My reviews of movies in reverse chronological order (i.e. most-recent-first) of date-of-review (which is not necessarily the same as the date-watched).
Title: The Human Stain
Review written: 19 October 2003
What if you were a black man by race and birth, but sufficiently light skinned to pass as a white? Would you take the opportunity to let the misassumption be, and slowly make the transition into a different life (one that must be kept secret from even your most loved ones, and one that requires you to sever all ties with your roots).
The Human Stain is based on Philip Roth's allegory of a man's struggle between individual advancement and allegiance to family and ancestry. Director Robert Benton and a strong cast of actors: Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, and particularly young Wentworth Miller (in the role of the young black man turning Jew) deliver excellent performances.
Despite the seriousness of the themes, the movie injects surprisingly smart touches of humor sandwiched between the tenser moments. The film manages to keep the secret of its protagonist hidden until the second half---there are enough possibilities for the audience to pursue before the reveal in the plot.
The movie also examines the nature of the class divide that keeps people confined to interactions amongst their cultural and class peer group---sometimes intentionally, but mostly implicitly. Thus, even the most liberal-minded person is scandalized by the phenomenon of class miscegenation of a highly educated scholar and professor of classics at a University developing a romance with a cleaning woman. Despite the fact that the relationship is consensual, the small-town community is unable to accept that love, even raw sexual love, can blossom and thrive between such disparate people with different life experiences.
Like Roth's writing, the movie works on many levels and makes for interesting watching. Well worth a visit to the theaters.
Title: Terminator 3
Review written: 12 October 2003
I had originally decided to not support the Nazi-scumbag, woman-molestor, Motherfucking Motherfucker "Governor" Ahnohld by spending even a single cent to see Terminator 3, but what the hey: the movie did feature a brief scene with Kristanna Loken naked.
T3 retreads old territory and says nothing remarkably new or interesting. The action and chase scenes feel contrived, the editing choppy and disorienting (have moviemakers learned nothing from The Matrix series?!?!?), and Ahnohld's one-liners written more as self-referential auto-parodic-homage than as providing meaningful information in the plot.
Yeah, Skynet gets loose and unleashes judgement day, and now it is up to humans led by John Connor to fight the battle against the machines. T3 also leaves the barn door wide open for sequels (which will certainly happen since Ahnohld cannot hope to succeed in politics, and will probably find the movie set a better venue for his groping and gang-banging than the state legislature).
Give this movie a budget theater visit (even then, only if the budget theater is really really really budget) or else wait for it to play on TV reruns.
Title: Intolerable Cruelty
Review written: 12 October 2003
It is beyond question that the Coen Brothers have gotten "soft" over the years. None of their recent movies (specifically, the ones since Fargo) comes anywhere close to matching the darkly comedic spiciness of Blood Simple or the ping-pong verbal style of The Hudsucker Proxy.
That said, Intolerable Cruelty does the usual Coen Brothers thing: take a well-mined plot (in this case, the battle of the sexes in the arena of matrimony and alimony) and give it their own little touch of comedy and twist.
George Clooney plays high-powered divorce lawyer Massey who spurns love in personal life, and wins seemingly impossible divorce cases in court for his clients. Just when he seems to be riding high, he bumps heads with Catherine Zeta-Jones's Marylin, a wronged wife seeking separation and riches from her philandering husband. Massey wins the case but falls madly in love with Marylin, prompting her to hatch an elaborate plot to get back at the lawyer scumbag. After a seesaw of point-counterpoint and advantage-deuce, the two "lovebirds" reconcile and live happily ever after.
The movie features a superb supporting cast (including Geoffrey Rush and Billy Bob Thornton), smart dialogue, slapstick interludes between tightly written plot evolution, and provides a good couple of hours of enjoyment.
And, of course, we have Catherine Zeta-Jones---enough reason to watch the movie even if none of the rest of the above were true.
