ONE (Ring to Rule them All.)

It is close now, so close to achieving its goal. (Yes, my count is a day ahead of most people’s, but I’m going at midnight tomorrow night, and for me that’s Tuesday.) A lot of the US press hasn’t weighed in yet, but as they do, check below. Update: One last scratchy, bad-quality clip, precious? Faramir runs into a spot of trouble. To be honest, the resolution’s so bad here that it’s almost not worth watching, but if you really need a fix… [9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2]

New York Film Critics Circle: Best Film of 2003.
Rotten Tomatoes: 98% (156-4)
Metacritic: 94% (40)

New York Times: “After the galloping intelligence displayed in the first two parts of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy, your fear may be that the director, Peter Jackson, would become cautious and unimaginative with the last episode…But Mr. Jackson crushes any such fear. His ‘King’ is a meticulous and prodigious vision made by a director who was not hamstrung by heavy use of computer special-effects imagery.”

New York Post: “‘The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’ rules as the crowning achievement of Peter Jackson’s awesome adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy, a majestic conclusion to a nine-plus-hours epic that stirs the heart, mind and soul as few films ever have…it’s also one of the most beautiful films ever shot.“

New York Daily News: “With ‘The Return of the King,’ New Zealand director Peter Jackson has completed his trilogy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s mammoth ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ and can lay claim to one of the greatest achievements in film history. Taken as a whole, ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is the first masterpiece of the 21st century.”

Chicago Tribune: “One ‘Ring’ – finally – rules them all. In ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,’ a great mythic movie cycle gets the ending it deserves – and we can finally see this stunningly completed film trilogy for what it is: one of the major achievements of film history.”

LA Times: “It took one ring to rule them all, and now there’s one film to end it all, to bring to a close the cinematic epic of our time, the one by which all others will be judged…As a model for how to bring substance, authenticity and insight to the biggest of adventure yarns, this trilogy will not soon, if ever, find its equal.”

Washington Post: “one thing Jackson does brilliantly is capture the exhilaration, fatigue, heroism and despair of war. He looks at it as something not ennobling but exhausting, more ordeal than crusade but — completely necessary…’The Return of the King’ puts you there at Waterloo, or Thermopylae or the Bulge, any desperate place where men ran low on blood and iron and ammo, but not on courage.“

Boston Globe: “‘The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’ delivers on all the mighty expectations Peter Jackson created in ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ and ‘The Two Towers.’…[It] unfurls with the sprawling pageantry of the first two installments, movies in which Jackson reclaimed the fantasy epic as a source of headlong astonishment.“

USA Today: “****….As good as each individual movie is, the third film vaults the work into the stratosphere of classic movies. Key characters are enhanced, new civilizations visited and battles fought more intensely, while feelings and motivations are plumbed more deeply and movingly…In its entirety, The Lord of the Rings surpasses other multi-part sagas such as Star Wars or even The Godfather.“

San Jose Mercury Tribune: “‘Return of the King’ combines the best moments of ‘Fellowship’ and ‘Two Towers’ and brings the Arthurian trilogy to a rousing, satisfying finish. Taken alone, it’s a great movie. In conjunction with the other installments, it’s a historic movie event, one that the Academy Awards will have to work hard to ignore when doling out this year’s top honors.“

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “With ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,’ Peter Jackson brings his epic series to a glorious finish. And in doing so, he’s made the greatest movie trilogy in cinema history…Peter Jackson has taken us there and back again. And he’s done it with a masterwork that truly is the one trilogy to rule them all.“

Village Voice: “The most hallucinatory of war films, The Return of the King concludes the Lord of the Rings trilogy with a burst of smoky grandeur…Peter Jackson’s hobbit epic is certainly the greatest feat of pop movie magic since Titanic.“

Slate: “This is the best of the three Rings movies�more than that, it makes the others look even better. You can finally see the arc of the trilogy: not just J.R.R. Tolkien’s, with its blend of Norse and Christian myth, but Peter Jackson’s….The Lord of the Rings took seven years and an army of gifted artists to execute, and the striving of its makers is in every splendid frame. It’s more than a movie�it’s a gift.“

San Francisco Chronicle: “With the possible exception of the Russian ‘War and Peace,’ such a combination of monetary resources, creative talent and technical mastery has never been brought to bear on a movie project, and nothing on this scale is likely to occur again soon….the movie reaches us with special recognition, even as it reaches both behind us and past us, with the universality of a classic. It is the old story, the timeless thing. The human struggle, made noble.“

CNN: “This third in the series of the ‘Rings’ franchise is utterly breathtaking. Even J.R.R. Tolkien would be highly impressed…All in all, ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is the stuff that dreams are made of. “

