WALL•E (2008)

WALL•E is…

A Charlie Chaplin/Little Tramp movie, but, with, you know, robots;

A not terribly subtle social commentary that nevertheless gets its point across without heavy-handedness;*

kind of reminiscent of Silent Running, if Silent Running hadn’t been so relentlessy pessimistic;

proof that Fred Willard is the cinematic equivalent of nutmeg: too much can be overbearing, but just the right amount can really brighten things up;

a great love story, with, you know, robots.

*However, since part of the commentary revolves around the fact that the human race had to leave Earth after filling up the planet with all their consumer stuff, I kind of question the practice at the theater where I saw the film of giving a WALL•E watch to the kids who attended the screening.

Iron Man (2008)

First things first: If you have not seen the film yet, and if you style yourself any sort of geek at all, stay through the credits. You will thank me. Of course, if you truly style yourself any sort of geek at all, odds are this little public service announcement is wholly unnecessary, as you wouldn’t dream of not staying through the credits.

Those post-credit thirty seconds? Best part of the movie, hands down, and a great setup for both a sequel and a spinoff. The leadup to the Big Reveal at the end was well telegraphed throughout the film. And while I personally prefer the classic version of the thing revealed I appreciate the sheer coolness of the parallel version chosen for this film.

I’ve drifted in and out of Iron Man over my thirty-plus years as a comics fan. More out that in, but the character has always been one I’ve generally liked. The film version of Iron Man does justice to the essential core of the character — wealthy industrialist weapons manufacturer forced by circumstance to confront his mortality, and his morality. Robert Downey, Jr. is note perfect in the lead role as Tony Stark/Iron Man. Beyond Stark, the supporting cast is solid, with Jeff Bridges the strongest of the bunch. That’s hardly surprising as giving a great actor a nice juicy villain role usually works out well in comic book movies.

As with any comic book movie, the man behind the mask is only half the equation; the mask — or in this case the armor — that defines the heroic persona is just as important. The Iron Man suit presented in this movie is easily one of the most note perfect translations of comic book gadgetry to the big screen. It helps that the core concept of the Iron Man armor over the decades has been almost constant revision and redesign (and the film plays with this convention very nicely, with Tony Stark suiting up in three different armors over the course of the origin story. It would have been easy enough to design something kinda robotic looking, paint it crimson and gold, and call it Iron Man, but Stan Winston and his crew did that one better; they created a believable translation from comic page to film. The models are terrific. You will believe a man in a cybernetic exosuit can fly.

In a summer movie season targeted at great geek expectations, including a new Hulk, a new Batman, and a new Indiana freakin’ Jones fer the luvva Pete, Iron Man started things off on a high note.

West Side Story (1961)

Random observations while watching a film classic:

During the opening aerial shots of the movie, I was amazed at how little traffic there was on the streets of New York City over forty-five years ago.

It’s been a while since I saw the movie, so I don’t know if I forgot or never noticed that the Sharks all wear black shoes and the Jets all wear white. On the streets, they wear sneakers. During the dance, the Sharks wear black dress shoes, the Jets two-toned blue shoes with white tops. It’s a nice little touch, unsurprising given the overall brilliance of the production design.

It’s sad that a free showing of West Side Story at an independent cinema in a college town (said college town being the alma mater of one of the creators of the work in question) and sponsored by the college drew such a miniscule crowd. If I say there were twenty people in the audience, I’d be exaggerating by a good fifteen to twenty percent.

300 (2007) [Haiku review]

Shirtless Greeks at war
Less campy than expected
The king shouts — a lot

Write Stuff

It’s like this: The Writers’ Guild of America (WGA) strike doesn’t affect me directly. We don’t have cable, and have never bothered with an antenna, which means we don’t pull in broadcast channels either. I don’t care from award shows. I have several seasons and series worth of television to catch up on through the miracle of Netflix. My entertainment needs are covered for a good long while yet.

[In the interest of full disclosure, having caught up with the third season last month, I will beg, borrow, steal, or tape while housesitting the next season of LOST when it begins at the end of this month. But otherwise? I'm good.]

While I’m not affected by the strike as a consumer, I support the WGA 100% in this labor action. As many people more articulate and more invested in the issue have said already, the central issue behind the strike is perfectly simple: if someone makes a dollar from a created work, and a writer contributed to that act of creation, a portion of that dollar belongs to the writer. If someone finds a way to distribute that creation in another way, and that distrubution generates another dollar, guess what? A portion of that dollar belongs to the writer. That holds for every dollar, and every distribution channel. There is room for negotiation about the size of the writer’s share, but not about the existence of that share.

With their day jobs on hold, a couple of television writers started a blog for their peers. Why We Write is a forum for working writers, aspiring writers, and others to explain their chosen profession (obsession) to the world. The entries are interesting, and like all writing, some are better than others. The common thread through the entires is that writers write because they can’t not write.

Check it out.

The Simpsons Movie (2007)

At the risk of getting all Comic Book Guy on the matter:

I will not make a movie without a good story to tell.
I will not make a movie without a good story to tell.
I will not make a movie without a good story to tell.
I will not make a movie without a good story to tell.
I will not make a movie without a good story to tell.

I was deeply disappointed in The Simpsons Movie. It wasn’t bad so much as flat. For every laugh out loud moment there were two moments that felt recycled and downright tired.

Homer’s selfishness and thoughtlessness almost dooms his marriage? Been there.

Bart rejects Homer in favor of a stronger father figure or more positive role model? Done that.

The Simpsons acquire a new/unusual pet? Do the names Santa’s Little Helper, Stampy, Laddie, or Mojo mean anything to you?

The Simpson have to escape Springfield one step ahead of a person/group? All this plotline did was make me wonder where the hell Sideshow Bob was. They have the opportnity to tell the quote ultimate unquote Simpsons story, and they leave out Bob? For shame!*

Homer is dragged into a spiritual/vision quest in order to find the clarity/redemption he need to do the right thing? It was funnier when Johnny Cash was his spirit guide.

