Category: Cinema

Mission Compromised.

Perhaps it wasn’t the best nightcap to Poseidon — four and a half hours of crashes and explosions tend to run together after awhile — Still, J.J. Abrams’ loud, garish Mission: Impossible III, while assuredly better than John Woo’s miserable M:I:2, doesn’t to my mind improve on Brian De Palma’s slinky, Eurotrashy original. (And I’m by no means a De Palma fan, particular after megastinkers like Mission to Mars and Femme Fatale.) I guess if you’re a huge fan of Alias, this might be your cup of tea — the film definitely plays like every episode of that show I’ve ever seen, what with the in-media-res opener, the artfully named McGuffin, double-double-agents, kick-ass femmes, and the weird, off-putting emphasis on torture. (Ok, there may be dollops of Splinter Cell and The Vanishing somewhere in there too.) Still, I found M:I:3 basically a sleek, well-designed non-starter and, in a word, missable.

It probably didn’t help that the central conceit of M:I:3 involves superspy-turned-desk-jockey Ethan Hunt’s new paramour (Michelle Monaghan), since Tom Cruise’s real love life has become both so creepy and inescapable over the past year. But, here we are (after the flash-forward opener), attending the Hunts’ resolutely normal wedding shower somewhere in suburban Virginia, and once again watching Cruise do his “This woman drives me cRaZy!” schtick. (No couch-jumping, alas.) But, domestic bliss is soon interrupted by an urgent (if oblique) call from Hunt’s new boss (Billy Crudup), and, quicker than you can say “silent birth,” Ethan has gotten the band (Ving Rhames, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Maggie Q) back together again, who then venture off to deepest, darkest Berlin to save a compromised agent (Keri Russell) from, you guessed it, torture. There, he crosses swords with criminal mastermind Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman) — or at least his underlings — and the battle is joined, one that will eventually rage from the Vatican to Shanghai to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge (which in this universe seems to be about a 10-15 minute drive from DC.)

If this all sounds a bit campy, well, it is…or, at least, it is at times (such as when Cruise dons priestly vestments to infiltrate the Vatican), and probably should have been for its entire run. But Abrams, in keeping with his usual Marathon Man-ish predilections, has decided to give this film his own brutal gloss, and I for one found all the wallowing in harsh interrogation scenarios a bit much. (Well, at least for this franchise…frankly, Bond could probably use more of it, at least if the Daniel Craig run will verge closer to the books. But I digress.) When you get right down to it, torture scenes not only aren’t very entertaining (by design, I guess), they’re also very close to cheating — Of course we’re going to feel for Cruise and his new ladyfriend when they’ve been put in such a situation. In short, Abrams is substituting visceral reaction for good writing — as someone on Slate noted with 21 Grams back in the day, he might as well have the bad guy kick a puppy while he’s at it.

That being said, the bad guy here, scene-stealing support by Lawrence Fishburne and Shaun of the Dead‘s Simon Pegg notwithstanding, is the highlight of the film. A million years away from his recent turn as Capote (or his prior Cruise pairing in Magnolia…ok, he’s a bit like his character in The Talented Mr. Ripley), Hoffman underplays his soulless and sadistic arms dealer as a man thoroughly bored with his ubervillain station in life, and seems all the more plausible for being nondescript and banal.

Liner Notes.

Admittedly, a summer B-picture like Poseidon isn’t going to turn the world upside down in any case. And it’s got nothing on the original Poseidon Adventure of 1972 (which itself isn’t all that great a film): Josh Lucas is almost always a likable presence, but he’s no Gene Hackman…nor, for that matter, is Kurt Russell Ernest Borgnine or Richard Dreyfuss Red Buttons (or is he Shelley Winters?) — but that may speak in this version’s favor. Still, by this point director Wolfgang Petersen is a master of both the underwater nightmare (Das Boot, The Perfect Storm) and the tube movie (Boot, Air Force One), and as a big, dumb disaster flick, Poseidon is competent enough. I can’t really recommend that you rush out and see it by any means, but it may be worth watching the back half on TNT some day.

