Mini Reviews Too Late

I've seen a bunch of stuff lately. None worthy of lengthy analysis, but some worthy of note.

Dirigible (1931). In Dirigible, a very early film by Frank Capra, we watch our brave hero Jack Bradon (Jack Holt) battle for the future of US Navy rigid airships! (Well, we know how that turned out.)

Our hero is married to Fay Wray, but there's a triangle with fighter pilot Frisky (Ralph Graves), who is frankly a lot more fun to be around than Jack, who acts as if he's got a rigid airship shoved somewhere up his fundament.

The climax takes place in Antarctica, where Frisky attempts to conquer the Pole in a mere three-engine monoplane and crashes. It's the dirigible to the rescue!

There's some truly spectacular footage in this one, particularly of an air show at Lakehurst, where the US Navy's entire dirigible armada seems to be on display at once. The special effects are really very good, particularly in the Antarctica scenes and in a scene involving a zeppelin crash at sea. (Incidentally, did you know that every rigid airship built in the US crashed, killing almost all their crews? The ones we got from the Germans did just fine.)

The drawback to this film is the acting, which is downright wretched. All of the actors, including Ms. Wray, exhibit what can only be described as negative charisma. Odd, because the three principals all had long Hollywood careers subsequent to this film. Apparently the audience was watching the zeps, and no one cared what the actors were doing. I advise doing exactly that.

The Happening (2008). Further evidence that M. Night Shyamalan is a one-hit wonder. This story would have made a great half-hour Twilight Zone episode, but is very flabby at 143 minutes. The latter parts of the film are so dull that a spooky old farmhouse with a menacing old lady was added to provide some tension. (A plague causing the entire population of the Northeast to commit suicide wasn't scary enough, I guess.)

The acting is very flat, and a subplot added to provide texture to the principals' relationship is ludicrous. Avoid.

Lost in Austen (2008). Jesus Christ, do we really need a romantic comedy that's three hours long? Okay, it's three episodes of a UK miniseries stuck together to make a feature for US release, but still . . .

It's a comedy with one joke. (Modern woman enters fictional realm, takes place of Elizabeth Bennett.) And yes, we'd all like to kick Mr. Collins in the balls, and chew out Mr. Bingley for being a gormless twit. And the acting is good, and the dialog gives a genuine feeling for the period.

But three whole hours . . . ? My God, Miss Bennett, those are three hours that I shall never again see!

Redbelt (2008). Macho playwrite David Mamet writing and directing a martial arts movie? Damn, I'm like so totally there!

It's not what you expect. It builds to all the traditional beats of a martial arts film--- including the one where the warrior gets tired of taking endless shit from these remorseless corrupt sacks of dog crap who run his life and the world in general, and then goes for his katana and gets all samurai on their asses!--- except that doesn't happen. Mamet is a master of the unexpected, and though all the beats are there, he rings changes on all of them. (Okay, mixed metaphor there.)

The result is a film that is set in a much lower key than the conventional martial arts movie, but that has its own satisfactions. It also has a very, very twisty plot that I found myself admiring a lot--- but then I'm Plotboy, and that's the sort of thing I like.

The Hidden Kingdom (2008). Speaking of martial arts movies, here's an amiable kung fu flick that won't surprise you at all, but that keeps every promise that it makes. It features Jackie Chan doing wire-fu rather than the amazing physical stunts that built his reputation--- and that's sort of like getting a Mercedes SLC Gullwing to play the role of a 1975 Ford Pinto--- but what the hell. If he doesn't mind, I guess I don't.

Reviews Too Late: The Good Shepherd

The Good Shepherd (2006) was a pet project for Robert de Niro. He'd been trying to make his fictionalized history of the CIA for ten years, but one director after another was, er, "suddenly unavailable." (You might think there might be a story there. I'm sure there wasn't. Ahem. [Looks nervously over shoulder.])

Anyway, in the end de Niro directed it himself, and it must be said that he did a damned good job. Of course the incredible star power of his cast must have made it easier for him.