Philadelphia Inquirer: “Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy is, by any measure, a crowning moment in cinema history…It is an achievement of bewildering scale.“

Roger Ebert: “This is the best of the three, redeems the earlier meandering, and certifies the Ring trilogy as a work of bold ambition at a time of cinematic timidity…Jackson’s achievement cannot be denied. The Return of the King is such a crowning achievement, such a visionary use of all the tools of special effects, such a pure spectacle, that it can be enjoyed even by those who have not seen the first two films.“

Miami Herald: “****. With the spectacular The Return of the King, Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy becomes the new benchmark against which all future fantasy movies must now be judged…The Return of the King feels like a miracle, a movie that exceeds even the most formidable expectations without straying from its singular path. All hail this King.

Charlotte Observer: “****. ‘Return’ is the equal of the magnificent opening episode, ‘The Fellowship of the Ring.’…[It] should convince even the most hardened skeptic that ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is one of the great achievements of film history…Jackson had the vision, persistence, insight and patience for this mighty job, plus the smarts to shape stage veterans and overlooked film actors into a seamless cast. He’s made himself as immortal as a movie director can be.“

Detroit Free Press: “So hail this ‘King.’ It not only stands as fantasy filmmaking on a peak of previously unscaled proportions, it now officially takes its place in the Great Hall of Movie Mythology, the place we return to again and again to share our dreams.“

Dallas Morning News: “But the trilogy’s real hero is Peter Jackson. The director and screenwriter brings unity to a somewhat unwieldy story and handles the spectacle scenes with flourish and coherence. The Return of the King is the best of the Tolkien-inspired cinema trinity. It’s got heart, soul and monsters.“

Baltimore Sun: “[A]s the final chapter of, essentially, a single 10-hour movie, [RotK] has a narrative beauty and a sublime ensemble performance that put it in a class by itself…The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is so replete with imagistic and literary treasures that it repays re-viewing. After seeing it, I felt as I did after seeing E.T. – that unless the distributor wants to pull it back, there’s no reason for it ever to stop running.“

Salon: “With ‘The Return of the King,’ Jackson, his remarkable cast and his enormous ensemble of collaborators have found victory at the end of their improbable quest…Packed with passion and heroism, the grimness of death and the hope of salvation, this final chapter flies past with the speed of Shadowfax…None of us is ever again likely to encounter a 200-minute movie we are so reluctant to see come to an end…this one is Jackson’s crowning achievement. It marks ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ without any serious question, as the greatest long-form work in the history of mainstream cinema.”

Two (Towers)…

Reelviews: “There can be no greater gift for a movie lover than the one bestowed upon audiences by Peter Jackson, whose The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is not only the best movie of 2003, but the crowning cinematic achievement of the past several years. In fact, labeling this as a “movie” is almost an injustice. This is an experience of epic scope and grandeur, amazing emotional power, and relentless momentum…Not only is this motion picture an entirely worthy conclusion to the landmark trilogy, but it’s better than its predecessors.” Mori at AICN: “[T]hese films represent a high point for genre filmmaking that will be nearly impossible to equal or surpass…It’s overwhelming. It’s incredibly powerful, with battle sequences that will sweep over you like virtual reality and emotional crescendos that would be impossible to hit in a single film.“

Three (Hunters)…

The Daily Mail: “How about amazing, stupendous, jawdropping and overwhelming? For this is wonderfully imaginative cinema on the grandest possible scale…There are sights here unparalleled in cinema…For its scale, imagination and passion, this is, without doubt, the greatest cinematic trilogy ever.” Financial Times: “This concluding film may be the greatest fantasy- adventure epic ever made. It is almost certainly the most spectacular.” Harry at AICN: “This is frankly one of the greatest films ever made…for me, it is without equal or parallel. It does not diminish the others to any degree, it is just what it is — perfect. Like when Lean did BRIDGE OF THE RIVER KWAI, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and DR ZHIVAGO — there was just fate leaning over the shoulder and perfection was achieved.” Wow, after all that superlative madness (which, ok, we expected from Harry), how bout a new commercial? Beware: this one’s a money-shot trailer…there’s a very good chance you might not want to see some of this stuff until after Tuesday. Then again, maybe you do…

Four (Hobbits)…

BBC: “The Return of the King brings an overwhelming air of expectation and of consequence – and in almost every sense it dwarfs what has come before…This three-hour, 11-minute epic is an unqualified triumph, one that raises the bar for any spectacle-respecting director of the future. The Oscar, surely, must go to Peter Jackson.” CTV: “Are there enough M words to describe Lord of the Rings: Return of the King? Majestic, monumental, magnificent.” Times Online: “AND so it ends, the greatest film trilogy ever mounted, with some of the most amazing action sequences committed to celluloid. The Return of the King is everything a Ring fan could possibly wish for, and much more.“

