Cynical Cinema

Ice Cube is actually a fairly good actor.  In movies like Barbershop (which was very good), he has shown he has the capacity to move beyond the tough-guy Vin Diesel-in-XXX type characters he plays, and also past the tough-guy-falling-down, Vin Diesel-in-The Pacifier type characters he plays.  And yet, outside Barbershop and the occasional scene in certain other movies, he has never even tried.  Once again, in First Sunday, he returns to the familiar formulas that have made him reasonably successful over the past few years.  The buddy that does dumb things and gets him into trouble, a la Friday.  The girl who has an eye for him, and wants to love him underneath that tough-guy-idiot exterior, if only she can find the heart in the man, a la Next Friday.  And so on and so forth.

 Most irritating of all in First Sunday is the supporting cast.  Every single character in this film is a cartoon.  Ice Cube and his stupid friend (played in this particular film by Tracey Morgan) are desperate for money, so they decide to rob a church.  A church populated by the hot chick, the crass granny, the evil deacon who’s embezzling the church’s funds, the kindly and understanding pastor, and the irritating, painfully flamboyant moron choir director.  The resolution of the film is almost as idiotic as the set-up, and the underlying theme of Ice Cube wanting to keep his son around him in the city could be played for some decent dramatic effect, but this film treats it just as a means to an end. 

There is nothing funny in First Sunday, and since it is ostensibly a “comedy”, that means there is no reason to rent it.

10,000 BC (1/10):  A bunch of prehistoric people do battle with prehistoric beasts in what most critics have said is one of the worst movies imaginable.  And we critics can imagine some pretty awful movies.

The Spiderwick Chronicles (6/10):  Freddie Highmore continues to be the kid who stars on movies about imaginary lands with goblins and fairies and such.  This one follows on the heels of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Finding NEverland, and Arthur and the Invisibles.

Definitely, Maybe:  Ryan Reynolds tells Abigail Breslin, (who playws his daughter) the story of his romantic life.  Apparently better than most sappy romatic stuff.

Boarding Gate (3/10):  The always smokin-hot Asia Argento gets into some good-time S&M and weird con games with sexy folks.  She is the kind of woman who makes this seem like a good idea for a movie.  But it really isn’t.

Heroes of the East (8/10):  A classic 1979 kung-fu film starring Gordon Liu (Pai Mei from Kill Bill) as a Chinese martial artist who must take on seven Japanese masters.  Great fight scenes, good comedy, an influential movie in the genre.

Come Drink With Me (9/10):  A true classic, from 1965, in the kung-fu genre.  Starring Cheng Pei Pei, (Jade Fox from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) who was sensational as a young woman, this is the film that inspired countless others, including most notably Crouching Tiger.

Honeydripper:  Danny Glover runs a juke-joint called the Honeydripper in a movie about the beginnings of rock and roll.

Futurama:  The Beast With a Billion Backs:  Futurama’s first full-length feature film, direct to DVD.

The Business of Being Born:  Ricki Lake provides insight into the process of childbirth.  Really.  This is a movie.

Unstable Fables:  Three Pigs and a Baby (6/10):  Jim Henson’s studio produces this, the first installment in what will be a series of movies re-examining old fairy tales.  This one, the three little pigs.  Charming, with enough references to keep adults happy.

Also out today:

Caramel
Flight of the Conchords Season One
Days of Darkness
The Eye III
Harm’s Way
Intimate Enemies
Savage Planet
Never Forget

Out next week:

Vantage Point
Drillbit Taylor
In Bruges
Meet The Browns
Sex and Death 101
City of Men
Prairie Fever
Mad Men Season One
100 Million BC
Shotgun Stories
X-Files:  Revelations
Time Bomb
Get Smart’s Bruce and Lloyd:  Out of Control

