Review: The Terminal
June 18, 2004; Regal Falmouth #2
* * 1/4 (out of 4)

It’s one thing for a movie to start as something, and over the course of the running time smoothly transition into being something else; this is clever, entertaining, and hard to do. It’s entirely another thing for a movie to simply not know what it wants to be, so it tries to be everything. This is even harder to do, and if it isn’t done perfectly, the end product doesn’t come out too well. This is where The Terminal falls. Steven Spielberg has a nice little character in Viktor Navorski, but he doesn’t decide what side of the character to explore. He just explores everything all at once, overloading the viewer and, at times, downright boring them.

Navorski (Tom Hanks) is going through a customs check in JFK Airport when a military coup overthrows the government of his homeland, rendering his passport and all other legal documents invalid. Thus, Navorski falls through a crack: he can’t step foot onto U.S. soil because he can’t pass the airport’s incoming customs check, nor can he go home, because he cannot pass the airport’s outgoing customs check. He is forced to live in the airport for nearly a year while his government restabilizes, making friends and falling in love with a flight attendant (Catherine Zeta-Jones) along the way. Meanwhile, his continuous presence is a constant thorn in the side of security chief Frank Dixon (Stanley Tucci).

There should be a great movie here. There’s a great cast, Spielberg’s directing is as top-notch as is expected… it just feels like in writing the script, Sacha Gervasi and Jeff Nathanson wanted to go every which way, and make Navorski run the gamut of human interaction – friendship, hostility, love, fear, sadness – and never focus on a single one. By cramming all of this into two hours and twenty minutes, they ended up just making the movie feel longer and more fragmented. It seems like Navorski only deals with one of these issues at any given time, so there are 8 stories within his life continually running alongside each other, with only the airport setting to tie them together.

Hanks is pretty good with Navorski, and there’s obvious growth in the character, but the growth happens to quickly between scenes to be realistic. Also, even though there’s not enough focus on the romance to make it matter, the 15-year age difference between Hanks and Zeta-Jones is definitely noticeable and a bit unnerving. Tucci is the most solid of anyone in the cast. Normally straightforward and by the book, Frank Dixon’s reactions to Navorski are second in humor only to Dixon’s repeated unorthodox attempts to rid himself of his unwelcome guest. Tucci keeps an energy in Dixon that makes him fun to watch, and also makes his ambition and resolution that much more believable.

The Terminal should have been a hit. There are so many good things and people within the confines of one movie, but they tried to make a greater movie than their time allowed. This forces them to cram too much into too little, and this stress brings even the best parts of the film crashing down. All the performances are strong; a shame they didn’t have a bit of a better vehicle.

Review: Around the World in 80 Days
June 15, 2004; Regal Falmouth #9
* * ½ (out of 4)

I’m a sucker for Jackie Chan; he is easily one of the most continually entertaining performers in the industry with his martial arts abilities, and he’s made a pretty solid attempt to learn English so he can fit in the comedy as well. While 80 Days is by no means Jackie’s best movie, his martial arts are as solid as ever, and some of the best cameos I’ve seen in a long time overshadow a pretty uninventive plot.

Chan is Lau Xing, who has been sent from his village in China to secure a sacred item that was stolen from them. He finds the item in London, where he also finds Phileas Fogg (Steve Coogan), eccentric scientist and inventor. Fogg is challenged by his colleagues to circumnavigate the world in 80 days or less; if he does it, he becomes the leader of the organization, but failure means he must never invent again. Lau Xing sees this as his best opportunity to return home, so he masquerades as Fogg’s valet, naturally befriending Fogg along the way. In first-stop Paris they pick up Monique La Roche (Cécile De France), a struggling artist who wants to see the world, and the three head off across Asia, the US, and eventually back to London, inevitably getting into all sorts of trouble along the way.

