Movie Review: 300

I finally saw 300, via Netflix.  I am soooo glad I didn’t see this one in the theaters.

One word sums up this movie: “juvenile”.

Disclosure: 300 is based on the comic book of the same name.  When the comic came out, I bought the first issue, read it, thought “What a piece of crap”, and didn’t buy the second issue.  My opinion of the comic has not changed since then, and the movie supports that feeling.

You know what would be cool?  Lots of blood squirting everywhere.  Like in that King Arthur movie, when the guy’s arms and legs come off.

You know what would be cool?  Lots of symbolic, dramatic lighting, like everything is occurring at sunset or under a full moon.

You know what would be cool?  A bottomless pit in the middle of the court of Sparta, with no railings or grating or cover, because, like, Spartans are so bad ass that they never slip, stumble, or fall.

You know what would be cool?  If the dramatic scenes all had shit floating in the air to give it a dreamy quality.  Snow, dust, pollen, whatever.

You know what would be cool?  If all the Spartans went shirtless all the time and were like totally ripped.  Dude, that would be gay, not cool!  Oh, well don’t worry, they won’t ever touch each other, so it won’t really be gay.  Just sorta.

You know what would be cool?  If we added reverb and other modulation to the voices at their most dramatic moments.  That would, like, totally help carry the symbolism through.

You know what would be cool?  If we had a voiceover going through the whole movie, sometimes reiterating the action but usually just giving color commentary and saying poetic shit.  And it would be way cool to — surprise! — make the voiceover be the story of the Spartans being told to others, to inspire them to fight crazy.

You know what would be cool?  If the Spartans were so bad ass that even their allies thought they were crazy and would run away.

You know what would be cool?  If there were all there dramatic, tension-filled conversations between the Spartans, full of pauses and deep brooding stares.  Um, dude, you’ve gone into the gay zone again!  Okay, we’ll have them break off the looks early, so no one could possibly think that there’s something gay going on.

You know what would be cool?  If we did all the action scenes cutting in and out of slow-mo, so you could totally see all the sword cuts and tumbling bodies and splashing blood.

You know what would be cool?  If the entire cast was men, just beating the snot out of each other.  Dude, gay thing again!  You need something with a woman, so we can get the chicks to let us see it.  No problem, man: we’ll add a subplot with the queen, and she can have sex in it, too.  She’ll be totally hot, and it will be rough, beating the snot out of each other sex.  And if we have to trim the film to make it shorter, we can cut the subplot some, removing girl stuff and keeping all the bad ass fight scenes!




You know what would be cool?  If this movie didn’t make me fear that the director’s upcoming Watchmen film will be more of the same.

Movie Review: Iron Man

I finally saw Iron Man last weekend, when the Columbia City Cinema got it in as a second run film.  It was pretty good, I thought.

Mind you, I’ve never been a fan of Iron Man.  Not that I dislike Iron Man, but I just haven’t ever followed the character other than in the pages of The Avengers.  (This is probably because he’s a tech-based character.  I’m a big fan of the Legion of Super-Heroes, where every member has to have a unique non-tech power; Iron Man is a no-go in that scenario.)

As a result, I know the basics of the the character arc for Iron Man without being able to get hung up on the details.  That makes me an ideal audience for a superhero movie: I know of Tony Stark and Pepper Potts, and I can identify the character prepped to be the Mandarin in a future film, but I’m in no place to complain if Happy Hogan was relegated to just a chauffeur but was so much more than that in the comics.

What I particularly liked about the film, though, is that it was a superhero film without being full of the arch-villain.  Obadiah Stane was more organically grown from Tony Stark’s back story, as opposed to Lex Luthor’s maniacal jealous businessman or Norman Osborne going off the deep end to become the Green Goblin.

Also nice was the fact that despite this being a movie based around a tech character, there wasn’t either the “bounce the character off he walls so frenetically that the audience loses all sense of direction” from Spider-Man 3, nor the “blow up every vehicle in the city” from The Dark Knight.  I want to be able to tell who is hitting whom and why; keep the property damage only to that which needs to be done, not gratuitous explosions because you’ve got the budget.