Unstable Fables is a series of computer-animated movies produced by The Jim Henson Company. The first in the series, Three Pigs And A Baby, comes to DVD tomorrow, June 24th, from Alliance Films. The obvious intent here is to make a film that both kids and adults will like, without spending too much money. And for the most part they succeed. For the kids, cute pigs, physical humour and falling down, and schoolyard-bully politics. For the adults, references to movies only they would have seen. Obviously Three Men And A Baby, but also Rebel Without A Cause, Dr. Strangelove, and other movies of their classic ilk. It’s the references to Dr. Strangelove, however, which are the best. To explain:

First of all, the plot revolves around the wolves, as they always do, trying to get to the three little pigs in order to eat them. The wolves come up with a devious plan to devour the pigs. A plan that will take several years, but apparently will be worth it. This plan is devised at the behest of the top wolf scientist, a cartoon character who is extremely reminiscent of Peter Sellars as Dr. Strangelove. This scientist is always suggesting the use of his patented “doomsday device”, which we don’t see until the end of the film. (And when we do see it, it’s worth it.) The wolves’ plan, as it is, is to infiltrate the pigs’ house with a spy - a cute little baby wolf. The idea is to leave it in a basket on the pigs’ doorstep, and to have them take it in and raise it as their own. Then, when that wolf is sixteen years old, they can convince him to steal the keys and open the door.

The fact that this plan is sixteen years in the making is part of the charming nonsense in this film. The fact that it is clearly taking more than sixteen years for the cow contractors to rebuild the houses of the two other pigs (having had them blown over by the wolves) is also delightfully nonsensical. So that means that all three pigs are together under one roof, raising one wolf baby. And that is the cruz of the film. The pigs at school make fun of the young wolf, because he looks nothing like a pig. And he comes home to his pig fathers, and as he grows into a teenager he becomes more and more resentful. (Leading to the “you’re tearing me apart!” Rebel Without a Cause reference.)

Then, as the wolves lead him astray, and he begins to ride a motorcycle and stay out late and hang with the wrong crowd, the plan comes together for the wolves, and it’s time to take the pigs “out for dinner, if you know what I mean”. The wolves are pretty cheap gangster imitations here. And the young wolf with the pig fathers is forced to make a difficult decision, one which could impact the future of…whatever. It’s a cartoon. But it’s a pretty good one.

Come Drink With Me is an absolute classic of the martial arts genre, filmed in 1965 and released on DVD tomorrow, June 24th, by Alliance Films. It stars Cheng Pei Pei, a legend of Chinese kung-fu films, who might be familiar to modern artists as Jade Fox from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Crouching Tiger, incidentally, is a film that owes a lot to Come Drink With Me, not just the involvement of Pei Pei, but also in tone and in the concept of the high-flying wire stunts that make up so much of the action. While it isn’t as visually incredible as Crouching Tiger (it WAS filmed in 1965), the costumes and set design were first-rate.

This really is one of the best kung-fu films ever made. Cheng Pei Pei is gorgeous, and incredibly skilled and convincing as a fighter, much like Zhang Ziyi today. She plays Golden Swallow, a martial arts expert and bodyguard for the royal family (who also happens to be the daughter of the king) who sets out on a mission to rescue her brother from the clutches of a group of bandits led by an evil kung-fu abbot. Along the way, she finds help from a local drunken beggar named Fan Da-Pei (or, Drunk Cat). His character is one that would become a staple of the Hong Kong martial arts movie industry - the old drunk who’s always singing and sloppy and messy and gross, but is secretly the leader of a lost clan of martial artists, and a ridiculously proficient fighter when push comes to shove. I think it likely that in the Hong Kong of the 1970s and 80s, it was quite likely that people left the drunks in the bars alone, for fear that hassling them might provoke a lethal barrage of kung-fu kicks and punches. And the drunks are always the good guys.