Five…

Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly: “All hail The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King! I can’t think of another film trilogy that ends in such glory, or another monumental work of sustained storytelling that surges ahead with so much inventiveness and ardor. The conclusion of Peter Jackson’s masterwork is passionate and literate, detailed and expansive, and it’s conceived with a risk-taking flair for old-fashioned movie magic at its most precious.” And, we’ve got another clip! Gollum connives above Minas Morgul…relatively spoilerish. (If you do watch it, notice how he licks his lips. It’s amazing CGI.)

Six…

Stuff.NZ: “It is now possible to view the three films as one movie, and the three combined are a spectacular triumph. The devotion of cast and crew to Tolkien’s work shines through, and through their dedication movie history has been made.” UK Mirror: “[Peter Jackson’s] challenge was to make it bigger, better and more spectacular than the first two – and, hobbit-like, he has triumphantly succeeded against all the odds.” Courier-Mail (SPOILERS): ” It unfolds with the majesty and power of all great movie experiences. The result is we have an epic that sets a new benchmark for battle sequences…”

The End of All Things.

Peter Jackson received a hero’s welcome in New Zealand yesterday as the Return of the King officially premiered in Wellington. I’ve been reading a number of online reviews lately, which I won’t link to as they’re so spoilerific. But so far the consensus seems to be (a) RotK is easily the best of the three and (b) some of the Theatrical Edition streamlining will aggravate Tolkien fans. I must admit, I was disturbed to find out some of the many scenes that have been edited out of the film, but I presume they’ll all be back for the EE next November, so I guess I really can’t complain. And if RotK is half as good as everyone is making it out to be, then I probably won’t care once the film starts anyway. At any rate, only two weeks to go… Update: Here’s a relatively non-spoilerish review that gets the consensus point across: The film is stunning. Amazing. Frightening. Breathtaking. Heartbreaking. Epic and intimate all at once. Booyah.

Succumb to Temptation…

Well, while I did pick up the soundtrack this morning. we’re getting to the point in the RotK release cycle where I’m starting to feel ambivalent about seeing this stuff before December 16th. Newsweek prints a very spoiler-filled first review and declares, “It’s an epic. It tells a passionate, elemental story. It takes the principal filmmaking currency of our times, special effects, and makes them matter. Is it a fantasy? It’s a lot of people’s fantasy, yes.” (The article also tells how the movie begins…I won’t put it here, but I’m somewhat proud of myself for having guessed it a year ago.) The Newsweek cover story also has a couple of all-new pictures, and a snippet from Andy Serkis’s forthcoming Gollum book reveals even more about the decisions made in RotK. All of this is very spoilerish stuff, even for those of us who’ve read the trilogy. You have been warned.

Attack of the Clone.

UGH. Well, the keyboard just fell to the ground and I lost a really long Matrix: Revolutions review in one errant keystroke. As Neo might say, “Whoa.” So here we go again…Spoilers to follow throughout.

Like most of the fanboy world, I checked out Revolutions on Wednesday and, well, I guess Andrew O’Hehir of Salon might’ve said it best: It “isn’t a terrible movie, but it is a tremendous disappointment.” (Many people I’ve spoken to think that even this proclamation is being charitable.) As y’all may or may not remember, I actually liked The Matrix: Reloaded, and forgave it many of its considerable faults (the interminable first forty minutes in Zion, for example), because I assumed that much of the drier, talkier scenes were necessary for setting the stage for the final installment. And I thought that the Architect scene that closed Reloaded also opened many intriguing doors that promised future mind-bending plot twists in Revolutions.

But, sadly, Revolutions capitalizes on barely any of this promise. Instead the Wachowski, um, siblings give us a closing chapter that is almost breathtaking in its inanity. For one, much of the time spent in Reloaded making the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson), Persephone (Monica Bellucci), and for that matter, the phase-shifting albino twins (“We are getting very aggravated”) decently compelling adversaries seems to have been completely wasted. None of Merv’s existential menace or Persephone’s prophetic allure comes to anything here — instead, they’re used as throwaway devices to set up an exchange in a goofy S&M joint which I suppose is meant to approximate Hell but comes off more like the Prague nightclub in Blade 2. As with the characters, so with the plot twists — Virtually every one of the intriguing questions dropped at the end of Reloaded (multiple Matrices, Neo’s real world powers) are either completely left by the wayside or just accepted by the story — Neo has powers in the Real World now because he does. Hmm, that’s not that interesting. It eventually seems that the only point of the film’s first half-hour (aside from the introduction of karmic programs, which I’ll get to later) is to rectify the Neo-in-a-coma cliffhanger of Reloaded, a cliffhanger that ends up having little or nothing to do with the trilogy’s main arc.