Title: Kill Bill: Volume 1
Review written: 12 October 2003
Kill Bill is Quentin Tarantino's homage to the revenge Western by way of Kurosawian samurai epics.
The basic story is simple enough: Deadly assassins working for the mysterious "Bill" kill an entire wedding party in Texas, but fail to kill The Bride. After a 4 year coma, she wakes up with the burning desire for revenge on her attackers, and systematically sets out to destroy them in the most stylistically brutal way imaginable.
The tale of revenge and vigilante justice for personal assault in a staple of the American Western movie: the best example probably being the classic Once Upon a Time in the West where the 4 hour long movie is mere prelude to the final 2 second shootout between Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda.
The tradition of Eastern martial arts revenge movies features one additional element: the righteous avenger's training and slow burn as he or she works up the metaphorical ladder of villains before reaching the big boss.
Tarantino seemlessly integrates the two elements into a truly contemporary classic of martial arts revenge. We see people walking around the streets of Tokyo carrying a motherfucking huge samurai sword as if this were the most natural thing in the world (not unlike people in Westerns walking around with guns and bullet belts that seem to be an integral part of their costumes).
We see martial artistry that is breathtakingly amazing. We see stylized violence and brutality that brings tears of joy into the eyes of the viewer---as when the trunk of a decapitated body emits a geyser of blood as it writhes to its demise.
Kill Bill: Volume 1 is an exemplar of the power of movies (as I was watching it, I was thinking how wonderful it would be if this kind of vengeance could be exacted on Motherfucking Motherfuckers). The thrill one feels watching this movie is evidence for a deep and primal human need for, not "violence" as such, but "righteous justice", inflicted on criminals. The modern legal system has far distanced the commission of a crime from the punishment (if at all) of the criminal; we need such movies to keep reminding us why punishment is far more important than mere correction or rehabilitation.
Uma Thurman (as The Bride) and Lucy Liu (as O-ren Ishii, one of Bill's assassins) give excellent performances as duelling fighters whose devotion to the purity of their fighting styles is matched only by their single-minded pursuit of their enemy.
I am eagerly waiting for Kill Bill: Volume 2 when we see The Bride fulfill the title of the series, i.e. kill Bill.
Title: Bubba Ho-Tep
Review written: 20 September 2003
While Imhotep may have been the original Mummy, he merely confined his terrorizing to the Nile Valley with a few occasional forays into the suburbs of London.
Bubba Ho-Tep, Imho's third cousin removed by second marriage, on the other OTOH hand, has managed to make his way to Texas after being stolen from a travelling museum by a couple of redneck bubbas.
Now, Bubba Ho-Tep is free from his confining spells, but needs to absorb the soul-energy of humans to regain his full strength. What better way and place to do it than attack geezers at a Texas rest home---eating up humans who will never be missed and are expected to die soon anyway.
The only people who can stop him now are: Elvis "The King" Presley (who had earlier swapped identities with an impersonator and is thus still alive while the imitator bust a blood vessel squeezing out a loaf on the porcelain throne), and President Kennedy (with sand packed into his skull to fill up the holes left by the missing brain matter, and his skin dyed black to keep him incognito).
The premise, plot, and execution of the movie Bubba Ho-Tep are hilariously ridiculous from start to finish. Bruce Campbell plays Elvis (impersonator), while Ossie Davis is JFK. Each of them plays their roles absolutely straight with no hint of "nudge-nudge wink-wink".
Were it not the fact that Elvis and JFK are fighting an evil mummy in Texas, this would be a horror B-movie. But with "The King" and the Prez, what we have is a great comedy.
Title: Robotrix
Review written: 23 August 2003
A hilarious spoof of the Terminator and Robocop series, Robotrix combines all the great elements of a guy movie: ridiculous sci-fi plot, lots of fast-paced kung-fu action, brutal violence, and hot, naked babes galore.