A Simpsons movie should have been epic. Granted, if you look to the box office returns, it didn’t need to be epic to get the job done, but without a good reason, why make the transition from television to film? Don’t get me wrong; seeing Homer and Marge and all of the rest of Springfield rendered in a richer color palate with a sharper resolution was nice and all, but the results just scream “wasted potential” to me.

For that matter, President freakin’ Schwarzenegger? Why? Did the producers think audiences wouldn’t be able to infer the connection between the Governator’s Springfield doppelganger Ranier Wolfcastle and the real thing? Was this supposed to be some kind of half-assed attempt to plant the seed for the constitutional amendment required to pave the way for a Schwarzenegger presidency? Curse you and your manipulative perfidy, Rupert Murdoch!

42. The Worst Movies of All Time, or: What Were They Thinking?, by Michael Sauter

Michael Sauter, you are my sworn enemy. Talking trash about Hudson Hawk made you so. That your interpretation is perhaps not wholly indefensible does not change the fact that we obviously have radically different, even conflicting, worldviews. Were we ever to meet, I imagine we could eventually find common ground in a shared appreciation of bad movies — for who could write so much on a subject he didn’t love? — although our respective definitions of “bad” would surely make for some lively disagreements. Indeed, your extensive summary of bad B movies makes you a sworn enemy with whom I might forge an uneasy peace. Plus, your book turned me on to the film Skidoo, which sounds so gloriously, all-star castardly bad, that I must track it down and experience it for myself. I figure this will either redeem you in my eyes, or fan the flames of my Hudson Hawk fueled enmity. Time will tell.

Cooking class

Entertained and inspired by Pixar’s Ratatouille*, The Kid asked me to teach her to cook. After talking it over for a bit, we agreed we would begin by trying to cook one meal a week together.

For our first foray into the world of gastronomic education, we pored through a children’s cookbook by a certain ubiquitous culinary celebrity. In our defense, I’ll note that we acquired this book at a time prior to this celebrity’s ubiquity crossing over the line into full-scale overexposure. After rejecting a few promising candidates, we settled on cold sesame noodles as our inaugural dish.

Admittedly, this was an exercise in measuring and stirring more than actual cooking, but it’s always good to begin by learning, and ultimately mastering, the fundamentals. Making the dish was educational for both of us. The Kid learned how to measure and mix and pour. She learned that sesame oil smells really good on its own, and that you can identify the distinctive taste of the oil in the finished dish. I learned that if you’re using a cookbook from someone famous for quick and convenient cooking, you have to account for the trappings of convenience.

For example, we’re a natural peanut butter household; although the recipe didn’t specify this, I must assume it was formulated using processed peanut butter. The noodles were terrific, and nicely peanutty, but they were lacking the hint of sweetness I expected from the dish. As a result, the saltiness of the tamari was a bit more assertive than I expected without any sugar to balance it out. Next time, we will either use the processed, hydrogenated oil-laden and besugar’d stuff made by the nice folks at Skiff or Jippy, or else we will add a little bit of sugar or honey to the dressing. Or a dash of duck or plum sauce maybe. Hey, I bet that would work aces.

The recipe we used called for about a cup of shredded cabbage to give the noodles some added crunch. Again, the author being a fan of speed, convenience, and short cuts, the recipe recommended using prepackaged cole slaw mix to get the job done. It worked fine, but it also left us with the better part of a package of shredded cabbage and carrot.

As it turned out, I had a fend for myself evening last night. As I was pulling a piece of leftover chicken out of the fridge, I noticed the slaw mix. In a burst of inspiration/improvisation, I created the following East-meets-Southwest fusion dish:

Bart Modern’s Barbecue-Shu Chicken

2T vegetable oil
1 medium yellow onion, sliced thin
1/2t Kosher salt
1t chili powder
1/2-1t crushed red pepper flakes
1/4c cider vinegar
2 cups shredded cole slaw mix
1/2c homemade barbecue sauce (or your favorite store-bought sauce)
1 barbecued chicken leg quarter, skinned and meat shredded off the bone. (Note: grilled pork or beef or tofu would work just as well, I suspect)

Heat the oil in a large skillet. When heated, add the onion, salt, chili powder and crushed red pepper flake. Cook over medium heat 3-5 minutes, until the onion softens and starts to brown. Add the vinegar (stand back from the pan to avoid inhaling the nasal passage scouring steam that rises when the vinegar hits the hot pan). Throw in the cabbage, stir to combine, and allow to wilt down, another 3-5 minutes, add the barbecue sauce and the chicken, and simmer until the chicken is heated through.

Serve with warm flour tortillas (I think. Didn’t actually have any on hand when I created the dish, but I think they would work fine. Of course, everyone knows that you never get enough pancakes for all the mu-shu when you order it at a restaurant, so eating it as is would be perfectly acceptable. It certainly worked for me).

*Highly recommended for animaniacs, cinephiles, and foodies alike. Should you happen to be all three, then ooh la la! We’ve been getting a lot of mileage out of the line “I killed a man…with THIS thumb!” ever since we saw the film.

The Illusionist (2006)

Here we have the other magician movie of 2006. Where The Prestige tells the story of a game of “cat and also cat” between competing magicians, the core of this film is the the interplay between Edward Norton’s Eisenheim the Illusionist and Paul Giamatti’s Chief Inspector Uhl.

Giamatti is fantastic in this role. He plays Uhl as a cross between a thinner, less corrupt Sidney Greenstreet and a non eye-poppingly intense Brian Blessed. The result is an incredibly powerful character who is both a dedicated public servant (with all the compromises to higher authority that entails) and an individual of great personal integrity. When those conflicting aspects of his character get called into conflict, Uhl’s dissipation of this tension drives the climax of the film.

