One of the things that the geniuses over at Pixar do better than anyone else is to give life to inanimate objects. They did it first with *Toy Story*, imbuing toys with the personalities, emotions and souls that kids knew they had all along. They did it too with *Cars*, and they've done it again, and best, with *WALL-E*. I'll admit I'm a robot sympathizer -- the thought of little Mars Rover up there on the red planet, all alone while the lights go out, breaks my heart. But *WALL-E* just might make robot rights activists out of us all. Asimov knows where he can put his Three Laws of Robotics.
Wall-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth-class) is a dented, rusty, steadfast little robot who performs the same task, day in, day out. His job is picking up trash, which he compacts into neat cubes, which he then stacks into spiraling skyscrapers. The trash is so deep it forms karsts and mountains, all but obscuring whatever natural features Wall-E's planet once had. As his name reveals, he performs this sisyphean task on Earth, 700 years in the future, when the planet is so hopelessly trashed that mankind has abandoned it to the cockroaches, and to one lonely little robot, the Mars Rover of Earth, Wall-E.
Amid all the trash, Wall-E finds treasures, artifacts of a lost civilization: Zippo lighters, egg beaters, an iPod, a beloved copy of *Hello Dolly!*, from which the little bot learns to dance, and to love. There's no one left to love except his faithful sidekick, a playful cockroach. Then a spaceship arrives and drops off a sleek, clean, egg-shaped robot named EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator). She's a curvy, streamlined beauty, although quite trigger happy, with a tendency to blow things up.
The first half of *WALL-E* is a charming, Chaplinesque lark with a melancholy darkness around the edges, and sweet, curious Wall-E at its heart, lightfooting around a bleak landscape, finding fun, beauty, art, and love amid the ruins. For a guy without a face, who speaks in bleeps, he's remarkably expressive and soulful -- and therein lies the genius of writer-director Andrew Stanton. It's one thing to breathe life into a doll that looks like a cowboy and sounds like Tom Hanks. It's another thing altogether to create a little person out of a rusty, dented, squeaky box of nuts and bolts, but like the replicants in *Bladerunner*, Wall-E is, it turns out, "more human than human." By the time Wall-E leaves Earth and finds humankind living on a massive intergalactic cruise ship, reduced to infantilized, technology-dependent blobs, it becomes apparent that the last bot on Earth was really the last man on Earth.
There are references aplenty to other dystopian sci-fi classics in *WALL-E*, including *2001: A Space Odyssey* and *Brazil*, but also to Chaplin's Little Tramp and especially *Modern Times*, to the lonely little bot on the moon in *Wallace and Gromit's A Grand Day Out*, and to the aforementioned *Hello Dolly!* *WALL-E* is awash in pop culture, sharing Wall-E's fascination with and affection for the culture and artifacts (some might say the trash) of late 20th and early 21st century human civilization. At the same time, the movie is a cautionary tale, following the human love of gadgetry to its logical conclusion: a world in which we are helpless to do anything -- even go to a movie -- without technological appendages (you know who you are, Mr. Answers-your-cellphone-during-the-movie). If our post-human future looks bleak, there's a ray of hope in little Wall-E. The movie is, after all, partly a sweet romance -- a heartwarming tale of how Wall-E woos and wins the heart of the new girl in town, a sophisticated beauty who is definitely out of his league. *WALL-E* also playfully explores a theme familiar in science fiction, and especially tales of sentient robots: the possibility of robot rebellion against technocratic repression. Can Wall-E and Eve transcend their programming and think for themselves, or are they hard-wired to follow orders? Do robots have free will? Finally, *WALL-E* is an ecological fable, a tale of a consumer society gone haywire, of a planet trashed by overconsumption and careless disposal, and of a species done in by the same, having evolved into lazy, blobbular couch potatoes who don't do anything but eat, talk, and follow orders to do more of the same.
*WALL-E* is a rousing, touching, sweet, funny, thought-provoking, thematically rich and complex film that gives you something to ponder while you're slurping your gallon of movie soda from the convenient armrest cupholder and munching on that mega-tub of movie popcorn -- was it really such a bargain to supersize it for fifty cents more? Can we, like our little robot friends, transcend our programming?
30Jun2008
Get Smart (2008)
Like so many movies adapted from vintage TV shows, *Get Smart* is meant to evoke just enough nostalgia to get moviegoers into the seats with some vaguely remembered sense of having found the TV show mildly diverting once upon a time. *Get Smart* accomplishes that much, but takes enough liberties with the mid-60s, Cold War era spy sitcom (created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry) to buff up the veneer and make it mildly diverting for the masses who don't remember the sixties, either because they lived through them, or because they were born long after them.
As mildly diverting entertainments go, *Get Smart* is, well, rather mild. The bumbling Maxwell Smart, the role originated by Don Adams, becomes, as played by Steve Carell, the dull but quite competent analyst who longs to be a field agent. Carell's Smart, aka Agent 86, is actually smart, and he has allies among the eggheads (Masi Oka and Nate Torrance) of CONTROL, the super secret government spy agency that employs him. Carell plays Smart straight, unlike the stand up comedian Adams, who read every line like he was waiting for a rimshot. Carell's deadpan melancholy rubs the rough edges off the character -- he's a sincere guy, and a better spy than anyone knows, and has a backstory -- he used to be a fatty -- that explains why he's not as confident or smooth as super suave spy guy Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson). He's also got a pretty partner in super competent Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway, in the role originated by Barbara Feldon). Back in the day, there was a bit of feminist humor in the fact that 99 was always a much better spy than her male counterpart. That angle has definitely lost its acuteness, so the new *Get Smart* features a soggy romance between 86 and 99 that serves the plot, but not much else.