As the movie progresses, it relies on an impressive series of wire-aided fight scenes between Golden Swallow and the bandits, culminating with her showdown with the bandit leader Whiteface, while the drunken master takes on the evil abbot who is also his brother. Throughout, the film is part comedy, part musical, part drama, part romance, and all action. The story is very straightforward, while underlying themes run through the narrative. The major one, of course, is female empowerment. But it also touches on the idea of corruption through religion. This film is widely considered, in Asia, to be one of the best Hong Kong movies of all time, and it made a star out of Cheng Pei Pei and her drunken co-star, Yueh Hua. Their stars would continue to shine brightly in Hong Kong for years to come, and this film is as good today as it was when it was released.

Fans of kung-fu cinema might, just maybe, recognize Gordon Liu. Liu played Johnnie Mo, the leader of the Crazy 88 in Kill Bill Volume One. He also played the role of Pai Mei in Kill Bill Volume Two. This was Quentin Tarantino’s way of paying homage to one of the great actors and martial artists in the history of kung-fu cinema (as was his decision to cast Sonny Chiba as Hattori Hanzo). Liu has had a long and storied career in martial arts movies, and it is in no small part thanks to the film Heroes of the East. Which I believe was an inspiration for Kill Bill itself. A classic in the genre, Heroes of the East was one of the first Chinese movies to portray Japanese martial artists with respect, as noble and powerful warriors. Until then, the Japanese were merely convenient punching bags for the “superior” Chinese fighters.

Of course, Heroes of the East does not go so far as to say the Japanese could actually be better. Kung-fu student Ah To (Liu) is forced into an arranged marriage with a Japanese woman. She is beautiful and feisty, but insists on practicing Japanese martial arts around the house. This leads to a series of confrontations between the couple, which threaten their marital bliss. When she returns to Japan, intent on training harder on her fighting skills with various Japanese masters, it is for the purpose of becoming better so she can beat her husband and show him that Japanese styles are better. When he sends her a note, challenging her in these various fighting disciplines, it is for the purpose of finally ending their dispute. However, all these things get misinterpreted by all those around the couple, and before long Ah To finds himself in a tournament, fighting the seven top martial artists in all of Japan.

Now, this guy is a kung-fu student. A very good one, but still just a student. The idea that he could best all seven of these fighters - the best in their disciplines - judo, karate, katana, nunchaku, yari, sai, and ninjitsu. It’s fairly ridiculous. But at the time (1979), Chinese movies would not accept that their various styles (jian, three-section staff, Qiang, Butterfly swords, rope-dart and the always popular drunken style of kung-fu) could be defeated by even the most powerful of Japanese adversaries. These fight scenes are played for drama, for comedy, for action and for really cool stunts, all of which are expertly handled.

The standard themes in these films are explored - Ah To is emasculated by his martial artist master wife, there is comedy to be derived from looking at women’s boobs, there are sound effects at nothing, like when swords go through the air and make a metallic “swooshing” noise. The various styles matching up against the other styles. And the always-popular and influential “drunken boxing” style of kung-fu, a style which Ah To has to learn overnight, in a scene that is as funny as anything in a kung-fu film. Heroes of the East is a classic most of us here in North America have never even heard of, and it will be released on DVD June 24th by Alliance Films.

It’s a Boy Girl thing comes out tomorrow, June 24th, from Alliance Films. It’s a teen comedy with a familiar plot twist. The high school all-star quarterback and the really nerdy girl who lives next to him somehow switch bodies. And so now the nerdy girl learns all about being the football star, and the quarterback learns about being the nerdy girl, and they eventually fall in love with each other. Blah blah blah. These comedies are normally incredibly predictable, boring and painfully-PG. But there is good news here! This movie - is R-rated! There is nudity! And swearing! Maybe, just maybe, this one has a chance!

But NO! This is still the exact same movie as all the others. The smart chick who’s hotter than the head cheerleader, but no one sees it because she’s smart and nerdy and really into her grades and wants to go to Yale. The quarterback who can’t escape his destiny, the one who’s worried that this is all I’ll ever be! And even coming out of the mouths of people of different sexes, it’s still the same movie. And the hookup between the Shakespeare-reading hottie and the all-star athlete hottie at the end of the movie is the most painful cliche in high school teen comedies. I feel like screaming at the screen - Dude! It’s high school! You won’t be together for more than a year! It’s high school! This will not be the love of a lifetime here. You’re not going to get married. You are going to break up in college and sleep with everyone you meet. THAT is how this is going to work.