In what passes for a plot, an evil scientist melds his mind into the body of a robot and terrorizes the populace. To combat him, a good scientist (and babe) uses two androids (one of whom is a mind-meld of a slain policewoman), and a bunch of incompetent police-doofuses (who provide the comedic distraction).
Along the way, the android babes show off their vast array of assets and skills, and, oh, also their fighting abilities.
Non-stop fun from start to finish.
Title: Open Range
Review written: 12 August 2003
Kevin "Moonpope" Costner continues to baffle the human mind. Without fail, he has landed crap-bomb after crap-bomb, each succeeding movie an excresence of such staggering incompetence that one does not even know where or how to criticize them.
And in so doing, Costner will provide fodder for film school students who will spend sleepless nights and waking nightmares trying to pinpoint what exactly went wrong, so horribly wrong, with Costnerian cinema.
Open Range is about Costner yet again saving the world---this time as a gun-slinging cowboy on the open range, with hot babe Annette Benning lusting after him from the get go. Apart from a fantastic performance by Robert Duvall, the movie is a train-wreck of groaning cliches, and stupid melodrama, punctuated by a few moments of deliciously brutal violence.
I would much rather have had the sap and syrup taken out completely, and watched a movie along the lines of Unforgiven. Alas, such is not to be when the Moonpope is on the rampage.
It is impossible to recommend against a Costner movie. Go see it if only to weep at the comparative wonderfulness of Gigli.
Title: American Wedding
Review written: 29 July 2003
Perhaps anticipating that this would be the final serving of masturbatory pie, the makers of American Wedding, installment 3 of the American Pie series pull out all stops and go for some of the most disgusting, tasteless, and non-stop humor.
Blowjobs in posh restaurants, pooch-humping (or so it would seem), Saturday Night Fever buffoonery in gay bars, bacherlor party gone bad, naked strippers, pubic haircut, doggie poop chocolate truffles, and grandma-screwery, just to mention the very best of the highlights.
Obviously, those who did not enjoy the first two movies in this series, or do not like Farrelly brothers' movies should just go rent Tea with Mussolini and get stuffed. The rest of the discerning populace must get ready to throw rice at the grand finale party.
Bravo!!
Title: Uptown Girls
Review written: 24 July 2003
If I were a kind and charitable person (which I am not), I could write a review about the parallel's and perdiculars between last year's About a Boy and this year's Uptown Girls. How, for example, on the one hand we have Hugh Grant, a Brit, and on the other, Brittany Murphy, a bitch. How, for example, each movie is about precocious children and infantile adults finding love and happiness and balance in their lives. But sod it!!
Uptown Girls is: shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
Brittany "bitch" Murphy: die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die.
Wyoming "Twerp" Fanning: die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die.
Uptown Girls is without question the worst movie of 2003.
Hard as it is for even me to believe, I hate Brittany Murphy more than I hate Da Gwyneth!!
Title: Lara Croft Tomb Raider 2: Cradle of Life
Review written: 22 July 2003
The two redeeming qualities of the first Tomb Radier movie were that: (1) it never took itself seriously, and (2) never let up on the pace of action and adventure. This is what made watching Devilinia Moody a bit tolerable.
Now, as the summer of sequels marches on, we get to see Jan "Twister" De Bont show us why some cinematographers should never get into the director's seat. Cradle of Life is unbearable---even with Moody's super-tight dresses that might as well not have been there, since they leave just about nothing to the imagination.
The pacing of the movie is inexplicably, bewilderingly uneven: just when you are mentally gearing yourself up for a new adventure, you have to sit through minutes of ridiculous exposition and f'd up melodrama.
"Lady" Lara, not content with destroying the temples of Angkor Wat, now goes off on a mission to destroy ancient Chinese treasures. Even Bruckheimer blows up only cars and buildings.
And in case you are wondering, the so-called cradle of life is Pandora's box---hahaha, how's that for a joke. I would gladly have opened the damned thing and unleashed unending torment on the world if only it would have prevented this utter waste of film from ever assaulting theaters.