Speaking of the main arc, I’d think even the most rabid Matrix fanatics out there have to admit that almost all of the fanfic endings to Revolutions turned out to be more intriguing and well-thought-out than the real thing. Now I don’t have a problem with the peace treaty aspect of the conclusion – after watching the Animatrix prequels, that seemed almost inevitable. But, as J. Hoberman noted in a mixed-positive review, what we end up with here is one-part Christ allegory (perhaps Mel Gibson should’ve taken the role), one-part Return of the King, with Neo and Trinity rushing to Mordor before the White City falls. There are no interesting permutations to this formula along the way, no Matrix-like plot twist to take the film up a notch — instead Revolutions just grinds along inexorably to its rote conclusion. It would’ve been well nigh impossible for the Wachowskis to match the shock of Neo’s pod awakening in the first Matrix, but I think they could’ve approximated something along the lines of the Architect scene if they’d just tried a little harder.

Moreover, Revolutions as written fails to engage us in the characters we’ve been following along the way. One of the main three is reduced to little more than a Nien Nunb impression, while another dies (slowly) in what amounts basically to a Keymaker-like chauffeuring mission. Instead, we spend most of the movie watching the exploits of a Zion filled with uninvolving stock character tropes — the can-do kid, the grizzled sergeant, the take-no-guff officer, the scrappy girlfriend — take your pick. Frankly, the Wachowskis should be ashamed at the depths of cliche wallowed in here, in both the dialogue and the characters. Just grisly stuff.

So why, after all these issues, am I still giving Reloaded a 2-star (6/10) review? Well, for one, I guess I am a sucker for big sci-fi spectacle, and the Zion invasion sequence does undoubtedly make for some compelling eye candy. It’d have been nice if the machines had relied on a variety of military mechs rather than just the ubiquitous Squiddies, but they are kinda creepy, and I did like the moment when they pour out of the dock breach like the blooming of a poisonous rose. And then there’s Agent Smith, who as per usual steals scenes every time he opens his mouth — His scene with the Oracle may be the high point of the film. Hugo Weaving (and Ian Bliss’s wicked Weaving impression) deserve high marks for bringing the type of grade-b, meglomaniacal fun to the table that this ponderous film so often needs (More Joe Pantoliano would’ve benefited both sequels too, I should think.) Alas, the rain battle between Smith and Neo at the end of the film also feels like a bust. It’s never as engaging as their fracas at the end of the first Matrix, and it definitely could have benefited from more Superman stylings (punching through buildings, swinging streetlamps like baseball bats, etc.)

But I’m trying to accentuate the positive here. I did enjoy the Philosophy 102 lectures, even if they also seem inserted in as usual. To add to the existential and behaviorist disquisitions of Reloaded, we now have an emotive program discoursing on karma (also one of the better moments of the film) and Smith making a case for nihilism. You could read Neo’s final fate as representing the necessity of all philosophies to grapple with the inevitability of death, although it seems more pertinent to explain it as simple messiah martyrdom, given all the throwing around of words like “faith” and “belief” through the film. (The kid’s “I believe in Neo!”, for example…ugh.) Actually, trying to interpret the ending of the film brings me to my biggest problem with Revolutions: the movie turned out to be so pedestrian in its execution that it almost undercuts the intellectual legitimacy of the earlier films.

Put another way, while I think David Denby should be taken to task for the ridiculous snobbishness exposed in his Revolutions review (Denby writes that it is “far too late to bemoan the obvious truth that…college-educated gents, and millions of others like them, will spend many hours debating the apocalypse as revealed by the Brothers Wachowski but would die before reading a single story by Chekhov or Cheever dealing with the sensual and spiritual quandaries of ordinary people“), the film does suggest that much of the philosophical ruminations on the meaning of the Matrix trilogy may have been misplaced when the writer-directors are so glib and ham-handed as to finish it off with a mighty dollop of Christ-figure bathos, a sunset, and a little girl.

In sum, while the intriguing but flawed Reloaded suggested that the Wachowskis were going to swing for the fences in the final installment, ultimately it seemed that — action spectacle aside — they were content to settle for a bunt. Boo hiss.

Overkill Bill.