Edward Norton, as Eisenheim, is solid. His motivations are simple:

love, for Jessia Biel’s Sophie, a noblewoman he has known [and loved] since childhood, but who is betrothed to Rufus Sewell’s Crown Prince Leopold;

ego, which drives him to try and win Sophie from the Crown Prince, and to use his skills as a performer to first embarrass, then challenge, and ultimately attempt to destroy, the Prince;

and loss, which drives him to make contact with the dead.

Just as Uhl navigates the shoals of his own complex character, so Eisenheim charts a course through his own motivations.

And, of course, as with any film about magicians, nothing is precisely as it seems. The problem with The Illusionist is that the things that are not what they seem that are integral to the plot are telegraphed in such a way that it becomes possible to see the trick as it is happening. So, instead of appreciating the story, the film becomes an exercise in looking behind this curtain. This is a shame, as the sloppiness of the craft detracts from the impact of the performances, and this in turn blunts Giamatti’s final scene, as Uhl puts all the pieces together.

The Prestige (2006)

There is a running sentiment in this film about duelling stage magicians to the effect that knowing the “trick” ruins the illusion. Having read the Christopher Priest novel from which director Christopher Nolan derived his film, I unfortunately knew the tricks and secrets of both magicians. As such, while I appreciated the showmanship that Nolan — and actors Christian Bale (as Alfred Borden, or “The Professor” to use his stage name) and Hugh Jackman (as Robert Angier, “The Great Danton”) — brought to the story, the essential element of suspense was denied me. Knowing the trick made me sensitive to camera angles and line readings designed to preserve illusions, distort facts, and otherwise distract the audience’s attention from the sleight of hand taking place on screen.

On the other hand, this is the sort of film some people like to see twice; once in order to be fooled, and then to see how they were fooled. My experience with the story just puts me slightly ahead of the curve.

And, having read the book, I quite appreciate the adaptation. Nolan wisely does away with the modern-day framing device that Priest employs in his novel, leaving the focus where it belongs: on the conflict between the two magicians, and the personal enmity that fuels their professional rivalry.

Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966)

Where Doctor Who and the Daleks offered an interesting cinematic variation on the BBC television series theme, this sequel trades in the minor charms of the original for absurdity, illogic, and an extreme lack of imagination.

Indeed, Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. is not so much a sequel as a “let’s pretend the previous film never happened.” Aside from Doctor Who (there are no “The Doctor”s here; it’s a small distinction, but one that sets Peter Cushing’s character light years apart from his BBC analogue) familiarity with the Daleks and their home world, the story is entirely divorced from what came before. The film swaps out several of the supporting characters, replacing graddaughter Barbara and bumbling comic relief Ian for the interchangably inconsequential granddaughter Louise, and the slightly more dynamic Tom.

As for the Daleks, they are far less menacing than in Doctor Who and the Daleks (a film in which they weren’t especially menacing to begin with, largely because they are relegated secondary menace status. They spend most of the film rolling around their various command centers and control rooms, issuing orders to their robotized human slaves. Ooooh; scary: cybernetic middle management killing machines.

Let’s face facts; at its heart, Doctor Who is children’s entertainment. Thing is, though, there is a world of difference between being for children (which implies authenticity and respect for intelligence, even amid the most fantastic trappings), and being childish. This is a difference with which Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. demonstrates little understanding.

Inside Man (2006)

Spike Lee does the heist movie, and does it well. He understands the form, and plays off it nicely. In the end, though, the film failed to satisfy.

Clive Owen plays the robber. Denzel Washington plays the cop. The dynamic between them is solid, but there’s just not enough of it. The movie presents a tense situation, but there isn’t much of a feeling of tension to the movie, if that makes sense. It’s more of a technical exercise than an exercise in supsense. From the first line of dialogue, it’s clear that this is a movie with some serious slight of hand going on; nothing is as it seems, and all that. As a result, I spent so much time watching for the trick, that all the stuff going on around the fringes faded into the background.

Part of the problem, for me, may have been that I watched the movie in two chunks. I started to fall asleep about halfway through, just about the time Clive Owen started talking about Nazis. Figure once you bring that into a “simple” bank heist, you really need to pay more attention than I was capable of paying. It’s possible that some of the tension of the movie was released as a result of splitting it in half, but I’m not sure how much of a difference that would have made.

23. Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert, by Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert is one of my favorite critics. I don’t always agree with him — and how much less rich a world it would be if we all agreed all the time — but I usually respect his point of view.

Indeed, I’m usually less interested in reading Ebert’s thoughts on a new release I might want to see than I am in going back to one of his reviews after I’ve seen a movie, and had a chance to form my own opinion. This makes Awake in the Dark (like Ebert’s Great Movies series) a perfect reference work, especially in the areas of 1970s film, foreign films, and documentaries.

Spider-Man 3 (2007)

It’s no Superman III. It’s no Batman Forever. The closest third film in a successful series analogue to Spider-Man 3 is probably Return of the Jedi.

In both cases, these are films that struggle under the weight of their predecessors, and both Spider-Man 2 and The Empire Strikes Back shatter the conventional wisdom of sequels by being better than the original installment. Each third outing is burdened by expectations of exceeding what came before, and in both cases, this is a nearly impossible task.

Neither film is terrible. Indeed, Return of the Jedi represents a quantum leap in effects work from either of the earlier Star Wars films. Each film was almost destined to fall short of the gold standard they inherited, but each features elements that lowered them from noble failure to speeding train run off the rails.

Need anything more be said, at this late date, about the sins of Return of the Jedi? I thought not.

It’s worth noting, however, that Spider-Man 3 recapitulates one of the cardinal failings of Jedi: unnecessary and poorly-timed comic relief. As a character, Spider-Man is funny, even campy at times. He cracks jokes. He resorts to the occasional pun. He uses humor to stick a pin in people’s inflated self-image, from street crooks to supervillains to, most entertainingly, J. Jonah Jameson. As viewers, we accept, even expect that.