In this film we have Matt Damon, Alec Baldwin, de Niro himself, Billy Crudup, Michael Gambon, John Turturro, William Hurt, John Pesci, and Angelina Jolie in the thankless but obligatory role of the Wife Who Whines. ("You're off saving the world for democracy, and leaving me in this enormous Georgetown mansion with millions of dollars and nothing to do!")

We open with CIA special operations dude Edward Wilson (Damon) listening to the disaster of the Bay of Pigs over the radio. For some reason this makes him flash back to his days in Yale circa 1939, when he played Poor Little Buttercup in an all-male production of HMS Pinafore. So ravishing does he look in drag that he's immediately tapped for Skull & Bones, the covert society so utterly secret that everyone on the planet knows they run the United States. We are then plunged into the mayhem of a Skull & Bones initiation, which is so brainless, juvenile, and casually cruel that it immediately convinced me that I didn't want these guys running an ice cream stand, let alone a country. Let alone the world.

(There is naked mud wrestling involved. Since I don't see the point in male naked mud wrestling I conclude that the Bonesmen really must have thought Matt Damon was a chick.)

Part of the initiation involves the pledge lying naked in a coffin and confessing something embarrassing or disgraceful so that his brothers can blackmail over it the rest of his life. Wilson confesses that he's kept secret the suicide of his father (who was an admiral and a Bonesman himself).

So right in the opening scenes we discover all that we need to know: that we're right smack in the middle of the East Coast Establishment--- all male, all white, all Republican, all Old Money, all Protestant (with a teeny-tiny democratic sprinkling of Catholics). We find out that our story's about secret societies, about people pretending to be what they're not, about keeping and revealing secrets, and that it's all going to lead to disaster at the Bay of Pigs. (We also discover a surprising amount of cross-dressing among the upper classes, which they seem to be able to keep secret from the rest of us.)

Back in the film's present, the CIA concludes that the Bay of Pigs failed on account of a mole giving the Cubans the location of the invasion. (Of course the plan itself wasn't at fault: attacking 225,000 armed Cubans with 1500 lightly-armed exiles couldn't possibly go wrong.) Our hero discovers that he's up for the chopping block if he doesn't find the mole pronto.

Meanwhile, in Flashback Land, we see Matt Damon being asked to spy on one of his professors who's suspected of being a not-so-closet Nazi; we see his falling for a deaf-mute girl but being forced to marry Angelina Jolie after he accidentally knocks her up (better men have been there before you, Matt); and we see his recruitment for the wartime OSS by a crusty old general (de Niro).

What follows is a pretty darn good history of the CIA, with the serial numbers not very thoroughly filed off. (I wonder why they bothered to sanitize the movie at all.)

I'll even give you the key. Bill Sullivan is Bill Donovan, Phillip Allen is Allen Dulles, Arch Cummings is Kim Philby, Joseph Palmi is Sam Giancana, Richard Hayes is Richard Helms, Yuri Moldin is Anatoly Golitsin, and Matt Damon's character is (mostly) Richard Bissell, though there's a school of thought that he's also James Jesus Angleton. (Personally, I think Angleton was a much more interesting character.)

Oh, and MK-ULTRA is MK-ULTRA.

The film is exceedingly well made and well directed. There's symbolism, foreshadowing, a fine music score, well-drawn suspense, fine acting, lots of murky sets, and really brutal and unpleasant violence, and excellent use of sound--- I mean, the use of sound was so good that I actually noticed the use of sound, which is not something I usually notice. The movie probably benefitted enormously from the production delays, which allowed fine-tuning of the script.

All the more odd, given the time the filmmakers had to think about it, that the central character remains such a blank. Matt Damon does an excellent job with what he's given, but he's not given much. Edward Wilson is such a stick-up-the-ass mannequin that we never find out why he's in the spy game at all. Is it because he's a patriot? A romantic? Because he can't think of anything else to do, or because he's only doing what's expected of him? Is he a cold-hearted manipulative prick, or is he just playing one for the CIA?

We find out he's an arrogant SOB. When he's trying to recruit a mafia don to kill Castro, the gangster says: "Let me ask you something... we Italians, we got our families, and we got the church; the Irish, they have the homeland, Jews their tradition; even the [blacks], they got their music. What about you people, Mr. Wilson, what do you have?"