But the biggest sin this movie commits is not going all-out. It occupies some irritating middle ground between what could have been and what always is. If you’re going to show boobs and coarse language, and two hot people have switched bodies, go with it. Show the guy, in the hot babe’s body, playing with her boobs because he can. Show him hanging out in the girl’s locker room, looking at all the boobs. Show the girl “accidentally” grazing the boobs of the other hot chicks who are also naked. Show her (with her guy’s mind) trying to hit on a hot chick. Show the virginal, never-been-with-a-boy chick playing around with the new guy’s body, seeing how things work. Or reaching in a fascinated manner for other guys’ junk. There is potential for masturbation jokes, lesbian scenes, homosexual humour and general mayhem with actual useful nudity and the clever use of over-the-top profanity.

OK, this is the movie I’m seeing in my head. This is the movie I WANT to see. In fact, this may well be the movie I want to make. If you’re going to do a movie like this, go ALL OUT! Half-assing it is the worst thing you can do with the concept. And yet, this movie totally half-asses it. And it kills me. And it kills this movie. Samaire Armstrong is absolutely gorgeous, one of the hottest women in movies right now, and I assume that Kevin Zegers is some kind of gorgeous up-and-coming boy toy for the ladies. But that alone can’t be a reason to watch. And this movie doesn’t give you any other reason. So…don’t watch.

The first actor we see in The Spiderwick Chronicles (out June 17th from Paramount Home Entertainment) is David Stratharin. He is writing a book about creatures in our midst, beings that exist among us always, that we can’t see because they choose to remain hidden. Through his book, we catch glimpses of drawings of these creatures, but we don’t see enough of them to know what’s coming. Strathairn, you see, is Arthur Spiderwick, the man who discovered this realm existing in tandem with our own. And he recorded all the secrets of this realm in a giant book, the Spiderwick Chronicles. We learn fairly fast that this book was never meant to be read by anyone, ever, because reading it could bring about the end of the world as we know it. Of course, someone is clearly going to come by and read it anyway.

That someone is Freddie Highmore (Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), who actually appears as twins in the film. The two have very distinct personalities, and Highmore does an excellent job making sure that we always know which twin is which. Simon is a bookish, nerdy pacifist. His twin brother Jared, however, is the trouble-maker. The bad apple. The one kid the family doesn’t understand. Right away, we know Jared will be the star of the movie, because it’s always that kid who ends up being the star. The bookish intellectual is nowhere near as interesting as the angry rebel, we suppose. Jared’s anger seems to stem from several sources, like an absentee father, a sudden move to a new town and a new house. It must be summer, because the kids don’t have a new school or anything, and are allowed to roam about the giant house alone while their mom’s off at work.

Pretty soon, of course, Jared finds this book. And he opens it and reads it and unwittingly brings forces of evil down on his house and his family. His older sister is a fencer, which comes in handy when she has to slash up some goblins. His mother is never home during the film, so she is going to be in for a big surprise when she gets there. Simon rarely leaves the house, and when he discovers this world of goblins and evil-doers that exists right outside the door, he sets his brain to work devising defenses against the bad creatures. And Jared hits things, yells at his mom, hates the world and fights with his siblings, even in the middle of the most dire circumstances. Which becomes kind of annoying. Jared, through a lot of this movie, despite being the hero, is not very likeable. Highmore does a terrific job with the character, but he’s written in such a cliche’d “where’s may father? I HATE you” sort of way that it’s a little distracting.

