Cynical Cinema

If you are going to make a movie starring just one actor, you could do worse than Will Smith. I Am Legend is a movie concept that isn’t exactly new, it’s basically a remake of the old Charlton Heston post-apocalyptic film, The Omega Man. The film opens with a cameo from Emma Thompson, who plays a scientist on TV announcing a cure for cancer. I suppose we are to believe that whatever that cure was is the same thing that unleashed the virus that wiped out humanity. The next thing we know, it’s three years later and Will Smith is the only man left alive, and he tears around New York City in sports cars shooting at deer, who apparently now live right in the city with the humans. He is accompanied by his faithful dog, Sam, and he lives a fairly quiet life. He has set up mannequins in the local video store to appear as though there are people around, and he rents movies there every night. He has to make sure he is home by sundown, and then he sits there with his dog watching the films.

The reason, it becomes clear soon enough, that he has to be home by sundown each evening, is that not everyone has died. There are strange, mutated human beings living in the darkness. Like vampires, they die in the sunlight, and therefore the daylight hours are perfectly safe for Smith and the dog Sam. Like the volleyball in Castaway, Sam becomes a very human character in the film, like a child who can’t speak. He helps Smith with his work - which is, basically, finding a cure for the virus. Because he is immune to it himself, he uses his blood to try to cure the infected mutants, which he captures by means of snares and traps, the kind one might lay for rabbits as a third-grade boy scout. He then takes them back to his underground lab and injects them with…something…that might cure them. All very experimental, all very high-tech.

But of course, something has to go wrong. And I don’t want to divulge the end of the movie, so I won’t say exactly what it is that goes wrong. But I will say it involves mutants, since that seems obvious, and it involves Will Smith, since that too is obvious. He behaves, toward the end of the film, exactly the way I expect I would behave were I utterly alone save for a dog for three long years. There are some good action scenes, and the mutants are suitably scary. They do seem old-hat by now, however. We have seen many similar scary mutants in movies like Blade II, The Descent, 28 Days Later, and so forth. But they work, and they serve their purpose, so I really can’t complain.

There are some problems with the plot. How come his house still has electricity so many years after the world disappeared? How do his various cars seem to have an endless supply of gas? How come he has those massive steel doors protecting every possible entry into his house, yet the mutants can so easily break in at the appropriate moments? How do the mutants remember where he lives when the time comes? And how can he have the lights on in his house at night if he is afraid those mutants may discover where he lives? Furthermore, if his lab is in the basement of his house, how can daylight get down there to protect people from the mutants when the need arises? And most of those deer-in-the-city shots are very obviously (and therefore poorly) computer-generated.

All problematic, but in the end, irrelevant. As I said before, a movie with (basically) just one actor needs someone like Will Smith, who can make his way through scenes completely solo and still keep our attention. We enjoy this movie because we enjoy Will Smith, plain and simple. And despite the fact I have seen it many times before, despite the problems involved, I did indeed enjoy this movie.

Atonement is the story of love between a sock puppet and a stick figure. The sock puppet is played by James McEvoy, who has become the go-to guy when you need a young, attractive, possibly rough-around-the-edges but with a heart of gold guy to appear in a period piece. Keira Knightley plays the stick figure, the female love interest in this period piece, which tells a tale of a time when food did not exist, and what food there was, was kept away from Keira Knightley.

The film starts out in a familiar way, in that different people watching the same events perceive them differently. That difference in perception stems from the innate bias each character brings to the scene, and becomes a difference in truth as well. Specifically, a couple of scenes between McEvoy and Knightley that are observed by Knightley’s younger sister, played by Saoirse Ronan. Ronan is fantastic in the role that won her a nomination for best supporting actress at the Oscars this year. Her character, Briony Tallis, is actually played by three different actresses, including Vanessa Redgrave, who is terrific in her three minutes of screen time.

The first hour of the movie is fantastic, an hour that accentuates the distance between the characters by placing them all at great distances from each other in the country mansion in which they live and work. Briony Tallis intercepts a letter meant for her sister from McEvoy, and that begins a series of events that will destroy lives and crush romance. (By the way, this movie, and that letter, make the best use of the “c” word I have yet seen in a film.) The younger Tallis accuses McEvoy of a heinous act, one that we all know he did not commit. It remains unclear whether Briony knows, herself, that he didn’t, but we definitely know that she did not really see what she claims to have seen.