Unfortunately, Spider-Man 3 frequently avoids the well-timed one-liner and the precisely placed zinger in favor of pure slapstick. Instead of serving as Spider-Man’s comic foil, J.K. Simmons — still perfectly cast as JJJ — is left to play straight man to his secretary. Is the scene funny? Absolutely. Is it either necessary or true to the essence of the character? Absolutely not. A later scene in which Jameson plays the patsy to a young child in the midst of a climactic battle not only continues Raimi’s newly-developed tone deafness about what makes the Jameson character entertaining, but also interferes with the pacing of an action sequence that is already too busy by half.

Even worse than the Jameson bits is the tragic ways in which Spider-Man film stalwarts Bruce Campbell and Stan Lee fare.

I yield to no sentient life form in my appreciation of Campbell. He’s utterly misused in this movie. His plays his role with his customary aplomb, but he also plays it as though he wandered in from an altogether different movie. Like Simmons, Campbell’s work borders on the slapstick, something he and Raimi know well from their Evil Dead collaborations. The broad comedy, to say nothing of the outrageous accent, set entirely the wrong tone. Again, the sequence in which Campbell appears — the largest amount of Spider-Man screen time he has enjoyed to day — already has too much going on.

Stan Lee’s cameo in Spider-Man 3 is also his longest. He and Toby Maguire share a moment which, if it doesn’t break the fourth wall entirely at least reminds viewers that there is a fourth wall to break. It’s a nice homage, it allows Stan Lee to remind us what Spider-Man means, but it borders on the self-indulgent.

Problem is, Peter Parker/Spider-Man is already entirely too self-indulgent. Once again, the central conflict in the film is not the one between Spider-Man and the villain du jour, but rather the one in which Parker forgets and has to relearn the lesson With great power comes great responsibility. The key challenge he must overcome is the challenge of complacency. That is the tragic flaw from which all the other action in the film flows.

In essence, being Spider-Man has become too easy, and Parker isn’t ready when it becomes difficult again. He also isn’t able to look past his own self-satisfaction to understand the problems that his girlfriend, Mary Jane Watson is having with her career. Like many two-career couples, one party’s success generates friction and (justifiable) resentment on the part of the less successful partner. That one of the partners in this case is a superhero is largely incidental.

Unfortunately, the interpersonal conflict in this case feels like it exists not to provide honest character moments, or to show the development of a normal relationship under unusual circumstances, but rather to give poor, game Kirsten Dunst something to do with her screen time until it is time for her to once again be taken hostage, to once again give Parker/Spider-Man something important to fight for.

The lack of chemistry between Dunst and Maguire drags down their already contrived interactions. Though they are meant to be playing a couple standing on opposite sides of a growing rift, there are few scenes where it feels like either character is especially invested in bridging that divide.

Where Maguire fails to find much meat on the bones of his interactions with Dunst, he does manage in the early going to use the turbulent emotions stirred up by that relationship — as well as the turmoil churned up by learning his uncle’s killer remains at larger — to fuel his embrace of the alien symbiote that makes up the black costume he wears for part of the film. While Raimi and Company (thankfully) simplify the origin of the black costume — one that originated in the Spider-Man comics — quite a bit, they capture the essence of the concept. I will note, however, that in the comics, wearing the black costume didn’t force Peter Parker to sport such a jackass hairstyle. The alien-symbiote-inspired, Id-driven Parker is, unfortunately, another source of unnecessary and discordant slapstick.

The symbiote/costume feeds on negative emotions, and a tormented hero has no shortage of those bubbling just below the surface. So, while Spider-Man battles the array of villains aligned against him, Peter Parker fights a battle with his own demons.

All this conflict makes for a crowded screen at times. On top of the troubled romance and the inner conflict Raimi juggles plotlines involving Parker friend, Green Goblin son, and villain in search of revenge and redemption Harry “New Goblin” Osborn; villain and Uncle Ben killer Flint “Sandman” Marko; and black costume inheritor and Parker antagonist Eddie “Venom” Brock.

The Osborn story is slightly less threadbare than the Peter Parker-Mary Jane plotline. Its resolution rests on the contrivance of a character stepping out of the background to convey a crucial piece of information at an appointed time, even though they have been in possession of this information, and in a position to communicate it, since the end of the first film. Once that information is passed on, this story resolves in the only way it can.

The Venom plot is the least interesting of the three villain stories, but the inclusion of the character in the franchise was inevitable. Venom, largely on the strength of the visual presence of the character, is a wildly popular Spider-Man villain. His introduction happens in a way that gives the character a motivation to hate Spider-Man, and his actions in trying to destroy the character make sense, in the context of people in silly costumes punching hell out of each other.

Thomas Haden Church fares best as Sandman. His origin is ludicrously coincidental, but ludicrous in an “it could only happen in a comic book” sort of way, which is convenient, this being a comic book movie and all. His motivation is simple, and the character is almost sympathetic in his actions. He isn’t evil, but is rather a man who made a series of bad choices in response to a desperate circumstance. In a role without much dialogue, and one that relies heavily on CGI, Church manages to convey a range of emotions, largely through facial expression.

The interplay of these character, and their various interactions with, and battles against, Spider-Man, form the foundation of the real strength of the film: solid action sequences. The stunts are complex, and are impressive to look at. While Raimi struggled with the emotional content of this film, Spider-Man 3 represents the current pinnacle of his evolution as an action film director.

Doctor Who and the Daleks (1965)

It’s the little things that matter. As a long-standing fan of the BBC version of Doctor Who, I was less bothered by the large-scale changes in this first cinematic adaptation of the television series than I was about the little touches.