I will give Jackie Chan credit… he has come a long way as an English-speaking actor. There are very few lines you need to really work at to understand, and he’s gotten a very good grasp of the flow of American films. The problem with what he’s given here is that his dialogue will either blatantly push him towards an action sequence, or it is used to stop whatever train of thought the film was on and start a new one in a completely different direction. In fact, the writing overall leaves quite a bit to be desired. Understandably, the film is built on the action scenes Chan is famous for, so the rest aims for those, but that doesn’t mean the rest needs to be dropped altogether. Steve Coogan is, I’ve heard, fully capable of handling more mature dialogue… all he has here are some one liners, and clips playing off Fogg’s, “Look at me, I’m socially awkward” characteristics.

But then there’s the good. The dialogue aims towards Chan’s fighting because it is easily the best stuff in the movie. In a few of his last projects (namely The Medallion and The Tuxedo), it was apparent that he was relying more on wires and effects instead of the clever choreography that makes him a joy to watch; it raised some questions about whether he could still pull off some of his more elaborate stunts – not that anyone could blame him at age 50. But in 80 Days he returns to the creativity that brought him fame. Some of my favorite involves Jackie using found objects – benches, paintbrushes, hats, whatever he can get his hands on. This felt a lot more like his classics (Jui Kuen II) than his more recent, less impressive works.

The hidden gems in this movie are the cameos. They’re everywhere, and they are from everyone. Governor Arnold, Rob Schneider, Kathy Bates, Sammo Hung, John Cleese, but the best comes from Owen and Luke Wilson, playing the Wright Brothers. Their part is small enough to not pull away from the scope of the movie, but lasts long enough to establish that they were perfect choices for the written part.

Visually, the movie is very unique, and I think I liked it for that. Director Frank Coraci made some different and rather silly choices for how he would show the progress of 80 days without showing every day. His Indiana Jones-esque map is a little crazy and busy, but it works with the tone of the movie. Also amusing is some of the “far-fetched” ideas and inventions that Coraci gives Fogg – roller shoes, automatic carriages, whistle-activated lights, wind-powered electricity… he takes a number of things that seem commonplace now, and show exactly how preposterous they might have seemed in 19th-century Britain.

Around the World in 80 Days is fun, mostly because Jackie Chan returns doing what he does best. The slapstick-style martial arts are something in which very few people can come close to touching him; it really is his domain. Unfortunately, he overshadows the other two “leads” in the film; sad, because I liked what I saw of Steve Coogan, and I bet he can be very funny if he isn’t always serving as a set-up guy. All in all, this is a tame, family-friendly adventure, and no less than a fun movie – but oftentimes no more, either.

Review: The Chronicles of Riddick
June 13, 2004; Regal Falmouth #3
* * * 1/4 (out of 4)

It's been awhile since I've seen Pitch Black, but what I remember is that I liked it because David Twohy took a relatively small budget and a group of near-unknowns and made a very fun sci-fi action/adventure. More than that, the sci-fi material was rooted in a more realistic science, something few sci-fi directors are willing to risk doing nowadays. My hope was that in Chronicles of Riddick, Twohy would take those same ideas and apply the much larger chunk of change that Universal was handing him. While he does better than some sci-fi action titles, there's a freshness that has disappeared since Pitch Black, and in places it feels more like a typical Hollywood movie than I know Twohy can make. Nevertheless, Vin Diesel owns Riddick as much as any other action star can claim, and he makes the audience care about the anti-heroic killer.

Riddick is now a criminal, and after being captured by bounty hunters he is transported to a planet that has just recently been invaded by the Necromongers, a massive army/cult on a quest to find their ultimate paradise. Along the way, the Necromongers conquer worlds and add the conquered people to their ranks. After an altercation with Riddick, the Necromonger leader, the Lord Marshal (Colm Feore), orders Riddick's death, afraid he might fulfil a prophecy that says only a "Furian" could topple this empire - naturally, Riddick is the last known surviving Furian. Not anxious to rush his own death, Riddick fights back, and begins a fight to save his own life and the lives of a entire world's population.

