The Adventures of Baron Munchausen: An indeterminate town in what might be France is under attack by the Turks. During the seige, Baron Munchausen breaks into a theater production of his adventures to set the story straight and save the town in the process. I think. In the end it wasn’t very clear what was real and what was not. Those stories usually leave me really disappointed, as do “it was all just a dream” cop-outs, but this film was a delight. The effects, costumes, make-up, and sets were all just amazing. I especially liked Robin Williams as the king of the moon. Definitely recommended for people who like bizarre fantasy.
Tag Archives: movies
Battle Royale
Posted by melydia on June 19, 2005
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Battle Royale: The Running Man meets Lord of the Flies. Banned from sale in the United States, this Japanese film tells of a society where youth violence has gotten so out of control that the adults now fear their children. In response, the government has instituted an annual Battle Royale, in which a class is sent to a deserted island with few provisions and a smattering of weapons, killing each other until only one remains: the winner, the lone child to who gets to go home. If more than one remain at the end of three days, the collars around their necks will explode, killing everyone. Basically it’s two hours of children killing children, but I’m still not entirely clear why it was banned here. I liked it for the same reasons I liked Lord of the Flies, but I honestly don’t have any strong feelings about it either way. Maybe I’m just too desensitized.
Revenge of the Sith
Posted by melydia on June 6, 2005
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Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith: The same execrable dialogue and nonstop action of the first two prequels, but with a little more interest since I was curious how the wildly different worlds of the prequels and the original trilogy fit together. That connection, covered largely in the final fifteen minutes of the film, was done fairly well but still left quite a few loose ends and contradictions. But that’s par for the course in this movie – much of Anakin’s transition to the Dark Side was contradictory and unprompted. I was also baffled by the fact that the Jedi Council, whose skills border on telepathy, failed to notice such corruption in their very ranks.
The acting was almost uniformly bland, with one shining exception: Ewan McGregor. Not only did he make the stilted dialogue sound almost natural, he alone appeared to belong in the same universe as the original trilogy. I think he kept a Ouija board in his trailer to channel Sir Alec Guinness.
There was quite a bit of action in this one – too much, really. The lightsaber fights were amazing but so frequent they got a bit tedious. I guess I’m supposed to say something about the special effects, but when everything is computer generated it ceases to be very impressive. There were several scenes, both action-packed and otherwise, that seemed to do nothing but show off the pretty scenery and could definitely have been cut.
It wasn’t a horrible movie but “best of the prequels” isn’t very high praise either. I wish they had done Episodes 7-9 instead, because all these films did was shrink the Star Wars universe with unlikely connections. I didn’t like the Anakin/C3PO connection of Phantom Menace or the Boba Fett/stormtrooper connection of Attack of the Clones, and I don’t like the Yoda/Chewbacca connection of Revenge of the Sith. It’s gratuitous fan-pleasing and messes up the storyline. Still, I’m glad I saw this movie because, well, it’s Star Wars. Now hopefully it can all be put to rest and the fans can go back to their RPGs and fanfics without worrying about George Lucas messing everything up again.
Assorted Movie Reviews
Posted by melydia on May 17, 2005
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I had a lot of downtime during a recent trip for work and managed to squeeze in several movies. These were watched over the course of a 24-hour workday on a 12″ laptop with tinny speakers and often in 15-minute spurts, so my movie viewing experience may not have been the same had I watched them straight through while lounging on my couch.
Ray: Jamie Foxx was excellent and the music was lovely, but I don’t think this is one I would watch again. Most biopics, despite often revealing some less-than-complimentary traits, tend to ultimately show their subjects in a favorable light. I came away from this one wondering if Ray Charles really was as self-absorbed and uncaring as this film portrayed him.
Super Troopers: Screwball state troopers against grouchy local cops in the battle for jurisdiction. I’d been meaning to see this one for a long time. I was not disappointed. It had a lot of crude and physical humor, but it did not rely on the embarrassment of its characters for the joke (like, say, most Ben Stiller movies). It was more akin to the first Police Academy or Ghostbusters, except not remotely appropriate for children. Very funny. I’m definitely going to watch this one again.
I, Robot: Will Smith plays the same cop he’s played a hundred times, only this one is trying to figure out whether or not robots are killing people, thus breaking the Three Laws of Robotics. I read the book ages ago and my memory of it is quite vague, but I did not recognize any of this aside from a couple names and the Three Laws. And you know, that’s fine. The story was fun, I couldn’t predict the ending too far in advance, and the effects (especially the robots themselves) were awesome. There was one random bit that baffled me: why was Lake Michigan dried up? It didn’t seem to have anything to do with the plot. Maybe they just wanted to add something to the backdrop to further demonstrate that this was supposed to happen in the future – it was pretty neat-looking, after all.
