Netflix Roundup #2

Just a small one this time... Sadly, I've had little time for movies the last month or so... also, what Netflix has sent me has been a string of somewhat depressing films that I've wanted to see, but never quite been in the mood for - to that end, Ray has been sitting on my desk since mid-December. Maybe that'll be tonight... anyway, like I said, not a big list this time. Again, based on the 5-star system, and the titles will jump you to Amazon.

City of God: * * * *
As far as I am concerned, this should be the poster child for foreign films in America. The most common complaint is that the language barrier is too jarring, and keeps people from becoming engaged in the film. That isn't at all an issue for this film. Across the board, this is a very unconventional film (as I write this, I am reading the trivia section on IMDB.com, and it's making me appreciate the film even more). Very few of the actors were professionals, and many of them came from the slums around Rio de Janeiro, some even from the City of God. This is, for all intents and purposes, an American mobster movie, but it gets a very nasty edge to it because these are children. There are a number of sequences that are unscripted or improvised because these kids told the director that this is what life was like, and he felt a need to include that. The film is compelling enough as a story, but carries so much more weight with the knowledge that some of this really happens, and only the kids involved could ever have introduced that.

Rushmore: * * * *
I didn't know what to expect at all for this one. This is about as quirky a movie as you can find, and that may very well turn some people away. But most of the characters aren't so quirky as to be annoying, which allows them to create some really fun relationships. Bill Murray was my standout, as Jason Schwartzman inched a little too close to the line for my liking. It's a great cast all-around, with a somewhat ridiculous, over-the-top backstory supporting them, but that's something that Wes Anderson has repeatedly shown he can handle well. He's still a bit unpolished here, but if you've been a fan of anything else he's released since, chances are you'll get a kick out of this.

The Reckoning: * * *
The concept of this really appealed to me - a medieval drama about a traveling theatre group, and the priest who falls in with them. Great idea, great cast, lackluster execution. Everyone pulls their own weight, with Willem Dafoe, Paul Bettany and Brian Cox shouldering more than others, but there's nothing terribly interesting about the script, which might be the reason this one never saw anything spectacular. It might serve as a nice hidden history lesson for theater or medieval enthusiasts, but nothing significant.

Raising Arizona: * * * *
Yeah, this was all kinds of fun. This is Coen Brothers craziness before they established the people they work with on every movie. As such, Nicholas Cage is fantastic in a role that no agent would ever allow him to take now. Admittedly, this is a little more frantic than most of the Coens' later films, but that energy works well with the plot - when you're stealing someone's baby, you may need a little bit of crazy energy. It seemed maybe a little long (even though it's not), probably because the idea was starting to wear thin on me, but the cast pulls it through and keeps it fun. Why John Goodman isn't a huge comedic force outside of the Coen efforts, I'll never understand. This may be another one that fans of the Coens will enjoy more than others, but I think it's worth a laugh from everyone.

The Recruit: * * *
So yes, I saw the end coming the minute the main characters stepped onscreen, but the journey to get there was kind of fun. It's movies like this - movies that I assume a studio picked for him - that make it no question why Colin Ferrell has become the star he has. He is a bright point in this otherwise formula and blah movie. Al Pachino is good as well, but does he really have to try to do these parts anymore? The twists are pretty standard, but I kind of feel like Ferrell's character is a little bit smarter than the average pawn in this sort of film, if only because he KNOWS he's getting jerked around from the very beginning, he's just not sure by who. It's fun once, if you can bookend it with something better.


Closer: * * * *
I'd been sitting on this one for quite awhile, never quite being in the mood to rent it. A shame. This is a lot of fun. The only downfall of this film is that the script comes almost directly from the playscript, and while it is modern enough to be easily transformed, there is still a very presentational style to some of the language. But that isn't enough to seriously hinder the film. The four leads are perfectly cast, and provide some great voyeuristic fun. Anything involving the two men (Clive Owen and Jude Law) is a lot of fun, as they play the animosity perfectly. As for the women, Natalie Portman is adorable (as if she's ever not), and Julia Roberts needs to take more parts like this. She's mean, she's bitchy, and she's actually realistic. At times, I actually forgot I was watching Julia Roberts, which is a difficult thing, considering her name. The actual relationships aren't believable, nor should they be - it leads to some fantastic fights, especially the final fight between Owen and Roberts. In fact, Owen's character is the one to watch in the film, though if I remember the trailers correctly, you'd never know it. It's also very well made, considering there are NO auxiliary characters. There are no more than ten lines of dialogue from anyone other than the four stars. That's hard to pull off. I would love to see this onstage, once the subtlety that film allows has been removed.

