Science fiction being perhaps my choice if forced to pick one type of fiction to read, and certainly the first ‘adult’ books I read prodigously as a child, I read the original Asimov novels and short stories early on. As others have remarked the Good Doctor had his weaknesses as a writer but a shortage of ideas and situations in which to deploy them were not problems at all for him; the bulk of his great works were written between 1939 and the early 1960s and his sharp eye moved easily from newspaper and journal pages to fiction.

The movie Alex Proyas and Jeff Vintar made called I, Robot began life as an original script by Vintar called Hardwired and in that mysterious process Hollywood calls development was merged with the rights Twentieth Century Fox owned to Asmiov’s works. Accordingly the movie gives Isaac Asimov only a suggested by credit and, other than a few character names and constant reference to the Three Laws of Robotics, little really connects the two. Put it down to old human emotional response but I would have enjoyed the movie more if they’d stuck with Vintar’s title.

Trying to judge the movie by what’s on the screen then. Will Smith is the lead, a police detective who still has nightmares over a car accident in which he nearly drowned, a little girl in the other car did, and he was saved by a robot. He’s called to the scene of an apparent suicide of the main designer/inventor of the robots, who helped him recover from that accident, and who left Smith a holographic recording which is not a suicide note but does have a small database which can respond to Smith’s questions in a limited way.

Our copper doesn’t believe this was a suicide. Even though no person could’ve killed Dr. Lanning, the security records quickly show it, and no robot could so much have hurt him–that would violate the First Law–Smith suspects a robot did it. Of course US Robotics’ chief scientist Susan Calvin (played moderately well by standard Hollywood hottie Bridget Moynahan) will hear nothing of it and when Smith takes the robot to the station for questioning, semi-villanous USR CEO (Bruce Greenwood) shows up in 30 seconds with a court order and the mayor on the line to reclaim his property. Seriously, could police leiutenant Chi McBride be any more generic? We go on from there following the too predictable breadcrumbs and red herrings until Smith and a converted Calvin have won the day.

I, Robot is a big, pretty movie with special effects that do honestly stand out from an otherwise ordinary couple of hours. The NS-5 robots truly impress visually and in how they’re able to move, and the car chase between a couple of robotic robot transports and Smith in a 2039 Audi is almost as good. But a live action movie that credits an order of magnitude more people for visual effects and stunts than for acting almost certainly means too much effort on one than the other and Smith has the only part meaty enough to make a difference but he gives a here for the paycheck only performance.

I have a bit of trouble blaming Proyas, whose main previous significant work is the cult classic Dark City, for not being able to fully control a film with a ridiculous nine figure budget. Some of the producers though, like Laurence Mark and John Davis who have plenty off big picture experience, should have done better for a film that ought to have connected with the science fiction fan base in the same way Lord of the Rings and some of the recent comic book superhero movies did.

barely recommended

A quirky little film, Grand Theft Parsons is the story of what happened when country-rock originator Gram Parsons died of a drug overdose in September, 1973. He and his pal Phil Kauffman (not the film director) had pledged that if one died before the other, the survivor would take the other’s body out to the Joshua Tree desert and set it free with fire.

Kauffman went through some shenanigans but eventually made good on his promise. The movie tells of the day, more or less, between Parson’s death and the pyre. Johnny Knoxville does an intersting turn as Kauffman, with Marley Shelton as his girlfriend, Mike Shawver as a druggie with a yellow hearse used to transport the coffin, Robert Forster as the dead star’s dad, and Christina Applegate as Parsons’ uberbitch ex-girlfriend.

Irishmen David Caffrey directs from Jeremy Drysdale’s script and neither really brings much to the party. Honestly the facts of the situation don’t leave them much room to maneuver and in hindsight one wonders if there’s really enough material to justify a 90 minute movie. Sure Parsons was a rock star but by ‘73 drug overdoses had taken many greats, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Mama Cass, and he was more of a star to other musicians than the listening public.

not recommended

A 2002 Hong Kong import, Infernal Affairs compares and contrasts two young men on twisting intersecting paths. Both members of the same polica academy class, Andy Lau washes out while Tony Leung makes the grade and climbs to a leadership position in the major crimes bureau. In reality, though, Lau is working longterm undercover for Leung’s boss while Leung is a mole for crime lord Sam Wong, ostensibly Lau’s boss.

After many years both reach positions of sufficient responsibility to cause major damage and must finally confront each other. Direcctors Wai Keung Lau (who is confusing sometimes also billed as Andy Lau but is not the actor starring here) and Siu Fai Mak architect this collision gracefully and I understand why Martin Scorsese, Leonardo Dicaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen and a stellar supporting cast are participating in the American remake.

recommended

Let me try and make this simple:

• I have not enjoyed any movie directed by Jay Russell
• I have not enjoyed any movie written by Lewis Colick
• Joaquin Phoenix? Okay, Gladiator was cool but that was hardly about him though I have hopes for Walking the Line his upcoming Johnny Cash biopic as long as he doesn’t tr and sing.
• Travolta, okay, he’s done some good shit going back to the beginning though he’s had his share of dogs and recent years have been a bit hit or miss

Ladder 49 is definitely one for Travolta’s miss column. The idea is decent, a look at the career of a brave young firefighter as his life hangs in the balance, but the execution is trite. And Phoenix, maybe it’s his acting skills or voice and face, but he comes off as playing a girl. I don’t mean that in a covert homosexual slap or women belong in the kitchen way but he’s supposed to be playing a man’s man and doesn’t pull it off. Not even close.