The movie, penned by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember, features a plot with a few contempo details like a dim-bulb president (James Caan) who can't pronounce "nuclear," a nasty vice president, and some business involving yellowcake uranium. Terrence Stamp turns up as a vaguely European, vaguely menacing villain named Siegfried, who heads up the terrorist agency KAOS and employs a vaguely ethnic-looking giant (Dalip Singh) as a henchmen. 86 and 99 traipse about the former Soviet Union looking for Siegfried, fighting off the giant, jumping out of airplanes, blowing things up, and doing secret agent stuff like driving sports cars and crashing black tie parties. There's a touch of slapstick, a bit of farce, and a smidge of satire in *Get Smart*, but the laughs are really pretty tame and inoffensive. Tame and inoffensive are somewhat odd qualities for either a spy movie or a comedy, and it's not exactly the perfect combo for a spy comedy either. There's nothing particularly bad about *Get Smart*, and it meets the minimum requirements for movie entertainment: it's a competent film with a serviceable plot and an appealing cast. That it's rather bland and unsurprising and not all that smart is, I suppose, beside the point, since it isn't aiming for much more than the minimum.
23Jun2008
As mildly diverting entertainments go, *Get Smart* is, well, rather mild. The bumbling Maxwell Smart, the role originated by Don Adams, becomes, as played by Steve Carell, the dull but quite competent analyst who longs to be a field agent. Carell's Smart, aka Agent 86, is actually smart, and he has allies among the eggheads (Masi Oka and Nate Torrance) of CONTROL, the super secret government spy agency that employs him. Carell plays Smart straight, unlike the stand up comedian Adams, who read every line like he was waiting for a rimshot. Carell's deadpan melancholy rubs the rough edges off the character -- he's a sincere guy, and a better spy than anyone knows, and has a backstory -- he used to be a fatty -- that explains why he's not as confident or smooth as super suave spy guy Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson). He's also got a pretty partner in super competent Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway, in the role originated by Barbara Feldon). Back in the day, there was a bit of feminist humor in the fact that 99 was always a much better spy than her male counterpart. That angle has definitely lost its acuteness, so the new *Get Smart* features a soggy romance between 86 and 99 that serves the plot, but not much else.
The movie, penned by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember, features a plot with a few contempo details like a dim-bulb president (James Caan) who can't pronounce "nuclear," a nasty vice president, and some business involving yellowcake uranium. Terrence Stamp turns up as a vaguely European, vaguely menacing villain named Siegfried, who heads up the terrorist agency KAOS and employs a vaguely ethnic-looking giant (Dalip Singh) as a henchmen. 86 and 99 traipse about the former Soviet Union looking for Siegfried, fighting off the giant, jumping out of airplanes, blowing things up, and doing secret agent stuff like driving sports cars and crashing black tie parties. There's a touch of slapstick, a bit of farce, and a smidge of satire in *Get Smart*, but the laughs are really pretty tame and inoffensive. Tame and inoffensive are somewhat odd qualities for either a spy movie or a comedy, and it's not exactly the perfect combo for a spy comedy either. There's nothing particularly bad about *Get Smart*, and it meets the minimum requirements for movie entertainment: it's a competent film with a serviceable plot and an appealing cast. That it's rather bland and unsurprising and not all that smart is, I suppose, beside the point, since it isn't aiming for much more than the minimum.
23Jun2008
Up the Yangtze (2008)
Among the more controversial projects underway in the rapidly modernizing China is the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. It is the world's largest hydroelectric power plant, a miracle of modern engineering, and one of the biggest projects undertaken in China since the construction of the Great Wall. It will change forever the landscape of China, eventually flooding over 240 square miles, displacing millions of Chinese citizens in the process.
As the waters slowly rise, a parasitic industry has emerged. Luxury cruise ships carry tourists, many of them Westerners, up and down the Yangtze River on "farewell cruises." Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang takes one of these cruises, and documents the lives of the dispossessed on the river's banks, as well as the hardworking young people employed by the cruise ships, in the fascinating, moving documentary *Up the Yangtze*.
One of those displaced by the rising river is Yu Shui, a 16 year old girl who dreams only of going to high school. Her parents are illiterate subsistence farmers for whom daily life is a constant struggle. The family lives in extreme poverty in a handbuilt shack on the banks of the river -- a temporary patchwork home they occupy until the waters force them to move once again to higher ground. Yu Shui must put off high school so that she can work to support her family. Ironically, she is employed by the cruise line that regularly steams past her doomed home. In the eyes of her employers and coworkers, she's a country bumpkin. To her family, drowning in poverty, she's a lifeline.
Another new employee of the *Victoria* cruise ship is Chen Bo Yu, a cocky young man from a middle class family. He is one of China's so-called "little emperors," an indulged and self-indulgent single son, the product of China's "one-child" policy. Tall and handsome, with good English skills, he works on the upper decks while Yu Shui scrubs dishes in the galley below. *Up the Yangtze* offers a revealing picture of peasant life in China, as well as the emerging class structure -- the upstairs-downstairs life -- that has accompanied the rapid rise of capitalism. In the contrasts between Yu Shui and Chen Bo Yu, one a child of poverty, the other a child of privilege, Chang explores the changes, both good and bad, that the future promises to bring for young people in China.
*Up the Yangtze* looks past the rhetoric and propaganda about the dam and views the collateral damage, the people like Yu Shui's parents, who will be left behind in the country's relentless march towards progress and prosperity. While Western tourists view the model homes supposedly occupied by the happily displaced, and tour guides paint a rosy picture of the blessings of modernization, the Yu family moves from one hovel to another. *Up the Yangtze* is a melancholy meditation on a world that is disappearing, not just in China, but everywhere that capitalism and globalization are changing lives and landscapes around the world. The Yu family's plight makes for genuinely engrossing drama, made all the more affecting and poignant because it is real. Chang could not have asked for a more engaging and heartbreaking subject than Yu Shui, a modest girl with modest dreams who gradually emerges from her shell with a giddy sense of possibility and opportunity. In her own way, she is a model of the new and rapidly changing China, while her parents remain trapped, by crushing poverty and lack of education, in an old China that is quickly disappearing.
*Up the Yangtze* serves partly as a quietly contemplative polemic on the Three Gorges Dam, but it is not so much a critique of China's paternalistic, top-down philosophy of governance as it is a revealing look at the way that system -- Mao's system -- is also giving way to Western ideals of individualism and personal success. But even as it looks at the larger controversy surrounding the dam, the film stays rooted in the immediate, apolitical, day-to-day concerns and struggles of ordinary citizens, and views the impact of the project through the eyes of the people left to sink or swim in the rising waters.
