In this summer of third in the franchise flicks, the (perhaps not) last of the movies inspired by the classic Disneyland ride is another disappointment; worth seeing but just. Everyone is back (Depp, Knightley, Bloom, Geoffrey Rush, Jack Davenport, Bill Nighy, Jonathon Pryce, Stellan Skarsgard and the pirate crewmen) including the writers and director Gore Verbinski plus cast additions Chow Yun Fat and Keith Richards as well as a much juicier part for Naomie Harris’s mystical Tia Dalma.

The three key problems I have with Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End are:

• The opening sequence of ordinary folk lining up and being hung six at a go, including a small child in the final group, is far to grim and explicit for a family-friendly movie. How are parents supposed to explain this to the many six and seven year olds in the audience?
• The resolution of Bloom and Knightley’s romantic plot, which I won’t spoil, is disappointing and also too negative. Two b: Bloom seems to have caught the don’t wanna be here bug from Toby Maguire.
• Verbinski’s portrayal of Captain Jack’s life in Davey Jones’ Locker is surreal and belongs more in, say, Oliver Stone’s The Doors and Mike Myers parody of same in Wayne’s World 2.

On the plus side, Rolling Stones guitarist Richards’ performance is a pleasant surprise, Depp gets to go as far as he wants, Verbinski plays his huge cast as well as the computer-generated Jones does his pipe organ, and the cinematography by Dariusz Wolski is excellent, as is the sharp, colorful work from the Art Department.

recommended

Nicholas Cage has an uneven track record with me, to say the least, but in this 2005 Andrew Niccol picture he gets one for the plus column. Cage plays Yuri Orlov, a Ukranian immigrant whose family escaped when his father pretended to be Jewish. Unsatisfied with the family restaurant as a career prospect and captivated by the guns used by neighborhood mobsters, Yuri rides his ambition to the top ranks in the global arms business.

Of course, that means constantly dealing with unsavory characters and living with an intense feeling of insecurity and in this Lord of War plays to Cage’s strength as an actor. He’s hemmed in by family (first brother Jared Leto and then wife Bridget Moynahan and their son), the cops in the form of Ethan Hawke’s Interpol agent, competition from Ian Holm and even nasty customers like Liberian dictator Andre Baptiste Sr. (Eamonn Walker, very different from his spiritual character in HBO’s series Oz) and his insanely violent son Andre Jr.

On the plus side are Yuri’s salesmanship, ability to partition the aspects of his life and an uncle who remained in the Ukraine and rose to become a general at the time the old Soviet Union collapsed, providing him with an amazing inventory source. The title comes from the elder Baptiste and his Norm Crosby-ish word jumbling: Orlov, in one conversation, calls him a warlord but Andre tells Yuri he is the real “lord of war.”

Niccol previously wrote and directed Gattaca and S1m0ne and wrote The Truman Show. I thoroughly enjoyed the latter two but never saw the first so let’s give the Kiwi three for three as he keeps the action flowing, generally avoids getting sidetracked in the obviously tragic uses of the product and provides Cage with a realistic, flawed lead character, allowing his brother (mainly) to suffer the emotional consequences.

recommended

[Disclaimer: Glenn Homes of On Target Media sent me this DVD to review.]

For so many people, family is the dominant factor in life. Aurora Borealis is a movie that explores the beginning and end of family life through Joshua Jackson and Juliette Lewis as the couple coming together and Donald Sutherland and Louise Fletcher as Jackson’s grandparents facing the prospect that their time is over. Complicating the story is that Jackson’s father died ten years before, when the boy was only 15 and the father only 39, sending the youngster into a tailspin from he’s not yet recovered.

Sutherland does an amazing job as Ronald, portraying a man aware that his body has nearly deserted him with his mind not far behind. I never felt that he was slipping over the line into a caricature though that would’ve been very easy to do. Jackson’s Duncan is a bit more of a stereotype but writer Brent Boyd’s dialog and Jackson’s soft touch left me satisfied; one imagines that the former Dawson’s Creek star was happy to have a role that explored realistic emotions intelligently rather than the tweener hype-driven movies he’s mainly been in since that series.

Lewis was nice as the new love, Kate, but at over 30 perhaps a tad old for our boy. Maybe not, maybe reversing the normal Hollywood older man/(much) younger woman relationship was a sign of respect from the producers. Fletcher is still called out for winning the Oscar in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which I think was made the year Lewis was born, but my recent memories of her work is from (the highly underrated) Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Nonetheless, the role of Ruth is very different from either and she gives a quality, realistic portrayal that in many ways is the connective tissue for the movie.

