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Now Showing – Feb. 2010

February 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Legion We’re still desperately reaching for something from the Bible to scare you. This is all we had left. Collateral damage from an angelic driveby. The Book of Eli We long ago reached the limit of our imagination for post-apocalyptic adventure. So we combined it with… the Bible! We were out of ideas there, too.
Valentine’s Day A big-screen Hallmark card, because when you’re this shallow, you need us to script the relationship. A film that’s destined to be on TV next February, after we’ve sold all the DVDs we ever will. Tooth Fairy Because every action hero must be made to look ridiculous in at least one film, juxtaposed with children. And the last time we did it with the Rock, not enough of you could bear to watch.
Sherlock Holmes With martial arts from Brotherhood of the Wolf, we decided to make Sherlie less cerebral, and more dope and depression driven. We just can’t leave any classic unscathed. Dear John Well, if one of these sappy romances made money, let’s lower the age and sophistication of the lovers to that of the Twilight films, and see if we can sell a lot more. Next Winter, we’ll actually use pre-teens.
The Crazies We’ve used every excuse for people to start chasing and eating you – viruses, more viruses, alien viruses. So we’ll just skip the reasons, and the humans “go crazy”. The Wolfman We long ago ran out of any good ideas for horror. And we pillaged all the Japanese and Korean films we could manage – like the Ring. Besides, we remake every film in the current generation’s image. Dumber, more violent, and even more hoky.

Some of you will say I’ve been too hard on these films. As punishment, I think you should have to watch them. So, get busy. You’ve got a lot of crying to do. Or at least, my eyes are tearing up just thinking about it.

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Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

August 17, 2003 By Leave a Comment

I watched the 2-DVD set of “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” this weekend. What I found most disappointing is that Kevin Smith was basically shaken down by GLADD. They clearly used him for publicity and strong-armed him into paying money. There’s nothing anti-gay about his films. Look at “Chasing Amy”. If any film ever made homosexuality mainstream, that was it. And he shouldn’t have caved. But that’s how films are made in the US. They have to pass GLADD, or they’ll call you a homophobe in public until you pay up. Then, after he made the donation, they acted as if it were an admission of guilt. Basically, they used it to say, ‘This is what one gets for offending GLADD’ and ‘See how GLADD can raise money for gay foundations by targeting even those who’ve demonstrably endorced homosexuality.” It was great publicity for them. I remember explaining how studios are held hostage this way to an associate back in the eighties, and he called me a liar, and suggested that even if I were right, making a point of it wasn’t the right attitude. You remember the eighties. People were scrambling to be intellectually fashionable, or at least above persecution, by choosing which facts to pay attention to. But all such duplicity creates an atmosphere of social, ideological, and economic extortion that is supposedly better than the simple freedom of speech. The film wasn’t even a pimple on “Chasing Amy”, but it was made sordid by the thirty pieces of silver.

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The Hot Chick

August 3, 2003 By Leave a Comment

In The Hot Chick Maritza Murray portrays, “Ling-Ling”, a girl who is half African-American, half Korean-American.

After an ebonics-laden exchange of compliments with her African-American friends, she is immediately embarrassed when her Korean mother arrives with her forgotten lunch of kimchi and bulgogi (staple Korean dishes). “Out of all the Korean liquor stores, why did my father have to walk into that one?” Among other troubles, her mother is calling her “Ling Ling” which is a Chinese, not a Korean name. Similarly, the mother is wearing Chinese, not Korean, traditional clothing.

Again, in a shop of African antiques, “Ling Ling” expresses her pride in being an African American but, once again, is immediately ashamed when her Korean mother shows up. The stereotype is reinforced when the mother exclaims that “Ling-Ling” had walked right past the nail shop without stopping to greet her.

In short, the stereotyping, and even truly ignorant stereotyping, makes this otherwise vapid film truly repugnant.

