Category Archives: fantasy

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Posted on May 28, 2007

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

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Click

Posted on February 25, 2007

This is definitely one of Adam Sandler’s better movies of recent years, keeping his obnoxious antics in check and using them to teach him a lesson. Think of an updated It’s a Wonderful Life where a nowhere near as evil Mr. Potter is the lead character.

Sandler plays Michael Newman (“new man”, get it?), and ambitious young real estate executive who can’t quite balance work and family. Kate Beckinsale plays his unrealistically hot, loving wife and mother to his son and daughter (played by several actors each as the film moves through several decades of Newman’s life). Christopher Walken is the strange staffer in the wa-a-ay beyond department at Bed, Bath & Beyond, David Hasslehoff is Sandler’s obnoxious, piggish boss and Sean Astin is the kids’ swim instructor and, later, Beckinsale’s second husband.

Walken is so good as a snake oil salesman, the essential nature of his character here as in so many great roles he’s done before; his Morty slowly seduces Newman, allowing him to discover the ‘features’ of the special remote at the heart of Click long before its costs surface. As Morty cautioned at the time of purchase, this sale is final, no returns allowed.

Writers Steve Koren (Bruce Almighty, A Night at the Roxbury, many Seinfeld episodes and Saturday Night Live skits) and Mark O’Keefe (co-wrote Bruce Almighty) and director Frank Coraci (The Waterboy, The Wedding Singer) devised a very effective framework, enough funny bits to satisfy core fans (such as the right cross to Hasllehoff’s jaw featured in the ads), dropping in on our man’s life at varying–and increasingly lengthy–intervals before climaxing with a very old, lonely and sad Sandler.

recommended

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Last Action Hero

Posted on January 21, 2007

I always thought Schwarzenegger’s 1993 action farce was vastly underrated, especially when considered as a set with True Lies. Of course, I could be mistaking the accidental achievements of the many chefs who had a hand in this entree, between the four credited writers (Zack Penn, Adam Leff, Shane Black and David Arnott), director John McTiernan (Die Hard I and II, Predator, The Hunt for Red October and the remakes of The Thomas Crowne Affair and Rollerball), and the half dozen or more producers. The key for me anyway is that this is so over the top it’s become camp, intentionally or not, and filled with laughs. Since it was available via On Demand in high def I couldn’t resist.
Last Action Hero asks what if a golden movie ticket gifted by Harry Houdini to an old movie theater usher (Robert Prosky) when he was a child really does have a bit of magic. Prosky gives the ticket to troubled teen Danny Madigan (Austin O’Brien) before unreeling the brand new Arnold actioner Jack Slater 4. Wonder of wonders, the ticket is magical and minutes into it Danny finds himself in the movie’s world. Right in the back seat of Slater’s red convertible in the middle of a car chase between Slater and a pickup truck full of mobster Anthony Quinn’s henchman.

Danny is a huge fan and knows things–from the first three Slater movies–that Jack cannot understand. Of course he doesn’t agree that his world is simply a cinema fantasy despite the many strange things pointed out to him like an animated, speaking cat as a police office, that every woman seen is at a minimum hot or that Slater himself is never sick nor more than minimally injured.

Benedict (Charles Dance), a high-powered English hit man working for Quinn, gets Danny’s wallet and the half of the magical ticket in it. Realizing what it can do, Benedict steps in and out of different movies recruiting bad guys to terrorize the “real” world. Danny and Jack get back themselves (Jack and Danny’s mom, played by Mercedes Ruehl, hit it off but do not hook up), in order to stop Benedict and the others. Ian McKellen, playing Death in what’s supposed to be an Ingmar Bergman film, even steps out to check out Jack because no one has ever not been on one of Death’s list.
recommended

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Posted on August 6, 2006

Sequels, especially ones which are the middle chapter in a trilogy, often let down fans of the first movie. The Empire Strikes Back was a notable exception, often cited as the best of the six by fans, but The Two Towers (despite being a terrific movie IMO) is generally considered a letdown. The reason, even in the best of cases seems fairly straightforward: the first film opens the big can of worms and the main characters surprise and seduce us while the second still doesn’t resolve the conflict and we already know the characters.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is fighting welterwight compared to these heavyweight classics, and is an enjoyable two and a half hours, but still falls into the middle movie canyon. I suspect only the most ardent of Johnny Depp fans were expecting anything like what his Captain Jack Sparrow character turned out to be in Curse of the Black Pearl and others were wondering why the excellent, if eccentric, actor signed on for a movie based on a theme park ride; Eddie Murphy’s The Haunted Mansion, released around the same time, certainly turned out to be the weak effort most were projecting for Pirates.