Many of the supporting roles are filled by young actors whose faces will be familiar but will have you scratching your head to match the name: Steven Pasquale (you recognize him from Rescue Me, where he’s a squadmate and married Dennis Leary’s sister at the end of last season), Zack Ward (Christopher Titus’s brother on Titus), and Taylor Labine and Timm Sharp (small parts in many TV shows and movies made in Vancouver, where most of this was shot).

Boyd and director James C.E. Burke combine to give us a nicely paced story that doesn’t resort to filler to show off the star or some unrelated idea. They also playing on the setting of Minneapolis and use locale-specific things like the winter weather, Paul Westerberg and, of course, the northern lights that give us the movie title for a non-generic flavor. Too many other small films (and I use the term in the sense of intimacy and budget) could be set in Metropolis for all that we get from the location.

recommended

While Cars is a very good film and a worthy addition to the Pixar vaults, I don’t have a huge amount to say about it. Except I enjoyed it much more than I’d anticipated and this was yet another example of how having a decent-sized HD TV is so nice. Props to Joe Ranft, Owen Wilson, Bonnie Hunt, Larry the Cable Guy, Tony Shalhoub and Cheech Marin along with the massive animation and software departments.

Recommended

I think Truman Capote would have been reasonably happy with this movie about the most significant period in his life. While he was already a rising literary star for the novel Breakfast at Tiffany’s and as a regular writer for The New Yorker, there’s no question that In Cold Blood was not only a masterpiece but a breakthrough in modern journalism. Tom Wolfe, Ken Kesey and Hunter Thompson all followed along in the path the book blazed, as did New Yorker colleague George Plimpton.

Capote covers the years from 1959, as Capote read a newspaper story about the brutal Kansas slaying and immediately sensed this was a story he could write, through the 1965 execution of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock. Coming more from the perspective of a novelist and playwright, Capote inserted himself into events in a way that no journalist ever would. He befriended Smith and found the pair better lawyers for their appeals than were possible for the trial; despite his efforts, they were actually guilty and no Midwestern court in those days would have allowed the murders of four clean-cut solid citizens to go unpunished.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman got most of the praise for his portrayal of the titular character, and took home the 2006 Oscar for Best Actor (over a relatively weak field), though several others won or were nominated for major awards. Director Bennett Miller and co-star Catherine Keener (who played bestfriend Harper Lee) lost out to Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) and Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener), and to Crash for Best Picture.

From my perspective, the focus was spot on as Hoffman completely dominated Capote; I’m hard-pressed to imagine a more definitive example of Method acting. He captured the author’s manipulative, narcisstic persona, willing to say what he needed to get people to open up to him. That may not seem like much but over the course of 110 minutes it creeps and grows with the final acts clawing out from the inside.

recommended

My sweet wife was rewarded with tickets to an opening night showing for being such a good patient of our dentist and, since it was my birthday, decided to take me with her ;) I wish I had better things to say about this (allegedly) concluding volume of the current screen capers of our web-slinging superhero but alas I don’t.

The biggest problem we had with Spider-Man 3 is that director Sam Raimi and his co-writers Alvin Sargent and Ivan Raimi never seemed to have made up their minds on just what this movie should be: comedy, drama, musical. In the end the cut together something that was all three and yet not enough of any one to be a backbone on which the rest could build. Tobey Maguire’s strange performance was no help either, though I’d really like to know who decided how he would show the increasing effects of the alien symbiote that transformed him into Black Spider-Man. Then we could properly assign blame for the strange psycho-hipster stroll down Madison Avenue.

Still the flick does deliver the expected elements and so fans shouldn’t be completely disappointed. Harry Osborne dons his father’s Goblin gear for the opening battle with Spidey, Peter and Mary Jane have their romantic traumas (especially after Harry recovers his memory and decides to go after his best friend’s heart), Thomas Haden Church rises above all other performances–and gets the best special effects as well–as Sandman, and Topher Grace continues his post-’70s Show development with a nice villainous turn.

There have been articles lately about possibly continuing the franchise with new lead actors and I wouldn’t be averse to it, though a change at the creative helm might be advisable as well.

Recommended, barely