Category: Movies

A few old standards I watched while telecommuting this week.  (Intentionally chosen due to their familiarity and low need to be paid constant attention to):

1. 

   The Mummy:    A rippingly fun adventure that still holds up in plot and fx despite being pre-milennial.  The good guys are good, the bad guys are bad — but everyone’s got just enough of a human face under the serial masks to give it oomph.  This is one of my “desert island” flicks.
   

2. 

   Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl:    A bit darker and more complex than the previous, but great fun.  Watched it in particular to see if, post-WDW, it might be good Kitten fare.  Nope — a bit on the (PG-13) violent side (and complicated, to boot).  But glad I watched it again.
   

3. 

   The Last Starfighter :   The CG is crude, the masks rubbery, the clothes and hairstyles soooooo 80s, and the sophistication of plot and acting lower than most cartoons on today, but it’s, again, a hell of a lot of fun.  And who hasn’t thought that someone might be watching us, see us for our hidden and unappreciated talents, and pluck us away to save the galaxy (and impress our girl/boyfriend)?

Hmmm.  A number of bits I don’t recall from the book (where the whole lighting hunters sky boat thing was a brief interlude), and the trailer has a Princess Bride-style humorous bent.  Still looking forward to this, but it’s a bit worrisome.

(via Les)

Went to see 300 this morning at the local IMAX with Stan, Randy, and Jackie. I’d just finished rereading the Frank Miller graphic novel, so I knew what I was getting into. Bottom line: great for what it is, beautifully rendered, but not destined to go down in cinematic history as much more than that.

300 (2007)

Overall		Story
Production		Acting

Story: The movie closely follows Miller’s retelling of the Spartan “victory” at Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans (along with sundry other Greeks) made a stand against the invading Persian armies of Xerxes, inspiring by their brave deaths the rest of Greece to eventually hurl back the invaders. That’s pretty much it, and there’s plenty of speechifying, blood, gore, battle, and Warriors Code to satisfy an IMAX theater of Klingons.

Zack Snyder (who directed), padded out the script some with two other writers, largely because the actual graphic novel would have been about an hour-long film. We now also get to see King Leonidas queen, Gorgo, dealing with political rivals at home who threaten to leave Leonidas in the lurch and sell out the nation to Xerxes. These additions may have been necessary, time-wise, but they are far more conventional and less involving than the original Miller material.

Beyond that, the characters are not all that interestingly fleshed out. That’s part of the “myth” aspect of the tale — nobody ever gets a lot of motivation and backstory from Greek Myth characters, nor do we get more in 300. Leonidas is brave, sees the Greeks as protectors of liberty (ironic coming from the king of the most brutal, most slave-holding, and least democratic of the Greek republics), and loves his wife and his homeland even unto death. The rest of the Spartansget even shorter shrift, with a father-son thread inserted that telegraphs tragedy a mile away.

And, at that, they fare better than the Persians, who are more noteworthy for their sneers and piercings than as their complexity as anything more than villains.

Acting: Within the bounds of the limited character stories, the actors all do quite well. No hamminess, despite some of the lines and speeches to be delivered. The bad guys are bad, the good guys are noble brutes, and everyone plays well their part.

Production: As an adaptation of a Frank Miller graphic novel, the standard for comparison is Sin City, and like that movie, 300 maintains a close adherence to Miller’s visual imagery. Making heavy use of CGI for backgrounds and other effects, computerized blood spatters, and heavy (bordering on excessive) use of “bullet time” super-slo-mo to highlight various action. (Indeed, if all of the slow motion were cranked up to full speed, this would be a 90 minute film, nota two hour one).

The only place where this falters is with some of the prosthetic “monsters” — a misshapen Spartan, a berserker giant, and the imperial executioner. Especially the first (who’s the only character from the graphic novel, and who gets the most screen time), these creations never quite look real enough, especially in close-up.

But beyond that, not only is the imagery, costuming, and set-work a close match for Miller’s novel, it’s just gorgeous. It also lends the whole production a slightly unreal air that keeps the gore, the horror, and the melodramatic speeches from seeming as over the top as they are. This is myth, legend, not gritty realism, and as such it works beautifully.

Overall: As a kickass bloody war film, 300 is great. Violent, yes, but steeped in blood in such a way that it’s not gratuitous, just part and parcel of the legend. As history, 300 is okay, with the basic outline of the historic events being as portrayed (IMDB FAQ) — the only disadvantage being that most of the folks who see it will still not recognize the name “Thermopylae.” As a characterpiece, it’s sorely lacking; only Leonidas gets more than one dimension, and he not much more than that.