Curse, though, was a revelation and showed that a little imagination, a bit of discipline and a smidge of over the top acting go a long way. The problem is that this time the audience expects much more, the big surprises have been shot out of the cannons. So to speak.

Yet Dead Man’s Chest still succeeds. Reviewers were not particularly kind but the fairly full theater we saw it in laughed a lot and left talking and smiling. The barebones plot perhaps tracked a thousand previous pirate/romantic comedies but director Gore Verbinski, writers Ted Elliot & Terry Rossio (not involved in the first PotC but they did co-write Shrek) and the special effects crew did a really good job giving us new material.

The character of Will Turner’s father was terrific, both in dialog and Stellan SkarsgÃ¥rd‘s performance. The sequence with Sparrow, Turner, Norrington and the cannibal tribesmen, particularly the sword fight between the three men inside a dislodged waterwheel as it careens down a mountain–I’d buy the DVD just to see the making of this! Bill Nighy’s Davey Jones was another treat, but Nighy’s done so many good roles lately I wonder why he wasn’t a bigger star when younger. Keira Knightly, well, she’s smart and aggressive and as cute as ever.

Of course now the crew has got a really huge hill to climb with next year’s conclusion. All the major characters return, including Jonathon Pryce, Geoffrey Rush, Naomie Harris (the voodoo priestess) and Nighy plus Yun Fat Chow as a Chinese pirate captain and possibly even walking dead rocker Keith Richards as Depp’s daddy, so the Magic 8 Ball says: “Outlook Sunny!”

definitely recommended

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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Posted on November 25, 2005

Seeing a movie on Thanksgiving afternoon is turning into a tradition for TS1 and me, and this year we picked a real good one. Maybe it’s new director Mike Newell or that screenwriter Steve Kloves (who wrote all four of the scripts) or the three teenage leads are really hitting their stride. I think all three are actually true, plus Kloves, Newell and (presumably) JK Rowling figured out how to put the meat of the very long novel on celluloid.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is centered around the Tri-Wizards Tournament, an infrequently held international competition. Troops of students from two foreign schools–dark hard boys from Eastern Europe and agile, pretty girls from France–turn up to spend the school year at Hogwarts. And even though the Ministry of Magic has imposed a new rule allowing only students at least 17 years old to enter, somehow a slip of paper with Harry Potter’s name is regurgitated from the goblet making for four contestants instead of the customary three.

The tournament is no game like quidditch, though that sport does feature in a colorful opening sequence, but rather life and death tasks which are intended to test the school champions’ limits. All four do come close to death and one does in fact die during, but not really in it. The tasks also give Newell and the producers opportunities to bring in some decent special effects (dinosaurs, mermaids).

Of course this is the point in Harry’s saga when Voldemort regains human form. Ralph Fiennes has only one scene, at the climax, where he squares off against Potter but his performance, along with the scene itself, show that Goblet of Fire is fantasy but no kids’ movie. No more than, say, Lord of the Rings or Star Wars.

definitely recommended

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Hero

Posted on June 6, 2005

Dazzling. That’s the best word I can think of to sum up Hero (Ying xiong in the original Chinese, I suppose), the tale of a nameless assassin who confronts the man who is in the process of uniting warring kingdoms into the Chinese Empire.

Jet Li tells the King of Qin the tale of how he, some unknown chief from a tiny village out in nowheresville, defeated the three greatest fighters in all the land. So most of the movie is in flashback, not one of my favorite modes for sure, but in writer/director Yang Zhimou’s hands it works well. If you know what Rashmon style means, that’s sort of what we get here, the same event retold from different angles. Excellent acting/fighting efforts from Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, Daoming Chen and Tony Leung Chiu Wai.

