fetched, goes off the tracks and had me thinking about all the new implications this development raised. Sadly, the rest of the film stays on the tracks and is as routine as sports article.  

the life of david gale C