The only down side to this film was entirely on the theater’s part.  They were alternating showings of it with Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2 (two films that go back-to-back so logically!) in the same theater, and people for the next film were filing in during the Iron Man credits.  And thus to hasten things along… no, they didn’t stop things before the legendary post-credits scene, but they turned off the camera, so we got to hear it but not see it.  Grrr.

Movie Review: Mamma Mia!

Please don’t make Pierce Brosnan sing in a movie ever again.  Ever.

Note: I have not seen the stage version of this, so I can’t comment on how well or poorly the screenplay meshes with the original.  But I have my suspicions that a few things got dropped in the movie.

Beyond that, make no mistake, Mamma Mia! is not a “serious” movie. It is camp.  And when it remembers that it’s okay to be campy, that’s where the film excels, and sells itself to the audience, making us smile, giggle and twitter, and even sing along.  (It’s ABBA music. You’re supposed to sing along!)

When the movie pushes in a bit of melodrama — Sophie and Sky’s tiny spat, for example — it stutters and stumbles.  (Or anytime Brosnan sings.)  But as soon as the next whoop-it-up chorus-boys-and-girls dance number comes along, all is well again.

The casting, or more the use of the casting, is spotty.  The two adult women sidekicks rip into the film with abandon, chewing the scenery and carrying the film forward.  Meryl Streep always feels reined in by uncertainty — should she just say “fuck it” and embrace the cheese, or should she hold back?  This is informed by the character she is playing, perhaps, but she never feels like she is inhabiting a movie built around ABBA songs.  The girl playing Sophie is a wide-eyed cipher; her motives and dreams are vaguely mentioned throughout the movie, but she never really projects them.  Sky is cute but otherwise empty.  All three adult male cast members seem more stunned by the film than anything else; again, while that’s part of the characters, it comes across to the viewer as mediocre acting (or poor directing).

Thank goodness for one of the men’s implied gay romance.  The confession exchange on the boat gave more depth to the two characters talking than the entire rest of the film, and a genuine clever crossed-signals dialogue bit.

Also annoying was the insistence on groups of three — three adult women, three adult men, Sophie and her two girlfriends.  Sophie’s gal pals are so prominent in the first 10 minutes that their near absence from the rest of the film stands out strongly.  And where was the threesome (ahem) with Sky as the pivot point, to keep that balance?  Oh, there, we saw Sky, the black bartender, and one other guy for about 3 seconds in one scene, so that must have been that triad.  (Story logic says that the unnamed third guy there should also be the gay fling attached to one of the adult men, but I don’t think it was the same actor.)

In the end, you have two choices with this film: sit outside it and analyze it and find it wanting, or inhabit the film’s world and burst out into song, dance, and sequins as needed.  The choice is easy, the hard part is dealing with Pierce Brosnan’s singing voice.

Movie Review: Kung Fu Panda

The nearest theater to my house is the Columbia City Cinema, only about 1/4 mile away.  Only a couple years old, they’ve just added a 100-seat second screen to their 200-seat upstairs offering.  I’ve rediscovered the pleasure of the weekend matinee — just $6 before 4:00 — and I’ve gone 3 of the past 4 weekends.  (Having two screens makes that easier: there’s always something new for me to see, since they typically seem to swap out one film each week.)

(They also have single-person bags of popcorn for the reasonable price of just $2!  Yay!  And coming soon are the new Mummy film, maybe the new animated Star Wars, and they are trying to get second-run shots of Iron Man and Mamma Mia!  Double yay!)

In the past few weeks, I saw WALL-E (mini-review: “Cute, but not all that inspiring.  Went downhill in the pleasure arena once they left Earth, although there wouldn’t have been much story otherwise.”) and The Dark Knight (mini-review: “Heath Ledger was fantastic, the bat-cowl still makes Christian Bale look like a doofus, and I miss the decor from the previous film, where Gotham had some character to it rather than being just another name for Chicago.   Too many ridiculous car explosion chase scenes, too.”), and this Sunday, I went to see the new Jack Black-voiced computer animated film, Kung Fu Panda.