The second half of the movie becomes more conventional and boring in a period-piece sort of way, as McEvoy is released from prison directly into the army during World War II. There are some obligatory period-piece army scenes, and the lovers pine for each other from a distance as he gets evacuated from Dunkirk while she works as a nurse in a military hospital. This part of the movie (the second hour) sags immensely, and loses a lot of momentum. This part of Atonement could have been inserted in Becoming Jane, mid-way through, and no one would have blinked or realized it was a different movie. But the last three minutes redeem the movie almost entirely, as Vanessa Redgrave is magnificent as the older Briony, now a best-selling author, telling her tale and explaining the final result of her lie. Which the movie, with a running time of two hours and three minutes, is 51 percent excellent.

Atonement was nominated for best picture at the Oscars, and I think it was the least-deserving of the picks. Redgrave was more deserving of a best supporting actress nomination over Ronan, but Ronan is very good, and the new fresh face in Hollywood, so she will always get the nod over an elder Hollywood stateswoman. Atonement is good, but it is not Oscar-worthy. It’s just a well-done, well-written, well-acted period piece that will likely be forgotten in ten years. A far better choice for a nomination would have been either In The Valley Of Elah or Eastern Promises, two films that will likely have staying power and relevance far beyond what this one will manage.

Love In The Time Of Cholera is two and a half hours long. The tag line on the DVD box is “how long would you wait for love?” My answer is “not this long”. The movie is based on a novel of the same name by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and it takes place in South America. I have always wondered this about period pieces. If the characters are in a time and a place where they would logically be speaking Spanish, why then do they speak English with Spanish accents? It makes more sense that the movie would be in Spanish with English subtitles, or in regular English. Why try to do half-and-half? At least in The Hunt For Red October and movies like that, the movie begins in another language with subtitles, and moves seamlessly into English so that we can watch the movie in that language. Either way, in any language, this movie blows.

Javier Bardem plays a man who is denied his true love (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) as a young boy, and waits 51 years for the woman’s husband to die so he can go after his dream girl once again. In the meantime, he becomes the ultimate ladies man and romantic, and sleeps with six hundred and twenty-two women. On the plus side, we get to see many of their boobs. On the downside, this is two and a half hours of…not much. Benjamin Bratt plays the husband, and somehow his Spanish accent is kind of laughable. Also, because the movie takes place over 55 years, the stars have to get made up to look older and older as the movie goes on. Which sometimes works seamlessly, as it does with Bardem, and at other times looks like…well, makeup and fake moustaches, like with Bratt.

Predictable, and occasionally silly, Love In The Time Of Cholera is occasionally fun, sometimes painful, but mostly boring and slow. Javier Bardem is great, but why watch this movie when No Country For Old Men is out there? Stay away from this one, and rent No Country For Old Men again.

Asian cinema loves the Shakespeare. Akira Kurosawa based half his work on the works of the bard, most notably Ran (King Lear) and Throne Of Blood (Macbeth). And of course, Shakespeare borrowed heavily from others in terms of stories and structure, which means that his stories, and the Asian movies that accompany them, are hundreds of years old. He wrote a play called “Hamlet” that was based on the legend of Amleth, as told by the thirteenth century scholar Saxo Grammaticus. The latest movie from Alliance Films, The Legend of Black Scorpion, is a re-telling of Hamlet. Therefore, the story is about 800 years old, and it feels that way, as it should. Black Scorpion does not credit Grammaticus in the credits, but then, neither did Shakespeare.

The Legend of Black Scorpion features the incomparable Zhang Ziyi, one of the most beautiful women in all of Asian cinema. (You might remember her from such films as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, House of Flying Daggers and Hero.) One complaint I have with this film is that she doesn’t fight. I love watching her fight. The Emperor of China has been murdered by his own brother. That brother has usurped the throne, and taken the former Emperor’s wife as his own. The old Emperor’s son has been banished, since he is the only one who could topple the current empire and lay a legitimate claim to the throne. But when that young man fights through traps and assassins to reach the kingdom, things get all weird. And Shakespearean.