So, you probably know the set-up. It’s New Year’s Eve somewhere in the middle of the ocean, and, aboard a massive behemoth of a cruise ship that makes the Titanic look like the S.S. Venture, passengers party the night away to the Black Eyed Peas’ Fergie, oblivious to the ginormous “rogue wave” bearing down on them. Soon, the wave hits, the ship capsizes, and our gaggle of disheveled celebrities — a professional gambler (Lucas), a recently-dumped gay architect (Dreyfuss), a former fireman and mayor of New York(!) (Russell), his daughter (Emmy Rossum), etc. etc. — band together to get to the bottom of things (which, of course, is now the top.) Along the way, they must brave fearsome flash fires, watery death traps, and clunky exposition-riddled dialogue in order to get out alive, if they can. (I won’t say who makes it and who doesn’t, other than to say that [Spoilers] actors from the HBO stable don’t seem to fare too well on this vessel.)

So, is the movie any good? Well, yeah, it’s ok, in a turn-your-brain-off kinda way. True, the dialogue and characterizations are pretty much terrible — even the wisps of backstory and perfunctory conflicts given these folks turn out to be barely credible. But the movie still works, since you just end up rooting for the long-suffering actors instead, many of whom seem like they must be hating the water tank by now. (Speaking of which, Kurt Russell, no stranger to B-flicks, seems particularly at home here.) And, to its credit, there are a few legitimately clever and suspenseful setpieces herein, the best of which makes a solid, if not incontrovertible, case for never getting trapped in a water-logged air shaft behind a claustrophobe and Richard Dreyfuss. And, like the similar crests in Petersen’s Perfect Storm, the Big Wave itself has a wrath-of-God grandeur to it, particularly in its first appearance, as it looms in the distance like inexorable Fate. In short, Poseidon is nowhere near to being a great film, but it does make for a mildly diverting carnage-filled cruise.

Angst Amidst the Isles.

Ewan MacGregor, Colin Farrell, and Tom Wilkinson sign aboard Woody Allen’s next project, set to begin filming next month in London. MacGregor and Farrell “will play two brothers with serious financial problems that lead them to become enemies when a third party suggests they turn to crime.“

Blood from a Stone.

I’m way behind on my movies (although I made some headway today — more soon) and still haven’t caught United 93 yet…Nevertheless, the trailer for Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center is now online. Hm. This looks exploitative as all-git-out, and, while Conan and Nixon will always get him points, Stone has lost major cred with me after Any Given Sunday and the atrocious Alexander. I’ll probably miss it.

R&R, X&X&X.

Today’s trailers: Crockett & Tubbs reunite as Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx respectively in the full trailer for Michael Mann’s film version of Miami Vice (This isn’t much of an improvement on the teaser, frankly.) And, Dell offers seven minutes of clips from X3: The Last Stand, of which all but 90 seconds or so (thanks to Ian McKellen, who’s clearly at home scenery-chewing his way through this badly-written drek) looks and sounds cringeworthy. From this, it seems the real problem with X3 may be less Ratner than the so-far really clunky script by Simon Kinberg & Zak Penn.

No Mercy Shown.

This is why events unnerve me…By way of Ed Rants, the new trailer for Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette is out, and it maintains the New Order conceit of the teaser. (Although this time the background ditty is “Ceremony,” not Age of Consent.”)

Punch-drunk poolboys & petrol-powered puzzlers.

In today’s trailer bin, nebbishy Paul Giamatti confronts water pixies and werewolves in the new trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water (after making two stinkers in a row, you’d think he take his name off the title card), over-the-hill Sylvester Stallone walks…very…slowly to the ring in a new clip from Rocky Balboa, a.k.a. Rocky VI (Note Paulie & hat), Pixar contributes further to our national oil dependency with another new trailer for Cars (ho-hum), and crossword puzzlers get their day in the sun in this first look from the documentary Word Play. (So that‘s Will Shortz.)

Don’t Look Back.

According to Dark Horizons, Heath Ledger will replace Colin Farrell as Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes’ forthcoming Bob biopic I’m Not There. Purportedly also playing Dylan in the film are Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Richard Gere, and Julianne Moore.