This review is going to sound like a bit of a back-handed compliment.   My apology for that, but it cannot be helped, since I only have things to say about the places the film didn’t let me down…

About all I can really say about Kung Fu Panda is that it wasn’t as bad as I feared, on almost every level.   And when you expect systemic mediocrity but go above that, you end up with something that’s at least light and enjoyable.

There is nothing particularly deep and enlightening about this film (but I didn’t expect there to be). It is all set in a generic, pseudo-mystical valley in semi-ancient China — as these things often are — but not one with anything particularly recognizable as “true” legends, just the typical made-for-the-movies type.   (Compare to Mulan, which was based on real people and had more solidity and coherence to its setting.)   In particular, though, while they make abundant use of the Yangtze’s gorge rock formations, there’s no visit to either the Great Wall or the Imperial City, which are stock China references.

The movie trips lightly by most of the details of kung fu (and various other martial arts), making no mention of “chi” or “shaolin”, and it makes little use of stereotypical guttural “huuuuu-CHA” sound effects and only some tiny bits of “mystical energy” effects.   There’s lots of “wire work” effects, but little of it out of the realm of what gets seen in live-action Hong Kong films — and some parts of the rope bridge sequence are clever enough to forgive even those excesses.

I was worried that Jack Black comedy stylings would overwhelm the film or make his Po character stick out too much, but I was pleased to have that not be the case.   Likewise with several of the other “name” actors doing voice work; not having paid attention to who was whom going in, I didn’t get broken out of the film by Angelina Jolie or Jackie Chan or Lucy Liu.   I was also pleased to see several Asian actor names in the voice credits.

Sometimes animated fare decides that it has to push a message alongside and even on top of the story.   There’s a little bit of messaging here — everyone has his own strengths, and use your opponent’s biggest weakness against him — but they were pretty much stated once and then silently played on later.   (Okay, except for “There are no accidents.”   That one was hammered in a few times, and even the characters meta-commented on that.)

In the end, I smiled in a few places, and the kids in the audience (there were about a dozen, half the crowd) seemed tickled by parts of the film.  So, good enough for a matinee.

Theatre Review: Young Frankenstein

The new Mel Brooks’ musical, Young Frankenstein, is in the middle of its world premiere engagement here in Seattle, prior to it heading to Broadway.  This is the fourth big musical to have such a premiere here in recent years: Hairspray, The Light in the Piazza, and The Wedding Singer preceded it.  We saw it this afternoon.

“Ah, sweet mystery of life…”

The biggest problem with this show is the most obvious, but also the one no one really puts their finger on: it’s not in black and white!  (You have to have seen the film to understand what I mean, I’m sure.)

More seriously, they did a great job with the show.  Perfectly dandy casting — especially for Christopher Fitzgerald as Igor, channeling Marty Feldman, and Megan Mullally’s Elizabeth has a love of the late Madeleine Khan in her.  (It’s a deep love.  You have to see the show to get that joke.)  Roger Bart isn’t Gene Wilder, but he was quite fine as a loopy brain doctor (having previously been most familiar to me from Desperate Housewives, playing a loopy pharmacist; typecasting?).

Few of the songs are especially memorable, but that really means only that they are there to feed the jokes and to advance the story.

The show is definitely still new.  There were a few flubbed lines in today’s performance — most notable Inga saying “Put the candle in!” (huh?).  And a couple schticks just don’t have the timing down yet: the “Where wolf?” bit thudded, and the “hump” jokes didn’t come off as well as they should have.

Of course, this brings up the really big matter: when you’re doing a musical version of a beloved film, how can you preserve everything that’s important to people who can quote the film back to front?  (Mind you, Young Frankenstein is probably my fourth most watched film, after The Rocky Horror Picture Show [which had a musical on Broadway recently], Monty Python and the Holy Grail [which had a musical on Broadway recently], and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan [God help us if it ever has a musical on Broadway].)  It’s a tight line to walk, getting in all the quotable bits and adding 10-20 songs. Sometimes they manage it, and sometimes they don’t.  (Spamalot didn’t, in my opinion, and came off the worse for lifting a song from Life of Brian and not having any crucifixions to go with it.)