King Arthur: I like interpretations of the Arthurian legend. As it is a legend (as opposed to a novel or well-documented historical event), I don’t believe there is one true version. So my complaints about this movie have nothing to do with its supposed deviation from the story of Arthur and his knights of the round table. Here Arthur is a Roman fighting the Saxons in Britain one last time before he and his knights get to go home. This film was slow and often confusing. People spoke like they were spouting poetry instead of dialogue (which is okay to a point but this killed the realism) and too many actions were completely unmotivated. For instance, Arthur finds Guinevere because he randomly decides to bust into a building on somebody else’s property. What? Oh well, if you like insanely long battle sequences, neat costumes, and pretty scenery, you’ll like this one.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Posted by melydia on April 17, 2005
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The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: When I first saw the preview, I (and judging from the murmurs around me, most others in the theater) thought it was a joke movie, like somebody was going to bust in and sell us some car insurance or remind us to turn off our cell phones. The idea is that several famous literary characters (Allan Quatermain, The Invisible Man, Jekyll and Hyde, Mina Harker, Dorian Gray, Tom Sawyer, and Captain Nemo) are recruited into a league to stop a world war (from starting earlier than it would anyway, I suppose, since this takes place in the late 1800s). See, even the premise sounds absurd, so you can understand my skepticism. But no, it was a real film, and it garnered some horrendous reviews.
Not without reason, of course. The plot holes are extensive. The historical and literary inaccuracies are legion. The characters are beautifully attired but watered-down, without enough screentime to become fully fleshed. The plot is nothing special either – just a bunch of brilliant special effects shots (I especially enjoyed the building on fire that wasn’t on fire) strung together with little bits of dialogue trying very hard to have depth.
Good thing I don’t need my adventure films to have much depth. In the end, this was a fun bit of fluff. I laughed out loud in a couple occasions and discovered a sudden desire to go back and read all the source material to see exactly which canon traits were indeed ignored (for the life of me, I can’t remember if Dracula was vulnerable to sunlight or if that part of the vampire legend came later). While I will probably never watch it again, it was a nice diversion on a Saturday night.
Sin City
Posted by melydia on April 10, 2005
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Sin City: I’ll start with the good points, er, point: the film style. The use of black and white with just a smattering of color, the glowing white blood in certain shots, the stark shadows and bright lights – it was all gorgeous, just like watching a comic book come to life. A feast for the eyes, if you can handle something this gruesome.
Then there was the rest of the film. The dialogue was full of overblown metaphors, typical of the most outrageous satire of film noir. To make matters worse, most of the acting was on par with a readthrough at your average high school drama club. The fact that over half of the speaking was done in internal monologues didn’t help either.
Then finally there was the story. I was so bored I almost walked out an hour into it. See, the problem was that I just didn’t care. None of the characters were more than cardboard cutouts, walking stereotypes. You had your sexy, scantily-clad, gun-toting hookers; your ugly, monotone, gun-toting superheroes; your almost amusing but similarly ugly bad guys; your corrupt cops, politicians, and clergy; and a whole lot of blood. That’s about it – no originality anywhere to be seen.
There you have it: a bunch of stock characters spewing stilted dialogue while blowing each other’s brains out and surviving unlikely physical assaults. Oh yeah, and just to annoy you a little bit more, they jump around in time about halfway through. I didn’t think a movie this violent could possibly be so arm-chewingly boring. Don’t waste your money or your time.
Chicago
Posted by melydia on March 22, 2005
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Chicago: First, a quick synopsis: Roxie Hart kills her lover when she learns he was using her for sex and indeed was not her ticket to a singing career. Earlier that same night, the famous singer Velma Kelly killed her sister and husband for sleeping with each other. They both end up in the same prison, and from there on out the story becomes a tangle of lies and greed as each woman vies for the spotlight any way she can get it.
Though I have never seen the stage production, I can guess what it’s like: lots of flashy costumes, crazy dance numbers, and relatively sparse sets. That’s how musicals generally are, and that’s fine. Songs can be dialogue, interior monologue, or exposition in a musical without feeling like the story has been interrupted. So what if a bunch of chorus girls wearing absurdly large headgear pop up in the middle of a courtroom? In a musical, that’s perfectly fine. A movie, however, is different. The sets are detailed, realistic – too realistic to make said chorus girls look anything other than out of place. Things have to start out a little surreal and larger-than-life, as in Moulin Rouge or Singin’ in the Rain, for the audience to not be startled by people suddenly bursting into song.