You see, this young man was once in love with the Empress. He wanted her for himself, but his father married her instead, and now she lives with the uncle who murdered his dad. They seem to still be in love, but there is another woman at the palace that he runs around with while he is waiting for his chance to take the throne, and, by extension, his step-mother. And aunt. Hmmm. How very Shakespeare. This nephew is an actor more so than he is a fighter, and he puts on plays for the amusement of the court, plays that are pointed and directed at his murderous uncle. In true Shakespearean style, these plays are carried out with all the performers wearing masks. There is some great dialogue, especially a speech about wearing a mask and acting and swordfighting. Which is really what the movie is all about.

Well, that and jealousy, betrayal, and the inability to contain one’s inner nature. There are some really cool fight scenes. Not as cool as the ones in Hero, but above-average, even for Hong Kong martial arts cinema. We are not sure whether or not we like the Empress, at least until the end of the film, and even then it’s ambiguous. There are relationships between other characters that add a lot to the movie, especially the relationship between Yin (one of the Emperor’s advisors) and his son. It reminded me a lot of the relationship between Robert The Bruce and his father in Braveheart. The old man wanting to be diplomatic, the young man headstrong and uncompromising. And yet, willing to defend his father to his last breath.

And there are a lot of last breaths in Legend of Black Scorpion. After all, it’s Hamlet. Anyone who has any knowledge of Hamlet or of Shakespearean tragedy can probably guess how this film is going to end, so it really won’t come as a surprise. But I would caution against skipping out too soon, before the credits begin to roll. The final shot in this movie is magnificent, a beautiful shot that caps everything so well it would be worth watching even if the movie was bad. But it isn’t. The Legend of Black Scorpion will not end up being a Hong Kong classic, but with good swordfights, solid acting, great dialogue and the incredible ability that Chinese directors seem to have of using colours effectively, it is well worth renting.

The Kite Runner was one of the best books of the past few years, and now it is a great movie. If you have read the book, you know what takes place in the movie, and make no mistake, it is devastating. That being said, it is definitely worth watching. A young boy named Amir lives in Afghanistan with his father and their servants, one of whom is his best friend Hassan. They do everything together, including the big kite competition. Once a year, every child in Kabul gets a kite with razor wire and competes to cut the wires of the other kites. The one who is left at the end of the day is the champion. This is a big honour, and Amir is eager to impress his father Baba, who seems to favour Hassan for being more manly. Hassan is the best kite runner in Kabul, the boy who always brings home the big prize - the last kite to be cut.

On this particular day, however, a horrific event will change their lives forever. Hassan, who is Hazara, is assaulted by a group of older, racist boys who hate all Hazara. Amir witnesses the assault, but does nothing to prevent it. He is so ashamed of himself that he attempts to drive Hassan and his family out of the house. Many years go by, and Amir and Baba flee Afghanistan when the Russians invade. They make it to Pakistan and eventually to Cailfornia where Amir graduates from school and gets married. A phone call from Afghanistan plunges him back into the life he left behind, when Rahim Khan, a friend of the family, calls Amir and tells him “there is a way to be good again”.

Amir returns to Afghanistan, now run by the Taliban, a brutal regime that includes public stonings, racial intolerance, and the worst kind of oppression. His mission is to rescue a young boy, Hassan’s son, from the clutches of one of his childhood tormentors. I won’t explain the details of that rescue attempt, because I hope people will watch this movie and I don’t want to play spoiler. The only spoiler here is this: This movie will break your heart. It is devastating and sad and incredibly powerful, as is the book. If you choose one over the other, choose the book, because at least you can put it down for a while.

The other reason to choose the book is that so much more can be included in a novel than in a film. While reading, you understand all of Amir’s emotions, all of his thoughts and innate prejudices, and you sympathize with him a little more. In the movie, although he is just a child, you watch his actions and you hate him. If the movie was able to explain a little more in depth what his motivations were, it would be a little easier to stomach. You might still hate Amir, at least when he is a child, but at least you understand a little more. But The Kite Runner is a very good movie, and even without that extra detail it is an incredibly powerful piece of cinema. The performances by the children are outstanding, especially Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada as the unfortunate Hassan. I certainly hope these kids get a chance to appear in other movies, perhaps movies that aren’t so soul-crushing.