Fortunately, Young Frankenstein succeeds admirably.  Right now in the other room, Josh is watching the movie and I’m listening to bits, and being pleasantly surprised by some bits that I forgot about that made it into the show.  (The two significant bits lost that I’ve noted — and there are surely more — are “You take the blond, I’ll take the one in the turban” and the game of darts.  Oh, and “Damn your eyes / Too late”, but without Marty Feldman and close-up camera work, that’s quite forgivable.  I didn’t miss people not understanding what Kemp says, either.  And indeed, even the lost bits are adequately covered with new content which precludes the original pieces.)

Of note as well is that Brooks didn’t just add a bunch of songs, he added some new running jokes, fleshed out some back story, and did a decent job of avoiding things feeling like it was just songs pasted onto a movie script.  (And let’s not forget Susan Stroman’s choreography.  There some really great hoofing in the show, and that includes the horses pulling the [roll in the] hay cart.)

The show only runs in Seattle through next weekend, so you’ll probably have to wait for it to go up in New York..  Until then, take your sedagives and wait.

Couldn’t You Try a Little Harder?

I get leery of places and things which have to tell you up front how good they are in order for you to partake.

I first noticed this back in the mid-90s, when I was working for a gay newspaper and was asked to review a novel (Iowa, by Patrick Moore).  Unlike those which have pull quotes on the back touting how ground-breaking and fantastic the novel is, for this one the publisher put a quote on the front, which implied that they didn’t think that the title, author’s name, and photo of a shirtless twink would sell the book.  (Instead, they needed a quote by someone I had never heard of, like that would help sell it?)

(You might think that I remember the book so it must have been good.  No, I remember it because of the stupid pull quote on the front, which I even tagged in the review I wrote.)

Later in the decade, I started noticing a motel chain called Quality Inn.  If it’s good, quality should be expected, so if you have to tell me that it is “quality”, I’m inclined to disbelieve.  (This went a step further a few years later when I chanced upon a small restaurant, the Quality Diner.  Er, no thanks!)

And now for the latest: the DVD of Eddie Murphy’s film Norbit just came out, and it touts “Hysterically funny!” in huge letters on the cover, nearly as prominent as the title.  Was this the best review line they got for the film?  Heck, by the whopping 9% rating it garnered at Rotten Tomatoes, it may be the only good review line they got.

Movie Review: The Dukes of Hazzard

Against my better judgement, we watched The Dukes of Hazzard last night.  This is the 2005 film starring Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott, and Jessica Simpson… with all that implies.

First up, it wasn’t that bad.  (It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t that bad.)  Knoxville and Scott had some genuine rapport, Simpson was acceptable, and Burt Reynolds as Boss Hogg was adequately smarmy and a whole lot nicer to look at that the actor from the TV show.  It was a tickle to see Lost’s M.C. Gainey (“Tom Friendly”) as Rosco P. Coltrane.  And Lynda Carter: how can you go wrong with Wonder Woman?

The car scenes, of course, were where the film really shined, as it had to.  The paraphrase Superman, “You will believe a car can fly.”  (Although I’m not sure whether the blooper scenes of the failed jumps tearing the car to bits were a good thing to include.  They took some of the magic out of things.)

It was also nice to see every last little bit and running joke from the old show rear its head: Flash, Cletus, referring to Enos as a “dipstick”.  That made it feel like an actual continuation of the old show, rather than something with just the bare trappings, as is too often the case.

But the less good?  Willie Nelson would have been adequate as Uncle Jesse, but the constant play of bad jokes and riddles?  What was up with that?  And while I welcome a bit more authentic speech in the language, the crew apparently took the PG-13 rating they were going to have and embraced it a bit too whole heartedly, ending up just this side of foul mouthed.  (Although from the deleted scenes, they appear to have trimmed back from what would have got them an R rating.)   Oh, and tell me again how they got the farm back?

