Movie Review

(On DVD, July 2005) Yup, the thought of seeing Sylvester Stallone in a slasher film is just as bad as what’s up there on the screen. Starts as a boring serial killer cop drama, then becomes even worse as a slasher film where the bodies pile up so quickly you barely have the time to register who’s dying. I’m not kidding: the first few victims are greeted by “What? Who?” before yet another person gets killed. The setting has promise (in the usual “dark and damp” category), but the rest is just tedious. Stallone, surprisingly, seems better than the surrounding material. It all implodes in a blah fashion: the killer is revealed, everyone shrug, no-one wonders why this film was held on the studio’s vaults for three years before making it straight to video. Too bad; the reviews from theatre film critics would have been entertaining to read. The DVD contains some useless extra material, including deleted scenes that are even more wretched than the whole film.

(On DVD, July 2005) Wow! Dynamic crime drama, straight from one of Brazil’s most dangerous neighbourhood: If you thought inner-city black crime movies had it bad, then nothing will prepare you for the casual fashion crime is portrayed in this film. Kids with guns, shooting others and laughing to tell about it. Any thought of “boring foreign cinema” will quickly evaporate as the director changes styles, plays structural tricks and never loses our attention. Many characters are gracefully handled with minimal confusion: the script is a minor tour de force. This is a fabulous film: maybe not one you’ll care to see twice, but definitely one that deserves to be see once. The DVD contains a fabulous one-hour documentary that shows that the reality is even worse than the fiction.

(On DVD, July 2005) No wonder the film couldn’t find much of an audience after America’s new-found post-9/11 military crush! This dark satire of a peacetime army, set in 1989 Germany, is pretty vicious in its depiction of military personnel. Drugs, violence, incompetence: everything goes in an environment where nobody cares. Protagonist Joaquin Phoenix has a good turn as the cheerfully amoral protagonist, who will steal whatever he can get his hands upon, acting as an interface between the army and the local criminals. For maybe half an hour, Buffalo Soldiers is irresistible fun; not terribly realistic, but well-directed with a tremendous amount of energy and careful comic touches. Then it starts sliding toward drama and never stops. The story gets darker as the laughs get sparser, culminating in a finale that tries a bit too late to wrap it up in a happy finish. It doesn’t quite work: the third act is a bit of a mess, and the unevenness of tone takes away from the impact of the film. Still, there are good segments here and there, and provided you’re not over-sensitive to a bit of irreverence toward the military, it’s worth a look. The DVD includes some obvious electronic presskit making-of material.

(In theaters, June 2005) Director Doug Liman should be stopped. After a middling performance on The Bourne Identity, he comes and singlehandedly destroys what could have been a fantastic action/comedy romp through a heavy-handed “realistic” approach. Mr. & Mrs. Smith is, at its heart, a fantasy: How else can you interpret a story in which husband and wives are both members of rival assassination teams? How else do you show a story with big guns, fast cars, thick sexual tension and a sly take on matrimonial strife? This calls for a Bruckheimer/Bay sheen of glowing cinematography where not one single detail is left to realism. But Liman has other ideas, and Mr & Mrs Smith struggles with useless grit, leadening something that should have been more light-hearted. Even the action sequences suffer from too-rapid cutting, ugly cinematography and a lack of graceful charm. In sticking close to an unattainable reality, Liman also brings too much attention on the distasteful “conjugal violence” aspect of the story: However fun and cool the rest of the picture is, there remains a distinct discomfort in seeing husband and wife shooting at each other, and then moving on to punches, kicks and low blows. Summer action comedy? Not quite, no. Fortunately, it’s not all bad when you see the good work that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie bring to their role. Each play according to their media image: Pitt as the slightly-doofus handsome guy, and Jolie to the fatal seductress icon in which she has gradually evolved since her goth-cutter beginnings. As entertainment, Mr & Mrs Smith hits and misses. But one can see the potential for a far better film buried in the rubble.

(In theaters, June 2005) Now this is a welcome change of pace after the contemptuous ludicrousness that Joel Schumaker brought to the Batman series. Director Christopher Nolan and writer David S. Goyer do their best to anchor Batman in a more plausible reality, and if the result doesn’t quite transcend the typical superhero silliness, it brings to the film an aura of respectability. Christian Bale finally gets his blockbuster starring role after impressive performances in a string of smaller movies, Liam Neeson continues his streak of mentor figures and Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman all get wonderful supporting roles. (Sadly, Cilian Murphy is unremarkable as Dr. Crane and Katie Holmes is completely miscast as a character supposed to be tough and resourceful.) Batman Begins remains an origin story, but it flies by so quickly that it’s just a pleasure to watch. The mythology of Batman is rethought, retooled and revisited with good details, even if a lot of it seems awfully convenient at times. But no matter; while not a great film, Batman Begins is a lot of fun and even makes one curious about the inevitable sequel. Batman Reset, in other words… and the reboot hasn’t crashed yet.