Title: Johnny English
Review written: 15 July 2003
It takes the British to embody the paradoxical extremes of a stiff upper lip and an obsessive fascination with potty humor that would give Freud wet dreams.
Rowan Atkinson, of "Mr.Bean" fame, stars in this spoof of the James Bond legacy. He is the titular Johnny English, a British secret service agent so thoroughly clumsy and incompetent that he is, literally, the very last man the MI6 would pick for a mission.
Unfortunately, a nasty terrorist attack does kill of all other agents, and English is forced to rise to the occasion: regaling the audiences with both the physical humor of Bean, and the verbal wordplay so characteristic of Brit comedy.
John Malkovich, as a power-mad Phwenchy, is the villian who tries to get himself crowned King of English by kidnapping the Queen's pooch. English saves the English (hahahaha) from this ignominious fate of frommaging froggery by getting himself crowned instead, but only after he has bitch-slapped the Bishop of Canterbury in front of the entire nation.
Johnny English admirably succeeds in its goal: to provide 90 minutes of escapist humor while having no pretentions whatsoever. If only more movies would aim so high.
Title: Together
Review written: 5 June 2003
Directory Chen Kaige's movie Together is a tribute to musical prodigy---and its almost alien obsessiveness with excellence.
Xiaochun is a young lad with an amazing talent for playing the violin. His father, Cheng, puts together some money, and the pair of them leave for Beijing, trying hard to mask their country bumpkin ways and trying harder to get Xiaochun enrolled in the conservatory.
As the young boy learns about music from multiple teachers, he also learns about life, love, and the importance of family. Even though he is offered to represent his teacher in an international music extravaganza, he chooses to play his finest concerto for his father and for the sacrifices Cheng has made for his son.
Given that such a story necessarily demands a certain level of cheesy sentimentality and milking drama, Together is a well-acted, well-directed, and well-watchable movie. The role of Liu Xiaochun is played by real-life prodigy Yun Tang (whose violin playing provides the soundtrack for the film).
A pleasant, light-hearted movie.
Title: The Matrix Reloaded
Review written: 18 May 2003
The Big Bang ends in a Big Crunch which leads to a new Big Bang, ad infinitum. Apple uses a Cray to design the next Apple; Cray uses an Apple to design the next Cray. Programs sow the seeds of not only their own destruction, but also the precursors to the next improved version of themselves.
While The Matrix explored the post-apocalyptic future of humans vs. computers from the perspective of time's arrow, the 2nd movie in the installment, The Matrix Reloaded, emphasizes time's cycle.
We meet Neo, Morpheus, Trinity, and a new cast of characters from Zion. Neo is more aware of his powers inside the matrix and Morpheus is anticipating the prophesized battle with the computers. However, we soon learn that the seemingly unified world of software is quite fragmented. Programs that were formerly agents and sentinels become renegade viruses infecting the system; different programs work seemingly at cross-purposes: with some actually helping humans in their "fight" against the matrix. When complexity reaches a certain level, chaos seems inevitable.
Is The One really saving the world, or is it all part of a larger meta-control the matrix uses to renew itself---fully anticipating the emergence of free-floating human minds and making arrangements for one of them to emerge as the savior of the world, only to allow the matrix to learn from this mind to build its next version.
Agent Smith has gone loco, and cloned himself to excess. The oracle is herself a matrix program. Smith and Neo seem to share a strange new connection from the time of their conflict in the first movie. How will this all end?
The much anticipated sequel does deliver on its special effects (although, this time there is much motion capture and animated characters; which is not quite spectacular as wire-work kungfu), and like a big dram doughnut with cream on top, keeps us hungry for more in the concluding The Matrix Revolutions.