The centerpiece of this movie, and its strongest component, is Vin Diesel. No one is ever going to accuse the man of mastering Shakespeare, but he has proven he knows this character. It is so clear through the entire movie precisely what and who Riddick cares about, and every action is driven through those priorities. Plus, there's just something about Diesel's voice... it's too perfect. His deadpan and sarcasm transform a simple killing machine into a real, true character. The rest of the cast is... well, they're there, which has to count for something. One may spend a lot of time trying to figure out what Dame Judy Dench is doing in this movie, but for what her character is, she does her best. Alexa Davalos is horribly underused after introducing what could have proven to be a much more interesting character. The only supporting cast member to come out clean is Thandie Newton, as an ambitious upper echelon member of the Necromongers. She gets a good amount of screentime and plot presence, and she uses it well. She'll be a good addition to this series, should the planned sequels come to light.

David Twohy's directing delivers some ups and downs, though to be fair only fans of his work will notice the "downs." They're not so much downs as they are him falling back on standard Hollywood action fare, which isn't bad, it's just a little less than expected. The ups definitely come when he veers away from typical motifs and styles; a fight in near-darkness to demonstrate Riddick's abilities, a race against a planet's rising sun, and one fight that sticks out simply because Twohy removed the sound from the scene - these are the things that puts Chronicles above other action sci-fi movies. Unfortunately, these moments make up a much smaller portion of the movie than the typical stuff. Finally, that quarter-star comes solely from the last ten minutes of the movie; this could prove to be a beautiful set up for a franchise, and I am looking forward to see where Twohy can take it.

Review: The Stepford Wives
June 11, 2004; Regal Falmouth #5
* * * ¼ (out of 4)

In a 21st century consumed in liberalism and conservative backlash, what makes a film like The Stepford Wives work is the ability of everyone involved to embrace the absolute absurdity of the idea. It’s clear this could never and would never work – and no one would want to try. Any attempt at this would be met with outrage from every human rights group known to man for crimes against racial, gender, religious, and sexual equality. However, when you consider the ridiculousness of the situation and create a dark comedy around it, you’ve got a good chance at getting to audiences by making them laugh at the stupidity of bigotry.

Joanna Eberhard (Nicole Kidman), a high-powered Manhattan TV executive, suffers a massive nervous breakdown when the Board of Directors fires her from the network that she started. To allow her to recuperate and to begin healing familial wounds, she and her husband Walter (Matthew Broderick) pick up their two kids and head to quiet, suburban Stepford, Connecticut, hoping the change from the city will be just what they both need. Immediately upon arrival, Joanna begins to notice oddities abound; the men spend all their time at the Stepford Men’s Association under the leadership of Mike (Christopher Walken), and the women, when they’re not cleaning house or in the kitchen, spend the days at the Simply Stepford Day Spa under the watchful eye of Mike’s wife Claire (Glenn Close). Soon Joanna and her two best friends, the other two newcomers to the Stepford way of life, begin to see patterns and odd behavior from the women in town. It seems as though they exist only to serve their husbands. Joanna, Bobbie (Bette Midler), and Roger (Roger Bart) don’t have long to figure out what’s going on in the small community before the rest of Stepford gets their hands on them, as well.

Absurdity. It’s key here. While Kidman, Midler, and Bart spend the entire movie in horrified amazement outside of the circle, anyone within the Stepford circle fully commit to making this hell on earth seem completely real – even when it’s entirely impossible. All the men – geeks and nerds anywhere else in the world – play their parts as geeks and nerds trying to not be geeks and nerds. The women do a decent job of playing on the mechanical physicality while making sure with behavior and speech that no one could ever find this lifestyle truly appealing.

Everyone fits where they need to here. Walken and Close are marvelously creepy as the ‘parents’ of the community. Broderick, having been relatively absent from the screen in the last few years, comes back with a much more adult feel than he’s ever had before. The standouts in this film come via the three outcasts. Kidman’s Joanna plays mostly on sheer appalled terror, which creates some very worthwhile reactions. Midler, as a best-selling feminist author, provides some great one-liners and also a fantastic switch in personalities, which sets Joanna off even more as she realizes that she will be next. Roger Bart steals the show by playing the walking gay stereotype that he perfected onstage as Carmen Ghia in The Producers. His Roger also offers an interesting twist that the original The Stepford Wives - turning one of the men in a homosexual relationship into the perfect “Stepford Wife.”

