X-Men Origins: Wolverine Review

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I Am Legend

Well, I saw "I Am Legend" last night.

While it wasn't great, it also wasn't wasn't bad. In brief, here's my review, for whatever that is worth. :)

Great effects. It is worth seeing on the big screen just for the first 20+ minutes in an abandoned New York. But I thought that they didn't need to go completely CGI for the vampires/creatures/whatever you want to call them.
Makeup effects would have been fine and given them more solidity and reality.

The product placement wasn't as bad as a Michael Bay film, but it was close. Some examples were so glaring and obvious they made me laugh out loud.

The direction was very good. I'm not one for getting caught up in thrillers, you can either predict what is going to happen or you are prepared for the eventual "scare." Generally directors fall back on the pop out and scare you rather than create an atmosphere of suspense. Francis Lawrence did it right. I was on the edge of my seat in some parts, half wanting to look away and the other part wanting to see what happens.

Will Smith was very good. One caveat here, I like Will. I've always thought that he was an enjoyable actor, but through his career I've also seen a lot of growth in his range and abilities. I was really sold on his emotion for some of the scenes that could have been smarmy and dopey if done badly.

Lastly, the script. There are some glaring holes in logic. A couple of lines of dialogue made me cringe. And the story gets rushed towards the last part and then kind of just... ends.

All in all, not a bad popcorn film, but, as a friend put it, "This film will never rise above it's genre."

Farewell, My Lovely (1975) and Chinatown (1974)

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This weekend I went to see a double feature of
[url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072973/]Farewell, My Lovely[/url] (1975)
and [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071315/]Chinatown[/url] (1974).

Chinatown was up first. This is about the fifth time I've seen it and third
time on the big screen. I love this film. Set in the 50's, it is a film noir
story starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway and directed by Roman
Polanski, his last film in America. Robert Towne won an Oscar for Best
Original Screenplay for his script.

"Los Angeles detective Jake Gittes is hired by a woman claiming to be a Mrs.
Mulwray to spy on her husband. Shortly after Gittes is hired, the real Mrs.
Mulwray appears in his office threatening to sue if he doesn't drop the case
immediately. Gittes pursues the case anyway, slowly uncovering a vast
conspiracy centering on water management, state and municipal corruption,
land use and real estate, and involving at least one murder." [www.imdb.com]

The location shots and cinematography are beautiful. It really gives you the
sense and feel of Los Angeles in the 30's. It's sad to see the locations and
realize that only thirty years later many of them are not there anymore.

The script is tight and spare. There is not a lot of wasted dialogue. Towne
leaves it up to the audience to connect the dots. With Polanski direction,
the viewer is able to piece together many of the plot twists just slightly
ahead of Gittes.

Once you get over the shock of seeing a slim and young Jack Nicholson [not
quite as shocking as his age in The Raven, but even so...], he is truly
delightful to watch. The dialogue is snappy and Nicholson plays it with just
the right amount of sarcastic anti-establishmentarianism.

I am not particularly fond of Faye Dunaway's portrayal, but John Huston as
Noah Cross, her character's father, more than makes up for it. The sense of
power and authority he radiates every time he's on screen just about
squeezes every other actor out of frame. I could eat it up with a spoon.

Five stars. Highly recommended.

Unfortunately, seeing Chinatown first just served to point out all the flaws
in Farewell, My Lovely.

The movie is based on the Raymond Chandler book of the same name and is considered to be the movie version most faithful to the text. However, the story is obviously cut to fit the 95 minute running time and feels rushed. Having not read the original novel, I can’t say for sure that all of the twists and turns of the plot were as telegraphed as the movie, but I suspect not. The dialogue wasn’t bad, for noir-style dialogue. Very reminiscent of the snappy back and forth you’ll find in Sin City, but like most hard-boiled crime fiction dialogue, it just falls onto the floor and lays there like a dead fish if you don’t have the proper delivery.
Robert Mitchum is perfectly suited for the lead role of Philip Marlowe. All he really needs to do is wander around the movie looking tired and down and out. Really, no one does the basset hound look like “Mitch.” Everyone else must have taken their cue from him, though. I can’t point to a single member of the cast that made the slightest impression on me. Jack O’Halloran had less emotional range playing the hulking ex-con Moose Malloy than Richard Kiel as Jaws in Moonraker. Don’t even get me started on Harry Dean Stanton as the quick to anger corrupt police detective.
The entire film looks to be shot on the back lot of the studio. There are a couple of location shots, but as soon as a character steps inside, we’re back on a set. It looks as if everything was filmed with one static camera. One character will say their dialogue and then it cuts to a shot of the other actors reaction.
It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the film. To me it’s just light entertainment and fun to watch Mitchum [the only enjoyable part of the film]. Basically, it has more in common with a made-for-TV movie that a feature film.

Three stars. For Robert Mitchum fans only.

300

If you don't want spoilers, don't read this blog. :)

I saw this movie twice just to feel like I formed an adequate critical opinion of it, outside of the hype. I'll admit, the first time I saw it I didn't like it very much. The more I described it to friends and family I didn't have many bad things to say about it, but still had a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe it was the fact that I saw it late at night after a long day's work, big dinner and two Gin and tonics. In any case, by the time the final battle sequence started I was tapping the armrest and heaving big sighs waiting for the credits to roll.