"The United States of America," Wilson says. "The rest of you are just visiting."

He's also described as "a serious son of a bitch with no sense of humor."

But we never find out what makes him tick. The film commits the cardinal sin of leaving its main character a blank.

We are told that the KGB call Wilson "Mother," because he cares so much for his agents. But we never see him caring about anything except his family--- and even them, not so much.

Rule Number One for characters is: tell us what your character wants. If you don't, the audience won't care.

I wasn't interested in Wilson but I was fascinated by his milieu. I still give it three and a half cyanide capsules--- and if you're interested in how movies are put together, it's well worth watching just to admire the movie's structure.

Reviews Too Late: In Bruges

Imagine a gangster film in which nothing happens. That's where I thought I was for the first half of this movie, in a film about what gangsters are like when they're on vacation and not being gangsters.

Not that this is a bad thing. The first half of In Bruges is the best part. Nothing happens in very interesting ways.

Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and Ray (Colin Farrel) are a couple Irish hit men who are told to hide on the Continent following an assassination, and who end up in the beautiful medieval city of Bruges during the Christmas season. Ken loves the place, Ray hates it.

With nothing to do, they wander over the town, bickering, reminiscing, and encountering the locals. An American film is shooting in the town, featuring a drug-hungry dwarf played by the excellent Jordan Prentice. ("Bruges," Ray mutters, "even midgets have to take drugs to stick it.") On the set Ray meets an attractive woman named Chloe (Clémence Poésy, who I last saw as Fleur in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), and the two strike up a relationship that turns out to swing the movie in a totally unanticipated direction.

The film develops a more conventional shape when trouble comes to town, in the form of gang boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes). But first Harry has to get a gun from the local dealer. ("An Uzi? I'm not from South Central Los Angeles. I didn't come here to shoot twenty black ten-year-olds in a drive-by. I want a normal gun for a normal person.") Harry is a pretty unconventional gang boss, insofar as he's obsessed by honor: he'd call his enemies to the dueling ground if he could. (This was the part of the film that I found the least convincing. There's little point in being a gang boss if you don't have an actual gang to do your killing for you.)

The final shootout is nothing you haven't seen before, but it's informed by all the unconventional action in the first hour, so it's a little more than an ordinary shoot-out, if a little less than I'd hoped.

In Bruges is beautifully constructed, with no scenes out of place and no moment gone to waste. Writer/director Martin McDonagh did a brilliant job. You could use this film to teach structure in a film school. It's that well put together.

In Bruges is very funny, but the humor is utterly black, a postcard from a picture-perfect fairy-tail medieval town where hope no longer exists. If you're up for an unconventional genre film with a savagely violent finish, then this may be your cup of Irish Breakfast.

For me, I thought the film was worth it for the Belgian skinhead alone.

Reviews Too Late: Defiance

I watched my Netflix copy of Defiance the other night, and thought it would make an interesting comparison with Inglourious Basterds. I mean, here were real Jews, killing real Nazis, as opposed to cartoon Jews killing cartoon Nazis. The Bielski partisans did stuff that really mattered, like saving 1200-odd people from the Holocaust; whereas the Basterds did stuff that wouldn't have mattered much, even if it did happen. (Shoshanna did the heavy lifting in that movie; the Basterds were redundant.)

Defiance is heartening, if a bit heavy-handed. I doubt that any real partisan leader of the period would make idealistic speeches about freedom and resistance from atop a white horse--- these guys were too busy surviving to think much about political principles--- but on the other hand it was a damned stirring speech.

The film makes much of a rivalry between two of the four Bielski brothers, Tuvia and Zus, for leadership of the group. (The other two brothers mainly stand around and watch.) Tuvia wants to rescue Jewish civilians and wage war in a humane way, whereas Zus just wants to kill Germans, and eventually leaves to join a Soviet partisan band in order to do exactly that. The sibling rivalry is well drawn, as are the uneasy relations between the Bielski and Soviet partisans, and between the Bielskis and the surrounding civilian population, on whom they depend for food supplies.