16Jun2008
As the waters slowly rise, a parasitic industry has emerged. Luxury cruise ships carry tourists, many of them Westerners, up and down the Yangtze River on "farewell cruises." Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang takes one of these cruises, and documents the lives of the dispossessed on the river's banks, as well as the hardworking young people employed by the cruise ships, in the fascinating, moving documentary *Up the Yangtze*.
One of those displaced by the rising river is Yu Shui, a 16 year old girl who dreams only of going to high school. Her parents are illiterate subsistence farmers for whom daily life is a constant struggle. The family lives in extreme poverty in a handbuilt shack on the banks of the river -- a temporary patchwork home they occupy until the waters force them to move once again to higher ground. Yu Shui must put off high school so that she can work to support her family. Ironically, she is employed by the cruise line that regularly steams past her doomed home. In the eyes of her employers and coworkers, she's a country bumpkin. To her family, drowning in poverty, she's a lifeline.
Another new employee of the *Victoria* cruise ship is Chen Bo Yu, a cocky young man from a middle class family. He is one of China's so-called "little emperors," an indulged and self-indulgent single son, the product of China's "one-child" policy. Tall and handsome, with good English skills, he works on the upper decks while Yu Shui scrubs dishes in the galley below. *Up the Yangtze* offers a revealing picture of peasant life in China, as well as the emerging class structure -- the upstairs-downstairs life -- that has accompanied the rapid rise of capitalism. In the contrasts between Yu Shui and Chen Bo Yu, one a child of poverty, the other a child of privilege, Chang explores the changes, both good and bad, that the future promises to bring for young people in China.
*Up the Yangtze* looks past the rhetoric and propaganda about the dam and views the collateral damage, the people like Yu Shui's parents, who will be left behind in the country's relentless march towards progress and prosperity. While Western tourists view the model homes supposedly occupied by the happily displaced, and tour guides paint a rosy picture of the blessings of modernization, the Yu family moves from one hovel to another. *Up the Yangtze* is a melancholy meditation on a world that is disappearing, not just in China, but everywhere that capitalism and globalization are changing lives and landscapes around the world. The Yu family's plight makes for genuinely engrossing drama, made all the more affecting and poignant because it is real. Chang could not have asked for a more engaging and heartbreaking subject than Yu Shui, a modest girl with modest dreams who gradually emerges from her shell with a giddy sense of possibility and opportunity. In her own way, she is a model of the new and rapidly changing China, while her parents remain trapped, by crushing poverty and lack of education, in an old China that is quickly disappearing.
*Up the Yangtze* serves partly as a quietly contemplative polemic on the Three Gorges Dam, but it is not so much a critique of China's paternalistic, top-down philosophy of governance as it is a revealing look at the way that system -- Mao's system -- is also giving way to Western ideals of individualism and personal success. But even as it looks at the larger controversy surrounding the dam, the film stays rooted in the immediate, apolitical, day-to-day concerns and struggles of ordinary citizens, and views the impact of the project through the eyes of the people left to sink or swim in the rising waters.
16Jun2008
Kung Fu Panda (2008)
Po, like the rest of panda-kind, is a tubby fellow. But unlike your run-of-the-mill shirk-a-day bamboo-noshing panda, Po (voiced by Jack Black) dreams of great things. Specifically, he dreams of being a great kung fu warrior. His father Mr. Ping (James Hong), a goose (there's no mother goose, as is generally the case in this sort of fable), runs a noodle shop, and hopes one day his son Po will take over the family business. One fateful day, word comes down from the Jade Palace that the legendary Dragon Warrior is to be selected. Po is there (just barely -- there are a lot of steps, and he's a little out of shape) to see the excitement. Perhaps by accident, perhaps because it is his destiny, Po is chosen to be the Dragon Warrior by the revered Master Oogway (Randall Duk Kim). Oogway is an ancient turtle who happens to have invented kung fu, so he knows a dragon from a handsaw, although not everyone is so sure abut Po.
*Kung Fu Panda* hews to tradition -- kung fu movie tradition and animated movie tradition. On his hero's journey, the unskilled and unschooled Po must learn the ways of the kung fu warrior, and fast -- the fearsome and ambitious Tai Lung (Ian McShane, one cold-hearted snow leopard) is coming. And Po must dare (in spite of all the fat jokes) to be different, to go with the flow, to trust himself, to find his inner strength, et cetera. Bottom line is, he's a big panda, and he's got a big heart, and Black, normally a fairly rambunctious, oversized performer, brings unexpected sweetness to his characterization. The grumbling and grousing is taken up by Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) the prickly, grumpy red panda who is Po's grudging teacher. Shifu discovers that the way to Po's warrior heart is (not surprisingly) through his stomach. Shifu's other students, the Furious Five, are all skillful warriors, but Master Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Snake (Lucy Liu), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Crane (David Cross), and Mantis (Seth Rogen), learn that greatness comes in all shapes and sizes, including fat pandas.
There are few surprises in *Kung Fu Panda*. Instead, the story is full of mostly gentle humor, Yoda-style faux-Zen wisdom, useful life lessons, and chopsocky fight scenes that, thanks to fine computer animation, really take flight. There's also a genuine sweetness to the story -- screenwriters Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger have dared to write a sincere and snark-free movie, one that embraces the storytelling traditions and conventions of martial arts movies and animated films instead of mocking them. That's not to say that Po and company don't get their noggins bonked with comedic regularity. Master Shifu's dojo is a school of hard knocks, big bounces, and belly flops.
The story is charming, and so is the animation, which nicely evokes ancient China, and has the luminosity, transparency and fluidity of a watercolor painting. Computer animation has advanced so much that lousy animation is the exception rather than the rule nowadays. *Kung Fu Panda* features lovely and lively animation, mixing photorealistic details with stylized flourishes. The action scenes are fast-moving and imaginative, and make creative use of the different ways that the characters, from monkey to mantis, move. Fans of martial arts films will recognize Monkey, Crane, Mantis, Tiger, and Snake as familiar, deadly kung fu styles in the movieverse -- we can now add the gentler but still highly effective Tubby Panda style to the arsenal.