Comic Book: The Movie: * * *
This was in my queue for entirely geeky reasons: the Bruce Campbell appearance, and the morbid curiosity to see what happened to Mark Hamill's career. Not a pretty sight. The film is shot like a documentary, starring writer-director Hamill. It's kind of amusing, but it falls short because it's a little too much of the same thing. Someone talks about this Commander Courage character, Mark Hamill does something stupid, the studio gets angry, hilarity ensues. This is funny for a few rounds, but sooner or later you have to wonder why Hamill isn't getting the point. After that, it's just painful. The ComicCon stuff is interesting, just to see the huge variety and organization that go into such an ordeal. If you know about this movie, chances are there's a specific reason you want to see it. If this is the first you've heard of it, then you have no reason to pursue it beyond here.

That's all I've got so far. It's been a pretty lackluster month for movies, and I probably ought to be catching up on likely Oscar noms, but I'm kinda lacking funding as well. Hopefully things will pick up a bit in the coming month.

New look and Amazon

So as you can tell, I did a bit of revamping. I just decided a bit of a change was in order... this seems a little cleaner to me.

Also, I just joined Amazon.com's Associates program, so if you click through one of the links and end up buying something on Amazon, it'll start building toward gift certificates for me. And that, my friends, is motivation to keep this bad boy updated.

No movies as of late, though a Netflix roundup is probably forthcoming. Stay tuned!

The Producers: The Movie Musical

The Producers: The Movie Musical
January 1, 2006; Regal Greece Ridge (Rochester, NY)
* * ¾ (out of 4)

Despite being a theater major and my high-school musical theater background, I have always been very clear about my disdain for the form. Theatrical musicals (and the subsequent films that usually follow) tend to sacrifice complexity in plot and character and originality in writing for a nice love song or snappy closing. As my brother has said, musicals are forty-minute plays dragged out to three hours because of melodic shouting. Gross generalization, sure, but a lot of the times it’s true. All that weighed heavy on my mind when I went to see the film version of the Broadway play of the Mel Brooks film.

Now, I’ve always enjoyed The Producers in all its various forms. It’s one of the few musicals I can say I really enjoyed, and that the songs didn’t annoy me. This saddens me even more to look at the movie, knowing that somehow it didn’t transfer well from stage back to screen. All of the elements of the play are there, but that’s just it: this feels like one step beyond setting up a video camera for a performance of the show on Broadway. It’s no longer a play, but it doesn’t yet have the visual scope of a film. Susan Stroman’s camera barely moves once a shot is established, something I would have thought a dance choreographer would have noticed. Not moving the camera isn’t necessarily a bad thing – simple can be good – but shots hold for a little too long at times, with dialogue and especially musical numbers looking more like talking heads than the crazy characters they are.

Of all the complaints I thought I would have about the newest incarnation of The Producers, I didn’t think “There’s not enough music” would be one of them. I can understand cutting some of the songs – Broadway shows are expected to be long and showy, and that doesn’t always work for film. What really bothered me was the blatant lack of a score. Besides the overture at the beginning, there is not a single piece of instrumental music – if someone isn’t singing, there’s no music. And for some shots and conversations where there is little or no background noise, it leaves a very eerie feel sitting in the air. There were a number of times when I kept waiting for something to start up, and it simply never did.