Also irritating is the fact that the creatures have names we have already heard. We already know about goblins. We’ve heard of elves and griffins. We may well be familiar with those things. So why include things like that, and then make up three or four creatures of your own? I think the answer to that may well lie within the books. My youngest step-son tells me that the books are FAR different. I think what he means (if I understand correctly) is that the movie leaves out a lot of what is in the books in terms of detail. But then, what kids’ movie doesn’t? Eragon, Chronicles of Narnia, even How To Eat Fried Worms. They are all forced to skip large chunks of the story because of time constraints, and the challenge is keeping the story intact and understandable while trimming it to that hour-and-a-half running time.

And for the most part, the director, Mark Waters, does a good job of this. Not only does he get a high-calibre performance out of Freddie Highmore, he manages to craft a terrific alternate universe with charming and interesting characters, and he keeps the pace moving along briskly. The only time the movie slows down is when Jared has one of his distracting temper outbursts. It’s nice to see David Strathairn in a kids movie like this, his presence adds a certain amount of credibility to the whole proceeding. Also cool is the presence of Martin Short and Seth Rogen as the voices of two of the friendly creatures, and the very brief but very bizarre cameo from Nick Nolte. The Spiderwick Chronicles is one of the better movies aimed at kids around ten years old. It’s no classic, but it’s above-average. And when it comes to kids’ movies these days, that is certainly good enough.

The Flock is the first American effort from Hong Kong film maker Andrew Lau, who is famous for his excellent Infernal Affairs triolgy, the movies which were made into the Scorcese masterpiece The Departed.  However, with The Flock he falls a little short.  The movie is about Richard Gere, who is basically a parole officer for sex offenders.  When we meet him, he is being forcibly retired from his job, since he seems to have lost his mind a little bit.  He is going to be replaced by Claire Danes, and he’ll be teaching her the ropes before he’s done.  But he’s so over the edge that she is not only afraid of the sexual deviants with which they deal every day, she’s also afraid of Gere because he’s clearly a maniac.

When a girl goes missing, the two of them attempt to solve the crime, even though they are not the police, based on the sex offender registry and interviews of Gere’s “flock”, which is how he describes his group of criminals.  The people who took the girl appear to be targeting Gere himself, based on a clue they left just for him at the table where he always sits at the diner where he always goes.  They are sending HIM a message - but why him, why that message, what the abductors hope to gain from it - we never find out.  Why?  Who cares.  Here are some people doing awful things to other people.  Isn’t that awful?  Now let’s get to the end of the film.

Andrew Lau’s previous movies have been brilliant in their depiction of cops and cop culture, as action and drama intersect with double crosses and informants, and complex stories are made to seem much simpler.  However, in The Flock, he makes a fairly simple, straightfoward story seem much more complex than it has to be.  In the end, we get Gere being a tough-guy lunatic, Claire Danes crying a lot, and weird sexually deviant behaviour in rooms in the background.  And that’s about it.  The final scene with the abducted girl is tawdry and contrived, although it does convey an appropriate level of creepiness.

Oh, and one more thing - when you have the credits at the beginning of the movie, with the five main actors who are going to be in the film, and one of those actors is a name people will recognize (in this case Avril Lavigne), you have to understand that you are setting them up already.  Say you’re watching a film, and the first six names that flash at you include, say for the sake of argument, Christopher Walken.  And he appears for about four seconds, ten minutes into the movie.  And then you don’t see him again at all.  But at the end, when the mystery is unraveling, you kind of think to yourself - Christopher Walken got third billing in this movie…I bet he’s the killer…and of course you’d be right.  In this film, it doesn’t happen exactly that way, and it’s a little better done than that.  But still, the end came as absolutely no shock to me based on the opening credits and the rest of the movie.