It was easy to accept the convention of calling the main character (played with dotty, if underutilized, aplomb by Peter Cushing) “Doctor Who” instead of merely “The Doctor,” as was established in the series. It was harder to accept the notion that this Doctor was a human of the absentminded scientist variety rather than a myserious and irascible alien. Both interpretations have an air of the unworldly about them, but Cushing’s ethereal demeanor seems less suited to galactic crusading than the superiority — larded with a host of other qualities in greater or lesser proportions by the host of actors who have assayed the role over the past four decades — of the television Doctor.

It was easy to accept the TARDIS as something cobbled together by a lone genius tinkering in his garage workshop. It was harder to accept the sight of the TARDIS without the accompanying TARDIS dematerialization sound effect.

It was easy to accept the Daleks as armored killing machines bent on the eradication of their enemies. It was harder to accept that they would go about the killing without uttering their familiar battle cry “Ex-ter-min-ate!”

Regardless of these small differences, the film version captures the spirit of Doctor Who, or at least the spirit of the original programs. That is to say it is a children’s program first, and a rollicking intergalactic adventure second. It’s easy to tell the good aliens from the bad aliens, even if it does take a few moments to adjust to the alien-ness of the good aliens. Adults are variously kind, bumbling, or background nuisances. When watching the film with The Kid, it was suggested that Susan, Doctor Who’s precocious granddaughter, has a lot in common with Lucy Pevensie from the C.S. Lewis Narnia books. It’s a good comparison, both in terms of character and intention.

Forty years on, the film shows its age. The internal logic — or lack thereof — of the film is shaky at best. The characters are two-dimensional, and that’s being generous. But despite it’s many shortcomings, the film still manages to have a tremendous amount of kinetic energy and a sense fun that carries it over the rough spots, provided the viewer is willing to grant Doctor Who and the Daleks some leniency.

Haiku Review: Bullitt (1968)

Crime procedural
Great score by Lalo Schifrin
Terrific car chase

Haiku Review: Patton (1970)

Bastard? Hero? Both?
A warrior out of time
Flawless work by Scott

Brick o’ Harryhausen: The 3 Worlds of Gulliver

With this film, my grand tour of The Fantastic Films of Ray Harryhausen - Legendary Monster Series comes to an end. With The 3 Worlds of Gulliver I come to understand the phrase “not with a bang, but with a whimper.”

Eighteenth century social satire offers a poor canvas for Ray Harryhausen’s talents, at least when ranked against the scope of Greek mythology or tales from the Arabian Nights. Tricks of scale, and the occasional stop-motion crocodile simply can’t compete with centaurs and griffins and skeletal warriors and Hydrae. This would be fine if the social satire were presented in an engaging manner, but this is not the case. Jonathan Swift was a fine satirist, but not a particularly subtle one. The filmmakers adapted the content of the story, but not the intent, and the result is a flat, tedious film.

Rocky Balboa (2006)

I’m sure that some professional critic somewhere wrote this at the time of this film’s theatrical release, but like its title character, there is something endearing about Rocky Balboa. Note please that “endearing” does not imply “good.” This is a deeply flawed movie. It’s an exercise in pure ego, but it’s a humble egotism (if such a thing is possible) or at least one leavened with desperate neediness.

Rocky Balboa opens with the retired champ having made an accommodation with his past. He is obviously not at peace, but he is able to get up in the morning with enough of a sense of purpose that he can get through the day. This carries him over the hole left by the death of his wife, Adrian, the gulf between him and his son, and the distance between who he was, and who he has chosen to be.

When a computer-modeled simulation suggests that Rocky in his prime would have matched up favorably against the current heavyweight champion, the ludicrously named Mason “The Line” Dixon, Rocky allows himself to ask the question “What if…?” and to stoke a long-dormant fire in his belly. Meanwhile, Dixon, who has never faced an opponent worthy of his talent, finds his popularity — and his marketability — waning. His handlers propose an exhibition bout between the current and former champions to capitalize on the attention garnered by the computerized exhibition. Feeling they have something to prove, each fighter agrees.

For Rocky, this means getting back in fighting form. This of course means…

Training Montage!

Let’s be clear about something here: there is still no training montage like a Rocky training montage. Indeed, the training montage in Rocky IV is not only the greatest of the Rocky training montages, is not merely the greatest training montage of all time, it may be the single finest montage of any type ever committed to film.

While the montage in Rocky Balboa hits all the right notes — the contrasting training styles of Rocky and his opponent, Rocky’s commitment, energy, and perseverence at overcoming all obstacles and limitations, the Philadelphia City Hall steps (replaced in Rocky IV by the steppes of Russia — oh, hey, I just got that one!) — but it hits them in a labored, predictable, over the top fashion. When Rocky struggles repeatedly to lift a weight, there is no doubt that he will eventually get the bar over his head. There’s no drama, no dramatic tension, merely an obvious, “third time’s the charm” inevitability to the whole thing.

The montage gives way to the main event, a 10-round exhibition billed as a battle of Will vs. Skill. Punches are thrown. Blood is spilled. Director Stallone shows that he learned the lessons Robert Rodriguez (who directed him in Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over) taught in Sin City about the lyrical power to be found in the contrast between black and white images and bright red blood. Respect is earned and given on both sides. People fall down. People get back up again. Flashbacks are experienced. Odds are defied.

How does it end? The only way it could possibly end while still keeping the audience on Rocky Balboa’s side without straining credibility or sacrificing goodwill by robbing the character of his everyman, indomitable, underdog charm. It ends appropriately. It ends fittingly. It ends.

Haiku Review: RENT (2005)

Roger is a jerk
Cast’s a bit long in the tooth
Songs are quite good, though

Stranger Than Fiction (2006)

Toward the end of this film, novelist Karen Eiffel rhetorically asks about the value to the world of a man who knowingly chooses to accept his own death in the service of a greater, and more narratively fulfilling, good. A less confident, less intelligent movie than Stranger Than Fiction would not only have explicitly referenced Jesus Christ at this juncture, but it would have given protagonist Harold Crick the initials JC just to drive home the metaphorical point for the audience. Fortunately for that audience, among the many virtues of Stranger Than Fiction are its confidence and intelligence.