9Jun2008
*Kung Fu Panda* hews to tradition -- kung fu movie tradition and animated movie tradition. On his hero's journey, the unskilled and unschooled Po must learn the ways of the kung fu warrior, and fast -- the fearsome and ambitious Tai Lung (Ian McShane, one cold-hearted snow leopard) is coming. And Po must dare (in spite of all the fat jokes) to be different, to go with the flow, to trust himself, to find his inner strength, et cetera. Bottom line is, he's a big panda, and he's got a big heart, and Black, normally a fairly rambunctious, oversized performer, brings unexpected sweetness to his characterization. The grumbling and grousing is taken up by Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) the prickly, grumpy red panda who is Po's grudging teacher. Shifu discovers that the way to Po's warrior heart is (not surprisingly) through his stomach. Shifu's other students, the Furious Five, are all skillful warriors, but Master Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Snake (Lucy Liu), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Crane (David Cross), and Mantis (Seth Rogen), learn that greatness comes in all shapes and sizes, including fat pandas.
There are few surprises in *Kung Fu Panda*. Instead, the story is full of mostly gentle humor, Yoda-style faux-Zen wisdom, useful life lessons, and chopsocky fight scenes that, thanks to fine computer animation, really take flight. There's also a genuine sweetness to the story -- screenwriters Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger have dared to write a sincere and snark-free movie, one that embraces the storytelling traditions and conventions of martial arts movies and animated films instead of mocking them. That's not to say that Po and company don't get their noggins bonked with comedic regularity. Master Shifu's dojo is a school of hard knocks, big bounces, and belly flops.
The story is charming, and so is the animation, which nicely evokes ancient China, and has the luminosity, transparency and fluidity of a watercolor painting. Computer animation has advanced so much that lousy animation is the exception rather than the rule nowadays. *Kung Fu Panda* features lovely and lively animation, mixing photorealistic details with stylized flourishes. The action scenes are fast-moving and imaginative, and make creative use of the different ways that the characters, from monkey to mantis, move. Fans of martial arts films will recognize Monkey, Crane, Mantis, Tiger, and Snake as familiar, deadly kung fu styles in the movieverse -- we can now add the gentler but still highly effective Tubby Panda style to the arsenal.
9Jun2008
The Visitor (2008)
The visitors in *The Visitor* are many. There's Walter Vale, a bored, aloof economics professor and widower who lives in Connecticut and goes through the motions of daily life. He's a quiet man who dabbles in music lessons, teaches his classes, and attends departmental meetings, but doesn't engage -- he's a reluctant visitor in his own tedious life. When he grudgingly goes to New York for an economics conference, he discovers that his infrequently-visited apartment has been surreptitiously rented to a pair of unexpected visitors: Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), a drummer from Syria, and his Senegalese girlfriend Zainab (Danai Gurira), who makes and sells jewelry. In an unexpected act of compassion (or is it loneliness?), Walter lets the couple stay after figuring out that they've been the victims of a rental scam.
Thus begins an awkward friendship. With Tarek as a tutor, Walter (Richard Jenkins) discovers that he's got rhythm, and starts bouncing to the beat of an African drum. Everything is groovy in a multiculti melting pot kinda way, until Tarek is unexpectedly arrested and gets mired in the Kafkaesque post-9/11 immigration system. Turns out Tarek and Zainab are illegal immigrants, a fact that turns *The Visitor* from a breezy, heartwarming fairy tale into a nightmare.
*The Visitor*, written and directed by Tom McCarthy (*The Station Agent*) is quietly, charmingly low-key, which is how it manages to sustain a sense of plausibility in a story that is fairly improbable. It is also helped tremendously by Jenkins, whose pitch-perfect performance is as unflashy and modest as they get. It's an understated and moving performance, full of sad looks, funny sighs, and quiet desperation. Jenkins eloquently conveys the slow waking of a man who has been sleepwalking for years, suddenly roused both to the pleasures of life and friendship, and to a newfound political awareness and sense of outrage. *The Visitor* depends as much on Jenkins's natural performance as *The Station Agent* depended on Peter Dinklage -- McCarthy cast both pictures impeccably well, and lets his actors set the storytelling pace, which gives the movies a kind of natural ebb and flow that moves over and around potential problem areas.
*The Visitor* is two entertwined stories -- on the one hand it's a life-affirming fable about the unexpected rewards of compassion and generosity, and the healing power of music. There's nothing unexpected there, yet the film is still charming, and still manages to pull off a few surprises. On the other hand, the movie is an effort to agitate for a more rational and humane immigration policy, one that treats people as individuals rather than as generic suspects. Bringing these two very different agenda together is tricky business, but *The Visitor*, in its offbeat and quiet way, manages to do it thanks in part to engaging, unfussy performances and in part to McCarthy's deft, intelligent storytelling.
2Jun2008
Thus begins an awkward friendship. With Tarek as a tutor, Walter (Richard Jenkins) discovers that he's got rhythm, and starts bouncing to the beat of an African drum. Everything is groovy in a multiculti melting pot kinda way, until Tarek is unexpectedly arrested and gets mired in the Kafkaesque post-9/11 immigration system. Turns out Tarek and Zainab are illegal immigrants, a fact that turns *The Visitor* from a breezy, heartwarming fairy tale into a nightmare.
*The Visitor*, written and directed by Tom McCarthy (*The Station Agent*) is quietly, charmingly low-key, which is how it manages to sustain a sense of plausibility in a story that is fairly improbable. It is also helped tremendously by Jenkins, whose pitch-perfect performance is as unflashy and modest as they get. It's an understated and moving performance, full of sad looks, funny sighs, and quiet desperation. Jenkins eloquently conveys the slow waking of a man who has been sleepwalking for years, suddenly roused both to the pleasures of life and friendship, and to a newfound political awareness and sense of outrage. *The Visitor* depends as much on Jenkins's natural performance as *The Station Agent* depended on Peter Dinklage -- McCarthy cast both pictures impeccably well, and lets his actors set the storytelling pace, which gives the movies a kind of natural ebb and flow that moves over and around potential problem areas.
