Tag: Cinema

Inflated Currency.

Hmmm. A million dollars sure doesn’t go as far as used to. (And you’d think with that kinda cash Clint could have invested in a few more lights around the set.) At any rate, I’m willing to bet I might have thought more of Million Dollar Baby if I had seen it before the hype machine kicked in (and before I knew the twist, since I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.) But, well, MDB was a harmless helping of manipulative schlock, I guess. But even if I hadn’t seen Aliens of the Deep just beforehand, this film would have come off as a woefully two-dimensional enterprise.

At this late date, you probably know the story. Grizzled archetypal trainer Clint Eastwood and his grizzled archetypal sidekick Morgan Freeman run a dark and dilapidated boxing facility, without benefit of loyal title contenders or fluorescent lighting. Into this duo’s endless Who’s More Grizzled repartee steps Hillary Swank, a plucky, gosh-darned-don’t-that-girl-have-heart boxer-wannabe from the wrong side of the tracks, who’s burdened with the scariest, goofiest redneck family this side of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. (And don’t even get me started on Cletus, or Forrest, or Danger, or whatever that gimpy kid’s name was.) Soon enough, plucky Swank has even managed to thaw the heart of frosty ole Clint, and together they make that long-awaited title run, until…ack!

Like I said, MDB was ok enough as a hammy diversion, but I’d say its emotional resonance wasn’t too far removed from the Touched By an Angel melodrama of last week’s The Jacket. It’s a by-the-numbers boxing movie that turns into a by-the numbers Lifetime movie-of-the-week. Sure, the acting is polished across the board, but I thought the characters were for the most part shallow and cartoonish. (In fact, Morgan Freeman is barely even playing a character — he’s a Shawshank voiceover tinged with a touch of Bagger Vance.) And the plot barely holds together — I’m sorry, but, Evander Holyfield’s ear notwithstanding, you’re just not going to get away with that many sucker punches in a title fight.

I’m probably being a bit too hard on this flick — it made for a reasonably engaging two hours, sure. Perhaps it even works as an homage to the Hollywood of yore — at times this felt like a Karl Malden vehicle from 50 years ago. But, simply put, this was in no way the best film of last year — I’ll take Eternal Sunshine, The Aviator, Sideways, The Incredibles and a host of others over MDB any day of the week and twice on Sunday. This isn’t even the best Clint film in recent years – Mystic River was much more well-realized, and obviously Unforgiven is head-and-shoulders above this drek. How MDB won the Oscar bout is beyond me…Call McCain — the fix was in.

King of the Underworld

Despite feeling kinda rotten, I did venture out to the movies on Saturday night (armed with a hefty bag of throat lozenges) for an impromptu double feature. At the top of the bill was James Cameron’s IMAX extravaganza Aliens of the Deep and, all I can say is, if Cameron wants to make Battle Angel Alita using this funky 3-D technology, hail to the King. Granted, I haven’t seen a 3-D movie since the days before Captain Eo. Nevertheless, the effect was much improved, and made what could have been a staid underwater documentary comprised of what look to be outtakes from The Abyss into a riveting, jaw-dropping wonder.

I’ll admit, I was also fond of Cameron’s central conceit here, which is that our best bet for finding life in this solar system — at Europa, say — would be of the kind inexplicably thriving around thermal vents in the darkest, deepest parts of the ocean, where the sun never shines (and thus photosynthesis never takes place.) And what strange life it is! Innumerable swarming shrimp scuttle between ice-cold and boiling-hot water with nary an antenna twitch. Strange symbiotic tube worms ensnare food for their inner bacteria, which digests for them. Ethereal jellyfish float by, improbably yet undeniably alive. And, thanks to the 3-D, it seems you can reach out and touch all of these creatures just before your eyes — in fact, you can see them better in their natural habitat than any human being possibly could. It’s really quite amazing.