(Oh, I see: the governor pardoned the boys and Uncle Jesse, which must have reversed the seizure and sale of the farm to Boss Hogg.  Would have been nice to actually explain that, though!  And I’m not sure it would work.  The farm was probably seized and sold under RICO guidelines, since such property sale can occur independent of a trial and its outcome.  Perhaps the state would have had to compensate Jesse for the improper seizure, and either coerce Boss Hogg into restoring it [and reimburse him the 35 cents he paid for it, per one of the extra scenes] or give him the money to buy it back, which might not bee too expensive given that Hogg didn’t want the farm without the mineral rights.)

Mostly, though, the Duke boys were… inept.  These weren’t Good Ol’ Boys, these were Dumb Ol’ Boys.  I don’t remember Bo and Luke on the original show being quite this bad.  Seann William Scott especially played the role of Bo overly dumb.

In the end, mindless fun.  Just like the TV show always was.

Movie Review: Ratatouille

We went to see Ratatouille last night.  I had hoped to see Hairspray instead, but it was opening day and we were running late, so the first choice was sold out.  No biggie, and I wanted to see this, anyway.

Ratatouille is probably the most adult-themed computer animated film to come out of the Hollywood studios yet.  With its themes of life in the big city, getting and keeping a job, running a restaurant, and getting along with your peers, and especially with its mostly human (ahem) cast, it was a step away from the likes of Shrek and Toy Story.   No musical song-and-dance numbers, and not a screaming amount of bwa-ha-ha! funny moments.

In fact, it was because of the more adult nature of much of the film that the kid-friendly (read: “people who want kids to learn a lesson while being entertained”-friendly) bits sang out as over the top and too intense.  “Family is important” and “you don’t have to steal to be successful” were wedged in throughout the film way too obviously, as though Gusteau’s neon sign were lighting them up.

I was reminded once again (as I was after recently watching the DVD extras on Shrek II) just how good a job they have done with these computer animated cartoons.  We just don’t notice a lot of the subtle stuff they do simply because they do it right.   Think about it with this, a film about cooking: steam rising, ingredients plopping into liquids of various viscosities, reflections off highly polishes pots and utensils — all done so well that they don’t even register as “fake” (computer animated).  That is the mark of incredible skill and technology — magic.

I was also struck by the idea that this is where superhero films should go next.  The Incredibles already led the way, of course, but it was with their own characters, whom none of the audience are especially invested in.   Think about a computer animated version of Spider-Man or Dr. Strange or the Legion of Super-Heroes.  Designs which have a strong rooting in the comics, realistic enough to work but not all the way into the freak “uncanny valley”.  The ability to do whatever effects you need without having to integrate them with the live actors.  No stunt men, no mega-miniatures.  The time is right.

Secrets of the last Harry Potter book

Okay, my exposure to Harry Potter is limited to the 5 films to date — just saw Order of the Phoenix an hour ago — plus maybe 20 pages of reading, but I’m going to lay in my prediction for the Big Reveal in book #7 right now.

• Voldemort couldn't kill Harry when he was an infant.  Or at least couldn’t bring himself to kill Harry.

• In all the scenes we see of Harry’s parents’ deaths, it is just the mother we see being killed.  We don't see Harry’s father actual bite it.

• There are any number of wise and powerful people always looking after Harry.  And always seeming to keep secrets from him.  If they’ve known stuff and kept it from him thus far, they probably still do.

• Per the flashback with Snape in movie #5, Harry’s father had a bit of a mean streak in him.

What always happens to a group like the Order of the Phoenix?  (Or like Harry's group of student wizards and witches?)  Why, they get taken down by a traitor in their midst.  Ergo, I declare that Voldemort is Harry’s father, who succumbed to the Dark Side and became the student of Darth Sidious.

Well, maybe not quite that last bit.  But it captures the gist.