A movie based on a Stephen King novel is not always an indication that good things will happen. Most of us remember most of the movies based on his books as complete train wrecks. Dreamcatcher, Needful Things, Maximum Overdrive, Cujo…all awful films. There have been only two really successful movies based on King’s works - The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. (Although I didn’t like the Green Mile much, at least it wasn’t Graveyard Shift.) Both of those films were directed by Frank Darabont, who seems to do his best work when he collaborates with Stephen King. (He was also the screenwriter for The Fly 2 and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Which were as bad as Needful Things.)

The Mist is their third film together, and it does rise a little bit above the other King movies, but does not approach the quality of say, Shawshank. The biggest problem with the movie seems to be, remarkably, a disconnect between the writer and the director. Stephen King is successful because he understands that the scariest thing in the world is other people, far more so than any monsters or spirits or bugs that might hide in the mist. But Darabont is so intent on showing the dark side of human nature and the evil that resides within men that he is too anxious to show it. The premise of the story is that a mist descends over a small town, and there are horrible creatures that hide within that mist and kill people when they venture too far into that mist. A bunch of people are trapped inside the local grocery-hardware store, and they begin to self-destruct. Apparently, as far as this film is concerned, these people are so ready to turn on each other that they do so within one minute of the mist descending. They are instantly transformed into idiots, maniacs and evil-doers, in the time it would take normal people to finally understand there was anything wrong.

And am I the only one who notices that Aaron Eckhardt and Thomas Jane are the same person? Jane is the star of The Mist, a father who is protecting his young son at all costs against the creatures outside, and more importantly, the religious fanatic nutjobs inside. He is, for all intents and purposes, Aaron Eckhardt with less smiling. They are the same person, and I will not believe otherwise until I see them in the same movie together. In the same scene. I like Jane, and in this film, he is pretty good. So is Toby Jones, as a supermarket employee who looks like Andy Warhol but is able to channel his inner Rambo when the situation calls for bloodshed and firearms. This occurs almost right away, and the first monster attack comes early. It isn’t terribly scary, but then the monsters aren’t supposed to be the scary part of the story. It is the people.

The problem is with the people. Their conflicts feel forced, since they seem to go against what one would assume about human nature. No matter how much your neighbour might hate you, if you are put in a situation where creatures are attempting to eat you, you would try to get along with that neighbour, no? And if thirty people tell you that something in the mist is eating people, your first reaction is not likely to be “this must be an elaborate practical joke being played on me by everyone”. It would more likely be something like “there might well be things in the mist that want to eat me”. So the whole human-emotions-at-their-basest theme becomes a little comic bookish. There are also some cheesy, irritating speeches about the nature of humanity, which seem to have a greater purpose, but nothing really rings true.

The people in the store have been trapped there for two days. Two days, and already they have split into two factions. The reasonable people who want to work to get out of there, and the far larger group of people who listen to the horrible bible-thumping religious zealot woman and decide to sacrifice children. This could work if it was done better. But it isn’t. The Mist has two things going for it. First of all, it does what good horror movies are supposed to do. Which is to make some kind of social and political commentary out of the horror. That comment here is basically that if you scare people enough, you can get them to do anything and follow anyone. I wonder what that’s directed toward? And secondly, the ending. Although it doesn’t save the whole movie, it certainly comes as a surprise, and you can definitely chalk it up among the most shocking endings to a movie.

One more thing - if you’re going to have creatures from “another dimension” that “cross over into our world”, wouldn’t you expect those creatures to be something cool that you’ve never seen before? If they were just giant locusts and pterodactyl-men and monster spiders, wouldn’t you think someone had created them here? Just a thought.

When The Golden Compass was released into theatres, it created a gigantic controversy due to it’s purported anti-Catholic overtones. All kinds of right-wing Catholic wing-nut groups protested the movie, demanded that their congregations not attend, and complained bitterly about it in the media. Which, of course, increased the box office immensely. And the fact that it was still a dud at the box office indicates that had all these ridiculous groups just shut up, it would have disappeared from the public eye, made virtually NO money, and we wouldn’t even remember it today. Today being the day it is released on DVD, courtesy of Alliance Films. And I couldn’t really watch it without thinking about this anti-Catholic controversy. That was all I could think about. What are they so angry about? Where is the problem coming from?