The main problem with Jumper, as it is with most Hayden Christensen movies, is Hayden Christensen.  He is so wooden, he may as well be a totem pole.  Or Steven Seagal.  In this movie his love interest is Rachel Bilson, some girl who is famous from some TV show called The OC.  She is not a great actress, but compared to him she’s Greta Garbo and Meryl Streep rolled into one.  And then there’s Samuel L. Jackson, who will appear in just about anything ever, phoning it in as he does in the bad ones.  And this really is a bad movie.  The story is that Christensen is a “jumper”, some kind of person who can just disappear from where he is and reappear anywhere he likes.  He robs banks with this power, builds something of a playboy lifestyle, until finally he is tracked down by Jackson.  Jackson is a “palladin”, which is an organization?  A species?  A committee?  dedicated to tracking down and killing these “jumpers”.

Christensen escapes the first time, meets another “jumper”, finds out there are others like him, and finally meets his mother, Diane Lane, who abandoned him when he was a five-year-old.  Basically, the last hour of this movie is a cross-dimensional, all-over-the-world chase and escape involving the two jumpers and Jackson and the other palladins.  Which is all well and good, but I’d like a little more story.  Where do these “jumpers” come from?  Why do they exist?  Who are the palladins?  Why do they want to kill the jumpers?  How come the jumpers don’t always know that there are others like them?  Any back story at all would be nice, but there is none.  Zip.  All of this leads to a fairly mundane, inexplicable and silly conclusion after a mundane, inexplicable and silly movie.

But I kind of like it.  In a way, Jumper is delighfully idiotic.  The scenes where buses fly through time and space to emerge in the Arabian desert are insane.  The plot twists and the ideas that characters have and the complete lack of effort from Jackson and Lane are, in a way, hilarious.  The pointless and contrived involvement of Bilson, the unecessary high-school-bully scene, the wannabe heart-rending scenes with Christensen and his father…it all adds up to enough lunacy and idiocy and stupidity to make this movie somehow watchable through it’s mercifully short hour and a half running time.  I can’t say it’s a good movie without feeling a little nauseous, but I can say that you may well enjoy it.

Walk All Over Me is a Canadian film starring Leelee Sobieski and Tricia Helfer.  You can tell it’s Canadian by Minute Four, and you can tell nothing cool is going to happen by Minute Nine.  And you can tell you regret renting it by Minute Eleven.  And you can stop watching it right then and there.  The premise of the movie is that Leelee Sobieski is Alberta, a hot small-town teenage girl who runs away from home after getting into trouble with some thugs.  She runs to Vancouver, where she decides to hide out with Celine (Tricia Helfer), who is either a friend or a relative.  Or something.  Celine, you see, is a dominatrix.  And I know the nerds out there are excited already.  Tricia Helfer?  Dominatrix?  Yes…yes…and they are hosting Battlestar Galactica marathons in order to prepare themselves to watch this.

But you know what?  Tricia Helfer does not get naked.  Leelee Sobieski becomes a dominatrix too, but she also does not get naked.  Then why bother having the “dominatrix” theme in the movie at all?  Because it means that this way Sobieski gets to spend the entire movie in fishnets and cleavage-boosting bustiers and spiked heels on CFM boots.  And it also means that much of the film will take place in weird rooms, and people “not knowing what that weird helmet is for” becomes the standard punchline to jokes that were never told.  But there is almost no actual dominatrix action whatsoever, it’s just the clothes that appear in the film.  Which would be fine if you were making a porno, but this movie takes itself almost seriously.

It’s one of those crime capers where bad guys are after a good guy because they believe he stole some money, and bad guys capture good guys, and new guys get involved, and new guys capture bad guys, and bad guys trade good guys with new guys.  One of those.  But Canadian.  Obviuously Canadian.  And therefore painfully boring and not too good.  Perhaps the idea was that putting Sobieski and Helfer in boob-showing shirts and fishnets and short skirts and hooker boots would distract people from the lack of plot, the poor acting and the senseless story.  And, in a way, that DID actually work on me.  After all, how many times have I mentioned it in this review alone?  And the clothes and girls DID keep me watching past the eleven minute mark.  But by then I had seen everything, and I wished I had turned it off.  So there’s my advice to you.  Eleven minutes in.  Turn this off and watch a fishing show.