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The Hunted

April 28, 2003 By Leave a Comment

The Hunted is an unforgivably deceptive film. It’s portrayal of events in Serbia is contrary to anything remotely like the facts. No evidence of mass killings on the scale suggested in the opening moments of the film has ever been produced. It is one of the many such examples of a military-industrial propaganda line bolstered by Hollywood. What would be really novel is a few films showing American soldiers slaughtering innocent children as they did in Viet Nam, Serbia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

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Children of Dune

April 12, 2003 By Leave a Comment
Frank Herbert's Children of Dune
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Children of Dune (British miniseries) was a lot more fun than the two Dune films. Also Neverwhere (British miniseries) was a lot of fun. de Cabaras was especially well performed. Most fun I’ve had at the movies since Fellowship of the Ring.

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Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

April 12, 2003 By Leave a Comment

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind has an interesting premise (I especially liked when he graduated from CIA school and said goodbye to “Lee” and “Jack” who were taking separate buses out). But otherwise blah! Might appeal to Woody Allen fans – that kind of comedy.

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The Quiet American

March 9, 2003 By Leave a Comment

The Quiet American is a nice bit of minimalist spin on American involvement in Viet Nam prior to our invasion of that country. What’s disappointing is all that is left untouched, and all that is simplified to the point of a plot requiring only an assassination and some clarity over the use of barrels of a chemical agent. Very Schwarzenegger. Except that every hero’s heroism is undermined in this flick; no one stands a chance of being honest or faithful; it’s a naturalistic flick in which one’s natural (by which I mean ‘the law of the jungle’) rivals can be one’s civilized friends, simply because no one has a romantic’s level of self-respect, dignity, or consistent commitment to any ideal. Why not pal around with the man candidly trying to steal your lover away in front of you? A degenerate can be anyone’s friend. If you’ve no basic criteria for self-respect, no basic boundaries to which you are willing to give your life, fortune, and sacred honor, you can’t bloody well demand decent treatment from your associates. This is a demoralized series of character studies for the degenerate naturalist. Even the soundtrack is mercilessly relentless on this theme. Unfortunately, too, it seems enough in contemporary film for young, thin Asian actresses to be pretty, lithe, and… well… Asian. Helplessness doesn’t hurt, either; the need to be rescued is irresistable. The object of desire for the two male anti-heroes in this film is all of those things.

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The Life of David Gale

March 9, 2003 By Leave a Comment
The Life of David Gale
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The Life of David Gale wasn’t profound. It wasn’t shocking. It wasn’t even insightful. It added nothing to the cultural discussion of state-sponsored punitive killing. And if the point was to say, “innocent people die by capital punishment”, the response would have to be, “Yes, when they manipulate the system to do it intentionally.” The usual female reporter stereotype here: The character’s “tough” but the toughness amounts to being bitchy. She’s smart, but her smartness is a few wisecracks and some stoltifyingly simple deductions. She’s suppposed to be attractive in a sexually uptight, high maintenance sorta way, but she only succeeds in being generic. Not a sensual bone in her body. As a parody, she’d have been great, but one doubts that’s the intent. Gale is also a stereotype: horrendous killer/rapist behind bars, in command of the interview, knows something we all don’t, casual about his fate, stringing the heroine and so the audience, along. The Texas lawyer was the most interesting piece of work. Very Pulp Fiction meets X-files in style, with waist length silver pony-tail and his drawl. He’s a polite man of mystery. Now if the film had been about him…

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Epoch

February 27, 2003 By Leave a Comment

Epoch isn’t too bad, but it’s bad enough. The sci-fi unreality isn’t really a problem. It’s the unreality of all the other stuff – from the diplomacy to the way operations work in the field. That stuff is tongue-in-cheek some of the time, but the rest of the time it is just silly. The premise was certainly interesting, though not much different than, say, The Abyss, except that it’s on land. The are the usual stereotypes – bumbling ambassadors (who are indeed sometimes bumbling, just in different ways – this isn’t social commentary), mindless trigger-happy grunts (ok, that’s not too far off, either), a fundamentalist (hmmm. Guess he was kind of spot on, as well), the peace-loving scientist (one word… Oppenheimer), and the tough but soft in the middle uniformed love interest (’bout had enough of those). Then there’s the bewildered presentation of the Chinese. Clearly written by someone who knows nothing about them. There is too much shadow, gas, and too many sparks inside the “torus” – the mysterious (think ‘monolith’ from 2001) stone funnel that rose from below bedrock and stretched to the sky, hovering just above ground. And there’s the usual destruction of the great machine, complete with the getaway of our two reasonable heroes amid lots of camera shaking and rocks falling. And lo… he’s cured and she’s finally able to conceive. Ick! This is the B-side ot a B movie. It would be a decent comic book, but isn’t worth a DVD.