Eiffel (played by Emma Thompson with a world-weariness that makes it seem at times as though she is channeling Alan Rickman) is fighting writer’s block by writing a novel about a doomed IRS agent named Harold Crick. There’s just one catch: Harold Crick is a real person. He starts hearing Eiffel’s third-person narration in his head, recounting everything he thinks or says or does, and ultimately informing him of his impending demise. Not surprisingly, this shocks Crick. It also shocks him into action, both in an attempt to avoid his fate, and in an attempt to break out of the shell of routine that has grown around his life.

Sound like something from the mind of Charlie Kaufman? It’s a fair comparison, although Stranger Than Fiction is less metaphysically smart, and more authentically charming, than Kaufman’s fantasies. Like a Kaufman story, Stranger Than Fiction defies conventional wisdom across the board.

It’s a mainstream Hollywood comedy that is actually funny, with most of the laughs genuinely earned. As Crick, Will Ferrell, as it seems every comedic actor must at some point, has his Michael Keaton meltdown moments of over the top emoting, but for the most part, he avoids playing the role too big. As a result, most of the humor in the film comes from the dialogue — especially during Crick’s interactions with a literature professor played by Dustin Hoffman — and from authentically funny situations.

It’s a story about unlikely people meeting cute and falling in love. While it suffers from the common cinematic malady of developing relationships on ridiculously compressed timeframes to satisfy the demands of a 113-minute run time, Stranger Than Fiction steers clear of needless complications, avoidable misunderstandings, and other idiot plot devices to focus on the relationship between two plausibly real people who — surprise, surprise — have an actual chemistry between them.

The result is a story about why life matters, why the best fiction is never half as strange or wonderful as the most mundane reality, and why finding your voice requires accepting the responsibility inherent in using that gift.

Running with Scissors (2006)

Based on Augusten Burroughs’s 2002 memoir, Running With Scissors exemplifies the pitfalls inherent in translating the rich strangeness and poignant contradictions of real life onto the screen. This adaptation is too linear, too respectful of characters who don’t deserve it, and fundamentally too structured to capture the chaos of Burroughs’s reconstructed childhood and adolescence.

The book recounts Burroughs’s experiences living with the family of his chemically unbalanced, chemically dependent mother’s psychiatrist during the 1970s. The movie covers the same territory, but plays it straight. That isn’t to say writer-director Ryan Murphy doesn’t try to find the humor in his source material. He clearly sees the potential for laughter in the quirky eccentricity of his cast of characters. Unfortunately, by offering the audience a chance to share a laugh over humorous excreta or gags about adding deceased petflesh to the evening meal, Running With Scissors sidesteps the darker implications of its source material.

This leaves the cast largely adrift. Brian Cox does his best with the role of Dr. Finch, the psychiatriast, but the script never decides what it wants Finch to be. Is he a healer of a con man? A pill pusher or a savior? Fundamentally, does Finch himself believe anything he says to others, or is he merely drifitng through his life on presumed authority and neglected responsibility? Murphy doesn’t seem to know, so Cox can’t ever create a wholly realized character.

Meanwhile, Jill Clayburgh is given too much to work with, too much weight to carry. She’s a capable enough actress to shoulder the load, but Running With Scissors requires her to be the long-suffering wife, the romantic rival, the middle-aged eccentric, and the sainted surrogate mother, all at the same time.

By far the strongest performances in the film come from Annette Bening and Alec Baldwin in the role of Augusten’s parents. Bening, in particular, takes a role that could easily have gone over the top and makes it a masterpiece of restraint. Her descent into delusion, mental illness, and drug dependence is layered, complex, and sympathetic. With far less screen time, Baldwin turns in a phenomenally nuanced performance. He does the majority of his acting through subtle changes in facial expression, registering a range of emotion not fully captured in the dialogue.

But this is Augusten Burroughs’s story, and it rises and falls on his experience, and his perspective. From an acting point of view, the greatest problem with Running With Scissors is Joseph Cross, the actor playing Augusten. In the book, Burroughs unique voice carries his strange story along. He is largely reactive to his experiences, but engagingly so. In contrast, Cross spends most of the film in a haze of self-pity, looking as though he might burst into tears at any second, which is not terribly far from the truth. The character is unsympathetic, and barely likeable.

The character needs to be likeable to support the weight of the story. For all the humor that comes through in Burroughs’s writing, Running with Scissors is a dark book. By striking a lighter, safer tone, Ryan Murphy overlooks some of the darkness. He forgives the story and the characters for their sins, and by rendering them absolution he tames demons which should not be tamed. Absent the frankness of Burroughs’s narrative, the predatory nature of his adolescent relationship with a man 20 years his senior does not come through. It becomes just another part of the relativistic and non-judgmental tapestry of life among the Finches that defined Burroughs’s adolescent environment.

The film takes this loose, open ethos at face value, and in doing so, it robs the relationship of any moral or ethical context, or of its horrific contradictions. This is not to suggest that Running With Scissors should have been played as a story of victimization — for such would cut against Burroughs’s own interpretation — but Murhpy needed to acknowledge the unhealthy, even criminal, dynamic of this relationship. Ultimately, Running With Scissors is a coming of age story; even absent the perspective offered by the book, this film tells a selectively incomplete, and therefore dishonest, story.

Brick o’ Harryhausen: Jason and the Argonauts

As Sinbad, and the Arabian Nights milieu recedes in the background, and eventually disappears over the horizon, we turn our attention to Greek mythology, Harryhausen style.