That said, the extended running time of the 2nd and 3rd movies (4+ hours in toto) has probably given the Wachowski brothers merely the freedom to waste time in needless exposition and fluff. We see too much of Zion, too many human characters, too many human emotions, and not enough of the magical fascination and mind-blowing conception of the first movie.
The Matrix is the greatest movie ever made. Reloaded, by itself, is an average movie. I am hoping that the sedateness of this movie is merely a tactical move by the brothers to heighten the climax of Revolutions. We are now at the crossroads in the history of the Universe. Let us see if the trilogy can become the greatest of its kind ever.
Title: The Shape of Things
Review written: 10 May 2003
Eric Rohmer is now making English films. That is the impression one gets from watching The Shape of Things, a movie that doesn't just show, but proudly wears its stage-play antecendents.
After a couple of mellow digressions in Nurse Betty and Possession, director Neil LaBute brings back the venom that made his earlier films In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors such delights to watch.
The movie is adapted from LaBute's play, and features just 4 main characters. There is no background music except for Elvis Costello's songs in the interstices between scenes. The silence itself is so unusual that the first few minutes of the movie feel uncomfortable as the mind that is so used to blaring stereophonic auditory assault in regular Hollywood fare adjusts to isolated dialogue.
Paul Rudd plays Adam, a college chump with no girlfriend, who finds himself (the initially unbelievingly skeptical) object of affection of the gorgeous MFA grad student Eve(lyn), played by Rachel Weisz.
Evelyn, over the next few weeks, executes a complete Pygmalionic makeover of Adam. At the end of the semester, Adam has not only made the transformation into a hunka-hunka-burning-love, he has also more or less alienated his only other friends in college, Jenny (Gretchen Mol) and Phillip (Fred Weller).
Then the axe falls. Adam, Jenny, and Phillip find that Evelyn (if that is even her real name) has used Adam as her human clay mould in which to craft her thesis project---the thesis that anyone can be manipulated with enough offerings of sex and cajoling into doing pretty much anything.
The movie leaves us there, without offering any solace and yet without portraying either of the main characters as particularly evil or particularly deserving of such psychological abuse.
In addition to reversing the gender roles of In the Company of Men, LaBute also makes two superb casting decisions: Fred Weller, who was the target of female ill-treatement in The Business of Strangers (that other movie which was compared to In the Company of Men modulo gender-reversal), does a great job of playing the cocksure jock Phillip. The other brilliant piece of casting, strangely enough, is Rachel Weisz, who is no stranger to misandrist movies (having starred in Beautiful Creatures) and who produces this movie with LaBute.
Fans of LaBute will find this another brilliant and disturbing movie from a director who lays bare the modern human condition. Others might swear off dating.
Title: Anger Management
Review written: 10 May 2003
Adam Sandler plays a good-natured, sweet-hearted chump, only this time he is unable to express his anger even when blatantly mistreated.
His girlfriend, Marisa Tomei, fed up with his wussiness, plans for him to get enrolled in an "anger management" course run by the inimitable Jack Nicholson.
What follows is a celebrity walk-on filled, hilarious, silly, buddy-buddy bonding road trip movie where Nicholson and Sandler play off each other with superb ease.
In spite of the fact that the movie is not to be taken seriously, and perhaps because of that fact, Anger Management ends up being an enjoyable flick; a quiet little snack before the summer movie season rushes in over us.
Title: Basic
Review written: 28 March 2003
Back to Basics, indeed.
Action auteur John McTiernan's movie Basic is a smart, slick homage to both the hyper-subjective point-of-view puzzles of Rashomon and The Usual Suspects as well to the whodunit action-adventure-mystery thriller genre of movies.
Given that audiences have seen almost every permutation and combination of story reversals in a plot where the goal is to find who killed whom, McTiernan gives us not one, not two, not three, but 4 different stories, all in quick succession.