*The Visitor* is two entertwined stories -- on the one hand it's a life-affirming fable about the unexpected rewards of compassion and generosity, and the healing power of music. There's nothing unexpected there, yet the film is still charming, and still manages to pull off a few surprises. On the other hand, the movie is an effort to agitate for a more rational and humane immigration policy, one that treats people as individuals rather than as generic suspects. Bringing these two very different agenda together is tricky business, but *The Visitor*, in its offbeat and quiet way, manages to do it thanks in part to engaging, unfussy performances and in part to McCarthy's deft, intelligent storytelling.
2Jun2008
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" might as well be the mantra of the *Indiana Jones* movies. It might even serve as a title for the next sequel, should there be one. *Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull* offers more of the wasn't-broke-didn't-fix-it same, which is what makes Indy fun. The movies were originally inspired by 1930s serials, and the *Indy* movies have more or less become a series, even if it's been almost two decades since we last saw the intrepid archeologist swing his bullwhip and don his dusty fedora.
*Kingdom of the Crystal Skull* acknowledges the years passed -- instead of the pre-war 30s, it's set in the post-war, Cold War 1950s. What was Indy (Harrison Ford) doing in the ensuing years? Some spying, maybe, but it's a little vague. As this movie opens, however, he's in the trunk of a car being driven by Russians, who've captured the infamous Area 51 military base. What they're looking for should be obvious to anyone familiar with the lore of Area 51, and certain mysterious events that occurred in Roswell, NM.
The Russkies are led by Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), a paranormal researcher whose personality is as severe and unforgiving as her precision-engineered black bob. Less precise than the haircut is Blanchett's Russian accent, which is -- how do you say? -- rather loose. Spalko seems to have learned to speak English in Blanchett's own native Australia, not that the actress was in danger of earning a bazillionth Oscar nom for this movie. Anyway, Spalko's interested in space aliens and mind control, which according to legend, were among Stalin's obsessions too.
There's a daring escape, involving the usual Rube Goldbergian stuff, and, just to give the movie some Cold War relevance, Indy survives an atomic bomb, too. After his own personal Red Scare, Indy gets a taste of red-baiting government paranoia, which is where *Crystal Skull* dips a toe into contemporary political issues, but --fear not! -- ever so briefly.
Indy meets a switchblade-wielding, Brando-wannabe, Harley-riding hooligan named Mutt (Shia LeBeouf) who enlists his help in finding his kidnapped mother and a fellow archeologist named Oxley (John Hurt). Turns out Ox and Indy have history -- they once shared a mutual obsession with finding a legendary Mayan crystal skull. Turns out Indy and Mutt's mom have history too -- she's Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), who hasn't been seen since she was the spunky heroine of *Raiders of the Lost Ark*.
*Kingdom of the Crystal Skull*, like all the *Indy* movies, is a Steven Spielberg gestalt, so the various pieces -- space aliens, religious artifacts with history-altering powers, fascism, family drama, children searching for lost parents -- fit together and make sense about as well as can be expected. So what happens when those old warriors Spielberg and Ford become Cold Warriors? Pretty much the usual stuff. Creepy, cobwebby caves. Skeletons. Poison darts. Quicksand. Monkeys. The *Indy* movies are well-oiled machines at this point, and they need to be with all those moving parts. This one's got wall-to-wall action, lots of clever stunts, and a script by David Koepp that doesn't really innovate, but mixes up familiar elements (snakes again!) in a familiar but new enough and fun way. This Indy's a little more PC than he used to be too -- he's not shooting brown-skinned people anymore, and he's actually trying to *return* a priceless artifact rather than plunder it. Maybe he's getting soft in his old age.
But not too soft. Ford looks energized playing the whip-cracking, wisecracking hero again -- even when he's supposed to be a slightly creaky, cranky old coot, he's got a twinkle in his eye. And although Spielberg hasn't been directing any *fun* movies lately, he still knows how to engage the gears and create glorious, inconsequential mayhem.
26May2008
*Kingdom of the Crystal Skull* acknowledges the years passed -- instead of the pre-war 30s, it's set in the post-war, Cold War 1950s. What was Indy (Harrison Ford) doing in the ensuing years? Some spying, maybe, but it's a little vague. As this movie opens, however, he's in the trunk of a car being driven by Russians, who've captured the infamous Area 51 military base. What they're looking for should be obvious to anyone familiar with the lore of Area 51, and certain mysterious events that occurred in Roswell, NM.
The Russkies are led by Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), a paranormal researcher whose personality is as severe and unforgiving as her precision-engineered black bob. Less precise than the haircut is Blanchett's Russian accent, which is -- how do you say? -- rather loose. Spalko seems to have learned to speak English in Blanchett's own native Australia, not that the actress was in danger of earning a bazillionth Oscar nom for this movie. Anyway, Spalko's interested in space aliens and mind control, which according to legend, were among Stalin's obsessions too.
There's a daring escape, involving the usual Rube Goldbergian stuff, and, just to give the movie some Cold War relevance, Indy survives an atomic bomb, too. After his own personal Red Scare, Indy gets a taste of red-baiting government paranoia, which is where *Crystal Skull* dips a toe into contemporary political issues, but --fear not! -- ever so briefly.
Indy meets a switchblade-wielding, Brando-wannabe, Harley-riding hooligan named Mutt (Shia LeBeouf) who enlists his help in finding his kidnapped mother and a fellow archeologist named Oxley (John Hurt). Turns out Ox and Indy have history -- they once shared a mutual obsession with finding a legendary Mayan crystal skull. Turns out Indy and Mutt's mom have history too -- she's Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), who hasn't been seen since she was the spunky heroine of *Raiders of the Lost Ark*.