The best reason to see this movie is the cast. They are, to the letter, fantastic. Stroman got the vast majority of the original cast to play their original roles – the only notable replacements are Uma Thurman as Ulla and Will Ferrell as Franz Liebkin. Thurman is especially fun – since the last memorable time I saw her she had a samurai sword in her hand, this is quite the change, and a welcome one. Those two are slightly behind the rest of the cast as far as singing goes, but there’s no issue at all – Thurman’s voice has a very dark quality which makes it fun, and Ferrell’s voice matches his kooky personality.

The stars of the film are great – I’m not sure it’s possible for Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick to not be good in these parts – but every once in awhile I started to wonder if they might like to be doing something else instead; they’ve been Bialystock and Bloom for quite some time now. The changes to the cast certainly fuel some new motivation – Broderick’s romantic scene with Thurman is particularly amusing, since she has at least six inches on him. As much as I can’t see anyone else play those two parts, I’ll look forward to seeing Lane and Broderick in something different sometime soon.

This is about as on-target of a stage-to-screen port as you can find, and I am disappointed that it didn’t work better for me. The lack of incidental music and clearly inexperienced directing certainly doesn’t overrule the positives from the cast and the script, but it does make their jobs harder. On a happier note, Jay’s review of this ought to be going up relatively shortly. He seemed to enjoy it more than I did, which leads me to believe that maybe having seen the stage musical is NOT beneficial this time around. If you never dropped the money on tickets, this may be the best way to go for you.

Oh, and stay around till after the credits. If you know anything about film, you’ll be looking for certain things throughout the movie. The biggest payoff comes at the end.

King Kong 2005

King Kong (2005)
December 14; AMC Fenway 13
* * * * (out of 4)

This film worried me, the primary reason ironically being one that excited most people. I was worried because this was from the director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Now I enjoyed Return of the King as much as I could, despite being probably 45-60 minutes too long, but getting through each of the previous two was an arduous task that I’ve only done once. When I heard Kong was going to be on the long side, my fears intensified. Considering the original King Kong was only about 100 minutes, what was Jackson finding that warranted a near-doubling of the run time?

And then I saw the first trailer. And all my fears disappeared.

This became akin to my expectations for Revenge of the Sith. For that, I would forgive a lot of things from the previous films and even some in the new ones, so long as I got an awesome lightsaber battle on top of a volcano. And I got it. For Kong, my one demand was an awesome fight scene between a thirty foot gorilla and a tyrannosaurus rex. And I got it. About four times, and every time ruled. Luckily for us, Kong is so much more than a cover for a “King of the Monsters”-type battle. It’s a damn fine piece of cinema.

Pretty much everything clicked for me in Kong. The characters are all there (although most of the development takes place in the first hour, since after that, if your name isn’t Ann or you’re not a giant monkey, your screen time disappears), the settings are gorgeous and serve the script, and Jackson dispelled any fears I had about his directing – to me, this looks more like Peter Jackson of The Frighteners than Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings. He’s not afraid to play with his camera, or get messy, or let characters have real personalities. That’s also a compliment to the cast, as well. Lots of people had their reservations about Jack Black as Carl Denham, but Black restrains his over-the-top personality JUST enough, and eliminates some of the humor, and Denham is perfect. He’s a kind of semi-sadistic, manipulative schemer who is just enough scary and entirely fun. Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow is also great, but a good portion of her character only exists via her relationship with Kong…

… which brings me to the centerpiece of the film, undeniably the reason people stepped into the theater. KONG. In writing/development and design, he is a masterpiece. He comes off as more sympathetic than his predecessor, mostly because a lot more time is spent showing why he develops this attachment to Darrow. A good chunk of the last two-thirds of the film are spent on just the two of them – the film-stealing scene is when Darrow performs her vaudeville act for Kong; that’s when she first realizes he has no intention of hurting her. Jackson drops little hints everywhere that this is a different sort of beast than the original showed. In a cave on Skull Island, there are glimpses of giant simian skeletons – Kong is the last of his kind. His fur is matted and grayed. He has scars on his body from years and years of fighting. To an old ape, Ann Darrow is something worth protecting, and he has something worth fighting for again, instead of just territory on the prison of Skull Island.
And it’s gorgeous. I won’t waste any time on that, because you can clearly see it in the trailers. It looks even better on a huge screen. Roger Ebert is right – soon WETA won’t even need a director to make an amazing movie.