The movie is about moral choice. To save a life is to become responsible for it, and Tuvia (Daniel Craig) takes that responsibility seriously. He'll take in anyone, even the sick and elderly, and worry about feeding them later. He later almost literally becomes Moses, leading his people in an epic migration across the Sea of Reeds--- and in case we miss the point, this happens on Passover.

In the final scene, when the Bielski group is trapped on a riverbank by soldiers and a tank and are about to be slaughtered, I had a horrid feeling I knew how the scene was going to be resolved, with a big blazing Hollywood finish . . . and I was right. (If Moses had just led the Israelites off to the right flank, where they could get into heavy woods and the tank couldn't follow, he would have made a better choice than Tuvia did in the movie.)

Still, it was a pretty darn good film. Four stars. Left me feeling good.

It was when I started looking up the historical basis for the film, I found out that pretty much all the action was invented by the director/screenwriter.

Let me explain. What the Bielskis actually did during the war was heroic, brilliant, and inspiring--- but from the dramatic point of view, dull. They built houses, they built schools, they scavenged food, they herded cows. (The movie didn't mention they had a large herd of cows. Cow-punching is just too deadly dull.) The Bielskis didn't spend a lot of time fighting Germans, they were much more interested in saving lives.

When the Germans attacked, the Bielski otriad didn't cross the Sea of Reeds in an epic migration, they just moved deeper into the forest. ("Where's the big climactic scene?" the director must have said to himself. "I know--- I'll crib a story from Exodus and throw in a tank!")

So far as I can tell (and I haven't read any of the books on the Biekskis, so I could be completely wrong) the sibling rivalry between Tuvia and Zus seems to be invented for the film. So is the detail about Zus joining the Soviet partisans. The commando raid on the German police headquarters--- to get a supply of ampicillin to cure typhus in the camp--- has to have been invented, because ampicillin wasn't available till the 1960s and wouldn't have done much for typhus anyway. A third brother, Asael, has his age changed from his mid-thirties to around twenty, apparently to give Daniel Craig more screen time as the mature leader.

So. Good movie, excellent performances, inspiring story. Not much to do with history, but that's normal for Hollywood, isn't it?

Comparison with Basterds? The movies are so different that I'm not really inspired to try.

There was one thing that needed further clarification. The movie made much of the fact that many of the men in camp had "forest wives," women who lived with them. Yet in one of Daniel Craig's inspiring speeches, he announced that it was forbidden to get pregnant. How did they resolve this contradiction? Free condom distribution? A second-base-only rule? I'd like to know how they dealt with these practicalities.

Reviews Too Late: Banlieue 13

"Banlieue" literally translates as "suburb," but colloquially means "the hood"--- the French have saved their inner cities, but at the cost of moving the Projects out into the country. In this French film produced by Luc Besson, Banlieu 13 has been walled off from the rest of France, and given over to the gangs.

Well, it's no sillier an idea than Escape from New York.

And, like Escape from New York, the scientifictional premise is little more than an excuse for a whole lot of action scenes. Except that the action scenes in this one are really, really nifty.

The film stars David Belle, considered the inventor of le parkour, and martial artist/action choreographer Cyril Raffaelli. Neither are actors exactly, but they turned out to be much better than I would have expected, and more credible than most American action stars, if only because they do their own stunts. (And most excellent stunts they are.)

I won't bother to explain the plot, because the plot really doesn't matter. But the model who plays David Belle's sister is fun, if underutilized, and the various gangsters are amusing. (All the minor characters, in fact, are exceptionally well drawn, possibly because Besson's co-writer is character actor Bibi Nessari, who also plays one of the minor characters.)

But the real star of the film are the stunts. Raffaelli worked on the action choreography for three months prior to commencing principal photography, and it shows.

If you're tired of waiting for the next Tony Jaa film, or are deeply nostalgic for the sorts of movies Jackie Chan was making in the 80's, then this is a perfectly acceptable substitute.

Reviews Too Late: Legend of the Shadowless Sword

The lineage of this film is a little unusual: it's a 2005 Korean production with Korean actors, the stunt team is from Hong Kong, the movie was filmed in China, and the screenwriter is someone named Paul Sheen, who has no other credits that I can find.