In an effort to advance his claim to the throne usurped from his father by Aeertes, Jason sets out on a voyage to the end of the world, there to claim the legendary mystical maguffin known as the Golden Fleece. Fortunately, Jason has the gods on his side, or, more to the point, one very powerful goddess. Turns out Aeertes got a bit over-enthusiastically stabby when he took over the kindgom, killing a princess who was under Hera’s protection. Hera therefore pledges to aid Jason — within limits laid out by Zeus — in reclaiming his hereditary throne.

Jason gathers a group of heroes to aid him in his quest, loads them aboard the good ship Argo, and sets off to find the Golden Fleece. Among Jason’s intrepid band is Hercules, played here as supremely arrogant, tragically overconfident, and immeasurably powerful. That is to say, just like the Hercules of legend. His arrogance and overconfidence cost him dearly, causing Hercules to serve as one of several object lessons in the film about what happens when mortals defy the will of the gods. Again, this is standard Greek mythology fare.

Like the stories from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights that gave rise to the Sinbad films, Greek mythology is tailor-made to Ray Harryhausen’s effects style. Jason and his crew encounter giant bronze warriors, gods, harpies, a seven-headed hydra, and a troop of skeletal warriors over the course of their quest, each fantastically rendered. Sure, these creations look a little worn around the edges from the perspective of modern effects sensibilities, but they’re still remarkable when considered as products of their times.

As with all Harryhausen films, of course, the more you think about the stories, the more little details stick out, stray fibers that, if pulled, threaten to unravel the entire narrative cardigan. In Jason and the Argonauts, one such detail arrives near the end of the film, when Jason faces the skeletal warriors known as “The Children of the Hydra’s Teeth.” As the name suggests, these creatures spring from the teeth of the defeated Hydra, and are presented as even more fearsome and deadly than the creature that gave them rise. That’s all well and good, but it seems a bit like the old joke about how if the black box on an airplane is indestructible, why not make the whole plane out of the black box material. If the Hydra is such a fearsome creature that it is the last line of defense guarding the Golden Fleece, then where is the sense in having an allegedly more powerful reserve force? But, again, such worrisome thoughts defeat the purpose of watching a good swords and sandals epic.

Finally, since you can’t properly tell a Greek myth without cherchez-ing la femme, Jason meets up, and wins the heart of, Medea. Fortunately, their relationship comes to a more salutary end than it does in the classic myth, but this is more a function of the film coming to a somewhat abrupt end in the middle of the story than any lack of narrative fidelity on the part of the filmmakers. Indeed, one almost expects the film to end with a Bond-style teaser setting up a sequel: “Jason will return in The Man With the Golden Fleece…”

Brick o’ Harryhausen: The 7th Voyage of Sinbad

Concluding the reverse-order Sinbad viewing cycle is 1958’s 7th Voyage. Kerwin Mathews originated the role of Sinbad, in which capacity he is less effective than John Phillip Law in Golden Voyage and infinitely better than Patrick Wayne in Eye of the Tiger. Like Wayne, Mathews makes no pretext of being part of the Arabian Nights world, but is instead purely a creature of the soundstage. He cuts a fairly ridiculous figure as Sinbad, but he cuts that figure gamely.

The title of the film raises the question, “What of the previous six voyages?” a question it makes no attempt to answer. Sinbad is obviously a fabled hero, one who has done great deeds, and won acclaim and reputation, but the film cares little for this backstory. Instead, it’s a loosely-conceived collection of set pieces. The connection between these set pieces owes little, if any, debt to logic, but merely serve as excuses to get Sinbad and company from point A to point B in time to face the latest Harryhausen fabricated menace.

I don’t say that as a bad thing. But this was not a film destined to be renowned for its screenplay.

The Harryhausen menaces in this film are fantastic, from cloven-hoofed cyclopses, to dragons, to rocs and snake-women, and genies…Oh my! These early efforts have a freshness and energy to them that the later Sinbad outings, made with later-generation technology, never fully equal. Indeed, the dragon-cyclops battle in 7th Voyage presages the later minotaur-griffin throwdown in Golden Voyage. Of the two, the earlier effort is stronger, not because Harryhausen didn’t get better as he got older, but because 7th Voyage has the passion and energy of the new, of something that has never been seen before.

(H.G.) Wells of Lost Souls II: War of the Worlds (2005)

Sure, the alien war machines in Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds devastate the entire planet. Sure, they use humans as grist for their roving chum factories. Sure, the very notion of entire divisions of hundred-foot high mobile killing engines lying hidden beneath the earth — including in, you know, major metropolitan areas — strains the disbelief of even the most willing suspender of that quality.

In the end, none of this matters. Spielberg gets a pass from me for introducing the greatest innovation in the history of cinematic science fiction: The Pants Preserving Ray.

[Quick note of clarification: Tom Cruise plays a character named Ray in War of the Worlds. Tom Cruise’s Ray takes no firm position in support of or in opposition to pants during the course of the film. The ray in question is one of the standard sci-fi laser blaster variety.]

During Tom Cruise’s first encounter with the aliens, a tripod emerges from underneath the ground in outer borough New York. With a convenient crowd of gawkers and rubbeneckers standing helpfully close to hand (less because people would believably stand around watching while a hundred foot high machine came up from the ground like this happened [although some certainly would] than because Spielberg, who does not lack for these in the movie, wanted one more big crowd scene that could devolve into wholesale slaughter), the tripod opens fire on the assembly.

Once this starts, people start running for their lives, to little avail. Every person struck by the alien ray immediately disintegrates. Their pants survive.

Their pants survive! I swear, it’s the most mind-boggling scene in science fiction since poor Charlton Heston found the Statue of Liberty buried on the beach. What possible need could three-legged aliens have for the 501s and chinos, sweats and hiphuggers, capris and ass chaps of billions of two-legged humans? It’s madness. Madness, I tell you!

So there’s Tom Cruise fleeing for his life surrounded by explosions and falling pants. How @#$%ing cool is that? And then later in the film, he and his daughter wander through a forest as a gentle rain of pants settles to the ground around them. It’s almost lyrical in its lunacy.

