Worlds of wonder abound in the trailer bin today, including our first real look at Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm (looks a bit Munchausen-y…and I hope I can get used to Matt Damon’s accent) and this trippy voyage into Neil Gaiman’s Mirrormask. And, speaking of Gaiman, his and Robert Zemeckis’ forthcoming version of Beowulf has a cast: Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Brendan Gleeson, and Robin Wright Penn.
Month: June 2005
Love is a Battlefield.
Ok, I know that I shouldn’t have been expecting much more than some eye candy, a few decent action sequences and two hours of air conditioning. But, I’ll admit, I was disappointed by Mr. & Mrs. Smith — Director Doug Liman did a great job with The Bourne Identity a few years ago, and I generally root for both Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. But, while Pitt is as aw-shucks amiable as usual (his stint in Troy aside) and Jolie is, as always, very easy on the eyes, there just isn’t much here. Sure, marriage as war is a metaphor that’s been mined pretty thoroughly over the years…but one can usually still find choicer nuggets than the ones making up this flick. In short, the script is half-baked and the action is overdone.
Beginning with a marriage counselor interview intercut with the credit sequence (it plays a bit like the opening to The Incredibles) followed by a meet-cute in Colombia “five or six years earlier,” Smith seems intriguing enough at first glance…sort of an actioner by way of a Steven Soderbergh film. But the movie then takes way too long establishing its central conceit — we’re a good forty minutes in before the spy vs. spy angle is worked out — particularly given that Pitt and Jolie seem so woefully out of place in the burbs.
That being said, the early going is probably the film’s better half. Once the two start going after each other, and particularly after the big marital mano-a-mano, the movie takes several increasingly graceless lapses into absurdity. Most of the big action setpieces, particularly the finale in a department store, not only don’t make any narrative sense but have zero danger to them. (Really, what was the point of setting up these two as crack shots at the Coney Island fairground, if they continually miss each other from point-blank range? These Agents Smith are even more bullet-proof than Hugo Weaving in The Matrix.)
Action aside, the script also takes a turn for the hammy as Mr. & Mrs. Smith progresses. The more Pitt and Jolie begin to discover about each other, the less and less they sound like a married couple. And, after awhile, the movie’s ingratiating penchant of doing just about anything for a laugh, from funny faces to cat sound effects to Air Supply and “The Girl from Ipanema,” gets kinda tiresome. (Particularly egregious in this regard is every scene with Vince Vaughn, where the same “living at home with mom” joke is made over and over again.) By the time The OC‘s Adam Brody flaunts his Fight Club T-shirt while getting grilled by Pitt, I had had enough already. What can I say? I really thought Mr. & Mrs. Smith was gonna work out, but eventually, the thrill was gone.
Dubya cries foul.
With Social Security privatization going nowhere and Bolton still in mothballs until the White House coughs up the requested info, Dubya gets testy about Democratic “obstruction” at a GOP fundraising affair. Well, it’s good to hear the right-wingers are rattled, but at some point, the Dems do need to get a proactive agenda on the table, so the “road block” schtick doesn’t stick.
Punxsutawney Phil.
While the Finals haven’t made for the most scintillating match-up so far (although thankfully Detroit finally showed up in Game 3,) there’s a good deal of NBA news happening off the court of late — namely, the Zen Master’s back in Kobeland of all places and Der Kommissar is threatening another lockout, mainly because team owners want shorter maximum contracts so they can be protected from their own lousy decision-making. (*cough* Allan Houston.) Work it out, people.
Magneto was Right.
Likely to help squelch the rampant bad buzz since the Ratner hiring, Fox releases this X3 teaser poster. I dunno…the AICN guys got their hands on a spoiler-laden script review, and right now it seems this might turn into a fiasco of Fantastic Four-like proportions.
Time out of Mind.
What would you do if you had a time machine, albeit one that only lets you travel backward for as long as you’re willing to sit in a souped-up cardboard box? Well, chances are a lot of us may end up taking a page from Abe and Aaron, the two well-dressed, Wired-subscribing, jargon-spouting, and thoroughly scientifical protagonists of Primer. Find a way to impress your friends, make a quick buck on the stock market, that type of thing. But, frankly, figuring out what to do is the least of your problems, because pretty soon you might have other ideas, in which case you’ll get in the way, and then you’ll have to be taken care of.
Confused? Not as confused as you’ll be after leaving this intriguing and perplexing sci-fi flick. Written, directed, produced and acted in by Shane Carruth on a purported budget of $7000, Primer flaunts its incomprehensibility from the get-go, as Abe and Aaron speak in technobabble riddles while cannibalizing their home appliances to construct a strange device in the latter’s garage. Soon enough, they discover their bizarre gravity-defying invention can run without batteries for a time and has a strange side-effect on weebles, one that might have some interesting and remunerative real-world applications…
And then things get really confusing, as multiple Abes and Aarons begin living out the same time period, often working at cross-purposes to each other. Seriously, with the possible exception of the MIT guys who threw the time travel conference, I don’t think anybody’s going to be able to piece together exactly what happens in this movie the first time through. But, the general inscrutability of it all is part of the atmosphere. We never really understand what’s going on, and I could see some folks getting frustrated with this film — usually, incomprehensibility is not a strong suit in movies. Still, for some reason, Primer works as a heady sci-fi tone poem about the cryptic (and dire) consequences of mucking about with the timestream. Mostly unfathomable, sure, but if you’re a fan of the genre, it’s definitely worth catching sometime…perhaps yesterday.
In the Flesh?
Tell me is something eluding you, sunshine? Is this not what you expected to see? Twenty-four years after their last concert together, Roger Waters will reunite with Pink Floyd for Live 8.
Artful Dodging.
Must be auteur Sunday…along with the new Malick trailer comes this brief teaser for Roman Polanski’s Oliver Twist. Please, Sir, I want some more.
Downing to the Wire.
“‘A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise.’ The authors add, ‘As already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point.’” Using the Dubya administration’s blatant lack of postwar prep as their news-peg, the Washington Post finally headlines the Downing Street Memo on their front page, over a month after the story broke overseas. Well, better late than never, I suppose.
America Begins.
So that’s how Bruce Wayne made his money…Christian Bale shows up as John Rolfe in the new trailer for Terence Malick’s The New World, also starring Colin Farrell (as John Smith), newcomer Q’Orianka Kilcher (as Pocahontas), Christopher Plummer, Wes Studi, Noah Taylor, and David Thewlis.