John Travolta once again delivers an excellent performance as a US ranger called in from undercover DEA work to investigate a particularly disturbing mutiny and mutual gun-battles among a corp of recruits on a training exercise in Panama. Almost everyone who went on the exercise is missing, presumed dead, and the 2 cadets who do make it out tell completely different tales about who went renegade and why. What is more, everyone in the exercise group seems to have had a shady past, questionable associations, and motive for murder.
After the second story twist, one merely has to sit back, stop looking for internal inconsistencies or plot holes, and simply enjoy a director and writer having fun turning the genre on its head and getting, how shall we say it, basic. A very enjoyable flick.
Title: Tears of the Sun
Review written: 7 March 2003
Tears of the Sun should have been titled Saving Dr.Quinn, Medicine Woman. Bruce Willis, having saved the world in many films in the past, now comes to save Africans from Africans.
On the one hand, the centuries of bloodshed, ethnic hatred, tribal warfare, and genocide that have been going on in Africa is difficult to summarize in any movie, and always runs the risk of oversimplification and cliche.
But, here, we have a 2hour long spectacle of Monica Belluci showing off her magnificent tits in the midst of the tropical jungle, while trying hard to avoid rebel armies and trying even harder to speak a sentence of English without stumbling all over it. But, she does look gorgeous. Mama mia!! That was my only consolation in this film.
Like Saving Private Ryan, Bruce Willis, in Saving Dr.Quinn makes the transition from a detached soldier to a concerned humanitarian; a character arc that has been explored to death in far too many movies.
Give this movie a budget theater visit, if only to see Monica Belluci manage to wear an extremely tight shirt with the top 3 buttons off, as she renders medical assistance to refugee children---gives a whole new meaning to bedside manner.
Title: Bringing Down the House
Review written: 7 March 2003
Bringing Down the House is a reasonably funny movie; only, all the funny scenes and lines were in the trailer.
The movie straddles the dangerously thin lines between comedy, racism, and slapstick.
Steve Martin plays a tax lawyer suckered into an Internet date with (what he thinks is a) a beautiful, thin, blonde, white woman, not realizing that the woman in question is Queen Latifah, i.e. ugly, fat, dark-haired, and black (and yes, Queen Latifah is ugly). To boot, this woman is a felon and recent escapee from jail.
What follows is a comedy of errors, as Martin tries to make the best of the situation, and Latifah blackmails him into helping her prove her supposed innocence.
While the movie features many segments that rank with the best of Saturday Night Live style skit-comedy, the entire whole fails to work cohesively. We are treated to many distracting plot elements about love (lost and regained), stuffy heiresses (who smoke pot and make peace with the world), office politics, neighborhood politics, smarmy kids, bitchy s-i-l, etc.
Steve Martin has certainly seen better days and better movies. Still, good for a budget theater visit.
Title: The Life of David Gale
Review written: 19 February 2003
Would you kill to stop the death penalty? Would you die to stop others from being put to death?
Let us say that you were an abolitionist whose life, through a series of rather unfortunate circumstances, has gone to shit. You also realize that you have a good chance of getting a moratorium on the death penalty in your state if only you can prove, conclusively, that an innocent person was executed. You don't mind sacrificing your own life, if needed, to achieve your goal. How would you do it?
First, you find a woman willing to commit suicide, but make it look like a brutal rape/murder. Why would she do it? Because she is a good friend, who is anyway dying of leukemia, and is also a death penalty abolitionist zealot whose passion for the cause exceeds yours.
Then, you film the entire suicide with enough misdirections in it to make it seem that a murder was committed by someone other than you. You also film enough to show to anyone watching the entire tape that this was a suicide and not a murder.
Then, you let the police arrest you, all the while proclaiming your innocence, like any other accused person, and spend the next 6 years of your life on death row. You make sure that your legal counsel is a good friend who deliberately displays the kind of incompetence that has been alleged in those who defend murderers who are poor or mentally ill and cannot afford high-profile lawyers.