Frank Oz as a director has been pretty lucky. He tends to get an amazing cast that doesn’t seem like it would need much in the way of direction, so he can focus more on the visual picture. His image of Stepford is perfect – a man’s paradise, basically a town-sized country club. He gives the Men’s Association a beautifully sinister and evil feel, something that makes the end twist that much better. More than anything else, Oz presents the story in the best way possible to preserve the comedy without it getting lost in the craziness of the story he’s telling.

The Stepford Wives definitely proved better than expected, and great performances delivered by the people we’ve come to expect them from are right on target. The twist at the end is clever and unexpected and makes for a good end to a good time at the movies.

Review: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
June 9, 2004; Regal Falmouth 10 #1
* * * (out of four)

Movies in a series like Harry Potter become increasingly difficult to judge; on one hand, it is the rare movie that turns out better than the book that serves as source material, but on the other, cinema as a medium is very unique because it can express things in ways books can’t, so sometimes, not everything included in the source is necessary to include in the film. Upon seeing this movie, I am four years removed from reading J.K. Rowling’s book, so I do not remember exactly what was omitted from the script; I also can’t say whether or not the film would be improved were these details included. But none of this matters when considering Prisoner of Azkaban as a movie. What is presented here is a decent continuation on the three leads while not showing anything spectacular. The film benefits most from a new director Alfonso Cuarón, and it is a shame he won’t have a chance to continue in the series.

As Azkaban starts, the now-infamous Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) is returning to Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for his third year. He is reunited with best friends Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermoine (Emma Watson), but catching up is soon cut short by news that Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), a wizard convicted of murder, has escaped from Azkaban Prison and plans to seek out Harry Potter. The guards of Azkaban, the ghostly Dementors, have been dispatched to Hogwart’s in search of Black. Between Black, the Dementors, and mysterious new Professor Lupin (David Thewlis), there’s no doubt it will be another very interesting and eventful year at Hogwart’s.

The movie’s biggest strength lies within its new director, Cuarón. While Chris Columbus helmed the first two and firmly established the franchise, Cuarón takes hold of the secure universe and begins to visually twist it into a deeper, more complex state. His approach to the film’s opening scene, in which Harry confronts an aunt who despises him, unfolds more like a Roald Dahl book than anything else we’ve seen thus far in a Potter movie. This darker, more mature tone extends throughout the movie, and builds strongly upon the notion set in Chamber of Secrets that these are not just kiddie movies. Unfortunately, as Prisoner and Goblet of Fire, the next in the series, were shot nearly on top of each other, Mike Newell will replace Cuarón as director for the next installment. Time will tell if Newell will advance the good things that Cuarón put in place.

Also to the movie’s credit is any actor returning to the film from the previous installments, most notably the children. Radcliffe, Grint, and Watson (along with Tom Felton as Lucius Malfoy) have decisively claimed these characters as their own. They are growing and changing with the characters, and any attempt to replace any of them in future installments would surely be met with just and proper outrage. Prisoner specifically gives Watson and Felton time to develop and become key players in the story or simply in the every day goings-on of Hogwart’s. Returning professors are impressive as well, with Snape (Alan Rickman), McGonagall (Maggie Smith), and Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) leading the way. While Kenneth Branagh is missed, the additions of Thewlis and Emma Thompson’s batty Professor Trelawney help soften the blow.

Overly conspicuous by his absence is the late Richard Harris as Headmaster Dumbledore. In the wake of Harris’s death it became necessary to recast Dumbledore, and Michael Gambon delivers a solid performance, but there are too many noticeable changes in the Headmaster’s demeanor, energy, and overall feel. I appreciate Gambon making the character his own, but his Dumbledore is nearly unrecognizable compared to what the audience has grown accustomed to. I have to wonder if these differences played a role in a reducing the amount of screen time for the character in this installment.

Beyond all these individual performances, the movie simply wasn’t as solid as Chamber of Secrets. There are holes, albeit small, that were never properly filled – you try to justify to your children why Harry’s assault on his aunt is okay simply because he is Harry Potter. Above all else, the movie drags. I’ve seen it twice now, and both times I lost interest at just about the same point in time. It is impressive, though not in a beneficial way, that this movie feels longer than the previous installment when the running time actually falls twenty minutes short of Chamber.

