Mug's May Movie Digest

So here are some capsule reviews of some movies I've seen lately. Some of them are new new, like in the theaters new, and others are only semi-new, or on Bluray HD DVD new, which is nearly just as good as seeing the movie in the theater in my opinion (sometimes I would argue even better). So without further ado and in no particular order...

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skullfuck turns out to be an adequate, if not entirely fulfilling, entry in the series. Maybe I wasn't disappointed since I went in with very low expectations and found myself enjoying the major action sequences in spite of myself. Yes, the bombast of some of the bigger scenes nearly crushes the film beneath it and no, this is not Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it's an enjoyable, if not ultimately dismissive, two hours at the movies. No doubt many loyalists will disect the film from start to finish with issues and while it's far from perfect, it works as mindless entertainment. Harrison Ford does a good job reviving the character and he still moves quite well for someone his age (at least, that's what the magic of the movies would have you believe). Now if only they could have had a less turgid plot and some more believable FX, they might have had a gem instead of the B-grade fodder they ended up with.

But on the subject of action-film bombast, I sat through Live Free or Die Hard last night on Bluray, which was something I was kind of dreading as, like Indy, I have very strong feelings and childhood associations about the first film in the series. Turns out I was right - this was, by far, the weakest entry in the series and it feels virtually interchangeable with any other big budget action vehicle save for the occasional John McClane wise-crack or in-joke reference to the first Die Hard movie. The introduction to John McClane's character is just painful to watch as he accosts a young man making a move on his now grown-up-and-very-hot daughter and it doesn't get much better from there. Justin Long is enjoyable in his role as a computer hacker as is Timothy Olyphant's steely-eyed villain, but director Lens Wiseman has a very poor sense of camera placement when shooting dialogue and some of the editing is simply out of control. Like Indy 4, Die Hard 4 was clearly a process of "filmmaking by committee" and the end product clearly suffers as a result.

Even more self-consciously bombastic in its over-the-top action sequences is Shoot 'Em Up starring Clive Owen and Paul Giammatti. Both of these guys are extremely talented actors, so seeing them in a cheesy action film should elevate the material to at least some level of cool, right? Not when you have a sexist director who is gun-obsessed and has the gall to try to fit in a "guns are bad" message amidst the never-ending cascade of squibs and rat-a-tat gunfire. It seems they were trying to make something that was self-aware of its ridiculousness so they pushed it further and further and it ended up being just as dumb (if not dumber) as the action movies it is purportedly sending up. It's like they're saying, "We know this material is really stupid (wink-wink) but here's some more brain-numbing action scenes because we're smart enough to deconstruct it." Well they failed miserably. The end result is tedious, tiresome, and gratingly stupid.

All three of these action movies suffer from the same fundamental problem: how can you get "caught up" in the tension of an action scene when you know for absolute certain that the hero will emerge unscathed? We all know that CG effects are out of control in the modern blockbuster movie, and these films are no exception: the obviousness of their special FX, green-screen compositing and over-the-top stunt coordination makes the whole experience feel like a computer generated "virtual" rollercoaster ride. If this is the best that action movies are going to give us in this decade, then it's a genre I'll gladly skip.

On the positive side, I saw a movie called The Fall several weeks ago which is only now getting a wider distribution. Director Tarsem Singh (The Cell, music video for REM's "Losing My Religion") took 10 years to develop and shoot this movie which is sort of a cross between The Princess Bride and Lawrence of Arabia. It's a "story within a story" film that has a paralyzed stunt man (Lee Pace) telling an improvised fairy-tale to a young girl from his hospital bed so that she can get him pills for him to end his life. The movie switches into these gorgeous and exotic locations all over the world as it visually realizes the story being told from the little girl's perspective. Dramatic parallels between the two realities unfold within the fantasy world and the "real" world that these characters inhabit. It's a stunning and beautiful film - an accomplishment all the more praiseworthy for the unexpected emotional punch it packs along the way. It seems, critically, that this movie has had some mixed reviews and the effect of it on audiences is somewhat polarizing, but for myself, it is nothing shy of brilliant, inspired film-making and I recommend it unequivocally. Watch the trailer below... Tarsem Singh is a visionary.



And earlier this week, in an attempt to give my brain a break from action-movie overkill, I bumped up the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room in my Netflix queue which was a mind-blowing portrait of corporate greed and excess. I didn't know the details of the Enron scandal other than some shady accounting practices and insider trading from the corporate head honchos ultimately acted as their undoing, and that, as it turns out, is only half the story. It's a tale of greed and hubris for sure, but it also is a tragic character study as well; one that probes into the human nature of the situation in a capitalist society such as ours. Some scenes were really eye-opening like the revelation of their involvement with the infamous rolling blackouts in California in 2002. In several cases that the documentary makes, these were often the result of some of Enron's day traders calling up these power plant facilities and asking them to "get creative" to find reasons to shut the system down so they could create a higher energy demand and drive their stock price up even higher. Pretty amazing stuff that sounds like it's out of a James Bond story except this really happened! Not only that, but it begs the larger question of, if Enron is a case that got out of control and ended up being one of the biggest corporate scandals of our generation, how many other corrupted business practices are being made out there now? How many Enrons do we need before some of the leniency afforded corporations by our government demands reform? Pretty thought-provoking stuff, and, as a film, it never feels stodgy or too clinical and features great use of archival footage from the corporation's own in-house video productions.

Some other recommendations before I sign off would be 3:10 to Yuma, the western remake with Christian Bale and Russell Crowe was fresh, exciting and not entirely predictable. Ratatouille is another very well done animated story from Brad Bird that's not quite on par with The Incredibles but is extremely enjoyable and is gorgeous to look at. The sci-fi horror film Sunshine is also one of the best-looking films I've seen in a while and is a good entry in the genre of "doomed space expedition movies" even tho it falls off a bit in the final act when it goes slasher. And No Country For Old Men is better the second time through - a lot better, in fact.