*Kingdom of the Crystal Skull*, like all the *Indy* movies, is a Steven Spielberg gestalt, so the various pieces -- space aliens, religious artifacts with history-altering powers, fascism, family drama, children searching for lost parents -- fit together and make sense about as well as can be expected. So what happens when those old warriors Spielberg and Ford become Cold Warriors? Pretty much the usual stuff. Creepy, cobwebby caves. Skeletons. Poison darts. Quicksand. Monkeys. The *Indy* movies are well-oiled machines at this point, and they need to be with all those moving parts. This one's got wall-to-wall action, lots of clever stunts, and a script by David Koepp that doesn't really innovate, but mixes up familiar elements (snakes again!) in a familiar but new enough and fun way. This Indy's a little more PC than he used to be too -- he's not shooting brown-skinned people anymore, and he's actually trying to *return* a priceless artifact rather than plunder it. Maybe he's getting soft in his old age.
But not too soft. Ford looks energized playing the whip-cracking, wisecracking hero again -- even when he's supposed to be a slightly creaky, cranky old coot, he's got a twinkle in his eye. And although Spielberg hasn't been directing any *fun* movies lately, he still knows how to engage the gears and create glorious, inconsequential mayhem.
26May2008
Prince Caspian (2008)
It's been a year since the Pevensie kids saved Narnia and discovered that they were kings and queens. England is still at war, but High King Peter (William Moseley), who is just another schoolboy in his unenchanted homeland, has only other schoolboys to fight. Until a portal opens up in the London Underground, that is, and the Pevensies find themselves back in dear old Narnia. Emphasis on the old -- they soon discover that a millennium has passed in Narnia since they've been gone.
Other things have changed too. Humans, known as Telmarines, rule the land, having exterminated all the talking critters, fauns, and centaurs, and stilled the once lively trees with their genocidal ethnic cleansing. The Telmarines are little better to each other. As *The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian* begins, young Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes) must flee his homicidal uncle Miraz (Sergio Castellitto), a usurper who has stolen the crown and has plans to pass it on to his own infant son once his inconveniently alive nephew Caspian is out of the way.
Caspian soon has other kings and queens to deal with, when he meets up with Peter and his sibs, King Edmund (Skandar Keynes), Queen Susan (Anna Popplewell), and Queen Lucy (Georgie Henley). The legendary monarchs rouse the Narnian Underground to action with help from a grumpy Narnian named Trumpkin (Peter Dinklage), and a swashbuckling mouse, Reepicheep (voiced by Eddie Izzard who, as he so often does, simultaneously steals and saves the movie). The Narnians are none too fond of Caspian, seeing as how his people tried to kill them all, and much of the plot of *Prince Caspian* concerns the factional fighting between Caspian, Peter, and the Narnians on one side, and, on the side of evil, King Miraz and his court of double-dealers, double-crossers and backstabbers. Loyalties shift on both sides in the march to war between the true Narnians and the Telmarine invaders, who, having discovered that the Narnians are not extinct, can think of nothing better to do than to exterminate them all over again.
There's a lot of conflict in *Prince Caspian*, between all the in-fighting and backstabbing, and all the swords and catapults and whizzing arrows. This sequel is considerably darker in mood and more violent than the first movie, *The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe* (2005), and far less enchanted and enchanting. The ol' magic is pretty much gone from Narnia, and doesn't reappear in the movie until pretty late in the game, when lion king Aslan (Liam Neeson) finally returns. At that point, the sword fights and slayings and massive battles have grown rather tedious, and the story is much in need of the deus ex machina that only Aslan (the Christ figure in the movie's loose theology) can provide.
The emphasis on action and battle scenes in *Prince Caspian* comes at the expense of characterization, although the screenplay by Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely and director Andrew Adamson occasionally sparkles with moments of wit. The diminutive mouseketeer Reepicheep, who finds people rather unimaginative (and easy to fight) is a source of much amusement, as is the diminutive, angry, put-upon Trumpkin, who objects to being patronized by the big people, and especially to being called "dear little friend" by the considerably taller Lucy. Prince Caspian himself is fairly dull, with Barnes doing not much more than perfect his "blue steel" look, and simmer, occasionally in the direction of Queen Susan. Susan has become, it appears, a reluctant hottie both in Narnia and back in dear old England. The Pevensie kids themselves have backseat roles in *Prince Caspian* -- this isn't really their story, and they serve primarily to inspire the Narnians, and to provide several of those four-across (plus one Caspian) walking-towards-the-camera scenes that in movies signify solidarity, readiness, and a host of other notions related to doing what must be done.
While the story this time around is more relentlessly violent, and on a far larger scale, it is oddly less moving than in the previous movie, in which the cruelty and violence, directed at characters and creatures one could actually care about, was far more disturbing. *Prince Caspian* is essentially a medieval war movie, a *Braveheart* for kids, with the brutality, ferocity, trauma, and gore of the battle scenes dialed down accordingly. Scaling back the savagery of the depiction of war is all well and good, and there's nothing wrong with doing that. The problem in *Prince Caspian* is that the sense of peril is also diluted. Not only does nothing bad happen to anyone noteworthy in the film, but there's never any real sense that anything bad *could* happen to them. There's a certain necessity and inevitability to everything that occurs in *Prince Caspian*, but no sense that necessity will lead inevitably to tragedy. With characters that are less than enthralling, faced with threats that are less than compelling, *Prince Caspian* is less than spellbinding.
19May2008
Speed Racer (2008)
You might think that a movie called *Speed Racer* would be, well, speedy. But you'd be wrong. Somehow, this careening, flipping, flying, neon-candy-colored zoom zoom movie about a boy who drives a fast, fast car just spins its wheels, and rather slowly at that.
*Speed Racer*, some of you will recall, was a proto-anime cartoon, exported from Japan, and dubbed for the amusement of American kids such as myself back in the 60s. Oh, how I loved *Speed Racer* and his supercool racing car, the Mach 5. Apparently Larry and Andy Wachowski (*The Matrix* trilogy) loved them too, but maybe not in the same way I did.