Like I said, I don’t know if Aliens of the Deep would be everyone’s cup of tea — most of the film just involves young astrobiologists and underwater explorers enthusing over their wild and crazy jobs in tiny little subs. But, whenever a strange new animal popped up on the screen, and particuarly when the camera hurtles past the moons of Jupiter on its CGI-way to far-flung Europa, I thought to myself, “Now, that’s Edutainment!”

IIIrd times the charm?

Fool me once, I’m the fool. Fool me twice, I’m the fool who follows him. Still, I have to admit, this muddy, Peruvian Kramervision version of the new Episode III trailer — which officially premieres tonight on Fox during The O.C — looks pretty darn good. After the bunt that was A Phantom Menace and the travesty that was Attack of the Clones, there’s no reason to expect anything at all from Revenge of the Sith. But…I sense something, a presence I’ve not felt since… Update: Multiple mirrors here. Update 2: It’s now officially up here.

Dent, Arthur.

Don’t forget the llama food…Hitchhiker’s meets Douglas Adams’ Bureaucracy in this new shot from the forthcoming film. Apparently, in a deviation from the book, Arthur, Zaphod, and Ford [Spoilers — Click to Reveal] have more problems with paperwork in an impromptu visit to the Vogon homeworld.

Good, Bad, and Sinbad.

With Neo, Constantine, and A Scanner Darkly all under his fanboy belt (we’ll put aside Johnny Mnemonic for now), Keanu embarks on The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad. Keanu in a period piece? Uh oh. At this point, though, I’m more worried about the director — Rob Cohen of XXX and The Fast and the Furious. Hardly a Harryhausen.

Running Ape, Running Water.

Coming Soon offers some choice updates on two long-awaited fanboy projects this afternoon. First, Naomi Watts finds it’s not easy seeing green as she films her New York scenes “with” Kong, and secondly, we have confirmation that Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain is finally off the ground with these first two shots from the movie, starring Hugh Jackman (not Brad Pitt) and Rachel Weisz.

No Jacket Required.

Attentive observers of the sidebar might have noticed that I caught The Jacket over the weekend. If I don’t write about it now, I just might forget it completely. Amiable enough as a genre exercise, The Jacket is ultimately a fluffy, ephemeral B-flick. While containing elements of Jacob’s Ladder, 12 Monkeys, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, it ends up falling somewhere between an average episode of Quantum Leap and any episode of Touched by an Angel.

The story doesn’t make much sense, even by the liberal standards one must accord time travel tales. But here goes: After befriending a small child and her mother (Kelly Lynch, looking haggard) along the side of the road, recent Gulf War vet Jack Starks (Adrien Brody, better than the material deserves) manages through a series of unfortunate events to get himself locked up in a mental institution somewhere in what looks to be Stephen King’s Maine. At this asylum, despite the concerns of the resident Good Doctor (Jennifer Jason Leigh, not HST), the staff Bad Doctor (Kris Kristofferson, grizzled-as-ever) insists on pumping patients like Brody and Daniel Craig (crazier here than Rhys Ifans was in Enduring Love) full of drugs and locking them in a morgue cabinet for hours at a time. During one of these sessions, Brody’s Starks finds he can visit “the future” (2007), where he encounters the girl he met by the side of the road…all grown up, Knightley-esque, and troubled to the core (you can tell she’s troubled, I presume, because her mouth is open all the time — Knightley pulls off a decent American accent, but that’s about it.)

Got all that? Well, if it doesn’t make sense on the page, it doesn’t do much better on screen, and there are several more narrative jags to go. I don’t want to give the ending away, because that’s all there really is here, but it has very little to do with the first half of the film, in either tone or content. What begins as a dark psychological thriller — the audience spends a lot of time as a mote in Brody’s eye while he writhes and whimpers in the dark — becomes a rather saccharine (and creepy, given Brody and Knightley’s first meeting) romance along the lines of Always. All in all, The Jacket looks menacing but turns out to be harmless — I guess it might make for a decent enough afternoon rental if you’re bored enough. (And here’s one last tip, Brody, next time you find you can travel back and forth through time, think Biff in Back to the Future II.)