(In theaters, May 2005) Good? Bad? Does it really matter when it’s a film labouring under such expectations? A bridge between the much-maligned Episodes II and the classic Episode IV, Revenge Of The Sith just needs to be satisfactory. Which it is, but just. George Lucas’ shortcomings in matters of dialogue have been obvious before, but they’re even more glaring here, with wince-inducing romantic material and lines that don’t end up meaning what the writer intended (“Good relations with the Wookies, I have”: Thanks for an instant fan punchline, George!) He doesn’t fare much better with the overarching elements of his script either: the grandiose “fall of the republic” is too simplistic to be believable, and so is Anakin’s conversion to the dark side. The most tragic part of the story, though, is the shabby way it disposes of Padme (the luscious Nathalie Portman, now with added curls) as a porcelain doll who can’t live without her man. As a director, Lucas is doing better than ever with the way he moves the camera around (though one may wonder about the positive influence of his special-effects people or the rumoured involvement of Steven Spielberg), even though his grasp of actors remains as shaky as ever: Ian McDermid and Ewan McGregor do well, but Hayden Christiansen looks and sounds like a petulant brat who mumbles a lot. (“Darth Vader: The Sullen Teenage Years”). Fortunately, Lucas doesn’t come up with everything in the film, and so the design work and special effects remain as deeply impressive as ever: ILM truly brought their A-game to this film, with particular praise heaped upon the first twenty minutes of the film, the epitome of what a “Star Wars!” film should feel like. I have my doubts about other elements of the film (such as the inconsistent use of Force powers), but bitching about “Episode III” is no better than beating a dead horse. Revenge Of The Sith manages to satisfy what we expected from a film whose ending we already knew, but no more.

(On DVD, December 2005) You know, this film is a whole lot better with the commentary track turned on. I may still not think too highly of the dialogue or the pedestrian fashion with which George Lucas capped off his wholly unnecessary trilogy, but the special effects are nice and there’s interesting design touches here and there. With the multi-source audio commentary, you can at least give points for effort and technical prowess as the filmmakers explain what they intended to do with even the silliest sequences. Fittingly, the best thing on the DVD may be “Within a minute”, an exhaustive making-of documentary covering what goes into making only one minute of the finished film. Neat concept: there doesn’t appear to be a single production team left untouched by the end of it. A fair number of other targeted featurettes complete the portrait. Star Wars fans already know that the DVD is the essential missing part of their collection going in between volume II and IV; others may want to wait until the inevitable cash-in box set.

(In theaters, May 2005) It strikes me that with the latest historical epics, the only worthwhile question is “how’s the Big Battle?” In this case, director Ridley Scott has been handed a juicy target: The Crusades! The siege of Jerusalem! Armies against armies! It’s how we get to that point that just isn’t as interesting: Here, we follow a humble blacksmith-farmer as he improbably learn to be a knight, does everything right and ends up leading an entire population against the attackers. Slow at first, Kingdom Of Heaven finds its footing on the Holy Land: Protagonist Orlando Bloom becomes a gentleman-farmer, somehow becomes the favourite of both a king and his sister (in entirely different ways!) and quickly earns the respect of his fellow knights. Still, the film remains of shaky interest until the third act. One can blame the plot shortcuts on the rumoured cutting of several scenes, but it’s hard to imagine that a longer version could improve on the pacing of this lumbering monster. I suppose that we should be thankful that the end Big Battle is, indeed, worth the 90 minutes leading up to it. It’s not a bad film. At least it skilfully navigates a path between warring faiths without resorting to cheap racism. (Indeed, the most compelling character of the film is Ghassan Massoud’s Saladin) But Kingdom Of Heaven remains a bit slow, a bit improbable, a bit ordinary. Ridley Scott is a gifted director, but he seems to have phoned in this one. But really, in historical epics, why ask for much more than one Big Battle?

(Third viewing, On DVD, May 2005) The daddy of the “spoof comedy” subgenre still remains extremely funny today, but it’s a fair thing to say that it hasn’t aged as gracefully as one could have hoped for. Part of it has to do with the intentionally derivative intent of the film, based on cultural icons and conventions that aren’t as prevalent today. Part of it has to do with the way the “rules” of this type of comedy have been re-used in latter films. Finally, part of it may have to do with the low budget of the production, with all of the noticeable shortcomings that implies. I still think it’s one of the most fabulous comedies ever (and a significant childhood icon; I remember seeing it on a rented laserdisc player!), but Top Secret! remains the champ in the sub-genre. The DVD contains a remarkably frustrating audio commentary track. Maybe half of it is interesting.

(Third viewing, On DVD, May 2005) If even you happen to watch this film right after its prequel, you will be shocked -shocked!- at how many gags are lifted wholesale from the first film. This may not be a surprise when you consider that none of the guiding lights of the original signed on to do the sequel: When in doubt, the apprentice steal from the masters. The plot is just a touch more coherent and the production values are obviously superior to the original, but many of the jokes are repeated quasi verbatim and there’s an odd calculation to the entire production that makes it surprisingly artificial. Still extremely funny, of course, but do yourself a favour, and avoid too-close contact with the original. The DVD, sadly enough, is a bare-bones edition: Wouldn’t you love an audio commentary by William Shatner?