Well, I’m probably going to lose some fanboy cred for this, but I found Kill Bill (billed everywhere — even, ridiculously, in the credits — as “the 4th film by Quentin Tarantino”) to be a considerable disappointment. The movie starts off well…Uma’s The Bride covered in blood, some choice words, a gunshot, fade to black, Nancy Sinatra…so far, so good. Like an old friend back in town, it almost seemed at first we’d be getting something missing for too long, something along the lines of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown. But then, alas, it becomes all too clear that QT has ventured deep into George Lucas territory. In other words, Kill Bill is an overripe, overlong flick by a director infatuated with his own cleverness and brilliance, one who’s clearly surrounded by entirely too many sycophantic yes-men. To wit:

1) The Editing. Perhaps it’s a result of chopping the film in two, but there are several scenes here badly in need of shortening, which is doubly strange given how perfectly — languidly, with occasional jolts and rushes — QT’s first three films move. Take, for example, all of Chapter 4 (The Man from Okinawa), and particularly the sake-pouring nonsense. Ok, I get it — it’s Sonny Chiba (and, I’ve since been informed, Gordon Liu)…but let’s move on. Jackie Brown moves at a leisurely pace, yet I was and am never bored. In Kill Bill I was stifling yawns. Or take the introduction of Buck’s Pussy Wagon (which at best is a sophomoric, throwaway joke anyway.) Uma gets the keys from Buck, beats him a final time, looks for the car, finds the car, looks at the keys, looks at the car, gets in the car. All this could’ve been condensed into one edit (from the hospital floor to Uma dragging herself into the Wagon), particularly as the joke was already made in Chapter 1 anyway.

2) The Dialogue. With the possible exception of Lucy Liu’s words of wisdom for the Yakuza council — one of the best moments in the film — there is hardly a single memorable line in all of Kill Bill. Again, this is bizarre for a Tarantino flick, which as everyone knows have been distinguished by their dialogue. Ok, so samurai are generally strong, silent types…that doesn’t forgive the banality of what’s actually being said most of the time. “Silly rabbit…Trix are for kids”? C’mon. And, aside from the ridiculous number of grindhouse chop-socky in-jokes, most of the pop-culture visuals in Kill Bill seem lazy and off-hand (For example, the fellow in the Charlie Brown kimono – which not only added nothing to the film but could be seen coming a mile away.)

3. The Action. Of course QT has no obligation to make movies like the ones he’s made previously, so both the editing and dialogue problems could have been overlooked if Kill Bill had succeeded in its main intent. But, sadly, it doesn’t. Amazingly, given the input of Master Yuen Wo-Ping, almost all of the action sequences in Kill Bill are dull, stilted, and boring, and none more so than the much-hyped House of Blue Leaves. Really. I was shocked at how off they seemed to be. Perhaps its because Uma Thurman couldn’t handle the martial arts choreography for extended shots, but I think it’s more likely that QT just isn’t a very good action director. Too many quick edits, too many goofy shots (the blue silhouette sequence was embarrassing, as was the spanking at the end.)….It’s just sad. Even fights that held great promise (Go-Go Yubari, a homicidal Japanese schoolgirl with a tricked-up mace…really, how can you screw this up? Same goes for O-Ren-Ishii in the snow) seemed flat and lifeless. Somewhere down the pike, QT must’ve decided that gore is the end-all, be-all of a good action sequence, but arterial sprays aside, there’s really not much to see here (and the whole hilarious gore bit was done better in films like Dead Alive anyway.) QT made a point recently of attacking the fights in The Matrix movies, but I’ll take those anyday over the jumbled morass of bad wire-fu and chop edits on display here. And one needs only to recall the breathtaking wire-fu fights of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where the camera pulls back and allows the combatants to strut their stuff in extended takes, to see how badly misplayed QT’s action edits are here.

The Upside: Well, not much, really. There’s some great opportunities here, and I’d say Tarantino squanders most of ’em. I liked the anime sequence in the middle of the film, and the introduction of O-Ren-Ishii’s squad (Go-Go, Sofie Fatale, etc.) had a great comic book flavor to it at first. I thought RZA’s work on the soundtrack was superb. The critics on the film geek end of the spectrum (David Edelstein, Roger Ebert) adored all the in-jokes scattered throughout the film, and I’m sure most of ’em went over my head. (I don’t think, however, that this excuses the film by any means — LotR, for example, is filled with Tolkie in-jokes while still being accessible to laypersons.) Who knows? Perhaps if Kill Bill had just been another film, I might not be so harsh about it. But I expected more from this much-heralded return of Tarantino…I hope this was just an inglorious misstep, and I’ll probably go see Vol. 2 (word is the second one is more character-driven anyway). But I thought Quentin drank his own Kool-Aid with Kill Bill: Volume One, and hopefully he’ll return to his senses someday soon.