I determined that I had to see 300 again in completely different circumstances to see if that might change my opinion. So the following Saturday I went to an afternoon showing by myself. First off, let me that there were no less that four children under the age of 10 around me with their families. Now, I am far, far, far from prudish, but seriously, what is wrong with these parents that they would bring young children to see this film? From the writhing Oracle covered in a sheen of sweat on her naked body to sex scene with King Leonidas taking his queen doggystyle to the massive amounts of dismemberments and decapitations, this is not a movie for young children. Sorry, but it's true.

I'm a fan of Frank Miller's work and own pretty much everything he's written for comics, so I read the original series of 300 comics. I remember at the time that I thought the art and coloring were beautiful, but I wasn't overly fond of the story. The movie did an excellent job of capturing Miller's artwork on the screen and even better did justice to Lynn Varley's palette from the source material.

I have to go with the majority in agreeing that the visual effects were just about the best I've seen. The green screen effects were almost seamless with the actors and sets. Almost. There are a couple of scenes that the compositing is obvious, but they are so few and so minor if you aren't looking very closely, you wouldn't notice.

I wish the makeup effects were up to the same level. While they did capture Miller's character designs from the comics near perfectly, to me they looked blatantly like rubber prosthesis. This s not something I would really hold against the filmmakers; I was caught up enough in the story to suspend disbelief for the sake of the story. I was only mildly let down.

Overall, I felt 300 was well-acted, but truth to tell, it's not a script that is filled with much emotional depth. Like much of his work, including the noir Sin City books and movie, Miller's writing is crisp and staccato. He writes manly scripts for manly men. This leads me to the one line in the script that I cannot for the life of me get over.

The story goes that Frank Miller spent years researching the Spartans and the battle at the Hot Gates in preparation for writing and drawing 300. I guess that's why it gets to me that in the scene where he is parlaying with the messenger from the Persians, King Leonidas refers to the other Greeks dismissively as "Philosophers and boy-lovers."

I know that I'm the only one I've spoken to that this line bothers, but I just can't get over it. It's such a blatant revisionist line put in there just to support the supposition that the Spartans are real men. They were flagrant pederasts. You could easily have taken out that comment and have Leonidas refer to the other Greeks as philosophers and farmers or some other non-militaristic profession. He says basically the same thing when his troop encounters the Athenians during the march to the coast. Aside from being an unnecessarily offensive line, it's an outright lie about Spartan society. It's a minor thing, but it bugs me.

When the movie opens and we hear the voice over my first thought was, "Oh no…" I'm not a fan of the voice over. Usually they are not done well and are generally used to cover up gaps in the narrative that should have been evident in the film if it was well-made. In this case, however, I thought they did an excellent job bringing it back to the storyteller addressing the Spartan troop. It managed to get a lot of exposition out of the way and while at the same time feeling like an organic part of the movie.

All that being said, what I feel the movie suffers from is an emphasis of style over substance that at times threatens to overwhelm the film. Zach Snyder seems to have fallen in love with altering the film speed. It's like the abuse of the crash zoom in Ghost Rider.

If you took out all of the slo-mo sequences in this film, maybe it would only run 60 minutes. When used effectively, slo-mo can emphasize the emotional underpinning of a scene. There were moments when Snyder used this technique masterfully. In particular, there is one of the last scenes in the film wherein the storyteller stands in the field of wheat and informs the queen of the death of King Leonidas. It's a beautiful scene as the soldier turns and walks away and the queen looks down at her son. It captures so many emotions at once; her sorrow, a feeling of hope as she looks on the boy, melancholy of seeing her husband reflected in their son, the sense of duty as the soldier turn, his mission done, to return to his troops.

Now contrast this with an earlier scene when the queen is following her on through the marketplace. After he turns to run away, the scenes kicks in to slow motion as she passes through a series of blankets hung out to dry, emerging to find the older senator waiting for her at the fountain. There is reason for this scene to be slowed. That is not the only scene that suffers from this abuse, but certainly, to me, the most egregious. Snyder falls on this film-making trope far too often and I think the film suffers for it.

Then there is the stylistic choice to frame all of the action with running the film at half n speed, then jumping to one and a half speed, then back to half speed. This is effective once or twice, specifically when King Leonidas kicks the Persian messenger down the well and in the first battle sequence when the Spartans break out of their shell and charge into battle. Once again, though, Snyder overuses the technique to the point that, although beautifully choreographed and rendered, the fight scenes become tedious.

There is one specific scene that I think should be re-cut to make it more effective. In the final confrontation with Xerxes, the voice over kicks in and describes him dropping his shield, then his helm and as we see King Leonidas doing exactly that. Then we are treated to a glimpse into his head with a montage of images of Sparta, his soldiers, his queen, all the things that help him make his decision to throw the spear at Xerxes. This is an obvious call back to the messenger scene at the beginning of the film which has the same kind of montage preceding his decision to kill the messenger and defy the invading Persians. Then he announces the attack and hurls his spear, wounding Xerxes. The narration cuts back in to explain that he dropped his shield and helm to help his throw.

The problem with this scene is that the gap between the first voiceover and then the payoff is too long. If the montage was moved in front of the king dropping his shield and helm, the audience would be lead to believe that rather than make the same decision he had at the beginning of the film, he had decided finally to submit. Then the call for attack, the throw and the narration would have more impact because the audience would be completely duped into thinking the opposite.

Okay, so aside from my rant about the audience, here's what I thought of 300. It's okay. Not the best film I've seen, but not close to a bad film. Zach Snyder did a good job, but I think he still reflects too much of his music video roots by depending on camera effects to fabricate emotion. Would I own the DVD? Yes, absolutely.