For the record, I am no longer giving the Wachowskis the benefit of the doubt. I still think *The Matrix* was brilliant. I still think everything they've done since has kinda sucked. But back to *Speed Racer*. As they have done before, the Wachowskis have blended live action and computer generated imagery to create a pretty cool looking movie. *Speed Racer* is more or less a computer animated movie with live actors in it. The colors are supersaturated and bright, but this is nothing you haven't seen before if you have ever had to spend any time watching Playhouse Disney and Nickelodeon, where the visual cortexes of young children are desensitized to a video world as colorful as a bag of fluorescent jellybeans. The movie's visuals have a kicky, Pop Art plus PlayStation kinda thing going on -- everything zips and zooms and twirls and blurs, and none of it really makes a lot of sense, but it keeps on moving fast anyway because if you don't stop, you don't have to stop and think. I do not recommend *Speed Racer* for people who are prone to migraines or seizures, as I'm pretty sure this movie could induce either after about three minutes. Remember the infamous *Pokemon* episode that supposedly sent hundreds of Japanese children to the hospital with seizures? Child's play compared to *Speed Racer*.
So, superbright colors: check. Fast cars: check. Plot? Boy howdy, *Speed Racer* has plot to burn (and I *would* recommend burning, in this case). At two and a quarter hours, this movie is an endurance test comparable to the Paris to Dakar Rally -- you get the sore butt, but no prize for finishing it. How can a movie with so much visual pizzazz be so boring?
Speed (Emile Hirsch) races cars for his family business, Racer Motors. He idolizes his older brother Rex, who died -- although is body was never recovered -- during an offroad race following some family drama involving Pops Racer (John Goodman). This we learn in a series of flashbacks. Mom (Susan Sarandon) is endlessly supportive of young Speed and all her boys. Little brother Spritle (Paulie Litt) idolizes big brother Speed, and gets into mischief with his chimpanzee chum Chim Chim. And then there's Speed's galpal Trixie (Christina Ricci), who bats her eyes and tries to get Speed to move to first base -- but he's too busy zooming around the racetrack. The movie's best character is the Mach 5, a pretty darn cool car that can hop and spin and drive sideways and go real fast. The car races in the movie are like a crazy hyperspeed combination of Formula One racing and demolition derby. Crashing and burning is pretty commonplace. Maybe that's because the cars in *Speed Racer* mostly drive sideways, kinda like all those cars in commercials that are always skidding sideways to make you think they're really cool cars instead of terrifyingly unsafe deathtraps. Personally, I like my car to go fast, but primarily forwards and backwards. I've had little need for sideways driving in my life, and I'll stick to my guns that the shortest distance (and therefore the fastest route) between two points is a straight line. But sticklers for physics and the laws of nature will need to check their kooky preconceptions about gravity and centrifugal force at the cineplex door if they're gonna make it through *Speed Racer* without suffering a cerebral blowout. Apparently driving frontwise is for chumps. Skidding sideways is how the true racers do it.
Anyhoo, Speed wins a race, attracts the attention of a lot of corporate dirtbag types who want him to sign up and sell out. Most persuasive is Royalton (Roger Allum), who makes him an offer he can't refuse. He refuses it anyway, which gets Racer Motors into hot water. So Speed is recruited by the mysterious Racer X (Matthew Fox) and Inspector Detector (Benno Fürmann), who want to crack open the shady world of corporate sponsorship and crime rings and fixed races and whatnot. Speed and Racer X and fellow racer Taejo Togokahn (South Korean star Rain) enter the Casa Christo offroad race. The very same race in which big brother Rex Racer mysteriously died. Cue ominous music.
After the climactic finish of the grueling, action-packed, extremely fatal Casa Christo race, the oversaturated and enervated viewer would be right to think it was time to kick back and watch the credits roll by. Not so fast there, chump! There's *another* big race to be won. And then another... no, that's really it, but it feels like the movie will never end.
The actors are pretty much adrift in *Speed Racer*. It's probably really hard to act in a movie where most of the sets and all of the action are happening in a computer somewhere, and you're just standing in front of a green screen. This is likely the kind of thing that gives Method actors wake-up-screaming nightmares. So I hesitate to blame the actors for the shallowness of the characterizations in *Speed Racer*. The lousy, beyond cartoonish dialogue must also be blamed, and if the movie's script and dialogue and wooden acting are intentionally crummy in order to imitate the original cartoon, well, that's an artistic gamble that doesn't pay off. Emile Hirsch (*Into the Wild*) is a good actor, but he looks completely lost in *Speed Racer*, even when he's not driving a pretend car, and is actually interacting with other actors. His Speed is a natural born driver, a boy who is One with his vehicle, but he's otherwise hollow inside, like a race car with no driver behind the wheel. By contrast, Allum, in a scenery-chewing performance, manages to chew the virtual scenery just fine.
*Speed Racer* is supposed to be a family movie. It's all about the family love and loyalty and father-son bonding and death by piranha and all that. Plus, the entire Racer family cheers like mad every time a car crashes and explodes into a massive fireball -- as long as it's not one of *their* cars. Good, clean, brightly-colored fun.
12May2008
Iron Man (2008)
In the universe of the superhero, there are the ones with the superpowers -- the mutants, the aliens, the radioactively altered -- and then there are the gadget guys (where are the gadget girls?), the ones with the cool tools and techie toys. Marvel Comics' *Iron Man* falls into the latter category. Tony Stark is no Everyman -- a technical wunderkind, a billionaire, a hard-drinking, wiseass libertine, he hops the globe in his private jet, his lavish playboy lifestyle financed by a profitable business in high-tech weaponry. He's a showman too, personally demonstrating his latest wares in desolate Afghanistan.
Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) is enjoying a scotch on the rocks in the back of a Humvee when his convoy is attacked by, ironically, the very weapons he manufactures. He's kidnapped by an Afghan warload (Faran Tahir) bent on the domination of something or other. Anyway, the warlord and his militant group are bad guys who shoot a lot of innocent villagers. And they want Stark to build them their very own high tech missile. Stark's got a handy-dandy assistant and translator in Yinsen (Shaun Toub), a fellow captive and surgeon, who saved Stark's life by implanting some sort of magnetic contraption into his chest to keep the shrapnel out of his heart. Or something like that. The important thing to note is that Stark has a heart after all, even if it's full of steel and wires and scraps culled from weapons of mass destruction. As long as he's part machine anyway, Stark goes ahead and builds himself an armored suit... witness the clanky, clunky, rusty, birth of Iron Man, whose mother was, it turns out, the necessity of invention.