It's no surprise, therefore, that the result is something of a mishmash. It's not bad, in fact the movie's a lot of fun in a no-holds-barred, makes-no-sense kind of way, but it doesn't have anything that I haven't seem somewhere else, done better.

The Kingdom of Balhae (one of those that eventually became Korea) has largely been overrun by the Khitan barbarians. They've sent their Killer Blade Army to murder the various members of the Balhae royal family. The Killer Blade Army is composed of outlawed or exiled Balhaeans, and is led by Gun Hwa-Pyung (Hyeon Jun-Shin), a moody young fellow with a personal grudge against the royals. He's assisted by his murderous girlfriend, who--- like everyone else in the Killer Blade Army--- possesses various superpowers, including gravity-optional martial arts, the ability to fight underwater, and flight.

It's not surprising that the Killer Blade Army goes through the royal family like a claymore through goat cheese. Eventually there's only one left, a prince named Daejeonghyun (Lee Sio-Jin), who has been exiled due to an unspecified scandal. The problem is that no one knows where the prince actually is, so wise old General Ju sends Balhae's best fighter, a young woman named Soha (Yoon So-Yi), to find the prince.

Naturally the Killer Blade Army's looking for him, too. Soha's problem is that the prince has got himself a nice, raffish life as a receiver of stolen goods, and is understandably reluctant to become the king of Balhae, a job that comes with a death sentence attached. So Soha has to drag the reluctant royal across the country, evading his escape attempts while fending off hordes of assassins.

Much fighting ensues. The film is more or less a string of set-piece combat scenes, all of them spectacular. There is a fight on the road, a fight in a tavern, a fight in a temple, a fight underwater, a fight in a graveyard, a fight in the air. The Hong Kong stunt team brought their entire arsenal with them--- we see acrobatics, flight, people being hurled through the air, villains stomping their foot to cause small but fierce earthquakes, Soha waving her sword underwater to create a whirlpool that sucks her enemies to their doom . . . I'm sure I'm leaving something out.

But there's a problem with the special effects, stated thus: "In a world in which everyone can fly, flight loses its wonder." Sometimes I just wanted them to do some plain old kung-fu, but no, the movie kept piling one wonder atop the next until I lost track, and then lost interest.

It should also be noted that Yoon So-Yi is really beautiful, but not much of an actress.

As for the ending, it can go one of two ways. Either the prince escapes his escort, returns briefly to his louche life until tracked down by the villains and is killed; or he discovers his inherently noble princely nature, unveils the martial skill he's kept hidden all these years, defeats the bad guys, and becomes a great king.

Which do you think?

Reviews Too Late: Twilight

Urban romantic fantasy isn't really my metier, but I thought I'd catch Twilight on pay per view and check what the zeitgeist has been up to while I wasn't looking.

Filmed in Pale-O-Vision, Twilight was actually a pretty good movie, as far as that goes. (I mean, it is what it is, you're not going to learn any profound truths in this film.) The plotline was very straightforward and simple, with no real twists or surprises because you know Edward's a vampire going in. It's all like, I'm going to totally stalk this guy until he agrees to bite me, and that's more or less it. There's a subplot involving some evil vampires but they exist only as a device to put Bella in jeopardy, because Edward's too much of a gentleman to do it himself.

The acting was excellent, particularly that of Kristen Stewart as Bella, who gave the proper desperate intensity to her I-don't-care-if-I-die-or-not-I-want-this-and-I'm-going-to-have-it soulful yearning. Robert Pattinson does a very good James Dean impersonation, down to the bushy hair. Production values were high.

I didn't swoon, but then it wasn't aimed at me.

The film excels brilliantly in its use of cliches. Edward's dialog was beautifully designed to lure young Bella while pretending to keep her at arm's length. Consider the following lines:

I only said it would be better if we weren't friends, not that I didn't want to be.

It means if you're smart... you'll stay away from me.

I hate you for making me want you so much.

I don't have the strength to stay away from you anymore.

You don't know how long I've waited for you.

I wanted to kill you at first. I've never wanted a human's blood so much, before.

You don't know what you're saying. You don't want this.

What if I'm not the hero? What if I'm the bad guy?