There is so much in Kong, pulled from so many different types of films, especially romance, noir and (naturally) action. This is also the first three-hour film I can remember seeing that felt like three hours, and that was fine. Afterward, I thought back on the movie, realized the huge amount of stuff I had just watched, and would have had no problem sitting back down and seeing it again the next day. It doesn’t drag, even before the star appears for the first time – Jackson puts enough into every section and every act to make the time worthwhile.

As far as deference to the original goes, there are references and parallel scenes to the original version, but many are taken out of context or intended as a quick chuckle before Jackson goes back to his version. I saw the original the night before I saw the new one, and while I don’t think it is anything that is really necessary, there are a few gags you might not get. While it’s clear that Jackson loves the ‘30s version (he says King Kong is what made him want to be a filmmaker), he has taken the ideas and basic story outline of that film and exploded it into something entirely different. By my standard, this is NOT a remake.

Right now, King Kong is probably my pick for the best movie of the year – yep, beating Star Wars, if only because Kong stands entirely on its own. Thinking back on it now, I cannot name a single part of the movie I didn’t enjoy. It was, for lack of a better term, three hours of bliss. If you haven’t already, get everyone you know, and go watch a masterpiece.

Fun With Dick and Jane

Fun With Dick and Jane
December 20; Loews Boston Common
* * ¼ (out of 4)

The title is almost accurate. The movie is fun… at times, though not necessarily with both of the main characters. I will admit that the only reason I had any interest in this movie was to see Jim Carrey make a return to the screwball, goofy comedies he started in, which is certainly what the trailer made this one look like. Unfortunately, Fun With Dick and Jane is another case of a movie being bad mispromoted, and the very sad part is that it probably would have been better if it were actually the movie the trailers made it out to be.

All of the kind of funny stuff in the trailers that show Dick and Jane robbing convenience stores and coffee shops? That all comes within a three-minute montage that says, “Look how bad they are at this.” The real focus of the movie is how the two try to maintain their family and lifestyle after the carpet has been pulled out from under them – Dick, newly promoted to VP of Communications, is held partially responsible for the event that sent his company into a nosedive. As he and Jane work through a number of odd jobs and misfires to stay afloat, they begin to discover that there might be more sinister forces at work, something involving the CEO and CFO of his company. And with the backhanding CEO played by Alec Baldwin, you know there must be something funny there, right?

The only funny stuff is when people are directly mugging for the camera, with most of these moments coming from Baldwin and Carrey alone. Not that those two need a whole lot of help. But shoving the two of them in front of a camera and telling them to act goofy is not enough to hold a plot like this together. What is hard here is that Fun With Dick and Jane tries very hard to at least make you think that it presents a deeper message about the evils of corporate America. But the blending of screwball comedy doesn’t quite mix well, because for a good amount of the film, the only reminder you have of the corporate idea is how far the family has fallen. Suddenly, the corporate enemy is huge and looming, and the focus of the film. It is not a well-orchestrated change.

But I think that won’t be important to many people. The big selling point of the movie is that Jim Carrey is doing a full-blown comedy again, for the first time since Bruce Almighty (though some might say it’s been longer than that). And yes, he’s funny, when he is allowed to do rubber-bodied shenanigans or act crazy. But there’s not enough. Alec Baldwin’s painfully funny southern CEO adds a bit more, but that very fact makes me wonder if Carrey is even capable of the unabashed insanity of which he used to be a master. His relative calmness compared to, say, an Ace Ventura, is not necessarily a bad thing, but if we’re never to see anything to that level again, it is a sad loss.

Fun With Dick and Jane is OK… Carrey and Baldwin own the movie, though that isn’t a huge feat, nor is it one that comes with bragging rights. It is a unspectacular comedy, but it seems like that is what happens to comedy nowadays when you don’t have the means or approval for something like Wedding Crashers or 40-Year Old Virgin. It’s just disappointing to see one of the former undisputed kings of comedy dethroned so casually, and even moreso to think that he might not be capable of ever reclaiming that throne.