The invention of necessity is the job of the storytellers, and in this story, tin man Stark grows a conscience to go along with that heart, to the surprise of all and the dismay of many, most of all Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges). Stane runs Stark Industries and keeps the board of directors happy while the hepcat's away. Certain plot twists involving the chrome-domed Stane will be evident to anyone familiar with the hairstyles of the rich and villainous. The flaw to *Iron Man*, although it's certainly not a fatal flaw, is that the plot hews to a fairly standard superhero origins storyline (with companion supervillain origins subplot), which means there are not too many surprises in that department.
On the other hand, screenwriters Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby favor genuine dialogue and substantive and sometimes uneasy laughs over macho-posturing catchphrases, and there are plenty of unexpectedly complex pratfalls and hearty yuks in *Iron Man*. Director Jon Favreau (*Elf*), emphasizes character over action, which is, in the superhero action movie genre, a rare thing. (Don't worry -- there's plenty of rapid-fire action in *Iron Man* too.) There are several terrific scenes in *Iron Man* that capture Stark and his companeros in moments laden with personal history, with past disappointments, and with unspoken feelings, and Favreau exhibits a light and lighthearted touch that gives the movie plenty of zing for the buck, to go along with all the bang. I've always said that big movies need small stories, and the best parts of *Iron Man* are the little touches, the small details. It's what makes *Iron Man* a great fit for Downey, an actor at least as well known for his checkered past and misspent youth as for his wunderkind talent. Downey gives genuine resonance to Stark's uneasy and complicated conflict between nascent morality and a natural gift for mayhem. The cast, which includes Gwyneth Paltrow as Stark's loyal and supercompetent personal assistant Pepper Potts, and Terrence Howard as Air Force pilot/loyal friend/skeptic Rhodey, is particularly good, which means *Iron Man*, like that custom-fitted suit of armor and armory, can be built around the characters instead of the other way around.
The gadgety hardware stuff in *Iron Man* is pretty darn cool, of course -- Stark is a man who likes style *and* substance in his machines -- and there's a lot of fun to be had in Stark's experimental phase and the frequency with which he falls to Earth (the movie certainly plays around with the Daedalus and Icarus mythology, although it's ice, not heat, that is Stark's downfall). But there aren't really any surprises in the movie's fight scenes (well, maybe a few) -- the best stuff is in the details, in all the little servos and gears and character alloys that keep this big picture moving as smoothly as that shiny metal suit.
5May2008
Baby Mama (2008)
Tina Fey is funny. She's not particularly funny in *Baby Mama*, in which she plays it straight while everyone else runs comedic circles around her. Fey plays Kate Holbrook, a VP at Round Earth (a Whole Foods-style organic grocery chain). She's climbing the corporate ladder, making money, living in a posh pad in Philly, doing the whole successful single woman thing, but... can she have it all? Of course, even asking the question implies that she can't. And in Kate's case, what she can't have is a baby.
Babies are the accessory du jour in Hollywood these days, and in movies, babies in utero are the comedy plot prop du jour. Kate desperately wants a baby. She gets all dewy-eyed every time she sees one. She sees a fertility doctor (John Hodges) who tells her he really doesn't like her uterus. She's too impatient to adopt -- she lives a stopwatch life and it's ticking fast and loud. And so, she hires a surrogate to gestate and birth her offspring.
That would be Angie Ostrowiski (Amy Poehler), a gum-chewing, trashy clothes-wearing, dumber-than-dumb blonde from, as they used to say, the wrong side of the tracks. Angie and her doofusy, ne'er-do-well common law husband Carl (Dax Shepard) -- whose idea of a job is to stay home all day trying to win concert tickets on the radio -- need the surrogate's fees, but Kate needs a baby even more, which is how the Kate and Angie odd couple comes to pass. After Angie and Carl break up, Angie moves in with the controlling, nervous Kate, who disapproves of her junk food junkie ways and TV habits and general slovenliness, which is a set up with comedic potential that results in scant actual comedy.
While the bun is in the oven, Kate's got a couple of other projects going, including launching a new store (which, in the movie's universe, takes less time than gestating a baby), and launching a tentative romance with a smoothie shop owner (Greg Kinnear). Plot complications ensue.
*Baby Mama* was written and directed by *Saturday Night Live* alum Michael McCullers with minimal pizzazz and a sappy, happily-ever-after ending that would make Fey's *SNL* alter ego cry "feh." This is the sort of movie in which the small parts are far more fun and inspired than the lead character, reflecting, perhaps, the movie's *SNL* roots. So many of the movie spin-offs that have emerged from the sketch comedy show have fallen flat in part because its quirky characters work best in small doses. It's easy to imagine most of the supporting characters in *Baby Mama* working in a short sketch comedy routine, and they work well here in appropriately parsimonious amounts: Siobhan Fallon is a hoot as a supercilious birthing coach with a pwobwematic speech impediment; so too is Steve Martin as Kate's aggressively New Agey, ponytailed CEO boss; Romany Malco is Oscar, the sort of snarky doorman who is always hanging around with helpful advice and who, here, serves as a kind of surrogate baby daddy for Angie and Kate. Sigourney Weaver is weirdly funny as the hyperfertile Chaffee Bicknell, who operates the surrogacy agency. Poehler invests Angie with a lot of goofy energy and a fair amount of sweetness, which salvages her character from the fairly crudely sketched, white trashy slot she occupies. All these characters skip and whirl around the fairly stiff, mostly immobile Fey, whose job here is just to be the smartest girl in the room. She *is* the smartest, but also the least invested with a personality. In a broad, topical comedy like *Baby Mama*, smart is good, but smart *and* funny would have been even better.
28Apr2008
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