Finally, 3 days before your execution you give your first interview since incarceration and get the ball rolling to have the fake murder tape released to the public just after your own execution---thus simultaneously establishing your innocence and the failure of the capital punishment process to exonerate innocents.
This is the plot, or so I think, of The Life of David Gale. The movie featurs excellent performances by the 3 lead actors: Kevin Spacey (as the martyr David Gale), Larura Linney (as the friend who commits suicide for the cause), and Kate Winslet (as the reporter who reveals all). However, director Alan Parker misses the boat by: making the movie a bit too long, his characters (especially the reporter) a bit too dumb, and the plot a bit too full of holes, and turns what might have been an excellent mystery/drama into something of a soppy, sentimental, father-does-it-for-his-son sob-story.
I suspect that this gutting of the primary story was achieved because test screening audiences claimed that they did not understand what would have been, in my imagination, the original plot. I mean, the better storyline is so obvious that I cannot believe that a director and screenwriter who got so close to it would have missed it. So chalk one up for the kind of dumbing down that seems to have become the scourge of Hollywood cinema.
Still, this is a very good movie when compared to the high goals it sets up for itself, and certainly compared to some of the dreck we have been hit with in the recent past.
Title: Daredevil
Review written: 13 February 2003
Daredevil has got to be one of the shittiest movies I have had the misfortune to endure in a long, long time.
Incompetent non-acting, imbecilic script, sloppy editing, f*d-up "special" (in a manner of speaking) effects, and retarted direction.
This is one bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, BAD film.
I went in to see it thinking that Jennifer Garner's tits would provide some form of compensation even if the movie were to suck, and boy was I wrong. Even Catherine Zeta-Jones could not have saved this pathetic piece of pusillanimous poop.
Title: The Quiet American
Review written: 6 February 2003
It is always a delight to watch Michael Caine on film. He brings a certain panache and pizzazz to the roles he plays, be it that of a cad, a comedian, or a curmudgeon.
In Philip Noyce's latest movie The Quiet American, Caine plays Thomas Fowler a tired, old reporter for the London Times stationed in Saigon in the early 1950s. Fowler is happy with his life: far away from the foggy dampness and a passionless wife in London, minimal job responsibility, and a gorgeous Vietnamese girl who is his lover. He remains studiously uninvolved in the growing conflict between the French and Viet Cong for control of the country.
Into this idyllic mix comes Alden Pyle (played by Brendan Fraser), a mild-mannered, almost buffoony do-gooder trying to provide medical services to the Vietnamese people.
What follows is a richly metaphorical, intertwined tale of jealously and romance, mixed in with deep intrigue and the politics of genocide.
Pyle, it turns out, is not an innocent, but a top operative in the CIA. He organizes massacres and bombings all over the country to give the Americans an excuse to get involved in the holy task of "stopping the Communist menace in Indo-China". Along the way, and possibly quite unintentionally, Pyle falls in love with Fowler's girl, and that proves to be his downfall.
The mild-mannered, heretofore uninvolved reporter turns informer, more to win back his girl than to serve any higher cause, and gets Pyle killed. But then, he also discovers a new enthusiasm and courage, choosing to stay in Vietnam for the rest of his life, reporting on the growing tragedy of what was to become one of the bloodiest struggles in the post WWII world.
Both Caine and Fraser give excellent performances in this superb film. The only teeeeny-weeeny false notes in the picture were: a rocking/pitching camera in some scenes which did not require them, and a whole lot of Frenchie-speak. But, they are a small price to pay for watching a great movie with great performances by two great actors.
Title: Shanghai Knights
Review written: 5 February 2003
Fish out of water. Two countries separated by a common language. Slap-stick kung-fu. Owen-Wilsonian comedy. Sexy babes. Silly plot.