The Harry Potter film series, much like the books, has the unenviable curse of being held to phenomenal and unmeetable expectations. Despite that, each installment still needs to expand the universe and add to it an amount that will sufficiently keep the viewers interested. Speaking as a viewer who is not a huge fan of the books, the film fell short of that. In addition, fans of the books have expressed disappointment in the amount that was removed in the adaptation process. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is a decent continuation of the story that falls short of properly expanding the story. Some characters take great strides, while some suffer. Fairly enjoyable on its own, but hit or miss as a component in one of the most anticipated and coveted franchises in film’s history.

Harry Potter

There will be a review up here shortly... I did see this one Thursday night, but whereas it was 2 AM by the time the show was over, and I was sufficiently bored and thus distracted for the last half hour, I think it's only fair that I go and see it again with a relatively clear head, and when I'm not at risk of falling asleep, so expect to see that one up sometime this week.

Review: The Day After Tomorrow
Tuesday, June 1; Regal Falmouth #5
* * * (out of 4)

Propaganda movies have always been somewhat hard to swallow, regardless of the point of view they pushed. Anything that is so solidly one-sided strikes me as being flawed from the beginning, so hearing that environmentalist group the Sierra Club was holding a private screening of this film on opening day very much paled any high hopes I had for it. And yes, The Day After Tomorrow is the best propaganda film that the EPA never paid for. The message of preservation and conservation is out in force, and at times it crosses into arrogance, but most of the time, it’s a forgettable motive for a really fun disaster movie.

Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) is a climatologist who has discovered an alarming trend; at the rate the polar ice caps are melting due to global warming, the North Atlantic current could shift, and earth could experience a global-killing event within a few generations, sending the planet into another ice age. He advises immediate change to prevent the consequences in a hundred years, but his advice is wholly ignored by the vice president (Kenneth Welsh). Hall’s estimate was far too optimistic, it seems, when climate changes begin to have catastrophic results within the week – tornados in Los Angeles, baseball-sized hail in China, and massive flooding and freezing in the northern hemisphere. With a new ice age upon the Earth, Jack attempts to rescue his son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal) from snow-buried New York City while the government attempts to save as many people as possible.

This movie thrives on its destruction. Many movies have tried to use the world-killing scenario, but not many have done it well. Armageddon and Deep Impact threw most science to the wind using Earth-bound asteroids, and the fact that most of The Day After Tomorrow’s science is solid is the most frightening aspect. The idea that somehow, someday, this could really happen (granted, not to this scale) enhances the movie that much more, and definitely delivers the intended environmental message. Everyone will walk out of this movie with a sincere feeling that it’s time to pay a little bit more attention, and stop pissing off Mother Nature.

Unfortunately, once the film moves beyond the awe-inspiring images of disaster, it slows down… a lot. Quaid’s Jack Hall is not the typical action hero. Director/writer Roland Emmerich really likes this nerdy hero style; Quaid is playing the same character that Jeff Goldblum played in Independence Day, but Quaid can’t crack jokes. Gyllenhaal is decent, but a lot of time is spent with his Sam and Sam’s friends, and not much is done with them. Their only purpose is one act of heroism by Sam and his friends to save the life of another friend (Emmy Rossum). None of it is terribly interesting, but it at least tries to give a feeling of human perseverance, even in the face of extreme adversity.

A lot of what goes on after the first hour of mayhem is slow and mistimed, but Emmerich does provide for some beautifully frightening shots of the “new” Earth – space footage of storms covering entire continents, and a particularly effective sequence where Jack, on his way into New York City, walks past a frozen Statue of Liberty, now buried up to her crown in show. This idea of supposed human invincibility placed entirely at nature’s mercy is beautifully presented, and hands down delivers the film’s best moments. A better character-driven plot needed to be built around it, or Emmerich should have stuck to what he was doing best. Even still, as disaster movies go, nothing comes to mind that can top this one.