But, then, that’s probably not why people are coming to see the film, but to see a big, bloody action spectacular, and 300 fills the bill. The movie’s rated R for violence (a-plenty), nudity (lots of nipplage, male and female alike) and sex (softcore), and is definitely not for youngsters (I’d wait until late teens on this one). I’m pleased I went to see it, though I don’t think I’ll probably get the DVD — I have the graphic novel, after all, which does at least as good a job.

Yet another review of everyone’s favorite sound effect, the Wilhelm.

In the 1951 movie Distant Drums starring Gary Cooper, a small band of soldiers were crossing a swamp in pursuit of Seminole Indians. While wading through the Everglades one unnamed soldier was attacked and dragged underwater by an alligator. His last sound as he died was a startled scream.

In The Charge at Feather River two years later, a soldier named Private Wilhelm screamed in what sounded like alligator-assaulted agony when he was struck by an arrow. In fact, his cry of pained surprise was practically identical to unnamed soldier’s. Both men would soon be forgotten as a bit parts in B-movies, seen by relatively few moviegoers. But the holler they bellowed went on to be heard by millions– if not billions– of people worldwide.

Previous references here: 1, 2. Other oft-heard effects: Castle Thunder and Red-Tailed Hawk.

Evidently Paramount’s changed its mind as to how it wants the website for the movie of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust to be focused. But Gaiman managed to talk them into letting him post the nearly-ready-to-go previous version under his site. Fun.

Let’s just say it makes nice background while working at home.

T3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

Overall		Story
Production		Acting

I’m a big fan of Terminator 2, so I shied away from this one while in the theaters, hearing tell it was a bit … disappointing.

And … it was. But only a bit.

Story: There’s not a huge amount new here. John Connor is a bit older. Despite what we saw at the end of T2 (alternate ending), John’s mom has died and he’s an “off the grid” wanderer, certain he’s going to be tracked down by The Machines.

Which, of course, he is. At which point we have (stop me if you’ve heard this one) John and a companion fleeing a super-duper hi-tech Terminator out to kill him, protected by a Schwarzenegger-class Terminator, and trying to get into a top secret installation to prevent Judgment Day from occurring.

Um … ho-hum. There are a few twists, but, really, it’s much the same story, except for the end — and end that falls a bit flat, as we go from “there is no fate but what we make” to “sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” There’s no “win,” just survival … and if the Terminator from the future fails its mission — the primary objective at least — it’s hard to say that the “good guys” win, either. Indeed, it’s arguable that the good guys are worse off than they would have been if they hadn’t succeeded
quite so well in the second movie, which is kind of odd.

Indeed, T3 in that respect resembles another film that followed a James Cameron blockbuster: Aliens 3.

Production: The fx are a bit better (CG, you know), the car chases are more spectactular, the baddie is badder (and a girl), the body count is higher, and … well, the whole thing feels a bit flatter, a lot less edgy (lacking the paranoid manic intensity of Linda Hamilton’s Sarah), and somehow smaller (the exteriors are more focused, the interiors less ambitious).

The music? Huh. I guess there was music. Didn’t really notice, until the end titles rehash of the Terminator tune.

The fx, as I said, are technically spiffier (esp. when used to mix with real life, as in some of the initial car chase action), and they’re effectively used, but just not as exciting as the T1000 liquid metal of T2 — perhaps because there’s not much here we hadn’t seen in the dozen years since the ’91 predecessor.

Acting: Nick Stahl’s John Connor is a worthy successor to Edward Furlong — only more whiny and less ballsy. Claire Danes starts off shrill, ends up decent enough. Kristianna Loken as the T-X has less personality (in a bad way) than Robert Patrick as the T-1000. Schwarzenegger is just going through the motions. And everyone else … is just showing up for the paycheck.

Overall: T3 isn’t a bad movie. It’s an amusing romp, something to have fun with over a few beers. Alas, it’s main failing is the degree to which it falls short of its predecessor, somewhat tiredly going through the motions and tarnishing one of the spiffier future histories just a bit. Ah, well — not going to lose any sleep over it.

SEB posts a reminder of this faboo Mike Jittlov <s>video</s> film from back in the day, now up on YouTube.

I didn’t do SF conventions back when this was hot property — but I did go to a number of animation festivals, and this one always drew huge applause. Remembering that the stop-motion stuff was all done frame-by-frame, it’s just astonishing.