Chicago takes a different approach. Instead of incorporating the songs directly into the story, they are performed as sort of dream sequences, mostly in Roxie’s mind. Whenever a song begins, the action cuts back and forth between the real world and an imaginary vaudeville. This of course could not happen in the theater, as the costume changes would be impossible, but it is an interesting attempt to bring the stage to the screen without actually blending the two worlds together.
I can’t decide how I feel about this approach. On the one hand, it provides opportunities for some interesting symbolism – the husband as the sad clown, the lawyer as the puppeteer – but on the other hand, the constant switching back and forth is distracting. I did stop and think about the film from an artistic angle for quite a while afterwards, however, so in the end I suppose that comes out in its favor. But I’m sure the stage show is better.
Saturn 3
Posted by melydia on February 25, 2005
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Saturn 3: Big names, complicated story, surprisingly forgotten movie. The beginning is especially strange. Captain James is in a locker room, hurriedly getting ready for his big launch, and runs into Harvey Keitel, who was waiting for him and similarly attired. James jokes about Harvey’s recent classification of “mentally unstable,” saying that being assigned to Saturn 3 would make anybody unstable (keep in mind neither of them have actually gone there yet). Harvey responds to this by tossing James out the airlock. Mentally unstable, indeed. But here’s the weird part: Harvey takes James’s place on the Saturn 3 assignment as captain of the one-man ship. He boards the vessel wearing his opaque helment and no one is the wiser.
He lands on Titan (Saturn’s third moon, hence the name), where Kirk Douglas and Farah Fawcett live on a scientific outpost working on what looks like hydroponic research to help replenish the Earth’s food supply. They are also lovers with a strange backstory that is never explained adequately. Kirk’s been banned from Earth but Farah’s never been there. Not sure how that all ties together but anyway the two of them are lovers and seem fairly happy with their lot, isolated as it is. Then Harvey arrives and brings with him a robot named Hector, which is supposed to help Kirk and Farah speed up their output. However, Harvey trains Hector by interfacing him directly with his brain through a plug in the back of his neck which very obviously was the inspiration for The Matrix. Since Harvey’s unstable, so is the robot, to the point of lusting rather single-mindedly after Farah.
From there it turns more or less into your standard monster movie. The acting is decent (except for Harvey – his monotone sounded like was reading) and the effects are reasonable for the time period, but a lot of the story must be taken on faith and not questioned, because it certainly isn’t going to be explained. Like the entire future history of Earth between now and whenever this movie is supposed to take place. And the backstory of basically all the characters. And the fact that you can kill a man by cutting off his hand. And that a robot in a Harvey hat is supposed to be scary, not funny.
All in all it was an enjoyable romp, ripe for a hearty MST3K treatment, but it might have made a really good book. Movies have a lot of trouble with science fiction because everything must be explained in dialogue. Books do not have this limitation and this story would have benefited greatly from more background and scientific details. That, and in a book you can have a naked man without actually having to see Kirk Douglas’s 64-year-old ass. That would have been an improvement.
Constantine
Posted by melydia on February 23, 2005
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Constantine: I like movies about the battle between Heaven and Hell. This film’s take on it is that God and Satan made a wager about the Earth regarding who can get more souls (not exactly a new concept, but it works here). They can’t interact with humans, but “half breed” angels and demons can influence people indirectly, hoping to nudge them one way or the other. One of these half-breed demons is Balthazar, played by Bush’s lead singer, Gavin Rossdale. I was pleasantly surprised at what a convincing and animated character he portrayed here, considering what a soulless and boring singer he is the rest of the time. Keanu Reeves, however, struck me as terribly miscast in the role of John Constantine, the damned soul trying to buy his way into heaven. His monotone voice and weird inflection were wrong for this part. But I’ve come to expect such things from Ted Theodore Logan, so I can forgive that here. Anyway, the other character I’d like to mention is Gabriel, a half-breed angel. I have no idea what his/her motivations were nor even if s/he was supposed to have a gender at all. Was s/he good? Was s/he evil? Hard to tell. But I thought Tilda Swinton did an interesting job in the part, even if she looks too much like Cate Blanchett. All in all, it was an entertaining film and I can’t say I regret seeing it. I just wish it had starred someone else.
One more thing: ever notice in this kind of movie that Satan always shows up in person while God’s only a ray of light, if He shows up at all?
Near Dark
Posted by melydia on February 23, 2005
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Near Dark: One of the stranger (and sillier) takes on the vampire legend I’ve seen. Redneck vampires kidnap sweet old cowboy Caleb and make him one of their own. Then Caleb’s dad rescues him and cures his vampirism. Yeah, I didn’t know there was an antidote either. Apparently, all that matters is how you get the blood into your system. If it’s by mouth, you become a vampire. If it’s through a needle in your arm, you turn human again. Convenient, that.