You can have all of them in one slick package in Shanghai Knights, the followup to the hilarious and wildly popular Shanghai Noon. The sequel takes us back to the story of John Wayne (Jackie Chan) and Roy O'Bannon (Owen Wilson) as they leave for England to battle the evil villians who have stolen the imperial seal from China and are plotting to assassinate most of the British royal family to usurp the throne.
Oh, never mind the plot. You have everything in this film that you expect to see in a Jackie Chan action flick. The story never gets too sentimental, even in its supposedly serious moments, and the laughs, tricks, and action, just keep coming. Along the way, we also get to see sly parody about Sherlock Holmes, the Beatles, Charlie Chaplin, and that new-fangled thing in Hollywood called "movies"!?!?!
Don't miss this one.
Title: The Recruit
Review written: 28 January 2003
It was only a year ago that veteran actor Robert Redford attempted to recruit young actor Mr.Aniston into the CIA. Now, veteran actor Al Pacino attempts to recruit Mr.B.Pitt-look-alike Colin Farrell into the company in the appropriately named movie The Recruit.
Farrell is a computer whiz-kid who is spotted, ostensibly, by CIA instructor Pacino. While on training, Farrell ostensibly falls in love with a fellow recruit Bridget Moynahan, but later learns that she is, ostensibly, a spy attempting to smuggle a top-secret CIA computer-virus that can ostensibly travel through electrical wires and disrupt systems. He is re-recruited by Pacino to ostensibly stop the theft from occurring.
Note the use of the word "ostensibly" in this review. Everything in the movie is "ostensible" because the plot and story are an elaborate game of single, double, and even triple-espresso-decaf con. As the audience, you are supposed to be constantly thwarted in your naive attempts to figure out who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.
Obviously, since there are only 3 main characters in the movie, this doesn't leave room for very much by way of "surprises". Still, the movie is reasonably funny, reasonably well-acted, and reasonably watchable, ostensibly.
Title: The Guru
Review written: 23 January 2003
So it has finally come down to this.
I stopped watching Bollywood (or more generally, mainstream Indian) cinema because of the amount of utter crap these movies featured, and because of the total lack of any value, beyond momentary escapist entertainment (for a small subset of the audience) they offered.
And yet, today, I get to see a mainstream Hollywood movie do precisely the same thing that Bollywood has been doing so well for almost 100 years now.
The Guru is simultaneously: a Bollywood dance-musical, a rags-to-riches-to-rags story, a love-story, a finding-your-true-desire-in-life story, and a comedy.
After a 15 year hiatus of not watching Bollywood movies, it is quite amusing to see one, albeit in English and featuring American hot babes Heather Graham and Marisa Tomei. But I really hope Hollywood does not take any clues from the success of this film to start saturation bombing the market with this genre.
The eponymous guru is Ramu Gupta, an Indian lad who comes to the US seeking fame and fortune as a movie star, but finds himself desperately seeking work in porn films instead. A twist of fate makes him into a "guru" doling out spiritual wisdom in big spoonfuls to starved Americans who are willing to eat up any crap as long as it is spoken by someone who looks and talks like Deepak Chopra, and couches everything in the garb of Eastern Mysticism.
But in the end, of course, the guru realizes the vapidity of his fake lifestyle, and gives it all up for the love of his life: porn goddess Heather Graham.
The movie is quite funny, and funny in ways that an Indian would appreciate much more than an American. Worth watching, if only to see what Bollywood makes day after day, month after month, year after year.
Title: Darkness Falls
Review written: 23 January 2003
I think the movie Darkness Falls should have been titled Bullshit Rises.
One of the many things that define progress is that one cannot keep doing the same bloody thing over and over again, and still expect to be given the same accolades and treatement meted out to the first attempt.
The horror genre has been so thoroughly mined in the classic movies of the past, that it is no longer acceptable for someone to make a typical horror movie today and demand to be taken seriously or ask to be exempted from savaging by critics.
Darkness Falls is so full of standard horror cliches that it is real pain to sit through this crap-bucket. Skip it.
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