I also never felt attached to his character so the life hanging in the balance scenes that were intended to keep me gripped to the seat didn’t. The crumbling, flaming huge building interior where they took place–the film’s big fire–had all the necessary visual appeal but didn’t make sense, I wasn’t given enough information to explain why the fire was playing out as it did.

not recommended

Technorati tags: movies travolta actionflicks

Fernando Meirelles is clearly a filmmaker to be reckoned with, a man completely interested in using movies as a political vehicle. Constant Gardener is his second major work to come to the US and global markets following the celebrated City of God. Assuming he continues to find financial backing and distribution one can only assume Meirelles will continue to tell stories of power abused and sociopathic violence.

Where the earlier movie was the retelling of a true story, Gardener is labeled as fiction, based on John Le Carre’s recent novel. Le Carre made his name with Cold War thrillers but with the passing of that age turned his eye to men using similar strategies for personal, rather than political, gain. But with the passing of that age the underlying equivalence of those two pursuits has become quite clear; one has to look no further than the interchangability of employment between the Bush Administration and energy industry corporations. So Meirelles rides this horse to switch from the narrow scale of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas to the global marketplace of pharmaceuticals.

Working again with cinematographer César Charlone, we see terrific use of color, lighting, framing and transitions. Whether through the editing of Claire Simpson or simply being able to position his cameras in favorable places, there are many long panning shots that starkly contrast worse than Rio urban African slums against a modern core where foreign executives corrupt politicians and deaths are written of as inevitable (so might as well make use of them). A sea of rusting tin roofs slide by until, in the space of a frame or two, glass and steel buildings replace them, favored by trees and other greenery absent from the overpopulated ghettos.

The plot is simple enough: the title character, a mid-level Foreign Office functionary played well by Ralph Fiennes, marries human rights activist Rachel Weisz and the couple are sent to Kenya. Almost immediately Weisz is murdered, viciously, but Jeffrey Caine’s script flashes back and forth in time for the first half of the script so that the truth of Weisz’s character and her death is only slowly revealed. From then, once Fiennes returns to London, the story plays out chronologically but secrets are still parceled out parsimoniously. And despite being dead, Weisz is frequently onscreen–Meirelles uses her natural beauty and generous emotions as a means to personalize the film.

Fiennes does a marvelous job, Weisz is terrificly mysterious. Other significant roles are played by Danny Huston, as another British diplomat lost in the levels of machinations which surround him; Pete Postlethwaite (best remembered here as Daniel Day Lewis’s father from In the Name of the Father) as a drug developer looking for redemption in the desolation of a Sudanese refugee camp; Hubert Koundé as a Kenyan doctor conspiring with Weisz; Richard McCabe with a key third act cameo; and, a very different Bill Nighy than we saw and loved in Love, Actually, here taking a small role as an officious, self-serving knighted senior diplomat. There are a number of small parts played by what one can only presume are African locals, most well done, but neither the official site nor IMDB name many. An interesting ommision given the political slant.

Having praised Gardener for five paragraphs, let me take some space to point out a few flaws as well. Chief among them are a lack of focus on who Meirelles and Le Carre want to hold up for blame and odd bits of information tossed in uselessly that, if true (for the movie), would have certainly meant different choices would have been made by the characters. Most significantly among the latter is the revelation, perhaps 75% of the way in, that Weisz’s character was fabulously wealthy but had never revealed this to her husband nor used this wealth in obvious ways to further her cause or help the people she showed such care about.

The lack of a single, well-fleshed out villain is the worst sin though and almost destroys the film’s political value; in reality, no doubt all the types depicted here share responsibility but this is only 120 minutes and also not a documentary. From a plot perspective the fictional pharmaceutical company is the worst offender among the conspirators but is only briefly represented onscreen by a single executive, and Meirelles allows this man to offer contrition after falling from grace (his offering, by the way, is another throwaway bit not used again). The main government connection, Nighy’s Sir Bernard, has dialog in only three or four scenes and his local counterpart, the Minister of Health, even fewer.

In a novel this is much less of a problem because of the substantial larger space. The movie, though, is clearly a sales proposition: multinational corporations are using corrupt politicians to achieve profit goals without concern to the human cost because, after all, that’s not a debit on the ledger. To make the sale, Meirelles should have collapsed the novel’s cast so that viewers would come out of the theater angry at one or two easily identifiable real world correspondents to his villains but instead wastes energy across too many bad people to list here. Hopefully he’ll understand this for the next production.

recommended