Have you ever noticed that what you think of yourself makes you especially sensitive? Like, if you think you might be a dirty slut, you get extra angry when someone calls you a dirty slut? Or if you’re fat and you hate being overweight, then you flip out when people call you fatso? (This doesn’t happen to me - I don’t mind being overweight at all.) My personal hot-button is when people call me pretentious. Because, on some level, I am afraid that I might actually be pretentious. So, there must be something in this movie that the Catholic elite see in themselves that makes them crazy. I mean…crazier. So…what is it?

OK. This movie is about a parallel universe to our own. This parallel universe is run and overseen by a mysterious, evil religious-type institution called The Magesterium. Alright, they’re a religious-type organization…so maybe the Catholic church sees a bit of themselves in that. Perhaps they see themselves in the repressive, thought-police style administration run by this group. And maybe they think the hats and chains are reminiscent of their own. Or perhaps they saw the nazi-style uniforms of the soldiers who spoke German and said “oh my God! That’s us!” Actually, I made that up. Hardcore Catholics never say “oh my God”. But if this is what made them sit up and take notice, they must be a really self-loathing bunch, dem Catholics.

And the thing is, this isn’t a very good movie. It’s OK, it does the job, kids will probably like it alright. But it isn’t as good as it should be. As I watched it, I couldn’t help but think of a movie that was even worse - Sky Captain And The World of Tomorrow. Remember? Angelina Jolie, Gwenyth Paltrow, Jude Law, in a movie full of ancient bi-planes…in the future? The Golden Compass may well have been done by the same set designer, because it has the same ancient-future vibe to it. There are soldiers who are clearly Nazi-inspired. There are futuristic, long-distance high-tech zeppelins and dirigibles and hot-air balloons. There are flying machines that are like ancient Chinese junks with wings and balloons. It’s a bizarre past-future world in the present. And it definitely looks amazing, but it’s fairly irritating.

There seem to be no original ideas here at all. The characters have names like Azrael (Daniel Craig), which had me waiting for a while for the appearance of Gargamel, who never materialized. Another (evil character played by Nicole Kidman) is named Mrs. Coulter. Hmm…maybe that’s what has the zealots up in arms. A vixen who embodies all that is evil in the world called…Coulter? Perhaps a reference to Ann? Well, in the movie her first name is Marisa. We see it written down. Everyone in this alternate universe has “daemons” walking around with them. There is a group of rebels called the “Gyptians”. So…Egyptians without the E. These “daemons” are like our souls here on Earth, only they are manifested in animal form and walk around beside people. Which is pretty cute some of the time. But why “daemons”? Why couldn’t the author of this series of books have come up with a new name for them? I’ve heard of daemons before. These aren’t them. Anyway.

This is the second movie this year that teams Nicole Kidman with Daniel Craig. And, like in The Invasion, Daniel Craig has very little to do. He shows up at the beginning as the uncle of the little girl (Dakota Blue Richards) who is the star. The Magesterium tries to poison him, because he has discovered something that they want to keep hidden from the rest of the world. But Richards saves him, and then he goes off on a journey. And we don’t hear from him again. Then there is a really strange revelation toward the end of the movie, and I still have no idea whether it was for real or a ploy on the part of the evil people. But you see, this is actually the first film in what I imagine will be a forty-one part series, and as such there are many loose ends when it’s over. Also, this is the second movie this year to team Daniel Craig with Eva Green (you might remember Casino Royale). And neither of them gets enough screen time.

A few good scenes (like the polar bear fight) and a few great appearances by some cool actors (Sam Elliott, Christopher Lee), and an amazingly vivid set design make The Golden Compass pretty cool to look at. And I expect the series to get better. Dakota Blue Richards is very good as the young lead actress. More Sam Elliott, more Daniel Craig, and more Eva Green could really liven this thing up. But as it stands with this first movie, it ends up being much less than the sum of it’s parts, and it’s kind of boring. The best thing The Golden Compass has going for it is it’s message. The idea that kids need to learn to think for themselves, that independent thought is essential, and that not all authority is good authority. Hmmm…maybe that’s what got all those Catholics so riled up!