I still don't know if I can control myself.

I'm the world's most dangerous predator. Everything about me invites you in. My voice, my face, even my smell. As if I would need any of that. As if you could outrun me. As if you could fight me off. I'm designed to kill.

Do you trust me?

Wow. What red-blooded adolescent girl wouldn't totally fall for any broody James Dean-like character who said actually things like that?

(Note to any adolescents or others lacking in worldly experience: When a guy says, "I'm mad, I'm bad, I'm dangerous to know," guess what? He's telling the truth! He's doing you the courtesy of giving you fair warning! Thank him and then run the hell away!

(You're not going to be The One who's going to change him. Sticking around means giving him permission to beat you or kill you or pimp you out or whatever else he does to his victims. Run the hell away!

(This has been a public service announcement from the Dating Safety Commission. Thank you.)

But where was I? Oh yeah, Twilight.

It was well done. It was more of a mood than a movie. You could study this film for ways to keep the suspense high when things aren't actually happening.

And of course if you like moody, swoony romance, particularly involving James Dean, this is absolutely the film for you.

Reviews Too Late: the IRS Edition

At long last I have brought my taxes under control, and will deliver them to the accountant tomorrow.

As I've mentioned in the past, I tend to watch action films when I'm absorbed in digging through old envelopes full of receipts. Action films don't require a lot of my attention, except in the parts where things get blowed up, and sometimes not even then.

For some reason I watched things other than action films this time. For the most part, gazing at the screen over illegible scrawls on receipts did not help either the movie, or my mood.

Painkiller Jane. This series was from the SciFi Network, back when it was the SciFi Network and not the hideously pretentious, dumbass thing it is now. Being from SciFi was Strike One, since SciFi has proved over the decades completely resistant to any understanding what science fiction is actually about.

Strike Two was the concept. Strike Three was, or were, the stories.

Kristanna Loken, who was the robot that wasn't Arnold in Termnator III, plays a character who belongs to a grungy squad of secret commandos dedicated to eradicating the menace of "neuros," defined as "people who can do things with their minds." (Doing things with their minds is clearly a concept alien to anyone connected with this series.)

On the plus side the actors were fine, the production values pretty good, and Ms. Loken proved very eyeball-worthy. (She can act, too.)

"I've got to stop watching this crud," I would say to myself, as yet another dreadful episode unrolled.

"But then I couldn't watch Kristanna Loken!" another part of my mind would whine, and I would try to endure yet another hour of hopeless dreck while my lizard brain feasted on Loken's perfect complexion.

Not even Ms. Loken, however, could stop me from abandoning the series halfway through. I'll look forward to eyeballing her in other venues.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno: Since it's from Kevin Smith, it's deeply vulgar, and features language that would get you thrown out of most pool halls. I thought it was funny as hell. Be sure to watch the credits all the way through because There Are Surprises.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona: I checked this one out to see the performance that won Penelope Cruz the Oscar, but could only take about twenty minutes before I went to the garage to get a power drill in order to bore out my eyeballs. (And I like Woody Allen movies, usually.) It features a narrator who tells you everything the actors are feeling, which saves the players the trouble of acting.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: I wasn't that wild about even the first Indiana Jones movie, so you can only imagine how I felt about this special-effects-driven retread. If you didn't love the Star Wars prequels, stay away.

The Golden Compass: When this movie was first released I kept hearing how it wasn't very good, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover this an excellent attempt to translate Northern Lights into film. There are some gaps which will obviously be filled in the Director's Edition, and the movie clumsily rearranges some of the final scenes of the novel (including moving the final scene of the book to the next, hypothetical, movie in the series), but the production values are great, the special effects spiffing, and Dakota Blue Richards is absolutely great as Lyra. (It obviously helps child actresses to be named "Dakota.") Plus Nicole Kidman does a great job of turning Mrs. Coulter into a blonde, the Finnish witches are terrific (even if they mispronounce their own names), it's got every great English actor from Christopher Lee on down, and it's even got James Bond. What more do you want?

(As an aside, I was particularly amused that the DVD's copyright warning came not from the FBI, but from the Magisterium.)