The story is basic though robust enough to stand up to the repetition, with witty dialog between Li’s Nameless One and the king definitely a plus. The attraction, though, is Zhimou’s combination of gorgeous imagery, changing use of color and brilliantly-choreographed fantasy martial arts battles. I really loved the massive flights of arrows used in a couple of scenes, something I’ve never really seen before.

definitely recommended

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Elf

Posted on June 1, 2005

What went wrong with Elf? Hard to say. Ferrell at this point is kind of like Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy or Robin Williams at their manic primes, all over the screen and always able to take over any scene. Probably the script from David Berenbaum (speaking of Murphy, Berenbaum also wrote the script for The Haunted Mansion) and the directing of Jon Favreau weren’t enough to overcome the horrendous core concept: Ferrell as a tot sneaks into Santa’s bag one Christmas Eve and for some reason can’t be returned to his parents, remaining at the North Pole thinking he’s just an oversized elf to the age of 30.

At which point the “truth” becomes clear to him and, voila, he’s told who his real father is. Off we go to Manhattan and the completely different, angry, mean James Caan. Sure, Ferrell has plenty of bits to get laughs but the idea here is to make a movie. M-o-v-i-e. Anchorman is coming on cable soon, hopefully will be better.

not recommended

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Shaolin Soccer

Posted on April 17, 2005

This was a total hoot. Cross super kung fu fanatics with a soccer competition against a team lead by an evil megalomaniac and over the top acrobatics. That’s what you get in Shaolin Soccer (Siu lam juk kau). Stephen Chow does a Woody Allen, he’s the writer, director and star, and now I’m really looking forward to his Kung Fu Hustle that opens Friday. Very strange and hard to describe, nothing like anything we get from Hollywood, just totally worth your time.

recommended

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Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life

Posted on February 26, 2005

Angelina Jolie in extremely flattering tight outfits? Check. Whacked out phantasmagorical plot? Check. Diabolical villain racing our heroine to an ancient artifact that could doom millions? Check. Sure enough everything’s in place for the 2003 sequel Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.

What do you expect from movies based on video games? At least director Jan de Bont keeps the bullets and bombs within reason, a bit of computer generated menace and the visible blood absolutely minimal, a positive in my book. Gerard Butler, Ciaran Hinds, and Djimon Hounsou provide romance, evil and wisdom in support.

Yes, nearly everything is cartoony but from that perspective this is successful. A female Indiana Jones, as my sweetie suggested. Not box office gold, considering the $90 million budget, probably profitable in the long run but Jolie has said she won’t do a third.

moderately recommended

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Hellboy

Posted on February 6, 2005

Part of the current wave of comic books taking advantage of modern computer effects and makeup, Hellboy is a visually exciting movie, with really good pacing and decent acting. But if you’re hoping for a complete story and a plot that hangs together with some intelligence, this 2004 release is not it.

Primary cast is Ron Perlman as the title character, John Hurt as scientist and bureau chief, Rupert Evans as an FBI agent and new minder, Jeffrey Tambor as an officious, obnoxious government higher up, Selma Blair and David Hyde Pierce as two more paranormals, all of whom face off against Karel Roden as a “reimagined” Rasputin, Brian Steele as Sammael, Ladislav Beran as an ageless ninja-ish fighter and Bridget Hodson as a Nazi and the obligatory bad girl groupie.

(Apparently, the film pulls a “Vader” on the Abe Sapien character, with Doug Jones inside the funny suit and Hyde Pierce providing the voice. Since almost all of the character’s value add was in the dialog, I’ll leave the above cast note stand.)

Basic story: Rasputin, who in this tale didn’t die in Russia early in the 20th century, has teamed up during World War II with some Nazis to open a gateway to Hell in a special place on the Scottish coast. Hurt’s Professor Bruttenholm is there with a squad of American soldiers to stop them and does, but not before a baby Hellboy comes through; Bruttenholm takes him back to New Jersey. Flash forward 60 years, to the present day, when Rasputin has returned from the dead, ready to finish the destruction of Earth.

Writer/director Guillermo del Toro film before this was Blade II, a very similar movie. Your eyes are kept glued to the screen, the action coming faster and faster and some very creative visual effects. But, as I mentioned at the start, the script makes no sense and that’s even after you accept the made up beings and technology. There are numerous others but the best example is at the very end: Hellboy faces off against a huge monster whose existence isn’t even hinted at prior to its appearance and having defeated it (of course, what do you think?) just walks off with no explanation. Yet we’re supposed to accept it and file out of the theater. All I can think is that readers of the source comic books would know the missing details.

not recommended

P.S. There’s already a sequel listed on IMDB.

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