Almost cool enough to make you forgive the film its other lapses. Almost.

This is a spectacularly self-involved film. The world is literally coming apart at the seams, and all we see of that comes through Ray’s perspective. It provides focus to the film, but it does so at the expense of context. Spielberg is obviously confident that his audience will fill in the blanks, but “I know you know” takes the concept of “show, don’t tell” one step too far.

Perhaps this would matter less were Ray a more interesting character, but he’s not. Some of the fault lies with Cruise. Not so much because the publicity cycle for War of the Worlds coincided with The Tom Cruise Bat%$#@ Insanity Tour 2005 but more because he’s reached the point in his career where the things that made him a megastar are starting to show some wear around the seams. Making Ray a cargo loader was a perfectly valid casting choice, but expecting Tom Cruise to play the blue-collar everyman is like expecting Julia Roberts to play the all-American everywoman; it becomes difficult to separate the wattage of the bulb from the design of the lamp. Also, Cruise is reaching the point Harrison Ford hit in the late 1990s; he’s still solid and bankable and can open a movie, but he’s not what he once was. Like Ford, who has been derided for his somewhat limited range (surly-laconic, enraged-finger pointy, momentarily defeated-resurgent), Cruise’s stock responses (frustrated-sarcastic, emotional-blocked, resolute-martyred) no longer have the sparkle they once had. Ray suffers by association.

By the same token, Cruise suffers from the two-dimensionality of the skin he’s asked to inhabit. So Ray is a Bad Father? Spielberg establishes that at the start of the film, through the standard signifiers — the empty refrigerator, the tension filled “game o’ catch” with this son, the simmering (albeit subtle) alpha male jockeying between Ray and his ex-wife’s boyfriend/new husband. Unfortunately, having established it, he keeps hammering home the point.

I’m not suggesting that the simply fact of an alien invasion forgives the character all his paternal sins, but Spielberg’s insistence on reminding the audience of this fact over and over and over again was not effective. And the points he chooses don’t work terribly well. There are plenty of ways to communicate lack of parental engagement. Not knowing your ten-year old daughter has a nut allergy? Not one of them. I know it’s a minor point and all, but it rings false. Even if Ray is such a bad father, if his tendency for being late, and forgetting to shop for groceries, and living like a slob is a hallmark of his character, I refuse to accept that he wouldn’t know that. I refuse to accept that his ex-wife wouldn’t make a point of reminding him every time she dropped off the kids to stay with him. “Your son has an essay to write for school, and don’t forget, your daughter is allergic to nuts. So no peanut butter. In fact, it’s probably best not to keep the stuff in the house, just to be on the safe side.” Hell, if Ray is so inept — and as viewers, we’re certainly supposed to bear witness to his journey from ineptness to, if not competence, then at least a primal, instinctual parental sensibility over the course of War of the Worlds — how does he even get custody of his kids, aside from the fact that the movie needs the kids to chronicle the character’s reformation in response to tragedy.

Ray isn’t the only problem with War of the Worlds, of course. The story lets down the side as well. The movie also holds certain necessary character moments in abeyance until they suit the needs of the plot, rather than where they would fall in reality. As Ray and his kids flee New York, which was just attacked by aliens, in one of the few vehicles not affected by the aliens’ initial EMP attack, they pass pedestrians ambling along the highway. Not one of these people makes any attempt to hitch a ride, or ask for help, or otherwise interfere with Ray’s journey. Later, they lose their minivan to mob violence. The scene is scary, and believable, but the fact that it didn’t happen in the first instance makes not a damn lick of sense. The only reason the first group didn’t attack the car is not because such an attack wouldn’t have been realistic, but because the filmmakers needed the scary scene later.

Similarly, after finding a safe haven after the initial alien attack, Ray doesn’t bother to turn on the TV to find out what’s going on. He bore firsthand witness to the attack, he fled with his family, and he doesn’t check out CNN to find out what the hell is going on? Codswallop. As I write this, the media is in week two of nonstop, breathless, breaking news coverage about the death of someone who was famous for, basically, nothing. If the public has enough interest to sustain this level of media attention, shouldn’t the end of the world merit some good wall-to-wall coverage, complete with killer graphics, and somber, yet stirring theme song? I understand this was not the story Spielberg chose to tell, but it’s a story that should have intersected with his characters more than it did.

Steven Spielberg loves him some aliens. This is, after all, the man who gave us E.T. It shows. Even after depicting them engaging in the wholesale slaughter of humanity, even after showing them blighting the planet, Spielberg just can’t stay mad at the little guys. He wants it both ways. He wants his aliens to be scary, but he also wants them to be engaging. Witness the scene where a group of aliens explore the basement of the house where Ray, his daughter, and Stock Crazy Man Character #17 (twitchily played by Tim Robbins) are hiding out. After presenting the aliens as unstoppable killing machines for an hour and change, Spielberg shows the aliens as curious, almost childlike in their motions.

Now, there is a way this makes sense. Without a recognizable face, the aliens’ eventual defeat lacks impact. You can argue that we need to see the face of the enemy to appreciate the death of the enemy. On the other hand, Spielberg’s approach skates awfully close to the line of fetishizing the aliens, of making it possible to empathize with them. Had the scene lasted any longer, he would have crossed that line.

But of course, in the end, the aliens are overcome. The hero completes both his physical and spiritual journeys, and the film ends, leaving open far more questions than it answers. How will the human race rebuild? Will Ray, like Moses, have led his people to the Promised Land, only to be denied its embrace himself? Are we really supposed to believe that his ex-wife just hung out with her family in Boston, somehow managed avoid disintegration (all except, you know, her pants) or chummification, and waited for her ex-husband — who for all she knew was either dead or still as incompetent as ever — to guide her daughter home?