Iggy Goes Down . . . Well… another film by Camus. [Doesn't deserve it's own post.]

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Tadpole

February 3, 2003 By Leave a Comment
Cover of "Tadpole"
Cover of Tadpole

Tadpole is wonderful! It’s about a young boy, Oscar, a genius of 15, cultured, studied, multilingual, who is irresistable to women – like Diane (Bebe Neuwirth). And he’s in love with his stepmother, Eve (Sigourney Weaver). He can also tell all about a woman by examining her hands. I liked the premise right off, and liked the film even more. Most of all, I liked the characters. Except for Oscar’s dad (John Ritter), who I can’t stand in anything. There have been quirky, funny treatments of this subject before. Rushmore comes to mind. But this one doesn’t mock the act of love. The passion here is genuine passion, which makes it all the more interesting. It suggests that depth of passion is a thing not of age but of mind. What I don’t like is the origin of the title; “Tadpoling” is a term (obviously meant to ridicule) the trend of older women having much younger male lovers – usually about 10 years younger. Frankly, this “trend” is merely the result of women having financial and social independence and access to the cultural millieu once dominated by men. In contrast, it has rarely been thought unusual for men to have lovers 10 years their younger.

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Pearl Harbor

February 2, 2003 By Leave a Comment

Pearl Harbor – I refused to see it at the time – is pretty damned awful, all things considered. The tasteless quasi-comedic moments are the worst part. The romance is predictable. All the i’s of diversity are dotted, so one is conscious of being manipulated. But then, the film is one long manipulation anyway. The little speech on “the heart of a volunteer” was wretched. And, of course, it came out at just the right moment, eh?

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Possession

February 2, 2003 By Leave a Comment
Cover of "Possession"
Cover of Possession

Possession combines two elements that were meant to go together: the difficult pursuit of knowledge, and passionate romantic love. The lives of Victorian and twentieth century lovers run in parallel in this story; one wishes there were as much passion in the latter as in the former, but then you’ve got a passionless Aaron Eckhart as a “brush and flush kinda guy” – the male role. And Gwyneth Paltrow’s treatment of the ideologically inhibited gender studies professor is… well… inhibited. She smiles a couple of times but, for the most part, she just lies there, so to speak. I think the film would’ve been better had the entire thing been a period piece. Still, while the dialogue was wonderful, and the Victorian storyline suitably heart-rending (lovers caught by their promises and society), there just didn’t seem to be much acting. Most of lovely Jennifer Ehle’s work seems to have amounted to smiling in a composed worldly-for-the-time miss nothing kind of way. These were characters in costumes reading parts. It’s hard not to recommend the film, though; the dialogue and the plot were enough that I’d see it again despite its shortcomings.

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The Recruit

February 2, 2003 By Leave a Comment

The Recruit is a puff-piece recruitment flick for the security state. The whole film takes place as an internal drama – the CIA version of E.R. One part action, one part gadgetry, two parts mystery, and a dash of ideology. That’s how the ongoing barrage of spook flicks like Recruit are successful. The story line changes slightly, but the theme is the same: ‘Our enemies are everywhere. Our side is right; the anti-globalist anti-US-hegemony hordes are wrong. We need people with dirty hands and ambiguous moral commitments to fight this ‘war’. The secret police know best.’ Recruit, like so many such flicks, is Zamyatin’s We except that “The Guardians” are the “good guys” or, at worst, the necessary evil, the providers of safety at whatever cost. The twists and turns of the story hold one’s attention, but it requires a suspension of distaste w. the shadow regime, as it were.

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