Angels & Demons

Let's get a couple things clear. I enjoy Dan Brown's books. They are complete throwaway novels - they can be read on a single airplane or bus trip, they are perfectly engaging when you read them and absolutely forgettable after the fact. I think Angels & Demons and The Davinci Code, from a commercial literature standpoint, are just about perfect. There's a lot of people who will find a lot of things wrong with the books, but just about everyone will read them, and from a straight entertainment standpoint, millions will enjoy them.

I also hated, hated, hated The Davinci Code film. I think Tom Hanks is completely wrong for the character - he's too old, he doesn't possess nearly the amount of charm that Robert Langdon is supposed to have. This was supposed to be a slightly - slightly more bookish Indiana Jones. I think Audrey Tatou was even MORE wrong for her character, and I could have told you that without ever seeing her onscreen. The film came off much more like a scavenger hunt than a mystery. There's no doubt that there's a scavenger hunt aspect to the story, but it really felt like the pair didn't have to work for too much of what they found.

Since the day The Davinci Code film was announced, I was very, very worried about the inevitable Angels & Demons follow-up. The fact that it's a prequel and they're using an older Tom Hanks to play a younger Langdon is painful. There's any number of late 30-mid 40's guys who could pull this off. Tone Robert Downey, Jr. down a little bit and squeeze this in before Iron Man 2. It still worries me.

All that being said... I don't hate this. I'm not overly psyched by it, but I expected a lot worse. The tone seems a bit darker, which is necessary, and... I just really hope they pull this one off a lot better.

Religulous

This is an exceedingly difficult movie to watch, let alone review, without allowing some personal feelings to slip in between the cracks. It is so slanted to one particular viewpoint (and shamelessly intended to be that way) that to watch it with any attempt at objectivity almost gets in the way of the film’s objective: Bill Maher wants you to be incensed or repulsed, preferably at his subjects of ridicule. But he’s OK if you’re repulsed by his actions, too. That just means you become one of his subjects.

Much like Larry Charles’s last cinematic effort, Borat, this film becomes a series of unscripted “gotcha” moments as Maher travels to different religious-minded communities and locations around the world and chats with anyone willing to talk to him. Most of these conversations follow the same pattern: Maher sets up the pins so the unsuspecting interviewee can trip and stutter their way to his ultimate point. Points to Maher for really hitting every possible slant on the major religions – he interviews the guy playing Jesus at Orlando’s “Holy Land Experience,” then makes a stop at a Trucker’s Chapel before jumping on a plane for London, Amsterdam, Israel and the Vatican.

The film is by no means even-keeled, and never makes any attempt to act like it. I mean, c’mon, it’s Bill Maher. If you’ve ever seen one of his TV shows, you know where he stands on the issue of religion. One thing I did find interesting is that he makes it very clear who amongst his victims he actually respects, and the answer is actually surprising. Above everyone else, the resident Vatican astronomer and a pastor working in Rome meet the least of his scorn, mainly because they show a disdain similar to Maher’s for literal interpretations of scripture. Nearly everyone else is subject to his well-laid traps, and that is where most of the comedy emerges. It’s pretty funny to watch Maher get a sitting senator to admit that you don’t need to pass an IQ test to get into the senate, even if you might not approve of how Maher backed the poor guy into that corner.

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Eagle Eye

Stupid movies have carved out a nice little niche in America. They cost little, they do well, and they are often forgotten shortly after audiences leave the auditorium. The problem is that those tend to be comedies. Eagle Eye is not a comedy. But boy, is it ever stupid. On the bright side, it could be a lot worse.

I don't want to give the wrong idea. I enjoyed the heck out of Eagle Eye. While I was watching it, it was a damn good movie... most of the time. Occasionally, I would have a flash of realization that something I was seeing onscreen was completely absurd, ridiculous, misguided, paranoid or just plain idiotic. But then something would blow up REALLY BIG, and I would be sucked back in. In that way, I think the movie does exactly what it was designed to do – it's escapism at every possible level. But the way the plot is written, there may be people out there (re: stupid people) who try to see it as more than it is. If you fail to categorize the twist as absolutely moronic, then we have a problem.

Now, I can't go into what that twist is, really. In fact, giving away anything about the plot beyond what is shown in trailers and advertisements would be unfair. To start, we have two seemingly unconnected stories. The first is Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf), a super slacker working at a Chicago copy center in between hands of a nightly poker game. Jerry's life kind of sucks – crappy job, crappy apartment, no savings to speak of – but early on you get the impression that if he wanted to, he could move beyond that life. There must be something attractive about it. Tragedy hits Jerry's family, which reveals a lot about the choices he's made, and upon returning home for the night, he finds his crappy apartment stuffed to the gills with weaponry, explosives, and classified intelligence. His cell phone rings, and a woman gives him instructions to run. He doesn't, he gets arrested, the woman calls again and helps him escape... we've all seen this clip in the trailer.

The second story is about Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan). We meet her as she is bringing her son Sam to a train station in Chicago for a trip with his school band to Washington, D.C. Naturally, she's nervous, and her deadbeat ex-husband's presence doesn't help anything. Luckily, we don't see him again. After putting Sam on the train, her cell rings, and the same woman threatens her son. Rachel complies, ending up driving the car the picks up the escaping Jerry Shaw. From there, they are on the run together, completing assignments from the mystery woman without really knowing what the end game is.

It's about at this point that the movie turns deeply stupid. In the opening segment, we met Secretary of Defense Callister (Michael Chiklis), and his story is the one that reveals the mysterious woman to us. And it's deeply, painfully idiotic. I caught it about half an hour prior to the reveal, and I quietly swore that if it turned out to be true (which it was), I might leave the theater. I didn't. After the movie ended, I started talking about it with my girlfriend, and we picked it clean before we got to the restaurant down the street for dinner. Particularly involving the mystery woman's methods of getting Jerry and Rachel to where she needs them to be, there are leaps of logic over gaps so vast that they almost come off as clever at first, since there's no way in hell that YOU would have thought of doing things this way. But after a quick discussion, you'll quickly figure out that the reason you wouldn't have thought of it is because it's a damn stupid idea. This became a pretty common theme in our post-movie chat.

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